The Book of Beings: Beginnings (Episode One)

  I was cubing endless hunks of tofu and doing my best to hide my yawning, but Coco caught me and gave me this look that was both worried and suspicious. She came over to where I was working, her eyes boring into me.

  “You bad teenager, Mei Mei,” she said. Needless to say, that was not what I wanted to hear. “Regular teenager stay up all night and sleep all day. Now it dark and you fall asleep? What wrong with you?” While she was talking, I realized with relief that she was teasing me. That was Coco’s sense of humor.

  “Come on, Coco,” I said. “I was up early this morning.” Actually, I'd woken up at four and couldn’t get back to sleep. It was a miracle I was on my feet, let alone that my eyes were open. Well, partly it was a miracle. Partly I had napped during a couple of my classes and snoozed through lunch.

  “You go home.” Coco replied. “You no good like this.” That wasn’t actually true. I could almost literally chop in my sleep. And I was so indebted to everyone that I was determined to do everything I could to help. On the other hand, I was about to fall over…

  “I’ll just step out and get some air for a second,” I said. It was fairly cool that night. I thought going outside might wake me up.

  I went out into the women’s garden, which was right next to the kitchen in the women’s hamlet. I headed to the far end, where the bustle was farther away. There were these bales of straw along some of the rows of plants. Some kind of hippy gardening technique or something. I sat down and leaned back against one.

  The monastery was tucked up against the Sangre De Cristo Mountains on one side, and at night the mountains made a large, absolutely black silhouette where it seemed like the sky should be, but the rest of the sky around there was huge. It was a very clear night, one of those nights where you could even see the Milky Way, all the stars looking closer than you could imagine, pressing down on you almost, and so lovely.

  Of course, I fell asleep.

  *

  When I woke, I had the feeling that something had woken me, but I couldn’t tell what. I was covered in straw. The smell of juniper hung in the cool night air.

  I looked around. The kitchen was quiet and dark. They wouldn’t have worried about me. They would’ve assumed I’d gone home. The moon had come out, and its light was making it harder to see the stars, but easier to see what was around me.

  I thought I heard crunching on the gravel drive just outside the garden. I assumed it was an animal or something. There were a lot of mule deer that came down from the mountains at night.

  But it wasn’t a mule deer. It was someone walking slowly and quietly, coming back into the monastery from the path that led to the hiking trails. As they got closer, I could see that it was two people. One of them was Thay. The other was Elias. That is to say, the guy I had thought was Elias in the meditation hall. It was impossible to see if it really was him in the dark.

  They were walking together like they were doing walking meditation, moving silently through the moonlight except for the sounds they made on the gravel. For a minute, I thought maybe I was dreaming.

  Once Thay and possibly-Elias got to the path that led to Thay’s hut, they stopped and faced one another. Thay put his hands together in front of him, and so did the other guy. They bowed to each other. Seeing them do that somehow made sense. It was like they were old friends. Then they put their hands down and stepped closer together. Both men put their arms around each other and hugged.

  Now, it was a huge deal for someone to hug Thay. Buddhists are not against hugging. They even have this thing called hugging meditation. But because Thay is special, people don’t just go hugging him.

  And yet, this young man hugged him. Close and for a long time. Even though this other fellow was much taller than Thay, he seemed to lean on the older man. Thay patted the guy on the back, as if to comfort him. As if to say, “Everything will be all right.”

  Then Thay headed up the hill to his hut, and the other fellow walked on, disappearing into the dark. I sat there, weirded out, until I heard some rustling in the garden. It was an animal skittering around me like it wanted to approach, but it was shy. I figured it was one of the monastery cats, so I held out my hand to it. Until I saw in the moonlight that it was actually a fox. I had to shoo the thing away. Which definitely freaked me out even worse.

  *

  So I stumbled back to my house, which wasn’t that far from the monastery. I scarfed down three bowls of cereal and milk standing in the kitchen by myself in the dark. It’s not like I was trying to eat for two. I knew it was just going to be me in a couple of days. I had to eat all that stuff anyway because I was flat out starving.

  Then I went to bed. Lying on my mattress and not wearing my clothes felt like a huge luxury after having fallen asleep against that bale of straw.

  While I slept, I dreamt that it had been me and the actual Elias taking the walk, that we had bowed to each other, that he had held me, and that while he’d held me, he had patted me on the back.

  I dreamt that he whispered as he held me, “Everything will be all right.”

  20

  On my way back to the kitchen the next morning, I stopped in the dining hall and grabbed four muffins off the buffet. I snuck a glance around. No Elias. Nobody who looked anything like him.

  In the kitchen I quickly chopped up my muffins and stuffed the pieces in my apron pockets, just pulling one piece out at a time, hoping no one would notice how much I was eating.

  I shouldn’t have worried. Everyone was completely pre-occupied. The lunch was prepped, and we were working on dinner, which was going to be a big production. Strangely enough, my mom wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  But I didn’t have to wonder about her for long. After a few minutes, she came in looking seriously ecstatic, like she’d won the lottery. It occurred to me that this would be a good thing for all concerned, but I highly doubted she’d been buying any tickets, what with her not being allowed to handle money.

  She came right over to my station. “Manon,” she exclaimed, “we’ve been invited to have breakfast with Thay!” I tried to hide my disappointment.

  “Wow,” I said. “Uh, we?”

  “You too, honey. You were specifically invited.” My mom was gushing. “Oh, I’m so glad we get to be together for this!”

  She’d been at the monastery for four years, and this was the first time she’d been invited for a personal audience. It was a huge deal for her. I couldn’t exactly get out of it by arguing that there were a lot of people who would’ve been way more thrilled about it than me.

  *

  When we went out to go up to Thay’s hut, there were about a half-a-dozen other people waiting to go up too. Coco was in charge of us. She got us up the hill, made us take off our shoes, and ushered us in. The hut was empty. Thay was still out doing his morning walking meditation, I guess.

  The doors were small, so they were hard to get through, like it had been built just for him. The wood was very weathered and there were cracks between the planks. I was thinking that it must get pretty cold in there at night. But it was also kind of beautiful, what with the wood being worn down to an almost pewter color.

  There was a mat where Thay was going to sit. Coco was arranging us and she wanted me to sit next to him. She said Thay liked to see young people. I was definitely the youngest person in the group, but there was no way I could sit that close to him.

  I’d spent all this time telling myself that he was just some old man like anybody else, but now, once I was in this tiny room and thinking how he was about to come through that door, I was having an attack of nerves.

  Coco saw the stricken expression on my face, though, so she gave up and put my mom next to Thay and then me next to her. My mom thought I’d given up my spot for her. She whispered to me under her breath, “You didn’t need to do that for me, honey.” But I couldn’t even get it together to whisper anything back.

  Nothing in particular happened at the breakfast. I mean, nothing happened that you wouldn’t have exp
ected. We stood up when Thay came in. We sat down after he was seated. Coco brought around bowls of miso soup with a little bit of rice and egg. Even though the food was simple, Thay didn’t actually eat. Somebody told me later he was having stomach problems.

  I spent most of the visit staring at my soup, trying to get it down with one of those plastic decorated spoons like they use in Chinese restaurants. It was too much for me to even think about looking at Thay when he was sitting just a few feet away. I was embarrassed for myself for having thought that this wasn't going to be any big deal.

  I do remember the woman sitting across from me. The thing I noticed was how beautiful she was. Not normal beautiful. She was probably in her fifties, and her hair was silver and waving all around her head, but it was the kind of silver that’s so pretty, it made you think that if your hair goes gray you want it to look like that.

  And even though she wasn’t fat, her face had a quite round shape. It reminded me of the moon. Her skin was glowing, but also softly wrinkled. I thought to myself that I wanted to know what she put on her skin. She didn’t look like she’d had work done, but she still looked incredible.

  She was wearing a brown cotton kimono-type jacket, which meant that she was in the lay order, a sort-of club for everyone who wasn’t a monk or nun but who was still really into the whole Buddhist thing. Every once in a while, when I looked at her, I noticed she was looking back at me, in a nice way, and smiling. I think she could tell I was nervous.

  But otherwise, nothing special happened. No one said a word to me. And there certainly weren’t any glowing lights or vibrations or even a low hum in the room. But still, when it was over, when we stood up and bowed to Thay as he was leaving, I started shaking uncontrollably. My vision got blurry as my eyes filled with tears. I knew I only had a minute or so until I completely fell apart.

  Once Thay was gone, I filed out with everyone else. I found my shoes despite my tears, which weren’t yet rolling down my cheeks. I made it down the hill and into a women’s bathroom not far away. I stumbled into a stall and closed the door, leaning against it from the inside, sobbing silently.

  21

  I can’t tell you when the thing happened. It wasn’t in the room with Thay, or on the path, or even in that bathroom stall. The thing that happened didn’t happen during time or in space. I know that sounds weird, but it wasn’t dramatic. The heavens didn’t open. The clouds didn’t roll back. There wasn’t any flash of light, or any dark void, or swirling galaxies, although I can see why that’s what they show you in pictures when they try to show you what something like that is like.

  There wasn’t anything that the mind or senses can comprehend. I had seen what was on the other side of this thing we call life, though where it is, there is no seeing. The word we use for the thing on the other side of where there are no sides is Love.

  That was the reason I was sobbing. I was mourning violently for every moment I had spent apart from Love.

  22

  I suppose you think something like that happens and it changes everything. But it doesn’t. Once you pull yourself together, you’ve still got to wipe the snot off your face. What are you going to do? Fling open the door of a women’s bathroom stall, step out, and announce that you’ve just seen God? ’Cause you haven’t, not really. And even if you have, what good does it do to go around telling everybody? No good really. Probably, it just creates trouble.

  After something like that, though, everything does seem a little brighter for a while, a little more detailed. Maybe everything seems to sparkle, though it’s not like you can see any extra rays of light.

  It’s a lot like coming out of a dark movie theater after you’ve seen a great movie. Only much more intense.

  *

  I went back to the kitchen, ready to keep chopping vegetables. What else could I do? I’d splashed with cold water, but my mom still saw that my face was puffy and she came over to ask if I was okay.

  “Sure mom,” I said. “I just got a little choked up after getting to meet Thay.” You should’ve seen the look on her face. I had just made her decade.

  “Oh, honey,” she said, putting her hand on mine, “I’m so glad you understand.”

  I wasn’t sure that what had happened had anything to do with Thay, or that she and I were really on the same page at all, but I was glad for her to think that we were. I just hoped she didn’t expect me to go to any more of his talks any time soon. I definitely wasn’t up for it.

  *

  But one thing had changed. I knew I was no longer going to have the procedure on Monday. Not on Monday, and not ever. I was—as bizarre as it seemed, even to me—going to stay pregnant.

  I can’t tell you how I knew that, or even how it came about as a result of my experience. I didn’t hear a voice telling me what to do. And it wasn’t that I suddenly saw that the thing growing inside of me was the same as the thing that was on the other side of life. Although I could see that it wasn’t different from it either.

  Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t decide that abortions were a bad thing. I didn’t even decide that abortions were a bad thing for people who’d seen God, or rather the thing we call God that can’t after all be seen. I hadn’t suddenly fallen in love with my baby. I still didn’t quite believe there was a baby.

  I knew staying pregnant was going to make my life extremely surreal and that I had just, in some sense, stepped into an alternate universe, however much it looked like the one I had been living in all along. But that’s how strong the feeling was. I knew I wasn’t going to go ahead on Monday. I was absolutely certain.

  *

  That was the moment when I understood that I was always going to be the weird girl. In order to not be weird, you have to care what people think of you, and that has to be the most important thing to you, all of the time, no matter what.

  But however much I cared what people thought, however much I obsessed about it, there were still times when whatever was going on inside of me was more powerful than whatever anyone else thought of me. This was one of those times.

  I wasn’t going to have an abortion.

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  Episode Two

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  23

  Strangely enough, the first thing I needed to do (once I realized the procedure was off) also seemed like the hardest. I had to tell Amanda.

  I couldn’t stand to put it off. So in order to make the call, I stepped out of the monastery kitchen during the first break I got after that breakfast with Thay.

  Amanda had been a very good friend to me over the years, but I could see how maybe this decision was a little too far out there to expect her to come along with me on it.

  And it was terrible, that moment while I waited with the phone next to my ear, as I looked down the road leading away from the monastery and waited for her to say something, after I’d told her what I was going to do. But she just said I had better let her throw me a baby shower, and I said no bleeping way, and that was the end of that.

  *

  On Monday morning, I decided to make another call, to Planned Parenthood. I knew I didn’t have to. I could just be another irresponsible teenager who didn’t show up for an appointment. But Gabrielle had been pretty nice to me, and she had seemed concerned. I didn’t want her to worry.

  I thought of it when I was walking past what might’ve been the last pay phone in the city, and perhaps even the last one in the entire Southwest. It was outside of Ignacio’s. I’d had a hard time getting up and was going to miss the first two periods anyway, and I figured PP must be open by then, so I might as well stop on my way to school. I was pa
ranoid enough that I never would’ve done it with my own cell phone.

  When the receptionist answered, I told her I was calling to cancel my procedure that afternoon. She asked me what time it was supposed to be, and I told her.

  I was going to hang up, but she said, “Please hold on for a moment, I’m trying to find that on the computer.” So I stood there listening to Muzak and playing with that button on the phone that you press to make the volume louder and softer. Just when I had decided to hang up for real, someone came back on.

  “Mary?” It was Gabrielle. She sounded out of breath. For a second, I assumed she’d picked up the wrong line. Then I remembered that was the name I’d given at the clinic. Not real original, I know.

  “Uh, yeah?” I said.

  “This is Gabrielle,” she said.

  “Oh. Hi,” I said. The whole thing was extremely awkward. I was getting a very bad feeling.

  “So, you’ve decided not to terminate the pregnancy?”

  “No,” I replied. “Not right now, anyway.” I realized that sounded really stupid once I said it, but for some reason I’d had the urge to be non-committal.

  “You understand, if you don’t do it before twelve weeks, things get much more complicated?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m actually not going to terminate at all.”

  “Okay,” she responded. I could tell she was keeping her voice calm and friendly. “Wouldn’t you like to come in for counseling, though, or prenatal care? I mean, considering…”

  “Maybe,” I hedged. “Maybe some time.”

  “Would you like to make an appointment?”

  “No,” I answered. “I don’t think so. Not right now.”