The small bundle of kindling lit and the smell of wood and fire filled my nose. I stood and put my matchbook in my pocket. I got lost in the dance of the fire. It licked and gently glided up the dry wood crackling and lightly gliding to another larger piece of wood that made a loud pop while being dressed in flames.
Auntie Cass came carrying more wood and placed it onto a heap on a blue tarp not too far from our camp. I took a seat on a weathered camp chair Auntie had had for a long time and pondered at the flames. They looked so peaceful, serene and held so much heat and potential for sheer destruction.
“You look like you wanna crawl in.” She said, I turned to her half expecting her to tell me to move away from the fire. Instead she looked somber. “No, I know better than to play with fire.” I said half absently. She finished throwing a tarp over our freshly chopped wood, and sat down across the fire from me.
“I’ve done this one to many times. I hoped it would never happen to you” Auntie said. I watched her wrinkles crinkle in her forehead. Her brown eyes bored into mine, tears rimmed them but she didn’t dare to let them fall. “Thank you,” I said so quietly I could barely hear myself. She nodded and her gaze softened. “I don’t know how this happened to you, and you don’t have to tell me, just remember it wasn’t your fault. No matter time, or place.” I looked away from her gaze to my feet and wrenched my hands together. I could still feel the bruises around my wrists, and my upper arms still sore from being held so tightly and contorted. Shame washed over me along with the typical self-ridicule. “If I had just stayed home” or “why the fuck did I agree to go inside the apartment” or “why didn’t I fight” played on repeat in my mind. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and it stings.
Aunty got up and walked over to our tent. She bent in and grabbed the supplies she would need for the ceremony. She turned and walked over to me holding a pair of scissors and clippers in one hand, and a hand drum with a stick in the other. She handed me the drum. “Are you ready?” She asked. I nodded and she pointed to the ground a couple of feet from the fire. I sat in the same clothes I had worn the day it happened. Bellbottom jeans, my blue tank top, and an old plaid flannel I got from an ex. They didn’t feel like my clothes anymore. They had been taken off of me and then forced back on me. I was a doll. I had been stolen, played with and dressed. I shuddered uncontrollably and Auntie Cass’s lighter sparked somewhere behind me. She placed a small smudge bowl with smoking copal in front of me. The scent filled my nostrils and I breathed deeply trying to cover the scent of these clothes, the scent of him. I took another even deeper breath and felt the bruises on my ribs being stretched, making me grimace. I held myself until the pain stopped. Auntie patted my hair and started to cut it. All of it.
I sat as straight up as I could.I began drumming like she had told me to do when we planned this, the day before, when it had happened. I drummed slow at first and then picked up pace as I prayed. I wasn’t sure what I was praying for; at times it was for death, other times it was for peace, I would even pray from amnesia, or to be someone else entirely. Each prayer felt false. No one swopped in then, no one was coming to save me from my pain now. I was in it, this raw place, the place where your skin burns from your nerves being soaked in stress hormones, and you’re not sure how, but wish you could escape the prison of your bones and flesh. My whole body jumped when Auntie Cass turned on the little battery operated clippers. The sound took over everything and I was glad for the annoyance. When she finished shaving my head she gathered the bucket she had collected my hair in and filled it with tabaco, “Go get changed into the robe I brought for you. Then throw these out to me when you’re done,” she motioned at the clothes I was wearing. I stood and felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. I tried to focus but images of falling out of the first level apartment window from his bedroom kept replaying. Sitting and being propositioned and then standing up to be moved to the bedroom, being prone, getting up, falling out of the window, getting up. I couldn’t stop myself, and I puked. Sweat covered me and I was so glad to be bald as the wind picked up. I tried standing again and dread filled my soul. Auntie Cass was suddenly handing me a cool towel, holding me up “I’m sorry I puked next to the tent.” I stuttered. She rubbed my back and told me to go get changed. I stumbled into the tent and found aunties green backpack on her sleeping bag. I pulled out the black robe quickly looking to peel these tainted dressings off of me. While undressing I didn’t dare look down. I couldn’t face my own body, my changed body, not yet, not now. I quickly wrapped myself into the robe hoping to feel something different, maybe even safe. I was still in my body, though. I took my clothing I had changed out of and threw it outside of the tent and emerged minutes later to Auntie Cass standing by the low lying flames. She handed me the bucket as I approached. I grabbed bundle after bundle of hair, tobacco, and wadded up clothing and threw them into the fire. I screamed in pure rage. I howled and it deafened me. Rage would build and then deteriorate into an abyss of grief, and it consumed me. “Fuck yooou!!” I screamed and started to cry, collapsing to the ground. “Whhyyyyy!!??” I howled hysterically over and over. Rocking in place. Images of his advance, the way he walked, the way he smelled, the sound of his voice, flooded my memory. The insincerity of his smile burned into me. Glowing orange yellow and red filled my eyes and the fire mirrored my soul. Flailing out reaching for something more, something different. When at last I was out of fuel. I sat back against Auntie’s legs taking in small gasps of air relying on her strength to hold me up. And she didn’t move. Not once.
***
It must have been hours, the stars loomed and twinkled promising different worlds past our atmosphere. I longed to be there, wherever they were. Auntie's hand was leading me down a little beaten path towards the lake. SHe used to bring me here all the time before I thought my time was better spent chasing boys and staying out late with friends. “You remember this lake. Boooyyyy, I could never get you outta it when you were little.” She looked at me and motioned for me to get in. I took my robe off, and realizing my complete nakedness, got in quickly. The freezing cold water hit me. This was a lake fed by big glaciers, and now I remembered why I never left it, ‘cause once you did things just got colder, even if it was summer. And here I was, stark naked in it. Everything left my mind, the pain, my injuries, external and internal, the nausea, everything. My body demanded my mind's attention because the cold wouldn’t let me be anywhere else. There was no time, no past, no future. There was just this moment, and the cold. I must’ve been staring at Auntie long and hard cause she met my gaze and chuckled and said, “We may leave the land, but it always calls us home.” In that eternal moment I couldn’t imagine leaving ever again.
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