Yoga Bitch

by Suzanne Morrison

  “That is the men’s room!” she replied cheerfully. “Men’s and women’s!”

  I nodded, afraid to use my diaphragm even for speaking. I paced the bottom floor of the restaurant, which is a general store for expatriate vegetarians, from the looks of it. It’s where Jessica buys her rice cakes and tahini.

  How lovely, I thought, looking around at the boxes of organic pasta and rice cakes. Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe and don’t think. Rice cakes are lovely. How lovely for Jessica to be able to buy herself some nice rice—don’t breathe—cakes. I kept my thumbs hooked under the elastic waistband of my yoga pants in preparation.

  OKAY, I’M BACK. Where was I? Ah, right. So, finally, thank you sweet baby Jesus and all the heavenly saints, finally the door opened and a beautiful white woman in a flowing orange sari emerged. She was touching her lower lip, removing some stray lipstick from the corner of it. I walked straight into her and practically pushed her aside while pulling at my sweat-drenched yoga pants.

  Where is my mother? Oh, sigh.

  Twenty minutes later I removed myself from the bathroom, shaky and blanched. I took my time climbing the stairs to the open-air restaurant overlooking the street. I felt like I had become an abstraction, just an idea of myself. I had lost my core. I was hyper-aware of my surroundings, of Jessica and Lara on a low couch drinking rosewater lassi, of the coffee table with half-eaten salads and a vase exploding with frangipani flowers in front of them. Everything looked vivid and unreal, like the paintings of jagged red flowers and blank blue faces adorning the low walls.

  I sat down across from them in a wicker chair with a silky blue pillow for a seat.

  “You were in the bathroom forever,” Lara said, looking me up and down.

  I sniffed. “They have great lighting in there,” I said, attempting to joke.

  Jessica wasn’t buying it. “The Bali Belly?”

  “Mmm,” I said. “You bet.”

  While Jessica and Lara hunted down the waiter and asked him to bring me rice and water, I sank into my chair and tried to relax. And then, after they’d settled back down, I said something utterly stupid, as if I had forgotten where I’ve been for the past month. I said, “I need to get my hands on some antibiotics.”

  Jessica made a face. “Antibiotics? Oh, no.” She put her drink down to make room for my food, which had arrived. “Do you have any idea what antibiotics do to your body?”

  “Cure it of bad bugs?”

  “They wreak havoc on your system! No, you can’t take antibiotics.” She grimaced at Lara, who shrugged, smiling weakly at me as if she hated to break such news. “She can’t take antibiotics!”

  I quickly surmised where this conversation was headed, and tried to dispense with the inevitable. “I am not engaging in any sort of pissdrinking,” I said.

  Lara peered at me quizzically. “Amaroli, you mean?”

  “Pissdrinking.”

  “It’s called amaroli in India,” she said, watching me sip my water. “And I think that’s a much nicer term for something so good for you.” She laughed, sitting back. “Drink more of that water and then go try it. You could probably have the Bali Belly licked in no time at all.”

  I put my water back down.

  “Honestly,” Jessica said, handing my glass back to me, “everything happens for a reason. Maybe God has given you the Bali Belly so that you’ll have a reason to start your urine therapy!”

  The words I’ve feared since the moment I learned the truth about my yogamates, spoken at last. My urine therapy, she called it.

  “Jessica” I said. “Lara.”

  They looked back at me expectantly.

  “There is no way I’m drinking pee. It’s waste, it’s probably toxic, and most important, it’s pee.”

  Lara nudged Jessica with her elbow. “That’s years of prejudice talking,” she said.

  Jessica nodded. “Society’s taught you that urine is waste, but it isn’t, it’s pure. It’s cleaner than blood!”

  “Well, that doesn’t exactly make me want to drink it.”

  “Jason uses it for everything,” Lara said. “He snorts it for his hay fever, he gargles it if he has a sort throat. He even washes his eyes with it if he gets a sty.”

  “And he also drinks it every morning? Like Jess does, every single day?”

  She nodded. “Even more when he was getting rid of that parasite.”

  “And so do you?”

  Lara paused, her mouth open as if she were in the middle of a word. She seemed unsure of how to respond, but before she could try, Jessica interrupted her.

  “What you don’t realize, Suzanne, is that there are people out there who have cured themselves of cancer, of AIDS! With urine! It’s the perfect medicine, even the Bible tells us to drink it. Drink water from your own cistern, the Bible says. It’s ancient, ancient healing!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, turning back to Lara. “So, do you drink your pee, Lara? Yes or no?”

  She glanced at Jessica. “Well—I don’t have a problem using it topically.”

  Aha! “You don’t.”

  “Well, no. I mean, haven’t you ever been told to piss on someone who has a jellyfish sting?”

  I vaguely recalled this idea from my childhood. “I think so, but what’s the point?”

  “Urine neutralizes the poison. The acid in it eats up toxins, that’s why it’s so good for you.”

  Jessica nodded vigorously. “Indra told me she used it on a gigantic bug bite the other day, and it totally disappeared!”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But, Lara, do you drink your pee or don’t you?”

  Jessica interrupted again. “It’s in shampoo, Suzanne. And in moisturizer.”

  “Lara?”

  She squirmed. “I use it in compresses, and if I get a pimple I might put a little urine on it.”

  “And?”

  She sighed. “I’m still trying to get used to the idea of practicing amaroli.”

  I was as triumphant as a woman with tangled intestines could be. “And please, Lara, enlighten me. How exactly do you get used to it?”

  “I smell my pee every morning. I rub a little on my lips.”

  I shuddered. “God, gross,” I said.

  “Cigarette smoking is a lot more disgusting,” Lara said, “and you used to put that stick of toxins to your lips every day.”

  Oh, such silliness! I brushed it aside. “But you obviously think amaroli’s gross, or else you’d drink it, too, right?”

  Lara’s neck reddened as she spoke. “I tried to drink it once, but it made me gag. I actually vomited it up. Ever since, I can’t bear the thought of swallowing it again.”

  “Oh, man.”

  “Yeah.” She relaxed a little, sipped her lassi. She cracked a little smile. “It was awful.”

  My stomach gurgled. “I don’t think I can imagine anything worse than vomiting up your own pee.”

  Jessica was getting impatient. “You guys,” she said, “this is beside the point.”

  “No,” I said. “Jessica, this is exactly the point.”

  “You know that people have cured themselves of cancer and still you won’t try it?”

  “Well, if that’s the case, Jess, if people have really cured themselves of diseases that everybody wants to cure, then why don’t we know about it?” I knew I had her there.

  Jessica leaned back and looked at me as if she’d never realized I was the stupidest person she’d ever known. I’d never seen that look on her face before; it was almost evangelical, as if she were some crazed malarial missionary in the Amazon or something.

  “Suzanne,” she said slowly, as one speaks to the cognitively challenged, “think about it. What does Lou say? It’s a pharmaceutical conspiracy, Suzanne. Why would they want us to know about the benefits of urine therapy? It’s so obvious why we don’t hear about it.”

  “Well, why then?”

  She shook her head, exasperated. “Because, Suzanne. Pee is free!”

  Now, I hate to admit
it, but that actually does make some sense to me. I love a good conspiracy theory, especially if it implicates corporate America. It’s almost intriguing enough to make me do it.

  No, wait. That’s a lie. I still don’t want to do it.

  We walked home, and I only had to stop once to use the restroom at a small hotel in Campuhan, not nearly as bad as I thought the walk home would be. But when we reached the top of the ninety-six stairs, Jessica made me promise her something: I won’t take antibiotics.

  Was I crazy to promise her that? Well, yeah. I told her I would try her herbal remedies first—neem leaves and grapefruit seed extract. She says it’ll take longer to cure me, but that it’s still better for me than stripping my body of all its bacteria, good and bad.

  I’m trying to stay open to the universe, even if things have been rough lately, even if I feel like a quick antibiotic fix is exactly what I want right now. I will try to flush the bugs out of my system naturally. I will try.

  But I told Jessica that if anything starts leaching out my tongue, if I see even the shadow of a gray tinge, all bets are off. We shook on it.

  Now, to sleep. My mind will sleep while my body wages war. Go, fight, win.

  Later

  Sleep? What a joke. I’m up for the fifth time tonight. I hate this. I want to die.

  Back when I had my legs waxed, when was that—Easter Sunday?—Reni, the woman doing my waxing for me, kept saying “Ooh, sick, sick,” after ripping my pelt off. “Sick, sick,” she’d say, blowing on the bald bit, “sensitive, sensitive.”

  My stomach cramps up badly every few minutes, and I think sick, sick, which sort of makes me laugh and sort of makes my stomach hurt worse.

  4:00 a.m.

  The early-morning roosters and dogs are keeping me company. I’m lying on the futon on the ground floor, next to the bathroom. It just got to be too silly, using the loo and then climbing halfway up the stairs only to turn right back around and run for it again.

  I can’t help wondering if Indra thinks I’m a lower bird—sitting on my low branch, drinking milkshakes, showing off my “competitive” Happy Baby pose, refusing to drink urine.

  But then I think, well, shoot. If the lower bird is Gandhi and Hitler, then wouldn’t he also be urine and antibiotics? If it’s all the same bird, what difference does it make? What difference does anything make?

  April 12

  In the past two days I’ve swallowed forty neem capsules and an ocean of grapefruit seed extract. I have a bitter taste in my mouth that could be from the extract or from the flavor of reality. Because I’m getting the sense that there is no real transcendence so long as one is in a body. There’s only this willful, weak flesh, this muck of life.

  Yesterday Indra and Lou brought over bowls of soggy rice with bay leaves and some mysterious bowel-solidifying ingredient, and then squinted at me in the blazing midday sun as I lifted spoonful after dribbling spoonful to my mouth, then ran to the loo, then returned to repeat the process until my rice was gone.

  Indra was friendly. I think. Honestly, I don’t have the strength to try to impress her anymore. The higher bird has deserted me. The higher bird is a total jerk.

  Today I haven’t bothered to leave the bathroom. I’ve decided that this is where I live now.

  Later

  It’s actually quite lovely in here. The stone shelves next to the mirror are full of Jessica’s aromatherapy beauty products, so it smells like a garden. Or like an expensive boutique. It’s my very own jasmine-scented prison cell. When we first got here, Jessica taped some quotations to the wall by the light switch: If you are patient, your mind will be more settled, and what you do will be more perfect. Pretty funny quote for a bathroom.

  Just beneath that one, Don’t believe everything you think.

  I read somewhere that if you don’t worship God, you’ll find something else to worship, like money or power or your own reflection in the mirror. Well. I fear I’m starting to get a little nuts. I’ve been lining Jessica’s beauty products up on the counter, and then unscrewing all the lids and smelling them one by one. Indra told me not to forget to pray while I was in here, and I guess I haven’t forgotten, exactly. It’s just that I am sort of praying to Jessica’s products. More idolatry!

  When I was a kid I thought that adultery and idolatry were the same thing. And in a way, they are. I’m cheating on God! Worshiping the promises of wellness and healing on the backs of these glass jars.

  The prayers are more like little films running through my head, their colors bold and saturated. I study the labels of arnica oil, calendula cream, rose-hip balm, and it’s like I astral-project to the ancient lands where these products originated. Jessica’s pantheon of wise women use these in their red tents, rubbing each other down with eucalyptus and almond oils. These products belong to a world that is so much better than the one I live in. It’s simpler, it’s sweeter, work is honest and no one is cynical.

  People barter. If you want some lemon-butter cuticle softener, you trade for it. You give the herbalist something, like a goat. Or an amulet.

  I know it’s a fantasy, this world. But it’s such a beautiful fantasy! I imagine simple farmers gazing at their small crops in the deepening red of sunset, stretching their strong arms; rows of birch trees shimmering in the warm wind; lavender fields flushing purple in waves unbroken for miles. Somewhere nearby there’s a small stone house, where a richly seasoned stew simmers in a cast-iron pot. This stew will make me whole. The woman who makes it is a cross between Jessica and Indra, and she will give me herbs and oils to take at night that will make me serene and pure and patient. Sure, everyone in these fantasies has teeth, whereas back in the day they probably didn’t. And maybe I ought to remind myself that they wore these lovely-smelling oils to mask the fact that they only bathed after their skins developed a crust.

  But I don’t want to be a killjoy.

  Later

  Here’s what I’m thinking about: drugstore creams, big-business beauty products? All of them, corrupt. Disgusting. Vile. Fomenters of cancer cells and bad feelings. The back of any such product suggests you use a liberal amount. They practically tell you to use it up as fast as possible so you can go back and buy some more.

  But these small-batch hippie products of Jessica’s? They suggest a dime-sized dollop, a pinch, a modest, continent helping. They are here to serve but not to exploit. They are saints in the yogic tradition of wellness. So what if Jessica’s facial exfoliant costs four times what mine does? Mine was probably made from DDT and the ground-up bones of bald eagles.

  Honestly. Can you put a price on wellness?

  Later

  I can see night falling through the one glassless window in here, as big as a potholder.

  Dark out.

  Indra was here. She brought me more rice. She watched me eat it, sitting beside me on the futon outside the bathroom. She stroked my hair as I ate, and tucked it behind my ears. And when I said I was finished, she urged me to take just one more bite, like a mother would. So I did.

  I’m so tired.

  April um. Who knows anymore!

  Oh lavender, oh quince, oh calendula, how happy I am to be back in your presence! I left my cell for three hours, three horrible hours. Indra and Lou sent Noadhi here this afternoon to give me a healing massage.

  Before he arrived, I climbed the stairs for the first time in ages. Indra and Lou told me he would use the bed as his massage table, and not to bother wearing clothes. “He’ll just take them off you,” Indra said. I heard him chatting downstairs with Jessica, so I wrapped a red sarong around my naked body, and sat down on the bed to wait for him.

  He wore all white, and he was less friendly than normal. He smiled gently at me, but got right down to business. I would have loved a blanket at least to suggest some sort of modesty, but no. Off went the sarong. Noadhi rubbed his hands together and dove in.

  An hour into the massage, I was sweating in agony. I haven’t had many massages, but from the moment he started, I could
tell that Noadhi’s isn’t typical. His massage is actually a form of torture.

  He started on my feet, grinding his finger along each toe, focusing on the joint, where he stripped the cartilage clean. I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from moaning as he moved upward, digging his fingers into my calf, searching for the hard center of my shin. Once he had found the most sensitive spot, he ran the bony part of his fingers down it, as if to flay the flesh from the bone. In my agony, a surreal movie played in my head, a looping short film of fish being deboned, my grandfather cutting corn off the cob with a paring knife.

  This went on for hours. Three hours, to be exact, an eternity of Noadhi psychically removing my intestines and colon through my tailbone and lower ribs. This healing massage is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The pain begins, and begins, and begins again, unceasing and unchanging, never developing into something pleasurable or relaxing, just beginning, and beginning, and beginning some more.

  I have a whole new understanding of the idea of eternal damnation.

  I must have whimpered at one point, because Noadhi whispered, “Breathe,” and rubbed some unction of engine oil and Vicks Vapo-Rub under my nose. It burned. Then he shoved sharp slivers of bamboo under my fingernails and attached electrodes to my nipples.

  I haven’t spent so much time away from my little cell in days. I’m still wearing nothing but my red sarong—I almost slipped on it as I scuttled down the stairs, trailing oily footprints. I’m never leaving again.

  Some day, probably still April

  My yogamates have a day off. I’ve missed so many classes. Weeks of classes, it seems. My body is stiff and sore and my outlook is bleak. It’s like I’ve never done yoga in my life.

  Jason, Lara, and Jessica are planning to go with Made to Monkey Forest to play with the macaque monkeys. I plan to stay home and resent them.

  I wonder how they would feel if I died today, while they were out carousing with monkeys. I mean, don’t they at least want to leave somebody here in case I need a doctor? In case I slip into a coma?