Heavenly Creatures

Tara had forgotten how heavy life on Earth could be. Back with the old man, Tara had seemed to reside in a different dimension of being, where the peace around her penetrated into her core, leaving waters of stillness within. Being back in high school left her feeling whiplashed and confused.

Finally, it was the last class on Monday afternoon: astronomy with Ana. She collapsed into her usual chair and greeted Ana. Ana cocked her head to one side and looked at Tara in surprise.

“What is it?” Tara asked.

“Hm. You look different,” Ana said. “I can’t put my finger on why, though.”

Tara smiled, but said nothing. What could she say to that?

“Where’s the new boy?” Ana asked.

“I think he’s gone,” Tara said.

“Aw,” Ana said. “I thought you two liked each other.”

Tara nodded sadly. “I thought so too. It’s too bad.”

Ana nodded sympathetically.

During the astronomy lecture, Tara was surprised to find that she could understand everything Mr. Kirby said. Sun had kept his promise to help her with classes after all.

After school, Tara walked home by her usual route, but it was like she saw the trees next to the sidewalk for the first time. They were as lovely as the trees on her walk to the jungja with the old man.

And finally at dinner, Tara noticed for the first time that her parents didn’t talk to each other, or her, much at all. She had thought that this was normal, but she could see now that it wasn’t. Even in her home, it was as if her time with the old man was opening her eyes to the beauty and suffering all around her. Strange, how her perception of the world could change so drastically once the suffering inside herself had gone away.

* * *

As the days turned into weeks, Tara began to long for the sense of lightness of her time in her spiritual wormhole. She felt like an addict in withdrawal, and she realized that spiritual concepts were still concepts that she had to let go of if she wanted peace. She tried to distract herself with schoolwork and time spent with friends, and gradually her mind began to loosen its hold from the memory of those happy days.

One Sunday, she decided to try engaging her parents in small talk. It was the day when her mom usually went to the store to get groceries. Tara suggested that they make a family outing of it by going all together. She sensed that this pleased her parents, as they weren’t used to such a show of affection from her.

Tara got into the back seat of her parents’ white car. It wasn’t until they were halfway to the store that she had a feeling of deja vu so strong that it elicited a physical reaction from her.

“Mom—!” she began speaking. She saw a truck’s headlights in the rearview mirror a split second before she felt her body jolt forward. In her last conscious moment, an image of her sister flashed through her mind.

* * *

Tara’s eyes took time to adjust, but when they did, what she saw made her heart stop. In the seats in front of her, she saw her adoptive parents lying slumped across the dashboard. Blood trickled down her mother’s forehead.

“Mom!” Tara struggled to find the buckle holding her seat belt with shaking hands. “Dad?”

Her expression crumbled, and hot tears slid down her face. How could this happen again? Was this her fault? A punishment for what she had done in a past life?

No. It couldn’t be.

Tara looked out the window, wishing to see the old man again. Her mind stopped scrambling for answers, and she sat numbly until the paramedics came.

* * *

When Tara woke up, she was in a hospital gown in a darkened room. A nurse came in, saw she was awake, and smiled at her. The lights snapped on suddenly, and Tara squinted to adjust.

“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked.

“I’m okay,” Tara said. She almost feared to ask the nurse about her parents, but the woman preempted her.

“Your parents are alive,” the nurse said.

A wave of relief washed over Tara, and she began crying again. She wept and wept, and the nurse awkwardly gave her a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Tara said. “I’m glad. I’m so glad.”

“Oh, darling,” the nurse said. “The thing is, your parents are alive. But they’re not conscious. They won’t wake up.”

Tara swallowed back her tears. “What do you mean?”

“They’re in a coma,” the nurse said.

The word shot through her like an icicle. A coma. She lay back heavily in her hospital bed.

“Oh,” was all she could say.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. She looked at Tara for a moment longer before checking her vitals. Tara lay numbly, and after what seemed like an eternity, the nurse finally left, turning off the lights and closing the door softly behind her.

Tara lay awake long after the nurse had gone. Her mind was still in shock, and she was unable to form coherent thoughts. Maybe it was the lack of inhibition that this afforded her, but she began to whisper to the old man, as she had done while playing go with him.

“Why is this happening to me?” she asked. “I thought that I had understood everything. Is there something else, something more? Am I cursed, like Sun said?”

Tara suddenly realized that Sun had never said that to her. It was just something that she had thought. How could she not be cursed, with everything that had happened to her? It wasn’t just her birth parents who had died; it was also now potentially her adoptive parents.

They made a mistake in adopting me, she thought. But even as she thought these things, she realized that the train of thoughts she was pursuing was not productive. How strange, to have a brain divided against itself. One part insisting on leading her to destruction, and one part dispassionately aware.

“Why did you choose me?” she whispered, hoping that heaven would hear her. “I was just a normal girl, with a normal life. All I wanted was a normal life.”

That thought seemed to break some kind of wall inside her, and she began crying silently. She felt as if she were dying, as if this last hope that had held her to life was being ripped away from her. This was the end of all of her struggles. This was the end of all knowledge, all insight, all attainment. All of it, all of it was useless.

Tara wept and wept and wept herself to exhaustion and sleep. For the next few days, she wept herself to sleep, until she was allowed to leave the hospital and go home.