Margaret Karmazin

Margaret Karmazin's credits include over ninety stories published in literary and national magazines, including Rosebud, North Atlantic Review, Potomac Review, Confrontation, Virginia Adversaria, Mobius, Chiron Review and Aim Magazine. Her stories in The MacGuffin, Eureka Literary Magazine and Words of Wisdom were nominated for Pushcart awards and Piper's Ash, Ltd. published a chapbook of her sci-fi stories, COSMIC WOMEN. She helped write the introduction for and has a story included in STILL GOING STRONG (Haworth Press) and a novel, REPLACING FIONA, published by etreasurespublishing.com and available on online bookstores. One of her stories is included in TEN TWISTED TALES.

The Roof



It was a Friday, so automatically Jerry's stomach was a knot. Mick, his mother's boyfriend and drinking partner, arrived home anywhere between eight and eleven PM and that's when bedlam would begin - every week, like a loathsome TV rerun.

Rachel, Jerry's mother, came home from work, hauling a bag of groceries and a six pack of Ballantine. She unloaded the food, popped open the first beer and got supper going on the stove, the turned to cleaning up. By her third beer, she was running the sweeper, banging it into walls and furniture. When dinner was ready, she slopped it onto the plates.

"Get in here, you two!" she yelled and Jerry and his sister approached warily, fearing she might swing at them as they passed by her chair.

"That no good son of a bitch ain't here again!" she started.

The food stuck in the middle of Jerry's esophagus. Normally, he was hungry as hell and wolfed down anything, but he knew what was coming.

Karen, quiet, eyes on her plate, slowly and robotically shoveled in her food. Once Jerry thought he saw her hand shake.

"You kids clean up," Rachel ordered when they were through. She opened her fourth bottle and carried it to the living room, where she plopped onto the couch, propping her legs on the coffee table.

The legs were white with varicose veins. Jerry turned his face away.

Karen filled the dishpan and got the washing up underway. Jerry dried and wiped the table. The TV blared from the living room - canned laughter. It was now after seven. No sign of the asshole.

By nine, Rachel had grown testier. The fifth beer was gone and there was a dark light in her eye. She mumbled,"Son of a bitch, I cook his frickin' dinner and this is what I get? The bastard takes his frickin' paycheck and spends it all at the bar, forgets about me, forgets I work my ass off all week too and come home here and work what's left of it off cleaning up after all you like I'm everybody's slave?"

By the end of this, the mumble moved up to a yell. She stomped to the kitchen, banging into the door jamb, then whipped the refrigerator open so hard that something fell off a shelf. Jerry heard her open the bottle - swishhhhh! Then the gurgle of her gulping it down. That was number six and Rachel was not a large woman. She stumbled back to the living room and collapsed onto the sofa. In a moment, she was asleep, her mouth wide open, earth shattering snores issuing from its dark cavern.

She was forty-four, but looked ancient to him, her skin sallow and saggy.

Where had Karen gone?

He darted to the bottom of the stairs, paused, then took them two at a time. He found her in her room, white faced, sitting on her bed. A book was open on her lap, but she was not looking at it.

"She's out cold," he told her.

Karen sighed.

"I'll go get my homework," he said. His tone was listless.

She nodded, so he ran to his room and returned with his math and spelling books. She moved over to make room for him as he spread out his work on the bed.

"What time is it?" he asked.

She leaned back to check the small clock on her night stand. "Five after nine."

"Shit," he said. "Any time now."

His light brown hair shone from the overhead light. It hung in his face and he brushed it aside.

"You think we should put out the lights?" Karen asked. "Pretend to be asleep?"

"What difference does it make?" said Jerry.

He was remembering the Friday before. He'd gone to bed at ten and drifted into a jerky sleep, sensitive to any noise. Then, by some miracle, he'd fallen into deep sleep only to be snapped awake, heart pounding, as his bedroom door burst open and the overhead light flicked on. Mick stood there, red faced, veins standing out in his neck, a bull with steam shooting out his nostrils.

"What the fuck?" demanded the bull. "What the fuck you doin' in there? Get up, you lazy piece of shit and do some work around here!"

Jerry's heart thumped even worse as he scooted across the bed and cowered against the wall, using his blanket as a shield. Mick was at him in a second, slapping him around the head, yanking his arm and almost dislocating his shoulder, screaming in his face, spittle landing on Jerry's cheeks. He didn't dare move to wipe it off.

"Get up, you little piece of shit, and clean up the bathroom! All you kids do is make a mess, no good for nothing else! I work my ass off to feed you useless little shits!"

Jerry knew what he had to do, act small and keep quiet until the storm passed and hope that no serious damage was done.

But Mick tried to drag him from the bed, yelling like a lunatic.

"My foot's stuck in the sheet!" Jerry screamed.

Suddenly his mother appeared in the doorway. For a second, Jerry didn't recognize her. She looked slovenly, like some floozy woman he might see in a bar the times she or Mick sent him to pick up beer.

"What are you doing, Mick?" his mother shouted. "Leave him alone!"

Then she was on the man, clawing at him from behind, tearing at his hair, what hair he had. Jerry broke free and the pain in his ankle instantly subsided. He scrambled to disentangle the foot from the sheet, while the two adults struggled into the hall, knocking his football lamp onto the floor and smashing it to smithereens.

He'd felt a mindless urge to murder the man, to hit him with something hard or stab him in the back with a knife. Then suddenly, his throat thickened and a sob burst out. Son of a bitch, wasn't even part of their family and here he was taking over their lives, controlling them. Suddenly, he remembered his sister.

"Karen?" he called. No answer.

Rachel screamed and there was a barrage of thumps. It sounded like they were on the stairs. Jerry crept to the doorway, careful not to step on creaky floorboards. He knew where most of them were. He heard his mother yell from downstairs now, "You want to eat? Here's your dinner, you bastard. It's all dried up. The rest of us ate at a normal time like normal people!"

Jerry headed to Karen's room.

A thunderous crash ensued, then the shattering of dishes against a wall. "You expect me to eat this garbage!" bellowed Mick. "How hard is it to cook something decent? Like steak and mashed potatoes, not this Hunky crap!"

His mother screamed again.

Karen was nowhere to be seen, but Jerry had lifted her bedspread and peered under the bed. "Hey," he said. She was scrunched up on her side.

"Come on," he said. "We'll go out the window."

Without answering, she'd pulled herself out from under there and stood up. She was holding a black and white stuffed cow someone had given her. It had little pink horns.



Remembering this now, he figured why bother going to bed and be a sitting duck for Mick to burst in again? "Is your homework done?" he asked Karen.

"Half of it," she said.

"Then why wait for the prick to start? Isn't that his car now?"

They turned out the light and rushed to the window. "Yeah," said Karen, "that's him."

Checking the hall first to make sure his mother hadn't come upstairs, Jerry returned to the window and pushed it open. Karen climbed over the sill and out onto the roof. Jerry followed, pulling down the window behind him. The two children scrabbled sideways to prevent their heads being seen from inside Karen's room should anyone come looking for them.

"You okay?" he asked his sister.

"Yeah," she said.

It was pretty dark out, but the sky was clear and the stars visible.

"A starry sky," remarked Jerry.

"Yeah," said Karen, "maybe we'll see a UFO." She was quiet for a while, then said, "I wish we could get out of here."

"Either that or that bastard would leave," said Jerry.

There was a long silence, then Karen said, "How long's he been here? I forget."

Jerry calculated. "Eleven months, I think. Didn't he come before Thanksgiving? Remember that? He'd already been here some and then he threw that turkey out in the snow?"

"Oh, yeah," she said. "I remember now."

Her voice was forlorn. It grabbed at Jerry's heart.

"It's nice out here though, isn't it?" she said.

It was pleasant out, still warm for early October. A sweet breeze was dancing about, flipping leaves on branches. Jerry looked at the sky, hoping to see something. It was hard to concentrate due to the knot of rage in his stomach .

"The thing is," he suddenly said, "we shouldn't have to be out here. We should be inside like regular people, sleeping in our beds. Regular people don't have screaming morons smash into their bedrooms in the middle of the night." Just saying this got him so mad he felt out of breath.

"Marion doesn't have any of that stuff at her house," Karen said. "She has nice parents." Marion was her best girlfriend.

"I don't know anybody who does but us," said Jerry.

They sat in silence. Jerry looked over at her. It was one thing to feel sorry for himself, but another to feel it for her. A little girl, that's what she was, just a little girl, and shouldn't she have a different kind of mother? Not one who fell down and puked on the floor, not one who brought home a monster.

If only their dad hadn't died that way, that silly accident at the hospital. If only he'd stayed with them and not gone away wherever dead people supposedly go.

"Do you believe in heaven?" he asked Karen.

"I guess so," she said.

"Do you think Dad's there?"

"I don't know," she said. "What do you think?"

He looked back at the stars. "I know he wouldn't have wanted what's going on here. He would have kicked Mick's sorry ass in one second flat."

"Yeah," said Karen, and she laughed.

It was good to hear her laugh, though he felt he had to warn her to keep it down, just in case. Although by now, Mick was probably passed out on the sofa. In the morning, his mother would have a black eye or bruised arm. He didn't care. The way he felt, he'd have liked to slap her around himself.

"She's stupid, isn't she?" he suddenly said.

Karen knew who he meant. "Yeah," she said. "You gotta be pretty stupid to pick a man like that. When I grow up...." she began, then stopped.

"What?" he prompted.

"When I grow up, I'm never going to have a man boss me around. I'm going to be the boss or I'm not having one at all."

Jerry considered this. "What if you got a husband who's nice? One who never drinks and never hits you? One who buys you nice things and comes home on time for dinner. What then?"

She turned to him and he saw that her eyes were steely. "I am always going to be the boss," she said.

Though he wasn't sure he'd like that in a woman if he ever got married himself, he liked it in his sister. He understood.

"What I want," he said," is a peaceful house. When I grow up, whether I get married or not, my house is going to be peaceful. No screaming or hitting, none of that. That's lowlife stuff and I'm not having it."

Just then, Jerry saw something streak across the sky. He pointed to it. "Did you see that?"

"I saw it," she said. "Doesn't that means good luck?"

"Yeah, maybe we'll get lucky and Mick'll walk in front of a truck."

She laughed. "I wish we had a Pepsi," she said.

"Me too," said Jerry, but really he didn't care.






Wisdom





Claire watched the yoga teacher with a critical eye as he instructed her on which supplements to take for the mild pain in her knee. While she smiled and nodded with appropriate sociability, her mind was coldly analyzing the man.

Tall and ectomorphic with a sharp edged, Scottish face, he wore his pale yellow hair in a ponytail, a style Claire associated with self-righteous, herbivorous hippies. She had once taken the liberty of feeling the teacher's ponytail when discussing with him the sterling hair clip he now wore. The hair was like corn silk and pleasing to touch.

"You need chondroitin and glucosamine," he was saying. "And of course MSM and oil of evening primrose."

"Mmmmmm," she said, nodding. Pointless to interject that she'd been taking those particular supplements for two years and numerous others for twenty, subscribed to nutritional magazines and read medical web sites almost daily. This very pose of the all knowing teacher was what had grown to utterly annoy her.

Where is his wife, she wondered. They were standing in an aisle of the video store where she had rather unfortunately run into him. He was rarely without his spouse, a quiet little woman who apparently never went anywhere on her own. Lisa did not drive and seemed to have no girlfriends. Who, Claire wondered, did she talk to? Though Claire adored her own husband, there were times when she simply craved female conversation. Was Lisa a Stepford wife? Or maybe terrified of letting her husband out of her sight?

She could have asked the teacher where Lisa was, but did not want to prolong the conversation, if it could be called that. Within any moment of contact with the man, it seemed that all dialogue turned into pedagogy on his part. From yoga, his range of tutelage had expanded to spiritual wisdom, nutrition, Ayurvedic medicine, exercise in general and psychology. He had become, in only a matter of three years, an expert on everything esoteric and medical.

"Well, good seeing you," she said quickly. "I gotta run. Hope your back heals. And your wrist." She said this last with a slightly uncharitable inner satisfaction. After all, if he knew how to manage his prana so perfectly, why was he having so many physical problems? And why wasn't that glucosamine/chondroitin/MSM/evening primrose oil working for him?

He gave her the faintly shifty, grieved look she was used to by now, one which reminded her of a Jesus gone slightly perverse, asking with his eyes, "Why has thou forsaken me, oh beloved disciple?" but she managed to escape.

She was controlled as she finished up in the store and climbed into her car, but once she had pulled out of the parking lot, her eyes filled with tears. Her emotion was an even mix of rage and sorrow over another venture gone sour.

Of course it was just a yoga class, a small one in Minnesota, one of thousands in the world. But it was more than that. To Claire, the class had grown to represent another example of her tendency to self-destruction, her inability to get along in a group and worse, more illustrations of human egos and mean streaks.

The formation of the class had been propitious, since Claire had been tossing the idea around of learning yoga. Having turned fifty, she'd decided it was time to acquire a form of exercise that could see her into old age and possibly limber up her stiffening joints. So when a friend mentioned that a person she already knew vaguely was starting a class nearby and that the class would be free, she leaped at the chance.

The teacher was Perry Gulden. He had studied yoga for several years in Wisconsin where he and his wife had grown up. Perry frequently quoted his old teacher, Dada Agra, a man he revered, who supposedly could raise his body temperature two degrees just by breathing and had once even levitated. Claire firmly doubted the levitation bit, having recently watched a show on Discovery in which a skeptic searched the world over for yogis who could levitate and only found people who bounced themselves on thick floor mats.

Yet, apparently all in the yoga class save Claire believed the teacher's levitation stories and nodded with respect. She would frequently sit there with her earnest classmates, a wolf among sheep, questioning to herself things the teacher said. She had become something of a pariah for her refusal to go along with everything, yet when she had begun the class, she'd been joyful and enthusiastic.

Over the three years, she had still occasionally enjoyed feelings of gratitude and, because the teacher did not charge, gave him gifts. She made him three paintings, all of subjects relating to yoga, bought Lisa gifts for the home, contributed to collections to buy them larger presents and, with her husband, took them out to dinner.

Perry was charismatic, not handsome, but attractive to women in some subtle way. While he didn't ring Claire's sexual bells, she had at first enjoyed being near him and engaging in conversation. He touched people frequently and she liked this, his touch being light and inoffensive, friendly and not erotic. He cut a neat figure with his slender physique and shiny blond hair. Lisa was not as physically attractive as Perry and did not try to remedy this. She pinned her brown hair in a loose bun and wore no make up or jewelry. She basically stood aside, as if waiting in the wings to serve.

The ages of the students ranged from forty to seventy. There were six men and up to twelve women. Everyone, as far as she knew, was politically liberal, which suited her. Since 9/11, she had felt that she was living in a world divided in two: people who blindly wanted revenge and those who were reasonable and wanted to hold back. The class was filled with the latter. A peaceful group, she had thought.

"We'll begin with some simple breathing," said the teacher. He started them off with easy poses such as The Cat, which he made a point of using the Sanskrit words for, in this case Viralasana. He had them do neck and wrist releases and a modified Downward Facing Dog, which most in the class could not do at first. Then they concentrated on warrior poses, which Claire liked. Afterwards, she felt good.

"I think I'm already more flexible," she told Roger, her good friend in the class.

"Me too," he laughed. "I feel very bendy."

For several months, the classes were quite satisfying. In each, they spent a good solid hour on the poses, carefully adding more difficult ones as time passed. Claire could now sit in half Lotus Position without discomfort, do the Double Leg Forward Stretch easily and almost fold her hands in a prayer position behind her back.

It was easy to see that Perry greatly enjoyed demonstrating more complicated postures, ones the class could not do. He executed these in the center of the room, while they stood around and watched. At first, Claire found this fascinating, but it soon began to pall. There was something about repeatedly showing them postures they couldn't possibly perform yet that irritated her. It began to appear to Claire as unnecessary showing off on the teacher's part. He wore a particular expression on his face when performing certain of the poses that caused her insides to curdle.

Claire's class, the Wednesday afternoon session, met in an old school house owned by one of the students. Many of the students in her class also attended Perry's Monday class, which he held somewhere else. These were the more serious students, she supposed. Or perhaps people with less to do in their lives. She discussed this with Roger.

"I just don't have time to give more than one day a week," she said. "I mean, I do practice at home, but there's a difference between taking a half hour to do that and going to class, which turns into half the day."

"I agree," said Roger, who was a plump cardiac nurse. "I feel totally rushed trying to get everything done. I'm sensing though, a mild cloud of disapproval floating our way because we don't participate in both classes."

"Yes, I feel like we're outcasts because of it," said Claire. She was joking, but not quite.

"I mean I only signed up for this because Gary implied I was fat," he said petulantly, referring to his fastidious partner. "I don't need to be ostracized!"

Perry had tee-shirts designed for the classes. A businesslike student took orders. The shirts were attractive and sported the teacher's logo: Pradnesh Yoga written in Sanskrit looking letters. Pradnesh was the Indian name given to him by his former teacher, which meant "Lord of Wisdom."

Though some of the women had bought themselves pretty yoga outfits, now everyone came to class wearing their Pradnesh tee-shirts. Claire noticed that the teacher was pleased, but she felt a mild disturbance, a sensation of having been herded into a more obedient flock. Some hidden teenage part of her reared its sullen, smart-ass head and every so often, she wore something other than the Pradnesh shirt. This would usually be black, as befits teenage rebellion. She didn't know if she imagined it or if she had indeed caught the teacher observing her and wondering why she did not wear her Pradnesh shirt every time.

He took to beginning the class with everyone sitting cross legged in a circle. A volunteer read from the Bhagavad Gita. Soon, books on Taoism and Buddhism were added and someone read from each. Then students would comment on what they had read and Perry would make what he considered to be profound, wise observations that to Claire seemed simple minded. She was beginning to chafe at this, especially since she did not enjoy sitting still for long periods of time. Moreover, she noticed that this spiritual "instruction" on the part of the teacher was eating into yoga time and, as seemed to happen in any group situation, no one appeared interested in what she had to say.

"I have never understood this," she complained to her husband later. "There is always someone in a group of this sort who says nothing particularly original, yet once they begin to speak, everyone goes silent and listens. Yet, if I open my mouth, someone talks right over me. Do I mumble, Sam? Do I say stupid things?"

Should she manage to get a word in edgewise, that word was invariably wrong. No one would say right out, "What you just said was wrong," but one woman in particular, Susan, would invariably put down or correct Claire's comment.

"I am certain," she told Sam, "that if I were to memorize quotes from those books, they would still insinuate that I'm wrong."

"Well, face it then," he joked, "you're just wrong, no matter what you do. Just flow with it."

But she didn't find that as amusing as he had intended. Oh, she wished she could be as easygoing as her husband, a man who never seemed to let anything bother him, but she just wasn't. She had always felt everything deeply. Real or imagined insult or disinterest cut into her like a laser.

Some of the group went out for snacks after class or she and her husband would join a few for dinner out. Occasionally, at one of these events, she would find herself having a private conversation with the teacher. There was something sly and insinuating about him as he tried to worm out of her why she did not also attend his other class and why she refused to take part in something he had recently added, a half hour of Bikram yoga before their regular Hatha practice began. For Bikram yoga, they had to turn up the heat in the room to an uncomfortable eighty degrees, and though afterwards, they lowered it, it never returned to normal.

"I don't come for Bikram," she attempted to explain to Perry, "because I have low blood pressure, and performing that kind of yoga, especially in a hot room, makes me feel weak and sick. My blood sugar drops too. There is something about it that doesn't feel right for my particular energy." She did not add that regular, peaceful Hatha yoga was what she had signed up for in the first place and she resented the hell out of being pushed to add more.

"But doing Bikram would help you with your weight problem," he insisted. "And actually, Bikram is very peaceful."

Weight problem? She was only ten pounds overweight! "I know myself," she said, ignoring his tactless remark. "And I don't like the feeling that doing Bikram gives me." She wanted to add, why, if you are promoting knowing oneself and listening to one's inner energy, do you then try to convince me to ignore mine? But she did not.

"You know," said the teacher, "if you were to come on Mondays too, it would help with your anger feelings. The more practice the better. And I must stress again that you should really be meditating." She hated when he took that know-it-all tone.

"I only have time to give one afternoon a week to yoga class," she tried to explain, not for the first time. "I have several creative projects going at once, one of which is preparing for a show. I have a husband and house to take care of, errands to run. I work out every morning, doing routines I've enjoyed for years, including yoga now, and I need time to spend with friends. So there just is no more to give." She did not say that while yoga was apparently Perry's entire life, it was not hers. And as for meditating, she had tried it a hundred times and found it tedious.

Perry shook his head sadly. "I think you're missing out on things that would improve your life," he said. She wanted to punch him, a not very peaceful thing to do.

"Is it me," she snapped at Roger, "or do you notice a change in Perry? I can't put my finger on it, but it seems to me as if he wants to control more than just yoga class."

"I've noticed he's becoming a bit guruish, but I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt," said Roger.

Claire wished that she were as generous of nature as her friend. Instead, she was a skeptical person and in the past, her negative suspicions had more often than not turned out to be forebodings of truth. Since reading a book about quantum theory, she wondered if perhaps her own expectations were creating this sort of reality, but if they were, she did not know how to stop them. If she did manage to change her view of things, would people suddenly prove to be understanding and sane?

"Have you also noticed that he is no longer friend material, but has assumed a sort of kingly social position? He and Lisa used to meet us for dinner occasionally but now one is summoned to their home for events and holidays. And there seems to be a favored clique, which I am not in."

"I really don't mind being invited," said Roger. "After all the cooking I do for Gary , I enjoy letting someone else feed me. I have noticed the clique, by the way, the inner circle."

"Now it's every holiday," said Claire. "You can't make plans until you know for sure if you've been chosen to be summoned to the palace. I can't stand it. And then when you're there, everyone tiptoes around as if they're visiting a holy place. Why? No one tiptoes around at our house! Am I just jealous?"

"I think it's mostly Susan doing that," said Roger. "She seems to be obsessed."

He had a point. Susan, a woman in her early sixties, had become fixated on Perry. She spoke about him as if he were Paramahansa Yogananda. When she attended the occasional dinner at his house, she brought dishes that resembled flower arrangements and almost whispered in reverence. Perry, to add to the temple-like atmosphere at these events, dressed in gold edged, silk Indian outfits.

"I'm surprised she doesn't decorate him with garlands of flowers," said Claire.

"Or that he doesn't ride in on an elephant," said Roger.

"Do you think she is trying to distract herself?"

"You mean from the cancer thing?" asked Roger. Susan's husband was undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma.

"It's possible," said Claire. "If that's the case, I do feel sympathy for her. But her behavior is just feeding into Perry's vastly enlarging view of himself."

Perry stepped up his demonstrations of extreme poses. He would stand on one hand, his legs wound through his arms in Eight Bend Balance or do One Legged Sage Balance, or his absolute favorite, Abdominal Churning. For this, he would remove his shirt, bend over with hands on spread thighs and suck his stomach up into his chest. It was a frightening but impressive sight.

"Just watch now," he would say. For Claire, a person who learned by physically doing, this was useless. It was all she could do to refrain from openly rolling her eyes.

She checked with Sam, Roger, and other friends. She knew that possibly she was boring them silly, but she was becoming obsessed. "The thing is," she said, "out of the hour and a half we have for class, now fifteen minutes are gone because of Bikram running late, then Perry makes us do the circle while he instructs us as if we have never heard of Eastern philosophies before and all that takes a good half hour. Then he goes off on a long, show-offy demonstration, and that leaves us about a half hour for yoga. We've been doing this for three years and have sort of stopped progressing! You notice that every class now, we just repeat the same few poses."

Roger nodded. "Maybe he subconsciously wants to keep us from developing so that we need to keep coming back?"

"I don't know," said Claire, "but it pisses me off."

By now, it was becoming clear that Perry might be resenting Claire's sullen attitude and refusal to toe the party line. It was halfway through class and he was doing a lesson on the forward bend. "How about a volunteer?" he suggested. "Someone to demonstrate while I explain?"

In a reckless mood, Claire shot her hand up.

"Claire!" the teacher said, almost gleefully. "Step right up."

The forward bend had been easy for Claire from the start, so as he spoke, she lowered her torso into it and placed her hands flat on the floor.

When she had finished, he smiled and said, "Very nice. See class, even the lowest can teach us!"

The LOWEST? The word sliced into her. She glanced around to see if anyone had reacted to what he had said. Had she imagined it? No.

A scene from long ago flashed through her mind. She was three or four and had locked herself into her grandmother's bathroom. Several aunts and their kids were there, including her cousin Julie. Julie was a year younger than Claire, tiny and fairy-like, with fluffy blond hair that caught the light. Claire, a stocky little girl, had been hiding in the bathroom nursing a hard mass of hurt lodged in her chest. What had set her off, Claire had since forgotten, but she remembered the exact flavor of the suffering. It had to do with the fact that she felt no one protected her, that no one stood up for her rights. She'd watched grownups comfort other little girls when hurt and protect them as if they were treasured little princesses, but no one ever did that for her. That particular time, someone had hurt her and as usual, her mother had sloughed it off in her mildly scornful way. It was as if Claire were not someone to love and value, not a person with real feelings, or if she was, those feelings did not matter. It did not matter if people, if anyone, hurt her. In addition, it seemed that anything treasured little princesses did, even to just standing there looking cute, brought ooos and ahs, while Claire could probably sing an opera and no one would care.

So Claire refused to unlock the door and would not let her cousin in, even though Grandma and aunts pounded and pleaded. They were not begging for her, but for Julie who had to use the toilet. Remaining stone silent, Claire stayed locked in there, long after the begging had stopped and she could hear the birds singing through the window.

It wasn't until years later that she learned her father had cruelly, physically abused her and that no one in the family, including her mother, had done a thing to stop it.

Ever since, it had seemed that people thought they could say mean things to her that they'd never dream of saying to anyone else, because she had no feelings that mattered.

When she asked Roger about the "lowest" remark, he seemed not to have heard it.

"How could you have missed it?" insisted Claire. "He said it clear as day! What the hell did he mean? I am hardly the worst in the class. Look at Marian and Bill! They're nice people, but they're stiff as wood! And Gretchen - she can hardly do a side twist and Diane is lucky if she can get down on the floor! I don't claim to be in the top of the class, but would put myself safely in the middle!"

Her distaste for Perry now grew to outright contempt. Still, she wanted yoga, so she continued to attend the class.

Then, the teacher became disabled. Claire was at first surprised when she heard about it.

She telephoned Roger. "What exactly is wrong with him?" she asked.

"Apparently, he has back problems. Also his wrists and hips are hurting him. He seems to be falling apart. Maybe it's some kind of sudden onset arthritis or something worse."

Claire's immediate thoughts were uncharitable. She wondered if she was just not a nice person. Oh, she had done the occasional kind and unselfish act, but when it came to Perry and this class, she seemed to herself to be without mercy. Or was it that there was no barrier between her conscious and subconscious? That the demons other people kept hidden behind that door, in her mind were free to flow forth? She had observed people who believed themselves benevolent, but whose subconscious leaked malice all over the place. Was it preferable to not know you were unkind or better to be aware of it?

Whatever the case, she noted yet again that in spite of the teacher's self-appointed superiority on exercise and prana balance, his body was not healthy. But of course she did not immediately share these reflections with her friend. "That's too bad," she said insincerely. "So, what's he going to do?"

"There's talk of his having an operation."

"What about our classes?"

"I guess we'll be practicing without him," said Roger.

Practicing without him seemed to sadden some of the others, but not Claire. It was a relief not to have him there making her feel inherently wrong. Wrong because she did not take Bikram, wrong because she did not attend Monday's class, wrong because she did not see him as her spiritual guru, wrong because she did not kiss his ass. It was a delight to just practice yoga quietly in a group instead of wasting time watching him pose, a pleasure to have the two most advanced students carefully teach them a few new poses.

Susan, however, wore the expression of an overzealous funeral director. "Perry is seeing a specialist on the fourteenth," she reported in somber tones. He and Lisa can use any help anyone wants to offer. They need a ride to the doctor and Lisa needs help getting to the grocery store."

Susan went on, "There's a really beautiful Indian bowl I found in a catalog that Perry would love. It's three hundred dollars, which is a good deal. I'm taking up a collection."

Claire had to keep herself from groaning. But this was only the beginning. It went on for months - the teacher's condition referred to in sepulchral tones, Susan and another couple volunteering to drive and do yard work, cooking and gifts, a constant flow of energy towards the teacher's house. He lounged on the sofa while his wife ran herself ragged and a few adoring students surrounded him. While he was out of commission, other people in the classes went into hospital and out, got sick, had joint pains of their own and various other personal incidents, but no comments, well wishes or cards ever issued from Perry to them. All energy flowed in his direction.

Claire's heart grew colder still. "Clearly," she told her husband, "Perry goes along with Susan's assessment, that he is indeed a guru and above us all."

"I'm surprised," said her husband. "I liked him at first. But that said, I don't know why you let him bother you so much. I don't think he is trying to be obnoxious or cruel."

"No, I agree. But somehow this is tapping into all my insecurities. To see someone revered who does not deserve it and at the same time to feel dismissed myself by this person and by others in the inner circle, well, it brings out the worst in me."

"Well, they're fools," said Sam. "I revere you!"

"And I you. But I am becoming deranged over this yoga class."

The teacher, now recovering, attended an occasional class. Susan, more enthralled than ever, announced that she was collecting four hundred dollars, this time for a recorder that Perry could wear around his waist. "You know how important he is to us, how much he means to us," she said tremulously. "If he wears this, as he goes about his day, he can record his thoughts for us. That way we can all have him with us whenever we need to."

Outraged, Claire rushed home to call up Roger who had not attended that day. "Apparently," she said, "Perry has become a National Treasure. Somehow, he has progressed from being a simple yoga teacher on up to an ascended master and we need to absorb his utterings of wisdom!"

"Surely," said Roger, "he won't go along with this. Surely, he'll nip this one in the bud."

"Oh, no, my friend, it turns out that he is donating to the cause himself."

"Oh," said Roger. "Oh, my."

"You know," said Claire, "I have become as obsessed as Susan. I've let all of this drive me insane. Admit it, I've become insane in my contempt for Perry!"

"I think," said Roger, "that Perry pulls your strings. He has turned into something of an ass, but it bothers you more than it does anyone else. Why don't you just quit? You already do yoga at home."

"I don't know. Maybe I'd miss the social interaction?"

"What social interaction? The little that there is drives you bonkers! I think you're just making an excuse."

Claire was silent, thinking.

"Are you mad?" asked Roger.

"Um, no," she said, distracted. "I need to think. It's so easy to see into other people's issues, but to see into one's own..."

"I know," said Roger. "Oh, I know only too well, honey." He was a good friend.

"The thing is," he went on, "you seem to have this belief down inside that you're unworthy. You think you don't have the right to not like something or to decide for yourself that it's not for you anymore. So you sort of pump up the flaws of what you don't like, get really enraged at it, to try and convince yourself that you have the right to let go of it. Other people who don't have these hang-ups just quietly leave and don't look back."

After a moment of silence, she said, "That is exactly how I operate. You hit it right on the head! You're a genius."

"I know," he said smugly. She could imagine him at the other end of the phone, standing at his kitchen counter chopping veggies for dinner, looking pleased.

"Thank you," she said.

She thought about Roger's assessment and about how utterly out of place she now felt in the class. The week before, Susan's friend Lisa would not even look in her direction. Was it because she had not contributed to the four hundred dollar recorder fund?

The next Wednesday, Claire did not attend class. She went once more the week after that, then did not return. "I have the right," she kept telling herself.

One day, while perusing geraniums at the local garden center, she ran into Perry. She could see Lisa meandering through the azaleas. He looked happy to see her.

"Claire!" he said. "We've missed you at yoga."

"How are you?" she asked, bypassing his comment. She felt uncomfortable, possibly on the edge of panic and wanted to escape.

"I wish you'd come back," he said, not to be deterred. "You know that if you stay away too long, you'll be right back where you were. You know how important the practice of yoga is to dealing with your anger issues and prana balance. Besides," he chuckled, "I need you in the group. What would I do without Claire in the group?" His voice had that cloying, insinuative quality that had come to send chills down her back.

I have a right, she thought. She swallowed, took a deep breath and said, "I'm not comfortable in the class anymore, Perry. I prefer to do yoga on my own. At my convenience."

Her tone was so firm that for once the teacher hesitated before pressing her. "Okay. I just think you should realize that working by yourself you'll lose all the benefit of the group and probably fall behind. But if you change your mind, we'll welcome you back."

"Thank you," she said. "That's nice of you." Then, picking out two red geraniums, she smiled and walked away.