SUN COMING THROUGH THE TREES filled the yurt. Justine started a small fire in the woodstove, threw in some palo santo sticks, latched the door, and watched the flames catch through the window.
Cheyenne rubbed her eyes and sat up.
“You’re lucky,” said Justine. “Normally I teach an early meditation class but it’s the weekend.”
Cheyenne looked around the yurt. With light coming in so many windows it looked bigger than it had the night before. The bed was queen-size, the kitchenette more like a kitchen, the closet where the cot had been folded like a clamshell, large enough for several cots. In the center of the room a circle of sunshine from the hole in the canvas roof played on the floor.
“There’s a propane shower next to the outhouse if you like. I left a clean towel on the bench.”
Justine went to the closet and pulled down a box of clothes. She found a pair of jeans and a faded denim shirt with pearly buttons.
“It may not be your style. But it doesn’t have bunnies or blood on it.”
The back of Cheyenne’s hands burned. She couldn’t tell if Justine was stating a fact or making fun of her. She took the clothes and went to find the shower.
Outside the leaves were just starting to turn. The swamp was a perfect mirror. An insect skimmed the surface, which rippled briefly before reflecting sky and branches again. When she came out of the shower, she dried off on the wood steps and dressed. The smell of Justine was in the shirt, familiar in a primal way. The scent unearthed a bedrock longing older than words.
Walking back to the yurt she could smell the coffee. The sweet wood was now burning in the stove and the sounds of Justine moving around, the clank of mugs in the sink, brought tears to her eyes. It was strange how raw hospitality made her now.
“I thought we could spend the morning talking,” said Justine, sitting on the floor by the stove. “I’m sure you have questions.”
Cheyenne got a cup of coffee and sat down across from her.
Justine pulled her unbraided hair to one side where it cascaded over her collarbone and down her breast. She looked east toward the sun. The corneas of her brown eyes flashed with amber. Cheyenne saw faded discolorations on her cheeks, old freckles, terrain. Livy was everywhere. In her gestures, her coloring, her voice. Justine turned back to Cheyenne.
“How is Kirsten?”
“She’s okay. She got a job as a security guard.”
Justine nodded imperceptibly, her mouth open slightly, the bottom of her teeth white and even beneath her upper lip. “She could always do so many things I could never do,” she said.
Cheyenne tensed and Justine laughed.
“Relax. I’m not saying what you think I’m saying. She’s just never been a restless person. Whereas I’ve always been looking to solve something that can’t be solved, she’s able to be satisfied with things that are more attainable. Our imaginations are just shaped differently. It’s not a slam. I just need more.” Justine blew on her coffee. “And I bet that’s how you are too.”
Cheyenne’s skin got hot. She felt something cut loose inside her. It wasn’t completely untrue. Kirsten’s life, though untraditional, had an iron framework.
Justine crossed her legs.
“I went west because I was bored of college. It was full of little boys taking philosophy. Have you ever noticed that girls take psych and boys take philosophy? You see it everywhere you look, this idea that women should be so interested in what someone else thinks. I’m not. And that, it turns out, is a problem for people. Cyril was the first straight man I knew who wore eyeliner. We met because I made him share his table at a coffee shop.” She grinned. “He likes to be pushed around.”
“Kirsten doesn’t.”
“You’re right. That’s why I liked her. You should have seen her back then. Mall jeans and a pentacle choker. She’d say borrow when she meant lend and called soda, pop, which I’d never heard before, and she still had that wall of bangs from back in the eighties—I don’t think she’d ever eaten out anywhere that wasn’t a chain restaurant. But she was a refreshing and natural person in a world of posing little scenesters.” Justine paused. “I envied her quite a bit. Did you go to college?”
“Sort of. Some.”
Justine nodded. “It’s not all that worth it. One good year is probably all you need. A semester of philosophy, a decent literature course, something about media and art, and you basically have it.”
Justine got up to get more coffee. She talked about Seattle, how it was then, how it was different now. Cheyenne watched Justine’s face, which was beautiful and raw and moved through emotions so subtly that they were only discernible in the moment of transition. A long time ago someone, she didn’t remember who, had told Cheyenne that white wasn’t white but all colors at once. Justine’s face was like that, capable of showing all feelings simultaneously. What do you do with that kind of charisma?
Throughout the morning Justine talked and asked questions. She didn’t press, which Cheyenne was grateful for because she wanted Justine to like her and talking too much felt like a risk. At various points, Cheyenne brought up Livy but Justine didn’t seem that interested so she dropped it.
After breakfast they sat at the table, finishing slowly. Cheyenne was about to get up and do the dishes when Justine motioned for her to wait.
“You can ask,” she said. “Did I love him?”
Cheyenne looked at her blankly. “Who?”
“Cyril,” said Justine. “Don’t you want to know?”
Cheyenne’s mouth opened then closed. It wasn’t a question she’d ever asked herself. “I don’t know,” she said. “Did you?”
“To be honest, I didn’t,” said Justine. “I just wanted to see what he looked like in love.”
Cheyenne felt a faint revulsion.
“Did you love him?” asked Justine.
“You have to know someone to love them,” said Cheyenne.
“That is obviously not true.”
Cheyenne flushed with shame. Justine was right. It was not true.
Because, after all, here she was.
They spent the rest of the first day walking through trails in the woods. Justine had a limited relationship with the temple. She’d taught there for a while but something hadn’t worked out and a new arrangement had been found.
“Most people aren’t ready for what I have to offer,” she said.
“Most people aren’t ready for what I have to offer either,” said Cheyenne.
Justine laughed. Cheyenne felt a glow around them.
“Are your parents alive?” Cheyenne asked.
“Yes.”
“Do they know about us?”
“No. Why should they?”
The flatness startled Cheyenne but it was also a relief. A plain statement of fact, something nearly impossible to get out of Kirsten. As they walked, a new hope emerged, a trickle, a brook; maybe Justine really was her mother.
They continued to travel deeper into the woods. The trees were different from those Cheyenne knew. They weren’t like the cedar, spruce, or fir at home or the maple, birch, and elm near Jackson’s college. These were overgrown with brush and tangles and often she couldn’t see through the canopy. They walked the edges of a place called Half Hell Swamp then went east to Boiling Spring Lakes where they turned down an old railroad grade.
Cheyenne stopped and sniffed the air.
“How close is the sea?” she asked.
“Maybe fifteen miles?”
Justine pulled a leaf from a nearby bush and toyed with it, twisting it around its spine.
“Do you ever regret leaving?” Cheyenne asked.
“It barely entered my mind until you came,” said Justine.
Cheyenne felt the wind get knocked out of her. Maybe she had misheard. She asked again. “Do you mean that you never thought about it? Or that you never let yourself think about it?”
Justine tossed the wrecked leaf aside. “I didn’t think about it,” she said. Her voice was as clean as a sword stroke.
They continued walking until they reached the beach.
“Say a mother leaves her children because she thinks she isn’t going to be a good mother. According to most people, that’s somewhat horrifying but understandable. Maybe even noble. Or say a mother leaves because she doesn’t care that much, but she’s torn with regret later and it ruins her life: also, in its way, forgivable. Now, say a woman thinks she’d be a fine mom but leaves her children anyway and never feels any guilt at all. People are terrified of that kind of freedom.”
Cheyenne watched her mouth, the skin around her eyes.
Justine pointed toward the ocean. “There is a lighthouse, an old one, not far from here on the coast. Apparently the waters around the Cape Fear River are treacherous. You should see it before you go.”
Cheyenne felt like a stone statue of herself.
“For more than two hundred years that lighthouse has sent out a signal to fishing boats, slave ships, colonists, tourists—no distinction, no moral judgment; it lights everything. All around it sea turtles are hatched. We rush to protect them because we’re afraid to watch, or afraid of the part of us that can watch. But the real truth is that only some turtles make it to the sea. Many people never get to freedom. They’re just incapable. You’re not. I can see that. So I’m going to say it again: I left you and I wasn’t torn with guilt. I knew what I wanted to do and acted on it. I never thought about it much until you came. Now, how free do you want to be?”
Cheyenne felt a terrible awe. Justine was fearless. She had no remorse or doubt about anything she’d ever done. She had the will to move ever forward, a quality prized in great men. Maybe this was just what it looked like in a woman.
“We should go back,” said Justine.
On their return to the yurt Justine talked about her upcoming trip to India. She went occasionally, she said, on retreats, sometimes for years. Her relationship with the temple needed to change, she said; she’d done what she could with it and now it was time for a change.
As she talked, Cheyenne saw it again, the unmistakable face of her sister.
“You should come with me,” said Justine. “Get a little unfixed in who you are.”
At seven the next morning Justine’s students began to arrive, appearing out of the mist, sloshing through the swamp water. They took off their shoes and stepped into the yurt.
Cheyenne sat up on the cot. Glad she’d slept in her clothes.
“This is Cheyenne,” said Justine, once everyone was in.
The way she said it, the tone, made Cheyenne think she was going to say more but Justine left it there.
“Let’s start,” she said.
Sitting down, she struck the meditation bell. Nothing happened. People fidgeted or filled water glasses, they stretched. One rifled through a bag, another untangled a necklace clasp from her hair. It was as if they hadn’t heard the bell at all. Cheyenne looked at Justine, offended for her, but Justine showed no sign of interest. Cheyenne leaned back against the wall of the yurt to wait it out. She watched them, forming a line to the coffeepot, staring vacantly out the window—who were these people anyway? Youngish, nowhere to be on a Monday morning. Ten minutes passed. The milling continued. Irritation crawled up her spine. Whatever agreement these people had, she wasn’t in on it. No one had warned her. No one told her how to act. Do you know what this looks like from the outside? A student production of a French experimental play. A boring movie with the sound off. She had to go to the bathroom. She was still having her period and everything about the bottom of her felt heavy and everything about the top of her had been blown up into the sky. Irritation began moving up her spine as she realized she didn’t know how long the meditation would go on. These people knew how long it was going to last so it was their privilege to set that thought aside. And is nothing so much a part of being a child as having no control over time, the land where everything is eternal until you are told different—why hadn’t Justine woken her up earlier? Five more minutes passed and her rage got so bright and fast it burned the circuit. What was left of her was still and without current. The sounds had settled. Under her nails she felt the tender pink skin, and on her arms, the tiny hairs. Like a cut waiting to be sewn, open to everything. The meditation bell was struck once more. She could feel the waves of sound moving through her.
Justine shifted into a more comfortable position. “Death or fear?”
She waited.
“Who here has been terrified? I don’t mean scared. I mean shit-your-pants terrified. Real terror. Like ice in your lungs, skin on fire, you can’t breathe or speak, your guts turn to water—anybody?” Justine flashed a quick smile at Cheyenne. “Y’all should live a little more.”
Cheyenne laughed but she was the only one.
“You’ve never been truly scared,” said Justine. “Your fear is just a story. Your compassion is a story too. It’s not-caring you feel. It’s pity.”
The idea that terrible things could just be a story had always enraged Cheyenne, but coming from Justine it sounded different.
“I met a woman in a truck stop when I first arrived, a waitress,” said Justine. “She asked where I came from and I told her I was from the Midwest but spent time in Seattle and California. I named a few other places—I was very sophisticated. She had never heard of Washington State. I drew a map. She only recognized half of the country. Her whole world was the seventy square miles around where we stood. Anything that happened in those seventy miles would have been the End of the World. You know what she was doing? She was saving every penny to enter her five-year-old in a beauty contest in Huntsville to win a black-and-white TV. My daughter is the most beautiful girl in the world. She told me, ‘If I take her there, everyone in the world will see it.’ ”
Justine looked at Cheyenne, then went on.
“I was in a Thai temple once and saw the body of a young woman rotting in a glass case. She’d been a great beauty, a former Miss Thailand. She died of a heart complication and donated her body to the monastery as training on impermanence. Death is always in the room. Here we lie about it. Teenagers have to make their own dead bodies just to show it to us. Collapsing bridges, ice sheets snapping in half—it’s not important. Death is death.” Justine’s eyes fell on Cheyenne. “Why things happen doesn’t matter.”
Justine’s gaze stayed for a few seconds and then she turned and went on, answering questions, asking some, all the time glancing back at Cheyenne, looping her into the secret conversation. The sense of connection grew until it was a physical thing in the room. It elevated her in a way she’d never felt. Not all daughters resemble their mothers. Not all people who look alike are related. When people got up to go, Cheyenne felt a rush of pride. That’s right. You have to leave and I get to stay. She’s mine, not yours.
As the door closed behind the last person, Cheyenne heard the solid swat of a hand slapping a counter.
“So many bugs,” said Justine.
A man knocked. He was there to fix a leak under the sink.
“Oh, hi Jake. This is Cheyenne.” Justine slapped the counter, killing the fly. “Cheyenne is a student of mine.”