by Sharon Bala
Mid-afternoon, there came a knock on the door. It was Ashwa, now wearing a darker, more fuchsia, sarong. The same unnerving smoothness coated his features.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I, well, my order—our temple is downtown, off Johnson, near the pagoda—wishes to see your son.”
He stood, half bent it seemed, but also poised. His face appeared so hairless, laser-depilated, a stranger to beards. Each pore a little pocket of shiny skin.
“I told you to leave us alone.”
“I understand your desire for privacy. We’ve been occasionally passing by to perhaps see him and—”
“You’ve been watching us?”
“Oh no, no, no. Not watching. Occasionally passing by to perhaps catch a glimpse or speak—”
“You’ve been watching us?”
“Who is it?” yelled Craig from the kitchen. I heard wine being poured into a glass.
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Ashwa somehow maintained eye contact and did not. He kept his gaze on the shark-tooth outer edge of my left eye.
“Who is it, Jan?” yelled Craig again.
“Ashwa,” I said, though not to Craig.
He nodded.
“Billy has gone out into the yard and sat down below our tree and refuses to speak or move.”
“Below the cedar tree.”
“Yes, below the cedar tree. Is that somehow significant?”
“I do not know.”
“It’s the only species of tree in our yard.”
“I see,” he said.
“What exactly is he doing?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, I know he’s meditating. I know. But what is he doing?”
“May I come in?”
I moved aside, and he stepped into the house, his sarong rustling past the door frame. For some reason, we began to walk down the hall, away from Craig and the kitchen.
“Janet, it’s likely Billy is progressing to a deeper period of reflection, a more profound awakening.”
We passed the laundry room. I felt the weight of my body on each socked foot.
“How profound?” I asked.
“Who can say? Great teachers often seclude themselves for very long periods of time.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“In one sense, yes.”
“What other senses are there?”
“Who can say?”
“That’s cute. He isn’t eating.”
Ashwa nodded
“He hasn’t had anything to drink, or slept, in two days.”
Ashwa nodded.
We had by then circumnavigated the main floor’s maze of hallways and entered the kitchen. Craig, wineglass poised against his bottom lip, froze as we walked by. He tracked our passing with his eyes. Ashwa at my side in his sandals and purple dress, me pretending like Craig knew what was happening. I shrugged and kept focused on my feet. We kept walking and eventually stopped at the sliding-glass doors to the yard. Billy hadn’t moved. Our contraptions of food and water dangled around him under the tarp looking very DIY and embarrassing.
Ashwa peered through the glass at Billy. I noticed the flare of his nostrils as he breathed. They seemed to pull up instead of to the side.
“He should probably take water,” said Ashwa.
“We set up water.”
“It should be poured into his mouth from a chalice. I can do it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Might I go sit with him?”
I slumped. “Sure.”
Ashwa eased open the door and stepped lightly down to the half-wet grass. His sandals made a soft squishing noise as he approached Billy. He knelt before Billy and put his hands together, with two fingers pointed forward, like a kid pretending to fire a gun. And that was that. He didn’t pull out a chalice and give Billy water. Nor did he attempt to say anything. I watched him for several minutes, tried to see any potential arcing lines of spiritual energy, the crackle in the air, but nothing happened. Back inside, I told Craig about the visitor. Soon I went upstairs and lay on my bed overtop of the blankets despite my shivering in the clammy house. I slept for hours and woke in darkness with spit down the side of my face, eyes heavy as stones, the feeling that so much had gone on in my absence. Upon going downstairs, I could see Ashwa and Billy by the patio lamps, unmoved, like I hadn’t slept at all and only turned down the volume to some negative number.
After first thinking he’d run off and given up, I found Craig in the garage cleaning his Lexus. He’d somehow found the vacuum cleaner and looked to be sucking dust out of the coffee holder with the fabric cleaning attachment. On the ground around the vehicle lay a spread of Chamois cloths, Armor All, paper towels, car polish, an old toothbrush, newly shiny black floormats, and a pile of quarters and crumpled bills.
“Gotta take care of business,” he said, before ducking back into the backseat.
I left him to it and went to sit on the floor of the laundry room with my back against the dryer.
* * *
—
Three days passed. We called in for food. Craig had finished cleaning every component of his car by then, after which he slept for fifteen hours. Beyond that he’d been sitting in the den with his nose in his childhood photo albums and boxes of sports medals. He leafed through old school binders and Duo-Tangs. I had no idea the sheer amount of paper he’d hoarded. Boxes I’d never seen or moved or had to organize at his behest. Where had he kept them?
At some point on the third day Ashwa was able to pour water into Billy’s mouth from a stone bowl covered in sigils that I think may have just been musical notes. The weather dipped into rain and wind. Gusts lashed at Billy’s overhead tarp, sent our hydration bladder’s hose whipping around like an angry cobra in the dark. But Billy did not move. Ashwa stayed out there with him through it all. I swear at some point, from my bedroom window’s vantage—I’d been spending more of my time there, skipping the gym to watch him; at regular intervals, I’d drop to the floor and do push-ups, sit-ups, burpees, leg raises, pistol squats—I saw Billy’s lips move as Ashwa kneeled very close in front of him. Swore that Ashwa’s lips also moved.
After seeing this ghostly whisper between the two of them, I began to jump rope. My rope was red and had long ago ceased to hurt when it struck my shins. The thwaps came faster and faster, echoed around the bedroom. It got warm. Little Rorschachs of sweat painted the floor under my feet. Billy would not stop me jumping. Billy would know I was up there. Thirty minutes in I could hardly stand but I kept on. Forty minutes. Fifty. Had I always been jumping? Was there other than this?
Through this all, Billy didn’t budge from his position below the tree. Sweat pooled in my navel, the small of my back, the shelves of my ribs. Dark blotches of it spread over the front of my sweatpants between my legs, I knew, I just knew without looking, crept like melanomas through the grey cotton. My feet swelled, went soft and sticky. And then I stopped, though it felt like I kept jumping. The room shuddered up and down. I tried to breathe. I took up the jump rope and swung it against the floor like a whip. Again, again. I drew long welts in the hardwood. Next, the jade plant on the window sill. It shattered and broke over the floor. Chips of clay and soil flying. I turned to the wall and I swung and swung until shreds of daisy wallpaper hung in the air and billowed around me and stuck to my wet arms like Band-Aids. This swinging much more tiring than the jumping. Dirt and wallpaper in my eyes, my mouth. The room a bizarre aquarium. I made for the door, the stairs, Billy. We had to talk. My legs went out at the top of them. Down I went. I’d never before thought so much about the edge of each individual stair, how they are rectangular, where they would be when I encountered them, how each one might caress my back or arm or ankle. I came to a stop at the first landing, half upside down, one eye either swollen shut or held in a spastic wink I could not calm.
Craig found me there and didn’t say anything. He scooped me up, but I made him put me down. Told him I was fine. A little accid
ent was all. He pretended to believe me and it made me feel better. I paced around the house trying not to limp and eventually excused myself to the bathroom and cleaned my face in the sink, scraped off as much of the plant and clay and paper residue as I feasibly could without showering. Then I sat in the living room and looked out the window specifically from an angle where Billy under the tree was not in my line of sight. Just our regular yard. Our flimsy blue fence. The depressions in the grass we’d never been able to make flat.
* * *
—
On the fourth day, Billy was gone. All the contraptions we’d set up around him were still there, but Billy, who had been at the centre of it all, had vanished. I didn’t wake up Craig for some reason. He lay in bed folded around one of our thick down pillows, clutching it tightly to his nose. I padded from the room barefoot, down the stairs, out the patio doors to the wet lawn. I walked to where Billy had been, the patch of grass he’d been sitting on more green than anywhere else. I touched the grass where he’d sat. The blades bent under my fingers and I swear I could almost hear them flex. Grass like in spring. Warm to the touch. I looked around for Ashwa, but there was no sign of him either. No monks watched me from across the street. No one in a sarong visible anywhere. Sunlight peeked through thin strips of cloud over the city. I felt around the tree, sank my hands into the mud near the roots, traced my fingers up the bark, the soft bubbles of sap. Perhaps Billy was camouflaged, watching me. A test. Maybe he’d gone inside to sleep in his room, though I knew that wasn’t the case, knew that his blanket would be as severely tucked into the bed frame as it had been for the last week, not a wrinkle in the cotton, tight as skin.
I tried to feel him, the way I’d felt him when he put off the vibrations that first time in the mall food court as we lined up to buy cheeseburgers. Felt only the cold wind, the rub of my tank top against my breasts, the wet ankles of my pyjama bottoms. Where was he. Where was he. Where was he. He’d buried himself underground. Was at this very moment looking up at me through a hole in the network of roots and plant skeletons. He’d taken refuge inside the tree, folded the wood around himself like a gnarled quilt. How would I get him out? With an axe? With lightning? He’d shrunk himself to the size of a bean to live in the foundations of the house. To live with the dust mites and spiders. Gone invisible. Or walked up the street with Ashwa and his monks, the purple brigade. Walked up the street in absolute silence in the dark of night, the streetlights having failed or been quelled by a giant thumb. Walked and walked and felt no pain in his little bare feet. Gone up the street to the big water with the driftwood flung into piles like anti-tank hedgehogs from the Second World War. Watched the waves. But not stayed there. Kept going. Walked to a small, planked room with pillars like the legs of elephants. Made a little home there and served cups of tea to his guests. Spoke in low tones to the other monks and they all understood what he wanted and it was all very simple and he’d be back by the weekend for a good casserole, cheese bubbling over the sides. We’d sit in the cool sun, the monks too, the neighbours, but not under the tree and in real chairs, and he’d say something like I want to be a travel agent, a whale biologist, a karate master, and that’s how it would turn out.
SOFIA MOSTAGHIMI
DESPERADA
After Shanghai, I caught a cheap flight to Bangkok. In the sky, I met a group of Australians who joked about North Korea and Kim Jong-il the whole time and who said, “G’day, mate” for my pleasure. We parted ways at the airport, then I travelled to Ko Phangan, where I think I was roofied at the Full Moon Party. Good strangers took pity on me, and one of them reminded me of Kimia. This is what the group of girls told me later at breakfast, on the beach, pretty girls, sticky already with the 9 a.m. humidity. I saw now that the girl sitting across our small, square table looked nothing like my little sister. But when she smiled so gracious-like and thoughtfully, that was when I noticed it.
“You gave me tons of life advice,” she said, with that innocent, fearless tone only nineteen-year-olds have. “We’re from Vancouver, by the way,” she added. “You’re Canadian too, right? You said washroom yesterday instead of bathroom.” Her voice had that bright, elastic West Coast warmth.
“From Toronto,” I said.
“You also said that all that putting my career first was extremist feminist bullshit.”
They were like words rising from a grave that hadn’t been dug for me yet.
“I said what?”
“And you said, strangers are only scary if you’re someone to fear. You said that, like, um, what did she say again?”
She’d turned to the others, who were blank and beautiful and worthy of love—I thought, why did I ever leave my city? These people exist where I’m from too.
“She said that, like, people are only scared of other people if they’re, like, fixating on some evil part of themselves.”
“I did?”
“You’re wise as fuck,” the third one said. The fourth one stayed silent in my presence, and the other girls made fun of her for it. She didn’t care. She’d keep staring at me only with these black eyes.
“My sister, by the way,” I finally told them. “The one you reminded me of, Kimia. That was her name. She’s dead.” I needed to see their faces when I said it. I needed it the way I need to be fucked by strangers. But why?—I thought of him, and how his ears must have burned.
“Oh my God.”
“I am so sorry.”
“We’re so sorry.”
“Oh my God, so sorry,” they said.
They were young, and so sweet. They travelled with their parents’ money and had bodies that bended with confidence in strange lands, that spoke of such perfect, disgraceful privilege—and yet their smiles were not to be mistaken for empathy.
“I’m kidding,” I said. I couldn’t cling to the truth. I didn’t want to. “My sister almost died. But she’s alive,” I said. I lied. But the key to lying is to latch on to that idea as if it were the only fact in this world worth knowing.
I stayed with them a while longer. I learned that all four of them were trained Yoga instructors. They were travelling to India next, for further certification, but had decided to stop first in Thailand.
“The food is amazing here. Have you tried the stir-fried noodles?” they asked.
Which was when I thought of that famous novel-turned-movie about eating and travelling, which was when I thought of how food had not been a concern of mine, not once on this trip, and then I thought of the last supper that I had enjoyed.
My whole life, I told them, after a few more beers, my whole life, has been a giant sacrifice.
“For who?” one or all of them had asked.
“To who, you mean.”
“To whom.”
“To whom?”
“To life.”
They laughed. I laughed too, but by then my soul felt like wine. Like I had turned water to wine, and that’s the opposite of it all, isn’t it? Why did he do that? Why did I know a story that did not even belong to my people, and cling to it more than I did to my own? Why would you turn water to wine, Jesus?
* * *
—
In the café, he sits. He stares. But I am still in Europe. In Asia. The images of countries I never visited stream past my eyes.
* * *
—
While in Thailand, I had very little money. Those four lanky creature-girls who lounged on the beach like sirens, and whose beautiful white arms and names, amid the anonymity of everyone, surfaced, slowly, like individual badges by which I could tell them apart, they told me I was wise. I told them they were beautiful and light and airy. I watched them in the morning, walk from their tiny, rented bungalow to worship a sun-god, positioning their bodies into perfect statues. One position was called Child’s Pose, where they prostrated, and their arms like wings lifted, then fell snugly to their sides. I was reminded of my father. Once, I had seen him prostrate, pray to Allah, but religion was a barred phenomenon in my household—though my m
other wore Allah on a gold necklace around her neck and though my eldest sister, in high school, picked up the expressions Allaaaaaah and Say Walahi—and so with my father, I never spoke of religion. But I watched these girls, and it was no different, how they moved their bodies for meaning. I’d looked down then at my cup of instant coffee and seen my arm covered in ugly, long, black hairs, made wispy now from so many years of waxing, but still there.
“They don’t turn paler in the sun? I thought everyone’s hair turned paler in the sun,” one of them had said, with thin, turned-down lips and judgment that was only accidental.
In the afternoon, we watched the waves and talked about tsunamis.
“The end of the world is coming. That’s what I think,” one of them said.
“I think.” My voice had aged. It sounded broken to me. Their four young bodies around our little wooden patio table leaned in closer to me, and I tried so hard not to envy them, or hate them because they were nice, they were so nice to me.
“What?”
“Yeah, what?”
“This obsession with the end of the world. It’s not the end end. Sometimes I think we’re so afraid of the Earth continuing on without us that we have to believe we’ll see it all go down with us.” It was a thought I had never thought until that moment, with the sun above us and our waiter, small and tan with big teeth, delivering our stir-fried noodles and chopsticks.
“You know, I always thought maybe that’s why insects scare us so much yet we’re, like, so big. Like, they always survive. No matter what. And we won’t.” The quiet one with dark eyes spoke. She ashed her cigarette into the ashtray between us with one leg folded against her chest.