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Campfire Stories My best friend, Michelle, decided to camp out in her backyard for her sweet sixteen party. Practically being a member of the family, I showed up early with my three-man tent and birthday present in tow. Carosa, our other �sister,� would have been there to help, too, but she is inflicted with chronic lateness. I helped Michelle�s mom, Rhonda (or Mama Haynes as I have come to call her) cook the baked beans and carry all of the condiments for the meal out to the makeshift table in the backyard. Michelle and I helped Papa Haynes unload haystacks from a small trailer. The haystacks had been bound with thick wire that reddened our tender, unworked hands as we lifted them and arranged them in a semi-circle around where the fire would soon be lit. I helped them set up the enormous canvas tent they used for Boy Scout outings when Michelle�s brother was little (my tiny tent obviously was not needed). Slowly our friends started to trickle in as the sun sank into the horizon. Michelle invited practically our whole soccer team. That year we spent just about every weekend together, spending the night at each other�s houses, playing games of charades, and having potluck dinners. The food was cooked by each teammate herself, which always made for an interesting dinner. As each girl came, she was greeted with our traditional guttural calling of �hey.� As soon as everyone had arrived, most likely with the addition of Carosa, we began to prepare our special meal. Mama and Papa Haynes taught us how to make hobos. These foil-encased dinners consisted of potatoes, carrots and ground beef seasoned with Worchester sauce and garlic. We cooked them in the coals of the fire. It always amazes me how Papa Haynes can stick his hand in a fire without getting burned. After our meal and the s�mores that came afterwards, Mama and Papa Haynes went inside for the night, but I know for a fact that they did not sleep. They were always worried about Michelle staying up too late because she was susceptible to illness afterwards. Finally we were all by ourselves in the wilderness of their backyard; the Haynes family owned just enough land so that you felt like you weren�t in middle class suburbia. Mama Haynes, who always planned everything to a tee, left us with activities. We played a game called German Spotlight. In this game, there is a base, which was usually Michelle�s rickety old playscape. The group was divided into teams of two and inadequate flashlights were handed out. One team was to stay at the base while the rest strayed out into the woods guided only by the light of the moon (did I mention it was a cloudy night?). The teams in the wilderness were to try to sneak over to the base without the team on the playscape noticing them. I never could fully enjoy this game. To this day, I am still afraid of the dark for reasons unknown to me. Plus, while lying low in the dirt between some trees I unknowingly lay in a fire ant hill and was in an itchy hell the rest of the night. My team never won because I always made Carosa turn on the flashlight or I would scream at some unidentified object. We played for I�m not sure how long before the game just got boring. German Spotlight involved quite a bit of running, so it wasn�t until we quit that we noticed the biting cold in the air. But it was that coldness that would bring us together. We added layers and layers of Texas winter clothes to our bodies and huddled around the flames, squeezed into the small area between the haystacks and the fire. We began our campfire conversations reminiscing about our tournaments and sleepovers. Then we moved to what teenage girls talk about: boys. But as it got later and later, we became sleepy and introspective. At that late hour, in that cold night, the women who were growing inside us peeked through our sophomore hearts. After a long pause, the conversation moved to heavier topics of love, God and death. We shared our sob stories. Britney told us about the car accident that nearly killed her and her cousins. Carosa brought up the boy in our class who was killed by a drunk driver our freshman year. I told them specifics about my parents� divorce that I would not even let myself think about. Stacy told us about how she first started drinking and the downward slope that came after. When the subject of heaven and hell came up, Mandi showed a side none of us had ever seen. She was terrified and showed it with a childlike whining of, �can we not talk about this anymore?� With all the sharing going on, one friend felt comfortable enough to tell us what her father had done, why he had vanished, and why she clung so hard to her boyfriend. What actually happened between her and her father she did not choose to share. Nor did any of us ask, but we knew that he did things to her that a man does not do with his child. We were shocked. We were all stuck in a tearful speechless place. We merely hugged her and told her that each of us would be there for her. It was all we knew to do. We were sixteen, wise fools, trying to understand our friend�s pain. Eventually the fire died and we went to sleep, all pressed against each other in the drafty tent. We woke up in the morning and searched for wood so that we could rekindle the fire. Beth hadn�t talked that night, but while we were chopping wood and squirting lighter fluid, she nonchalantly told us that she was adopted. This, too, came as a shock. Beth�s dad was probably the coolest adult we knew, and Beth had to have come from his gene pool; they were so much alike. The reaction was not the same as it would have been if she had shared the night before. We talked about it for a while, asking if she knew who her birth parents were or if she knew any information at all, but after a couple of minutes we just concentrated on lighting the fire. We were unsuccessful. I remember thinking that I would be friends with those girls for the rest of my life. The fire brought us together that night, keeping us safe and warm from the outside world. When that fire died, so did our bond. The women who had come out that night retreated back into their hiding, and we handled the new and uncomfortable information immaturely. Instead of talking to each other about what was said, we kept all of our questions inside our hearts. There were a number of times when I desperately wanted to talk to one of the other girls about what went on that night, but everyone else seemed so closed off about it that I didn�t even bother. Maybe the hushed attitude stemmed from the unwritten law of children that you don�t tell other people about secrets someone has told you no matter what. But I didn�t want to tell other people. I wanted to talk to the ones who had told me. This eventually turned into us not feeling comfortable around each other. The stories were not mentioned ever again, but they were always in our minds. We were in a vulnerable stage of our lives, and the fear that sharing those stories created was just too much for some of the girls to handle. I still keep in touch with some of them. Others I just hear about through my mom�s grocery store gossip or from a friend of a friend of a friend. When I would look at them during our last two years of school, they always appeared happy. But I knew what their lives really consisted of. I knew that they once contained the ability to think and feel on a deeper level, on that one October night, that they each had let die. Britney had at least ten girls she called her �best friend.� Her and her best friend of the moment could always be seen walking down the hallways, arm in arm, laughing hysterically about one thing or another. Never, besides that night, have I seen her be serious or not laughing about something. I guess you could say that she is just a happy person, but I say that she�s covering up who she really is. I got a glimpse at who these girls were. I�m grateful that they shared this with me, but it saddens me to think that no one else gets to see that person inside and that they don�t even seem to see themselves. Carosa, Michelle and I were able to come away from that night with a more intimate knowledge of each other and ourselves. We were still only sixteen, but after that night, we were not afraid to let the women inside come out every once in a while. We grew while the others stayed the same. My innocence was lost. Friendships could no longer be just about sleepovers and charades. I knew what kind of deeper sharing and loving I was capable of. Michelle, Carosa and I never let the fire die out in our lives. It died down, but the embers were still red and the fire easily rekindled. The rest of the girls just went back to the cold darkness inside. |
| Spring '01 |