Burnt Land

by Tua Harno

  Ralda pointed at a teepee on the far side of the pond. “That’s where the sound meditation takes place.”

  Sanna didn’t know what that was.

  “The walls of the teepee keep the sound waves in perpetual motion. It creates a unique spatial experience, like you’re swimming in sound.”

  Sanna wanted to ask why Ralda had brought her here, but just then a young woman in a blue shirt walked up, and Ralda hugged her.

  The young woman said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” to Ralda.

  Ralda shook her head, said she hadn’t done anything. “The answer was already waiting inside you.”

  The woman smiled through her tears, then looked at Sanna and said, “Incredible things will happen to you in the company of this person.”

  Sanna didn’t know what to say.

  “A former student,” Ralda said, urging Sanna on toward the teepee.

  A gray-haired man in a black sweat suit opened the entrance to the teepee, smiled warmly when he saw Ralda, and stepped out to greet them with hugs.

  “And this must be Sanna,” he said, turning toward her. “Welcome.”

  Then he invited them to take off their shoes and come in. Sanna bent over to untie her laces, but Ralda stepped back.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  Ralda shook her head. “I’m helping lead the session. I’ll see you at the car afterward.”

  It was extremely dim inside the teepee and Sanna stumbled as she crossed the threshold. When she squinted she could make out mattresses laid out in a circle and a large copper-colored gong in the center of the space. It was suspended from the dark poles like an archery target.

  She lay down to listen to the instructions. The voice of the male teacher was calm and warm; he sounded as if he were narrating heart surgery—critical and risky, but he had performed thousands. Sanna figured that unless the gong was disturbingly loud, she’d doze off on her mattress. She hadn’t slept well, and kept waking up to check if Martti had texted. At four in the morning, her phone had vibrated: Hey, just woke up, I love you.

  How was she supposed to reply? Me, too, I’m sorry, you just happened to catch me in the middle of a spiritual quest?

  And now I’m about to do sound meditation. Sanna pictured Martti’s amusement when she’d tell him about it later. She glanced around at the other participants, surprised by how still they all were. The session leader had warned them that the teepee would feel cold once they relaxed, so they should wrap themselves in the blankets. The darkness, the silence, and the blanketed bodies lying in a ring made the place seem suspect. Sanna remembered the photographs she’d seen as a child of a religious sect’s mass suicide, the dead laid out in bunk beds wearing identical sweat suits and trainers.

  The session leader and Ralda circled the tent, brushing soothing essential oil on the participants’ hands. Sanna’s wrists warmed at the touch, as if a piece of heated wood had been placed on her veins. The warmth climbed up her arms toward her lungs and heart. She recognized Ralda’s footfalls, heard her strike a match.

  The sound emanating from the gong was low and steady; it had no sharpness, no tinkling, and the space filled with the unbroken resonance. The air quivered against Sanna’s legs and ribs, as if her body were a tuning fork. She could feel herself rising and falling like a buoy in swells.

  The sounds deepened and deepened. It felt like they were coming from far within the bowels of the earth, and Sanna felt her body sink. She thought about how music usually was uplifting and invigorating, but this sound dragged you inexorably into its vortex, washed over and through you.

  When she opened her eyes, she could practically see the dense sound in the air. The session leader’s and Ralda’s crouched black figures moved like winged creatures. One of them was walking in circles with a smaller gong, while the other played the big bull’s-eye. That had to be Ralda; Sanna thought she recognized her narrow hands. Like a witch tending her fires, Ralda struck the glowing disk.

  Their black garb turned them into pure shadow. Sanna blinked to see better, but the contours of their bodies bled into the darkness. There was an ominous slowness to their movements, as if they could stretch out time, keep the participants paralyzed in a dreamlike stupor as long as the music of the gongs played.

  The sound rang out, louder and more inevitable. Sanna wasn’t sure if it could ever end in this space. Sweat started streaming down her forehead as she was still trying to make out Ralda’s figure in the darkness, to find the spot where the arms and legs attached to the torso, but the shape had lost its edges. Ralda and the session leader were flickering black holes, like dyed flame, and the sounds of the gongs grew more terrifying. As if chasms and crevasses had opened up in the teepee’s floor, the crust of the earth collapsed, and Sanna could feel herself falling. She heard someone crying inconsolably, and for a second she wondered if it was her. Was it possible for your voice to leave your body and come to you by another route, so you heard it as an echo?

  Her body was giving off heat, and Sanna pushed off the blanket. A piercing pain ran from her right lower back to her belly. My baby! Sanna thought and tried to sit, but only her head obeyed. Her hands and legs were nailed to the ground.

  Would the contractions feel the same when they came? She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down hard, couldn’t understand why it was impossible to get up or move. The pain was hellish. Nothing this intense could last. The sound was louder now, and Sanna vaguely understood that the sound was the source of her agony. She was in pain because she was lying in this earsplitting sound. It lashed at her like a fiery whip. Sanna lost control of her legs and arms, the muscles fell away, as if from roasting skewers. She coughed and gasped for breath, couldn’t think. Pain devoured all the space.

  In the midst of her agony, Sanna saw an orb glowing with a blue-green light. It looked like Earth, but upon closer inspection, the form proved to be a child. Sanna cried when she looked at it, but the tears felt comforting because nothing mattered as long as she could see that heavenly peace.

  The growl of the gongs intensified, and Sanna could no longer resist. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to slip away. She could feel her body burning, joint by joint. All that remained of her fingers were embers, holes burnt through her cheeks as if they were paper. She could see her teeth now, and her tongue fled into her throat so she felt like she was choking on it. In the midst of this blackness, a woman’s voice carried into her ears. “Don’t be afraid, we’re in this together.” Sanna nodded at the voice, accepted the terms like a sleepwalker.

  The sound changed, retreating like the tide, farther, faded, and was now nothing more than a sigh and a farewell, like a receding shoreline seen from a boat.

  When Sanna came to, she was seated with her legs bent under her, curled up in a ball around her knees. From the stiffness in her jaws she knew she’d been grinding her teeth; her gums were throbbing, and a pain shot through one of her molars as if it had cracked. Her face was wet with tears, and she was shivering cold. The session leader spread her blanket across her shoulders; his gesture was so caring and tender that Sanna felt like hugging him, soothing herself by sobbing softly against him. The session leader recognized her need and held her face in his palms for a moment.

  People were asked to talk about what they had experienced. Most of them had found the sound meditation profoundly relaxing.

  Sanna felt like shouting, Is being burnt alive a pleasant experience? A squeak escaped her lips. The session leader gave her a questioning look, but Sanna didn’t want to say anything. She could feel the dried sweat on her skin. Why had the sound been such a powerful, painful experience for her? Was she exceptionally sensitive to things like this?

  “Sanna, you were the only one who moved,” the session leader said.

  Sanna glanced around apologetically; maybe her movement had disturbed the others, but she’d been completely unaware of it.

  “My stomach hurt,” Sanna explained.

  The session leader
nodded, eyes bright, waiting.

  “I’m pregnant, so . . .”

  The other participants gasped, as if grasping something essential.

  “I just couldn’t lie there,” Sanna said, hoping that was the end of it.

  But the session leader asked, “Did you realize you were moving?”

  Sanna stared at him for a moment, as if something personal about her had just been exposed.

  “Yes, of course,” Sanna said, bringing the conversation to a close, and avoiding the scrutiny of Ralda’s gaze.

  Ralda was standing on the driver’s side when Sanna got back to the car. She looked at Sanna, lifted her phone, took a picture, and then handed her phone to Sanna. In the photo, Sanna could see a purple half-moon in her lower lip, the bloody impression of her upper teeth.

  “Do you care to explain why you lied?”

  Sanna looked at Ralda, panicking, feeling like she had offended her.

  “I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand what had happened. I didn’t know how to talk about it.”

  “When you feel something deeply, you lock it up inside yourself and deny it. You decide to forget and flee. How can I trust your saying you’re committed to the demands of the trek?

  “It’s different when I’m alone with you,” Sanna said. “I didn’t know those people, I didn’t want to open up to them.”

  Ralda nodded, but she still looked guarded and disappointed.

  “I’m serious, Ralda, believe me,” Sanna insisted. “I won’t run, even if things get hard on the trek.”

  Ralda opened the car door without saying anything. Sanna went around to the passenger side. She lowered her seat until she was nearly prone but didn’t close her eyes. Seeing a sliver of sky and the streetlamps at regular intervals outside the window was relaxing. How grateful she was to be here, not in pain. The experience in the teepee felt like a nightmare.

  Sanna held her hand out toward Ralda, and the other woman took hold of it. Sanna could still see the doubt on her face; her mouth was a pinched line.

  “I’m sorry, Ralda.”

  “This is for your own good, Sanna. For yours and the baby’s.”

  The domestic terminal at Perth airport was like a construction-site canteen, teeming with men in safety gear, but instead of eating everyone was nodding off on benches, waiting for their boarding announcement. It had been weeks since Martti had flown to Pilbara, but Sanna still hoped to see him among the men.

  Ralda took off her reading glasses and wiped them on her sleeve. She had a map spread across her thighs. She caught Sanna scanning the crowd, and Sanna quickly lowered her head and studied the map. The names of the towns were completely unfamiliar.

  On the plane, Sanna twirled her phone in her hands after enabling airplane mode.

  “Maybe you could just turn it off and give it to me,” Ralda said.

  Sanna hesitated; she’d been under the impression she’d be able to hold on to it until they got to Broome.

  “It’ll help you prepare mentally for the trek,” Ralda said.

  Sanna bit her lower lip and nodded, unlocked the phone, and turned it off. It felt odd handing it over to Ralda. The phone was an extension of her body and her thoughts. It was her link to Martti.

  The night before, she had informed him they were starting the trek, that she wouldn’t be able to send messages while she was gone. It’s not too late to back out, come to Pilbara, he had replied, which made Sanna happy. They would be reunited in a couple of weeks.

  They were staying in a cheap hotel in Broome. Ralda headed out to get the remaining supplies.

  “I’ll be gone maybe an hour. Stay here and rest,” Ralda said.

  Sanna looked around the hotel’s low-ceilinged lobby, at the cream-colored leather sofas and the magazines on the white table like in the reception area at a doctor’s office. She felt a throbbing restlessness, didn’t know what she wanted to do. She looked for her phone until she remembered she didn’t have it anymore.

  The hotel had an outdoor swimming pool. Young people in dreadlocks, scarves, and handmade jewelry had gathered around it. Sanna went to her room and put on her bikini, vaguely embarrassed at having packed it. She had also brought her compact, thinking maybe Martti would come meet her at the airport after the trek. She eyed her baby bump in the dim mirror, remembered Martti’s palm on her belly, and suddenly felt lonely. But then she stepped out into the brightness and went over to where the young people were carousing. They said hello, and Sanna nodded shyly. The people in the pool were holding on to the edge and floating, or standing in the shallow end, talking to those who were eating and drinking in the lounge chairs.

  She put on her goggles, jumped into the pool, and swam to the far end. It was quiet underwater; all she could hear was the muffled gurgle of the slurping drain. She could see the bodies where they stood along the walls, the sole of a foot rising to rub a calf, a body twirling around. The only thing she could sense were these headless, handless movements. Sanna swam back and forth in the middle of the pool, letting her body stretch until she was tired and out of breath.

  It was strange, hearing the stillness turn into silence. Sanna sensed the pause in movements, in speech. She let her feet drop to the bottom. When she pulled her goggles from her eyes, Ralda was standing at the edge of the pool with her shopping bags at her feet. She was staring at Sanna, concerned.

  “What are you doing?” Ralda asked.

  “Swimming.”

  “I can see that. You’ve splashed all the water out of the pool,” Ralda said. “I told you to rest. You’ll need your strength for the journey.”

  Ralda picked up her purchases and went inside. Sanna let go of the edge, backed up, and glanced back at the others, who looked at her for a few polite seconds before turning away.

  Sanna couldn’t bear to ask if she’d really been splashing everyone, though she did surreptitiously look for puddles on the tiles. She stood in the middle of the pool, not knowing what to do. She shook nonexistent water from her ears and blew her nose in her hand, painfully aware of the snot in her palm. She couldn’t lower her hand into the water or take hold of the railing to climb out. She held it half-open, as if carrying a precious stone she’d found, and reached for the ladder with her left hand.

  Sanna wiped her hand on the corner of her towel and reclined in her chair. The sun dried her skin quickly, but Sanna was shivering. To cover up how out of place she felt, she stood languidly and carefully folded her towel, even though she was going to toss it in the hamper. She slipped on her flip-flops and tried to maintain a smile, although she wasn’t sure for whom and why. Why was it so difficult for her to just be?

  Ralda was talking and laughing into her phone, and waved at Sanna as she stepped inside. She immediately proceeded to end the call, even though Sanna tried to indicate that there was no need. She had a slight headache, as if the brightness from outdoors had followed her into the room. She plopped down on her bed, but Ralda asked her to get up and wrapped her arms around her. She could feel the arrhythmic beating of her heart. She was hot and her legs prickled, but Ralda held her for a long time.

  “Did you feel anxious outside?” Ralda asked.

  Sanna nodded.

  “I understand how you feel. You’re afraid of being exposed,” Ralda said, still holding Sanna close enough for her to feel Ralda’s breath on her earlobe. “Thousands upon thousands of women have done the same thing. It’s not the ugliest sin in the world. But it’s no wonder if you feel ashamed with your belly showing.”

  Sanna untangled herself, feeling nauseated as Ralda continued, her voice penetrating.

  “You were playing for time, you knew Janne was cheating on you, but you thought a child would change everything. You didn’t want to break up because you were afraid it would be too late to have a baby then.”

  Sanna stepped back and lowered herself to the edge of her bed, water dripping from her hair to the bedspread. Haven’t we already gone over this? she thought.

  “You would
n’t accept Janne abandoning you and having to live alone, take care of your mother. You stopped taking birth control. It was the only course of action open to you. And now—now you’ve found another man. Stop it, Sanna. I know you’re thinking about him, the baby doesn’t matter after all, does it? Right? You’re planning on starting something new, what difference does it make if the child has to carry your depression and your lies?”

  Sanna gulped and looked to the striped rug for answers. The footprints staining it vanished at the dark stripes. Her side ached. She took a deep breath and tentatively raised her gaze.

  Ralda was staring at her demandingly.

  I don’t know, she tried to say to Ralda with her eyes. Living with Martti simply felt possible. She didn’t have any reason for it, it was just a feeling. She pictured how she’d held Mom’s violently bawling head in her lap when one of her lovers had left.

  “Why does this always happen to me, how come no one wants me, I’m so fat, ugly, and awful, I’m going to die alone.”

  “Oh, Mommy, I love you, Mommy,” Sanna had said, rocking her mother. “I’m here.”

  Ralda’s phone rang again and she stepped out of the room to answer. Sanna fell onto her back. She stared at the lamp hanging from the ceiling until her eyes stung.

  Can you ever forgive me?

  Ralda was moving about when Sanna woke up.

  “Time for breakfast,” Ralda said.

  Sanna pulled on her cargo pants, slid into her flip-flops, and said she was ready.

  “Aren’t you going to wash your face?” Ralda asked.

  Sanna went into the bathroom. She twisted the faucet to cold. The water was still lukewarm, but she rinsed her face with it, swished it around her mouth; it tasted rusty and she spat it out. The water swirled to the bottom of the basin, dirty brown. The burnt land was inside her.

  The dining room was dark and low, with the long tables surrounded by a jumble of plastic chairs, yellow or gray with black metal legs.

  “I’m going to call our ride now,” Ralda said. “Are you ready?”

  Sanna nodded silently. She felt detached, saw that the dining room clock read four in the morning, but couldn’t sense the time in her body. Sanna had no idea how much time had passed when she heard footfalls behind her. Ralda had already put on her backpack. She was with a man she introduced as Denzel. Sanna said hello to Denzel, who looked a lot more like a wilderness guide than Ralda did with her bracelets.