The Reclamation - Part II
On a journey for self-actualization, Pat travels into the Mojave Desert for a wellness treat curated and led by Brooke Lumin, host of the Luminescence podcast and lifestyle brand. Pat’s bunkmate, Celeste, rubs her the wrong way, and Pat makes a strong impression on Brooke during a challenge on the first day.
DAY 2
The second day was spent performing Mindful Silent Service, which was essentially just chores around the property done in complete silence. Pat was assigned bathroom duty and spent a good part of the day scrubbing and bleaching, attacking the mildewed tiles of the bathhouse with a thick-bristled brush. She’d never minded this kind of work, and was grateful to have an excuse not to socialize with Celeste, who was far away in the dining tent.
Later, at the evening Inspo Session, they sat around the fire as the sun set, the sky rioting in pink and orange. Pat’s stomach gurgled. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were VisionShakes, Brooke’s meal substitution smoothie, sky blue from an algae called spirulina. This was not enough to keep her satisfied, and she wondered how any of the other women were so easily sated by the strange drink. Celeste had tried to sneak in her trail mix but it had been confiscated by Gina, which caused a stir in the dining tent. The VisionShakes, Gina explained, were part of Brooke’s Depletion for Creation philosophy, or D4C, something she talked about at length in season 2 of her podcast. If you took away the creature comforts you were used to, something new and beautiful would grow in their void. Celeste had snapped back that she was quite familiar with Brooke’s teachings, and demanded to speak to Brooke herself about the meal plan. Gina told her that she was welcome to speak to Brooke at the fire circle that evening. In the end, she surrendered her reusable plastic pouch of nuts over to Gina, who tucked it away in her omnipresent Luminescence tote. “Sorry about that,” Celeste said to Pat after it was over. “I get a little crazy with low blood sugar.”
Now they sat in silence, staring at the flames, conversations buzzing around them. “Fires are so dangerous this time of year,” Celeste said, loud enough for the women in front of them to turn their heads. She went on to inform Pat that a friend of hers had lost her home in Palm Springs as a result of carelessness with a back yard fire pit. “Burnt to bits,” she said. “Everything incinerated. Can you imagine?” Thankfully, Brooke emerged before Pat had a chance to respond. Pat was embarrassed. Embarrassed for Celeste, who, since she’d failed at the Quieting, seemed unable to refrain from criticizing all aspects of the Retreat, but also embarrassed for herself. Surely the other women thought she was aligned with Celeste due to their proximity in age. Then the group hushed.
Brooke stood in front of the fire in a loose-fitting linen smock and pants, her blond hair rippling down her shoulders. “I want you all to understand something important before we begin our work together—our real work,” she began. “This is not a space for the weak. Look at the landscape around you. The great painter Georgia O’Keeffe once said of the desert that it was a place which knows no kindness in all its beauty. Take that in. This is not a spa retreat. I repeat. This is not a spa retreat. You are warriors. And as warriors, you’ll test your endurance, and come out stronger, sleeker, and more actualized than when you came in.”
She went on, reviewing the group’s spiritual expectations for the next several days. Pat was oddly soothed by her absolutes, which normally she’d question. But there was something about the landscape, about the fire, about Brooke’s gentle purr of a voice that she found refreshing. The land around them that had once felt so empty, so hostile, came alive in the dusk light, the creosote bushes and Joshua trees danced across the hills, the jagged rocks flashing pink in the sunset. For the first time in a long time, it felt like everything was going to be okay. She envisioned a new consignment boutique, the rows of garments carefully steamed and hung from racks to be browsed by fashionable types of all ages, the types of people who knew that things just aren’t made the way they used to be.
“I want to tell you a story,” said Brooke. “A story about sacrifice. Who here has made a sacrifice before?” All hands went up. “In the realm of business, we need to learn how to let go. This is something I figured out at an early age. As many of you know, I was the child of a single mother—a hotel maid.” It was a story she told often, and one Pat had heard before on the podcast. Brooke had a rough time of it growing up, but watching her mother’s sacrifice made her stronger. Celeste seemed to be nodding along, entranced with Brooke. Pat was relieved. The last thing she wanted was for the woman to embarrass her by bringing up the trail mix incident.
“Your next mission, warriors, is called The Letting Go. And I’m going to do it with you, of course. This is the first time we’ve ever done anything like this at The Retreat. Gina, please join me.” Gina approached, carrying a small, zippered pouch (branded). From it, she pulled a pair of scissors. At the sight of the blades in the firelight, Pat felt a lump in her throat. Then Gina stood behind Brooke and gathered her blond strands into one hand.
The sound of the scissors slicing through Brooke’s fairytale golden locks seemed to echo across the landscape. The crowd gasped. In the firelight, Brooke grinned with teeth. Gina cut more and more, letting it pile up on the dirt. Finally she took the clippers and shaved off the rest, so that Brooke sported a buzz cut. It suited her, with her angular cheekbones and doe brown eyes. More Sinead O’Connor than chemo patient. Then Gina and Brooke picked up the hair from the ground and threw it into the fire, where it gave a brief pyrotechnic show before disintegrating into ash.
Pat gagged at the odor of burning hair, then quickly regained her composure. Others, she saw, were also looking queasy, holding their hands to their noses to block the smell.
“I’m sorry,” Celeste whispered to Pat. “I don’t see what this has to do with anything we’re supposed to be getting out of the boot camp.”
In the twisted expression on the woman’s face, Pat saw that she was looking to her for some sort of answer. She had never been looked at in that way before. She’d always been the bewildered one, stumbling into whatever minor successes she’d found in life.
“It’s about sacrifice,” she whispered, with a newfound authority.
“You will be the first,” Brooke said, and Pat realized with a jolt that Brooke was pointing at her. She stood, running a hand through her own cropped curls and walked to the fire.
To be continued…
Lena Valencia’s debut short story collection, Mystery Lights, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in 2024. Her fiction has appeared in Ninth Letter, Epiphany, Electric Literature, the anthology Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Elizabeth George Foundation grant and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Originally from Los Angeles, she lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is the managing editor and director of educational programming at One Story and the co-host of the reading series Ditmas Lit
Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and check out more of her work here.