There was something different about her. She was too pleasant, too affable, to be real. She seemed to smile at everything. She laughed heartily at jokes to be sure and she brightened the dull prisonlike quality of the conference room just by entering it but that wasn't when you noticed her smile. In a nursing home there are sad moments. People die. It doesn't happen every day, not at a smaller place like the one I work in but still, people die. The first time I watched her greeting a family that had come in to move their mother out, that was what the staff called it, I watched her smile. She greeted them gently but with a furtive happiness that was undeniable. She discussed their mother as though they had been friends their whole life. I was in awe of her.
As fitness coordinator I was considered a director level manager and was required to hold monthly meetings. Most of the instructors and therapists that worked for me didn't work at the home full time. My meetings, if held in the conference room, would be just myself and whoever else had a class that morning. I moved my meetings to the Mexican restaurant across the street and scheduled them for Thursdays at six. I bought the first round of margaritas. Elena joined us for a meeting. She offered a few words of encouragement and then sat back down and watched with her usual elegance.
I covered what I needed to say and dismissed them. A couple of instructors, my friends in the group stayed around for another drink. It was not unusual for us to close the place down and have to call our husbands to come get us but with the Executive Director sitting there they left after one last Margarita. I figured to stay until Elena was ready to leave but she didn't seem in any sort of a hurry. The two of us sat there enjoying our salty sour cocktails discussing how she had ended up running a nursing home. I learned about her time in Tibet and India and the mountains of Peru. I learned she had Spanish and Indian heritage and when I avoided asking she explained that no, her family didn't come from Mexico, her family had never moved, America was the one that moved. It was so long ago she didn't think it was fair to Mexicans to claim Mexican heritage.
I wanted to know more but I didn't get the chance. "You know, at first I thought I was going to have to talk you into leaving. Perhaps I thought I might even fire you. I've seen you are work now. With the residents, with your staff, on a long day like today I see it begin to clear. I get the idea that there is something golden, maybe auburn beneath the darkness. Pardon me for asking, have you been cleansed recently?"
It was a lot to take in. Why was she going to make me quit? What had I done that she would fire me for? I suppose it was natural, being in the fitness world for as long as I had been, but I wondered what the hell drinking nothing but fruit juice for a week had to do with anything. I told her it had been a while but that I had done a cleanse last year. Lemonade and Chili Powder.
"No, love. A spiritual cleans. Dust the cobwebs off your karma. My first changed my life. Come, I can do one."
"What the fuck, sure." I said.
"Fucking A." she laughed back.
She lived across the street. We walked. The apartment complex was nice enough but nothing fancy, honestly I had expected a lot more. There were kids playing on a playground and several adults getting stoned in the spa. She inhaled deeply as we passed. "next time." She mumbled. Her unit was in a corner on the bottom floor. She welcomed me in then almost danced her way down a short hall to a bedroom. She said she would be right back and suggested I get undressed.
I didn't get undressed. I milled about her small home. She had catholic idols, runes, all sorts of little Buddha statues, golden monkeys made of painted ceramic and an immense painting of a dark skinned nude woman with broad hips and immense breasts. I was staring at it when she returned. She paused at the end of the hall. She had undressed herself and now wore only a sort of macramé tunic through which I could clearly make out the curves of the woman in the picture. "it was a pain to sit for but Carlo did his best to make it up to me. he was small though." She smiled broadly and wiggled her pinky finger at me. I needed to go, I told her. She ignored me and beckoned me to follow her.
I'd never been undressed by a woman. I didn't think of it as sexual but it wasn't platonic either. She was slow about it and diligent. I wasn't dressed up or anything. My T-shirt was oversized and came up over my head easily. My sports bra, a size too small had to be rolled up my ribs and tugged off my arms. Bare chested I stood paralyzed and she went to work rolling down my yoga pants. She was on her knees towards the end looking up at me. I had to look away but even after I did the image of the woman, so calm cool and in charge kneeling submissively at my feet troubled me.
"I shouldn't be here." I said.
"Lie down." She cooed. I did what I was told.
I've had massages before and so I set out to believe this was no different. It was true, I was on my back rather laid out on my belly and my breasts heaved with my breath and cool air tickled the tangle of fur between my thighs I couldn't have imagines needed to be groomed that day but really I was just laying in a dark room with candles flickering and gentle music, it was similar to music anyway playing in the background.
When Elena would lean forward, her large chestnut breasts swaying in my face barely contained by the thin weave of twine I just closed my eyes. She described to me that being on the floor was intentional. I needed to be grounded. In a perfect world I would be laying on bare earth or clay but that was dusty and the blankets and rugs laid out beneath me were more comfortable, in her mind anyway. She briefly described the Sahasrara as her fingers gently massaged my scalp and then the Ajna as she moved to my forehead. It was soothing. The tension slipped away. I let her voice drift into the background. I didn't fall to sleep though I could have if I let myself, but did allow a certain catatonia envelop me.
I wouldn't have imagined her fingers wrapped around my throat soothing but she had pulled oil from somewhere and smelled of jasmine and House Special Chicken. It was Vishudda she almost whispered to me and her fingers moved out to the muscles of my shoulders.
When I get a regular massage they torture my shoulders and upper back and even when done I can still feel the knots. As Elena's long fingers traced out my clavicle I discovered my back had relaxed and my shoulders had rolled back and the floor felt smoother, flatter, and more lovely than a floor should.
Anahata she said was deep inside the body. She hummed as she placed both of her hands over my heart. There was no way to directly sooth it. She coached me to breath and her hands gently traced my ribcage. I did not consciously recognize her hands cupping my breasts but I knew she was. I wasn't going to stop her. The anahata held my Dharma she told me. My nature was contained within my heart. She suggested I embrace it. My lips parted as I drew in a deep breath.
I raised my hands from the floor as she reached my belly. She paused to gently place them at my sides again. It was true, she said, the physical manifestation was important but not so important as people would have you believe. I was beautiful she told me. She said it was more than golden, it dazzled with color. I was an old soul she said and I realized she was speaking of my aura. She was weird but her hands were magical.
She told me of the tension I held in my Manipura and I can't recall really what she said to do with it. Her fingers had moved on. She had traced circles around my belly button and now ran her nails over the small mound dusted with blonde hairs that was my pubis. She described the Svadisthana and I found myself thinking about Steely Dan. She stopped whispering and went back to chanting.
She didn't touch me "there." But she may as well have. Her hands pressing down, her fingers tracing my pelvic bones triggered "there" as surely as if her fingers were between my thighs. I felt the build up in my legs and lower back. It was more indirect and I am sure more in my head than in my body but in the end, the result was the same. I felt the spring coil tighter and tighter until finally it released. I gasped for breath, uttered a mild oath and found myself feeling cheated. She should have kissed me after. Ty always kissed me after making me come like that.
