And so I did. I read the book the Sailor gave me. Three years had passed since it lay in my suitcase in the armoire in Bali. It still smelled a little like mothballs. Emaciated by sadness, unemployed, living in my aunt’s basement, I read it in small doses, like medicine. Or like messages from a man I was almost ready for.
The book was a collection of novellas about the misadventures of a character named Maqroll el Gaviero, or Maqroll the Lookout. The first story is Maqroll’s journal of an ill-fated journey upriver through an unnamed jungle in South America. Early on, he distracts himself from the madness on ship by establishing precepts. “Remnants of life at the Jesuit academy, they do no good, lead nowhere, but they have that quality of benign magic I always turn to when I feel the foundations giving way.”
I loved that. I read on:
“Is it true we forget most of what has happened to us? Isn’t it more likely that a portion of the past serves as a seed, an unnamed incentive for setting out again toward a destiny we had foolishly abandoned?”
I put the book down and listened, for once, to my heart. And then, three years after he’d given me Maqroll, I called the Sailor to tell him I was reading it.
Soon my journal was full of his name—his real name, Kurt, which for so many years had felt too real, or maybe too sacred, to put into writing. I met him for a drink while my heart was still raw, and soon found myself telling him everything, absolutely everything, about my heartbreak, the years of writing about him in my journal in code, about how I dreamed of him all through my time in Bali.
One day we got to talking about God. We were in Kurt’s bedroom, where we’d been living for most of that week, listening to Bob Dylan and eating cheese and crackers in bed. Kurt told me he was an atheist. “Always have been, always will be. I remember being fourteen and knowing there wasn’t a God.”
I told him that was how I wanted to be. To live this one life without postponing my happiness to the next one. “Kurt,” I said, inspired. “Let’s not transcend.”
He laughed. “Why would we?” he said.
“No, I mean it. Let’s not transcend. Let’s just live together on this plane. Fuck all this transcending and questioning and yearning for God. Let’s just do this. Be together. Read books. Maybe I can finally start living if I let go of this idea of God.”
We were sitting face to face, our knees touching. “But you know,” he said. “I don’t think you would be yourself if you stopped looking. And besides, last I checked, being on the hunt for something real counted as living.”
“So you’re an atheist but you don’t think people who yearn for some kind of God or spiritual practice are weird? Or dumb?”
He laughed. “Weird, yes. Dumb, no.”
“So what if we had some children and I suddenly went all Saint Augustine and found Christ. Would you be willing to raise our kids Catholic? I mean, not that I will, but what if I did?”
“Of course,” he said. “Or we could do the opposite of your parents: raise them with no faith, but send them to Catholic schools. See how that experiment pans out.”
“Nice,” I said. “Pawn ’em off on the Church to get their religion.” I thought about it for a moment. “Or I could just teach them yoga.”
“I am not raising a bunch of pissdrinkers,” Kurt said. “My kids won’t drink pee.”
“Your wife won’t either,” I said. “Once was enough for me.”
His eyes brightened, and I heard what I had said. “Oh shit.”
His cheeks flushed red, and he pulled me closer. I clasped his face in my hands. “I didn’t know you were possible,” I said.
I left his house that evening in the strangest state. I felt convinced that I had just said good night to the man I wanted to spend my life with, and yet I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder like an adulterer. I went home to write up a euphoric account of the day, and then followed that with a night’s worth of Hail Marys.
I kept up my penance for many months. And when I wasn’t luxuriating in my nightly penance on my aunt’s deck, I was with Kurt—and I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. At times it seemed that there had to be something wrong. A man isn’t supposed to make you happy, especially when you have no business being happy. I was being duped. The happier I felt with Kurt, the less I trusted it and the more severe my penance was later. Happiness? I thought. That’s not for me, not anymore. It’s hair shirts and mea culpas from here on out.
But eventually my sadness gave way to a sort of wonderment: waking up in Kurt’s bed, I’d watch him sleep and let the tiniest glimmer of hope warm me. Maybe this was real. This love I’d heard about, the love I thought I’d seen in Indra and Lou, the love I’d yearned for, might actually be possible. It might actually be lying right next to me.
Sometimes I even found myself wondering: if a love like this, the kind that jackknifes you open like an oyster shell, if that isn’t a myth, what else might be real?
I was still having attacks of guilty penance several months into my relationship with Kurt, like aftershocks from the earthquake I’d been through. And once again I thought that a change of scenery might be the trick. So, one year after leaving New York, Kurt and I went to South America in search of Incan ruins and giant glasses of Malbec.
In Lima, our friend Kathi told us about the healer. A few times a year, Kathi and her family visit this healer, this curandera, in northern Peru for purification rituals. Kurt says that the second he heard the words healer and rituals, he looked at my face and knew he was screwed—I needed to see this healer. Six hours back from Machu Picchu, heads still soggy with the altitude change, we were on a plane north, to Chiclayo.
“We’re off to see the wizard!” Kurt sang when our alarm went off at dawn.
We spent the day wandering around Chiclayo, visiting the hot, dusty pyramids of Túcume, and poking around the witches’ market, where a man tried to sell me shrunken heads and Moche artifacts. At midnight we took a taxi to a lonely corner of town, where there were stray dogs, garbage in the streets, and one dim yellow street lamp that was nearly swallowed up by the dark night.
We were there to see Ysabel, the healer. Her assistant, Yolanda, greeted us at the door, and we gave her an envelope of cash, which she folded in half and pocketed before guiding us through the house. It was almost as dusty inside as it was in the street. Even the low ceilings had sandy cobwebs hanging from them.
Ysabel’s husband and children were gathered around a small, dented television set. The house smelled of fish and frying oil.
Yolanda led us to a side door that opened onto a small courtyard. The night was clear, and we all instinctively looked up at the web of constellations above us. Soon we were arranged, squatting or sitting in lotus, around a small altar that Ysabel called her mesa. It was crowded with potions and colognes, prayer cards, rocks, sticks, figurines, pieces of ribbon, a half-dozen crucifixes, and a shallow gray-white Tupperware bowl filled with a greenish liquid. It looked like liquid Jell-O, but it was actually the juice of a mildly hallucinogenic cactus called San Pedro.
I’ve never been one to experiment with drugs, really, but tonight I drank the San Pedro up like it was going to cure me of some awful disease. As if it wasn’t a drug, but a gate; as if Saint Peter himself were welcoming me into heaven with each cupful. I would walk through his gate tonight, and wake up tomorrow in heaven with God and the angels and the man I loved. We drank as Ysabel chanted the rosary in Spanish. We drank, and we drank again. It tasted thin and bittergreen, like biting into a dandelion stem.
After the drug kicked in, Ysabel asked us to stand in the courtyard. She gave each of us a smooth wooden baton and told us to rub our bodies with it. Our faces, our arms, our chests, legs, and feet. Throughout this scrubbing we were told to flick the baton away from our bodies, as if it had collected a sludge of bad spirits like the skim from hot milk.
We must’ve done this for hours. We scrubbed, and Ysabel and Yolanda prayed over us, walking between us as we worked, baptizing us with cologne a
nd holy water and grain alcohol, which they blew from their mouths. I got to thinking that I was undergoing a massive spiritual exfoliation, scrubbing layers of penitence and regret and grief off of my body so that I could be new, so that I could step forward into my new life with Kurt, happy, free, liberated from my past. And it must have been the San Pedro, but I could actually see some of those bad memories and guilty feelings on my skin, like evil fairies that needed to be squashed with my powerful, magical healing baton!
They collected in a broken heap at my feet. The mound grew larger, and I felt lighter.
Every few minutes Ysabel or Yolanda would scrape my silhouette with metal or wood batons and then spit at me a few times. And I was rubbing my aura off, rubbing my skin off, rubbing out my past, and the lighter I felt, the more I thought, It’s working! It’s working! I released myself from Jonah, from New York, from my disappointed friends and worried family. I forgave myself and Jonah and even God—and I didn’t add, as I almost always do, the words “if you exist.”
I felt Kurt by my side, this tall, broad, bearded sailorman allowing himself to be spat upon by two women with rosaries in their hands and cactus juice in their teeth. This man could have dismissed such a ritual as impossibly airy-fairy, as the sort of thing he would never have done in his life, but because he loved me, he was here. I could feel him scrubbing his skin with the same seriousness of purpose I had, and I wanted to tell him that having him there made me understand the faithful; how they find a home in their faith, a truth beyond doubt, a comfort never known. I hadn’t found that faith in God, not yet, but I had found love, which was a kind of faith. I felt Kurt beside me and allowed myself, finally, to surrender to my heart, to make my heart a sanctuary for his. That ridiculous, embarrassing, irrational organ had led me here, to a place my mind never could have taken me.
Afterwards, we went out for beers. I hadn’t felt so free, so connected to the world around me, since my kundalini breakthrough years before. I kept turning to Kurt and saying, “Seriously, sweetie? We need to do more drugs.”
The next morning I woke up with myself again. Not ecstatic, not as liberated as I’d felt the night before. I could still feel a little glow from last night’s epiphany, but mostly I was just me, a little tired, a little hungover, happy to see the man on the pillow next to mine. And my thoughts ran to Indra. For the first time, I imagined what her life must have been like. Not the mythical life I had created for her, but the life she had lived. I remembered her saying something like, “You think my chest is open in backbends? Have your heart broken as many times as mine has been, and you’ll find there’s a lot more room in there!” At the time, in Bali, I laughed, because it was sort of a funny thing to say, but the truth behind her words didn’t sink in. How could it have? I wasn’t thinking about Indra, not really. In Bali I told myself I was thinking about Indra when I was actually thinking about me. Now I imagined Indra leaving that first husband of hers, driving cross-country in search of God and transformation, and tears sprang to my eyes. I understood now. Indra had suffered.
I thought of how many times she had been disappointed, how many times she had started over, and it struck me that the most extraordinary thing was that she still had hope and faith. Suddenly that seemed more impressive and inspiring than anything else she’d ever taught me.
Not long after we got back to Seattle, I visited Indra and Lou’s studio one more time. I signed in, I brought my checkbook. The studio was the same as it had been years before, bright, sweet, simple. Still no boutique, though I did see two of Indra’s woodcarvings perched on a windowsill.
Lou was teaching, but Indra was there, acting as his assistant. It had been four years since I’d seen them. Lou said hello, but his eyes were distant, and I felt that I had let him down somehow, that my absence had been an insult. But maybe that was me. Maybe I’ve always projected my fears onto Lou. Indra didn’t notice me at first, and I wondered if the woman I had so wanted to emulate would recognize the woman I had become. It wasn’t until I was folded in a standing forward bend that she saw me. She came over to my mat and bent herself in half to look me in the eye. Her hair was shorter and darker, and she was still as beautiful as I remembered her being. “Hello, you,” she said. Her eyes were warm, and they knew me.
I smiled my hello. She looked younger, and happier, than I remembered her. When the class ended, she sat behind Lou, one hand on his back as they bent forward in namaste. I put my hands at my heart, as one does at the end of a class, and without reservation, I bowed to my teachers.
Acknowledgments
Nearly a decade has passed since I left Bali, and it wasn’t long after I returned home that I started thinking about this story. Which is to say that I have nearly ten years’ worth of advice, support, and favors to repay. I hate to think I may have forgotten someone, but if you are that someone, e-mail me, and I’ll take you out for ice cream.
I am deeply grateful to Danielle Svetcov, my awe-inspiring agent, who believed in this book even when I didn’t, and to Elizabeth Fisher, Monika Verma, Kerry Sparks, and all the good folks at Levine Greenberg for years of enthusiasm and faith.
Thank you to the magnificent team at Three Rivers Press: Domenica Alioto, Annie Chagnot, Tina Pohlman, Catherine Pollock, Caroline Sill, and Campbell Wharton. I’m particularly grateful for my editor, Christine Pride, whose insight, intuition, and sense of humor run through this book, and for Hallie Falquet, for stepping in to bring the Bitch home.
Thank you to my wonderful parents, Frank and Kathy Morrison, who have been almost absurdly supportive of a daughter who uses cuss words in her titles. And the existence of my siblings, Frank and Jessica Morrison, David and Jill Jackson, Jimmy Morrison and Elizabeth Kennedy, suggests that there is indeed a benevolent God looking out for me.
I have an enormous extended family, the type of clan that inspires ushers at my shows to say, “Wait—all thirty want to sit together?!” Thanks for a lifetime of support to the Andersons, Bassetts, Dreschers, Gulacsiks, Hintons, Iversons, Jacksons, Morrisons, Mountjoys, Quarders, Schusters, Spieldenners, Thurtles, and Woods.
A thousand salutations in honor of Marlice Gulacsik for editing, advice, and lodging when it was most needed. And Virginia Schuster—thank you, Gini, for always upping the ante. If I’ve ever said short story, you’ve said book. If I’ve said song, you’ve demanded an opera. It has helped.
Thanks to Kathleen Jeffs, Lizzy Brown, Jamie and Lorna Brown, Rebekah Anderson, Claire Dederer, Brian McGuigan, and Keira McDonald. Thank you, Theatre Off-Jackson, Debut Lit, the Hugo House, 4Culture, and Artist Trust.
Thank you, Mary Ashley, Brad Wieners, and Kristin Kimball, for getting me started in New York.
Thank you, Status, Jay and Cheri Causey, Erin and Debbie Brindley, Kit and Tawny Case, Laurel Anderson and Cal Jackson. Thank you, Kim Namba, Brian Castellani, and Lia Aprile.
Thank you to my sounding boards and defibrillators over the past decade: Pace Ebbesen, Joby Emmons, Kathi Huber, Dan Humphries, Jessica Jory, Keisha Knight, Whitney Lawless, Tiffany Parks, Ryan and Maggie Rogers, Francesca Severini, Katy Sewall, Judah and Sarah Stevenson, Daniel Werner, and Amy, Michael, and David Zager. Thank you for the conversations, the coffees, the drinks, and the smokes. And for occasionally accompanying me to the yoga studio.
That goes double for Kate Hess and Andy Secunda, who gave me exactly the advice I needed at exactly the right time. I hope someday to return the favor.
Thanks to Josh Baran for his generosity and wisdom.
Thank you, Jessica Ryan, for many a milkshake, and my teachers, for introducing me to everything I love about yoga.
Thanks to the marvelous S. P. Miskowski, who repeatedly inspires me to keep working; Veronica D’Orazio for keeping me off the Planet Clare; and Crystal Gandrud, for being the kind of writer and friend I want to talk to all day.
Thank you to Mike Daisey, who has been a port in many storms, an ark in many a deluge, and a wise, dear heart I have often relied upon. Thank you most especially to Jean-Mi
chele Gregory, who has been with me on this trip since I first came home from Bali and told her I might have a story to tell, who has read every draft, staged every performance, and whose mark is on every page of this book. JM, I quite literally could not have done it without you.
Finally, I give thanks to any and all gods that I get to share my life with Kurt Peter Anderson, who daily gives me courage and faith, and more joy than I ever would have believed possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SUZANNE MORRISON is a writer and solo performer whose one-woman shows Yoga Bitch and Optimism have played in New York, London, and around the world. She lives in Seattle with her husband and a delightfully inbred cat named Riley. You can find Suzanne blogging at the Huffington Post Books Section and at suzannemorrison.blogspot.com, where she writes about absolutely everything she’s reading, writing, and rehearsing.
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