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Under the Hand of Buddha By: Ira Sukrungruang |
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I always found Sunday
morning masses on television fascinating. Before heading off to Wat Dhammaram the Thai Buddhist
Upstairs my mother, father, and Aunty Sue got ready for temple. Their footsteps thudded from room to room. I knew exactly where my three parents were by the creaking of the floorboards. If I heard their rapid steps on the stairs, I’d quickly change the channel. I recognized what I was watching was wrong, but I didn’t understanding why. It wasn’t like I was sneaking a peek at a skin flick. Still, there lingered a sense of guilt, of family betrayal, of Buddha frowning from his lotus pad, as this white haired man spoke powerfully about DIVINITY. Always above the preacher on TV were a wooden cross and a man draped on it. I’d seen the cross before—silver and glinting in the recess sun around the necks of some of the kids at school. There was also the faint outline of the cross outside the temple. But this man, he looked sick and frail, so thin you could see his ribs. After a of couple weeks, obsessed with the man’s identity, I decided to ask my mother. “Who’s that man on the cross? I see him everywhere.” “Don’t know what you talk about,” she said. I asked my father. “Do you know him?” “Why ask stupid question?” he said. I asked Aunty Sue. “Who is he?” “Ask mama,” she said. Next Sunday, while my parents fumbled upstairs to get ready for temple, I was determined to seek out the identity of the man on the cross. At the bottom of the TV screen during the sermons was always a phone number. I was ten and my mother finally allowed me to use the phone to call my friends Mike and Kevin, but other numbers weren’t permitted. She said she would know if I called anywhere else. It was her private magic. I was at the age, however, where my mother’s magic didn’t seem as potent as it used to, and I had become so curious that my thoughts continually went back to the man on the cross. I picked up the phone and dialed. It rang twice before someone answered. A woman spoke so quickly I didn’t understand what she said, a babble of words. I held the phone tight against my ear. “Hi?” I said. The woman cleared her throat. “How much would you like to contribute?” She sounded mechanical. “We accept donations of twenty dollars or more. With a forty dollar contribution you get the Holy Book.” I had nothing to contribute. I wasn’t sure if I knew what contribute meant. “Hello?” the woman said. “What will be your donation?” I hung up. * * * “You’re telling me, you don’t know Jesus?” My best friend Mike sat on his bed, leaning against the wall, his math book propped open on his knees. It was Monday, and we worked on our homework in his room. I jotted the answer to 2/3 + 1/3, appearing more engaged with math than my question about the man on the cross. I began to think that Jesus was a Mattel toy everyone had but me. “Who is he?” I said again, working on the next problem. “He’s, like, God’s son,” Mike said. “Why does he look so sad?” “Oh, I don’t know.” Mike put a finger to his chin and looked at the light above him. “Maybe it’s because he has nails in his hands and feet. Maybe because he’s wearing a crown of thorns.” I winced, curling my toes inside my shoes, clenching and unclenching my hands. The nails—this was new. I had been staring at the cross on TV for weeks, but the image was never clear enough for me to decipher that he was nailed to it. Or perhaps, the last thing in my mind was someone nailing another human being to wood. It sounded like one of Mike’s crazy imagined stories, the plot to a Stephen King novel which he loved to read. “You’re lying,” I said. “Am not.” He rose out of his bed and jumped onto the floor, slipping in tattered socks. He thundered down the stairs and I heard him rumble around. A moment later, he was back with a book. “Here.” He flipped to a page and pointed to a picture. I crouched on to his bed. Jesus’ blood dripped from his hands and feet, from the crown on his forehead, and from a wound on his side. He wore a white cloth around his waist that billowed in the breeze. Four men, a woman, and a sheep stood at the foot of the cross. “This is called the Crucifixion,” Mike said. It was a wonderful word. I repeated it. Crucifixion. “This guy here is Pontius Pilate,” Mike explained. “He’s the executioner. And this one is Martin Luther, I think.” “Isn’t he black?” “Not Martin Luther King. Martin Luther. And she’s Mary, Jesus’ mother.” “What about the sheep?” “Lamb,” Mike said. “They’re gonna kill it for God.” I took it in—the picture, the cross, Jesus’ glazed over eyes, his parted mouth. My best friend had become a prophet. He was opening new doors in my life, doors my family never wanted opened. It didn’t occur to me that Mike could be wrong, that Martin Luther came well after the crucifixion. That perhaps it wasn’t Pontius Pilate. That the men could’ve been a few of the disciples. That Jesus was known as the lamb of God, and the New Testament wasn’t into sacrifice as the old. These were the things I learned much later in college. These were the things that didn’t matter then. I stared at Mike. “Why are they executing Jesus?” “Because he’s dying for our sins.” Sins. Gum
in “How do you know all this?” “CCD,” Mike said. It sounded conspiratorial like FBI, CIA, KFC. “I hate it,” he said. “The teacher’s real mean.” “What is it?” “Sunday school. It’s where we learn all this stuff I don’t really care about.” I thought
of my Sundays at the temple, learning Thai and Buddhism in a small room
filled with dusty books and portraits of Mike’s eyebrows perked up. He had two types of smiles—one was endearing, the other masked mischievous lies. The latter took me ten years to learn. “I ate Jesus,” he said. “No way.” “Everyone eats Jesus when they’re seven.” In my
imagination, I envisioned Mike and our fifth grade class hunched over plates
of Jesus steak, which resembled Porterhouses at Mattson’s on “Why do you eat him?” “So he can be in you,” Mike said, “like how Professor X can get into any mutant’s brain and make him do whatever he wants.” Mike went back to his math homework. He asked what I got for number fifteen, but I was only on seven. Downstairs, Mike’s father’s booming voice announced my mother was here to pick me up. I gathered my things and started for the door. “Mike?” I said before I left. “Huh?” “What did Jesus taste like?” He tapped the pencil on his math book. “A cracker.” * * * Her name was Melissa, my first and only Thai crush. She was fifteen, a lot older than most of the students in my Sunday school class, but she couldn’t speak an ounce of Thai and seemed disenchanted with the world. Her Thai name was Ananya, but she demanded everyone call her Melissa, never responding to anything else. When she entered the room, I wanted to hide. I was afraid to look at her. Afraid my heart might explode. That was the effect she had on me. She wasn’t like Tracy Gilligan, my first crush; she was more like Alyssa Milano or Justine Bateman, an untouchable celebrity, someone you admired from afar. I never said a word to Melissa. I was careful to sit at the other end of the room, so I could take tiny peeks at her and lose myself in her long black hair, her black clothes, her dark brown eyes. She never looked happy, not once. As each Sunday passed, I saw less and less of her because she rarely came to class. The last time I saw Melissa, she stumbled in late and sat in the only seat available. Next to me. I pretended to take copious notes. Pra ajan, our monk-teacher, was lecturing about Buddha and how people mistakenly compared him to God or Allah. These deities, he was saying, were just that, deities. They existed in the imaginations and hearts of those who followed them. Buddha, however, was a man who found a way to alleviate suffering in the world. He was real. Not a vapor or a booming, disembodied voice. He didn’t have supernatural powers or grant wishes. He didn’t create the world. Buddha’s strength was his mind. He preached wisdom so that we could make the correct decisions to assuage our own suffering. Melissa raised her hand. “What’s wrong in putting your faith in something that may or may not exist if you truly believe it does?” “Nothing wrong,” said Pra ajan, “just not Buddhist way.” Melissa straightened in her seat. “Buddha teaches us logic, teaches us choice. But I find it comforting that there might be something that isn’t explainable, something that governs us all. Something like God.” No one in class said anything. Some kept their eyes on the table or their hands. Some stared at Pra ajan, waiting for an answer. We had never heard anyone question Buddha, our Buddha. We had never heard anyone speak of God in our classes. But here was this fifteen-year-old girl casting doubt on our religion. I turned to look at her. Her forehead was wrinkled, her eyes red, as if she were about to cry. “I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I guess I’m just confused. I want to believe I’m not alone. When something bad happens, like the Challenger exploding a few months ago, I want to believe there’s something or someone to turn to other than ourselves. And I want to believe that those people who died are happy in heaven, or something like a heaven. I want that option too. It’s just comforting.” Melissa sighed, her upper body collapsing into her chair. Pra ajan took a step closer to Melissa. He smiled sympathetically. I believe if he could’ve touched her, he would have, perhaps placing a comforting hand over hers. But because he was a monk and monks were not supposed to touch women, all he could do was smile. Melissa stood. She folded her hands together and bowed to Pra ajan. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Pra ajan, but I don’t think I’ll be back, at least not for a while.” Melissa said thank you and walked out of the room, leaving us in a disconcerting silence. Pra ajan began his lecture again, but by then, I was lost in my head. Later, I learned from my mother that Melissa’s parents had enrolled her in Queen of Peace—a private high school—because they were dissatisfied with the local public schools in the area. They never thought religion would be a problem because they were devout Buddhists, preaching his doctrine to her daily. It was no wonder, said my mother, that poor Melissa was becoming “God people.” She was among them most of the day. Her teachers were nuns. Her friends spoke of God often. He was everywhere in her world. He was everywhere anyway. When my
father and I drove down I-294 towards God was inescapable. I was the only Buddhist in my fifth grade class. I
wasn’t sure what it meant to be a Buddhist except every Sunday I went to
temple and prayed in Pali, an ancient Sanskrit
language I didn’t understand. I folded my hands and recited the words I was
taught. I kowtowed to a statue of Buddha three times after a prayer. I did
all the things I good Buddhist was supposed to. I never understood, however,
why. * * * My father washed the Oldsmobile station wagon when a man walked up our driveway, two books in his right hand. My mother and aunt hung clothes on the line connected to my basketball hoop. It was a pleasant summer day and I tried to do a wheelie on my bike. I couldn’t lift the front end off the ground more than five inches. The man said hi as he passed. He wore a brown wool suit even though the temperature was tipping into the nineties. He smiled widely, his face damp with sweat. He approached my father, who stopped washing the hood. My mother and aunt watched from behind sheets. The man stuck out his hand, but my father showed him the suds on his. “How are you, sir?” asked the man. “Good,” said my father. “My name is Joseph.” Joseph had a red beard, but his hair was the color of tree bark; I wondered whether he dyed it. Coming up the driveway in the same wool suit was an Asian boy, no older than me, but much shorter. He stared at my bike as he passed. “This is my adopted son,” said Joseph. My father smiled at the boy, who stood straight like a soldier. How could this be his son? Joseph was white with cracked skin and his son had nearly the same complexion as me. “You see, my son here, Elijah, his heathen parents
abandoned him in “He very handsome,” my father said. “Looking very strong.” “That’s nice of you to say,” Joseph said. “Thank you.” He told his son to thank my father. “Thank you, sir,” Elijah said without a trace of an accent. “We don’t want to take too much of your time today, seeing it’s beautiful and you are washing your car, but my son and I, we’re going door to door spreading the word of God.” My father opened his mouth to speak, but Joseph cut my father off by raising his hand. “Let me ask you, sir, do you think you will go to heaven?” My mother ducked behind the sheet, chuckling. Aunty Sue tried to hush her. I could see the faint outlines of their bodies through the sheer of the sheet. “My family Buddhist,” my father said. He moved back to the car and picked up a frothy sponge. “So were Elijah’s biological parents,” said Joseph solemnly. “And they abandoned him, left him for dead. Now, you are good people. I can see that. Your son here,” he nodded at me on my bike, Elijah looked at me too and smiled, “…well your son looks like a good boy. Aren’t you?” I stared at him. “Yes, he looks good,” said Joseph. “But Elijah’s parents, they were Buddhist. My wife and I saved him from the orphanage where they fed him unmentionable things. Snakes.” I wanted to ask Elijah what a snake tasted like. “Now, in chapter three of Genesis, the snake tricked Eve into eating the apple. And the snake is the Devil. So you see, they were feeding my son the Devil.” Joseph paused. His face became redder. His temples were damp with beads of perspiration. Elijah stood still and quiet at his father’s side. I noticed he was wearing Nike basketball shoes that my mother wouldn’t buy me. I envied him. His wool suit, his shoes, his cool name. Elijah. Finally my father said, “Very sorry to hear that.” “It was sad,” Joseph said, shaking his head. Then he stopped and raised his chin high into the air. “But it was the power of God that saved my boy. The power of God that led my wife and I to that orphanage, the power of God that led us to Elijah.” Joseph’s voice got louder and louder. He raised his hand in the air like the TV preachers. My father turned to look at my mother and aunt. He shrugged. My mother widened her eyes, telling him to get rid of Joseph. Aunty Sue hung up her nurse’s uniform, staring at the man with raised hands and the Asian boy beside him. My father began washing the hood again in wide arcs. “They are
in hell now, Elijah’s biological parents. They are paying for their sins. My
wife and I spent three years in My father stared at Joseph. “Why do you think we leave this house? Good area. Nice school.” Joseph laughed. “You are a funny man, sir.” I meant where will you and your family be after you die?” My mother walked toward Joseph and crossed her arms. “We Buddhist. We born again in next life.” Joseph was surprised by my mother’s entrance. I was surprised. To Joseph and Elijah, it must have appeared as if she materialized out of the air. Joseph put a hand on Elijah’s shoulder. “Reincarnation is a lie. There is no such thing. According to the New Testament, if you are not God’s people you are doomed to an eternity in damnation.” Damnation. We didn’t know the word. Joseph sighed, impatience creeping into his face. Elijah stared at my mother as if she was a witch. “Hell,” Joseph said. “If you are not God’s people you will go to Hell.” In the silence that followed, Elijah looked at me and whispered “Hell.” I stared right back and whispered “snake eater.” A few cars passed in front of our house. Aunty Sue shook a shirt and swung it over the line. My father and mother turned to each other and laughed. My mother covered her teeth. My father erupted, bracing himself on the car. I started laughing because my parents were laughing. Joseph tried to speak over the commotion. “You can be saved. God has a big heart.” No one listened. Frustrated, he thrust a book at my father, who took it in a soapy hand. “Thank you for your time,” Joseph said and turned around. Elijah stared at me again, smiling, and mouthed “Hell” once more before joining his father’s long strides. I watched them get into a white sedan and zoom around the corner. When my father calmed down, he threw the book at my mother like it was a hot potato. She threw it to me. “You see,” she said, “you see how God people so crazy?” I kept the book, the Holy Bible, and later that evening I read it. It was like nothing I had ever read. There were numbers all along the sides and words like thou and thee and shalt and begat and compasseth and doth and sayest and hast and wherefore. And the names, names that complicated the tongue, some of them as long as Thai ones, names that sounded cool, almost superhuman: Cain, Enoch, Zillah, Methuselah, Noah. And the stories, they were confusing, enchanting, darkly entertaining. As I read, I imagined the Bible unfold in comic book stills. In this panel, a slimy snake curls around Eve’s long bare leg and convinces her to take a bite of the apple, which sparkles on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The snake even winks. In another still, Cain, face hidden in shadow, confronts Abel for the last time. We don’t witness the murder, but we see the word THWACK! But I had questions. Many. Why two creation stories? In chapter one, God created everything and then he created man and woman together. In the second chapter, there was another creation story that contradicted the first. Here God created man, Adam, and then all the animals, which Adam names, then Eve from Adam’s rib. What was the point? Why couldn’t the writer pick one story? And geez, God could be a mean dude. He favored Abel’s offering of sheep. He destroyed cities. He told Abraham to kill his son. I wondered whether people prayed to God out of fear. “Mike, do you fear God?” “You’re supposed to.” Recess. We chilled on the bench, bored of playing tag or shooting hoops or Red Rover, Red Rover with the guys. “I’ve been reading the Bible,” I said. “These weird people came over—” “Bible Thumpers,” Mike said. “That’s what my dad calls them. They try to convert you.” “They gave us a Bible, and I’ve been reading it, and if I were Christian, I’d be scared of God. I’d be scared every second of the day. Aren’t you?” “I don’t believe in him.” “Didn’t you just do Confirmation?” “Yeah, but I don’t believe in him.” “What do you believe in?” “Nothing.” “How can you believe in nothing?” “Listen, I believe in something, I guess. But I don’t believe in stories. In a guy who thinks he’s bad ass and can blow up cities.” “ “Yep,” Mike said. “Do you know about Job?” I shook my head. “Job was a do-gooder in a good way. He had a big family, loved God, everything. One day, God and the Devil meet and make a bet. The devil says, God, I’ll make Job hate you. God says, go ahead, he’s loyal. So the devil goes down and kills Job’s crops. Still Job doesn’t give God the finger. The devil says, I’ll take all that he loves. God says, whatever, dude. Do whatever. So the devil kills Job’s family.” “No way,” I said. “Yes way. And still, Job believes God is good. So the devil says, I’m going to make his skin come off. So Job’s face starts to come off. Made him look nasty like Freddy Kruger. Job never says, I hate you, God. He stays faithful, which is weird because if I looked like Freddy Krueger, I’d be like kicking God’s ass. Finally, God’s like, you see, Job stayed true. He went down to Job and gives him his skin, gives him his crops, gives him a new family. Job asks God, Why did you do this to me? And you know what God says?” I shook my head. “He says, ‘I am God. Never question me or I’ll kill you.’” “No, he didn’t.” “Yep,” Mike said. “I can’t believe in a guy like that.” The lunch mother blew a whistle that signified the end of recess. Mike got off the bench and started for the line. I stood where I was. Freddy Krueger. My face falling off. My family dead. “Are you coming?” Mike asked. * * * I bounced religion around in my head. The more I learned, the more confused I became. Was God evil or not? Why was Buddha fat in some countries and skinny in others? Nothing made sense. Nothing seemed to fit. Religions were theories with holes, puzzles without essential pieces. I began to feel, perhaps, the same suffocating confusion as Melissa did, and I understood why she had left the wat. Though I couldn’t quite grasp Buddhism or Christianity, I found myself becoming more obsessed with certain aspects of each. With Christianity, it was exactly what Melissa had spoken about—the notion of a constant companion. I decided my God wasn’t an angry man. He was just one of the guys, an imaginary friend. Each night after I said my prayers in homage to Buddha, I spoke to God. I’d say, “God, how are you?” I would tell God about my day—Boy Scouts and gym classes, my secret crush, and hitting Kevin too hard in the arm. God listened. Sometimes he talked back. He sounded like my principal, a man with a voice that dwelled in the guts. Because I couldn’t see God, I made Charlie, my teddy bear, become the embodiment of him. It was easier to talk to something than to talk to air, easier to tell my mother I was talking to Charlie than I was talking to God. I would say to God, “What creation story is true?” “What do you think?” said God. “I don’t know.” “Well, there you go,” said God. Or: “So, Mike said he ate you and you tasted like a cracker.” “I guess I do,” said God. “I hate crackers. I like rice.” He was there. Always. Or at least when my imagination allowed him to be. I found comfort in that, especially when the shadows deepened at night, when part of my mind saw moving monsters in the closet or my ears imagined creaking chairs. The mere knowledge of him watching over me gave me a sense of peace, of relief. With Buddhism, I clung to Buddha himself. At least his statue. I spent hours in front of the Buddha in our living room, drawing his figure in a sketchbook. I drew him from different angles and perspectives. I drew close ups of his face, his serene half open eyes, his slight smile. I focused in on his hands, smooth on his lap. When my mother and aunt visited their friends, I asked to be excused so I could draw their Buddhas. They thought I was a special child, a Buddha child. I became the ideal Buddhist youth, an example to other Thai children. “You see, Ira, you see how he loves Buddha.” I played the role occasionally, enjoying the attention. When someone sneezed, I said, “Buddha Bless.” In a moment of frustration, it was not “Oh God”; it was “Oh Buddha.” I carried my notebook
everywhere I went. Stopped and sketched every Buddha I passed. The fat ones
in In early spring my mother’s
friend’s son passed away. He had been driving too quickly around a curve on I wore jeans and a T-shirt and sat in the back of the temple, my Buddha sketchbook tucked under my arm. The main temple used to be a gymnasium. The ceilings were high and voices echoed. On the walls were murals of how Buddha attained enlightenment, large storyboards that wrapped around the entire room. On the right side of the gym, four monks gathered on a raised platform. The most venerable of the monks, the Sankarat, prepared the holy water by melting a yellow candle into an ornate copper bowl shaped like a lotus bud. The wax dripped and sizzled. At the front of the temple was Buddha. He loomed above us, about ten feet high and ten feet wide. Unlike the other Buddhas I had seen, his hands were not in his lap. His right hand was held up in front of him, as if to say stop here. The other lay on top of his knee. This Buddha appeared more alert, more awake than most Buddhas. There were only a handful of people attending the service, mostly women dressed in black. When the monks started praying, everyone folded their hands together and closed their eyes. The room hummed and buzzed, deep bassy voices echoing off walls. I opened my notebook and began to draw. I drew the delicate curve of Buddha’s nose, and tried to capture his oval chin. He sat in perfect posture; his torso was in the shape of a V. Buddha’s earlobes nearly touched his shoulders. But what my eyes kept drifting to were the positions of his hands. The one held in front of him was smooth and gracefully arched like a breaching whale. The hand on his knee bubbled up a bit, as if there was something underneath it, as if he were concealing a secret. I drew that hand over and over. I focused hard on it, squinting. I had concentrated so hard on my drawing I hadn’t noticed the service was over. My mother said it was time to go, but I asked her if I could stay a moment longer. Of course, she said, and took a seat next to me, draping her arm around my shoulder. She took a quick glance at my notebook and said, “So pretty.” Then she kissed the top of my head. Her presence was a comfort, but
I was drifting off. I was losing some connection to the talking and walking
world, and felt as if I was flying toward the Buddha at the front of the
temple, flying and becoming smaller and smaller until I was the size of a
sparrow. It was a surreal sensation, a sensation I can compare to only once
when I had eaten too much spicy food in a Thai Restaurant in The miniature me stood in Buddha’s golden lap. He climbed down one of Buddha’s long fingers and peeked at what lay under Buddha’s hand. He saw something, an undecipherable shape. It was covered in darkness. My mother nudged me. I was back in my seat. The Sankarat stood beside her. She instructed me to pay my respect, and I stood quickly and folded my hands together, forgetting about the pencil until it nearly stabbed my eye. “I see you back here drawing fast,” he said. “Drawing what?” My mother spoke for me. “Tong
loves to draw Buddha,” she said in The Sankarat tilted his shaved head. His entire body was covered in earthy orange robes. He was shorter than even my mother and bone thin. I couldn’t see his hands. The only uncovered parts of him were his head and feet. Under his thick glasses that took up half his face, his eyes were soft. He reminded me of Yoda, the ancient Jedi master. “Drawing Buddha?” he said. “May I see?” I handed it to him. He flipped through the pages of my sketches, pausing longer on some. I wasn’t an artist. I knew my drawings weren’t perfect—Buddha’s eyes were monstrous in some pictures and his head too big for his body in others. Some I erased so hard I tore the page. But these were my private drawings, my vision of Buddhism on a given day, time, or hour. I was afraid the Sankarat would think I was a sinner, drawing our Buddha imperfectly. “Very nice,” he said. He opened the sketchbook to the Buddha I had been drawing that evening. “You see Pra Jow with different eye.” I shrugged. “Draw what is not there. But more here.” He pointed to my heart. “That is Buddha way.” I don’t see anything, I wanted to say. My drawings were crummy searches for something I didn’t understand. I wanted to tell him I spoke to God sometimes and that made me feel OK, not sinful, not like I had done something wrong. I wanted to ask him about what might be under Buddha’s hand, if anything at all. The Sankarat handed back my sketchbook and before I took it from him I put my hands together and bowed my head. “Good boy,” he said. “Smart boy.” He turned to leave. I sat back down and stared at Buddha, hoping for the moment to come back. But nothing happened. My mother and I were the only people left in the temple. She said another prayer to herself, closing her eyes so tightly the corners were wet. When she was done, her eyes popped opened and she said, “Ready?” I nodded. “What did you pray about?” “I praying
for boy.” She wiped at her eyes. “I praying for you.
Me. Aunty Sue. “Does Buddha answer all your prayers?” “Always,” she said. * * * My mother, father and I were on our way to On the
way to My mother said, “Tow, tow.” Poor thing, poor thing. We were in the lane closest to the median, so my father slowed down, careful not to scare the dog, and when we were past it, he sped up. My mother folded her hands and whispered a quick prayer. My father closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Mie pain lie,” he said. It’s OK. “Ma yoo tee dee,” said my mother, her voice soft. The dog is in a better place. I couldn’t keep it in any longer, but I didn’t make a sound. I wiped at my face quickly. Heat rose in my cheeks. I sat and cried for the next two hours. When we arrived in It was easy to forget. We were trying hard, too. In the early evening, before we
started back towards I was in the middle of my parents. I asked my mother whether dogs were reborn. “Na noun,” she said. Of course. “Took yung,” said my father. Everything. “Do you think it’s happier?” I asked. “Yes,” said my mother. My father told me that dogs were one of the noblest animals in the world. When they died they came back as something or someone of importance. A king, a warrior, a monk. I smiled, imagining the dog awaiting a better life. I jogged on ahead, passing the darkest purples, the lightest lavenders. When I turned to see where my parents were, they were backlit and in silhouette, far behind, hands linked, my mother laughing into the sky. I didn’t think much about
religion after our trip. My curiosity ended in As I looked at my parents that spring day, I thought about heaven, and if there was one, I would want it to look like this: a world of tulips, sprouting in every corner, the sky forever a painter’s palette. And I would have my mother and father there with me, holding hands, laughing and loving each other. And if I was reincarnated, I wanted to be a tulip, this tulip with its petals spread wide like a cup ready to catch rain, this yellow tulip, bright like the shine of a Buddha, and my mother and father could be the nurturing earth that houses the bulb, or maybe they would be the sun that willed the tulip out of the ground and into the light. |
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