The girls laughed outside while Ana lit a fresh joint. I watched Fernanda, terrified and curious. What was happening to my friend? I mentally beat myself up thinking back on that night of the séance. What if everyone was right and I am just a bad piece of flesh? What if I’m the problem that caused this to happen?
I thought I was accustomed to the feeling of running out of options, but this felt like being buried alive.
Fernanda lay in bed, buzzing from the experience at the club.
“That was amazing . . . what we did to that asshole. I can’t wait to do it again. I wish I could be like that all the time.”
My dear, power is as delicate as the skin of a grape, intoxicating when it ferments and grows and like an unattended vine if not pruned. Where I am from, our power increases over centuries and millennia. Knowing oneself takes time. Harnessing that power even longer.
Fernanda licked her lips, left dry by the matte lipstick. “I’m sorry—I know it’s bad for me to take joy from knocking his ass out. I often feel excited and then ashamed. If I think about my accomplishments too much I’m a show-off. If I think about sex I’m a slut.”
Labels by others are a way to control you. Hear it enough and you will believe it, like a spell.
Fernanda thought of Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit of the apple. How knowledge made Eve into something to be renounced.
“I don’t want to be afraid of my body anymore. I want to know more about it, what it craves.”
Remember what I said about power. Delicate touch.
Fernanda unbuttoned her jeans and slipped her hand over her panties.
Fernanda, you do not need that thin barrier. Feel and see your body.
Fernanda took a breath and pulled off her jeans and panties.
A heaviness settled into the front of Fernanda’s brain, the voice in her head a soft melody. Relax. Relax your mind and open yourself wide enough to let something enter or exit, even if it’s just yourself.
Fernanda thought of the first time she kissed Ruben, after the barbeque. For a year before that she’d burned in secret for him; they’d exchanged long glances even when he had a girlfriend. The opportunity arose when Pauline slept at Ana’s one night, passed out from mixing weed and beer. It was just the two of them when he drove her home. So close, but still hesitant. When he parked his truck, neither said goodbye.
“Maybe I can call you sometime?” Ruben’s clear skin and long eyelashes made Fernanda want to be closer. A light wetness on his lips felt like an invitation.
“I would like that.” She didn’t know what she was waiting for until he leaned over to turn down the radio. With a thundering pulse, she turned her head towards his, allowing gravity to bring them together. His soft tongue slipped between her lips. It felt like magic between her legs, sparks of energy. In her shyness and fear of what could happen next, she had pulled away and said goodbye.
Fernanda didn’t want to hesitate any longer. Splayed out on her bed with a mirror propped between her legs as instructed by the goddess, she thought of how his body looked beneath his cadet uniform. Those full lips that were pillowed and tender. Perla’s sexual adventures always stirred something inside of her. Now Fernanda felt the goddess ease the guilt ingrained since before her first communion, the white veil hanging on her wall a constant reminder.
If our bodies are something to be ashamed of, why are they created so? If pleasure was not to be ours, why are we built to feel it?
The folds between her legs looked like purple and pink petals shimmering with morning dew the more aroused she became. Her index finger stroked her flesh sending a feeling of calm through her, a warmth that extended to her thighs and nipples, like the only time she took a drag of weed from a small glass pipe, but without the hacking cough after. What if it wasn’t her finger but Ruben’s, or even better those lips of his, pressing gently and then harder. Fernanda leaned back in her bed, forgetting the mirror. Why did she deny herself this for so long?
Fernanda continued her exploration. The longer she became acquainted with herself, the less shame she felt. It dissolved like a host on the tongue.
Fernanda, I still have work to do through you. Tomorrow I will concentrate my power to break through our physical and mental barriers. I will move into the light which means you will be suspended in darkness with no recollection or control.
“Absolutely. You can have all of me.”
Power surged within Fernanda. First busting that pig at the club and now saying what she felt. Even if the voice wasn’t a goddess but a devil, it was worth it. This freedom.
After the club things went from normal-strange to desperate-scary. I showed up at Fernanda’s house in a good mood the next day, expecting the Fernanda from the previous night. Her father opened the door in his postal uniform. He appeared groggy, his eyelids thicker and heavier than before.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here,” he said.
“Why? What happened?” He opened the door just wide enough for me to see Fernanda sitting on the sofa and muttering to herself like a zombie.
“My wife said not to let anyone in today. I’m sorry.” He shut the door.
The rest of the girls and I drove slowly past her house every day. Fernanda returned to the dying flower beds to bleed and mutter in Nahuatl in the relentless heat. The hot sunless haze felt like some spell. Under no circumstances could water be used for outdoor purposes. Pick any street and the grass in front
