Rite of Passage
“Sahle?” my mother asked, softly snapping fingers in front of my unseeing eyes.
We were sitting in a coffee shop downtown, easing our weary feet after an afternoon of browsing boutiques in search of what my mother called my “birthday suit.” I had promptly advised her that the black lace blouse we purchased should never again be referred to as such.
“Hmm?” I blinked at her as I tried to focus on the present. “Sorry, did you say something?”
She rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath about staring into space. “I asked whether or not you’re excited for tomorrow.”
I looked at her with a quirked brow.
Tomorrow was my twentieth birthday and, for the life of me, I could not muster an ounce of enthusiasm. I should be excited. It was not every day that my friends threw me a secret surprise party – albeit one that I found out about as soon as the planning began. But I despised parties. Any sort of bustling, crowded event was a strange mix of terrifying and tedious. I hated the heat and press of too many bodies, the background chatter that groaned, the nearly perceptible buzz of energy that floated in the air.
If I were being truly honest, I would admit that my hatred did not stem from the parties themselves but rather how they made me feel. I was a solitary sort of girl, someone who much preferred a quiet walk along a country lane or a comfy reading nook on a rainy afternoon. And, no matter how old I grew, how many birthdays came and went, I never failed to say something stupid and impulsive in front of a crowd of people.
My friends would not call me shy, even if there was a quietness to me. I had a tendency to speak my mind freely the moment something rubbed me the wrong way, and I had a sparking temper that flared whenever I was backed into a corner. For all of these reasons, it was healthier for everyone involved if I avoided the large events my friends insisted on throwing.
But my mother knew all of this. Despite the fact that we looked nothing alike, our personalities were fairly similar. I found a kinship with the knowledge that she, too, found large gatherings anxiety-producing rather than joyous as normal people did.
I drained the rest of my coffee and a hairline crack along the mug’s edge scratched the corner of my lip. “You know I’m not,” I responded with a grimace.
But my mother just laughed, tipping back her blonde head as she chuckled. It was my turn to roll my eyes at her and, despite my derision, I smiled. I had always loved my mother’s laughter, the way her blue eyes crinkled at the corners and shone with mirth as she let loose almost bell-like giggles.
My own laugh was nothing like hers, at least not to my ears. I guffawed and even snorted at times. And when my own head tipped back in fits of laughter, it was not gently waving blonde hair that glided down my back.
My own head of hair was dense and curled like tightly coiled springs that seemingly defied gravity. They had grown long enough in my late teens that they did now fall towards the earth rather than springing out at odd angles, and in the last years I had grown to not despise my hair. I would not say I loved it, but I no longer looked in the mirror with dread.
My skin was also darker than my mother’s. While hers was the color of fresh cream, mine was a lustrous, warm beige. I tanned several shades darker in the summer and went a sickly shade of yellow when I spent too many hours indoors.
But what I did have of my mother were her eyes. Those gray-blue eyes that shone in laughter – that color was the same as mine. My eyes were set at a slight slant while hers were not, but the color was near-identical. And for that I was always thankful. It was something I could grasp onto, something that marked me as hers.
In truth, the eyes could have been as much from my father as my mother. My hair texture, my skin coloring, the shape of my features all looked like my father. They were not exact replicas, as if an errant great aunt had also lent the upturn of a nose or the arch of an eyebrow, but I saw myself more in my father’s darker coloring and tightly coiled hair.
I brushed one of these coils back from my face as I kept the disbelieving look trained on my mother. “I don’t do well with crowds.”
“So you continue to tell me,” she replied. “But Sahle, these are your friends. And they’ll all be there to celebrate you.”
“There to celebrate the existence of alcohol, you mean,” I murmured under my breath. Several of my friends jumped at the idea of any event where they could slurp down straight vodka as fast as their throats would allow.
My mother’s face suddenly changed, and it was as if a gauzy veil of emotion draped across her usually bright smile. “Yes, well, some parents aren’t as relaxed as we’ve been with that sort of thing. Your friends will grow out of it in time and with more exposure. But promise me something?”
I nodded, transfixed by her shifting mood.
She took my hand where it sat on the round bistro table between us. “You’re getting older, Sahl, and with that…some things are going to change. You’ll lose some friends. You’ll make new ones. And at the end of it, all you’ll be left with are your memories of being young, being at your parties, being with the friends you had in that moment. Cherish them, OK?”
Both eyebrows raised at her now, but something in her earnestness kept me from laughing, from making light of her seriousness. “OK, Mom.”
She nodded once, as if confirming something in her own mind. Then she drained her mug and stood. “Shall we head home? Someone has to decide what they’ll wear with their new top!”
I laughed as I climbed to my feet and followed her out of the shop. Only my mother could make me excited about a birthday – almost.
✴✴✴
I awoke the morning of my birthday with a splitting headache and an overwhelming sense of dread. I rolled out of bed and stared at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. Welcome to twenty, I thought as I looked into my gray-blue eyes.
Between my own classes that I attended at the local college, lunch, and a barely suffered-through bite of birthday cake at home with my parents, time seemed to slow and race interchangeably. But before I knew it, it was time to head to the birthday party I had been dreading.
My dad offered to drive me, even though I said more than once that I could call a rideshare. Strangely, he insisted. That is how I ended up sliding into the smooth leather interior of his sedan as we headed out into the evening.
“You excited, Sahl?” my dad asked me.
I rolled my eyes. “You and Mom keep asking me this like I suddenly changed my mind about birthdays.”
My dad let loose a low chuckle, the sound warm and deep in his chest. He was a quiet man, one who listened more than he spoke – except to me. I felt he spoke to me more than anyone else in the world. “We know you, and how you feel about it. But turning twenty is a big deal. We want you to take in the experience. It’s important.”
“That also sounds like Mom,” I responded, watching the lights of suburbia whisk by. They were the lights of slightly too large houses with slightly too large lawns, slightly too big department stores on slightly too wide avenues. “She said something similar yesterday while we were shopping. Something about savoring this because one day all I’d have are memories of my friends.”
“She’s right.”
“You two are too sentimental. Next year, I’ll be twenty-one and I’ll be back at the same party with my same friends. I don’t think much changes in a town like this.”
Strangely, my dad did not say anything for a moment. I watched as his grip tightened on the steering wheel, and I wondered what I had said that put him on edge. His eyes stayed fixed on the road and then he nodded. It was his way of ending a discussion that he felt was going nowhere.
I leaned forward and flicked on the stereo. A CD was already loaded, and the tumultuous sounds of Carmen filled the car.
“Hmm,” I hummed appreciatively, reclining back in my seat.
The opera was my favorite, as it was my dad’s favorite. He had introduced me to opera as a child and our love for the art was something that bound us together. Of all of the performances we had seen over the years, both live and recorded, nothing had ever come close to beating Carmen for pure melodramatic excitement. Of that, we were always in agreement.
“A classic,” he said.
“A vision,” I added.
My dad turned his head a fraction of an inch to glance at me and I smiled at him. He returned the gesture but, even reserved as he was, I could see that the smile did not reach his eyes.
A few minutes later, I was standing before Cecily’s front door, clasping the edges of my leather coat together to keep the cold off of my barely-covered skin. The lace top my mother and I had purchased was pretty if a touch goth, thin and delicate in a way that clung to my gently curved torso while still being loose enough for comfort. Underneath it, I wore a black camisole that did nothing to trap body heat.
Before I could ring the bell, the door flew open and a gaggle of pink-clad college juniors exploded out onto the porch.
“Happy Birthday, Sahle!” several cried in unison.
I restrained my rolling eyes as I spotted Melody and Katherine, two friends-of-friends that somehow always seemed to be around. My mood was only slightly more excited to spy Cecily’s boyfriend, Jason, and his friend, Lyle. In my estimation, they were the male equivalent of the giddy but empty-headed Melody and Katherine.
And then I spied Cecily and Jenna, and my fake smile shifted into a real one.
They wormed their way through the gathering crowd – ignoring a few people who I was pretty sure asked “Who’s birthday is it?” – and threw their arms around me.
“Thank you both for hosting the party,” I said, still confined in their embrace. As some of my closest friends, they knew my general feeling about birthdays and parties, but they played along, happy to believe for even a few moments that I was genuinely excited to be here.
“Come in. Come in. You’re all letting the cold in,” another voice called from the open doorway, and I angled my head to see the fourth member of our usual group, Mer.
Pronounced “Mare,” Mer was my oldest friend and the person I trusted most with my secrets. I had known her since the third grade, and we had been inseparable ever since.
While Cecily and Jenna were friends, Mer was like the sister I never had. I broke away from Cecily and Jenna to make my way over to her, and she wrapped me in her own warm embrace, the heat from the house tickling around our frames.
“Happy birthday, cupcake,” she said in my ear, and I smiled into her mane of red hair. For a whole year, when we were eleven years old, she called me cupcake. Now, she only broke it out on special occasions or when she wanted a favor.
“Thanks, Mer,” I replied, pulling away from her to survey the scene before me. “Let’s get this party started.”
The party was exactly what I expected. Music pumped from the built-in ceiling speakers. The mingled smell of musty beer and sweet icing filled the air. The heat of too many bodies packed the room.
There were probably fifty people here, I estimated – fifty people and most of them I had never met.
I also knew exactly how that happened. Cecily had always been a talker, and when she was throwing a party for any reason, it was an open invitation. That was just how she operated, and I accepted that, even as I took an offered red cup of lukewarm beer with a nod to the baseball-capped guy manning the keg in the kitchen.
“The big two-zero,” Mer said, taking a cup for herself from the lineup on the counter.
I took a sip, mentally preparing myself for the bitterness before my lips even met the cup. “Don’t remind me.”
Mer shook her head at me with a smile. “You always have such a thing with birthdays. But you know, you’re only supposed to hate them when you’re older, like when they’re a reminder that you’re one year closer to the grave.”
“They’re already a reminder of that,” I quipped back. “Seriously, though, I remember having a sense of dread around my birthday even as a child. It’s hard to explain but there has always been this sense of imminence that I could never shake.”
Mer looked at me – really looked at me. There was kindness in her eyes as she said, “I understand, Sahl. I mean, I’ve never felt like that on my birthday, but I get that that’s how you feel. And I get that the feeling makes it hard to have a happy-go-lucky day.”
I nodded at her, shifting my feet on the white tile of the kitchen floor. I pulled my gaze from her green one to scan the room. “Where did Cecily and Jenna go?” I asked, ready to move on from the conversation.
“Cecily was having an argument with Jason before you arrived, so I’m sure she’s finishing that up. And you know wherever Cecily is, Jenna is bound to be, too.”
I laughed at the observation. It was true. Cecily and Jenna were practically joined at the hip and had been as long as we had known them. If Mer and I were best friends, those two were best friends. The four of us combined as a looser group of great friends but we all knew who our closest person was.
I scanned the party again. I narrowed my eyes as I looked past the beige and white living room towards the sliding doors leading to the back deck. Between the low light inside and the approaching darkness outside, it was hard to see the figures moving, but they were certainly there.
Something drew my eye right to the dark silhouette of Cecily’s high ponytail at the exact moment the taller, wider silhouette that was Jason stepped towards her and raised his arm. That hand reached out and connected with Cecily’s cheek, and I imagined I could hear it like the sound of a snapping whip.
I did not consciously tell my body to move but it did just that, as if drawn towards that deck and whatever was happening out there.
“Sahl?” Mer called after me in confusion. I heard her footsteps following behind as I shimmied through the mass of bodies gently swaying to the beat of the music.
I reached the glass doors that led to the backyard and flung them open. I hurried out onto the porch, dodging two people moving back inside.
The outside light was turned off but night had not fully descended. In the half-light, I could easily make out the redness of Cecily’s face as she cupped one palm to her cheek.
“What the fuck?” I exclaimed, turning to Jason as Cecily cast her eyes to the deck.
But Jason was not speaking. His eyes were narrowed and an angry scowl cut across his face.
“Sahl!” Mer called for a second time as I marched up to Jason. I probably should have thought about how this large man could strike me just as he had hit Cecily, but I had never been one to think first and act later. It was quite the opposite really – I had always been a touch impulsive when my emotions got the best of me.
And my emotions burned now with outrage and disbelief. I could almost see the haze of anger like a physical barrier between my eyes and Jason’s stubborn face. I did not try to reign it in.
I walked up to him, stopping a touch too close for comfort. I looked up into his ruddy face with a scowl of my own. “I said what the fuck?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jason muttered, not meeting my eye.
My breath was heavy, coming quickly in and out as I stared at him. I willed him to be the tough man he was and look at me.
Almost reluctantly, his eyes met mine.
“I’ll ask you again. What the fuck was that?”
“It’s none of your concern.”
My mouth nearly fell open. “Like hell it isn’t!”
Like any good bully, Jason was drawing himself up in indignation, using it as armor to deflect any sense of wrongdoing. I could see it in his posture. He stood a little taller and his shoulders pulled back a fraction of an inch.
“Sahl, everything’s fine,” Cecily called from behind me, and I turned my gaze to her. Mer and Jenna were standing beside her, Jenna’s arm draped around Cecily’s waist.
But it was not fine – not at all.
I turned my attention back to Jason. “You think it’s acceptable to hit your girlfriend?”
“I think it’s none of your business what Cecily and I do,” he quipped back.
“You make it my business when you hurt someone I care about.”
But Jason was not listening. He stepped around me and reached for Cecily just as Jenna and Mer tightened their hold on her.
“Let’s go,” he told her, his wide fingers digging into the pale skin of her wrist. He pulled her as if to drag her back inside, but she would not budge.
I hated that hand on her. I hated the look of his fingers where they made deep indentations in her skin, and I wished he would release her.
He pulled his hand back, shaking it as if her rejection physically stung.
“I think it’s time you leave,” Mer said, her green eyes taking on a fierce light as she glared at him.
For one intense moment, the two stared at each other. No one dared move. Our breath seemed to still. The birds who sang of night’s descent quieted in the trees and the whisper of the leaves froze. Even the gentle breeze seemed to stop to watch in fascination.
“Come on, man,” Lyle called from where he stood by the railing. “Let’s just go.”
I did not know Lyle well, but in that instant I knew he had more sense than I had ever given him credit for. Leaving was the only good option, unless Jason was planning to physically beat us all to pieces.
That was the only way Jenna, Mer, or I would let Cecily go with him.
Jason looked between Lyle and Cecily, seeming to decide that ignoring the rest of us was the best course of action. Abruptly, he turned away. “Fine. This party’s lame anyway.”
He stormed off the deck with Lyle at his heels, but I did not move until I saw, through the glass back door, the front door to the house close behind him.
Only then did I fall back to where the three women were standing. Jenna was gingerly touching the red spot on Cecily’s cheek and Mer was whispering something to Cecily in the same tone one spoke to a horse or a sick baby. We all moved slowly, quietly, shocked as we were by what had just happened.
Eventually, Cecily cleared her throat. “Thank you, Sahl,” she said as her eyes met mine. “You didn’t need to do that…but I’m glad you did.”
She blinked against the tears that welled up, and I smiled a little at her. “Of course. No one hurts the people I care about.”
She nodded. “I know.”
The four of us spent the next fifteen minutes in the bathroom, fixing Cecily’s hair, redoing her makeup, and patting away the tears. Even if this had not been her house, I knew Cecily would not have left. It was my birthday after all, and she and Jenna believed in nothing if not that all the stops must be pulled out for a good birthday.
Although it went unspoken, it was as if the four of us agreed to wallow in what had happened while we were in the bathroom. And when we stepped outside of that sanctuary, when we rejoined the party, we would not speak of it again – not tonight at least.
Tomorrow, Cecily had some tough choices. I knew I would be calling her first thing in the morning to urge her in the strongest way possible that it was time to leave that dick of a boyfriend.
The party hummed along without us, and if anyone had noticed what transpired on the porch, no one asked about it. I pasted a mask of a smile on my face and greeted the friends-of-friends who wished me happy birthday. I accepted a new cup of beer – this time cooler, thankfully – and sipped at it. And then Mer was calling to me from across the room, a cake knife brandished over her head.
Those partiers who knew me, or who were paying attention generally, sang happy birthday. We ate cake. We danced to whatever thumping club mix Cecily had picked out earlier in the night. And we laughed – oh, how we laughed.
I disliked my birthday but if there was anyone who could make it better, it was the three women standing around me. I glanced at their open faces as we spun around and jumped up and down and shook our booties ironically to the beat.
And I smiled my first real smile of the day. If this was twenty, maybe it would not be so bad after all.
A few hours later, I stifled a yawn and glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of Cecily’s living room. As if on cue, the clock chimed eleven o’clock, and I knew it was acceptable for me to leave.
Mer, Jenna, and Cecily all protested when I said I was heading home, but I knew they were just happy I stayed as long as I had at the party. I gave a round of hugs, a stern promise to call Cecily in the morning, and then I pulled out my phone to order a ride.
Minutes later, I slid into the backseat of a car. And a few minutes after that, the car pulled up to the front yard of my suburban home.
I closed the door of the cab as I hopped out onto the curb in front of the house. My parents were early sleepers, often going up to their bedroom by nine o’clock but here it was hours later, and the house remained lit as if they were still downstairs. They could have left the lights on for me, or perhaps it was a rare moment when they were up late to finish a movie.
It was no surprise, therefore, to find them seated on the couch as soon as I unlocked the front door.
“Mom. Dad,” I greeted them as I relocked the deadbolt. “You two are up late.”
“We were waiting for you,” my mother said quietly. But something about the tone of her voice was off. It was too calm, too flat as if she was mastering it against nerves or fear.
I focused my attention on her and then my dad. Quiet as he was, he had always been able to communicate one thousand words with a single look or the angle of his head. His silence now rang out like a shot. He was communicating nothing, just staring at the floor, the ceiling, a spot over my shoulder – anything to avoid meeting my eye.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
It was then that I spied two small bags sitting next to the couch. “Are we going somewhere?”
Despite my questions, no one spoke. Slowly, my parents looked at each other and, as if some decision had been made in that single look, my father stood and approached me.
His broad frame towered over me, his gray-blue eyes locking on my own. “Sahle, I need you to trust us. OK, honey?”
Something was wrong. My skin tingled with the knowledge of it. No, it was not OK and I shook my head, unable to say the words aloud.
But my father was having none of that. “No, honey, you have to trust us. In a moment, we’re going to go on a trip. It’s been planned for a long time. It’s going to be difficult and a little scary, but I promise that nothing will hurt you.”
“What are you talking about?” I choked out. My eyebrows had risen in incredulity. Surely, surely my father had to be losing it.
I turned to my mother for confirmation. “Mom, what is he talking about?”
She had been looking away from the two of us but when she turned back, I saw that her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. She cleared her throat before she stood. “Sweetheart, please just listen to him. Listen to us. We have to go. I know this is strange and that it doesn’t make sense, but it will all make sense soon. Everything will be alright.”
Of course I trusted my parents. I loved them and I knew they would never hurt me, but something in the way they held themselves, something in how they talked, told me on an instinctual level that this was not just any trip.
Something was off. Something was wrong.
But even as I kept shaking my head, willing whatever was happening to stop, my parents were picking up the two bags. My father came back to me and took my arm in his, propelling me towards the kitchen and back door.
“Can someone please explain where we’re going? It’s nearly midnight! Why do we have to go now?” I questioned, trying to squirm out of my dad’s grasp.
“All will be explained shortly,” he responded, his grip like an iron band on my elbow. “I promise.”
It was the second time he had made a promise tonight and I noted it. I was going to throw it back in his face if someone did not explain shortly, and if I so much as stubbed a toe.
For some reason, though, I stopped fighting. Maybe it was the look in my mother’s eyes, the way her bottom lip trembled the more I tried to pull my arm away from my father’s grip.
I trusted my parents and as much as I did not understand what was happening, I made the decision to go along with it. They would not lead me into harm. They would only do what was best for me. I knew that as deeply as I knew that the sky was blue, that my body needed air to breathe and food to sustain itself.
So I let myself be guided to the kitchen, through the back door and out onto our back lawn. Once there, my parents put down the two bags.
“Sahle,” my father spoke sternly. “If I let your arm go, will you please stay put?”
I simply nodded, not trusting my voice to hold steady if I responded verbally.
“Good,” he said and let go of my elbow. And I did not run. I just stood there, close to my father as I had before.
A faint click to my left drew my attention and I glanced over to where my mother stood. She was holding her silver locket in her hands, the one she always wore. No matter the time of day or night, no matter if we were at the beach or sitting on the couch at home, I had never seen that locket off of her neck.
Now, she held it in her hands, cradling it like it was a precious amulet. And perhaps it was, for she opened it and I saw the miniature of the three of us that had been in that locket since I was a baby. She had often told me it was her favorite photo of our family whenever I had begged her to open the locket and show me what was inside.
To my shock, her finger now grasped the plastic overlaying the photo. She pulled it out, along with the image. Below was a small stone. It shone like off-white milk glass, and it was perfectly shaped to fit behind the image without rattling around or forcing the photo to bulge.
She shook the stone out on her palm and then closed her fist tightly around it. I watched as her eyes shut, and she whispered a series of words to herself. Then she opened her palm and the stone was alight, shimmering as if the edges were lit from within with silver dancing bands.
“Sahle,” she said, turning to me. I felt her hand slip around my own and she gave my hand a little squeeze as she smiled. It was a wistful look, and I struggled to make out the emotion behind her tear-filled eyes. “Always remember that we love you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that I would, that I did, that I could never not know that. But before the words could get out, a shimmering net of light rose from the stone in my mother’s hand.
It shot straight into the sky before arching over above our heads, creating a dome around us, a net of white light that shone like blood vessels in the night air.
I blinked at the sight, trying to make sense of how ribbons of light seemed to cage us in. In one blink, I was assessing the light and in the next there was nothing.
And in the next, there was everything.
