Elizabeth, Bet for short, got on the road early. She was tired by the time she pulled off the highway onto the back streets of Manchester. She thought to herself, New Hampshire wasn’t supposed to look like this. This morning’s drive was four hours; she’d never gone more than thirty minutes from home in a car by herself. Today’s drive, past the old lifeless mills and across the debris-clogged river, made the hairs on the back of her arms raise up. She’d come looking for a teacher, a shaman, who was recommended by a number of friends. She came to learn and to grow.
The houses she was driving past were Victorians; many were derelict, marred with graffiti. She could imagine their glory days when small children ran from the grand porches. Ghosts, of Aunties in swings with beaus and mothers rocking babes in arms, linger in the shadows. The gray day made grayer by the shattered glass of broken streetlights. Finally, the house number she was looking for appeared. She sighed. The house was a sooty gray. Its shutters hung from rotten sashes. Grime covered the clapboards of the house like the skin of the unbathed homeless man on the sidewalk. She parked on the street making sure the contents of the car were covered and the doors locked, approaching on foot. Up broken steps she walked, all five foot four of her broomstick straight and vigilant, holding onto a two-by-four rail. Keys peeked out from the knuckles of her fisted right hand. For a Saturday morning in late November, it was eerily quiet. There was a strong cold breeze; it had apparently blown open the front door. She felt like Gretel, except the gingerbread house was not made of cookies, and she was expecting “the good witch.”
Her light tread barely stirred the dust as she walking up the interior stairs grimacing past plastic Christmas wreathes and rubber linked foot mats. Bet reached the energy worker’s door on the third floor: three the number of creation, the trinity of the soul. The energy of the building was stale and lifeless. Un-retrieved newspapers and mail lay on each landing. The lack of cooking odors added to the solitude of the place. Though she was here to study Reiki, she didn’t understand how someone so skilled at working the body’s energy could so totally ignore the buildings malaise. A green brass doorknocker in the shape of an elephants head with a red plastic heart dangling from its trunk hung from the teacher’s door.
Bet “tap, tapped” the hollow heart on the hallowed door. She took the knocker, as a positive sign she was in the right place; Ganesha the Elephant God was one of her protectors. Bet’s heart raced. The door sprung inward. Her teacher to be, Susan, welcomed her with a Buddha like smile and a tight hug. Susan was much taller than Bet, wiry from the ends of her salt and pepper hair to the bone thinness of her limbs. Bet entered warily
An east facing bay window backlit Susan in a rainbow aura. Bet could see three cluttered rooms. She stood in the barest, calmest room, the center room. There was a single, tattered, overstuffed, Queen Ann chair there holding court over a threadbare oriental rug of Prussian blue. Dust bunnies gathered in the room’s corners and one or two rolled riotously across the floor following a stray breeze from the un-caulked windows. To the left, a mountain of art and artifacts rose from floor to ceiling. Its contents somewhat incomprehensible; its width and height restrained only by the walls of the room. Billowing rolls of rice paper roiled wave like against drapes of lace. Bet took a step back, a bit afraid of being absorbed by osmosis. She glimpsed taxidermied squirrels and birds buried so lifelike amongst the ritual inanimate objects. The corners of the ceilings held dust weighted webs called Irish Lace. It was like a scene from Great Expectations, Dickens’ spinster Miss Havisham would have felt right at home here. Bet there wasn’t the drying corpse of a bridegroom in the spare room. To the right, through a high oaken opening, was the kitchen. The student followed the teacher in trailing luggage and apprehension.
Susan made herb tea in mismatched teacups. The woman sat discussing life, hers and Bet’s. The hour, now, well past noon, Bet’s stomach growled. The hands of the antiquated chrome bound circular gas stove’s clock showed 1:15.
“May we have some lunch?” Bet asked.
“Lunch, yes …” Susan reached for her coat on the chair back. “This is my art garret, I’m infrequently here, so we must shop.”
Bet fished through her pockets to retrieve the money for the classes. “For the lessons, room, and food,” she gestured, holding it out toward Susan.
Nodding, Susan stood, the green bills slipped into an overly large beige sweater-jacket.
“May I see my room?” Bet asked.
Susan pointed to the door off the kitchen.
“It’s right there.”
Across an expanse of gray asbestos-laced linoleum, worn to the black backing, they walked. Susan opened one of the doors. The nights’ lodging appeared before her, truly, a monk’s cell. There were no bureaus no chairs not even a mattress frame. There were no curtains on the windows. A yellowing, egg crate foam, mattress peeked out from beneath dingy stained sheets. The mattress lay upon the un-swept hardwood floor. Susan pulled of the sheets and flipped the mattress. Quickly she replaced the same sheets and smiled.
“I had guests last night. I’ll just straighten this up a bit. We’ll have a cozy nest for you in no time.”
Bet eyes widened. She had paled noticeably. With a deep breath, she pulled back her shoulders and firmed her resolve; she came here to learn and not to judge by exterior appearances the quality of her teacher’s knowledge. She knew from experience coddling was seldom an effective learning tool. With a nod, she put her bag in the corner.
When they returned from shopping they cooked dinner, vegetarian chili and baked sweet potato, building internal chi and harming no animal. The meal finished, Susan led toward the room at the front of the house. Stocking footed, Bet entered the maelstrom.
Susan sat Bet on a yellow-vinyl tuffet held together with peeling gray duct tape before the altar of life and death. The altar seemed to move in the candle smoke like a living thing. Fountains cascaded like tears upon river stones. Candles of all colors bled waxen steams down the sides of the phallic pillars. Crystals of raw purple quartz, lava stones from the bowels of mother earth, and the bleached bones of a buck lay scattered in a heap. Buddhist prayer flags: red, yellow, blue, meandered drunkenly through raised daises of random heights around vases of dead chrysanthemums. Turtle rattles, hawk feathers, scrolls of kanji, all balanced tentatively.
Bet gnawed at her lip, it seemed as if even the smallest motion would topple the whole mass onto her feet. Her eyes glanced at Susan as she knelt. Susan was all shaman now, she placed a deer’s skull beside us its jaw agape. She reached for a bottle of amber liquor.
She smiled. “Your altar gives you power. It must be fed in thanks.”
Bet’s pupils grew large in the candlelight. She wrung her hands. Susan put the bottle to her lips, taking a mouthful, she flung her head up, and down rapidly; with a burst of energy, she sprayed the liquor in a fine mist over the altar.
“This is how we feed the altar.” Susan explained.
Her thin white hands extended the dubious bottle toward Bet. The liquor was warm, sharp, tasting of methanol. The straw wrap on the reused bottle reeked of mold. Bet could almost see the forest. It reminded her of the local moonshine she’d sipped in the foothills of the Himalaya’s, Raksi. Susan had brought this back from her shamanic studies up the Amazon. Bet spit. The fluid burnt her tongue and lips. It fell gracelessly, puddling in the hollows of the skull’s jawbone.
“Close your eyes,” Susan commanded and covered Bet’s eyes.
Susan walked in a circle around Bet stopping in front of her. She was so close even blindfolded Bet knew where she was. Susan then placed Bet’s hands in prayer over her heart chakra. She traced a line from the heel of Bet’s hands to her fingertips. Bet’s arms and hands were then raised above her head. Susan circled again placing her own hands on the crown of Bet’s head. A burst of breath shot downward through cupped hands into Bet’s skull. Moving methodically, cupped hands to Bet’s spine, Susan sent a tone through her cupped hands into Bet’s spine at each chakra point the tone changed. Bet resonated with breath. Silently, Susan traced symbols onto Bet’s opened palms at heart height, symbols of power. A tinksa sounded, bells to awaken the newly reborn. Susan removed the blind fold and Bet opened her eyes. The air hung heavily with power, a wavering mirage like electricity filled the room, riding on the smoke woven candlelight.
Creativity, re-birth, growth: all were the shaman’s gifts. From the bowels of earth Mother and the tempest of Sky father, from all the numerous God’s and Goddesses of nature, from the human excreta gathered in this room; a new being more powerful than ever before stood. Bet now understood. Creativity does not exist in a sterile environment. Birth is a very messy business.