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"81 Buddhas" by Jay McKenzie



CW: Abortion



Mornings here are shrouded in mist. It is a soft, golden mist: too cool for Southeast Asia, too hot for the countries kneeling to the Himalayas. The interior teak walls groan, reluctantly awakening from slumber, much like myself. Outside, the improbable city rises from the dust; umber and xanthous and sandy. 


After a quick breakfast alone watching groups and couples plan their day over limp toast and congealed egg, I shrug on a light cardigan, wrap a bandana around my head, and grab the bike from outside. 


It’s a rusty old thing, chalky-mint paint peeling from the skeleton. But I paid $2.50 for five days' rent, so I’m not complaining. It has a decent sized basket so I can tuck my daily supplies in it: water, a couple of apples, Lonely Planet. It has no brakes though, so stopping involves either dwindling to a halt or jumping off the seat to plant my feet in the dusty earth. 


           Today, I have no particular destination in mind: I plan to listen to my instincts, to change my usual frenetic pace. 


To become a human being, not a human doing. 

#


It was not my intention to skulk around Old Bagan to ask the forgiveness of eighty-one dead-eyed stone Buddhas, but here I am, ten in, committed. 


Kneeling at the feet of number eleven, I marvel at my absurdity. I’m not a Buddhist, or even religiously inclined, but I am riding the swells of grief which are drenching me in a feverish madness. 


At least I know that I am mad. 


I am many things but deluded, I am not. 


         "Hello Buddha," I say. This is a small temple and I'm alone, boxed in by stone walls, cold statues. Outside, a hump-backed cow sits sentry by the door: rural security at its finest. 

            

I rest a hand on Buddha's knee, close my eyes. 


            "Forgive me. I have fucked up splendidly."


            It is unrehearsed: I say whatever is bubbling up when I get to each one, and in these silent chambers, self-consciousness stays outside with my protective cow. 


          When I've lingered long enough at this one, I open my eyes, stand, thank him. 


#


They made me pay upfront. I peeled the wad of notes from my wallet, trying not to baulk at the price. The monetary one, anyway. I tried to keep my mouth closed so the frowny receptionists wouldn't notice my blue tongue from late night snacking that I couldn't even clean, with furious toothbrush scraping. 


           "You see," I told my reflection. "You're an incapable mess."


           She looked back with sad eyes. 


           I sat on a squeaky plastic chair clutching the forms, eyes making a watercolour of the waiting room, while couples drifted in and out. 


Dr Lin lay me on the bed in a cold consultation room. 


“There it is,” he said, printed out a photograph and sent me back to the waiting room. 


They kept the photo on top of my file, where I could see it: a grey grainy little prawn shape against a black hole.  

#


By eleven, my clothes are sticking to my wet skin. There is little shade here between the temples. A few malnourished trees beg fruitlessly for moisture by the roadsides and dirt tracks. 


I take myself and the bike into New Bagan, flopping into a seat at the nearest open cafe.


There is wi-fi here and my phone buzzes intrusively as soon as I connect. 


Stupid, I curse. You don’t need to look. 


It starts ringing immediately. I’ve been starved of conversation for days and a tiny strand in me craves human connection. The rest of me wants all humans to disappear and never bother me again. 


I answer. 


“Lis? Jesus, where have you been?”

Neil. Angry, scared. I picture him sitting in his poky London flat staring at the rolling February smog. It will still be dark, I remind myself. He’s up early. Probably can’t sleep. 


“It’s been six weeks,” he whispers. “What the hell?”


I sigh in response, but can’t find a word, a phrase, that ties together the whirling maelstrom so I say nothing. 

“Seriously, Lis. It’s not on.”


He is still whispering. 


“Is she there, Neil?” 


She. Caroline. His fiancee. In just a few short weeks, she’ll be his wife. As long as…well. I suppose he is calling to check that I’m not going to mess that up for him. 


“Look, I just want a straight answer, Lis. Did you do it?”


Did I? 

#


In the temple of Dhammayangyi Pahto, I lay my arm on a cool stone slab, the well cradling my arm intersected by a perfectly straight gash. It is said that King Narathu - who ordered the building of this monument - demanded that the walls be laid with such precision that not even a pin could pass between the bricks. Any mason responsible for a pin-thin breach would have their arm chopped off on this very stone. This proved what an excellent and pious Buddhist he was, in this building constructed to atone for the murders of his father, brother, and wife. 


        I shudder, stand, continue strolling around the temple. 

        

There are only a few Buddhas here now, and even if there were more, it's too busy for me to execute my ritual. And walls touched by a cruel man such as Narathu doesn’t really fit with my slightly deranged loving atonement. 


           Outside, a young couple pose in wedding finery for photographs and I think about Neil getting married and his panicked voice on the phone. 


            "Picture, Miss?" 

        A chubby-faced boy is selling sand art on the steps of the temple: lotus flower, dharma wheel. His father helps him, he explains. He's saving for teacher training college. 


      "Good and happy children are very important," he says. I select a picture of a hand in vitarka mudra. "For wisdom. You are a good lady."


          I'm not.  


#

Buddha twenty-nine sees me calling it a day. The sun is dipping into the horizon and I'm craving a lukewarm shower. 


           I stroke Mr. Twenty-nine's narrow, almost feminine cheek.


          "Thank you, sir."


          It's only when I mount the bike that I realise how sore my limbs are, how burnt my shoulders. I'm gritty and grimy all at once and I don't really feel much better. 


          "Maybe tomorrow."


          My feet push slowly on the pedals, Neil's desperate voice ringing through my head. 


          "I was worried about you, Lis," he'd said. But he wasn't. Isn't. He's worried that his pretty little house of cards might fall. 


           A pathetic part of me that I despise tries to convince me that he does care. The thin, judgemental goat tethered to a post near the hotel knows the truth though. He stares at me with such piercing certainty, a spring bubbles behind my eyes. 


          "Fuck off goat," I say. But really, I mean fuck off Neil, and take any lingering sentiment I have far away. 

#


Holiday romance, he called it. Giddy, exuberant, he left me breathless from the moment we met. 

          Down at Loewy's, they pack them in on a weekend, and it took him three attempts to holler his name over generic house music. We laughed as he misheard ‘Lis’ as 'Geese' and honked at me. He was visiting his cousin, he said, and we laughed some more when we realised that his cousin was Mal, who'd just started working at our place. 

           

"Shall we get out of here?" he'd murmured. 

           

Neil was funny, erudite and damn sexy. 

           

"We shouldn't mention us to Mal," he said. "I don't want to put him in an awkward position."

         

A few weeks later he was flying home. "I'll miss you," we said. And then he was gone. 

         

And the following day at work, Mal said,"you know he's getting married in a couple of months?"

#


Mita is an excellent saleswoman. Under a thatched canopy in the middle of a market stall row, she sells me five woven handbags. Handwoven, she tells me, by enterprising village girls. She could well be spinning a yarn: she might have bought them cheaply wholesale from a Yangon factory, but I choose to believe her. Her daughter, Yunyoo, blinks at me from beneath a roughly hacked fringe, with eyes that say I know what you are. 

         

  Mita smears a thick disc of yellow paste on each of my cheeks, a stripe down my nose. Thanaka. 

         

 "For sun," she says. "But also pretty. You find nice Burma man to make you happy."

         

 She pauses, mid-daub. "You're not kowaan?"

         

 I frown. She taps her belly, points at Yunyoo.

         

"Pregnant? No."

         

   She adds a stripe to my forehead. "Okay." From the stall, she plucks a small woven purse. Sanitary towel sized. "For the private things."

         

 Yunyoo rolls a coconut across the dirt. 


#



Test again in a month, said Doctor Lin, dismissing me with his busy hand. 

         

I misheard him though: anaesthetic, grief. But I heard week. Test again in a week. 


A week after I returned home, I tested. 


Positive. 


My pulse was thudding high in my throat, threatening to leap out of my mouth. Shaking fingers fired off a badly punctuated email to Doctor Lin to which a perfunctory reply pinged back.


Month. I said month. 


No greeting, no inquiry as to my health. Just four sharp words and a brutal dismissal. 


The thrill I felt at seeing positive, though, told me all I needed to know about what I’ve done. 

#


The last Buddha of my second day is my forty-ninth all up. I show him the blurry photograph I've been carrying in my wallet for the last few weeks, the one I laminated at work after everyone had gone home. 


 "What do you think?"

            

Of course, he doesn't answer, but I imagine if he did, he'd have made some sympathetic remark with a tilted head and gentle smile - he looks the sort. 


I don’t need to look at the photo as I hold it out to the statues: it is imprinted in my every thought. I run my hands across my belly, grasping for something. 


At times, I can’t stand, can’t breathe. It sneaks up on me, knocks me off my feet, strangles, yells, punches me. 


Grief, you are a brutal lover. 

          

I've cried a lot today, and it's left me dry. I feel papery and insubstantial:a discarded onion skin, a dead moth-wing. 


          "Can you bring him back as something lovely? A swallow, a kitten?" 

Him. That's the first time I've done that.  


"A mother who keeps him safe and warm, please?" 

          

Outside, the dark presses in and I consider curling up by Buddha forty-nine, spending the night at his feet. Better still, staying here until I've dried out completely, crumbled, blown away as a blizzard of dust. 


           I stand, drag my arm across my eyes, say goodnight to my latest lama. 



"Get out," hissed the receptionist. She jabbed my shoulder with her pen. "You're upsetting the other patients. Go. Sort yourself out."

            

In a blank corridor, I sobbed, debated running. But my bag was still on a chair in the waiting room, and my shoes were underneath. Stupid really: monumental moments decided by a Desigual bag and a pair of $15 Bali-buy Havaianas.


           My face was studded with pink blotches, and no amount of splashing in the sterile bathroom was helping. 


           Go. Leave. Go for lunch. Go shopping. Go figure stuff out. 


You are pathetic, said something inside me. It doesn’t deserve to be saddled with you. 


I can make it work, I told the uninvited voice. I’ll think of something. I…want this 


You only want to feel okay. You are a selfish waste of space. 



Go in there, pick up your bag and leave. Walk out. It doesn’t matter. 


It matters. 


It doesn’t. I can do it. I can love. 


You’d be a horrible mother. 


#

In my mouth, the sweet-sour flake dissolves. It is like nothing I’ve ever tasted before, and I’m devastated to learn that after I leave Bagan, I’ll probably never taste them again.

Only here, the vendor tells me.  


Now, I’m armed with two big bags of them, and for the first time in weeks, I am enjoying the process of eating something. 


“I’ve discovered tamarind flakes,” I tell my first Buddha of the morning. “Quite the revelation. But you already know that, right?”

He is Buddha fifty and his left eye has disintegrated, giving me a jocular wink as I present the photo. 

“Maybe you could bring my boy back as someone from Bagan who grows up eating tamarind flakes.”


I’ve decided to name him, my boy. The forum I scrolled last night over dinner said that it can be healing. I’m not sure I deserve to heal, but I’m going to try the name thing nonetheless.


Buddha fifty-one has both eyes and looks like a sensible sort, so I show him the photo and try out a few. 


Hugo?


Martin?

Richard?


Nothing. 


Benjamin?


Ralph?


Buddha fifty-one looks on, impassive. 


“Neil?” I snort. It comes out as a laugh, but turns into a sob. 


“I know, I’m pathetic.”


Daniel. 


My breath catches in my ribs. That’s the one. 


Daniel. 



#


I’ve missed you, Daniel, since before they even took you from me. 


A fat-fingered nurse jabbed my arm with a needle. “Can’t find a vein,” she told Doctor Lin. 


“Then stop,” I said. “Let me go. I’ve changed my mind.”


They stared at me, then the nurse looked to Doctor Lin who nodded for her to continue. 


“I don’t want to,” I said. I tried to move, but I was strapped by the feet, knees spread. 


Your picture was in my head, imprinted on the insides of my eyelids when I closed my eyes and tried to forget you. 


“Please,” I said, but it came out as a whisper, a breath. 


“Aha,” said the nurse. 


And then everything started to swim away: the room, the clumsy nurse, the cold eyed doctor. And you, Daniel. You started to swim away. 


I grasped for you Daniel, please believe me. I fought as hard as I could. 


No. I should have fought harder. 


I came around slowly, sluggishly, as if dragged through thick tar. 


Pale blue curtains separated me from the world. I was on my side on a cold vinyl surface. A bed of sorts, narrow, hard. 


From beyond the curtain, I heard the sleeping breath of another woman. Did she feel relief? 


I knew you were gone. 

I was hollow, empty. 

As my body started to obey me, I wept. Softly at first, then louder, wilder, abandoned. 

“Ssshhh,” said a knit-browed nurse. “Hush now.” 


She patted me on the arm, but she was looking at the soft flutter of the curtain between me and the other woman. 


“I need to go,” I said through thick lips. “I have to go.”


She shrugged. “Free to go whenever you like.”


Daniel, it was hard, to push myself to sit, to swing my legs over the bed, to slide my bare feet onto the floor. The nurse helped me to my feet, my legs insubstantial as dandelion stalks to hold the weight of my body and my grief. 


I took a few tentative steps, a thick pad wadded between my legs. 

“Go home now,” said the nurse. “Live your life. Forget this ever happened.”


#


I have the last ten Buddhas to speak to today. 


I ride to one of the furthest little temples hugging the riverbank that I saw on my way back to the hotel last night. The single stupa rises from a half derelict building that somehow feels reflective of my fractured heart. 


It is cool inside, as I have come to expect, but there is something else here: a scent. I sniff. It is some sort of oil, faintly herbal, and between the crossed legs of a Buddha, I see a small bowl on legs with a flickering tea light underneath. The temple is empty. I wonder how long it has been burning. 


Ten Buddha’s line three walls of the temple: four either side of me and two straight ahead. For a moment, I am elated. 


This is surely some kind of sign, I think. Ten Buddhas, a burning light. I am about to be redeemed. 


I kneel at each Buddha in turn. 


Look after him, Buddha. Let Daniel know his mummy loved him.


I am not sure what I expect when I arrive at my last Buddha. My eighty-first, my final. Settling in front of him, I cross my legs, rest the photograph in my palm. 


Eighty-one days, I tell him. Eighty one days, I carried my boy. And then I let him go. 


I unlock what little reserve I have been holding back and let everything out: the last few months of clutching my little secret to my belly, Neil’s sharp tongue, Doctor Lin’s blank face, the jabs of the needle, the foggy head, the empty space in my centre, the longing, the grief, the regret and the years of a now-impossible future lying ahead. 


Everything I will not have leaks out: the birthdays, the milestones, the dirty knees, the tears to wipe, the hungry mouth seeking his mother’s nourishment, the warm body sinking into mine. 


They fall in a cascade, the tears, until there is nothing left to cry. 

I look up at Buddha eighty-one, my final hope, my last stab at redemption. He stares back, impassive. 


The candle has gone out. The herbal smell is gone. There is just me gripping a grainy photo in the presence of stone on brick. 

I’m not sure what I expected: a lightning bolt, a shifting fog, a sense of peace. But it wasn’t this, a dull, empty malaise. 


Tomorrow, I will travel to Lake Inle, buy a Burmese ruby to commemorate Daniel, look for ways to fill the spaces in me. 


But now, I bow, thank the Buddhas for listening and climb back onto the dusty bike. I push my feet down on the pedals. 

I have to keep moving. 


One, two, one, two.




Jay’s work appears in numerous publications, including Unleash Lit, Cerasus and adda. Winner of the Exeter Short Story Prize, Fabula Aestas, Writers Playground and Furious Fiction, she was shortlisted for the 2022 Exeter Novel Prize and the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her debut novel Mim and Wiggy’s Grand Adventure was released in July 2023.

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