Chapter 3 #3
“I was just looking in the mirror in the bathroom one day,” she said.
“Like a teenager does, you know? Wondering what I was going to look like as an adult, who I was going to be. And I just started to notice my features in a way I hadn’t ever noticed them before.
I don’t look like my parents. At all. I have this black hair, these dark eyes.
This nose. My parents aren’t like Aryan blond Germans, but they’re definitely not swarthy.
They’re kind of mousy-looking. Whatever was in me, it wasn’t coming from them.
Or from my grandparents. Or anyone else in the family. It was suddenly really obvious to me.”
“But from one of the Rajneeshees…”
“We had pictures of Osho all over the house, like I said. He was always looking at us with those eyes. Those moonlike eyes, that little smirk. And he had this nose. He had this skin. I was putting on some makeup and it just kind of clicked. I finally saw it. My whole aspect changed.”
“That must’ve been pretty bizarre,” I said.
“It was,” she said. “But it was also very subtle. It took a long time to process. It went under the skin, too, into the blood. I realized I’d kind of known for a long time, but somehow the idea had never formed into a full-blown thought.
The whole shape of my life altered. I was still myself, but I was someone else, too.
I had these two very different histories inside me. ”
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing, really,” she said. “I didn’t say anything about it.
I kept going to school, hanging out with my friends.
It changed everything, but it also didn’t really change anything.
It was strange. I saw my parents differently, obviously.
I felt new things in myself. But I didn’t feel Indian, either. ”
“What seemed different?”
“It’s hard to say,” she said. “New interests. New tastes. I got into Indian religions, Indian literature. I wanted to taste Indian food. I think this is true for everyone in a way, though. Everyone chooses on some level how to form their personalities. You have your Irish side and your Jewish side, or your Korean side and your Black side.”
“Your mom side and your dad side.”
“Right. Mine were just more pronounced sides. I felt like I had new choices. I wasn’t just a German expat hippie child anymore. I had blood that went somewhere else, too. It was good, ultimately. It gave me access to more things.”
“Did it pull you away from your parents?” I said.
“You’re so full of questions!” she said.
“But no. I wasn’t suddenly some kind of identity warrior.
Mostly, I didn’t want to embarrass them.
I almost thought they might not know! Germans of their generation have a certain relationship to the past and secrecy.
My parents are very open, very transparent.
They hate secrets. And yet, at the same time, they’re very incapable of certain insights. ”
“But you talked to your parents about it eventually,” I said.
“Not until I was in my twenties,” she said.
“By then, we’d been living in this cone of silence about it for so long that it didn’t really matter anymore.
I’d come home wearing kohl makeup, or a sari, and we’d all pretend it wasn’t happening.
Then one day, I was visiting home from college, and I just asked them who my real dad was, like it was no big deal, like we’d already established this fact.
And in a way, it was true, we had. We’d already done all the processing inside ourselves.
We were finally ready to have a calm conversation about it. ”
“And what did they say?”
“They said they didn’t know. It could’ve been a handful of guys.
My mom really enjoyed herself in those days.
Or she’d been serially raped, depending on how you look at it.
I prefer the former. That’s how she sees it.
She never seemed traumatized by her time in the ashram. All the men were quite nice, she said.”
“But your parents weren’t in touch with any of them?”
“No,” she said.
“Did you want to go find him?” I said.
“Not particularly,” she said. “I know the kind of guy he was.”
“And your dad wasn’t bothered by any of this?” I said.
“He’s very German,” she said. “He sees things in a very clinical light. He made a decision a long time ago that he was my father. He was going to play that role. No one was going to take that from him.”
We’d made a full circuit by this time, up to the Japanese gardens and back down to the pond where the geese were no longer mating. A new batch of picnickers was on the lawn, a new circle of Hacky Sackers. We exited the park and reentered the traffic of town, heading back toward the library.
“You should really write about this someday,” I said. “It would make a great book.”
“Ha!” she said. “Why would I ever do that?”
“People would be interested,” I said. “It’s an interesting story. You tell it in an amazing way.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. I just told you all of it. Anyway, I’m not a writer kind of person.”
“You could be,” I said.
“Why do writers always think that sharing things in public is such a good idea?” she said. “You have this idea that sharing things in public is inherently positive. Some things are just private. Leave it be.”
“We have to share our stories,” I said. “That’s how we understand anything about the world. That’s how we know what’s going on with each other.”
“It doesn’t change anything, though,” she said.
“A librarian against books,” I said. “Interesting.”
“I’m not against books,” she said. “I just think there are plenty of them already. Most of them don’t have any reason for being. And anyway, there’s life outside books, too, you know. I’m for life.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said.
“You should try it sometime,” she said. “It’s nice out here. Smells good.”
We were getting back to the campus now, where students were dozing in the afternoon heat. A gardener was pruning the dogwoods lining the quad, clipping their pink limbs, which seemed criminal. At the library door, we paused before parting ways.
“Thanks for all the help today,” I said. “I appreciate it very much.”
“Of course,” she said. “I mean, it’s my job. And thanks for lunch. And the walk.”
“My pleasure,” I said. “Any time.”
She opened the glass door. The reflections of the surrounding greenery slid and vibrated on the pane. “Phil is right,” she said, stepping inside. “You are a good listener. I see why he likes your visits.”