Taneesha Never Disparaging by M. LaVora Perry Read Free Book Online

she’d gotten to dress down at her father’s job instead of itching it up like I did at Ontario. She had on jeans and a beige pullover.
    We both liked to finish our weekend homework on Fridays so we could keep Saturdays and Sundays free for whatever. Now we stretched, bellies down, on my living room floor. My locks hung past my face and Carli’s red hair hung past hers. She had her left leg, the one with the brace, propped on one of our moss- green couch pillows.
    The fireplace and mantle were behind us. In front of us, paper and books sprawled across the softness of the big plum rug, spilled over its edges, and spread over the wooden floor like sugar glaze over a Pop-Tart.
    My stomach growled. I was about ready for a snack.
    â€œHey, Taneesha,” Carli said, softly. “Look at the altar.”

    I looked at it—a large, cherry-wood table with four legs, and, underneath it, a legless, long cubby that was raised on a platform. The cubby had a row of books inside. The altar seemed the same as always.
    â€œSo?”
    â€œNo, look . Don’t you see? It’s sparkling. It’s almost like fairies are dancing on it. Little Tinker Bells.”
    And then I saw. That Carli, she was right. Today, like every day lately, had been cloudy. But right then, a beam of sunlight shimmied through one of the living room windows and burst into tiny points, dancing on the altar’s polished wood.
    Light danced on the extras that sat on the altar table, too—on the shiny, red and yellow apples in a terracotta bowl and on the rounded glass of the sea-green water jar. And light danced on the pair of vases that sat on the oval end-tables at each side of the altar—black, glazed vases, shaped like teardrops and holding evergreens that filled the room with their pine smell.
    For a silent moment, Carli and I just sat there on the floor, watching the sparkly show.

    â€œWhat’s it all for, Taneesha?” she asked, dreamily.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe things on the altar. What are they for?”
    â€œI’ve told you that before. Plus they talked about it when you came to meetings.”
    â€œTell me again.” Her eyes still followed the lights.
    â€œEverything stands for the five senses plus water is for purity,” I sighed, annoyed at Carli for making me rattle off information that she should have remembered already: “Fruit, taste. Beads, touch. Bell, sound. Incense, smell. Candles, sight.”
    â€œYour altar doesn’t have any candles. Or incense. How come?”
    â€œMy parents stopped using candles when I was a baby so I wouldn’t start a fire. And my father’s allergic to incense. Plus my mother says burning stuff’s bad for your lungs.”
    â€œOh.”
    There was a pause.
    â€œWhat about the branches?” She was talking about the evergreens Daddy had cut off the tree in our back yard. “What are they for?”
    â€œLeaves stand for forever, for no beginning or
end, for how long life lasts.”
    As irksome as it was to have to answer Carli’s twenty-questions, I couldn’t help thinking that my parents would have flipped into extreme gush mode if they’d known I was actually telling somebody about Buddhism. Even if it was just her.
    â€œForever. Hmm. Cool.”
    We went quiet again.
    â€œI wonder what happened to him,” she said.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThat boy from last week, the one who got beat up. I wonder if he’s okay.”
    â€œHope so.”
    â€œMe too.”
    More quiet.
    â€œI’m going to chant for him,” I said. It seemed like the right thing to do. “Do you mind?”
    â€œNo. I’ll do it with you.”
    I stood and reached for the most conspicuous part of the altar, the part Carli hadn’t even bothered asking about. Maybe because she remembered what that was, even though she’d apparently forgotten everything else she’d ever learned about Buddhism.
    I opened