The Memory Palace (41 page)

“Who is she?” she asks.

“Her name is Tara. She’s a goddess.”

“Awesome. I got a friend named Tara.”

“Her name means ‘to cross over,’ like you cross a bridge over a stream. She helps people cross over difficult places. They call her the Swift Liberator sometimes because she stands for freedom from pain and suffering.”

“I like her. I wish I could take her home.”

“She’s a kind of mother figure because she’s so compassionate. There’s a story about how she was born from a tear falling from Buddha’s eye. Some people meditate on her image to help them overcome fear.”

“Do you do that?”

“Not really,” I say. “Listen, the gallery’s closing but you can come back another time. I can tell you more about her then.”

“Thanks,” she says.

“See you again maybe.”

“Yeah. Maybe. ’Bye.”

Before I leave for the day, I stop to look in on the monks. I pause in front of a grainy 1959 black-and-white photo of a young Dalai Lama in disguise on horseback, fleeing his homeland. He looks vulnerable in the picture, so small on his horse in the immense Tibetan landscape at dusk. When the Dalai Lama left the Potala Palace in the night as the Chinese were advancing, he said to his companions, “I see a safe journey. I see a safe return.” I wonder if the woman in the pink hoodie will come back. I wonder if I will return as well, to the place of my origin, to the mother I left behind.

It is almost mid-April and the monks are close to completion. From the side, looking at it at eye-level, the mandala resembles a giant cake. It’s hard to believe that soon the monks will sweep it all away—the colorful rooms and animals, the protective rings of fire and water, the secret Sanskrit prayers. I feel sad about leaving and saying goodbye to the monks, especially Tenzin Y. When I’m around them, I feel more at ease in the present moment, more accepting of the fact that I don’t know what to do about my mother
today
. I also feel, when I’m with them, that I have the potential to do something
compassionate and brave. But what that is, I don’t know. Will I feel the same when I return?

After the Tenzins leave for the day, I climb a ladder a workman had forgotten to put away. From above, the mandala is a perfect architectural plan and easy to imagine as a five-story palace. There are circles within circles, each one a mandala, each mandala surrounded by a square representing a palace room. In my mind, I enter one of the doors at the first level, the mandala of the body, and walk through transparent walls. I climb up glistening steps to the second level, the mandala of speech, surrounded by five multicolored walls. Up another set of steps and I’m at the third level of the mind, encircled by three more walls. Farther in, on the fourth level, is the room of consciousness. Is this a map of the human brain? Everything here is ordered, like a Bach cantata, a nautilis shell, the petals of a rose. On this platform is yet another room—the center where the monks first began, the mandala of enlightenment—happiness, freedom from suffering, compassion, freedom from pain. They say that Kalachakra resides here, upon an eight-petaled lotus. I peer down into the mandala of enlightenment; it is the smallest one of all. Is there something in that tiny room for me, for my mother, or is it just another beautiful thing to be swept away?

Close to the outer rings, I see a tiny smudge. I climb down a couple rungs. An insect has died in the sand, perhaps a fly, but I can’t tell. I climb down another step. It is a fly embedded in a secret Sanskrit word. Will they leave it there or try to pick it out? Even in this realm of ordered beauty there is something a little off, a fact I somehow find comforting.

The friend who manages my post office box in New York forwards a letter to me from my mother one day. Dear Myra, she writes, I hope you know that you are the only friend I have in the world, and that I don’t know where I’ll be in the near future but I’m sure to be alone. She says she has decided to let me have her address and hopes I will do the same. She wants to see me quite badly. She tells me she hasn’t been that well and is living in subsidized housing for “women in transition” in Cleveland.
You can call me in the evening on the public phone, after five. I look forward to your call.

I decide to decide later about what to do, after I return to Massachusetts. Maybe I’ll write the director of the place. Or should I call? Do I have the courage? She doesn’t have to know I called. Maybe she has a social worker now, someone who can help. It’s possible that social services in Cleveland have improved since 1990. There is always a sliver of hope in me, the hope that I can still save her and see her again.

The monks have finally finished. Everyone from the school and surrounding community is invited to the closing ceremony. We place flowers and little bowls of water on altars at each cardinal direction of Kalachakra. The two Tenzins circle the palace and chant, turning the ritual bell and
varja
in their hands.

Dozens of people pour into the gallery. I recognize two women from the shelter but the one I talked to about Green Tara is not in the crowd. The Tenzins invite a couple of us up so they can give us gifts. Tenzin Y. places a white
khatag
around my neck and bows. He calls me Mira-la, adding an honorific ending to my name. It sounds like what my grandma used to call me in Hebrew when I was young—Miraleh.

The monks pinch special places in the sand. Then, with steady hands, they guide the varjas and mark lines through the palace, dragging them to the outer edges of the design. They sweep the sand to the center, the place where they began, and then, when all of the rooms and deities and elephants and flowers, jewels, horses, shells, waves, wheels, words, and protective flames have dissolved into a pile of colored dust (including the little dead fly), the two monks scoop the pile up and pour it into an urn. With all the colors blended now, the sand resembles the gray ashes of someone’s cremated remains.

We head to the river, a hundred people or more. It’s a quiet but joyous procession through Canton. We pass beneath the movie theater’s marquee, which advertises the film
Life Is Beautiful,
and walk in the spring air to the banks of the Grasse River. We sit in silence while the two monks enter the river and wade up to their knees. They chant for several minutes then tip over the run. We watch as the water takes the fallen palace and carries it away.

The next day, I stop by the gallery. The blue platform still bears faint traces of chalk; soon that too will be washed away. Tenzin Y. is gathering his tools.

“Tenzin-la, I was just wondering—why toss the sand in the river? Why not over a hill, or bury it in the ground?”

“Oh, that is easy,” he says. “We sprinkle colors on the water because it delights the magical beings who live below.”

“Magical beings?”

“The colors make them happy.”

A group of professors and gallery staff arrive to say goodbye. I want to ask Tenzin about these water creatures—if this is something he really believes in or if it is a myth. I want to ask him what he thinks I should do about my mother, now that I know where she is.

“Tenzin-la...”

“You have another question for me.”

“Yes... I mean, no—not really, I guess. I just hope we see each other again.”

“Don’t worry, Mira-la. I see a safe journey. Tujechhe.”

“Tujechhe, Tenzin-la. Goodbye.”

When I get back to Massachusetts, a letter is sitting in my post office box:

Dear Daughter
,

I’m still waiting for your call. I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay here and I want to ask you a favor. There’s an art show at Cleveland State University. I never submitted anything before. I brought in a large picture called “Going Places” and a small one of a girl named Nancy who comes in here to cook. They accepted them both. I went to your big art exhibit in Chicago once. Can you come to mine? I wonder if you are receiving my mail or if you are in some kind of detention. I need to see you even if it is a screen appearance. Lately I’ve been through hell. Your old picture, “Selective Forgetfulness,” is still missing and many other things from the house. What other dirty tricks will be played on me this day?

Norma—“Mom.”

She asked me to come to her art show. What should I do? How long will she stay in that place? If I lose her again to the streets, what then? The day the monks tossed Kalachakra into the river, I watched colored sand that had once been palace rooms of red, yellow, blue, and green sink below, forming a final mandala on the surface of the water. A few rippling circles spread outward, and then, in an instant, they were gone. “May I be a protector for those without one,” said the Buddha of Compassion. “May I be a bridge, a boat, a ship for all who wish to cross the water. May I be a shelter for those without a home.” I finally have an address for my mother. Can I find her safe and permanent refuge? I don’t know if I can see her again, for in my dreams she still holds a broken bottle to my neck. But can I find her a place where she has enough to eat and a quiet room, and people to watch over her every day? The Buddha of Compassion said, “How is life precious? O ignorant one, do not fall asleep now.”

Could I be a bridge, a boat, a ship?

Five months later, at the end of September, a truck driver falls asleep and goes hurtling down the New York Thruway right into my car. When the doctor at the hospital in Schenectady discovers that I had only been unconscious for a few moments, he briefly checks my neck, asks me a couple curt questions, and sends me home. The man I had been dating at the time, who had been driving my car and who had sustained mild whiplash, finds a rental car and drives me back to Massachusetts. I call my sister to tell her I had an accident but am fine.

The next day, I wake up in a fog. I wander from room to room, not sure what I’m looking for. I call a friend, then put the phone in the freezer. I boil water for tea and leave the burner on for most of the morning. I try to read the paper but the words blur together and nothing makes sense. When I talk, some words get stuck and can’t come out. All I want to do is sleep. I can’t remember what happened the day before, or the day before that. Or what I did ten minutes ago. When I go see my primary care doctor the following week, he says I look and sound fine. “Nothing to worry about,” he says,
patting me on the back. “It’s just a little concussion. You were only out a few moments,” he says, “so it can’t be that bad. You’ll be back on your feet in a few weeks, tops.”

How we measure the severity of head trauma has a lot to do with a rather flawed system called the Glasgow Coma Scale. Doctors look at how long a person has been unconscious, how well he or she responds to stimuli such as voice commands and touch. If a person is only unconscious momentarily or not at all, he or she is often given cursory neurological examination and sent home, which was what happened to me. But even though my doctor says I’ll be fine, something isn’t right in my head. I can’t seem to focus and can barely read. Going to the grocery store is now a harrowing experience. I can’t bear the music they play and all those bright lights. I can no longer find my way out of the store without help. I find myself standing in an aisle, crying and confused. Then I get lost walking the two blocks home. And those sounds on the street—so many people talking, dogs barking, and people honking horns, children shouting—the world around me is unbearable. All those voices coming at me wherever I go. This must be what my mother feels, this relentless assault to her brain.