The Burn Zone

by Renee Linnell

  At the end of the day, we drove home. The ride was less awkward. I felt closer to him. He told me I had spent the day in “a lot of light” and if I felt anything weird to call him at any time of the day or night. He added that he slept alone in a room that was empty except for one bed and that I would not be disturbing him. His eyes lingered on mine as he said this.

  I thanked him and quickly got out of the car. Never in a million years would I call that man in the middle of the night. It would be disrespectful, to him and to Lakshmi. I had a quick vision of a bed alone in a cement basement. I brushed it aside and drove back to my house, unsure of how to feel. Part of me felt ecstatic that I was now this much closer to the two of them, that I could help lighten the load and ease the suffering of someone so important to Lakshmi, and part of me felt like I was knowingly covering my eyes as I walked straight into a trap.

  Chapter 6 Renegade

  Not only had my Wanderlust been born in Costa Rica, but my “bad girl” spark had been ignited. I started drag-racing my blue and pink Mustang 5.0 behind the school building. I forged doctor’s appointment notes, skipped class, and drove to Alabama Jacks, in the Florida Keys, where I drank Jack Daniels on ice with red-necked fishermen twice my age. I set my cruise control on 135 mph, rolled down the windows, and opened the sunroof, blasting “Magic Carpet Ride” on repeat. Rather than hit the brakes, I would swerve into the shoulder lane to pass cars that were in my way. I dove off the stage at rock concerts, into the mosh pit, where I’d slam my body into people three times my size. I got thrown out of bars for drunk and disorderly conduct. I threw up on my typing exam my senior year in high school because I was still drunk from the night before.

  Seriously, I was a mess. I had so much emotion swirling inside of me and so many questions. I felt like a caged animal. All I knew was that I got a lot of attention when I behaved badly. Before my father died, I had been quite possibly the weakest, smallest, weirdest, nerdiest kid in school (besides my brother). Suddenly, I was “cool.” People looked up to me. People wanted to be like me. I was an enigma, and the power of it excited me.

  My mother had told me things like “a woman only has sex to please a man” and that she had been raised to believe a woman’s place was in the home. I could not stand this belief system. By this time, I had watched my mother become so undone by my father’s death that she practically lost the will to live. When she did engage in life and social activity, she hid behind her physical beauty and presented the façade of a wealthy, beautiful woman who was kind and gracious, with no problems whatsoever. I vowed I would never let men become that important in my life. I would never become a “prim and proper lady.” Whatever she was doing—whatever she had been taught—was clearly not working for her, and I wanted no part of it. I went out of my way to disobey her, to be the opposite of everything she wanted me to be. The rift between us deepened.

  Just before my seventeenth birthday, my mother insisted I become a “debutante,” something I dreaded. I wasn’t sure exactly what it entailed, but when I heard I was to be “presented to society,” I wanted to throw up in my mouth.

  My father had strongly opposed the entire society thing. He was very humble. He donated large amounts of money to charity, but always did so anonymously. When he built a second story on our house, he had the architect design it so that, from the street, it appeared to still be one story because most of the other homes on the street were only one story. He was very conscious that we were financially better off than most, and he was careful to never act better than anybody else.

  My mother, on the other hand, was always trying to show off how much we had, always putting on airs. I realize now it came from a deep insecurity, but back then, when I was a teenager, I just thought she was heartless and superficial.

  “It is a privilege to be invited,” she said, about being a debutante. “You should be honored.” I realize now that she would have killed to have been given this chance when she was young, but back then, I was furious.

  The mother–daughter inaugural lunch approached. The other debutantes discussed weeks in advance what they would wear. Each girl got her hair, nails, and make-up done. A photographer would be there, we would be introduced to the other debutantes, and our names would appear in the newspaper.

  I didn’t want to go, so I did it my way: I showed up straight from the ocean, with sandy feet, wet hair, a crumpled dress I had crammed in the trunk of my car, and a huge hickey on my neck. My mother, who was waiting for me in the lobby, took one look at me and turned beet-red. I thought she was going to start yelling, then she cleared her throat, shook her head, and tipped her nose into the air.

  “Well, Honey, I would have preferred you make a little more effort,” she said.

  She turned her back to me and walked into the luncheon. The photographer, in an effort to hide my hickey, asked me to turn my head as he took my photo, making me the only debutante not to be looking directly into the camera.

  Each debutante was supposed to throw a party for the other debutantes, so months later, my mother agreed to host my party in our yard. I cohosted with two other girls, deciding on a reggae theme and a live band. My brother and his friends spent hours lugging coolers, soft drinks, tables, and chairs out to the yard. The morning of the event, one of my co-hostesses called me to go over the details.

  She read me the guest list but didn’t mention the names of my brother or his friends.

  “What about Gary?” I asked.

  “He can’t come,” she replied.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Because he is not a debutante or a date of a debutante, and if we invite anyone who is not a debutante or a date of a debutante, it will lower the status of the debutantes,” she replied.

  I was enraged. “Gary and his friends have spent hours setting up this party. It’s at his house. They have to come,” I countered.

  “No, they are not allowed.”

  We argued some more and hung up the phone. Her mother called me. Our other co-hostess called me. The consensus was that Gary and his friends were not invited. I screamed inside my mind. This was the kind of high-society frivolous bullshit I could not stand.

  I ran to my mother’s office and wrote in huge letters on a piece of typing paper:

  Come crash my debutante party.

  Arrive at 10:00pm sharp and enter as a group.

  Live reggae music and free food. BYOB.

  I put it in my mother’s copy machine and ran off five hundred copies. Then I called a friend and asked him to help me plaster cars at the beach.

  That night, hundreds of people showed up. The police arrived to quell the crowd, people ran in all directions, and my mother, to my amazement, appeared in the center of it all, with the bullhorn from our boat, yelling, “Kids, I apologize. This is a private party. You will have to leave. But if you want to come back next Saturday night, I will host a party for all of you.” She then found me in the crowd and was—surprisingly—not angry. She was drunk and having fun with so many people at her house and in her yard.

  True to her word, she did host a party the next weekend. In fact, once she realized my brother and I were drinking underage, she allowed us to have everyone drink and hang out at our house on the weekends. She never purchased alcohol for us, but she turned her back on the beer and wine that arrived with our guests. I’d often walk downstairs late at night to get something to eat and find her drinking wine with my friends, all of them sitting around the kitchen table, drunk and laughing.

  The truth is, everyone loved my mother. She had a great public face for all of our friends. She took everyone in, fed them, listened to them, nurtured them, and sent them home full (in body and in spirit). She let all of them stay as long as they wanted and never asked personal questions. She loaned them money, helped them get jobs, and even made up jobs around our house in order to employ the ones who needed money but were too proud to take a handout.

  No one besides my brother and me ever saw her broken side. She was
a dichotomy. As we all are. She had such a need to be needed and she was in so much pain. I suppose I was a safe place to let out her hurt and her anger, and in my constant rebellion, I created the perfect target. At that stage in my life, I hated her for disappearing in alcohol and pills. I hated her for being so concerned with her fading beauty. I hated her for acting like she was better than others. I hated her rigid Catholic superiority and her refusal to talk about my father’s death. Most of all, I hated that I was there to love and hold and listen to her, but she could not see me or my love, because she was fixated on and only wanting that love from my dead father.

  By the end of my senior year, I couldn’t wait to get away from her and away from Florida. I was accepted into UC Irvine. My mother spent weeks buying me everything I could possibly need to leave home. This was her pattern: abusive and neglectful, followed by loving, nurturing, and indulging.

  Moving to California was the hardest thing I had ever done. I was incredibly homesick. I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the campus and the sheer number of other students. On Thanksgiving, my mother came to visit, and I fell, trembling and sobbing, into her arms.

  “I want to come home,” I said.

  “Okay, Honey,” she agreed.

  At times like this, I loved her so much.

  I flew home the following week and started school in Jacksonville. I got almost all A’s. I qualified to be a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was on the dean’s list. I graduated magna cum laude, with a BS in psychology and a BS in dance. At night, I worked as a cage dancer at a local nightclub. I was choreographing and rehearsing and going to the gym on my lunch break, surfing in the mornings. I was on fire. In fact, halfway through my junior year, I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, and my mother told me to take it down a notch.

  “You don’t need to get A’s in everything,” she said.

  But I couldn’t help myself. It was the way my father raised me: Work hard, do your best, all the time, at everything. And the constant striving, the constant excelling, helped me hide. I didn’t have to focus on myself and my mental demons; I didn’t have time. I hid in activity, and I pushed the dark, wounded, lost, empty part of myself even deeper. Without realizing it, I put on the exact same façade my mother had: happy, sexy, fun, beautiful girl who loves everybody and whom everybody loves.

  Chapter 7 Chosen

  Vishnu returned to Arizona two days after our beach outing. I had heard very little from him while he was gone and, as always, was not exactly sure when he would return. One morning, my phone rang. Private number. It was Vishnu calling to say he was on his way north from the airport, and was planning to hike a trail near my house. He wanted me to meet him. His voice sounded strained; he seemed distracted and nervous. We met on the top of a hill, took a very short small-talk-filled walk together, and then he told me he had left his car down below; he asked me to drive him back down the hill.

  Something about having him in my car felt really wrong. He seemed too big for it. The closeness we had experienced on the beach had dissipated, replaced by an energetic wall. He didn’t speak. I didn’t speak. Something major had shifted, and I felt like I couldn’t ask him about it. All I could think about was, I have Lakshmi’s boyfriend in my car. The responsibility of it felt huge to me, and, suddenly, I felt too small and inadequate to handle it. I drove him down to his car in strained silence, each minute lasting an eternity. Quietly, he got out of my car and drove off in his. I was left with no idea why he had wanted me to meet him. Surely, it could not have been just to drive him to his car.

  The next day, as the small group of us was arriving for our karate class on the beach, he asked me to join him for a short walk. We walked a few minutes down the beach, along the shoreline, in awkward silence. Suddenly he stopped. He turned to look at me and asked, “Do I seem familiar to you?”

  The wind lashed our hair. The waves crashed on the sand. The seagulls’ calls echoed quietly against the cliff.

  I felt that fatherly connection again. Vishnu was twelve years older than me and so much more mature. It felt like he was filling this void I had held for so long.

  “Yes,” I responded. “I feel like you were my father in a past life.”

  He cringed. He looked crushed.

  “Father?” he asked.

  I felt embarrassed. That obviously wasn’t the answer he wanted. “Yes,” I said.

  He changed the subject. “I want to know about the guy you are dating,” he said. “Did you meet him before or after you became Lakshmi’s student?”

  “Before,” I said. “But I’m no longer dating him.”

  He seemed relieved.

  “You have to be so careful,” he said. “So many Dark Beings will be drawn to you now. You must be wary of everyone you meet.”

  By now, the entire group of students had arrived and was lining up for class. He turned back to begin teaching. I followed him, wondering about Dark Beings.

  The next week, he called to say we had to go “do recon” on that beach again. The same two students who were supposed to join us before cancelled again at the last minute. Vishnu and I went alone again, and again I felt awkward. We walked along the beach. He talked; I listened. He spoke mostly of what it was like to work so closely with Lakshmi and again brought up his PTSD.

  This time, he explained a bit more. He said his PTSD was from “battling the occult,” but left that hanging there, like I was supposed to know what that meant.

  He looked down at the ground and said again, “You can help me. Just being with you helps me.”

  This time, it was cold on the beach. The wind whipped the salt water from the waves into our faces and onto our clothes, making us turn around before too long and head back to the parking lot. Before we left, Vishnu sat in the sand to finish what he was saying; I sat down next to him.

  After a long pause he looked at me and asked, in an incredibly defeated and humble way, “Renee, would you like to spend more time with me?”

  I knew he was asking, Renee, would you like to see me romantically? I looked back at him. He was wearing sunglasses, which drew my attention to his short, yellow teeth. I wasn’t attracted to him. Or was I? I couldn’t be sure. There had been times when I was getting ready for Lakshmi’s events that I wondered, as I applied my make-up, Would Vishnu think I’m attractive? There were times when I saw him escorting her and protecting her that I thought, I wish I had a Vishnu in my life. There were times, when I met him to look at dojo spaces, that I saw him as strikingly handsome. When he taught karate, I often saw him as strong and youthful. And there was the fact that he was Lakshmi’s consort, her boyfriend—and Lakshmi was God to me.

  His question made me feel like The Chosen Child. Out of all the other students, he wanted me. I yearned so desperately to be close to him and Lakshmi, and they were a package deal. Being close to Vishnu meant being close to Lakshmi. I desperately wanted guides, supportive parent figures. I wanted answers to my questions. I wanted to not feel so alone.

  And I was afraid that saying no would jeopardize my position with him. I coveted my special position. I was also afraid that if we got closer, he would see my flaws. I did not know if I could live up to his expectations, whatever they might be. I most certainly could not be Lakshmi.

  I grabbed a handful of sand and held it up to him. I said, “I feel like I am holding something so precious here. My relationship with you and Lakshmi feels like a precious gem to me, something I have wanted for a very long time.” I covered the handful of sand gently with my other hand. “I want to hold it so carefully, with so much respect. Of course, I would like to spend as much time as possible with the two of you. Of course I’d like to see you more.”

  I had been careful to include Lakshmi in my answer; to show him that I hoped spending more time with him really meant spending more time with her.

  “Do you enjoy my company?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I responded, unsure if it was he I enjoyed being close to or if I just really loved finally bei
ng The Chosen Child.

  He smiled, stood up, and offered me his hand. It was the first time I had touched him. His hand felt very strong and surprisingly soft. It felt familiar. When I held it, my world turned white. The same feeling I had when I touched the pyramid. He helped me up and, side-by-side, we left the beach.

  Chapter 8 Hawaii

  Just after my sophomore year of college, I got asked to model for a bikini calendar and was told that one of the models would be selected as model of the year. She’d be given the cover shot and would be taken around the world for a six-month photo shoot, starting the following January. I got picked, and my mother allowed me to take a semester off from school. Her only caveat was that my boyfriend, Matt, go with me.

  “We don’t know this man,” she said, referring to the photographer. “I checked him out as best I could, but I still can’t be 100 percent sure he’s legit. I want to be sure you have someone you trust with you at all times. I also want you to get your plane tickets for the entire trip from him before you leave. That way, if he’s not who he says he is, you can come home quickly.”

  I loved her for this. She said she was afraid to let me go, afraid of what could happen, but she also realized it was a great opportunity for me to see the world, one she did not want me to miss.

  A few months later, Matt and I got our plane tickets and itinerary: New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Nepal, Malaysia, Indonesia, Fiji, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and French Polynesia. My dream to travel the world was coming true.

  The trip had its ups and downs. When we were in Nepal, the photographer and his team of Sherpas abandoned us in the Himalayan Mountains, at an elevation of 22,000 feet. We had to follow donkey poop for ten hours in order to find our way to civilization. The photographer appeared three days later, after we had navigated our way over the top of the mountain pass and down the other side. Apparently, he and the Sherpas had stopped to eat and had started drinking, then could not cross over the pass for three days because it had started snowing.