The Centre(53)

“What do you mean? How do I ‘integrate’ them?”

“There is a process. Everyone who we’ve shared this information with has undergone it.”

“Who else have you shared with?”

“We let very few people in. The staff know. And my father and his associates, too, obviously.”

“Okay,” I said. “Walk me through it then. I’m ready.”

“It’s not that easy,” she said. “The best way to describe it is a kind of self-ingestion.”

“Self-ingestion?”

“Yes. It can feel a bit like digesting one’s own self, really considering the body, becoming truly aware of it, starting with your little pinky toe and working your way up to your scalp. And then, understanding, within your being, what you have undergone. It already happens somewhat during the language course; that’s what the meditation sessions are about. But if you’re systematic and consistent with it, all kinds of other insights reveal themselves.”

She said that this would take time, and she could show me how to begin, but then I would need to continue by myself until, eventually, all would be clear. She said we could start right then, with the toes. And so, I followed her instructions. I took off my socks and lay on my back and pulled my right foot toward me, knee bent, hands wrapped around my sole. Next, she guided my breathing until it lengthened and deepened. Then, she directed me to consider my toes, to examine them, with curiosity and compassion.

“I feel strange about this,” I said, raising myself up on my elbows. “Why can’t you just tell me again?”

“Please, Anisa. Trust me. This is necessary.”

So I lay back down and tried again. It took some time; at first, I was restless and fidgety, but slowly, patiently, she redirected my attention again and again, until finally, I surrendered to the process.

I’d always hated my toes: they were short and stubby, pink and round, with bits of hair sprouting near their middles. In fact, I hated my feet altogether, although when I really considered them, I realized this hadn’t always been the case. I noticed, during my examination, a prominent mole on the outer side of my right foot. I hadn’t looked directly at it in ages, had practically forgotten that it existed. But someone had told me, when I was a child, that this mole was a sign that I would travel, and I remember staring at it then, on a cuter, smaller foot, and feeling excited for this gift foretold by my body. I wondered when this appendage had started seeming so grotesque to me.

I sat like this for a while, holding my toe, slowly removing the layers of other people’s gazes that had settled upon it. I found myself thinking of the way I looked at Billee, at his sweet whiskers and the little freckles from which they emerged, at his dab of a nose and the little M on his forehead that looked like someone had drawn a pair of ears there, and at his actual ears, soft and sharp and rotating independently from the rest of his face. When I looked at Billee, I saw perfection. His nose, to me, was a miracle. And now I tried to bring that same gaze to my feet. Sometimes I was successful in this endeavor, and in those moments, I marveled at the beauty and grace of this vehicle I had been given the privilege of inhabiting for my brief span of time on earth. And I thought of my father, and his obsession with the stars and planets, and how he would remind us sometimes of the strangeness of our blue dot, and I felt filled with love and gratitude. An hour passed this way. An hour of intimacy between my feet and me.

Shiba told me to continue this process over the coming days until I reached the top of my scalp and then beyond.

“What we are doing here,” she said to me, “I don’t think there is anything more important. You’ll see.”

I shared with her that during my process of self-ingestion, I had also felt, I thought, Peter’s feet, walking purposefully down a German sidewalk, and Anna’s, soft and achy, and, well, maybe even Anna’s daughters’ feet too, and beyond.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes shiny. “This is the magic of it. Their feet are your feet. This is what I was hoping you would see.”

“I’m still having his nightmares, you know. Peter’s.”

“It’s not just nightmares though, is it? Also nicer dreams. This is what happens when you have an intimate relationship with anyone. You partake of their lives. They change you. Sometimes the experience is pleasant, sometimes not. But who knows, maybe you learn and grow more from the unpleasant bits.”

It isn’t always easy to distinguish between the rush of excitement and the chill of fear, and my adoration of Shiba was not so oblivious that I didn’t consider the possibility that she had, well, practically hypnotized me, calmed me to the point where I didn’t feel the need to demand answers straightaway and had decided, instead, to go at her pace. But I allowed for that possibility and chose to walk toward her nonetheless. I had turned around enough times in my life, abandoning relationship after relationship at the first hurdle, to know that this time, I would find the strength to stay. And when I’d felt Peter’s and Anna’s toes within my own, well, I had sensed that they, too, wanted me to continue.

The next morning, back in my own flat, I lay on the living room carpet and devoured my ankles, spinning them around, flexing and stretching them. These ankles that had run across the sand of Defence Club playground, and that had twisted and swollen once when I’d tripped while walking down Willesden Green. These ankles that had been cradled in the hands of an old boyfriend on a sofa on a cold winter’s night. Every morning, in this way, I moved upward through my body. Sometimes, tears started to flow, and other times laughter would erupt. And occasionally, I drifted off, something in me resisting further exploration, but when that happened, I would call myself back. At times, I heard Anna’s voice beckoning me to continue my investigations within.