I'll Be You(25)

Downtown Ojai consisted of a modest strip of stores under a Spanish Mission colonnade, a clutch of wine tasting rooms and boutiques selling sun hats and rope sandals, a single-screen movie theater with a crumbling fa?ade. Women in athleisure walked the streets, carrying reusable bags full of leafy vegetables. I felt pale and pasty and weak. I desperately wanted a macchiato but the signs all advertised vegan elixirs.

Caleb had offered to come with me today and I’d said no, concerned how my sister might react if I showed up at her retreat with a strange man in tow. Or maybe I just thought that I could handle this one myself. I don’t need no man. But as I drove through the streets of Ojai, I regretted leaving him behind. I had no clue where I was going. I could have used an extra set of eyes.

I cruised slowly through town, into the quieter side streets and back again, looking for a sign for GenFem. I saw a dozen other spas and retreats and centers, but none that fit the bill. The woman at the center had called it Dr. Cindy’s “personal property,” though, so perhaps there wouldn’t be a sign at all. Maybe it was just a house, indistinguishable from any other. How would I even know?

Charlotte had slept most of the way to Ojai but now she woke up and began to cry at the misery of still being strapped in place. I pulled over on the main street where there was a playground and pushed her on the swing for a few minutes, but the midday sun was unrelenting and soon Charlotte’s face was the color of a raspberry. I’d forgotten sunscreen. I didn’t have water, either. She swung listlessly in the heat as I cursed myself for not planning better. I was a shitty aunt.

We aborted the mission. Instead, we made a beeline for an ice cream shop across the street. I got her a double scoop of strawberry and we walked down the colonnade in the shade, until I found a crystal shop with a giant pink quartz in the window for twelve hundred dollars. Positive energy is not cheap. The crystal made me think of my mother, which made me think of my sister; it seemed as good a place as any to find a healing-oriented local.

The room was lined with glass shelves displaying glittering rocks on tiny stands. Charlotte immediately lunged for the first one she saw, fat fingers outstretched. “Tweasure,” she informed me, as I yanked her backward. The woman behind the counter—black curls to her waist, harem pants—watched nervously.

“Please don’t let the baby kill the crystals,” she offered, not unkindly.

I gripped Charlotte to my side as she squirmed unhappily. “I’m wondering if you can help me,” I began. “I’m looking for a wellness retreat, run by a group called GenFem?”

The woman looked at me blankly. “Huh. I don’t think I know that one.”

I pulled out my phone and pulled up the GenFem website, then thrust it toward her. “This? Recognize it?”

She took the phone from me and scrolled through the site, frowning a little. “No. But hang on.” She turned and yelled toward the back of the store. “Jessa? Heard of GenFem?”

Another woman appeared from behind a bead curtain that led to a back room. She was gray-haired, slight. She looked at us and frowned. “They’re the ones with the funny place up by Maisie’s avocado farm.”

“Some kind of spiritual retreat, right?” I asked.

“Spiritual? I don’t know about that. At least it’s not my kind of spiritual. They’re going for a different kind of energy.”

“What kind of energy?”

She thought this over for a beat, fingering the stone necklace draped over her collarbone. “More Narcissus, less Gaia.”

I had no idea what that meant. “OK. But you know where I can find their spa?”

“Spa?” The woman laughed. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

“More like…a compound.”

This was unsettling. The word conjured up wartime bunkers, armed guards. I tried to reconcile this with the benign-looking strip mall storefront I’d visited the day before. Nothing was adding up neatly at all. “Have you been inside?”

She shook her head. “I really don’t know anything about the group. I’ve seen the members at the grocery store, but they don’t spend much time in town. Why do you want to go there?”

“My sister is there. Can you tell me where it is?”

She walked to the front window of the store and pointed out to the road. “Take this to the far edge of town, where it starts to climb up over the hill. Turn right at the pizza place and follow the road up past the avocado farm. The compound is gated; there’s no sign but there’s a big iron entrance. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“Thank you.” I tugged Charlotte toward the door.

“Wait.”

The older woman approached us and crouched down in front of Charlotte. She took the little girl’s free hand and pried it open, then placed a small, polished rock on her palm. The rock was green and black, a dark light glowing from its depths. Charlotte went still, silent with awe.

“Labradorite.” The woman stood up and smiled tightly at me. “For safety and protection.”



* * *



—

I followed the woman’s directions out to a pizza shack on the edge of town, and then turned off the main highway and up toward the hills. Wildfires had almost devastated the town a while back. In places the hills had been scorched right down to the road, and the blackened skeletons of trees still stood sentry over the devastation, although a green carpet of new shrubs had already thrust their way up around them. I found myself on a narrow road, driving past an avocado grove with an empty fruit stand out front and a sign that read Take one leave a buck. There was no farmer to be seen, although the avocados hung heavy on the trees, and lay rotting in piles in the brush. Thousands of dollars of spoiled superfoods.