It was a young woman, naked from the waist up, her bare breasts covered by a thoughtfully arranged string of beads. She had one leg tucked in, and the other was beginning to wander off her lotus-ringed platform. She wore an elaborate crown, and the tiny look on her tiny face was one of serenity.

(Here, I caught myself, embarrassed again. The description of the jade breasts was somewhat less important to the story. But Luke was smiling. “Tara,” he said.)

“This is Tara,” my father said. “One of her major forms, at least. Green Tara.”

I rubbed my thumb over her face. I did not think of my mother.

“Tara is a great bodhisattva, a benevolent protector goddess, and the personal favorite deity of many Tibetans. Buddhist stories are full of Tara springing into action to save her devotees from certain death, snatching them away from the edge at the last moment, pulling their feet from the fire. She is the ultimate compassionate warrior. But the most important thing she protects you from is fear of fear. When you call on Tara, you’re asking to be freed of the delusions that keep you from seeing the world as it is. You can recite Tara’s mantra whenever you need her: om tare tuttare ture soha.”

I repeated it until I had it memorized, and two days later, when I returned to my mother’s house, I hid the figurine inside the secret wall compartment. I wanted to put it on the dresser in my bedroom, with all of my other tiny things. It might even have gotten lost there, I realize now, amid the bracelets and matchbooks and the many delicate glass animals that had once belonged to the grandmother I had never met, the one who had brought my mother here. I might have forgotten all about her, the Green Tara. But I was afraid that my mother would see her, and so I hid her, and because I hid her, I looked at her all the time.

“Not many American girls get gifts of Green Tara,” Luke said.

“My father is a Buddhist,” I said. I hesitated. Shastri Dominique had dismissed me. Luke wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t, from the way he was looking at me. There are some things you can tell no matter how old you are. “He was here last year. John Ellis? About as tall as you. Blond hair, blue eyes?” I could feel my heart beating in my ankles.

He made the face people always make when remembering on cue: squinting upward as if his experiences were being projected on an invisible screen two feet above his head. As if that helps. “Rings a bell,” he said at last. “He came for a dathün?”

“I don’t know.” I was already memorizing it. Dathün.