Space Between the Stars (29 page)

In December, I met Carlos in Osaka, Japan. I felt as though I had been transported underneath America, to the other side of the world. We rode the Bullet Train from Osaka to Tokyo, traveling 340 miles in three hours. One cantaloupe cost twenty dollars, and a glass of orange juice in the hotel restaurant was six dollars. Japanese women dressed in high-fashion European couture as well as in traditional Japanese kimonos. We visited Buddhist shrines and Shinto temples, and I read about Amat-erasu-O-Mikami, the Sun Goddess, a chief deity of the Shinto
faith. Other than the Indian goddess Kali, she was one of the only female gods I knew about. We saw thousands of golden Buddhas lining temple walls, and we were taken to Kamakura, where the famous Daibutsu Buddha stood more than forty feet high.

I had not realized how much traveling I would need to do to be with Carlos. I loved airplane flights, seeing countrysides from trains, and trying to guess what a hotel would look like before I arrived. Bill Graham often traveled with the band, and over time I began to know him. We made plans after concerts to meet in the hotel lobby the next morning to run together. Bill had a powerful, strong presence, and his body moving next to mine gave me adrenaline to pump my arms harder and push my legs farther. We talked as we huffed and strode through Vienna, Geneva, and Munich, places he had known as a child, and I got to know Bill through the stories he told of not even remembering his parents—he was two days old when his father died, and nine when his mother sent him to France for school. When Hitler's regime began persecuting and murdering Jews, Bill and his schoolmates were put on buses and sent away with almost nothing to eat but oranges. He exchanged the innocence of childhood for toughness and survival walking from Lyon to Marseilles, on a train to Spain and Portugal and on a ship to Casablanca, without parents and with the sound of torpedoes sizzling in the sky. As we ran, I thought about the trauma and humiliation Bill had endured that had produced the stony exterior and fighting spirit that had bullied me and others. Two of his sisters survived Auschwitz, and Bill was sent to a Hebrew shelter in New York, where he waited nine weeks for someone
to pick him out for adoption. Compassion, love, and respect were what I grew to feel for Bill after our runs. We interacted in business as I assumed more responsibility for Carlos's schedule and finances, and I saw with new eyes the fearless warrior Bill had learned to be as a child.

In the summer of 1974, Guru held a special ceremony in his backyard to give Carlos and me our spiritual names. Every August devotees from around the world stayed in the Queens neighborhood to celebrate Sri Chinmoy's birthday, and to attend meditations. Carlos could be in Queens only five days between his Philadelphia and Saratoga Springs shows, so he met me there. We sat among a small group of devotees as butterflies lit on the maple leaves above our heads and a warm breeze filtered through my sari. Sri Chinmoy proclaimed that Carlos was to be called Devadip, meaning “Lamp of God,” “Eye of God,” and “Light of God.” I was given the spiritual name Urmila, meaning “the Light of the Supreme.” The bestowal of names signified that we had made spiritual progress. Carlos returned to his tour, telling his road manager and band members to call him by his new name. The press was puzzled but followed Carlos's request. Mom and Dad were less than enthusiastic to hear Kit-saun call me Urmila, and they continued to address me as Deborah, the name they had given me to honor a woman of great strength and intelligence in the Bible.

Carlos and I had always wanted a family, but were told that Sri Chinmoy's philosophy was that children were a hindrance to the meditative life. We asked Sri Chinmoy when it would be time for us to start a family, and Guru told us, “Wait. Wait.” Dipti Nivas kept me busy to exhaustion, and Carlos's schedule
of touring and recording kept us apart. Abruptly, Mahalakshmi and Mahavishnu left the meditation path, which jolted Carlos and me. Sri Chinmoy said they would fall in spiritual consciousness without him, and we debated if this could be possible. I continued to manage Dipti Nivas and attend meditations as if nothing were different. Then, early in 1976, I became pregnant. I don't know if my diaphragm failed, or if I subconsciously wanted a child so badly, I'd forgotten to use it. Through the disciple phone chain, I sent a message to Sri Chinmoy, asking him to call. I hoped he would offer us his blessing. But, in his grainy voice, he told me, “Do not worry, dear one. The soul has not yet entered your body. You can have an abortion.” This sounded authentic to what an illumined master would know, but I was flooded with disappointment and sorrow. My desire to fulfill my own needs was not enough to refuse to follow his direction, and I trusted Sri Chinmoy could see planes of consciousness I could not. Now, my immaturity seems appalling, but at the time, I completely believed Sri Chinmoy was an avatar, a holy man, someone whose grasp of divinity was higher than mine. I did not consult Carlos, because my allegiance was to God and I had heard directly from God's messenger. I scheduled the abortion for a time when Carlos would be in Los Angeles, recording. He never saw my tears or noticed my emotional numbness. Carrying the secret of my act, I clung more to Sri Chinmoy's edicts and followed his way to God by denying my own inner voice. The mourning period was exactly one year until I could sit before my shrine and my first thought was not how sad I felt. It is interesting to me now that Guru never con-
sidered the aliveness of a woman's psyche that is connected with such intimate decisions. He never asked how I was doing with the choice I had made.

Carlos and I were on different time zones in our own house: I awakened at 5:00
A.M.
to meditate, run, and go to work. He still stayed up until 2:00 A.M. practicing his guitar, and he rose long after I left the house. Music was his life; meditation and service, mine. It was a recipe for separation in even the closest of marriages, but with rock-and-roll as a backdrop luring Carlos away from home on a regular basis, even our devotion to God could not protect us from life's temptations. Sri Chinmoy's goal of keeping disciples busy so that the world would not draw us away from spirituality only served to separate Carlos and me more. He began going to clubs when he was home, and I was too tired to go out with him. What he really wanted was to escape the same rigid box he had left his parents' home to be free of, and he was sick of obeying Sri Chinmoy's orders. I was stuck in the cycle of obedience, and wholeheartedly subscribed to the disciple life. Carlos could not talk me out of it. If I had known it was disconnecting us, I might have been able to pull back and examine where I was; but I did not comprehend Carlos's need, nor see how I was justifying and blindly accepting Sri Chinmoy's demands.

This continued until one Friday night in early summer of 1978, when our schedules coalesced and we went to a small club in Burlingame to hear a local band. On the drive over, I talked about how Kitsaun and I were planning a remodel of Dipti Nivas. Carlos talked about his upcoming tour. We parked
on Hillside Drive and walked inside the club. Heads turned and voices whispered as we came through the doors. “Carlos is here.” “Santana's here.”

We were led to a table in the front, but Carlos asked to sit farther back. I took off my coat and ordered sparkling mineral water, aware of eyes on us. After the band's set, a young woman with dark curls around her face walked up to our table. “I want you to have this,” she said, pushing a gold bracelet into my hands. The angle of her face and her smile were directed at Carlos, and my stomach flip-flopped at the husky intonation of her voice.

I opened my mouth to say thank you, but Carlos stood up and ushered her away, his hand on her elbow. He bent over, talking to her in a way that suggested he knew her well. She looked vaguely familiar. Then I remembered—she was a Bay Area musician, and I had seen her before.

My heart sped, and my insides felt as though they were catapulting across the room. The stage spun before me. I recognized in one horrible moment that Carlos was having an affair. When he turned to walk back to our table, I stood up and put my coat on. I had to get outside. Carlos followed me through the smoke-filled room. I burst through the doors, as though the fresh air could save me from what I had discovered. This man whom I adored, who had vowed that spirituality was the highest value in his life, who meditated each morning, who married me in my uncle's home—had chosen to break our covenant.

Carlos opened my car door. I fell into the car as though I were drunk. Rage, sorrow, and a broken heart made me dizzy. I did not look at his face when he got behind the wheel. He put the key in the ignition, but did not turn the car on.
“Do you want a divorce?” I asked.

“What!” Carlos screamed. “What are you talking about?”

“It's obvious that you and that woman have something going on. I've been through this before. I'm not going to live with you while you carry on with other women. We're married. That means something to me.”

“This was nothing,” he said in a choked whisper. “I love you.”

“Love is one thing. Fidelity is another,” I said, sounding like a schoolteacher instead of the brokenhearted lover.
Why can't I cry?
My mouth was dry. My eyes were dry. I was stunned, reduced to giving a nagging lecture. “Let's just go home,” I said. “I need to pack.”

The hour drive from Burlingame to Mill Valley was excruciating. Road sign after road sign announced that my world was splitting apart. Like a train charging through my mind, the woman's face chased me. I had left the bracelet on the table.
What was that supposed to have been? A gift for the wife from the girlfriend?
All the pain of previous years raged through my body. What I had learned from Sly's twisted world was that it mattered to me if he slept with other women. Maybe it was my parents' long marriage and their image of togetherness—the bond they had forged fighting racism to seal their love—that made me want a pure intimacy with Carlos. Maybe it was my idealism that two people could love each other only, even in the hedonistic world we lived in. Trust and loyalty were essential to me in any relationship, friendship or marriage. I felt shattered knowing I had shared my body and soul with a man who had been making love to someone else. What had been a triangle with
God at the top and Carlos and me sharing the foundation was now a series of disconnected lines. I stared out into the night, piecing together the past months. I had been caught up in planning the remodel of Dipti Nivas, in running, in learning Guru's songs, and in teaching meditation.
When Carlos had gone out to clubs, he must have been meeting her.

We drove in silence until we reached the gravel drive to our house. Carlos spoke: “I'm sorry. I don't want you to go.”

I jumped out of the car, slammed the door, and ran to the house. The key would not turn in the lock. When it did, I turned off the burglar alarm, marched up the hall stairs, and dragged my suitcase from the attic.

Carlos was standing in the living room, his head hanging on his chest. “Where are you going?”

“I don't know, but I'll leave in the morning. It's too late now. I'm just going to pack.”

I walked to our bedroom. Over the window hung a quilted banner I had bought at a country fair. Appliquéd letters spelled

out: IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING VERY MUCH, LET IT GO. IF IT COMES

back, it'syours to keep. My eyes spilled over with the waters of heartbreak. I opened drawers and filled my suitcase with saris, slips, underwear, running clothes, and toiletries. On the top, I placed Guru's picture and some of his books. I would have to move in with Kitsaun. I had a room there where I occasionally spent the night when Carlos was on the road. I could not believe this was happening.
Should I ask Carlos if he is sleeping with her? He didn't deny it when I told him that's what I thought. Why couldn't he have denied it?

From the studio beneath our bedroom floor, I could hear
the beautiful notes Carlos's fingers were playing on his guitar. They pierced my heart; tears dropping like a storm on everything I packed. I sat on the floor, looking at Guru's picture— asking, pleading with God for help. The music stopped downstairs, and Carlos soon stood over me. “Please don't go. I promise I won't see her again. I love you.”

“I love you, too. But if you loved me, you wouldn't have done this. I can't live like this. It's too painful. It's everything I went through with Sly.”

“I'm not Sly,” Carlos said firmly.

I wanted to scream, “Bullshit!” but my years of meditation would not let the words leave my lips. I looked up at the ceiling we had painted when we first began living together. “I don't know who you are right now.” I walked into the bathroom and locked the door, turning on the shower and letting it run for five minutes before I took off my clothes and stepped in. I did not move as the water sluiced over me. Too much was churning inside for me to move on the outside. My thoughts went over the past few weeks—every day, every detail—as I looked for something I must have done, some lack I had, to have made Carlos share the most intimate part of himself with someone else. I had left Sly knowing I had not been enough. He'd needed many women, different women—certainly not me, not my upbringing, not my love of purity. He had been a pimp before Sly and the Family Stone, for God's sake! But with Carlos, I'd thought I had found a soul mate, an eternal lover.
What a fool.

I had seen Carlos's eyes when women flirted with him from the audience and backstage after shows: a glint of passion; a thrill of the chase. It was so obvious they wanted to be with
him. His melodies were an aphrodisiac, and he held his guitar as though it were a woman, caressing the neck, bending his knees into each note. Silent promises emanated from the stage—of sensuality, of tenderness—enough to weaken any woman's legs with desire. I towel-dried my limp body in the bathroom, dressed, and slowly opened the door to our bedroom. Carlos was not there. I could hear him playing his guitar downstairs.

I slept fully dressed on top of the bed, waiting for morning. When I woke up as the orange glow of sunlight spread through the gray mist outside, Carlos was asleep next to me, under the covers. My wedding ring felt as though it weighed twenty pounds. I sat up, looking at Guru's photo.
I've got to call New York. Guru will tell me what I should do.