Fifteen

By Tanya Sousa

At fifteen, I didn’t realize how I’d changed from the person I’d been. Before then, I’d looked for partridge nests in the forest-lined edges of logging trails, and lived rapt with the discovery of old, silent, and still farm equipment no less mysterious to me than the Great Pyramids. I spent hours by our pond visiting with frogs and dragonfly nymphs, and was known to poke curiously and gently at round-bellied barn spiders.

Fifteen forced the Country Child to sleep while she, the older stepsister in a very real sense, took the helm and heard the call of her culture. There were boys and clothes instead of being amazed at speedy black beetles—books and studies of a different nature; rather than sweeping sketches of willowing birds, there were charcoaled human faces and hands, sometimes a building or two, although the walls and the windows couldn’t agree. But yes, Fifteen held dreams of houses, and the Country Child was put into a room there, safe and warm, but silent, with eyes closed and deep, blind breaths.

Perhaps she would have died there, alone, hidden, if it hadn’t been for that day Fifteen saw a wonderful thing in a golden fall field.

She walked with the family dog, Simba, like so many times before, but Fifteen felt little interest in the trees and waving grasses, or the calling of birds and hum of insects. The woods and fields had become invisible, and she moved through it all without touching or being touched. Simba disappeared in the tall grass, and vanished from sight and mind until there was a surprising flash of orange-red.

Simba was colored like that; her playful growls and barks sparked before Fifteen caught sight of her leaping body, bounding and twirling, mouth pulled open in a delirious dog grin before melting back into the grass like flickering flame. Fifteen stopped walking, vaguely annoyed that the Country Child stirred from her slumber and then finally yawned. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Go back to bed.”

“I’m not tired. I want to see!”

“Whatever.”

Fifteen and the Country Child remained together, listening to the joyful sounds but seeing nothing for a time until the canine face rose up again. It was different somehow—smaller? Then Simba’s head reared up next to the other, and the truth struck the Country Child. She vibrated like a hummingbird and nudged Fifteen. “Did you see it? Did you see it!”

“I saw it!”

“Simba is—she’s playing with a fox!”

Fifteen drew in a breath and grimaced. She grasped for science classes and books about facts—about likelihoods—about what culture would tell her, including what the farm boy down the road, tall and tanned and wanting to move to Connecticut someday, would say.

“They’re not playing. They must be fighting.”

Country Child danced. “No! No! Look!”

Fifteen was silent as she and the Country Child watched the two twirling and racing, strange little noises coming from the vixen as she and her domesticated friend understood they were not such distant cousins, the wild and the still wild at heart. At times their colors blended, so it wasn’t clear which one was which.

Fifteen smiled. Country Child laughed.

Suddenly, both heads popped over the grass again, the fox alarmed. She raced to the nearby woods like a rapid-running stream while my beautiful dog sat for a moment, still nearly laughing as well. I called softly to her, and she came. I heard the echoes inside, whispers that would fade, blend, join before long.

“I don’t want to go back to bed. I’m not tired.”

Sigh “You can stay up with me. But don’t tell anyone I let you…”