Soulmates (21 page)

“Namaste,” Bodhi said. “We're here tonight to honor the Egyptian goddess Nephthys. She is the goddess of night, but also the goddess of death.” He began to softly thump on his drum. “I want us to chant for her. As night falls, we want to let our bad feelings and negativity die. When we wake every day, we should think of it as another opportunity for rebirth.” Maria syncopated Bodhi's thumps with a jaunty beat on her bongos. Willow started shaking her tambourine and nodded to me to do the same.

Then Bodhi started chanting, “
Nam myoho renge kyoooooooo
.” He said it three times before Maria and Willow began to chant it along with him. I was busy trying to keep time with my tambourine and didn't say anything until Willow shot me that death glare. I started mouthing the words, pretty sure I was messing them up. But my effort must have been enough for Willow because her glare was replaced with a satisfied smile.

We continued chanting for several minutes. At last, Bodhi held the last note of
kyooooo
for a long time and slapped his drum three times with great force. Then he took his shirt off. A dark forest of kinky hair covered his lanky torso from shoulder
to hipbone. His drawstring pants rode so low that I saw where the stomach hair trailed into his pubis, and I tried not to stare. As I averted my eyes from his form I noticed that Willow and Maria had both taken off their shirts. Neither wore a bra, and though it was almost completely dark I was close enough to see that their nipples were hard pink points in the cold desert air. They were both looking at me expectantly.

I shook my head no. I was happy to bang a tambourine in the middle of the desert, but getting naked in front of virtual strangers was not part of my agenda. My face burned—how dare they assume that I would just go along with this? As I stood there, wordless, Willow grabbed my hand and pulled me twenty feet away from Maria and Bodhi. “What are you doing?” she spat.

“I just don't feel comfortable taking my shirt off,” I whispered back.

She squeezed my hand so tightly it started to hurt. “Dana,” she said, “I invited you here because I wanted us to connect spiritually. I thought you were ready for it. Don't embarrass me.”

I really did not want to do any weird sex stuff. But we were alone out there, and I felt like I had no other choice. I didn't want to stand out as someone who wasn't spiritually evolving, or have my reticence gossiped about over lentils. I scowled but took my shirt and bra off. I was so worked up I didn't feel the cold.

Willow led me back to the circle, where Bodhi was patting his drum dreamily and Maria was lying down on the ground, looking up at the sky.

“So glad you are joining us,” Bodhi said. I sat down and didn't say anything, still annoyed. Maria came up behind me and started petting my hair. Then she started to braid a section of
it. I have always hated the feeling of strange hands on me, but I sat there and took it, while rage and fear beat inside my chest in tempo with Bodhi's drum.

I don't know how long we sat this way before they started talking. I expected another chant, another ritual of some kind. But they just began to gossip. It was all about people at the Homestead whom I hadn't met yet, so I couldn't really follow the thread. But I did gather that Maria's favorite thing in the world was to rat out another guest to Janus for breaking a rule. “I caught Coyote and Genesis whispering to each other during the afternoon silence,” she boasted. “Janus was extremely pleased to hear that.”

Though Maria seemed to take special delight in narcing on her fellow non-ordained, Bodhi and Willow appeared to enjoy a little light squealing, too. Bodhi said, “Did you hear about River? He's been leaving his assigned yoga classes if Yoni's not the teacher. He either goes back to his room and hides out there, or goes looking for the class Yoni
is
teaching.”

Willow scoffed. “Ugh. It's so against everything we stand for.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, the first thing out of my mouth since she had snapped at me.

She turned to me with a simpering expression on her face. “The guru has carefully planned each of our schedules in consultation with the dictates of the universe. Thinking you know better than the guru is the height of hubris.” She shook her head like she couldn't believe she even had to explain this to me. “Yoni wants everyone to experience him equally, except, of course, for his ‘nymphets.'”

“Willow, that's not kind.” Maria
tsk
ed. “Yoni's assistants are very sweet and they're just doing their job. Everyone wants a piece of Yoni, and he must guard his time very carefully.”

“Fine,” Willow said. “But no one knows how those particular girls got
that
particular job. I just think it's a little convenient.” It sounded to me like she wanted the job for herself.

Maria looked uncomfortable and changed the subject, so the conversation moved on to their origin stories. That's what they called their lives before they got involved with Yoni, as if they were
X-Men
characters. I found out that though they all had different superficial reasons for being at the Homestead those reasons boiled down to the same core: they were running away from something.

Willow was running from the government. She didn't seem to be accused of any crime—in fact, it sounded like when she was at home in Marin County, she didn't leave the house very much. But she was upset about potential government surveillance. She was obsessed with Edward Snowden, whom she called “Eddie.” She did not seem to grasp the irony that she was watched much more closely inside the Homestead than she probably ever was outside it. But perhaps because the surveillance was low-tech—you were being watched by other people, not by drones or video cameras—she was less perturbed by it.

Maria was a college dropout who was trying to cure her eating disorder through spiritual awakening. She was still painfully skinny after trying several normal rehab programs without success, Maria's parents were willing to foot the bill for this spiritual retreat so she could possibly find a little peace.

Bodhi made a lot of money in Silicon Valley and went to Burning Man every year. He came to Zuni to get some space from his ex-girlfriend (though he still called her his “love star”). “And what brings you here, Dana?” Bodhi said. Everyone turned their eyes on me.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, it's sort of like what happened to you. I had a relationship that didn't work out, and it was hard for me to move on. I'm trying to evolve here, um, spiritually, and make something of my life.” Just like in my first class with Lo, I had begun my story thinking I had to make up something that sounded realistic, and once it was out of my mouth, I realized it was 100 percent true.

Everyone seemed to accept my origin story. And I felt lighter after I told them why I was there. I wasn't so worked up about taking my shirt off anymore. It didn't seem like that big a deal, and it didn't seem like anyone was going to make me do anything weird or sexual, or both. Not much later, Bodhi licked his finger and put it up in the air. “I think the wind is telling us it's time to retire for the evening.” He chanted “
Nam myoho renge kyoooooooo
” one more time and then put his shirt back on. Willow and Maria did the same, and so did I. Then we walked in a single-file line back to our rooms.

My sessions with Lo were the only places I felt any sense of calm. My concept of time continued to blur. I didn't know what day or date it was, since every day melted into the next. It was both destabilizing and soothing. I was so used to being on a workday schedule and responding to my bosses' needs, it was nice to float around in a timeless netherspace. As the days went by, it
threw me off-kilter because I was so disconnected from everything I'd ever known.

Lo was my stability. She was full of praise for my work with her, which helped me feel supported in her presence. We were establishing a true bond, and I hoped that I'd soon feel comfortable asking her about Ethan and Amaya, as well as whether she had known Rosemary. But I was also learning more about myself, and how I'd let my life end up this way.

The second time we met we discussed our elementary school years. Lo's family of Witnesses had settled in Sacramento, which she called “Sactown.” She made it sound like a barren hellscape where the sun shined unremittingly and her unfeeling parents either ignored her (she was the second youngest of seven) or beat her for her dirty thoughts.

“There was a lot of shame in my household,” Lo explained. “That's why I was drawn to this work in the first place, to process that shame.”

“My household wasn't filled with shame, exactly,” I said, and then didn't say:
It was filled with land mines set by my mercurial mother
. “But your mention of shame brings up one particular memory.”

“Please tell me about it,” Lo pleaded.

“I'm not sure. I'm afraid it's going to bring back up a lot of bitterness. I'm trying to move on from that kind of feeling.”

“If you're afraid to discuss it, the emotions need deeper processing. Remember, this is the safest space in the world.” I looked at her kind, open face and believed her.

I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I sighed. “My mother had planned a big fourth of July party in our yard for the whole neighborhood.
She rented a bounce house. She spent the week before preparing all her signature dishes: rhubarb pies and deviled eggs and burgers with her own proprietary blend of spices. She picked out the dress I was going to wear. It was a white sleeveless sundress with big red bows on the shoulders. I remember her staying up almost all night before the day of the party, just to make sure everything would be to her liking.” Lo maintained eye contact while I took a breath and then continued.

“The morning of the party, I could feel she was on edge. Whenever she gets anxious, she starts cracking her knuckles, and I could hear the
crack crack crack
from ten feet away. As people started arriving, I kept looking over at my mom, and she had this scary smile plastered on her face. But everyone seemed to be having a good time, so I relaxed a little. The kids were bouncing on the bounce house and drinking juice boxes. The moms and dads were drinking their spiked lemonades, waiting for their burgers to be ready.” I paused for a second. I could feel the weight of what I was about to tell Lo, like a barbell perched on my chest.

“Everything was fine until the food was ready. I bounded over to get my burger, and I could feel my mother watching my every move. I sat down to eat, careful to put a napkin on my lap because my mother hated it when I made a mess. But when I took my first bite, a dollop of ketchup fell onto the front of my white, white sundress.” I couldn't help it; I started to cry. Sharing the memory made it feel new and raw again. “The second the ketchup made contact, my mother started to scream at me in front of everyone. I can't even remember what she said. But I remember I spent the rest of the party locked in my room, sobbing.”

“And how did that make you feel?” Lo asked, sidling up to me and putting a comforting hand on my back.

“Fucking terrible!” I shouted.

“There, there,” Lo said, pulling my head into her chest and stroking my hair. For a moment I recoiled at the intimacy. Lo's touch was so maternal, it felt too close. But it also felt nice, so I relaxed into her.

After a few breaths I sat up and wiped my face with my sleeve. “I feel like I spent my whole life on tenterhooks, worrying that any misstep would set her off.”

“That must have been a very hard way to live,” Lo said.

“It was awful. And it's why I stopped talking to her. I needed her support when Ethan left me, but all she offered was judgment. About eighteen months after he left, she was nagging me about getting back on the dating scene and finding a man before my eggs dried up. I told her again that I still wasn't ready. That I was still working through our breakup. And you know what she said? She said it was no wonder he left. That I emasculated him with my big career and all my money. I made him feel small.”

I started crying hard again. Reading Ethan's book, I'd worried that my mother was partially right, even if she'd said it as cruelly as possible. “And then she said I was too good for him anyway, so what was I still so down about? Good riddance to mountain trash.” Ethan was a lot of things, but he wasn't trash. My mother's casual malice shocked me, now that I was saying it aloud to someone else. Lo patted my head until I was finished. I sat up and told her the rest of it.

“I stopped answering the phone when she called and blocked
her e-mail. My sister still speaks to her sporadically, so she told Mom why I cut ties. Mom very quickly stopped trying to reach me, and the last I heard, she'd cut me out of her will.”

Lo pulled a handkerchief out of her poncho and handed it to me. “I'm glad you told me that story. That was very brave of you, and it was brave of you to distance yourself from your mother's negative energy. You've done very good work today. Don't you feel lighter? Less blocked up?”

I dabbed my face and nodded back. “Yes, I do.”

One night after dinner, Willow and I were both reading on our beds. Each of the rooms had a shelf filled with Yoni's writings—some were professionally published books, some were graying pamphlets. They had titles like
You Can't Spell Empower Without
M
and
E and
The Dharma of Business: Using Ancient Virtues to Win in the Modern World
. I kept trying to find useful information in these books, but the woo-woo jargon in them was so thick, I couldn't parse it.

I kept thinking I felt Willow's eyes on me, but when I looked over at her, she was buried in her book. I got up to pee, and when I came out of the bathroom, Willow was gone. I hadn't heard a thing, so she must have crept out as quietly as possible, purposely waiting until I went to the bathroom to leave. Since she'd included me in her drum circle, if she purposely ditched me, she must be doing something secret. I ran to the front door and saw her at the end of the hallway, about to round the corner. I scurried on tiptoe down the hall after her.