Mary’s life, London England 1885 Mrs. Sheldrake, keeper of this home for the indigent and insane, eyed the small, brown skinned man in front of her. He was talking, but what she noted was his personal warmth, which felt to her very like hope. Hope rose in her heart as a ghost, dangerous, wailing, pulling bitter disappointment right behind. She curled against this, unconsciously lifting herself to her full height and leaning her body away from him. The man’s voice pierced through to Mrs. Sheldrake’s brain. “Mary Eagleton is her name. I believe she was registered with you several months ago,” he was saying. His different skin and gentlemanly demeanor provoked in Sheldrake a sense of high society which her own cockney accent denied. “Yes, yes, I know the one you speak of. She’s up on the rafters, that one.” She raised her eyebrows, her wrinkled face following the gesture until every line moved toward her greasy, gray hair. “Yes, I’m sure it’s been difficult,” he acknowledged. “Here, if you would be so kind as to accept this…” and the small, soft palm of the gentleman opened depositing a few shillings into her own hand, although she did not recall offering it to him. “Of course you must want to see her yourself, you’ve come such a long way.” Mrs. Sheldrake’s assumption, that the gentleman had travelled great distances from an exotic point of origin, provoked from her the use of formal names. “She’ll be in the Recreation Room.” He turned silently and followed her through to a heavy door which she unlocked using a key from many dangling off the large metal ring at the side of her apron. They stepped a short way down a dark, narrow

hallway when she beckoned with her hand that he look through a small, barred window on a door to his right. People, maybe twenty, some shuffling slowly around the perimeter, any number of them moaning, or shouting suddenly, populated this dark den. Three small high windows on the opposite side opened directly to the elements. Years of snow and rain had flooded portions of the room and now moss grew beneath those far windows as though to remind those on this side of the green growing life outside. Yet no eye might take comfort by looking at trees or grass because the opening was too high. Only a scrap of sky for any who looked up, a scrap of sky and the moss, green and damp, lining the wall in a dingy, downward pattern. No one looked in any case. They walked slowly, or rocked themselves or leaned against the walls, staring off to some other place, another time, or to nothing at all. Mipham, whose native land India with its many meditation masters had afforded him training in observation, focus and attention, instantly absorbed the entire scene. His eyes however never stopped searching for Mary. The former beauty huddled against the back wall, swaying slightly, her eyes distant, unfocused. He took in the matted, unwashed hair, swollen, infected skin, and the curve of her arms around an invisible baby to which, as he walked closer, he heard her humming. What Mary experienced was a sunlit meadow just beyond the trees she saw in her inner world. She was trying to get to the meadow, to that safe, warm place. “Mary,” he called softly. Then again, “Mary.”

The thin veil of possible comfort receded as she heard her name. The last syllable of her name yanked the next, Theodore, from her. Theodore who had loved her, Theodore whose child she had, Theodore gone from her, this name dredged with it an intolerable anguish. “Theodo....ahrhg,” the wail erupting from her thin body sounded part animal, part human, part from another dimension. Mipham stepped back, reconfiguring. Clearly Theodore’s callousness had cleaved her psyche more deeply than Mipham had understood. Now it was going to take time to bring her back, coax her back to the land of the living, “...if that is even possible,” he thought. His training in meditation as a path to cure the mentally ill told him it was possible, but the depth of Mary’s anguish and the loss of the child argued against it. Mrs. Sheldrake, eager to ease this exotic and wealthy looking stranger’s way, tried to soothe. “Now, now you didn’t know she were as bad off as this…she comes and goes, she does and best left to being gone for all as ever ‘appens is that wailing and moaning.” Her solid frame led Mipham back through the large door and out to the reception area. “I’ll come again, if that is quite all right,” he said. Anticipating the warm feel of shillings across her palm for whatever small favors she might apply to this man, Mrs. Sheldrake eagerly responded as her eyes followed her hand in replacing the key on its large ring, “Come as often as ye like, then. We’ll take good care of her, our Mary, yes, we will, you can be sure of that, as best as…” Mipham was already out the door. For the next few visits he again crossed the sodden, grimy floor, stood a few feet away from Mary’s side, watching. Mipham absorbed every

detail including her breath, which came in and left from the top of her chest, stopping altogether for long periods of time. These two signs, her breath coming in and leaving through the top of her lungs, and the large gap between breaths demonstrated deep mental and emotional disturbance within the young woman. He deliberately focused on his own breath, allowing it to come and go freely. Mary hummed, rocked her invisible baby, and stared toward the meadow only she could see.