Days later, the child will say, “It was terrible, Mom. They hurt so bad. They were so scared. I really wanted to help them.”
“I know you did, sweetheart,” the mother will reply. “I did, too.”
The child will look at her questioningly.
“I dreamed the same dream,” the mother will explain.
“Can people do that?”
“Not always. Maybe it was because you were so sick, and I’d been so worried. It made a special bond between us that night, I guess, when I lay down with my head on your pillow. It was so sad for that child to be left all alone—I really felt for her. I guess I was imagining you in her place—”
“But, Mom—”
The mother rushes on, propelled by the weight of what she has wanted to tell someone for years. “You were so upset when you awoke, your temperature started going up again. I was really scared. I wanted to buy that dream from you, like my mother did with me. I even took the coins out of my purse. Did I ever tell you I used to have a nightmare, the same one, over and over, until your grandma bought it from me?”
“I did, too, Mom! I dreamed the exact same thing before I got sick, only it wasn’t so clear. But—”
“Then I remembered what happened when she bought it. Somehow it stopped me completely from dreaming. All the years of my growing up. And I thought, I can’t do that to you. Even if they’re painful, I have to let you have your dreams. Did that nightmare come back again, after that?”
The child nods, her face pale. “It still does, every few days. But, Mom, there aren’t any girls in my dream. There’s a burning building, with people trapped inside, but they’re all adults.”
That is how the mother learns that what she dreamed wasn’t her daughter’s fear. It was her own.
27
FROM THE
DREAM JOURNALS
The morning after we were accepted into the caves as novices, we received our first lesson. It was delivered by Elder Samyukta. Later we would realize that this was by design. She was one of the milder dream teachers, less intimidating than Elder Simhika, with her fierce mane of silver hair, or Elder Samahita, who had the habit of stopping newcomers in the dimly lit corridors of the caves and examining them with her steel-blue eyes.
In her simple cotton sari, Samyukta looked not too different from the mothers many of us (but not I) had left behind. She put us at ease by asking if we had slept well, and if we had had enough to eat at the morning meal. But when she began her talk, her voice deepened, and she looked at us as though she saw things we did not know about ourselves. We realized then that living here, in these caves that were in the world but not quite of it, would change us beyond recognition. And some of us—including myself—were frightened and focused all our attention on holding back tears. Thus later, when I finally realized how vital this first lesson had been, I could remember only parts of Samyukta’s speech. I will set them down below as best as I can.
All of you, she said, are blessed because you possess the gift of dreaming, but unless you know what the dream is, whence it comes and what its purpose can be, the gift is useless.
Erase from your mind all the notions you hold about dreams. They will only impede you in your path.
It is true that oftentimes a dream is stitched together from images thrown up by an agitated mind, worries that surface when the body is still. But those are the dreams of ordinary beings and need not concern you, though much of your life will be spent in explaining them.
Sometimes you will be given a warning in a dream, which you must convey to the person it is meant for, a person whose mind is too thick for the dream spirit to pierce. This is a more difficult task—for often such a person will not want to hear what you say— but it is still not your main purpose.
The dreams that are most important come from another reality—you might call it another
time,
for want of a better term in our limited speech. This is the
time
of the dream spirits. I lack the capacity to describe it. All I can say is that even an instant of being in that time will transform you the way the philosopher’s stone transforms base metal into gold. But I stumble ahead of myself.
As you progress in this path, you will realize that each of you has a guardian spirit. If you are fortunate and careful, the love between you and this spirit will grow into a great and wondrous thing. Through dreams the spirit will tell you who you truly are, although it might have to speak many times before you learn to listen. Unless you observe a life of service and compassion and cultivate the six treasured virtues, you may never learn this skill. But when—no, if—you finally hear, you will see the intricate web of love that binds existence together, and you will never need anything else in order to be happy. The more fortunate among you, blessed by the dream, will live long in the world after, and help many souls. But for others the message will come at the moment of death, and will be inseparable from it. For those who need extra guidance, a messenger may appear at the time. Do not lose him or her—it will be your last chance to grasp the truth of the dream time.
Many years have passed since Samyukta’s speech, and since I left the caves in disgrace. I think of her words from time to time (the fragments I am left with) and grow dejected. I’ve tried to live a virtuous life, but unsuccessfully, caught as I am between two worlds that define virtue in opposed ways. I’ve often been impatient, and angry, and restless. I’ve regretted the choices I made and blamed them on others. Worst of all, I have not loved anyone fully, not my husband or child, not the suffering souls that have come to me for help. Try as I might, the core of my heart remains moldy and desolate. Even the dream spirits have not been able to fill it. My only hope is the messenger—will he ever come?
28
Rakhi
The fever is gone, but Jona is still too weak to go to school. Sonny wants her to stay at his house, and though part of me bristles at him (Sonny-the-controller), I have to concede that it’s more practical. This way when he goes off in the morning to do whatever it is that DJs do when they’re not performing, I can come over and keep Jona company. By the time I have to leave for the Kurma House, Sonny will have returned.
The morning after the fever, I wipe Jona down and change her sweat-crusted clothes. I put baby powder on her the way I used to when she was little. When I bend over to kiss her forehead, she asks if I will move in with her and Sonny until she’s well enough to go back to school,
please, Mom.
It’s hard to refuse when she’s been so ill. I hate myself for it. But if I weaken and give in, the result will be disastrous. Being in this house when Sonny is gone is difficult enough. Being here when he’s around will bring up too many painful memories—even if he wants me here, which I doubt.
But most of all, I don’t want to give Jona false hopes about the two of us getting back together.
I say no, bracing myself for tears, but Jona doesn’t insist. She turns on her side and closes her eyes, as though she hadn’t really expected that I would say yes. There’s such resignation in the curl of her back that a pang goes through me.
Am I making a mistake? I guess I’ll know only later. Up close, it’s impossible to read the foreshortened angles of one’s actions—which are the right turns, which will lead to sorrow.
Did my mother make the wrong choice in deciding to come to America with my father? Reading her journals, I begin to see what she hid from us so craftily: her regret, her longing for community, her fear of losing her gift. Ironic that her ability to tell dreams stayed with her; it was love that she lost—the love for which she’d crossed the forbidden ocean. I had always thought of my mother as a serene person. Now I see that this was only because she denied sadness, which she considered a useless emotion. She survived by making herself believe that loneliness was strength. I begin to understand why she kept her face resolutely turned to the future. It was too painful to think of the past. Except in the journals, she cut that part of herself out of her heart.
Reading, I feel a great pity welling up in me—for her and for us. Because existing in this way exacted its price. Her discontent worked its way under our skin, living there undetected like a low-grade infection. In my father’s case, it would erupt from time to time in his drinking bouts. My disease was a subtler, more chronic one. It expressed itself in my endless sallies toward knowing her, as though by gaining that knowledge I could make her mine.
My life is not as dramatic as hers, nor my choices as momentous. But I know this as well as it is possible to know anything in this shifting, shadowed world: if I got back together with Sonny for Jona’s sake, sooner or later I’d resent her for it. And that would be much worse than the disappointment she’s suffering now.
This Friday Jona has recovered sufficiently to go back to school, but I decide to keep her home one more day. One day for us, mother and daughter, to shrug off worry and exhaustion and enjoy ourselves. When I ask her what we should do, she tells me she wants us to paint together.
As I set her up at the table with her watercolors, I can feel my heart tightening as though someone has pushed me to the edge of a cliff. I consider telling her I have nothing to paint with. But she’ll catch me in that lie: she knows I always carry a portable easel and a canvas in the car. Reluctantly I fetch them, and we begin. Rather, I stand at my easel and watch my daughter paint, eyes narrowed, head tipped to one side, so engrossed that she forgets my presence. I envy her as she mixes reds and oranges and blacks, as she applies the strokes with a bold, unwavering hand. As objects take shape on the paper, I see that she is painting—once again—a fire. I watch uneasily. What is this obsession with burning? But soon I’m distracted by how much she’s improved. She must have practiced a great deal in these last confusing months. With her grandmother dead and her mother overwhelmed, painting must have given her stability. A way to express her emotions. I observe the care with which she delineates details. The windows of the tall building gleam in the light from the flames. They are filled with people, palms flat against glass, mouths open in a silent scream. The sky, too, is full of fire. It’s hard to wrench my eyes from the strangely magnetic quality of the painting.
My own canvas is still blank. Even after the vivid dream that came to me in Sonny’s bed, I haven’t been able to paint. God knows I’ve tried, staying up nights, even after returning bone-tired from the Kurma House. I’ve stared for hours at the canvas, trying to find a subject. But everything I loved to paint before—a Calcutta train station, fishermen on the Ganga, the Belur Math at sunrise—seemed tired. Or perhaps it was I who was tired of them. I needed a new field, a new style—I just didn’t know what.
Maybe I, too, should paint my dream. I sketch in the line of the hill, the two figures standing with their backs to me. I mix white and yellow for a dawn sky, a deeper yellow where the sun would be rising in a little while. No use. Even when I use my best techniques, I can’t seem to put life into the painting. The mother and child stand stiff as wooden cutouts; the wildflowers are lined up in regimented rows. The anguish I felt in my dream, the sense of loss and fear—I just don’t know how to convey that, no matter how I slash my strokes or pile paint on paint. Finally I take a turpentine-soaked rag and wipe off the canvas.
Sonny comes whistling in the door, carrying a bag of groceries, but when he sees what I’m doing he breaks it off. He offers to carry my art supplies to the car. No thank you, I say, but he follows me out anyway.
“I’m sorry the painting isn’t going well,” he says.
I want to tell him it’s none of his business. But I find myself blurting out, “What if I can’t ever paint again? What if my talent left me when my mother died?”
He puts out a hand as though to touch me, then drops it. There’s understanding in his eyes, and sadness. “I feel that way sometimes, too. It makes you want to die, doesn’t it? But it’ll pass. You have real talent, Riks. I know it.”
I don’t believe him, but I want to hold on to the small comfort of his words. When he invites me to stay and eat, I don’t say no.
Jona decides we are to have pancakes for lunch. (“Sonny and I will make them, Mom. You just watch.”) They put on aprons. Jona fetches the ingredients and Sonny measures them, looking decidely domestic.
It’s just an act,
says my whisper voice.
Deep down
he’s still Sonny-the-hell-raker
. Still, I’m impressed. The father-and-daughter team cooks the pancakes to the accompaniment of much laughter. (
Making a mess of the kitchen in the process,
my whisper voice points out primly. It’s not my kitchen, I point out in return. I don’t have to clean it.)
We eat our pancakes topped with fresh strawberries and cream—that’s what was in the grocery sack. (My whisper voice purses its lips.
So impractical.
) Jona pours us orange juice. There’s a smudge of flour on her nose; pleasure flushes her cheeks when I tell her how delicious the meal was. Sunshine floods the kitchen, loosening my muscles. I feel warm and fuzzy and pleasantly full. I could commit to doing this every once in a while. Even if we can’t be a happy family 24-7, we can be it in bits and pieces.
Then Sonny says, “I’ve been working on some new music that I’m really excited about. I’d love to have you come to the club and hear it.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Jona adds. “You should go. It’s really cool.”