I wanted to make a gift to a woman I admire. In gratitude. But I didn’t know whether one could make gifts to one’s therapist. What’s allowed? It’s a culture I wasn’t familiar with, like traveling to a country where you don’t speak the language. I no longer visit her as I did back in 2005 when I wrote this; I’ve since moved away. But I often think of her. She was my teacher and spirit guide for over a decade. She taught me how to understand my dreams and how to soar. In other times, she might’ve been a Mayan high priestess or an oracle at Delphi. This analogy would make her laugh, I think. But that’s how I saw and still see her.
Every Tuesday I drive toward the most congested area of San Antonio at the most congested hour of the day, and, no matter how early I start, I arrive promptly late for my appointment with a woman I call the shameless shamaness. She doesn’t call herself this. Her business card reads “Jungian Therapist.”
A few months short of finishing my nine-year novel, I sought her out. I was as prickly as a snake after shedding its skin, as agoraphobic as a vampire in the day, as waterlogged as a blue maguey. I was frightened and sad beyond the reach of family and friends. I felt myself drifting away from society, like an unmoored boat swept away by subterranean seasons.
I’d been this ill before, and I knew what to do when I was this beyond-help blue. Seek out a bruja. I asked around, and somebody who was also heartsick and sad gave me her name.
At our first meeting I thought my shamaness looked exactly as a bruja should—wise and clever as a little white owl, benevolent as a television-show grandmother. My therapist listens and is paid to listen to my stories. In the beginning I felt I had to be entertaining. There is something odd for me still in telling a story one-on-one without getting a story back in return. It makes me feel guilty. As if I am being narcissistic hogging up the spotlight. As if I am being rude for not asking, “And you? How was your day?”
I think about her between sessions. When I dream an especially good dream, I’m as delighted to present it as a pupil delivering an apple. I’m curious about this woman who listens patiently to the latest episode of the story called my life. I want to ask her so many things, so many, but I think it’s against the rules.
I would like to ask, for example, “Do you approve of me, or am I silly?” Even if she didn’t approve, what does it matter? But it matters a lot. To me.
I would ask whether the stories I’ve told her are any good—worth repeating, worth remembering. That’s how I define a good story.
Does she get tired listening to stories all day and all week, year after year? How does one stay healthy at the end of a day full of stories? Does one have to shake oneself off like a dog after its bath?
And. What did you eat for breakfast today? Do you believe in an afterlife? What about a before-life? Does your husband read to you? Does passion exist until death? Have you ever seen a ghost? Did you have a good childhood? What is the most remarkable thing you remember about giving birth? Do you own a dog? Are you happy? What has la vida taught you? Does your husband listen to the story of your life before you put out the light?
When I was a child, there really was a girl I knew whose name was Sally, and who would later inspire bits and pieces of the character of the same name in The House on Mango Street. She was in my class all through middle and junior high, but it wasn’t until about midway that we actually began to talk to each other. I think it was only because we walked home the same way, and because she was mad at her best friend that day.
Her home was a half block before mine, on top of the corner grocery store. She invited me up, and I was allowed to walk through the big wide rooms of her apartment, an old Chicago-style building with wooden floors, high ceilings, and tall windows. I thought it was grand, but I could tell Sally didn’t think so.
Then she stunned me by asking something I didn’t expect: “Can I see your pajamas?” It was a strange request, but I was anxious for her to be my friend, so I took her home with me that instant.
Our two-story bungalow was tidy and full of spirit and, best of all, ours. Nothing luxurious, but I could tell Sally thought I was rich. Maybe it was our nice furniture that fooled her. Our father, after all, was an upholsterer. And we had art on the walls. A silk tiger our uncle Frankie brought back from Japan after he was in the service, and a set of paint-by-number geishas my mother had painted. Thanks to the previous owners, almost all our rooms were wallpapered, and some had carpeting. Sally didn’t seem to notice the sweaty walls and drafty space heaters, the bedrooms without doors.
I led Sally to the little closet that was my room, tugged back the bedspread and pillow from my twin bed, and showed her my neatly folded pajamas. I didn’t know for sure whether my pajamas disappointed or met her expectations. She didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything either, but I supposed she expected frilly silk and marabou feathers, not my flowered flannel.
After all these years, I think I finally get it. I would like to ask my therapist, “Can I see your pajamas?” It’s as if I want to understand, in a shorthand way, who she really is.
When I’m on the road giving readings, I sign books after my performances. I’m aware that my audience has waited a long time to tell me something. I often feel like a therapist then. So I try to pay attention and make eye contact, to be as present as I can possibly be, because the business of listening is much more difficult than speaking.
One evening after a reading I gave at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, the line to meet the author was especially long and slow-moving. I could feel myself flagging.
“You used too much energy tonight, didn’t you?”
I looked up and saw a woman who could’ve passed for my sister. A woman with a Mona Lisa grin that said, “I know you.”
“You’re a bruja, aren’t you?” I blurted out. I could tell she was a good witch, one who works in the light. She smiled, and we recognized each other the way animals recognize their own kind.
“Okay, then,” I said. “What can I do to recharge?”
This is what she told me: “When you get back to your room tonight, find a quiet space. I want you to close your eyes and imagine a white flower. Any kind will do, but it must be white. Imagine it as a bud. Now see it opening-opening-opening-opening. Imagine it in full bloom, as full and heavy as can be. Now blow all its petals away, so that nothing’s left but the stem.
“That’s for everyone you met and talked to today.
“Now I want you to imagine another white flower bud. See it opening again. Opening-opening-opening-opening. It’s beautiful. Enjoy it. Inhale it. Savor it. This flower is for you.”
Last month, after three years of being my therapist’s patient, I received an unusual message on my phone machine. My therapist was canceling our appointments for the time being, a family emergency, she would get back to me. And when she finally did return after a month’s absence, it was with the frank and calm announcement that her husband had died.
I wanted, then, to take care of my story listener. It was her turn to tell me a story, and it was my turn to listen. And finally I felt I could be of some use to her, that I could, for a change, give her something back for all she had given me. But I felt too shy to say this and couldn’t find the language for all the things swirling inside me. The next time I saw her I brought a white orchid, luminous as the full moon.
The Japanese say it’s a black cat that’s necessary when one is in mourning. They say black cats absorb one’s grief. This may be true, but I know from experience that white flowers know how to listen.
And because I could not say what I felt then, I say it here now. You are my white flower. I offer you this bouquet, to cleanse and soothe and salve you. These pages are for you.