Hearts & Other Body Parts

by Ira Bloom

Esme dropped her sisters at the drop-off spot and promised to pick them up after school.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Katy asked, scandalized. Esme almost never missed school; she practically had a phobia about it.

  “I’m exhausted,” Esme explained. “I finished all my finals yesterday, and I was up all night, and now I just … I need to take a day, okay? For myself.”

  Katy and Veronica exchanged glances. “Stay out of my room,” Katy warned. “Some of my wards are, uh … dangerous.”

  “I’ll take a day off, too,” Veronica said, thinking of her Crock-Pot of flower petal extract. Too easy for Esme to sabotage.

  “Pinkie swear,” Esme promised, proffering the digit. “I won’t go anywhere near your rooms.”

  The oath was sufficient for Katy and Veronica. Over the years, they’d imbued the pinkie swear with so many curses and hexes, to defy it was worse than death. Especially some of the weirdness Katy had added, like being turned to cheese and nibbled by rats, eyes eaten by spiders, bones turned to Jell-O, and itches all over so horrible you’d claw your own skin off.

  Esme returned home and wandered about the house. It was so quiet. In her room she pulled all her books and notebooks and assignments from all her classes out of her backpack and organized them into piles. There were crumpled tests in the bottom of the knapsack. She’d always made a habit of keeping her paperwork neat—she hated creases in her papers or dog-ears or especially torn binder holes. But she’d been shoving all her lousy tests into her backpack as if the act of crumpling them negated the points that were leaching out of her GPA. Good-bye 4.5. Good-bye Stanford—she’d never get in now. She sat on her bed and examined the history test she’d just received back the day before. There was a big red D on it.

  “Well that’s D-grading,” she told the test.

  Then she got to work.

  Esme wasn’t thinking clearly, but she was not entirely without resources. She was different from her sisters. She had the ability to distance herself from her emotions. She’d always been an intellectual creature, until she’d met Zack. He was so wonderful, he’d blindsided her, like a Mack truck running a red light and T-boning a little tinny econo car. But when she was alone, she could manage, with effort, to focus.

  Like many high school nerds carrying five AP classes with dreams of Stanford, Esme had spent long hours working on her “stack,” the combinations of vitamins and supplements she took every day to enhance her cognitive function. She was something of an expert on the subject of nootropics, holistic neuroenhancers that optimize brain function. Every Silicon Valley bio-hacker knew about Bacopa, peptides, caffeine, green tea extract, B-complex, and the racetam family. But where Esme left those pharma nerds in the dust was in her knowledge of arcane eldritch alchemy, the lore about divine vitality and the techniques for coaxing the maximum efficacy out of every herb and botanical.

  There were recipes in the grimoire for teas and infusions that would calm the mind and relieve anxiety, but she needed something more powerful. It would take the form of a tea, she decided, and there would be hybrid magic involved. Fortunately, she’d exhaustively studied all the botanicals while she’d been making her beauty potion, so she had a comprehensive, cross-referenced knowledge of all their characteristics and uses. She had some ideas about the state of mind she wished to achieve: clarity, mindfulness, tranquility, insight, and transcendence.

  Esme decided to pulverize the herbs into a powder like matcha and whisk it in a Japanese tea bowl with the bamboo chasen she’d seen in her mother’s room. The efficacy of the herbs was in the leaf and flower, so powdering them and drinking the plant matter as well as the brew would intensify the results. She’d studied Japanese tea ceremony while reading the biography of Rikyu, the tea master. Not enough to perform a ceremony, which took a lifetime to master, but hopefully enough to whisk the tea with ceremonial panache. Rikyu had refined the tea ceremony into a focused meditation, and through it achieved a kind of transcendence and clarity which enabled contemplation and a unique perspective. Also, Japanese tea ceremony had evolved from Zen and Taoism, which brought a lot of powerful invocation into the ritual. She decided to use some actual matcha in her brew, for the caffeine, L-Theanine, flavonoids, and polyphenols.

  Esme worked through the day on her tea, while thinking about the other elements of the ceremony. She would incorporate some Tibetan meditation with candle staring. Meditation was useful in achieving transcendence of thought and mindfulness. She’d preface the session with a Wiccan ritual and invoke the Goddess for guidance.

  Esme took a break at three o’clock to go pick up her sisters at school, and was relieved to find them waiting for her. Both sisters were tight-lipped about their day. At the front door of the house, each went their separate ways, into their own bedrooms and secret projects.

  By nine thirty that evening, Esme was ready. Instead of a smudge, for a purification ritual she lit sandalwood incense and held it between her palms. To each of the four corners, she held her hands together as if in prayer and bowed, like a Thai wai greeting. Esme first offered to the south, fire, energy, the masculine principal, and forgiveness. To the north, then, she offered up her thoughts to Earth, mother, Goddess, body. She transitioned then to west, water, and offered a prayer for healing and purification. She saved east for last. Air. Esme’s element was always air. To east, she offered up thoughts to breath, light, and mindfulness.

  When the room was purified and Esme’s mind calm from the ritual, she stood the incense in a bowl of salt. She then went around and lit white ceremonial candles, for truth and purity, in each of the four directions. Her spirit candle, in the middle of the circle, was sky blue, for tranquility. She would use this focus for staring in her meditation.

  Esme retrieved an iron teapot from a Bunsen burner on her workbench and carried it to the center of the circle, where she sat on a yoga mat and crossed her legs in half lotus. She focused on her breath. She dipped her bamboo chashaku into her large container of powdered herbs, and measured it into her mother’s chawan, a very old and valuable tea bowl Melinda had received as a gift. Then, channeling the spirit of Sen no Rikyu, she whisked the brew into a froth with the chasen, as she’d seen in an online video. She held the tea bowl in both hands and drank, clearing her mind. Then she put the bowl on the floor, stared at the candle, and began to meditate.

  The tea calmed Esme’s mind right away. She breathed, releasing each thought. Esme’s last bit of internal dialogue before she entered her trance was that the tea was certainly some good stuff. Then she released the thought with her breath and entered into a state of mindlessness and transcendence. She lost all sense of time or place, like falling into the cosmos.

  She had no idea how long she spent in that state, before her vision began. In the vision, she was in a field of wildflowers, meditating, in a state of contentment. She opened her eyes and watched a beautiful woman of indeterminate age approach through the fecund meadow, wildflowers woven in her hair. She wore a flowing sundress, a little hippie-dippy, but it worked with her long, strong legs and cowboy boots. Her eyes were rainbows, and her hair was sunshine, and her skin was fresh and rosy. Definitely the Goddess. Or a composite of Goddesses, because she had all the elements of Earth Mother, seer, healer, and spirit guide.

  Esme never invoked any Goddess in particular, because she was more a pantheist than a polytheist, and she was skeptical of the ones from Egyptian and Norse and Greek mythology. What did they even have to do with witchcraft or paganism? Esme was a nature spirit kind of girl. “The Goddess” was an abstraction. But who was this here now?

  “Shush your mind, you,” the Goddess chastised in Esme’s vision, reading her thoughts. “I’m all the Goddesses, and any and none of them. And the Gods, too, do you want to see?” The Goddess grasped the hem of her skirts, laughing, as if she were going to prove it.

  “Goddess, I—”

  But the Goddess pulled Esme to her feet, and placed a finger over her lips. “Let it go, child,” she said soothingly.
“Always thinking, never being. Release the thought, open your mind.”

  Esme was five foot nine but the Goddess was way taller. Esme had no sense anymore that this was either a vision or a dream. It just was, as it was supposed to be. The Goddess embraced Esme, and she felt whole and serene and wise. And then, the Goddess placed a hand over Esme’s heart, and her heart opened up, and she felt infinite love and compassion, and a terrible sadness, which is part of acceptance. “Just a taste, my child, of what you could have, if you dedicate your life to serenity. It’s for this place here and now, but try to take some back with you, okay, hon?”

  And Esme nodded her acceptance, because compassion was a gift that she hadn’t earned, and she knew she was unworthy to keep such beauty inside herself, but she was determined to remember whatever she could, and take it back with her into the world.

  Then the Goddess bent and kissed Esme on the forehead, where her third eye would be if she had a third eye, and Esme had clarity. And she knew her feelings, truly knew them, for Zack, and for her sisters, and her mother and father and everyone. “Is this what you came for?” the Goddess asked, laughing.

  “Thank you, Goddess,” was all Esme could say.

  “Mindfulness is such a beautiful state,” the Goddess said, her eyes full of wisdom and sorrow. “But there’s one more thing. We’ve skipped a chakra.” And the Goddess punched Esme in the solar plexus so hard she doubled over. And that’s when she came out of her trance.

  She spent the rest of the night in a fetal position on the floor, crying her eyes out.

  At five o’clock in the morning Esme gave up on the idea that she was ever going to get to sleep. She was entirely cried out, literally dehydrated from the nonstop flow of tears she’d shed. She’d been curled up like an embryo on the floor all night, a little sad fetus, wracked by remorse, heaving and blubbering, but finally reborn with some retention of clarity.

  Esme had wrung herself through the wringer of guilt and emerged, humbled by the beauty of what could have been, by the ugliness she’d made of it, and the determination to make it right. She knew one thing: She did not love Zack and never had. What she’d felt had been a kind of madness. She saw him for what he was, a user and a cheat and a flirt and a cad. She didn’t know why she’d had those feelings for him, but she knew they were false, some hormonal thing, some compulsive insanity that had possessed her. So Esme had grieved for the innocence she’d wasted on the wrong thing and the knowledge that love was not some blissful jolt of giddy infatuation. She didn’t know what to call that, but it was not love.

  And then had come the guilt and remorse for her behavior. Because she did have love in her life, a very fine love, her love for her sisters, and what had she made of that gift? The backstabbing, the lies, the manipulations she’d pulled on the two very dearest people in her life, and for what? To cheat them out of a boy she’d never truly loved.

  After Esme had finished mentally flagellating herself about her sisters, she’d replayed all the nasty things she’d done in her life, the people she’d betrayed, the mean things she’d said to poor Lisa Vaughn, probably kidnapped and murdered by now. How she’d fought with her own mother, who loved her as only a mother can. How she’d been snarky and mean-spirited to her father, treating him like some kind of clueless jerk when he was the best man she knew, generous with his time and his heart, until she’d worn him down with unwarranted contempt. And a hundred other people she’d mistreated over the years.

  When she’d finally stopped crying and quaking in her own sweat and tears and begun to calm herself, to promise herself that she’d be a better person, would give her father hugs and cherish her sisters and allow her mother the gift of loving her … that’s when she remembered Norman Stein, whose only offense had been to be a good friend. What she’d done to Norm … it was really too much, she couldn’t stand it, and she bawled again, like a baby.

  When Veronica, and then Katy, finally came to the kitchen that morning, Esme had been waiting for over an hour. She was so relieved to see them she started blubbering again. She couldn’t tell if it was psychosis from sleep deprivation, but as the sunrise filtered through the blinds, everything took on a rainbow effect, as if seen in the light of a prism, noticeable only at the very edges of things, where shadow hit light. She caught glimpses of it at the edge of Ronnie’s beautiful cheek as it curved into shade, or in Katy’s eyes. There was something of the Goddess’s rainbow eyes to Katy, Esme realized in an epiphany, because Katy was the Goddess, and Veronica was the Goddess, and everything in the universe was the Goddess, and if she could only hold on to that clarity, everything would turn out okay.

  “I’m so sorry,” Esme promised Katy, taking her in her arms and hugging her for all she was worth. “I love you, Katy, I love you forever, and that’s final.” And Katy hugged her back.

  “I love you, too, honey,” Katy swore, because that’s what middle sisters do, in a perfect world.

  Veronica tried to run, but Esme nailed her in the hallway before she could escape into her room. Esme tackled Ronnie and sat on her and planted kisses all over her face and told her she loved her until Ronnie gave up struggling and kissed her back and promised she loved Esme just as much. Because that’s what baby sisters do, too, in a perfect world. If you can catch them.

  While Veronica was in her room fixing the mascara Esme had smeared with her kisses, and Katy was in the yard watching the dogs do their doggie business, Esme prepared a breakfast for her baby sister of grapefruit juice and a half a banana and toast with fruit spread, and a glob of yogurt in a bowl for a protein. Veronica looked at all the food and tried to object, but Esme started to cry again. Esme swore it would break her heart if Ronnie didn’t take care of her health, and Veronica finally acquiesced, on condition that Esme didn’t start kissing her again, because she’d had to redo her makeup from scratch.

  In the car on the way to school, Esme told her sisters that she was done with Zack for good. “Honestly, I don’t know what came over me, but it’s gone now. And I hope you two can look within your hearts, and see if what you think you’re feeling for him is real or not. But if either of you ever want to talk I promise not to judge.” And then she proceeded to enumerate all her new insights about him being a user and a cheat.

  “What are you trying to tell us, Esme?” Katy asked. “Zack is not a user. If he’d wanted me, he could have had me a dozen times by now. If anything, I’m the user.”

  “You’re just pretending you don’t want him anymore,” Ronnie accused. “I knew it was a trick, with all that huggy-kissy stuff this morning.”

  “Yeah,” Katy said. “She’s just bad-mouthing him to chase us off.”

  Esme silently prayed for restraint. Choking the life out of her sisters just a few hours after gaining insight into how much she loved them didn’t seem like a grateful response for the Goddess’s gift. Veronica and Katy were acting to her as she had acted toward Norman, when he’d tried to get through to her on the very same subject. Esme had a new perspective about just how entirely creepy and obsessive her feelings for Zack had been.

  “I swear to the Goddess, I do not want Zack,” Esme declared. “I swear I love you, Katy and Veronica, and that I would never betray you.”

  Katy raised an eyebrow. Ronnie shrugged. “Just lay off the trash talk about Zack,” Katy said.

  “Yeah, we don’t want to hear it,” Ronnie agreed.

  “Okay, okay. I promise.” Esme slowed the car for the bridge traffic. “But will you two have tea with me this afternoon? I want to share this really great recipe I came up with. In my room. Four o’clock.”

  “I gotta take the dogs for a walk,” Katy said. “And clean the poop in the backyard.”

  “Yeah, I’m busy, too,” Ronnie added.

  “Tonight, then,” Esme said. “After dinner, eight o’clock?”

  Katy was suspicious. “Since when do we all have tea together? Is this a thing now?”

  “Yeah, what are you putting in the tea?” asked Ronnie. “I
know you’re making potions in your room.”

  “No, it’s just … I made this great tea, it gives you clarity. I’ll make it up fresh, right on the spot, so you can be there for the whole process.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ronnie said. “Like we trust you.”

  “You two can make the tea,” Esme pled in desperation. “Just … please. Do this for me. If you ever loved me. And I’ll never ask you to do anything else ever again.”

  “Not tonight, I’m busy,” Ronnie said.

  “Me too,” Katy added.

  “If you don’t do this for me, I’ll never do one more favor for either of you as long as you live, and don’t even think of testing me.”

  “Okay, okay,” Katy conceded. Her dogs had vet appointments the next week, and Esme was the only one who could drive.

  Veronica, as the number one recipient of Esme’s favors, was also quick to acquiesce.

  True mindfulness, Esme knew, was not a state of consciousness that could be achieved in just one night. Her consciousness, her very soul, was stained and polluted and flawed, and it would take a lot of laundering before it was truly clean. Already her clarity wasn’t as sharp as it had been during her vision, or even in the early hours. But what she had held on to, what she focused her mind on, was a kind of penetration through the preconceptions and reality biases that had always kept her in a kind of fog. She could see through the deceit that masked the world, the lies people shrouded themselves in, which she herself created around other people. And more important, she could see through the lies she’d always told herself.

  The school campus that Friday morning was like a new world to Esme. Clarity was intense, when she used it to observe people. Katy had to practically drag her along toward the school from the student parking lot, because Esme was staring at everyone, picking up clues with her penetrating insight, stuff that had always been right there but she’d never put together. Facial expressions juxtaposed to snippets of recollection; observations and associations she’d made over the years about a million little things all revealing in-depth details about people’s emotional states and desires and true characters. The harder she focused, the more was revealed. Merely by strolling through the parking lot and casting rapid glances, the clarity yielded quick if superficial little synopses of people’s most defining characteristics.