The transforming power of Ruth
A short story by SUCHEN CHRISTINE LIM
When I first set eyes on Ruth in the monastery, all I saw lying curled like a foetus on the large trestle table was a dark-haired, severely deformed skeletal woman, the size of a nine-year-old. Dressed in thick woollens, she was in a frozen state. She could neither move nor speak a word.
"My daughter, Ruth," Helen, our meditation leader, said.
That year, I'd flown to Denver, Colorado, still seething with anger and resentment. Desperate to leave my heartbreak behind me, I was determined to do a two-week silent meditation retreat in the Benedictine Monastery in Snowmass. I rented a car and drove up the Rocky Mountains to the town of Aspen, 2,400m above sea level.
It was foolhardy. I had never travelled alone. Lawrence wouldn't hear of it. Neither had I driven up any mountain before, so it didn't occur to me that in mid-March it might still be winter in the Rockies.
Halfway up the mountain, it started to snow heavily. The next morning, Aspen was like a scene straight out of a Christmas card, all covered with snow, and Helen was waiting to take me to the monastery.
"Mrs Sarah Verghese?" The stout American woman in a brown leather jacket and boots shook my hand. Her handshake was warm, and so were her grey eyes.
"Here, let me."
With a deft swing, she swung my heavy suitcase into the boot of her large four-wheel drive. I gasped, "You could've hurt your back."
She looked 60-ish, 20 years older than me, yet she had lifted my suitcase as though it was a bag of groceries. "Don't worry. I'm used to it. Shall we go?"
The monastery was in a high valley surrounded by forests and snow-covered hills. There was a dormitory, a chapel, and a few secluded cottages known as hermitages for those who wished to meditate alone. Twenty of us from all walks of life and different parts of the world were to stay in the dormitory. Not all were Catholics.
Some, I discovered later, were Methodists, Calvinists or Presbyterians. The monastery welcomed everyone, but they had to observe one simple rule - silence at all times inside the buildings.
The next morning we were awakened at 4.30 by the gentle ringing of a bell. At 5, we entered the softly lit meditation room. Helenwas already seated on her cushion. On our drive up, she'd told me she lived a few miles down in the village below. I reckoned she would have to get up earlier than 4.30 to drive up the dark mountain road to reach the monastery before 5, and in the bitter cold, too, for it had snowed all night.
We sat on cushions on the floor, and had wrapped ourselves in thick shawls and blankets. One of the walls was glass from floor to ceiling, and I could see that it was pitch black outside when Helen sounded her bell and I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again at the sound of her bell, the sky was still dark. We stood up and walked slowly round the room to stretch our legs before the next sit. A few latecomers straggled in and we sat again for another half an hour till 6. By then, a soft grey light had filtered through the glass wall, and the snow-covered bushes outside were tinged with pink. We filed silently out of the meditation room into the kitchen-cum-dining room where a shock awaited us.
Lying asleep curled on her side on the trestle table was this thin girl-woman who was all skin and bones. We ate our breakfast of freshly baked bread in an uncomfortable silence, using our eyes to ask a neighbour to pass the butter or jam. My own eyes avoided the trestle table.
The severity of the woman's deformity distressed me. I couldn't bear to look at her, and I was ashamed. Ashamed of my distress. I glanced at the others. No one looked at the trestle table. No one went near it that first morning.
That evening, some of us, unable to bear the silence any longer, went out to the garden to talk. A woman who had done the retreat before told us that Ruth was 36 years old, and she was deaf. I went back inside. I didn't want to listen any more. I didn't want to talk about this deformed adult-child. Lawrence had insisted on an abortion when we were told that the foetus inside my womb had grave genetic defects. He didn't want children, he said.
I didn't want to think about Ruth. Yet, her existence could not be denied. Every day, she was among us, curled up on the trestle table as we ate our meals and had our coffee breaks in between the meditation sessions. Every lunch hour, we watched Helen, her mother, carry her like a baby into a private room to feed and change her diaper, and our hearts were filled with pity for Helen. At such moments, I felt Lawrence and I had done the right thing.
On the third morning, I noticed Ruth's dark eyes following us as we moved about the dining room. The next day, I thought her eyes blinked at me as I walked past. It made me stop. When I looked at her, her eyes seemed to smile although not a muscle twitched on her stiff, frozen face.
The next morning, I stood at the trestle table and mouthed a silent "hello". Her eyes seemed to brighten at this, and I was pleased. On the fifth day, I bent down towards her and whispered, "Hi, I'm from Singapore."
From then on, I made it a point to stop by the trestle table like the others to say a few words to Ruth despite having been told that she was deaf.
"I saw a bird outside my window," I told her one morning, and touched her inert hand. The tactile sensation shocked me and I withdrew my hand at once. Her bony fingers were stiff and bent like a dead bird's claw. Although Ruth couldn't see my face since she couldn't turn her head, I felt I had to apologise.
"Sorry, Ruth," I muttered, "I'm not used to touching bones." And had to smile. I sounded corny. Yet, looking into Ruth's eyes, I knew she'd understood my clumsy apology.
Over the next few days I noticed others in my group relating to Ruth with growing familiarity. Like me, they held her hand, patted her and laughed silently with her as though they were in conversation. On the ninth morning while I was whispering something to Ruth, I realised with a shock that I'd stopped seeing her as an ugly twisted human wreck.
"Something has shifted inside me," I whispered to her. "I no longer want to plunge and twist a knife into my husband's heart. Cause him as much pain as he'd caused me. I'm still hurt, but I don't want revenge any more."
By then, I felt that the twisted body on the trestle table did contain a spark of intelligent compassion. Each day I'd found myself stopping a little longer at the table. I could be talking to myself, yet when I looked into Ruth's dark eyes, they seemed to reflect understanding. In fact, Ruth appeared less deformed. No longer a being to be pitied. I could no longer describe her as a skeletal adult foetus. She was a human being. Like me.
Thinking back to those silent days in the dining room of the monastery, I believe that Ruth's daily silent presence forced me to see beyond the physical body. Daily, I saw how Helen carried her 36-year-old daughter like a baby into a private room to feed and change her diaper without fuss as though it was a normal thing to do. Helen's devotion made me see the nature of love with no strings attached. On the last day of the retreat, I plucked up courage to ask Helen about Ruth, and this is their story.
Ruth came from a family of six. Helen was a cook in the monastery before she became our meditation leader. Her father was a carpenter. When the monks first invited Helen to join the monastery's meditation leadership team, she declined because she couldn't leave Ruth at home all day. The monks told her to bring Ruth to the monastery with her.
Later, when the monks discovered that Ruth's presence had a positive effect on those who came for retreat, they made Ruth part of the meditation leadership team, and paid her a monthly stipend. The abbot of the monastery said that Ruth had lessons to teach the rest of us.
Over the years, I'd wondered what lessons we had learnt from Ruth, a human being so utterly helpless and dependent on others like a baby, yet so transformative in her influence on others.
Like a baby.
The writer is the winner of the Singapore Literature Prize and the S.E.A. Write Award.
Copyright © 2014 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights reserved.
Published on Dec 28, 2013
