My mother and I are on a road trip. It’s time for me to apply to college. I like Berkeley because, from what I’ve seen in pictures, its ivy-covered stone buildings and grassy quads reminds me of how I imagine an East Coast school would look. I’ve decided I don’t want to go out of state. I am the first to leave the nest—we’ve been in California almost a year—and the real East Coast, as much as I miss it, feels too far away. After the disruption of the move, it feels too soon to leave. I just left.
We arrive into town and, first stop, my mother locates the health food store a mile from campus. The familiarity of the store is comforting; it smells like every other health food store I’ve been in, like vitamins and hand cream and vitamin E oil, but the location is too far and I won’t have a car.
“Look at this.” My mother indicates a flyer thumbtacked to a bulletin board filled with other notices. Acme juicer for sale: good condition. Yard work wanted. In the middle of the flyer she is looking at sits a square-faced man dressed in red robes with a red dot between his dark eyebrows. Meditate with Swami Muktananda.
“Do you want to see what that’s all about?” she says.
Outside the ashram, the air is wet, the sky gray with Berkeley fog. Without the glitter of sunshine to sparkle things up, every crack in the sidewalk is a wet vein, and the plaster side of the orange building is smudged and weathered as my mother pulls open the door and holds it for me. We step inside to a worn blue carpet where, just inside the door, pairs of shoes sit in rows. I try not to observe how, without feet, the shoes’ ugliness, the creases at the ball of the shoes, the scuffs at the heels, the black inside where their owners’ soles have ground in foot grime, is more noticeable. Too many things—the sidewalk, the chipped plaster, the gray sky—are melancholy here. My mother slips off her clogs without missing a beat; she is already heading through the small door. I untie my laces, kick off my sneakers that, without my feet in them, look as shoddy and abandoned as the shoes they are joining.
My mother stands at the chest-high front desk, where a white man and a white woman, both sporting dark red dots between their eyebrows, face her with blank smiles. My mother is leaning forward; she has laid her arm across the surface of the desk and grips the other edge as if she might pull herself up onto it and climb over the top to join them. The woman with the dot nods at her, clearly responding to something she has just asked, and stands, reaches to a pile of brochures at my mother’s elbow, opens a brochure with one hand, and holds it up like a menu for her to read. My mother releases her hold on the desk and takes it, her mouth in a wide smile that looks suspiciously like triumph.
“The evening program is beginning in ten minutes if you’d like to head into the great hall,” the man says. He has wide doe eyes with little crumbs of sleep crust in between his lower lashes.
“The evening program,” my mother says, rolling the words around in her mouth. “Do you want to go?” This isn’t a real question. This is a barbed arrow; there is no exit. She is already heading toward the double doors across more blue carpet. She has her hands together now, holding them palm to palm like she is praying, a gesture I’ve never seen her make, and bows, palms pressed, to each flowy-clothed ashram member we pass. A woman smiles and puts her hands together, nods in return.
We file in where people are already sitting cross-legged in rows, men on one side of the room, women on the other. A blond man in a flowing shirt and equally flowing pants directs us down an aisle where pillows have been placed instead of seats. My mother files in and sits quickly, settling herself cross-legged. I follow. As I adjust my legs, trying to get comfortable on my pink pillow, an East Indian man in orange robes steps to the microphone, introduces himself as Swami Anantananda, welcomes us, then announces the evening program schedule for the upcoming week. As he speaks, I notice for the first time, behind him, an ornate wicker chair adorned with flowers sitting in the shadows on a slightly raised stage. I realize all the rows of pillows face this chair. Swami Anantananda moves from announcements to a brief introduction on how to meditate.
“Let your mind wander; it will. Don’t pay too much attention to your thoughts; let them come and go. Focus on your breathing.” He suggests two mantras, Ham Sa, which he says translates into, “I am that,” or Om Namah Shivaya: “The lord who dwells within you as you.” Then he steps down from the microphone and sits at the foot of the chair. As soon as the swami is seated, another man, also dressed in orange, begins to play a guitar-like instrument. The sound it emits is a long, low twang as Om Namah Shivaya appears projected onto the white screen behind the wicker chair. Everyone in the hall begins singing, matching their key to that first note, Oh-oh-oh-oh … Ohhmmmm. The next note is played, slightly higher, and the chanting responds, Nam-ah-ah. A third note is played, even higher, Shiv-ay-ya-ya-ya-ya-ah. My mother has joined in. After several rounds, when I realize this is what we’ll be doing for a while, I join in, too. I’m mostly hoping to pass the time, but if there are benefits to be gained, I’ll take them. After about twenty minutes, long after my inner clock has signaled it’s time to move to the next activity, the twanging slows, the projector snaps off, and the lights in the hall dim.
Around us in the darkened hall, people settle in. Beside me, my mother settles in. It’s time to meditate. I’m definitely picking up on the fact that the patience required for how slowly everything is moving might be part of the lesson of enlightenment for Westerners. At least, it’s a lesson for me.
“Use the mantra,” my mother whispers.
She closes her eyes and begins taking long, slow, deep breaths. I begin taking long, slow, deep breaths. In my mind I repeat the mantra, Om Namah Shivaya, but it’s not easy, I’m noticing, to fit my breathing around all those syllables.
Om Nam-ah, breathe in. Shiv-a-ya, breathe out. I’m rushing it, attempting to fit everything in. My cheeks begin to tingle. I’m hyperventilating.
Ham, breathe in slowly, Sa, breathe out slowly. The tingling dissipates.
Ham Sa fits so easily with my breathing that it requires no concentration. I’m saying it in my mind as I breathe and thinking of all the other things I’m trying not to think about, at the same time: Ham, my hips ache. Sa, sitting cross-legged makes my right foot fall asleep. Ham, what will happen if I stretch my leg out? Sa, point my toes, flex my toes, point my toes. Ham, the two women sitting as motionless and upright as boards in front of me don’t seem to notice my foot between them. Sa—
My mother taps my knee, sharply, with the tips of all her fingers.
I pull my leg back. I am not supposed to be feeling discomfort. If I were meditating properly—this is the message of her jab—I would have transcended the worldly naggings of pain and desire.
Across the aisle, in the men’s section, a man with a moldy beard and a skinny neck begins to roll his head violently. Around the hall, more and more people do the same. Some begin to emit noises. In minutes, the hangar-size room sounds like a barnyard.
Grunts, squeals, barks echo off the ceiling.
“Kriyas,” my mother will explain, once she has done some reading on the subject, “are a cleansing.”
“A cleansing of what?”
“The mistakes of past lives. Unwanted karma.”
She will talk about ego, the danger of following impulses that come from our contracted selves, and how Swami Muktananda, because he comes from a lineage of enlightened beings, can end the cycle of birth and death by taking away all desire.
“What if we don’t want to end the cycle of birth and death?” I ask. I am thinking of orange sunsets with cobalt clouds, a crescent moon, the sound of rain outside my window on a December night, the chirrup of crickets floating in on a warm white summer dusk.
“The goal is self-realization,” my mother says. “That’s what we’re here for.”
My eyes are supposed to be closed, but I can’t help looking around to see who else is restless, too, and who seems to be successfully achieving a quieted mind in this meditation session. Now a door opens and a round Indian man with white chalk marks over his eyebrows and a red dot between his eyebrows walks in slowly, his long orange robes flowing behind him. In one hand he holds several long peacock feathers. Walking among the rows of meditators, Baba Muktananda—I realize this is who has just joined us—raises the feathers and brings them down on people’s heads or shoulders, harder than I would have expected. Bop. Bop. Bop. Eventually he approaches my mother and me. The bop is as hard as it looked; the feathers brush my hair, but the stalk part smarts where it hits the top of my head.
In these smacks, Baba is delivering Shaktipat, my mother will tell me, the energy from an initiated master that is needed to open our Kundalinis. The journey to self-realization, according to my mother, begins with this initiation. The rest is up to us.
The mewling and bleating, the wild swiveling of necks around us, is reaching a crescendo. I wait for the disgust my mother can so often go to, the thin line of her mouth, the upward tilt of her chin, when she finds herself in unwanted proximity with other people.
Instead she sits up even straighter and closes her eyes, her lips posed in a relaxed-looking smile.
* * *
I’m at UC Berkeley. I let my mother set me up, no questions asked, in Euclid Hall, a damp co-op with a bloodred rug and a Count Dracula staircase on the quiet side of campus, because she wanted me to have a kitchen to blend salads in. Homesickness sets in the moment she drives away. It turns out Euclid Hall is graduate student housing. All the other freshmen are in the dorms, making friends. There is only one student my age, a male, who I will make out with one night then avoid for the rest of the year. The inhabitants of this co-op represent yet another unfamiliar culture represented by dirty sandals and philosopher beards, by a language of sarcastic quips that I am no match for.
“Everything you need is inside you,” my mother tells me in the language of the ashram when I call home, panic squeezing so tightly that I can hardly breathe.
I return from classes the end of the first week to find someone has baked brownies. They’re still warm; the kitchen smells of chocolate and batter. Portions sit wrapped in tinfoil on the counter for anyone who wants them. At first I think I’m going to be okay. Just acknowledge them and move on. It’s no different than it’s always been; I’m used to wanting. But it is different. I’m hungry and my mother’s not here to make sure I drink my celery juice and eat my blended salad before that hunger gets the better of me. I think of the Ho Ho in Francesca’s kitchen so many years ago. Then, I was focused on summer fun and first love. Here, I am alone and missing home. My guilt at even thinking of cheating feels acute. Plus I am my whole family here. Who am I if I’m not eating the Program? I pick up a tinfoil square and smell through the foil. Smelling will be enough. Just to get a sense of it. What’s the difference between eating and imagining I’m eating? Imagination has always carried me. I unwrap and breathe in the brownie. A corner flakes off, into the foil. I pick up it up, mere crumbs. A mouse-size nibble. How could that hurt? Just to get the taste of it. It’s the idea of it I want anyway. Before I can change my mind, I put the crumbs into my mouth. They sit on my tongue, sweet, granular. I flick them to the back of my throat and swallow. Too small. Crumbs don’t count. Half a brownie is small, too. How could half a brownie hurt? I eat the half in two bites. If one half is too small, then isn’t the second half just as negligible? In my mouth, the brownie liquefies, melts on my tongue. I take another bite, rub the pasty, sugary smear off my teeth with my tongue and swallow. I finish the entire brownie, suddenly exhilarated, liberated. I can do this: eat brownies like a normal person. The whole world has opened. I see myself balanced, eating blended salads when I want them but also brownies and cookies and cakes. It’s flour. It’s sugar. These things come from the earth. They are natural. Egg yolk is a Program food even. I can still consider myself healthy. In fact, I can eat another brownie because they are so healthy. I take slower bites this time. I see my future: my body robust and easy, taking food in stride, finding health in everything. I swallow, clean the last chocolate smears from my teeth, feel around with my tongue for more but there is nothing. The brownies are gone and I am suddenly alone with the consequences of what I’ve done. What was I thinking? White flour and egg whites take B vitamins from the body. Chocolate never leaves our system. I feel seared with sadness. The only thing I have is me and now I don’t know who I am. I can no longer consider myself pure. In an instant, I’ve betrayed years, betrayed everything I’ve known to be true. Then a glimmer of an idea: If I water fast, I can clean most of this brownie out of my system, almost as if it didn’t even happen. I can erase it from my body. I’ll skip a blended salad and go to bed now. Fast for three days, the way we used to when we were sick.
* * *
One night, after my father has fallen asleep, a month after I leave home for college, my mother slips upstairs into my now-empty bedroom. He tosses and turns all night, she tells my brothers. He turns on the radio in the wee hours of the morning when he can’t sleep. He is not considerate of her needs and she wants to see if she will sleep better alone.
Two months after her move upstairs my father tells my brothers he has found an apartment by the beach in Santa Monica. “It will be a trial,” he tells me. “Your mother and I want to see if we are happier living apart.”
* * *
“I’m starting a rugby team,” Annika says. She sits next to me in Scandinavian Literature. I’m a year into college and I have one friend.
Rugby? I think I’ve heard of it. I imagine leather helmets, a muddy field in England, an oblong ball. But I could be wrong.
“Do you want to join?” It’s January. We are walking down the cracked leaf-strewn sidewalk from Euclid Hall to campus. With Annika, I get glimpses of relief from my homesickness. “Goose Woman,” the players on the men’s team will call her, and the name will stick. She has a long neck, a small head, wide hips. When she laughs, she sticks her tongue out and her head jabs forward like she’s pecking at corn. But she explains Kierkegaard to me and sits on a stool in the co-op kitchen while I blend my dinner.
“Yes,” I say.
I first love rugby because it feels like I am back with my brothers, sprinting across the cold grass of our Point Lookout front yard. Practices on the rugby field, under the white lights of Strawberry Canyon, the froggy smell of mud, the horsey smell of crushed grass, catapult me from sadness into the crunch of rib cage and thigh, the grab of arms, the give of soft throats and bellies. Hard breath, wet hair, burning lungs. I haven’t run this fast since I was eight. I run to get away, to score between the goalposts, palms flat, knees sliding across tufts of grass, sandpaper-rough mud and sand, to catch someone around her ankles, to bring her down, me and my brothers, and it’s Kill the Guy with the Ball all over again.
Around rugby I feel noticed, like in the old Point Lookout days, when I was tan and thin from swimming in the ocean all day, all the pale, white, city uncool washed away and leaving me tomboy svelte, lithe and easy in my body. Rugby players like me and I like them. Frat boys’ heads don’t turn when I walk by, but I can’t walk down a rugby sideline without feeling like there’s a spotlight on me, and everyone I pass stops whatever he was doing to watch my progress. Feeling attractive lifts me from the sadness that hangs around like wisps of Berkeley fog, impossible to grasp and control, but always somewhere close.
* * *
I am bent over the small bathroom sink, holding my hair back with one hand, sticking my finger down my throat with the other the way my best friend and sorority sister has just taught me. Beside me, she is doing the same. I have permission from our sorority housemother to blend salads in the basement. Even so, I’m a sophomore and I’m finding it too difficult to live a lifestyle where I can take the time to blend salads before hunger is too pressing. I’m finding it too difficult to live shut away, removed from tempting foods, too difficult to go to bed for three days to fast when I slip up.
The food comes up, still warm from my body: Spicy tomato sauce, smooth white crust, chunks and strings of cheese. Too soon for stomach enzymes to have soured it, the purging is almost as pleasant as the ingesting. Afterward I feel high. Physical, endorphins perhaps, but also the triumph: This is so easy. For the first time I am having my cake and eating it, too.
* * *
“Mikey D likes the ladies,” Molly says. We are sitting at the top of the stadium, watching the men’s team emerge from the tunnel and run onto the field. “That’s Fuzzy. Easy Money, Spare Change, they’re brothers.”
Molly plays hooker; she’s as wide as she is tall, with a beak nose and freckles. We’ve only been a team for a month, but I wonder if one of these guys has already broken her heart.
“And that’s Tim.”
Everything slows as I watch him run onto the grass. His shoulder-length hair blows back; the muscles in his thick calves ripple. Long, soft strawberry-blond hair, a girlishly pretty face, narrow nose, cheekbones, Cupid’s-bow lips.
“He’s captain,” Molly says, “been with his girlfriend, Louise, for four years, since freshman year. He doesn’t sleep around like the rest of them. You guys play the same position. Outside center.”
Except Lou stepped out on him while Tim was in the UK this past summer. Now, during our games, he strides up and down the sidelines, calling to me.
“Tackle at the knees! Take her outside shoulder!”
The final whistle blows. As the spattering of observers head down the hill, I find my bag leaning against the chain-link fence. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tim linger, kick at a tuft of grass by the goalpost. He’s been at my games for a few weeks, but we’ve yet to talk. Now he comes up behind me.
“What will all your boyfriends say?” he asks as he follows me down the hill toward campus and my sorority. I can’t tell if he’s kidding. I’m a fast runner, I like to tackle, and I’m blond from afternoon practices. Rugby has become the family I was needing. I’m feeling good about myself again, and I’m glad Tim thinks I’m popular. I don’t tell him I’ve never had a boyfriend.
We go to get him a hamburger. He eats and talks. I listen. Stories of the night he and his teammates were rescued by helicopter from the national forest after a storm blew in and the rivers they needed to cross swelled to raging torrents. He is gorgeous, he is a star, he seems larger than life, like my father, only not like him at all. I feel awash in a calm kind of knowing. That unexplainable familiarity I’ve only had with a few people, all girlfriends, except for Tim. People I meet and just know, like déjà vu, that they are going to mean something to me. I have this sense that I can’t explain, because I barely know Tim, that I’ve come home.