Between Darkness and Dawn

by Margaret Duarte

  “You mean the Hot Seat?” I shivered. “I don’t know. My situation is kind of weird.”

  Jennifer snorted. “That’s what they all say.”

  “Some of the stuff in my head is pretty scary.”

  Another snort. “I find that hard to believe.”

  If only she knew.

  Jennifer’s gaze strayed to the window again. “Do you think the subconscious has a sense of humor?”

  “Most definitely not. It can’t reason, and it believes anything our conscious tells it.”

  “Then I’m in deep shit,” Jennifer said.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  AT FIRST, WE THOUGHT we had been spared. But near the end of the session, Hal announced there was time for one, maybe two, more in the Open Seat, and only Ted, Jennifer, and I were left.

  Hal looked us over, one at a time. “So, who will it be?”

  Jennifer gripped my arm and started breathing in and out in short, shallow breaths. “Lordy, lordy, lordy.”

  I patted her hand and stood. “I’ll go.”

  An ear-splitting whistle from Kate. “That a girl.”

  Hal addressed the class with a warning. “Remember, we’re not looking for a break through, but a break-in. By invading Marjorie’s privacy, we hope to help her re-establish contact with her lost and deadened feeling.”

  Good luck with that. I’d been trying to do so for weeks with no success.

  “You’ll do fine,” Jennifer whispered, the color drained from her face.

  “Of course, she will,” Kate said.

  Hal picked up a chair and placed it next to the Open Seat. “I’d like to try something new this morning.” He gestured for me to come forward. “Marjorie, you’ll be talking to an imaginary person, who’ll be sitting in the empty chair in front of you. If it helps, you can move back and forth between the chairs as you act out the dialogue between the two of you. Exaggerate it. Use ridiculous extremes if you like, but act as if you’re talking to a real person.”

  “I don’t think I can.” My words came out low and a bit hoarse.

  “You mean you choose not to?”

  “Yes. I mean... No.”

  His smile was understanding and encouraging, the kind of smile a parent gives a child when she’s first learning to walk. “You have to go out of your mind in order to use it.”

  I eyed the door, wishing I could make a run for it. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Your unconscious can be programmed to do whatever you want it to.”

  I caught Jennifer’s eye. She managed a shaky smile and gave me the thumbs up.

  “You’re going to talk to the personification of whatever or whoever bothers you,” Hal continued in a calm, hypnotic voice.

  “The personification?” I looked him in the eye, hoping to make clear that I wasn’t easy to put under, if that’s what he was trying to do.

  “Yes. Ascribe it with a personality. Give it a name.”

  I thought of Antonia, who bothered me plenty. Ascribing her with a personality wouldn’t be that hard. Sad and outreaching. “Okay.”

  Hal smiled, nodded. “Now tell me, Marjorie, what would you like to accomplish?”

  “I’d like to help my mother.”

  “Speak up Marjorie, so the class can hear you.”

  “Help my mother.”

  “In what way?”

  “I want her to be happy.”

  “You can’t do that for her,” Hal said with a note of criticism. “She has to do that for herself.”

  “She can’t”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Several of the workshop members laughed, some hooted and clapped, but Hal frowned and narrowed his eyes. “If she’s dead, how do you know she’s unhappy?”

  “I hear her crying.”

  “A real psycho,” sneered a male in the group.

  “Shut up, Ted,” Jennifer snapped.

  Hal coughed—his way, I’d learned, of regaining the class’s attention. “I’ll ask everyone to refrain from such comments.”

  Ted’s face reddened. “You told us to say what we feel.”

  “I also urged you not to judge. Judgment blocks expansion. We’re here to support one another, remember?”

  A shrug from Ted. “Yeah, whatever.”

  But Kate, dear Kate, wouldn’t let it go. “You’re here for all the wrong reasons, Ted.”

  The scowl on his face suggested he was anxious for a fight. “Oh yeah? And how do you know?”

  “I saw you drooling over all those bare bodies last night.”

  “Not yours,” he said, a cruel edge to his voice.

  An impressive eye roll from Kate. “Oh, give me a break. I may be a bit long in the tooth, but my body’s tanned and toned. Center-fold material.”

  Applause broke out, and someone said, “Way to go, Kate.”

  Jennifer leapt to her feet. “Wait till it’s your turn in the Open Seat, Mr. Smarty Pants. I’ll get you good.”

  Ted sneered. “I’m not getting into that damn chair.”

  “That figures,” Kate said, her voice low and confident. “You piece of chicken shit.”

  “You’ve really got a mouth on you,” Ted shot back, taking a step toward her.

  “Come on,” Kate said, putting up her fists. “I’ve fought bigger guys than you—and won.”

  “Kate, your behavior is not very lady-like,” a female participant chided.

  Kate gave her a piercing glare. “Lilly dear, ladies get fucked and fucked over.”

  Lilly puffed out her lips and turned pink.

  I looked at Hal. He appeared to be following the altercation with interest, as though searching for clues, while the participants gave pieces of themselves away. As far as I could tell, he faced some critical choices as to his level of intervention. How much and when, for instance, should he limit what people were allowed to say or do? I tried to relax, curious as to how much divergence the group could tolerate and still function in a constructive and cohesive manner. For now, it seemed, there would be no holding back in this class.

  “I had to grow a pair of balls,” Kate said to no one in particular.

  Jennifer clapped. “Tell it like it is.”

  I felt a slight thrill. Something important was happening here. No wonder Hal was allowing the scrimmage to play out.

  “Next thing I know, they’ll be calling me Katherine,” Kate said under her breath.

  No one commented on that, but Hal wrote it down.

  “Back to Marjorie,” he said, and all heads turned my way.

  I faced the empty chair, not certain where to begin.

  Then I heard someone crying.

  My throat tightened. I strained to hear more. “Antonia?”

  I’m here, Sunwalker.

  Dear God, finally. “Mother?” I sat down facing the second chair and closed my eyes.

  I’m so sorry.

  I took a ragged breath. “Sorry for what, Antonia?”

  Only your father knows.

  “Knows what?”

  Silence.

  “Knows what, Mother.”

  More silence, then, I still love him.

  “You still love the man who broke your heart? The man who tore our family apart.” I felt angry for her, for me. “Do you still love me, too?”

  More than you know.

  I reached out my hands and groped in the air, but came up empty. “Touch me, Momma. Let me feel your touch.”

  But she was gone.

  ~~~

  “You should’ve been an actress; you know that?” Jennifer said on our way out of the Gestalt workshop. “Even though you didn’t change seats the way Hal said you could and you never told us what your imaginary person was saying, you had everyone on the edge of their seats. It looked like you were really talking to someone.”

  “I was.”

  Jennifer’
s mouth clamped shut, and she stared at me as if I’d grown horns.

  Kate slapped her thigh. “I knew you weren’t acting. No one’s that good.”

  We halted on the paved path leading to the narrow wooden bridge over the ravine, which divided the 120-acre Esalen property. “I wanted so much for her to touch me.”

  “Who?” Kate asked, her eyes radiant.

  I pulled in a deep, reviving breath. “My mother.”

  Jennifer quit gawking at me as if I’d come from another planet, only to eye me as if I were a bit loco. “Why didn’t we hear her, too?”

  “The only other person who’s been able to do so is my sister, Veronica.” And Adam.

  Kate whistled. “What a blessing to know there’s an afterlife.”

  “You ever doubted it?” Jennifer asked, stepping onto the rickety bridge.

  A group of guests carrying backpacks exited the bridge on the other side and appeared to be heading for the Buddha Garden. We were on our way to the Big Lodge, where we would grab a bite to eat and then go our separate ways until supper time. A good thing, because I felt exhausted and needed a nap.

  “Why yes, dear,” Kate said as she followed Jennifer onto the bridge. “If you’ve been through what I have, you’d have doubts, too.”

  Jennifer shook her head as if this were highly improbable.

  “I hope my husband and son are happy,” Kate said, just loud enough for me to hear over the rushing creek below and screeching hawk above. “Wherever they are.”

  I reached forward and gave Kate’s shoulder a squeeze. “Me, too.”

  Kate turned to glance at me, but said nothing until we’d exited the bridge on the other side. “You really freaked Ted out, you know. I thought he was going to puke.”

  “And you should’ve seen Hal,” Jennifer added. “He seemed upset about something.”

  We passed a circular meditation house where workshops titled Modern Mystical Movement, Radical Aliveness, and Core Energetics were in session. “Well, it shook me up, hearing my mother again. She’s been hard to reach lately.”

  Jennifer paused to eye a stone Buddha surrounded by wilted flowers and beaded necklaces. “What did she say?”

  The image of my mother formed in front of my eyes. My heart expanded as if to take her in. It had the room. Dear God, it had the room. “That she still loves my father and loves me.”

  “What are you going to do?” Kate asked.

  I turned in a slow circle, taking in the churning ocean, the looming mountains, and the kinetic Esalen grounds, feeling a sudden restlessness, as though all were conspiring against me. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it can’t be accomplished here.”

  “I think talk of the spiritual freaks out all the scientific types,” Jennifer said.

  Kate crossed her arms. “While you were staring at that other chair with tears running down your face, I got the shivers. It was obvious that something inexplicable was going on, but most of the group didn’t get it. They didn’t dare.”

  ~~~

  Anxious as I was at this point to return to Pfeiffer Park and see what I could do for Antonia—and for myself—I also wanted to finish what I had started at the Esalen Institute. I’d come with the intention of exploring and healing some of my inner conflicts in a supportive environment and had only accomplished part of that. I’d watched others explore and had done a bit of exploring myself, but, as far as I knew, I hadn’t done any healing.

  So, that meant more Gestalt workshop.

  Which wasn’t easy, considering that most of the participants were distancing themselves from me. I would’ve done the same had I been in their shoes, but it made for some uncomfortable moments.

  Jennifer and Kate, bless their hearts, stuck by me like bodyguards. They assured me that I had helped bring out the spiritual aspect of their search for self and that the rest of the class consisted of fools if they couldn’t see that for themselves.

  “If the group is supposed to be a mirror in which we catch a reflection of our own personal style of interaction, as Hal teaches,” Kate said the next morning as we headed for the Gestalt workshop, “we’re in deep shit.”

  “The group mirrors my fear,” I said. “I hate what’s going on with my mother and would like to ignore it, too.”

  Jennifer raised her arms up and down like a bird having trouble on takeoff. “But these are hip and educated people. Teachers and psychologists. They’re supposed to be open to glimpses of reality that most people never permit themselves to see.”

  “Yeah, like Ted,” Kate said.

  Jennifer snorted. “That turd.”

  Hal started class with another surprise. “In yesterday’s session, this group failed miserably in coming together as a unit. Each of us was holding on to our own presuppositions, beliefs, and ideas. As a result, we sat back and watched Marjorie take the Open Seat as if she were putting on a show. We didn’t give her our empathy, our support, or our strength. Today, with your cooperation and Marjorie’s, I hope we can change that.”

  “Hold it,” Ted said. “I’m an independent thinker, not a conformist. I refuse to become part of some Nazi groupthink.”

  “I understand your fear,” Hal said.

  “It’s not fear—” Ted began, his face turning red.

  Hal held up his hand. “Let me finish. You’re afraid of losing your individuality, or, worse yet, coming to some misguided group decision. But ask yourself. How independent are you really? Most of us rarely have a truly independent thought. Our minds develop in relationship to other minds. They are not locked inside our brains. They are fields that interact with one another.” Hal waited a moment for his words to sink in, “So if you think about it, you’re already part of a group mind.”

  “Of a collective consciousness,” one of the psychologists in the group said.

  Hal stopped pacing the room, looking relieved that at least one person comprehended his missive. “That’s right, Nick, and it’s radically different from groupthink. The individual isn’t subordinated, but enhanced and strengthened by participation in the group.”

  “Like the Blue Angels,” Kate said.

  Hal chuckled and resumed his pacing. “Yes, with everyone in sync.”

  Nick spoke up again. “There has been increased interest of late in mind/body healing, and I believe that collective intelligence has a lot to do with its success. When a group finds cohesion, sometimes magic occurs.”

  “Group magic.” Hal scratched his head as if Nick’s comment inspired deep thought. “I like that.” He eyed each participant and asked, “How about just for today, we practice a shared intention to help Marjorie reach her mother. If we listen for something deeper, we may learn something new.”

  “Communicate with the dead?” Ted asked, his voice an unpleasant squall.

  From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Hal flinch. “Our intention is to help Marjorie reach her highest potential. We’ll be creating a safe space in our center for her to do her work. We’ll focus all our attention on her goal and forget about our own personal agendas.”

  Hal turned to me. “Marjorie, are you ready to receive our support and possibly receive another message from your mother?”

  Yes, yes, yes. “Yes.”

  “Okay then.” Hal picked up a chair and motioned the rest of the group to do the same. “Let’s make this a healing place and let’s attempt to explore a territory that is rarely, if ever, accessible to us individually.”

  As the group circled their chairs around me and I took the Open Seat, I eyed my fellow participants one-by-one. Several returned my look with blank expressions, others nodded, but most of their gazes drifted over my shoulder. Only Hal, Kate, and Jennifer seemed to be sending out any positive vibes. Ted sat with his arms crossed, his contribution a hard stare.

  Facing the empty chair, I closed my eyes and waited, hoping to receive some sense of direction from the people gathered around me. Something warm blanketed me, but I had no
way of knowing if it came from the group’s unified intention or from my mother’s presence.

  “Antonia?” I said.

  Nothing.

  “Mother?”

  I held you in my arms until the end.

  “Oh, my God, Momma.” I found it difficult to swallow. Someone handed me a tissue. I wadded it up and wiped my face. “What can I do to help you?”

  Talk to your father.

  “But I don’t know him. And I don’t know where he is.”

  First Dawn knows.

  “Who?”

  Your sister.

  “Veronica?”

  She knows.

  “Momma?”

  Yes, Sunwalker.

  “Will we be together someday?”

  We already are.

  “Can you touch me?”

  Something cool brushed my cheek, and I reached for it. But no one was there. No one I could touch or feel anyway. It was like loving and being loved by God, which, according to my present standards, fell short, a giving and receiving that was illusive, lacking, and incomplete.

  When I stopped crying, I realized how quiet the room had become. I opened my eyes, afraid of what I might see. My gaze sought out Hal for guidance, but he was sitting in a chair with his face in his hands. Next, I eyed Kate and Jennifer, who both looked back at me, their expressions glazed. I scanned the other members of the group. Some were crying. Some were praying. Some just stared into space. Ted stood next to a window, looking out. I listened to my heart thud in my chest as I waited for Hal to break the silence. He coughed, stood, and said, “We heard her, Marjorie. We heard your mother.”

  “Thank God,” I whispered, searching the faces around me for a glimmer of understanding and support. Nick nodded at Hal’s words, the woman named Lilly smiled, and several others whispered amongst themselves, but only two met my eyes.

  Jennifer and Kate.

  Hal faced the class. “You just got a taste of something authentic, be it your deeper psyche, your soul, or whatever you want to call it. However, I must warn you, the experience will fade. At your current stage of development, you can’t adequately interpret what just happened here. You won’t have that kind of self-understanding. But I do think most of you can appreciate the miraculous something that can occur when individuals quit fighting for airspace and come together in shared exploration.”