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The book had been open between them long enough for its spine to settle flat. Cindy had finished the page several minutes earlier but had not turned it, one hand resting over the lower corner while the light breeze from the screened window worried gently at the paper. A row of folded stockings lay beside her on the bed, paired but not yet put away, and two school notebooks stood on the little table beneath the window although the term was almost finished. Jennifer sat on the floor with one shoulder against the side of the bed, her knees raised enough to support another book across them. Neither girl was reading now. Their talk had wandered away from the page without either deciding it should, and the quiet between sentences was as ordinary as the voices themselves.
Outside, a lawn mower worked somewhere beyond the neighbouring houses, coming nearer, fading, returning, then stopping altogether. The sudden quiet made the birds at the back fence seem louder. Jennifer had been talking about a photograph in a library book, a procession climbing a road toward a church whose name she could no longer remember. She had described the candles first, then the road, then the people carrying shoes in their hands after walking too far in them. Cindy had asked why they went, and Jennifer had said some Catholics travelled to places connected with saints, miracles, old churches, or things they believed had happened there. She had said it without making the people in the photograph sound foolish or especially wise. They had simply gone, and after a little while Jennifer closed the book across her knees but kept one finger inside it. “Do people go places?” she asked. Cindy looked at her, waiting. Jennifer added, “Buddhists, I mean. Like Catholics do.”
“Yes,” Cindy said, then paused. “Sort of.” She shifted one stocking away from her knee, considering how much she actually knew rather than how much an answer ought to contain. “Mama knows more of them than I do. Papa too. There are places people travel to. Temples. Places connected with Buddha.” The words sounded too much like something copied from a school text, and she frowned slightly at them. “I don’t know all of them.” Jennifer said, “I didn’t think you did,” without any trace of consolation, which made Cindy look at her again. Jennifer’s thumb moved along the closed edge of her book. “Would you want to go?” This answer came more easily. “Yes. I think I would.” When Jennifer asked why, Cindy rolled a stocking cuff once, found it crooked, and opened it again. “Because I’ve heard about them. Because they’re far away.” She knew immediately that this was not quite it, and after another moment she said, “It would be real ground.”
Jennifer waited, and Cindy tried again without dressing the thought up. “Not just in a picture. There would be an actual road. Dirt. Trees. Weather. You could stand there and know people had really stood there before. I think I’d like knowing that.” Jennifer’s eyes moved toward the window, perhaps picturing a place made real by the same kinds of things that made Geneva real. “Would it feel different?” she asked. Cindy considered saying yes because the answer seemed expected, then decided against it. “I don’t know.” Jennifer only nodded. Some adults answered uncertainty by repeating a question with different words, as though not knowing were a cupboard that had been searched lazily. Jennifer generally left it where it was. Cindy smoothed the heel of the stocking across her palm. “Maybe I would feel different because I’d gone all that way. That’s not the same as the ground doing something.”
“What would you do when you got there?” Jennifer asked. Cindy gave her a brief look. “I don’t know that either.” Jennifer’s mouth moved faintly, not quite a smile. “Would you pray?” The word made Cindy pause, because it was not wrong exactly, but it belonged more naturally to Jennifer’s way of speaking about faith. “Maybe not like you mean. I might sit.” Jennifer asked, “That’s all?” and Cindy answered, “I might think.” When Jennifer wanted to know what about, Cindy said, “Things.” The next question came predictably enough: “What things?” Cindy looked at her until Jennifer lowered her eyes to the book without apology. The mower started again somewhere outside, coughed twice and caught. Cindy let the silence stand before choosing one example herself. “Anger, maybe.”
Jennifer looked up. Cindy said, “I get angry.” Jennifer’s answer, “I know,” was so immediate that Cindy’s eyebrows drew together. “Not all the time.” Jennifer said, “I didn’t say all the time,” and Cindy accepted that, though she kept a little of the look for another second. “But I do. Sometimes somebody says something stupid and I think about it for hours afterward. Or I know what I want to say before they’ve even finished talking. Mama can tell.” Jennifer asked how, and Cindy’s reply came with complete certainty: “She can always tell.” Neither girl needed more explanation than that. Cindy began rolling the stocking properly, folding the pair together and turning the cuff over it. “It isn’t that I think I shouldn’t get angry. Sometimes you should. If somebody is cruel, being pleased about it would be worse. It’s what you do while you’re angry.”
She placed the finished pair beside the others and continued, “Sometimes I know what I want to do and I do it because I’m angry, and then later I think I should have waited.” Jennifer looked down at her own hands before asking, “Does it work?” Cindy stared at her. The question remained in the room long enough for Jennifer to hear what she had made Buddhism sound like, and a little colour appeared in her cheeks. Neither of them laughed. Cindy simply said, “Sometimes.” Jennifer nodded with the same seriousness as before. “Would going somewhere make the sometimes easier?” Cindy leaned back against the wall. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She thought a little more. “I’d hope I remembered it after.” Jennifer asked whether she meant the place, but Cindy shook her head. “The going.”
“If I saved money and took trains and a ship and more trains and went all that way because I thought something mattered,” Cindy said, “I’d hope I remembered that when I came home and got angry because Mama told me to sweep the kitchen twice.” Jennifer wanted to know if Eun-jung really made her do it twice. Cindy said, “If I miss under the table.” Jennifer considered the imagined return from a sacred journey to an ordinary broom. “You could remember the pilgrimage while you sweep.” Cindy said, “I could still be angry.” Jennifer answered, “Probably,” and Cindy nodded. “I probably would be. That’s what I mean. Going somewhere wouldn’t make me another person.” Jennifer rested her head lightly against the bedframe. “Then why go?” The question held no challenge in it, and Cindy did not hear one.
“Because you might remember better,” Cindy said. She glanced at Jennifer, then toward the square of sunlight on the floor. “If you stand somewhere you wanted to see for years, you remember standing there. If somebody tells you something, you can forget. If you read it, you can close the book. But if you had to travel for days to get there…” She lifted one shoulder. “It would be harder to pretend you never cared.” Jennifer let that sit for a while before asking, “What if somebody can’t go?” Cindy first answered the obvious thing, “They can’t,” then understood what Jennifer meant. “Would they miss something?” Jennifer clarified. Cindy disliked the idea almost immediately. “No. That wouldn’t be fair.”
She spoke more quickly now because the unfairness was easier to recognize than the religious part. “It costs money. People have work. Or children. Or somebody sick at home. Or they’re sick. Or they’re old. You can’t say somebody is better because they could buy a ticket.” Jennifer did not interrupt. Cindy added after a moment, “That’s only what I think. Mama might say it differently.” Jennifer’s answer was quiet. “I’m asking you.” Cindy looked down at the stockings, pleased by the distinction in a way she did not bother to announce. “Then that’s what I think.” Downstairs, a cupboard door closed, and the faint smell of something toasted drifted up the stairwell before the breeze changed and carried it away.
Jennifer opened the Catholic book again and turned it toward Cindy. The picture was smaller than Cindy expected: a road climbing between low walls crowded with people, some carrying bundles, others empty-handed. One woman had tied her shoes together and hung them across her shoulder. Cindy bent closer. “She probably got blisters.” Jennifer studied the same woman. “Probably.” Cindy asked if people really saved for journeys like that, and Jennifer said some did, for years. That interested Cindy more than the candles. “That part makes sense.” Jennifer asked, “The saving?” and Cindy nodded. “All of it. If you put away money every week, you keep remembering why. If it takes two years, that’s two years of deciding you still want to go.” Jennifer followed the road upward with her eyes. “So the going matters as much as getting there.”
“Maybe,” Cindy said. “Unless you spend the whole trip complaining.” Jennifer glanced at her, and Cindy continued before the thought could become a joke. “If you take a train for three days and learn nothing except that the seats are uncomfortable, that seems like a waste.” Jennifer observed that they probably were uncomfortable. Cindy replied, “That can’t be the whole lesson.” Jennifer looked again at the woman carrying her shoes. “Maybe it’s one part.” Cindy accepted that with a small tilt of her head and began putting the finished stockings into the drawer, two pairs at a time so they would not tumble together. Jennifer watched until Cindy pushed it halfway closed, then asked which place she would go to first.
Cindy’s hand remained on the drawer pull. This was easier to picture than to explain. Her parents had spoken of several places over the years, sometimes directly and sometimes while discussing people they knew or books they had read. One returned most often in Cindy’s mind because of a tree, though she knew the tree she pictured could not simply have stood unchanged for centuries. “Bodh Gaya,” she said. Jennifer repeated the name carefully without asking Cindy to do it for her. “There’s a place there connected with Buddha’s awakening,” Cindy continued, then stopped before she could turn the sentence into a recitation. “Mama told me about it when I was little. I used to think the tree would be enormous. Bigger than our house.” Jennifer asked if it was. “I don’t know,” Cindy said.
Jennifer looked out the window, measuring some impossible tree against the roofline. “Would you sit under it?” Cindy answered, “If they let me.” Jennifer asked what she would think about there, and Cindy pulled the drawer open again because one stocking had caught at the edge. “Probably lunch.” Jennifer turned toward her. “I’m serious,” Cindy said, freeing the cloth and pushing it farther back. “That’s what I’d worry about. I’d go all that way and finally sit down, and then I’d think I was hungry. Or somebody would cough and I’d listen to them coughing. Or my foot would hurt. Or I’d think about whether I was sitting correctly.” Jennifer considered all of these possibilities as if each deserved a fair hearing. “Thinking about lunch probably wouldn’t ruin it.”
“I know.” Cindy shut the drawer. “I’d still be annoyed with myself.” Jennifer lowered her eyes toward the photograph. “Would Buddha be annoyed?” That question made Cindy stop. She imagined herself older but still recognizably herself, tired from travelling, sitting badly, hungry and trying to force an important thought into being because she believed the place deserved one. The picture made her feel foolish and slightly fond of the person in it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’d mind more.” Jennifer’s finger rested at the bottom edge of the page. “Then maybe you could stop minding.” Cindy looked at her. “Maybe. You make it sound easy.” Jennifer said, “I didn’t say easy,” and Cindy conceded, “No.”
For a little while neither girl spoke. Cindy slid down from the bed and sat on the floor opposite Jennifer, leaving the open book between them so neither had to hold it. Jennifer moved one knee aside to make room, and Cindy flattened the page where it had begun to lift. After several quiet moments Jennifer asked, “What if you got there and it didn’t feel important?” Cindy kept her eyes on the photograph. “I’d be disappointed.” Jennifer asked if she would wish she had not gone, and the answer came more quickly than Cindy expected. “No.” She tested it against herself and found it true. “I’d still know what it looked like.”
“The place?” Jennifer asked. Cindy shook her head slightly. “The road. The air. What people sound like there. How hot it is. Whether the ground is hard. I’d remember who went with me.” Jennifer’s attention shifted from the page to Cindy. “Would you take pictures?” Cindy said she would if she had a camera. Jennifer asked if Cindy would put herself in them. “Some. Not every one. If I went that far, I’d want to see where I went when I looked at them later.” Jennifer nodded. “Me too.” It was the kind of agreement that did not need enlarging, and neither girl tried.
From there the pilgrimage gave way almost accidentally to the practical difficulty of reaching India from Ohio. Neither girl knew enough to solve it. Cindy thought they would first have to reach New York, although Jennifer suggested another port might be nearer if trains ran the right way. Cindy objected that nearer meant very little if no suitable ship left from there. Jennifer pulled an atlas from the shelf beside the bed and opened it across the floor, the binding stiff from spending too long upright. The map reduced the Atlantic to a calm blue width and made the rest of the journey look falsely simple. Cindy traced the edge of the United States without pressing her nail into the paper. “You’d need more than one ship.” Jennifer asked why. “Because I don’t think one ship goes from Cleveland to India.”
“We wouldn’t leave from Cleveland,” Jennifer said. Cindy replied, “I know. That makes it worse.” Jennifer measured the ocean with the side of one finger and asked how long Cindy thought the journey would take. “A month,” Cindy guessed. When Jennifer asked if she meant only the ship, Cindy corrected herself to all of it. Jennifer thought that sounded too short, so Cindy increased it to six weeks with no more evidence than before. Jennifer remained doubtful but had no better figure. She searched for railway lines on another map while Cindy checked the index, although they had not yet agreed which city they were trying to reach first. Within minutes their imagined pilgrimage had acquired ports, tickets, luggage, meals, missed trains, seasickness and an argument over how many dresses could reasonably fit into one case.
Cindy was the first to notice how far they had wandered from Jennifer’s original question. She closed the atlas over one finger and said, “So yes. We have places people go.” Jennifer looked at her, then at the atlas. “I thought you might.” Cindy removed her finger and let the book close properly, stacking it on top of the Catholic volume and aligning the corners. “You asked a long question.” Jennifer objected, “I asked one sentence.” Cindy said, “It became long,” which Jennifer accepted without attempting to win the point. The sunlight had moved far enough across the boards to reach one leg of the small table, and downstairs plates touched one another with the soft clink that meant Eun-jung was setting something out.
Neither girl moved yet. Jennifer rested her palms behind her on the floor and asked one more question. “If you went, who would you take?” Cindy’s parents came first without any need to consider alternatives. “Mama and Papa. It would feel strange to go because of things they taught me and leave them here.” Jennifer nodded, looking down at the books. Cindy watched her for a moment. The next thought arrived only after the answer, and because she had not prepared it, it was easier to say. “You could come too.” Jennifer did not brighten theatrically or ask whether Cindy meant it. She simply answered, “I would.”
Cindy immediately saw a practical problem. “You’d have to eat what was there.” Jennifer looked toward the stairway. “I eat here.” Cindy said, “One supper isn’t a continent.” Jennifer’s face changed very slightly. “I don’t only eat bread.” Cindy answered, “I know.” Jennifer said, “You said it like I do,” and Cindy replied, “I said you’d have to eat what was there.” Jennifer considered pushing the matter and decided against it. Cindy could tell from the way her mouth settled. Their amusement remained contained within the familiarity of the disagreement rather than turning either of them cleverer than she was.
Cindy pulled the Catholic book from beneath the atlas and gave it back. “Show me the other picture.” Jennifer found the page without searching long. The photograph showed a stone courtyard crowded with people and candles, the figures too small for their faces to be clear. Jennifer pointed to a woman kneeling near one edge, not because she was the most important person there but because her coat looked almost exactly like one Eun-jung owned. Cindy noticed before Jennifer said anything. “Mama has that coat.” Jennifer said, “I know.” Cindy bent closer. “No, hers has darker buttons.” Jennifer studied the image and agreed. Cindy kept looking another moment, then let the page fall back into Jennifer’s hands. She had no new question ready, and Jennifer did not supply one for her.
Cindy rested one shoulder against the side of the bed and looked from the photograph to the closed atlas beneath it. Bodh Gaya still existed mostly as a name, a remembered tree and a place on a map, but she could picture the road beneath her shoes more easily than she had an hour before. She could also picture coming home afterward, opening this same drawer, being told to sweep beneath the table and finding that annoyance had survived India perfectly well. The thought did not disappoint her. It made the imagined journey seem more possible, something a person could carry into ordinary days without having to become somebody else first. She did not try to decide whether that was what pilgrimage was supposed to mean. For the moment, it was enough that it meant something to her.
Downstairs, Eun-jung called Cindy’s name once. Cindy raised her voice only enough to answer, “Coming, Mama,” then closed the book carefully and handed it back to Jennifer. “We have to go down.” Jennifer stood first and set the books on the table while Cindy checked the room. One stocking pair remained on the blanket near the pillow. Cindy picked it up, opened the drawer and placed it with the others. Jennifer waited by the door without suggesting that it could be done later. When the drawer was shut, the girls went downstairs together, already discussing whether the smell from the kitchen was toasted bread or something that had caught on the pan, while the long journey to India remained spread across the morning behind them without requiring an ending.