The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Ten. {fiction}
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Amy sat down at Leanne’s kitchen table while Leanne puttered around making their tea. She stopped in front of the window over the sink and peered up at the passing clouds.
“Well, would you look at that,” she said. “Storm rolling in.” She turned and looked at Amy, who was playing with scattered pieces of a puzzle that would eventually form Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
“And look who just got here.” She smiled, shaking her head. “Figures.”
Norman slinked against Amy’s legs and pushed his wet nose into her bare foot, mewing seductively.
Leanne’s hand shooed him away. “Ya just ate, Mister. None of that preying on a helpless girl.” Norman looked up at Leanne with utter disgust and retired, tail up, to the living room. Amy watched him walk away with impeccable dignity in his white-slippered feet.
“Jack Fletcher, huh,” Leanne said, screwing the mason jar of tea bags closed and returning it to the wooden shelf.
“Ain’t he a picture. Could stare at that one all day.”
“Well, I didn’t know he was prime real estate around here.”
“So?” Leanne asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t have shot so high.”
Leanne wheeled around, and put two hands behind her on the steel handle of the oven.
“Why the hell not?”
Amy looked down at her slovenly sweatsuit, then up into Leanne’s steely gray eyes. She said nothing. She thought the way she looked on the outside said everything.
“Reaching for something high up is the only way we grow. What are you gonna do, reach down below ya? No, we reach up. And you’re not hopeless, you’re just a project. You’re just primed for a makeover, inside and out. You’re a transformation waiting to happen.
You’re one of those makeover movie dreams — I love those movies. Ask the ladies at the library, I’m always renting them. ‘Cuz there’s nothing I love more than transformation. My Fair Lady. Pretty Woman. In a Beggar, out a Queen. I can’t take my eyes off of those stories, dammit.”
“You think so? There’s hope?”
“Well, abandon hope, kid. Forget the future, forget the past, embrace the now. You’re your hope.” The tea kettle hissed and Leanne switched off the fire. Thunder cracked over the house and outside the window, the air turned black.
“Well, hot damn,” said Leanne.
“You’re so close to starting over, can’t you taste it? Cant you feel it? A new life moving in like a storm? I mean the fact that you even noticed someone besides yourself is a great sign. That’s growing up for sure.”
Amy ignored that. “Well, when do I get to start changing?”
“You’re like my… daughter,” Leanne said, pulling down two mugs from the shelf.
“You have a daughter?”
“Had. I had one.”
“Where is she?”
“Now is not the time for that conversation.”
Amy bit her lip. “Okay, I’m sorry.”
“Apologize when there’s something to be sorry for. Anyway. One day she’s two, the next day she’s twenty. And she kept saying she couldn’t wait to grow up. And the whole time, she was.
We’ve all got one of those Days of Our Lives hourglasses somewhere, and it’s just runnin’ on out, but we act like it ain’t. Change is happening all the time, it’s all there is. Trust me, you’re changing.”
“I think my whole life I just wanted things to stay the same.”
“Wishing for that will kill you. No, you gotta know, you’re on the ride. Put your hands in the air and say ‘Wheeeeeee’.”
Amy threw her hands up lightly, like she was in a roller coaster, just for fun, but the truth was that was exactly the way life felt. A free fall. She laughed despite herself.
“There ya go. So why didn’t you talk to The King himself?” Leanne passed her a dark blue mug of tea. “My old boyfriend Bob made that mug,” she chortled. “Big Ol’ Wizard. That mug has magical powers. Make a wish when you drink from it. And, as always, be careful what you wish for.”
All this magic talk… Amy liked it. It was better than believing in nothing. She cupped the blue pottery chalice, closed her eyes and wished for the second time on the full moon, this time for love. She sipped in the wish water deeply.
“I didn’t talk to him because I was afraid, I think,” Amy said.
“Of what?”
“I thought I was the journalist,” Amy said. “I’m used to asking the questions.”
Leanne rolled her eyes. “Were. You were a journalist. Eight million years ago. Now you’re sitting in my kitchen drinking tea. The past bores me. It puts me right to sleep. Snooze. No more past talk around me, got it? I’ve got no use for it. What I wanna know is what’s happening now.”
“Got it,” Amy said. Although she wasn’t sure what she would talk about, she didn’t feel she had much of a present.
As if she could read her mind, Leanne said, “You’re enough. Just as you are. Right now. We all are. Ain’t gotta be nothing other than who you are right now. Now, why didn’t you talk to Jack Fletcher?”
“I guess… I don’t feel like enough. I used to be. I’m not… anymore. I was scared of him… rejecting me. I looked terrible. And that he’d think I was weird, and that I would say something really stupid.”
“Oh, you kids. You think you have your whole lives to live. That’s a lie. What does the Buddha say? He says, ‘Your problem is, you think you have time.’
Here’s what you need to be terrified of. Not living. Not falling in love. Not speaking up. Not taking chances. Not going for something that makes your heart feel like a Christmas bonfire. You need to spend your whole life, the time you got left, following that fire.
None of the other crap, none of the fear, none of the past, none of the distractions. Just the fire. Just the desire. What you truly desire, that’s your destiny. That’s your destiny, and that’s your true destination.”
Amy ran her finger around the rim of the mug and thought about this concept of Transformation.
“Well,” she prodded again. “When do I get to start, this new life?”
“That’s easy. When you finish with your last one. You done with that disasta yet? You ready to say goodbye? Now’s the time to throw it all in the fiyah — all of it, no exceptions — and walk out new. I’m telling you, kid, to really change, you can’t do anything you used to do.”
She pondered this. She had been holding so much space in her heart for James to come back that there was no room for anyone, or anything, else. She had frozen time while life passed her by.
“What are you still holding on to from it?” Leanne asked. “What’s left? Is there anything alive left from your old life? No. It’s all ashes and death. I can tell you this, kid, it’s done with you. Lemme tell you something else, and it’s a good thing you’re sitting down.
You were as done with him as he was with you. You just didn’t know it. So stop playing the victim. Stop telling that story. Life spared you. He did the honors, but you were dead inside, and that ain’t no life. That’s not love, either. That’s what I’m saying.
Everything has a season, and your love had entered its winter. It was begging to die. He knew it. He did you a favor. It might have felt brutal, but it was a brutal gift. So receive it, and then let it go. Offer it away. Release it. Sayonara.
Nothing new can come while you’re still death-clutching the past. And it’s the perfect time to let it go. Full moon.” She looked up through the ceiling as if she could see it.
Amy winced from all the truth Leanne had just served her.
“Here’s the thing about life,” Leanne said. “So often, the worst things that happen to us turn out to be the best.”
Amy wasn’t so sure. She changed the subject.
“Speaking of the moon,” she said, “I’m going to a circle tonight.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“Her name is Danny, I met her on the beach.”
“Well, would ya look at you! Social card filling up right here.”
“Yeah, she invited me to her house.”
“Ah, with all the baby witches.”
Amy balked. “Witches?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“You ever think about thinking for yourself? Try not to believe everything you hear, my dear. And you want a transformation? Nobody does a makeover like the Goddess.”
“The Goddess?” Amy asked.
Leanne sighed.
“Well, here’s one way to look at it.” She gestured with her right hand, “There’s a Sun,” and then with her left, “and there’s a Moon, right? There’s a day, and there’s a night. There’s a male, and there’s a female, right?” She looked at Amy to make sure she was following. Amy nodded.
“So there’s a male God… well, I’ll be, is it so insane to think there’s a female God?”
“I guess not,” Amy said.
“And all that feminine nature, that’s the Goddess. That’s the creative, healing, transformative energy. That’s what’s going to change you. She… she is change. The stuff of storms, seasons, cycles… of life, of death, of rebirth.”
Something moved inside of Leanne’s eyes, like a plan hatching. She took Amy’s hand and led her to the side screen door of the kitchen. She opened it and a powerful gust of wind came rushing into the room.
“Just look at her, I mean, feel her in action. Feel it in your body.” Amy usually hid from storms, but she watched the wind move the trees and she saw lightning fork over the hill. “Close your eyes, and feel it,” Leanne said. Amy closed her eyes. She breathed in the whooshing air.
Then she felt Leanne’s hand on her back and a swift push, and she stumbled into the yard.
“Hey!” Amy said, almost tripping over herself in the grass. She reached for the door, but Leanne pulled it shut. The thunder roared over her head, and lightning cracked a tree less than a mile away.
“Okay, I get it, Leanne. Let me in.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Leanne said, from safely inside the screen door. “That’s life out there, and you’ve been hiding from it in the porch of your mind, waiting for the rain to stop. But it never, ever stops. You’ve got to learn to move out into it, you’ve got to learn, even when it’s scary, to dance in it.”
“What?!” Amy cried through a crack of thunder. Her hair whipped with the howling winds and the cloud above her cracked open, in two seconds flat she was soaking wet. She threw her arms around herself despite the warm winds, she huddled against the storm.
“Nothing can protect you from life!” Leanne had to shout over the roaring.
“You feel that energy? That’s Mother Nature! That’s what lives inside of you! It’s the feminine forces of life! And you’ve got it, kid! We just need to wake it back up inside of you! That’s the force of creation and we’re ready to recreate you! You see? And see that moon in the sky?” Amy looked up.
It was so dark in the middle of the day; the moon had made her debut early, right over Leanne’s house. “You’re just like her too! Sometimes you’re light, sometimes you go dark, but just to glow again! She’s always dying to be reborn!
You’re mighty powerful! You’ve got the forces of creation inside of you! But you know what’s most powerful about her? It’s that she’s soft and open enough to receive. She receives the sun’s light, and that’s how she glows.
She’s vulnerable enough to receive light, life, and love — that’s what fills her up and then she has something to offer! Then she’s powerful enough to light up the dark and move the whole world. That’s the feminine, my friend.”
“Okay, I get it,” Amy panted. “Can I come in now? My sweats weigh a million pounds.” Her thick Hanes sweatshirt and pants hung off her like heavy wet sandbags, it felt like trying to move through wet cement.
“Well then, take ’em off.”
“What?!” Amy cried. Now she was getting angry. She hadn’t been naked outside since she was two years old.
“You might as well take them off. Because you’re not coming in here until lose some of that armor and you dance.”
“No. I’m leaving.”
“Fine, but you can never come here again,” Leanne crossed her arms.
Amy stared at this woman through the screen. She wasn’t budging, she just stared back at Amy, as serious as an ox.
For a moment, she thought about retreating. Of never seeing Leanne again. And once again, leaving the island, and going… where. She looked up at Leanne’s face. Dammit, she loved that face.
“Life is asking you to dance,” Leanne said. “You gonna say Yes?”
Amy looked around. There was no one for miles. Just pouring rain over rolling acres of green land. She flared her nostrils, then she shook her head and she started to laugh. Oh, why the hell not, she thought.
“I hate you!” she cried through her laughter.
“Oooh!” Leanne whooped. “Something other than sorrow and self-pity! I like it! Today we’ve felt desire and anger! We’re talkin’ passion, people! There might just be life in you yet!” This time, for the first time since Amy had met her, Leanne’s laughter felt truly joyous.
This woman had already given her so much. Amy wanted to give her something back. And once, once she really knew how to put on a show.
Leanne wanted a show? She’d give it to her. She reached for the bottom of her thick wet sweatshirt. She peeled it off her body like an old dead layer of skin. She ripped off her sports bra. The water ran over her flesh and made her nipples stand at attention.
“Oooh, kid,” Leanne said, “That running’s been working. You’re beautiful, kid, beautiful!”
Amy blushed but kept giving Leanne a striptease, with the gusto not unlike an empowered exotic dancer who had once danced on a table she and James ate at in Spain. Amy had watched her unbridled femininity in awe, feeling helplessly trapped in her own body.
She stepped out of her sweatpants like another layer of skin, and then, for her last act, she peeled her underwear down off her legs and flung it into the rose bush.
“Ow ow owwwww!” she cried like a wild thing on the moors. She opened her arms to the moon and tossed her head back, catching the rain in her throat.
“Now here’s the trick, darling. Even when you’re fully clothed, stay this naked. Stay this free.” Amy shivered alive.
Inside, Leanne had moved her old beatbox radio to the table by the screen door.
“Lose the armor. Let life take you.”
The local radio was playing the beginning strains of Ben Howard’s “Only Love.”
“You know this man?” Leanne shouted. “He’s one sexy mutha.” Amy stood naked in the warm rain and watched Leanne start to sway her hips across the kitchen floor in the glow of the lamp, her eyes closed, like she was dancing with God.
“Why, if I was 30 years younga…” Leanne mused with a satisfied smile on her face, like she was moving in warm liquid honey.
Amy’s heart filled with love for this woman. She felt it burst like a cloud and crack open with the thunder, she felt it rain love.
“You’d make the bunnies blush!” Amy cried through the rain, howling with laughter.
“That’s right, kid. You betcha. Now it’s your turn. You’re up to bat in life. Make the bunnies blush. Show me what it looks like to do something with your whole heart.”
Leanne cranked the radio up so loud it battled the roar of Mother Nature. The music filled the backyard, filled her soul. And with that, Amy began to move, the rain washing her clean of the past, her heart as cracked open as the sky, the moon filling it with desire.
And then she moved her hips, as if she was dancing for the first and last time in her life, and once she started, she couldn’t stop.
“Keep moving those hips, baby. That’s where all the rebirth energy is. Keep ’em fluid and juicy!”
Amy swiveled them with the sensual fluidity of a flamenco dancer.
“That’s it! Out of the mind, into the body! That’s where the life is!” They danced together through the screen door. Leanne in the warm light, Amy dancing in the wet dark.
“Only Love! Only Love! Only Love!” she and Leanne cried in unison.
“So,” Leanne cried. “You ready to let the past go?”
“Yes,” Amy whispered into the wind.
“She can’t hear you!” Leanne cried, pointing at the moon.
“YES!” Amy screamed.
“And you’re ready to say Yes to life?”
“YES!!” Amy screamed even louder, her arms raised to the moon, shedding her skin like a snake and shaking her hips like the wind, in her birthday suit, soaked down to the very bone, to her very essence.
“Amy Lunaro,” Leanne hollered through the screen, “You’re going to make one damn fine woman. Just you wait and see. Look out, Jack Fletcher.”
The thunder cracked and Leanne let out another whoop from within the kitchen.
Outside, awash in Nature’s dark and beautiful baptism, Amy was still crying “Yes, Yes, Yes,” as naked as the day she was born.
This is an ongoing series from a forthcoming fiction novel by Sarah Durham Wilson of DOITGIRL.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Transformation of Amy Lunaro’.
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