Below is a piece I played around with at Camp Salondawega 2014. This was Salonathon’s first year hosting an artist’s retreat, and you can bet they will be doing it again next year and I will be there with bells on.
All photos courtesy of the phenomenal Zack Lee.
This is the start of the workings of a one woman show that will possibly feature a dancer sometimes and is about stepping into your power and rites of passage. It sounds vague because it is.
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The walls are armored in particle-board panels
Each panel bears the same printed, simulated wood-knot
Little eyes looking back at you
There is a deer head mounted on a sagging anchor that missed the stud
And it smells like rubber cement
On the wall with the least surface area,
There is a big screen Zenith television with a tube inside
It buzzes when you turn it on and if you relax your eyes you can see rainbows in between the tiny vertical lines that make up the picture
There is a brown leather sectional couch in the corner
With bronze studs that attach the leather to the frame
And it is smooth on the places where people sit
And lay their heads
And cracked along the edges where the leather is hard and tight
It smells like cigarettes
The carpet is threadbare down the center of hall and in front of the coffee table and in front of the Zenith tube television
Marking the habits of all who have inhabited the space
If you lay on the floor it smells like when you take your vitamins or drink too much coffee.
On the walls there are are dream catchers
A cross with a crying, sleeping Jesus
Hawk feathers
A painting of a Cherokee Chief in the style of a comic book super hero.
The windows are high on the wall, rectangular in the hamburger style way
and are level with the grass.
They slide open sideways
The track is rusted
There are no curtains.
Glowing ashes float by the window
From the burning leaves outside
And the styrofoam cups that burn purple and melt into something that could only be classified as atomic.
This is where the firsts happen
Pricking our index fingers and rubbing the blood together
One night after watching the edited for TV version of The Craft on TNT.
The Marlboro light
That crackles if you suck on the filter hard enough
The kiss that was intimate enough to know that he was drinking vanilla coke
Before you shared the cigarette
And when we realize we don’t know what we are doing, we practice on each other.
Lacey’s basement is a private island
In the 814 area code where the school busses don’t go
Surrounded by 20 acres of Northwestern Pennsylvania forest
Where the trees are dense and old that the ground is always cold
And you can find patches of snow well into April
And if you dig into the loose earth with your thumb, you will find clay
And there is always the sound of running water
And each summer storm leaves a fallen tree
We never found them all.
Lacey and I became friends because of circumstance
Her last name is Aloisio and mine is Anderson
So instead of memorizing that Robert Frost poem in Ms. Montgomery’s class
I got to know her shoulderblades
That moved like wings
As she took dictation
Lacey and I are friends because our birthdays are within 4 days of each other.
Our moms would call each other scrambling the night before the birthday celebration month day so that we wouldn’t bring the same BiLo Halloween cupcakes.
This year she brought chocolate cupcakes with green frosting and an orange plastic pumpkin ring on top
I brought sugar cookies in the shape of a ghost with white sprinkles stuck to the white frosting.
They both tasted the same.
Lacey’s hair is long and always in a ponytail
And the ponytail continues the line that aligns her high cheekbones with the crown of her head and her chin that punctuates the heart shape of her face.
And her eyes are brown like leather and framed by thick horse lashes.
She smells like water
This year we are having a joint birthday party
It is October.
And The Craft is playing 3 times a week on TNT
And this party is more than a birthday celebration
It is a slumber party.
It is a conversion.
Because, tonight, Lacey is going to call the corners and open the portals and all of our burning questions will be answered by the Cherokee spirits.
Lacey is 1/32nd Cherokee on her mother’s side.
She is a spirit of the land
And the clay that is a thumbs length underneath the dried leaves and the dirt
And the water that turns your toes purple in August and and the fallen trees of 100 summer storms
They all speak to her.
Tonight we are evoking the spirits that inhabit the ancient Cherokee burial ground in Lacey’s forest.
It’s existence has been proven because Lacey and I found a spot by the creek where there are arrowheads.
And we dig them up and we glue them to the frame around her full length mirror
Lacey the warrior princess.
Slumber party means that Lacey’s dad leaves $20 on the table and goes somewhere else and doesn’t come back until after we have been long asleep.
We take Lacey’s moped to the Kwik-Fill station for supplies
The burn from where the pipe etched itself into her calf that one time is still scabbing and peeling and scabbing again
So we put on jeans and boots and we tuck the jeans into the boots
She throws me her brother Tony’s leather jacket and I have to roll the sleeves 3 times just to peep my knuckles out
She brushes my bangs out of my face
Grabs a tube of frosted pink lipstick from her dresser
And puts it on, instructs me to go pah
And we are ready to purchase sour cream and cheese ruffles, Heluvagood Original Flavor dip, Classic potato chips, Orville Reddenbacher’s microwave popcorn, little debbie nutty bars, and the huge jar of Snyder’s cheese balls and Vanilla Coke
I always ride on the back of the moped.
I am in charge of the snacks.
Arrange the bowls in order that they would appear in the rainbow
And divvy out the snacks by size and shape and color
Lacey returns from her room with a handle of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
A birthday present from Tony.
And I see his jacket slumped over the back of the kitchen chair with the arms rolled up three times
Like an amputee
She asks me what to mix it with
I say vanilla Coke because I saw my mom do that once.
So I get the punch bowl
and mix it, measuring with my eyes and my intuition.
And I forage all of the cups you can’t see through
6- one for each girl
And arrange them in a circle around the punch bowl
Etched with pears and grapes and blossoms
An antique, but not Cherokee
It is Lacey’s job to greet the guests as they arrive. I make plates and give out Sprites. The girls inquire about the bowl, but Lacey says we wait for later.
She is a master of anticipation.
The fruit flies are swarming
And the ice keeps melting
So I add more and swat my hand around the jagged lip of the punch bowl
Like casting a ritual to my ancestors.
The girls just look at me; through me; and will sometimes say “Kayla, right?”
Lacey wants to move the punch bowl and the snacks to the basement, so I do it without instruction.
They are nesting and setting up their ‘areas’ and picking out the order in which to watch Hocus Pocus, Pretty Woman, and The Craft. The Craft has to be last, Lacey says.
I light candles
Yankee Candle’s Pumpkin Spice
Yankee Candle’s Snowflake
And a handful of random dinner candles held up by tarnished antique candelabras
But not Cherokee
Lacey spreads out a blanket that is woven from a bunch of different colored threads so that when you stand far away you see the image of a wolf’s face
I set the punchbowl on his nose
The candles around his head
6 pillows
I take the one from Tony’s bed that is black with white spots where his drool had dried
The rest are perfect squares embroidered with deer motifs
A turkey
One has an arrowhead, for Lacey.
Without prior discussion, Lacey gestures for them to line up in front of the punch bowl and they do without hesitation
I ladle their cups with flat, brown syrup rum water.
She is wearing a roach clip barrette with a hawk feather and leather strips and wooden beads behind her ear.
After Justine, Lauryn, Candice, and Megan have been served, I ladle my glass half full.
We hold our cups gingerly and scoot on our knees to our places. The thing about a group of girls is that each knows her place without anything needing to be said. The transition is always seamless.
The orange glow from the candles’ flames flickers on the wall as the sun sets
And the leaves rustle
And we each, as if on cue, touch our arms to feel the goosebumps rising
No one shivers
We are going to open the portals
And we are going into the woods
To receive the message from the ancient Cherokee spirits
We hold hands
My partners’ are warm and the sweat is cold and our fingers delicately tremble against one another
We are skeletons
We close our eyes and we are breathing together
Lacey chants Earth, Air, Fire, Water until she feels like it’s time to stop
And she asks for the spirits to come forward
And to lead us to the place
Where her Cherokee ancestors are buried
I swear I heard a woman’s voice
Murmuring sounds in a rhythm that makes my spine grow taller
I pinch my my nose shut and finish my cup of rum and vanilla coke. Counting the gulps. 2-3-4-5
My cheeks and tips of my ears are hot
And something that lives dormant and low
Slithers into my chest
I stand on my feet firmly
And my voice is clear
As, to Lacey’s surprise, I tell everyone to go outside.
I smell sweat, and the anticipation, and the cotton candy, and cucumber mist body spray
I have been possessed by the Cherokee warrior princess herself
The porch is slabs of graying pine
There is space between the support beam and the ceiling
That was shimmed once, but the roof still shifts away
There is a stack of firewood that Tony splits
And he huffs out of his nose like a bull
And his cheeks are red
And he is glowing
There are camp chairs bleached by the sun and linked together by spiderwebs
An empty can of Fancy Feast chicken flavor
Sunbleached Bud Light cans
And a rug that is new that simply states “Welcome” with no punctuation
The sky is overcast and it could be dawn or dusk. And the shadows are long and blending into the places where the sun’s rays permeate the low hanging clouds. We could be anywhere.
We breathe together.
Shallow and clavicular
Hands gravitate toward each other but never clasp
A line of virgin offerings
I hold the flashlight in front
Lacey holds court behind me
Pointing out the landmarks
The tree where the warrior princess hung like a leaf after leaving her body
Because the white men wanted to take her as a wife
Normally I would listen and play along
Fulfill role of ‘side kick’
But I am focused
I am joining my sister Cherokee Warrior Princess
And she tells me that I am the only one
That has the potential to be as brave and as noble as her
The Maglight leads us to the circle of six stones
Lacey and I prepped the week before
With moss on the rocks and leaves and twigs strewn about
To make it look like the arrangement has always been there.
We sit
I turn out the light
Lacey pauses just long enough for our eyes to adjust
Water drips from the trees
And, as if Lacey coached them, coyotes howl in the distance
But, having lived in 814 her whole life, she knows that they are more afraid of us than we should be of them.
I want to derail her.
Today is my actual birthday
And she is holding court
These girls don’t even know my name
Or they pretend not to
So that I know my place
On the dried up slobber boy pillow
My mind is a screen
And my mouth is a vessel
And my voice is unwavering
As I begin the tale
Of the Cherokee warrior princess
That would not be taken
And died with honor
I conjure her brown feet walking along the creek
The beads on her tunic rattle
Her braids follow her shoulder blades that glide along her back like wings.
And Lacey transforms
From red faced and flustered
To awe struck
To a sheep
Everyone whispers that they see her
Murmuring vague details about hair like a raven’s
Eyes like a doe
We have all read the same stories.
And we need to be converted
We return in silence
Honoring the threshold that has been crossed
Lacey makes space for me to set my bed up next to her
And she looks into my eyes
And without saying anything
My position has been changed.
And all of the girls call me by name.
The blue Zenith-light flickers on the walls as the credits to The Craft roll over my eyes.
I count all of the names 2-3-4-5
When the screen is black, I slither out of my fraying sleeping bag with Belle on the front post princess-ball transformation.
It is a little too short, and my shoulders peep out.
I collect the cups
And the rainbow bowls
And the antique punch bowl
Stacking them so that I only make one trip
Up the stairs
And to the kitchen
I wash away the vanilla rum syrup
And the radioactive emulsified cheese
And the Cherokee Warrior princess is humming a song
Just behind my ears
The sky turns the color of blue that is difficult to look at without squinting
The dishes are drip drying in the rack
And I fall asleep counting the sounds 2-3-4-5
And everything is still.
Kayla Mae Anderson 