Cartwheels in a Sari (20 page)

“Will you tell me where you'll be staying?” Oscar begged.

“No.”

“Can I get a phone number to reach you?”

“No.”

“Do you know when you'll be back?”

“No.”

He wiped his hand across his sweaty forehead, and his chair scraped the tile floor. He took a few seconds to regroup.

“Can I get a minute alone here?” He snapped at Chahna.

A minute alone couldn't do any harm. If that was what it took to finally say good-bye and be done with the entire episode, to break free of him once and for all, then I could do it. I nodded to Chahna, assuring her that this was fine. I would walk him the half block to the subway alone.

“I can't believe you're just taking off and are leaving me,” Oscar said, still sweating, the moisture now filling his eyes as we descended the stairs into the station.

I didn't know what to say, so I remained silent, which made him shake his head in disbelief.

“This is, this is, complete bullshit,” he shouted, then took a few quick breaths.

He grabbed my hands, urging me toward the turnstiles. Inwardly I chanted to Guru for strength. I was doing the right thing. This was the right thing.

“I can't let you go,” Oscar said with a weak smile, trying to pull me toward him. “I just don't understand any of this,” he said, exasperated.

I knew it wasn't fair. I hadn't told him anything, and now I was abandoning him. No reasons. No explanations.

He slipped two tokens into the machine and whisked us through the turnstile. The squealing raspy engine of an
approaching train echoed through the tunnel. He tugged me, with increased urgency.

The E train skidded to a stop where we now stood. The doors opened.

“Come with me. We'll escape together.”

He backed into the subway car, still clasping both my hands, pulling me inside.

For a moment I visualized our perfect future together, burrowed in the comfort of a domestic oasis. With him I would gain a loving partner, but I would lose my holy trinity— Guru, my soul, and the Supreme. My life with Oscar was impossible. I was Guru's Chosen One, and because of that, Guru left me no choice.

I took a decisive step, backing out of the door's threshold onto the platform as the doors snapped shut. Oscar pressed his face against the glass and his hands frantically clawed at the doors, attempting to pry them open.

I studied his face, absorbing as much as I could to store away with me.

“Jayanti,” Chahna called from a few feet away. “We need to go.”

With his mouth open, Oscar's words were gone as the train vanished into the black tunnel. I watched as my once-possible future sped deep underground and away from my life forever. Feeling empty, sick and cracked, I walked over to Chahna, who waited for me with her arms open wide and squeezed me so tightly I couldn't catch my breath. When we steadied ourselves, we ascended from the darkness up the stairs, to the streams of brilliant and aching light from the world above.

W
ITHOUT INTERROGATING ME AS TO THE FULL REA
- son why Guru was airlifting me out of New York, my mother and father dutifully helped me pack. Ketan, sensing juicy scandal, doggedly scrounged for more information, but I remained quiet. Any attempt to explain what had happened only made things feel worse, until everything hurt. Each time an Oscar memory began to form, I dug my nails into my arm to force it to stop. I unplugged my telephone. I threw away my cache of perfumes and oils purchased to entice Oscar. All the outfits that I had worn with him, including my favorite purple silk dress, I gored with a scissors before dumping them into the garbage. From movie stubs to his phone number written on a napkin, I systematically eliminated all physical reminders of Oscar.

Before the drive to Kennedy Airport, Guru invited me to his house. With a blessingful letter, explaining how proud he was of me, and another wad of blessingful cash as parting gifts, Guru pressed both hands upon my forehead, covering my third eye. His touch was forceful, as if embossing his protective imprint for my long journey ahead. He beamed a wide
smile, proclaiming his eternal love, pride, and joy for me. I consciously worked to preserve Guru's dousing of sweet affections, knowing I needed his affirmations to be even functional. I felt unsteady and weak, as though I was in the fragile stage right after a serious illness, and Guru sensed this. Without a single scolding or warning, Guru became once again the doting grandfather who years past had beamed while his dearest Jayanti climbed upon his lap or delivered to him a bouquet of hand-picked dandelions. I was reminded of his transformative love, and by the time Guru waved his final round of farewell blessings, I felt strengthened by his enthusiastic confidence in me.

When my father pulled up to the departures area at the airport, I feared that Oscar might be waiting for me, that despite his promise, he could have bought a plane ticket. I scanned the chain of people waiting to check in—every man with dark hair and jeans caused me an anxious jolt. At the security screening, where passengers without boarding passes said their final good-byes, I barely flicked a farewell gesture to my mother as I squinted through the knots of people in case Oscar was entangled with them. At the final boarding call, long after all the other passengers were seated and safely buckled for the long flight, the overrouged ticket collector, impatient at my refusal to budge, snickered, inquiring if I were expecting a Hollywood last-minute movie airport reunion scene. Her comment broke my vigilant stake-out. I surrendered my ticket, while wondering if somehow Oscar would already be on board, relaxed and smiling, waiting for me.

After a sleepless flight, Lalita greeted me at the arrival's gate. Tall and slender with gray hair swept off her heart-shaped
face, Lalita was practical and kind. An original member of the Paris Center and an insider to Guru's inner circle, Lalita was the eyes and ears from France to Guru. Fluent in English, she breezily chatted, careful to avoid any mention of why I was suddenly in her charge thousands of miles away from Guru and New York.

After staying a few days in Paris at her elderly father's elegant apartment, we drove through the core of France to Montpellier. From my first sighting of the Eiffel Tower to the endless stretches of countryside blanketed with van Gogh's sunflowers, France felt too rigidly perfect. Its carefully aged villages, complete with faded hand-painted shop signs, felt staged. I waited for the wash of sprawling used-car dealerships, strip malls, and graffiti-covered underpasses, but I never saw them. Queens now seemed farther away than ever. My new terrain was not remotely comparable. Jamaica and Montpellier did not seem to share a single common feature. Outwardly, nothing overlapped.

Quaint pedestrian cobblestone walkways streamed into Montpellier's grand squares filled with outdoor cafés and markets. Ancient Roman aqueducts, now groomed into chic parks, braided the edge of the city. Its university, founded in 1220, seventeenth-century Arc de Triomphe, and eighteenth-century ornate opera house nonchalantly boasted Montpellier's permanent reputation as a cultural bastion of the south. Artisans, students, entrepreneurs, and tourists flocked to Montpellier for its coastal setting and carefree lifestyle. I, undoubtedly, was the only person for whom it was meant to serve as a rehabilitation facility, to break my addiction to boys. The orders came from Guru that Lalita was meant to be my counselor and guard. She did not hover over me, and I
was grateful for the respectful distance that she afforded me. Never once did I catch her snooping through my bags or bursting into the small room inside her apartment that she had designated as mine. Cheerfully inviting me to help her give meditation classes or shop for supplies from the market for her divine-enterprise restaurant, Lalita presented the perfect facade that I was a normal guest on a normal visit. I figured if she could pretend, then I could, too.

But I wasn't happy. Inwardly I questioned my rushed evacuation from New York. Being so far away from Guru felt too risky; I needed to be in Guru's constant presence for my recovery to keep me focused on the right path. France was confusing; it lacked Guru's rigid structure, his protective grip. Since I did not want to disappoint Lalita in feeling that her kind efforts were magically working, I smiled, pretending I was in the process of being spiritually reborn, but inside I felt the same rumbles of uncertainty and desire. I had not changed nor was I transformed. Occasionally, if I suspected a phone call from Guru was approaching to check on my progress, I'd casually mention how happy I was, which I knew was better than any type of payment I could offer her. Reporting positive, tangible results was a sure way for her to please Guru, and, as a devoted disciple, that was priceless.

Feigning contentment, I surmised, worked to my advantage, as well. From observing the promotion, demotion, and expulsion of disciples my whole life, I understood the more a disciple showed outer signs of struggle, the more scrutiny the person received from both the genuinely concerned and the predatory opportunists. Unchecked displays of enthusiasm or devotion counted as normal acts, but absences or visible sulking only exaggerated and heightened the troubled disciple's
state. It was safest to affix a smile, blending into the throngs to divert attention. Outwardly, when I was with the Montpellier disciples at meditations, the restaurant, or just alone with Lalita, with staged joy I'd mention postering for an upcoming meditation class, or I'd arrange a fresh bouquet of flowers upon the shrine. These small markers were more than enough to divert attention and provide cover for my frail and feeble reality.

AS POSITIVE REPORTS
stretched back to New York that the initial toxins had been flushed from my system, Guru commanded that I stay in Montpellier to ensure a full and healthy rehabilitation, but I felt isolated in a way that I had never imagined. In Montpellier, Lalita was the closest I had to a friend, but even with her, I was fully aware of the clear boundaries of our friendship. Lalita was busy, and I already took up way too much of her time. Besides Lalita, the other women, all much older than me, were disciples I didn't know well. They all had their own agendas, and I didn't want to seem too needy.

With patchy, fragmented French left over from high school, I was excluded from the ordinary ease of daily small talk and jokes. I stuttered, mispronouncing wrong words, while flicking through a dictionary. The disciples were courteous about switching to English or downshifting to basic greetings when I was in their company, the remainder of the city did not have the time or patience for me. Bus drivers blurted out their annoyance when I tried to cram bills into the automated ticket stamper, and waitresses rolled their eyes when asked to repeat the plat du jour for the third time. I had
never appreciated the luxury of living in a society where I was in control of the language. Even when we had traveled with Guru through countless countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan, where we could not speak the language, there was never a sense of exclusion, of being invisible, since we were just tourists, dropping in for a week or two. Locals who wanted our business, whether it was for a taxi ride or an elephant ride, catered to us, cutting deals in botched English phrases; we were the guests, the special ones. Now, without the padding of a group, I was the single outsider, who appeared both deaf and dumb. Achingly conscious that as a disciple of an Indian guru exiled for rehabilitation, I already occupied a solitary position, but having the extra separation of language heightened my sense of loneliness. When I tried to flood myself with French by tuning in to talk radio, after a few minutes my head felt waterlogged. Nothing stuck. I tried to convince myself that maybe it was better this way, that I could remain aloof, unattached, which might help me jump-start my Guru-revival, but no matter how hard I pretended that being tuned out from the noise of the outside world was a spiritual boost, it just made me feel more lonely.

Used to having my family as filler between Guru's schedule, without them and without Guru, the fat lumps of unscheduled time in my days and evenings felt ominous. I didn't know what to do with my time, and even if I did, I didn't have Chahna with whom to explore. I both missed and worried about Chahna. She had seemed so harried and torn over my sudden departure. When we had said our last goodbyes, Chahna sobbed, unable to finish a single sentence, as though she sensed our separation would be as final and permanent
as I had experienced with Oscar on the train platform. But Chahna, like Oscar, was thousands of miles away.

Enough time had passed, and it was clearer to me than ever that my pining to return to New York was not just because of my yearning for Guru's peace, love, and bliss; I could no longer deny that it was really because I missed Oscar. I imagined meandering through Montpellier with him, arm in arm, using up entire days in one small neighborhood. He would be my companion in a country filled with couples in love who roamed the streets, proclaiming their amorous affections under the brilliant public stage of open squares and street corners. I watched pairs of lovers seated upon the city's marble monuments, embracing tightly, ruffling each other's hair, biting each other's necks. Remembering Guru's proclamation that he had used repeatedly since junior high that the Supreme was my boyfriend, I'd look around, still hopeful to see if maybe, just maybe, the Supreme would actually turn up.

Since the Supreme was an aloof boyfriend, absent and uncommunicative, I turned my attentions back to Oscar. While walking around the city, I pretended I held his hand, experimenting with grips, knitting intricate combinations of fingers, palms, and thumbs. Setting the tables in Lalita's restaurant or chopping fruit to garnish her dessert tortes, Oscar was always with me, my hand skimming his cheek, softly landing in his hair. I secretly searched for Oscar, hoping that he would not have given up on me so easily. I fantasized about him hiring a private eye in a room with thick blinds and hazy smoke, intricately describing the details that led up to my last appearance. When the detective didn't
produce any tangible leads, Oscar devoted himself full-time to rescuing me. Vowing never to cease pursuing the love of his life, sooner or later Oscar's trail, perhaps beginning in Paris, would land him in Montpellier. In anticipation of his impending arrival, I carefully checked the mirror before retrieving the mail, just in case Oscar was waiting for me in the lobby of the apartment building. Anytime and anyplace, without advance notice, he could appear. I needed to be prepared. As I waited, peering over the tops of my sunglasses in large crowded areas, I often rehearsed our reunion, imagining a tight embrace, as pedestrians strolled past with knowing smiles.