Soulmates (20 page)

“Wow. That must have been hard for you, growing up like that.” I was genuinely moved by Lo's story. How coddled I was as a child by comparison! My mother didn't even let me walk to a friend's house alone until I was in high school.

Lo shook her head. “It was just how I was raised. I have made my peace with it through years of energy work. Now, you go. What is your earliest memory? Take your time, dear. We have all the time in the world.” Lo reached out and patted my hand.

I closed my eyes and tried to go back. Something I had never thought about before flashed into my head. “I was sitting in the backseat of the family station wagon,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth uncontrollably. “It was the way, way back, so I
was looking out at the road. I must have been in the first grade. I had been fighting with my sister, and my mom had had it. So she said I had to sit back there, even though I hated it. It didn't have any seat belts, and when my mom would make a turn, I'd go flying. I remember she said she didn't want to look at my face.” Tears welled up in my eyes. What was happening to me?

“How did that make you feel?” Lo asked, not breaking eye contact.

“Scared. Alone,” I said, really starting to blubber. Where was this even coming from? It felt like this story was being excavated from underneath layers and layers of detritus. But I couldn't stop. “Uh, ugly. Because she didn't want to see my face.”

“There, there,” Lo said, reaching forward to pull me into a hug. We were still sitting down, so the position was awkward. I cried into her shoulder anyway. She smelled like clay and clean skin when the poncho was off.

When I pulled away, a string of drool trailed from my mouth. I had left three distinct wet spots on Lo's purple robe where my mouth and face had rested. “I'm so sorry,” I said, wiping my nose with my sleeve and trying to collect myself. “I have no idea where that came from!”

“There is no need to apologize. You should actually feel very proud. It is rare to have a breakthrough during your first session of inner child work,” Lo said warmly. “Usually these things are not so close to the surface, and we must dig to get at them.” She paused and examined my face. I could feel red blotches appearing on my cheeks and my eyes getting puffy. “I'm sensing that you're still processing the trauma of your husband's abandoning you.”

I sniffed the tears up and nodded pitifully.

“When you were at Zuni, I understood you were hurt by your husband, but I couldn't fathom the depths of it until just now. When you arrived this morning, the energy field fractured around me. That only happens when someone has suffered a profound trauma,” Lo told me.

“I'm really fine,” I said.

Lo gave me a sympathetic look. “It's quite all right, dear. You shouldn't unburden yourself all at once. That's a way to overwhelm the work we do. It's better to go through it piecemeal. The idea is that every time you visit me, you will mature. Today, I think your emotional and spiritual age is around six. That is when your first memory took place, and that is where you have to grow from.”

I nodded. I was still catching my breath. I was angry at myself for losing control. I would never get to the bottom of what happened to Ethan if I let my emotions get the better of me. But all the same, Lo had tugged at something that I didn't even know existed, and that was terrifying. How could I let myself be so affected by what I knew was babble?

“I'll see you tomorrow morning,” Lo said, bowing a little to me. When she leaned down, I saw a flash of her blue asterisk necklace again, and it sobered me. Lo
must
have known Rosemary. How could I get her to talk about it, let her know I knew Yoni's past?

For now, I just chirped, “Great!” I'd figure out a way in by my next session with her.

“Good. The next time you're here I want to try something a little different. We will spend part of the time working through
our memories, but I also want to do some aromatherapy work, because I think that will help unlock a little of what's closed off here.” She pointed to my sacral chakra—just where Gaia had done her energy work.

“How can you tell I'm blocked there?” I asked.

“Honey, it's written all over your face. Any experienced practitioner could tell within minutes that was what ailed you. And then your inner child confirmed it.”

“Oh.” Again I had that sinking feeling that I had failed a test. I wanted to get good marks, even in a class I'd call bullshit spiritual theory. I hated when things didn't come easily to me. This was something that had bothered Ethan a lot. I would refuse to try any new activity if I thought I wasn't going to be good at it right off the bat. This kept us from cross-country skiing, beach volleyball, and salsa dancing. In the grand scheme of things, these weren't great losses. But I was starting to see how my bad attitude had worn him down over the years. Maybe that was part of what drew him to Amaya. She was game.

“Don't worry. You're here for a reason,” Lo said.

“You're right,” I agreed. “I will be here tomorrow. Same place?”

“Always,” Lo said. “I never leave.”

Everyone seemed to have yoga classes in the afternoon. Mine was a beginners' class, and I got a lot of personal instruction from a man in his fifties named Karma, who had a pleasantly ruined face. After, when Willow and I were back in our room preparing for dinner, I told Willow that Lo was my morning teacher. She smirked, then sighed with false sympathy.

“What?” I asked, insulted. I felt protective and fond of Lo.

Willow stopped braiding her hair and looked at me. “Lo isn't really considered to be one of the premier teachers here. Her methods are seen as . . . How should I put this? Outmoded. I don't understand why she even bothers anymore. I think the other women her age here just sleep and gossip all day. I heard Yoni only keeps them around out of loyalty, because they've been with him for so long.”

“Do you know how long Lo's been here?” I asked.

Willow shook her head. “Not exactly. But it seems like she's furniture here, a real fixture.”

“Have you ever been assigned to her workshops?”

Willow smirked. “No way.”

“Then how do you know her methods are outmoded?” In addition to hating being belittled by Willow, I hated older women being dismissed because of their age.

“Word of mouth is very powerful at the Homestead,” Willow said. “You'll learn that once you've been here a little longer.” She smiled condescendingly.

She had no idea what she was talking about. Hearing her disparage Lo and talk down to me had a perverse effect—it loosened my tongue. I wanted to wipe that arrogant grin off her face, and I knew just how to do it. “Speaking of word of mouth, I keep meaning to ask you about this thing I heard about before I got here. I don't really read the newspaper, but I saw something about some death or something that happened near here? I can't really remember the details.”

Willow's face darkened. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her mouth puckered. “I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about,” she said. She got up from her bed. “Excuse me. I feel
I really need to do some energy work right now.” She disappeared into the bathroom.

Message received,
I thought as I sat on my bed.

On my fourth day at the Homestead I arrived at my assigned afternoon yoga class and saw that Yoni was sitting at the front of the room in lotus pose with his eyes shut. I stopped short, rooted in the doorway, as one of Willow's friends, Bodhi, and some other non-ordained residents streamed past me. I forced myself to go forward and set up my mat toward the back of the room. The front of the room was reserved for the ordained.

Bodhi was next to me, and he leaned over to whisper, “I'm a little starstruck, too! We never know which classes the great master will attend ahead of time.”

I smiled wanly. At least he'd read my fear as excitement.

Word around the Homestead was that Yoni had studied with the notable hatha guru Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in India in the early seventies, which was why that kind of yoga was practiced at Zuni. I had no idea whether that was true. People said a lot of things about the guru—that the Dalai Lama went to him for advice; that he had once cured a woman's scoliosis through the power of touch; that he and Steven Seagal were best friends. But whether or not he studied with Krishnamacharya, the poses we did were heavy on headstands and shoulder stands, which I was getting better at every day. I liked the lightness in my mind that I felt when I was inverted.

I managed to relax a little while Yoni was leading the class. Once my initial pang of fear subsided, I could see that he was an excellent teacher. I had been too clouded with rage when I attended
his class with Ethan years ago to notice. He spoke slowly and clearly, and he seemed genuinely pleased when people were making progress. “This is good work, Clover,” he said to one woman, who adjusted one of her poses after a correction from Yoni.

I was in the middle of a headstand, a brand-new skill of mine, when Yoni came up behind me. His footsteps were so light and I was concentrating so deeply that I didn't realize he was there until I felt his hands on my hips. “I want you to come out of this pose and try again,” he murmured.

I brought my legs down to the floor and tried to listen to his words as if I were any other student. Above all, I didn't want him to see how scared I was.

But Yoni didn't seem to notice. “You need a strong foundation with your neck and shoulders, like this.” He adjusted me so that my hands were cradling my head and my elbows were a little farther away from my head than they had been previously. “Good, good. Now try going back into the headstand from this position.” I went into my headstand from this base. He was right—I wobbled much less this way. My back was less arched, and the whole structure felt firm.

Yoni stood back and examined his work. “Very good,” he said. Then he knelt down next to me and whispered, “You've come a long way.” He stood up and said to the class, “Slowly and gently come down from your headstand. When your knees are on the mat, leave your forehead down and shift into child's pose.”

I tucked into child's pose, the good feeling I'd gotten from the adjustment to my headstand totally gone. How did Yoni know I'd come a long way? Did he recognize me from the class
I had attended with Ethan years ago? That seemed impossible. Thousands of people had come through his classes since then. Did he murmur words of encouragement to all his new acolytes, as a way to get them to stick around? Or had he been talking to Lo, who might have told him my inner child work was going so well?

Whatever was going on, I did not want to draw attention to myself. When Yoni said, “It's time for savasana,” I rolled onto my back like everyone else. I closed my eyes and heard Yoni bang a gong three times.

“I would like to tell you a story about a wild donkey,” Yoni said. “The donkey was a few years old, and just starting to come into his own. He told his mother that he had to go and seek his destiny on the road to the Yarlung. She tried to stop him. ‘You are such a young donkey,' she said. ‘And you have never left our village. How will you find your way?' The young donkey reassured her. He had received a prophecy in a dream that told him to seek a waterfall.”

Yoni took a long pause, so long that I wondered if the story was over. But at last he continued, “At first, the donkey was afraid. He encountered many pitfalls on his journey. He got a nettle stuck in his hoof. He was bitten by a serpent. His coat became drab and itchy. But he was not deterred, because he believed in the destiny set out for him. And his persistence was rewarded. The donkey arrived at the Yarlung Valley after a season of travel. He found the hidden waterfall that had appeared to him in his dream. It was shrouded in shadows and tucked behind a hairpin turn, but a kindly fox showed him the way.”

Thinking that the story was over, I opened my eyes. Yoni
looked right at me. His face was stern and disapproving, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “Though his mother did not hear from him again, she was at peace. The same waterfall appeared to her in a dream, and she trusted that her little donkey's destiny was fixed.”

When Yoni stopped speaking we all lay in silence for several more minutes. I didn't dare open my eyes again. I tried to figure out whether Yoni's story was specifically meant for me—had he discovered that I was Ethan's wife?—but I couldn't fathom how it applied.

Finally Yoni said, “Namaste,” and left the room before students could approach him.

I sat up, dazed. I was just being paranoid, I told myself. There was no way Yoni could know who I really was. He was just being a good teacher, giving a new student a bit of positive reinforcement.

A few nights later, Willow finally invited me to hang out with her friends. “We're having a drum circle, and then a rap session,” she said. “We've decided you should be included.” I had all the rhythm of a wind-up toy and I was already in a baggy T-shirt and leggings, ready for bed, but I knew I had to go. I put on a pair of flip-flops and left our room with Willow. I figured it was okay to wear shoes, since we weren't doing an official activity, and Willow didn't say anything to me, though she went barefoot.

Willow led me down a series of paths to a clearing in the brush. I tried to orient myself as I followed behind—left at the yurt, right at the cluster of three cacti—but dusk had fallen and I
doubted I could find my way back without a guide. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees with the disappearance of the sun, and I hugged myself to keep warm, squeezing the goose-pimpled flesh of my upper arms.

Willow's friends Bodhi and Maria were already there when we arrived, and we sat in a small circle. Bodhi had a drum the size of a four-year-old strapped to his chest. Maria had a set of dainty bongos. Willow pulled two tambourines out of her bag and handed one to me.