Danielle

by Emily Stern

When my next-door neighbor Danielle and I were 12, we started having sex. We lived in chain link enclosed, dingy townhouses. They were narrow and dark and the windows looked into the tiny, grassless backyards of the next layer of townhouses in front of us. Most of the neighbors were high, and poor, just like my family. I tried to control my destiny through being a witch.

Locked in my closet, I lit candles, made wishes, and cast spells. I wrote the wishes and spells on small pieces of paper, and lit them on fire, beginning the ritual of breathing the heat and humidity and smoke deep and fast into my heart, staring at the tiny slips of hope burn between my fingers until they were blackened and painful. I would light a taper candle and drip the wax into the palm of my hand until it was so full that it began to spill over, then, closing my eyes and letting the earthy rumble of pain reach my blood, the dull rush made me believe that I was one with everything, and therefore powerful.

The rule was that the spells wouldn’t work unless I was making my skin bubble underneath. The final step was to mix the ashes of the burnt spell into the squishy wax I was holding. I believed that I could manifest anything. I never asked for anything frivolous. I asked the universe for change. I asked for safety. I asked for my mom’s boyfriends to stop fucking me. I asked that my mom would stop hating herself. I asked for the strength to save myself. I asked for a real friend.

I met Danielle while I was sitting on the sidewalk outside of my front door, smoking a cigarette. She was taller, and wider, and seemed like she might actually be tougher than I thought I was. She was black with a short fro, and seemed more like a boy than a girl. I drank her in, standing above me, and wanted to impress her and curl into her at the same time.

We became quiet friends. Hanging out, and not saying much. We didn’t talk about what we had in common. It wasn’t really necessary. We were silent witnesses. Neither of us needed to explain why there were drugs lying around in plain sight, or why we were sleeping on battered twin beds without sheets or act shocked when we heard each other screaming through the thin walls. Until one night, in her room, with Michael Jackson blaring in the background, we talked about how we were both being fucked with by our mom’s boyfriends. Then, we were quiet again. We didn’t look at each other as we slowly moved into each other, my back pressing into her, her strong arms around me from behind pulling me tightly into her, listening to each other breathe. I turned around and we hugged each other, my head in her chest. We stayed that way for what felt like a very long time. She touched my face. My hand reached for her breast. And then we slowly kissed each other. Our 12-year-old fingers moved around each other’s bodies the same way the men’s fingers did, but this time I think we both wanted to be there. We were choosing. We were choosing softness, and eventually, wetness, and quiet cries and clinging. And silence again. Another oath of silence, but this secret was like the tree swing under the weeping willow. This was a place to hide and feel, for 3 months, until I went away for 2 weeks to visit my father. I came back, and my mother had moved us to Indiana, the next state over, and I never saw Danielle again.

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Emily Stern is a writer, chef and teacher in Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.emilystern.com and www.foodbodyconnection.com