by Jamie Kain
“I’ll be very upset if I pay for your education and you go and die before you get to use it.”
I hadn’t been expecting such a backhanded comment, and I sat there stunned, unsure what to say. How great did the risk of my cancer’s relapsing have to be before I wasn’t worth spending college-tuition money on?
Part of me wanted to stand up and leave, tell her to stick her money up her ass, but I knew the real reason we were there wasn’t just about college money. It was about my mother needing money to pay the rent, and if I blew it now, we’d spend the next month eating nothing but ramen noodles and avoiding angry calls from the landlord.
Also, because this often meant my middle sister, Rachel, and I coughing up our own money to pay for food and other essentials, I was doubly motivated.
“I’ll try my best not to die,” I said evenly, meeting her eye and almost smiling as I said it.
Satisfied with that, she nodded and wheeled herself back out of the room. A minute later, I could hear her and Lena talking again in hushed tones, probably haggling over the amount of the check grandma was writing.
Because no one was yelling or slamming doors, I knew this visit had been a success.
I got out my cell phone and began composing a text to David: R u free? I typed, then hit send.
I used to think I wanted to be a doctor, but the more time I spent in hospitals, the more I saw that the people who made a difference were the nurses. A few of those who’d helped me over the years were my heroes, angels who’d swooped in and offered soothing words and gentle touches when I’d been in the worst pain of my life.
I wanted to be one of them. When I was younger and still believed in God with a capital G, it was partly because I thought if I was a good enough person, maybe God would let me stay alive longer. Maybe he or she or it would make the cancer go away for good. I used to think we had to bargain our way through the world, trading good deeds for good luck, but now I know it’s not that way at all.
I spent my whole life trying so hard to be good, and in the end it didn’t matter.
My cell phone chirped to let me know that David had texted me back. I looked at the message: We r all free—his little bit of phonetically spelled philosophy.
I wished I could be as hopeful as he was, but I wasn’t. I could hear Lena and Grandma de Graas still murmuring in the next room, two people bound by love and hate, tangled in family ties. Just like my sisters and me. Just like all of us.
And here I am now, where we are supposed to be truly free (or at least that’s what we assume about death, don’t we?), still bound to the people I left behind.
Ten
Rachel
I have spent most of my life rolling my eyes at the spiritual-seeking crap that surrounds us in Marin County. Meditation and chakras and all that.
But when I am sitting in the dining room of the meditation center with Krishna, and I look around at the people smiling and talking, I feel kind of curious about them. Like, who are they and why the hell are they here and not at the mall?
I stand in line and get a plate of food, then take a seat at a table where some other hippies are already sitting and talking. Krishna tells me he will be right back.
The scent of incense and curry are heavy in the air, which is probably a good thing since I doubt any of these people wear deodorant. I pretend to be interested in my food, take a few bites, stir it around.
“Are you enjoying the feast?” Krishna asks as he sits down beside me.
Why do vegetarians always call it a feast? It’s not like anyone’s roasted a goddamn pig or anything.
“Yeah, it’s good. Thanks.” The lentil stew is heavy on the spice and coconut milk, and it’s served over the ever-present brown rice. But it’s okay. It’s the first thing I’ve eaten since Sarah’s death that I think I’ve sort of tasted.
“What did you think of the meditation session?” he asks.
I would like to say it was stupid, that I got nothing out of sitting for a half hour trying not to think, but I feel … the opposite of that. Ever since the session ended, I’ve felt this sort of crazy calm, like I’ve been drugged.
“It was hard to do … but I liked it.”
“Monkey mind. We all struggle with it. It’s a term to describe how our mind always wants to jump from thought to thought. We handle it by simply noticing when the mind starts to wander and gently returning to our focus on the mantra.”
I can’t believe I am seriously having a conversation with someone about meditating and mantras. Part of me wants to laugh, and part of me is just here.
Being.
I feel sort of good and not panicky for the first time in a long time.
“I’ll try to remember that,” I say.
“Does that mean you might join us again sometime?” he says with a little smile.
He is so freaking gorgeous, I’d probably agree to celibacy for the next year if I thought it might eventually lead to something with him, but the way he asks me the question, it’s not like he’s trying to sell me on Buddhism or get in my pants. It’s like he genuinely wants to know.
“I think so,” I say, surprising myself.
“I’d like that. Would you like a tour of the center?”
I say I would, and we carry our dishes to the kitchen where we each wash and dry our stuff and put it all back in the cabinets like good little pseudo-Buddhists.
Then he leads me out of the dining room into the main entry area and through the front door. From there we head down a path that passes the parking lot and goes off into an open field dotted with boulders, trees, and cows. We are walking into a postcard of Marin.
“This is one of the paths where we do walking meditation,” he says as he walks beside me. “It’s a style of meditation that you can employ anywhere, but it helps if it’s a quiet place, free of distraction.”
“How did you end up here?” I ask him, genuinely curious.
He smiles, and my stomach does a flip. “I wasn’t always disciplined about my spiritual path. I told you about my heroin-addict days. When I got clean, I knew I had to do something drastically different. I’d been a Buddhist since my teens but not serious about it, and then I signed up for a weekend meditation workshop here, and the rest is history.”
“And now you run the place and never have sex?”
He laughs. “No, I’m just a resident instructor. My celibacy is part of my own self-directed spiritual path.”
I say nothing because I feel stupid for bringing up his lack of a sex life now. Something about him is so serene, so open and genuine, it wipes away all my crap. He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met, and because I know we can’t have sex, I kind of just want to observe him and see what kind of magic he has that might rub off on me.
We wander along the path and take a short walk back toward the main buildings. He shows me the dorm areas, the campground, and the main offices. We end up back at the main entrance where we started.
My gaze lands on a job-notice flyer sitting on the front counter.
“I don’t suppose you’re looking for work?” he says.
The flyer says they have an opening for a full-time front-desk receptionist. I don’t know what to say. Could I be a receptionist, smiling and answering phones and being nice to neurotic rich people and hippies all day?
It is so far from my idea of the job I belong in, I almost laugh, but something about Krishna makes me not want to hurt his feelings, so I don’t.
“Hmm, I don’t really have any experience other than serving coffee.”
He smiles. “Well, think about it and let me know if you decide you’re interested. I have a feeling it would be a good fit for you.”
I don’t know what to say to this, so I say nothing. Part of me is flattered he wants to give me a job, and part of me is trying to imagine my future.
“What are your plans now that you’ve finished high school?” He leads me toward the meditation room where we spent a half hour before dinner sitting silently an
d with our eyes closed.
It seems like an odd question for a Buddhist monk. Aren’t they supposed to be all about the present moment? What does he care about my future?
But why don’t I care? That’s the bigger question. I think of Sarah, the hike, and everything that went so wrong so fast, and I know I don’t believe I deserve to be planning for a future now.
“I don’t know,” I say, wishing I had a better answer.
We are alone in the meditation room now, and he sits down on a cushion and invites me to sit on one opposite him. In all my vast life experience, this is the part where we get naked and screw each other’s brains out, and I would definitely go there with Krishna, but I am sure now that’s not what he has in mind for me.
I feel the wall that I always have up between me and the rest of the world crumbling down, brick by brick.
The room is so quiet, in spite of the people still milling about the center outside the door. Early-evening light comes through the large windows that line one wall and reflects off the shiny wood floor. Something about that light makes my chest ache like I just got some shitty news.
“Have you ever looked at someone and known they have an important purpose in your life?”
“No,” I say without thinking about it. Then I think of the way I so easily went with Krishna and came out to this place, not a single eye roll the entire time, and I consider changing my answer.
But before I can, he says, “I saw you on the sidewalk, and I didn’t know what sort of tragedy you were experiencing, but I knew I was supposed to stop and talk to you.”
“You mean like little voices told you so?”
He smiles a Jesusy sort of smile. “Not exactly, no. One thing meditation does for me is it helps me listen to my inner voice. Whether you call that voice God or your subconscious or the universe or whatever, it’s the part of us that speaks the truth.”
If I didn’t know better, I would think this guy was so full of bullshit we should be drowning in it right now, but Krishna … I don’t know.
He’s different.
For once in my life I just trust him without questioning it too damn much.
“Why me?”
“I don’t know yet, but the more we’ve talked, the more I’ve become sure we are supposed to help each other. Maybe I’m supposed to help you, maybe you’re supposed to help me, I don’t know that part yet. But I think you might make a good receptionist for the time being,” he says with a full-on grin now.
“When you asked about my future plans, I’m not sure because I don’t really want to go to college, at least not yet. And I guess I always thought I’d become like…” I feel stupid saying the next part but want to tell him the whole truth. “Like a model or something, some kind of celebrity on TV.”
“It’s the dream of our generation,” he says without any sarcasm, and I’m grateful he doesn’t make fun of me.
“Do you want to know the whole truth?”
He nods.
“Before my sister died, when I wasn’t working at the coffee shop, I spend all day taking photos of myself to post on Instagram, and putting videos on YouTube, and, you know, that kind of stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Like sexy stuff. Wannabe-porn-star stuff, I guess.”
“Is that what you want to be?”
“No,” I say, surprised the answer comes out so easily. “It’s just, I don’t have any talent besides looking hot.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true.” I look off to the side, out the window where a row of redwood trees rustle in the wind.
“Maybe you need to give yourself a chance to find out what else you’re good at, what else you like to do.”
“Maybe,” but I can’t think of what I’d do. “I like to dance, but I’m not good enough to get into music videos or anything.”
I might be able to get myself a job swinging on a dance pole, I think, but don’t say it out loud. The only thing that’s stopped me from doing that yet is the lack of reliable transportation I have into the city, where all the strip clubs are.
For some reason, I want Krishna to think I’m not as awful as I am, but I also want him to know the truth. It’s an impossible freaking balance to strike.
“What about your little sister? Do you think maybe she could use your help?”
“What does she have to do with this?”
“Sometimes the good we have to offer the world is most easily found in what we can do for the people around us.”
“She hates me,” I say, but I realize instantly that it’s not true. Asha maybe doesn’t hate me so much as she just puts up with me.
“Why does she?”
“Well, mostly, I haven’t been so nice to her.” Or to anyone. “Nice hasn’t really been my style.”
“Do you think you might be able to change her mind about you?”
What I think is, Asha is the least of my worries. She is not the sister making my life beyond miserable right now. Sarah is the one I have to worry about. Now that she’s gone, it’s as if my relationship with her—and her death—are the only things that matter.
I used to think that if I could just show the world how Sarah wasn’t as perfect as everyone thought, then I’d be happy. Then life would be fair. But now I have all the dirt on her. Now I know just how imperfect she is, and I can’t tell anyone. Telling her ugly secrets now would mean leaving out everything I did wrong.
My legs are starting to ache sitting in this cross-legged meditation position again, and I don’t want to talk about Asha anymore. I shrug and give a little who-knows smile, hoping that’s enough answer for him.
“Can I tell you something else?” I say.
“Sure, anything.”
“Remember how I told you my sister died?”
He nods.
“I was there when it happened.”
I don’t say the rest. I don’t tell him my big ugly secret—that I am the reason she is dead, or Sarah’s secret, which I’m afraid would pale in comparison to mine. That stuff, I can’t say aloud.
I’m not sure I ever will.
He stares at me with this crazy intensity that makes me think I’m going to burst into flames, but he seems to be waiting for me to continue.
I don’t.
“That’s why I had to stop and talk to you on the sidewalk,” he finally says.
“It is?”
“You’re carrying a burden too heavy for one person to bear.”
I say nothing to that, not sure what the hell to say.
“But we can’t solve the world’s problems in a day, and you’re probably wondering if I’m ever going to give you a ride home, right?”
I smile and stretch my legs. “Yeah, sort of.”
“Let’s get going then.” He stands up and extends a hand to me.
I take his hand and stand up myself, feeling warm at the physical contact with him, but then I feel stupid, because, of course, it’s not like we’re ever going to get naked together.
Unless I can change his mind about that celibacy thing. But as I walk out to the beat-up, old Toyota with him, I realize that’s not exactly what I want to do. Instead, I think I want Krishna to stay just as he is—not quite like any other guy I’ve ever met.
Maybe someday I could tell him the whole ugly truth about Sarah’s death, and he might not hate me for it. He might just smile that Jesus smile and tell me everything has a purpose. Maybe he will tell me how to sleep through the night while remembering that kind of truth.
But I doubt it.
Eleven
Asha
Spring break comes and goes. I realized right away I couldn’t stay in the park forever unless I want to spend all my time smelling bad and starving, so I went back home to the house where Sarah is not, where all the questions about her death that have no answers scream at me. Home, 414 Redwood Way, has a gaping, empty space where my sister should be, and that space threatens to swallow me up, the closer I get to it. I
stay in bed for the entire week trying not to get swallowed while most people my age are living it up. I try to read, but I can’t focus. I hear nothing from Sin, and I want to die.
Thoughts of Tristan, and that kiss, alternately torture and entertain me. I can focus for a minute maybe on how it felt to have his mouth on me, his hand traveling up my thigh, but then thoughts of Sin and his anger always interfere, and I’ve decided it’s better to just put the whole thing out of my head as much as I can.
I also try not to think about Sarah, and what we would be doing if she were around on this day or that day or the next day. I mostly fail.
Lena hassles me to get out of bed, to help her with things. I refuse, and she flips out, and then she either goes to bed too or she leaves and goes to her boyfriend Ron’s house, where she is spending more and more time these days.
Rachel and I usually have a strict policy of not talking and staying the hell away from each other, but near the end of spring break, she passes my door, sees me lying in bed, and stops.
She looks like she’s about to say something, but instead she just crosses her arms over her chest and leans against the doorframe, staring at me as if I were a strange bit of flotsam that had washed up on the beach.
“What?”
“You can’t stay in bed forever,” she points out, as if this is somehow a helpful piece of news.
“Actually, I can.”
To this, she says nothing. Just keeps staring.
I consider telling her to go away, but it would take too much energy and would probably have the opposite effect of what I want.
I close my eyes, and a memory surfaces, one of Rachel taking care of me after the bone-marrow donation. I was in bed, achy and exhausted, while Lena and Ravi were at the hospital with Sarah. So we were home alone together, and it was probably Rachel’s first time having to take care of someone else. She seemed to be enjoying the responsibility, which surprised me even back then.
I remember her bringing Lena’s laptop into the room, since we didn’t own a television, and looking up online games for us to play while we sat side by side in bed. And she read to me from A Wrinkle in Time until it started giving me a headache. Then she went downstairs and came up a half hour later with a tray that held a bowl of soup and a cup of hot tea. The soup, a strange concoction of brown broth and floating food objects that she’d made from scratch herself, tasted so salty I gagged at the first mouthful.