The Shape of Family Read online

  Sero could see it, the weight of the burden in the lines etched into his brow, the twitching at the corner of his eye. She wrapped her arms around his waist, trying to dissipate some of that tension from his body.

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “I wake up in the morning with an aching jaw, from grinding my teeth all night. I’ve never done that before now. And this.” He pulled up one of his long sleeves to reveal a chalky white rash covering his arm. “Caused by stress.”

  “What can I do?” Serotina asked, interlacing her fingers with his. “Let me help you. I want to help.”

  “I know,” Micah said, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. “I know everyone here will sacrifice when called upon, just like I am now. That’s what keeps me going. We’re going to win this, Sero. We’re going to fulfill our vision here at the Sanctuary, together.”

  Sero smiled, believing him with all her heart. It wasn’t his temper she’d seen just now; it was his passion. The same passion that had helped grow four hundred pounds of organic produce at the community garden, that had helped August overcome his addiction, that had helped Ericka leave her abusive relationship, that had helped her release the guilt she had been carrying since Prem’s death six years before. His passion had made so many good things possible, and she felt honored to be witnessing it. She promised herself she would do whatever she could to help the Sanctuary succeed, to be the confidante and support Micah needed.

  38 | the olanders

  APRIL 2015

  The only thing left for Keith to do was secure Jaya’s signature on the transfer documents. His accountant had asked him repeatedly if he was certain about this; it was unusual to transfer a large quantity of assets to an ex-spouse without any court order to do so. Jaya would be able to do as she wished with the money, the accountant advised: spend it all, run off with a new man. Keith laughed at that proposition. Clearly, his accountant had never met a woman like Jaya. Yes, Keith was certain. As soon as Jaya signed those papers, he could take some solace from knowing that whatever happened to him, she and Karina would be taken care of in the future.

  Establishing the accounts, orchestrating the transfers and completing the associated legal and tax paperwork had given him something productive on which to focus the past several weeks, as his attorney learned more about the SEC’s case against him. Keith had, as his lawyer had advised, already set aside the requisite assets to cover the stock gain, potential penalty and legal fees.

  “I’m trying to sit down with the SEC to discuss the civil charges, but they’re taking their sweet time,” Carl said. “The good news is the DOJ doesn’t seem too interested in pursuing criminal charges, Keith. Lucky you’re in Silicon Valley. They’d probably make you an example if you were in New York, but in California they’re more focused on border crimes—drugs, immigration.”

  Keith felt hot shame at the mention of his fate in the same breath as those offenses. He hadn’t thought about how he would explain the asset transfer to Jaya, whether he could bring himself to admit to her his questionable behavior. His criminal behavior. She had always thought him too ambitious and driven by money, and now she’d be proven right. And yet, he wished he could talk to the woman he remembered, who was smart, thoughtful, grounded. He missed having her insight and perspective in his life. But that woman was gone, and Jaya now seemed, at best, indifferent to him.

  Keith couldn’t even imagine telling Karina about this. She didn’t have to know anything yet, and hopefully never would. The last time he’d seen her over winter break, she’d seemed happier than ever. She was bubbly and full of stories about the classes she’d finished, the community garden she shared with her friends, new recipes she had been trying out. He missed hearing from her as often now, but other parents had told him to expect this; it was all part of the normal development process, a sign that she was truly ready for life on her own.

  * * *

  Jaya sat across the table from Christophe, who had arrived only three weeks earlier from his native Ivory Coast. “Any work, I will do any work,” he was saying earnestly. Christophe was thirty-eight and trained as a physician in Africa. But with three children and a wife to support, the modest savings with which he’d immigrated were quickly being depleted. He had applied to drive a taxi with every company in the Bay Area. Christophe was wearing a suit and tie, as he always did, though Jaya had told him he could dress casually for their meetings.

  “Your first job is always the hardest to get,” Jaya said, as she’d told many other new immigrants at the Refugee and Immigrant Support Center, where she volunteered. After returning from India, with her mother’s reproach in mind, Jaya had decided to get involved in some new pursuits. Seva, service to others, was one of the pillars of the Guru’s mission, to strengthen communities by supporting the most vulnerable members of society. Alongside other devotees, she tried working at a soup kitchen and a homeless shelter. It was uncomfortable interacting with strangers and making small talk after living in a world of her own making for so long. But then Jaya heard about RISC on the radio and sought it out on her own. She’d felt an immediate connection the first time she came here, and she became a regular volunteer.

  “Missus, where are you from?” Christophe said, finally comfortable enough at this visit to ask her a personal question. “You are not from here, a . . . native American?”

  Jaya smiled and did not correct his use of the term. “No, I’m a naturalized citizen, originally from India.” After years of struggling with this question, she had decided that the definition of who she was and where she belonged was far broader than any one nationality. Jaya’s true home was her inner consciousness that traveled with her everywhere. It was inside herself that she either felt at home or out of place. At first, she’d found this an unsettling thought, that her inner demons would follow her everywhere; but gradually, she came to find comfort in the idea. If she invested the time and energy to follow the Guru’s teachings and progress along the path toward a higher consciousness, it was something she would always have, that could never be taken from her. Her essential humanity was untethered to geography, place, even to people. In this way, she had made some peace with being so far from her parents and Dev’s family, and even took strength in knowing her lattice of support was as expansive as the earth.

  At RISC, Jaya helped individuals acclimate to the United States, navigate the systems of government they needed to use and get settled in a new life. The work she did here wasn’t complicated: filling out leases and driver’s license applications and other essentials of American life. It was, as they used to call it in her previous role at the Policy Institute, small-scale work—serving one person at a time. The institute hadn’t funded programs like this because they were not scalable; their growth was restricted by the supply of individual volunteers like her. Jaya’s previous job had been to seek out effective programs that could be expanded to serve larger populations quickly, through technology or grassroots efforts. In that world, she’d tried to solve problems on a systemic level. But all systems are, after all, made up of people, and most change fails because of them—through corruption, politics, egos. That work was illusory, drawing her away from what was real.

  She had come to understand that the trials she faced on earth were meant to help her connect to the pain and suffering of others—to practice universal love and kindness, to be less connected to earthly concerns and more connected to the spiritual sphere. It was hard work, but it was a world view that made sense and felt gratifying to her. She endeavored to make each of her interactions authentic now, to touch others personally as she had been touched. At RISC, Jaya was making a real impact, a true and meaningful difference to actual people. God had created human individuals, not systems. When you lost that connection with personal touch, you lost what made us essentially human.

  “Let’s practice some interview questions, shall we?” Jaya said, keen to help build Christophe’s confidence before his next interview.

  “Okay, missus.” He straighte
ned his back and tugged at the lapels of his jacket. “I am ready.”

  39 | serotina

  APRIL 2015

  “At this pace, we should be done with the whole batch in two weeks,” Serotina said to Micah. She and Jasmine had been working long days to trim the first harvest of plants they had grown from scratch. “And our total yield will be about ten pounds.”

  Micah grinned. “Fantastic. Hey, Rufus, come over here. Bring the laptop.”

  Rufus joined them and placed his computer in front of them. “Presenting . . . Greenfields, the web’s finest purveyor of licensed medical-grade marijuana.” On the screen was the brand name with a logo featuring the cartoon image of a smiling sun in sunglasses. “For our website. And I’ll print it on our package labels.”

  “Ooh,” said Jasmine, leaning on Rufus’s shoulder to see.

  “Looks cool, man.” Micah slapped him on the back. “Bringing a smile to faces everywhere. Sero says we’ll have ten pounds ready in two weeks, so let’s turn on the website and get this show rolling.”

  The next day, orders began coming in. Rufus started preparing the shipping labels and packages, while Sero and Jasmine continued to trim the buds.

  “We’re sure this is all legit, right?” Jasmine asked.

  “Well, in California,” Rufus said, “medical marijuana has been legal for over a decade. To place an order on our website, people have to upload a doctor’s prescription, and we require an adult signature for the UPS deliveries. So, I’d say we’re being extra-super careful.”

  “And we have a dispensing license,” Serotina added, confident about this from her conversations with Micah.

  Every evening after dinner, Sero took Micah down to the basement to update him on their progress. The entire batch had sold out in the first week, generating almost twenty thousand dollars in revenue, and he was eager to get it shipped so they could collect. “How long until the next batch is ready?” he asked Sero as he licked a rolling paper to seal a joint.

  “Twelve weeks,” Sero said, flipping through the crate of labeled shipping envelopes on Rufus’s table.

  “No way to do it faster?”

  Sero shook her head. “Unfortunately not. Hey—” She paused at one of the envelopes, then flipped through a couple more. “New Mexico?” She looked up at Micah. “And Montana? Can we do that, legally?”

  “Listen, Sero.” Micah smiled at her as he leaned back in his chair. “There’s legal and then there’s right. Something may be legal, but it’s not right. And something can be right but might not be legal. I believe in applying our intelligence and sense of right and wrong to situations, not just blindly following the letter of the law like a lemming. You agree?”

  “Well, I think it depends—”

  “Okay, let me give you an example,” Micah interrupted. “You might not know this, because the girl is tough as nails, but Ericka has two severely herniated disks that cause her chronic back pain. She’s entitled by law to get a handicapped placard for her car. You know how helpful that would be, when we go to the farmers’ market or the nursery, to be able to park close when we’re loading those heavy trees and soil bags? Yeah, super helpful. But is it right? Does she need that spot more than someone else? Probably not. So, she doesn’t use the placard and we park far away. If we took a handicapped spot—legal, but not right.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but in that case, she’s not doing anything wrong either way.”

  “Now, another situation with Ericka: Over-the-counter painkillers don’t work for her; they don’t put a dent in her suffering. And she doesn’t want to use prescription meds, because of the risk of getting hooked. You know what does help her? Smoking marijuana, once in the morning, once in the evening. That’s it. Two joints a day and she’s a perfectly functioning member of society. She doesn’t get addicted. Everyone’s happy, right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but medical marijuana is legal, and she can get—”

  Micah held up a finger and spoke over her. “Now, what if Ericka lived in Wyoming? Exact same situation, same medical condition, same solution, same ethics, right?”

  “Right,” she admitted.

  “Right,” he echoed. “But Wyoming has different laws. You know why? Dick-fucking-Cheney, that’s why. Let’s look at the options available to a person in Wyoming.” Micah held up one finger. “Get hooked on opioids and end up on the street or dead.” He held up a second finger. “Become a debilitated member of society on disability.” Now, he held up three fingers. “Knock off Dick Cheney.” He grinned at her. “Or . . . order a package from us and hurt no one else. Perhaps not technically legal by Wyoming’s outdated laws, but definitely right, right?”

  She didn’t respond as she considered his argument, which did seem to make sense.

  “The same has been true throughout history. Slavery was legal for centuries, but not right. Women didn’t have the right to vote in this country until they fought for it. Gandhi stood up to the British and was thrown in jail. Just a few years ago, marijuana was illegal and now the laws are changing everywhere. We’re ahead of the curve, Sero. Don’t you want to be on the right side of history?”

  She did, of course. That was why she had come to the Sanctuary in the first place, to live in a better way, according to higher ideals. It was legal to pillage the earth, after all, even profitable, but it didn’t make it right.

  Micah pulled a lighter from the pocket of his jeans and lit up the joint. “Besides, the cops don’t give a shit about weed now that it’s legal. They’re more focused on the tons of cocaine smuggled over the border. Trust me, I’ve got friends on the force.” He held out the joint and Sero took it from him, allowing herself a long drag and the satisfaction of helping their cause.

  * * *

  The next day, around noon, Sero saw Micah in the kitchen, coming in from his long morning run. Apparently, he’d had competitive times in several marathons in his twenties, though he never boasted about it.

  “All done packing up the first shipment,” she said.

  “Great,” Micah said, guzzling a can of coconut water. He touched her shoulder as he walked past, and she felt a tingling heat sensation as his hand trailed down her back. Since they’d begun sleeping together, he sometimes touched her like this, but always subtly, never drawing too much attention. “I’ll drop it off this afternoon. Want to come along? There’s a feedstore near the shipping office; you can get that new lead rope you wanted for Buddy.”

  “Sure,” Sero said. “I’d love to.”

  They spent an entire glorious afternoon together, trying out a new smoothie bar, strolling around, buying supplies for Buddy. When they arrived at the shipping office, there were no parking spots out front, so Sero offered to carry the bin of packages inside while Micah waited in the car, double-parked on the street. Afterwards, as Micah drove back to the Sanctuary, Sero found the contentment she’d felt all day begin to dissipate. She loved being alone with Micah and hardly ever had the chance—only two or three nights a week in his bedroom. The other days, she missed that connection. And having so many other people around the house had started to feel stifling. Her time alone was limited, between meditation, yoga, group circle, shared meals and chores. Even with seven bathrooms in the house, there were busy periods with thirteen people trying to shower and brush their teeth, and sometimes the hot water ran out for those at the end of the line.

  That night, there were two visitors at the Sanctuary for dinner: Tommy, the mushroom grower from the farmers’ market, and a Brazilian girl named Cerise who worked at the hardware store in town. Cerise was petite with rosy cheeks, black hair cut in a straight bob and wore a small silver ring in her nose. She did not look like someone you would go to for advice on home repairs, but Micah and Jeremy raved about her knowledge of plumbing fittings and valves. The guests sat on either side of Micah at the dinner table, and as Cerise laughed and answered their questions about power tools, Sero found herself feeling particularly uncharitable.

  “Hey, Micah,�
� Justin asked at dinner. “What’s happening with the driveway, man? It looks like a construction site out there.” The front driveway was still dug up, necessitating all of them to park tandem in front of the garage instead of using the circular drive. A large pile of paver stones had accumulated on the front lawn, many of them now broken. Fortunately, the water in the house had not been affected since that first day they had shut it off to start digging. Sero had been hesitant to ask Micah about it, but Justin apparently wasn’t. “Seriously,” he continued, looking around the table, “when are those pipes going to be fixed? It’d be nice not to have to climb over that pile of rubble every day.” Micah stood up from the table to carry his plate to the kitchen and gave Justin a withering look that ended the conversation.

  40 | serotina

  APRIL 2015

  Serotina worked tirelessly on Greenfields through the spring. Another hundred pounds of product in the cycle would be ready for sale in a couple of months. “We should order the next batch of seedlings,” Sero told Micah one evening in bed. “Our mother plants aren’t big enough to generate their own yet.”

  “Okay, I’ll arrange it. Listen, Sero.” Micah propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her. “I think it’s time for you to stop working at NatMark. You’re much more valuable to us here, working on Greenfields full-time.”

  “What about my employee discount? That makes a big difference to our food costs, doesn’t it?” Sero had conflicting emotions about the idea. She liked getting out of the house, having some time away from the group. But she also liked feeling indispensable to Micah; she hoped he wanted her around more not just for Greenfields, but himself.

  “Well, pretty soon, we’ll be self-sufficient for food. And in the meantime, don’t worry about the groceries.” Micah leaned down to kiss her. “Anyone can do the shopping. We need you here. I need you.”