Even after the blood came, and even though I still worried what would happen if I got pregnant, Sam and I were still trying early in 1983 when a woman at work told me about a class she’d taken.
“I think you’d like it,” she said. “It’s a way of really getting honest with yourself.”
I looked at her.
“Personal growth,” she said. “They help you look at your life, make sure you’re living it to your fullest, that you’re not going through it half asleep.”
I didn’t know what she meant, but she had a new brightness in her eyes, a confidence in her voice.
“I can’t really explain it,” she said. “All I can tell you is it will change your life.”
I told Sam about the classes, five days of long hours. I wanted to go. He said, sure, go. No, he didn’t want to join me.
I signed up.
The leaders, two men in their early thirties, slim with styled hair and expensive dark suits, sat on tall chairs at the front of the room. They spoke into handheld microphones. There were a hundred of us, the participants. We sat on metal folding chairs arranged in precise rows. I was in an aisle seat. The chairs were close together; my shoulder touched the woman next to me. I moved my chair a few inches away from her.
One leader said, “We want you to pay attention to what you agree to and the strength of your intention to keep that agreement. Think about this, especially in terms of the agreements you make to yourself.”
The other leader asked everyone to stand. He said, “Here are the agreements you must make to participate in this class.”
With each agreement we were to sit if we agreed, keep standing if we didn’t.
“Be on time. You will not be let in if you are late. If you miss a session, you will be dropped from the program.”
I sat. This would not be a problem. I was always early. A man and a woman stayed standing.
A discussion followed. The man sat, the woman sat. We all stood again.
“Do not leave the room until we give you a break. Even to use the bathroom.”
I sat. I would drink less water. Three women stayed standing.
A discussion followed. The women sat.
“No food or drinks or gum in the room.”
I sat.
“Don’t move your chair from the position it is in when you arrive. Unless we ask you to move it for an exercise.”
I stayed standing.
People turned in their chairs, looked at me the same way I’d looked at the three woman who didn’t want to wait for breaks to use the bathroom. “I have a small bladder,” one woman had said. They looked at me the same way I’d looked at the man who’d said he might have to be late because of work. The way I’d looked at the woman who’d asked, “What if my car breaks down? I can’t help that.”
A woman with a flowy skirt moved down the aisle toward me, microphone in her hand. She handed me the microphone.
The leader asked me, “Why don’t you agree to keep your chair where we’ve placed it?”
The microphone was heavy. I spoke into it. “I don’t like to sit close to people.” My voice everywhere in the room. My chair at a slant behind me.
“Why?” the leader asked.
Mom used to joke about my great aunts who always wanted a hug and a kiss. One night when I was six or seven or eight she said I was old enough to not kiss her good night anymore. That was the last time I’d kissed her or hugged her. Now being hugged made me uncomfortable. Since the rape, even more so.
I spoke into the microphone. “I don’t think you should be able to tell me how close I have to sit to someone.” An edge to my voice. “I don’t see the big deal about moving my chair a little.”
“This is about challenging your self-limiting beliefs,” the leaders had said to a woman who didn’t want to wait to pee.
“This is about keeping your agreements,” they’d said to the man who might be late. “You signed up for this class knowing the hours. You made a commitment to yourself. How often do you say you will do something knowing you might not?”
“This is about being accountable,” they’d said to the woman whose car might break down. “It’s time to decide what you want in your life and stop blaming others for not having it.”
“This is about your getting out of your comfort zone,” one leader said to me. “And your comfort zone may not be as comfortable as you think,” the other leader said to me. “This is about challenging the stories you have about yourself. We act on our stories without ever questioning whether they are still true.”
A rush, a flush on my face. Like they knew me, cared about me, cared what kind of life I had.
This was new. This was scary. I wanted more.
“Are you willing to be challenged?” they asked me.
“Yes.” I moved my chair back to its place. I sat. I folded my arms, tucked my shoulders in so I wouldn’t brush against the woman next to me.
Around me, men, women, young and old sat in chairs, facing each other. Knees close, hands in laps. My partner for this exercise, a woman a few years older, sat across from me. “Look at each other,” the leaders had said. “Don’t speak.” I looked at her face. Her nose was uneven. Her eyes were blue. Her eyes. On mine. I breathed. I worried what she would see, my big pores, stray hair on my eyebrows, acne scars on my cheeks. “Stay with it,” the leaders said. “Let your partner see you. See them.”
The flight in my stomach, my chest.
Her eyes. Something there. She wasn’t her face. I wasn’t mine. I was more. She was more.
“Now one of you begin speaking. But say something new. Something you’ve never told anyone before.”
“This is hard for me,” I said. “To just sit. To not talk. To look at you and have you look at me.”
“I know,” she said. “But when I look at you, I see beauty. I see hurt. I see strength.”
This was new. This was scary. I wanted more.
I didn’t think I could dance. They put on music, the Pointer Sisters singing “Jump,” and they said, “Dance like your life depends on it.” I danced. It didn’t matter if I was good.
It was as though I’d been stirred from a long sleep where I’d been dreaming a dream of someone else’s life. I woke from that other person’s dream knowing I wanted something different.
They made a line of people, and I could decide who came close, and who didn’t, choose which person I hugged and which I didn’t. I wrapped my arms around almost all.
Like soil long-parched by sun, each new thing was fresh rain, sinking into cracks and crevices.
Live as if death is on your left shoulder, they said.
This sat me up, and I moved toward these words.
This isn’t a dress rehearsal, they said.
Like from water and sun, that seed of knowing, planted and buried four years earlier in the dangerous morning hours with a stranger, grew to life. How easy it is to die. The urgency to be present, take in each moment. Be alive.
All the possibilities for me to choose were open. I wanted more. I wanted different from what I had.
But how would I know I was choosing right?
Sam stayed at home, writing or reading with a glass of bourbon or a cup of coffee. I came from a session or from getting together with my new friends, carrying all the excitement on me. I’d signed up for the next class. The second level. “Come with me,” I said to him. “You can do the first one and catch up.”
He didn’t want to go. He didn’t like the change in me. Maybe I was being brainwashed.
I went to the second level. Sam stayed home. I was gone all day, much of the night, only home for sleep, to change clothes. The lights of our townhouse seemed dull and flat. I woke in the night to the shifting inside me. Telling him about the possibilities of me that I hadn’t known.
He called my parents, told them I was taking these courses. He told them they were filling my head with things. I might be involved with a cult. They must have been scared. Not far from Condon, Rajneeshpuram had sprung up near the town of Antelope. People wearing red clothes, dancing naked. Hugging at random. Cult, everyone said.
I called my parents and told them not to worry. Everything was okay.
I told Sam that they were filling my head with good things. “I wasn’t happy. I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t. But I am now.” I told him I hadn’t liked myself much, and I did now.
He had thought I was happy before. I had thought so too.
“Come with me,” I asked him again.
He was glad I was happy. He didn’t feel the need to change himself.
The next time I called Mom, I said, “I love you.” Years, maybe, since I had said that. Had I ever said it?
A pause. “I love you too,” she said. Natural, like she’d been waiting for me.
The next time I saw Dad, I hugged him hello and, the next time after that, he put his arms around me, and I leaned into him. He hadn’t held me since I was a girl of seventeen and had sat on his lap that early morning after the prom.
He’d stopped drinking earlier in the year, after his doctor told him it would be a good idea. Though it may have been hard for him privately, from the outside, it seemed like an easy change. He made the decision and he quit.
Now the time and attention he’d put to drinking was given to his grandkids. He related to them with a quiet presence I remembered from when I was a little girl and had walked with him in the cold winter nights to feed the bummer lambs.
The leaders had us stand. They said, “Find the person in the room that you have the most resistance to.” I looked at a tall, thin woman with curly hair, pale skin, and glasses. Earlier I’d heard her say, “I don’t have children and I don’t want to have children.” She’d said it with her chin up, straight out, no apology. I couldn’t imagine. Why wouldn’t a woman want children?
“Go to that person and tell them what it is you resist in them.”
People moved around the room, finding the person. I went straight to her.
We stood facing each other. I said, “I feel uncomfortable around you. I think you are selfish not wanting children.”
She said, “Okay.” She smiled an open smile, even against my harsh words. She said. “Are you curious about why I don’t want children?”
The lights in the room were low. All around us, pairs of people stood saying why they were not drawn to each other.
“Okay. Why?” I said. Ready to shoot down every reason she had. Because a woman should want to have children.
She said, “A lot of women have children because they think it will make them happy. I don’t want to have a child to make me happy. I’m happy as I am. There are enough children. I don’t need one of my own.” She looked at me. Sam and I hadn’t stopped trying to have a child. “Let me ask you. Why do you want to have a child?”
I wanted a child because having children was what women did. And even though it’s what they all did, it made them special. I wanted the attention. The baby shower, the baby clothes, the story of the birth. The child to hold and love. I would be a good mom. A child would make me happy. I wanted a child because I’d never considered not having one.
None of those reasons seemed good enough now.