The Turtle that Turned into a Little Girl

"The Turtle That Turned into A Little Girl"

By Christine Stoddard

The fact that the Egyptians worshipped them is irrelevant: Buddhists insist that cats do not go to Heaven, let alone rule over it as gods. Or perhaps I am confusing my religions, philosophies, ways of life, "however you want to describe each culture's hodgepodge of myths and rhymes contorted to fit reason," as my college Theology professor once blathered. Buddhists do not envision Heaven in the Christian sense, they prefer--why is that cat sniffing that log? I pause, afraid that it's discovered a dead thing. At first, I do not understand why the cat is lurking around in the garden at all. I thought I read in one of those magazine "Did you know?" lists that they were sacrilegious. What it is doing? Is it hunting? Buddhist cats should be vegetarian cats, especially if they live off of the generosity of Japanese monks. I step closer to the short-haired feline, but that one step proves fatal. The cat immediately darts off into a nearby hedge, concealed from my Western eyes. Now I can inspect its finding. I close my Nicole Miller umbrella, shake it only to wonder what difference it will make whether it is wet or not as I use its tip to poke and prod. The umbrella flips over a palm frond and I sigh. An empty turtle shells lies in the stinky mud, the inhabitant long gone.

I squat like I'd seen nimble Asian women do by the roadside as they sift through sweet grass for fallen acorns to grind into flour. Flecks of gold and deep brown mark the shell, the first I have ever seen outside of a nature center. It tells a thousand stories, none I comprehend. A couple of seconds later, I grow restless with my sighting and stand up. My lavender skirt suit is crumpled in all of the wrong places, not that it should be crumpled at all. My mother, the grand-daughter of a seamstress, would be so disappointed. I purse my lips for a second but ignore my annoyance. I can have the suit pressed again tomorrow. I continue walking through the lotus scented garden. The scent is not quite as pure as I had imagined. I suspect that the blaring train has distracted my nose. Somehow a single train in the lonely countryside sounds louder than all the construction work and road congestion roaring in the city. If cats don't belong in a Buddhist monastery, steam engines certainly don't either. Thanks to Andrew Carnegie, few icons better represent the greed of capitalism. Immediately after I think that, I laugh nervously to myself. No matter how much I wish to convince myself otherwise, I still hold an M.B.A. and not an M.A. in Literary Theory. I bend down to waft the lotus stench into my expectant nostrils, but it doesn't help me smell the flower any better. Mostly I smell my Tender Poison. Obviously Dior was not intended for a summer's day amongst holy plants and ceramic Gautamas.

At least I don't have to smell the water in order to enjoy it. I walk over to a bright orange overlook and sit down on a similarly painted bench to admire the pond overflowing with lily pads. It stretches out into a broad ellipse where clusters of algae blooms float over koi kingdoms. Every now and then I catch glimpse of a scaled tail slithering beneath the ripples caused by dancing dragonflies. When I see a turtle pop up onto a thick log, my mind flashes back to what the cat found. Wouldn't it be strange if the turtle had reincarnated into the very cat that discovered its shell? If I'm going to entertain metaphysical thoughts, then--

I hear someone behind me. I whip around, startled. It's a monk, a white man dressed in burnt orange robes and Teevas. He wears smart glasses that frame his blue eyes. The man sits down, his robe nearly blending into the wooden bench underneath him so that his head almost seems to float. His furry hands clasp a clear bag but before I can determine the bag's contents, two Japanese girls suddenly run up to him, giggling. He clasps their tiny hands, so sallow against his ruddy red skin. Words I cannot decipher spill out of the children's purplish lips. The man nods for a moment, pensively absorbed. The girls tug on his robes until he finally says what I assume is "No." The children lose their smiles and droop like the odd wilted lotuses in the garden. They sit next to the man, one on either side of his much larger body. Their waists are about the same size as his thighs. The man mutters something and the girls outstretch their hands. Then he digs his paw into the clear bag and drops several Cheerios into girls' palms. Cheerful again, the girls toss the Cheerios into the water and laugh. My gaze follows their stubby, pointing fingers. Blue gills, sunfish, koi, and turtles have all emerged to swallow the bland cereal. As the children throw out more, the number of hungry, aquatic creatures multiplies. Fish lips form a perfect "O" as they suck individual Cheerios into their piscine mouths. I glance up from the newly formed islands of turtle shells and notice that the monk's previously stony face has broken into a kind smile. Wrinkles line his skin the way the carps' scales structure their coats of iridescent chips in ivory and apricot patterns.

But I am not as discreet as I thought. The monk turns to me and asks, in the heaviest South Dakotan accent I've heard since Fargo, whether I'd like to feed the fish. When he pronounce the word "fish," I cringe, not because of his accent, but because the word suddenly seems brusque for such beautiful animals. Even in their frenzy to fill their stomachs, the koi remind me of graceful birds trapped beneath the green water. Their fins are wings and their scales are the feathers of ancient folklore, where birds are plated in real gold and silver because the gods willed it.

I thank the man as I simply take the bag. Then I scoop out some Cheerios and pelt the pond's glass surface with them. A turtle the size of my first thrusts from the black depths of the water and viciously seizes two Cheerios simultaneously. I blink and the turtle has already disappeared to his duckweed lair. Most of the other Cheerios I threw are gone, too. It's like Black Friday at the mall.

"How did you find out they liked Cheerios?" I finally ask the monk. By that point, I have already tossed four heaping handfuls of cereal into the water.

The monk grins and replies, "I used to bring stale bread, whatever the other monks and I hadn't finished that week. I figured at least the birds would eat it, but the fish always liked it better. One week, though, we had finished all of the bread. All we had left was, well, a box of old Cheerios in the back of some cabinet. So I grabbed the box and came here. As soon as I threw some out, the fish and turtles gobbled it up. Turns out they like Cheerios better than bread, but that kind of information would put pet stores out of business."

'Out of business' is a phrase that makes me shudder. I murmur a polite, "Oh," and roll the bag up to return it to the monk. He takes it, then strokes one of the little girls' glossy hair. Both of the children wear plain bowl cuts and matching pink sandals with lace-trimmed socks. If it were not for the extraordinary light shining in their faces, I might have mistaken them for dolls. They are too lovely and serve as a reminder of the daughters I could still have.

A balmy breeze sweeps by and rustles the monk's robes. The orange cloth seems to engulf the girls in epic flames as they fly back and forth. The breeze's delicacy amplifies the monk's hugeness and roughness as he sits so still. Not a single hair on his head moves, as if each strand is made of steel. I suffer this striking creative impulse. I just have to take a photograph of them but the only camera I have is on my cell phone. I might as well feel the urge to write a novel and type out a text message to tame the desire. The monk's hand drops from the girl's head and rests in his large lap.

"Do you come here often?" He asks, shattering the silence that managed to grow beneath the breeze. The man's question sounds like a bad pick-up line, but I snap the connection in half. He's a monk, I tell myself.

"No, not really, only every now and then. It's too far from the city."

"You live there then?"

"No, but in an immediate suburb."

"Alexandria?"

"No, Arlington."

"Where the cemetery is."

I suddenly shiver at the reference. I had never identified my home county that way before. Yet now an image of 300, 000 graves flashes in mind over and over like a crude Eisenstein scene. Leave it to a monk to reflect upon death. After letting too long of a pause linger, I say, "Yes. My apartment is less than a five minute drive from there."

The girls, who I only just noticed appear to be identical twins save for a height difference of about four inches, pat the Cheerios bag impatiently. The man releases it from his clutches and then sighs, "My wife lived there for a year during high school as a foreign exchange student."

I perk up. A certain word piqued my interest. "You have a wife?"

"I had a wife," he murmurs after clearing his throat, "A beautiful wife."

I picture him embracing a lithe geisha with azaleas in her pinned up hair. Powder shrouds her, even the tops of her pixieish fingers. She resembles one of the dolls nestled amongst ferns in the garden. In a fairytale-like venture, the monk rescued her from the whorehouse, they wedded in the Japanese mountains, they--

"She died twenty-one years ago. Cancer."

"I'm sorry." I'm not sure if I really mean it and then, amiss, I whisper, "I didn't know monks could marry."

The girls place the Cheerios bag on the orange floorboards before scurrying off into the garden. This time the monk does not stop them. In the background, I hear them shrieking the way happy children do.

"Certain monks can, depending on the type of Buddhist, which country. Japanese monks may marry. It's one of Buddhism's lesser-known facts. Well, lesser-known to outsiders I suppose." He crushes a Cheerio between his fingers. "Are you Buddhist?"

[Read the rest of the story here.]