“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be meditating on…the beach, the rain forest, the mountaintops…I need him to give me something,” Tamia whispered and then as if he’d heard her, Baba jumped up like a man a quarter his age.
“Children, Afrikans, Soul Trekkers, Free People,” he called, his voice more mellifluous, yet also stronger than she’d thought by looking at him. “Your body moves to the sound of the universe. The sound in space. In order to connect with your body, to create new matter, to expel illness and hatred and evil from your body, you have to be tuned in, to be plugged in to the universe. My Baba lived for 115 years because he could meditate to that sound. He cleared his body of illness and evil. Your Baba is eighty-seven and I have walked through the woods, climbed mountains, and brought more than six hundred children to their lightness.”
“Baba?” Tamia repeated, leaning over to Malik and thinking of how amazed she was that Baba was eighty-seven. He didn’t look two days over sixty-five. “Is that his name?”
“No. His name is Peter, but we call him Baba—Babatunde. It means ‘Father,’” Malik answered.
“What is inside of you that needs healing? That needs new matter? We die a little every day. We must replenish those dead cells. We must reconnect with the Creator of the universe. The Creator of all things. We do this by connecting our bodies to the rhythm of the universe.” While he was standing, Baba bent over and hit the gong.
“Ohhmmm,” everyone called out in unison. “Ohhhmmmmm.”
“What?” Tamia said.
“Ohm,” Malik answered her. “It’s the sound of the universe. The sound out in space.”
Tamia looked at him.
“It is!” he said.
“How do you—”
Tamia hadn’t realized it but Baba had walked around the circle and was kneeling behind her.
“Lean into my hand,” he said, cutting her off.
She was about to say no but her back just rolled toward Baba’s hand on its o
wn.
“Ohhhhhhmmmmm,” the class called out. “Ohhhmmmmmmm.”
Not knowing what else to do, and to avoid the fact that she was now laying back on the hand of an elderly man she didn’t know who was wearing less fabric than she had on her bra, she hummed along.
“Ohhhhmmmmmm.”
“You have a broken heart,” Baba whispered into Tamia’s ear. “It has tried to kill you.”
Tamia’s heart flipped in the way it usually did when she’d heard bad news. But this wasn’t bad news. It was just a shock. The truth.
She turned to ask Baba something, but he was already gone—back up at the gong.
“Hey, king,” Ayodele said, gliding into the room as if only air carried her feet. A size two, she was wearing only a knitted bra and mudcloth harem pants—which Tamia called MC Hammer pants. Half of her body was exposed, and Tamia kept thinking she probably had on less clothing than the hookers in the street right outside, but no one said a thing. She sat in the empty space on Tamia’s other side.
“Greetings, Ayo,” Malik said, straightening his back and glancing toward Ayo. Although her breasts were hanging out for all the world to see, Tamia noticed that he looked her right in her eye.
“Ohhhmmmm,” everyone hummed with the gong. Yet Ayo leaned over Tamia and giggled with Malik about something that had happened in the kitchen earlier. And hahahahaha, wasn’t it funny how this and that happened.
Tamia turned and looked at the woman who had shushed her, but she wasn’t doing anything now.
“Why would they put soy sauce on it?” Ayo said, giggling with Malik. “Everyone knows you can’t do that! Right?” She looked at Tamia.
“Oh, Ayo, do you remember my attorney? Her name is Tamia.”
“Oh,” Ayo said. “I thought I recognized your beautiful eyes.” She kissed Tamia on the cheek and it was just enough sweetness to make Tamia know that she’d hate this woman for the rest of her life.
“Ohhhmmmmm,” Tamia droned on with the rest of the people in the room to drown Malik and Ayo out. “Ohhhhmmmm!” Somehow she’d become the loudest and fastest in the room, leading everyone into an unceremonious aria.
“Wait,” Baba shouted, hitting the gong like it was actually the gong show. “Someone is off-key. Someone is out of tune. Someone is not connected with the universe. Who is it?” Suddenly his voice went from African cool to Detroit ghetto.