Sonja at 18 {rewritten with lots of editing and honing.}   

Sonja at 18 {rewritten with lots of editing and honing.}                     

     Our healing village is down by the levee in New Orleans. I am deep in Psyche hospital funk. Then a cappuccino hued girl with raven hair walks into my life.
     From the moment she comes in I am entranced by her. She is an 18 year old girl of Honduran descent who enchants me. She has a lyrical way of talking. Her talk is sheer sensual poetry in words. Her name is Sonja.
     When I first meet her I think she is unapproachable. She seems like a yuppie who won’t be interested in a dotty guy who talks books all day.
     Over the days to follow I see deeper into her. I see beyond the illusion of her airs, and into the heart of a very vulnerable and beautiful person. She confides to me her fears and anxieties.
     We couch sit close enough to feel each other’s body heat. She curls in fetal ache. “My ovaries are hurting like hell” she exclaims. She says her ovaries are hurting because of birth control pills. I want to
reach out and hug her but hospital rules forbid physical contact between patients.
     We nestle like hungry birds in our autumn nest. We are inches apart. I feel her breath like a tropic breeze scented with bougainvillea tree. In the winter of my solitude, I cuddle her with eiderdown words.  
     She tells me how she went crazy. Her boyfriend gave her LSD while they were in the French Quarter. She laid her head in his lap. He turned into a laughing clown with a black crow stare before her madhouse eyes.
     I say, “That would have scared me. You will get better.”
     She rolls on the couch. “Thank you John. I needed to hear that.”
     She hugs her knees. Her lipstick is a darker shade of midnight. She looks vulnerable as a winter sparrow. Her eyelashes flutter like dove’s wings. Her outward display of calm assurance belies a deeper angst.
     One afternoon I plant myself beside her  as she lies on her stomach in bed. John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” pipes from her boom box.
     She looks up at me with her streetwise gaze and asks, “How does this song make you feel?”
     I look into the abyss of her eyes and say “Moved.” She is too young to be so old.
     A shepherd of  our flock bursts in. “PC, PC, physical contact” he jokes.
     Sonja looks up at him with her sleepy eyes. “Yea I remember that from the adolescent ward. But John and me weren’t touching.”
     He decrees, “I know. But no men and women in the bedroom together.”
     Me and Sonja sit in the empty cafeteria after hours. “John, let’s split this joint” she says.
     I reply, “I feel like a bird in a gilded cage here. Time to fly free.”
     Sonja says, “Then we’re in this together. Here’s the plan. We’re going to make a run for it holding hands. My guy friend will be parked in the getaway car in the parking lot. He has a safe house we can stay in.”
     I smile softly and say, “Sounds like a prison escape movie.”
     The next night we sit with Dan in the empty dining area. “John, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. However, the hospital staff informed me that if we take you along they’ll call the police” Sonja laments.
     Dan replies, “That’s some heavy shit. No way can I do it with cops.”
     I sit out in the common area and woo Sonja, telling her places I will take her in Europe. She responds “If you pay for it sure!”  I sit next to a staff guy on the couch who has overheard our conversation and has a mischievous grin. He says, “She seduces you with her body and you seduce her with your mind.”
     One of my most endearing memories of Sonja is playing touch football in the quadrangle with her, wearing a knee length skirt. She crouches like a tiger with her derriere raised but untouchable by me. Yet she is so close I can reach out and clasp her in my hands. But I watch her every move as she darts like a falconess across the grass. Her maiden hips have my boyish eyes wide with wonder. Her cotton frock clings to her form. Though young and nubile her curves are those of a woman. She runs like a nymph. I imagine a golden orb of heat swelling like a ripening orange between her legs. A wafer-thin fabric is all that conceals her naked moons. So close, yet so faraway, I muse. In my mind’s eye, sultry sunlight licks her bare bottom.
     Once Sonja tells me, “If I fell in a pond or something, you wouldn’t come in and save me, would you?”
     I reply, “Of course I would.”
     She insists, “No you wouldn’t.” Like an ice berg I catch glimpses of her mysteries, but so much remains below the surface.
     One evening Sonja and I are inside the aerobics studio. “Fight me John. Fight me” lilts Sally the dance therapist. She waves me into her with her hands.
     Lights flash red. I side kick at her pulling just before contact. She smiles and urges me on. My karate thrust of foot toward her breasts pumps to the beat of the music. The glint in her eye sparks my libido.
     The class ends and the sweaty people disperse. My sweetheart Sonja and I linger in the room. We face Sally who stands resolute.
     A strange sensation erupts in me. I tell Sally that my legs are pulling apart. She wants to go with this phenomenon.  I let my legs split while Sally holds my thighs. My primal moan grows with the widening spread of my legs. Sally grips my upper hind limbs with womanly strength. Energy surges from my schism. Sonja watches and says “Oh my God!” The crack in my being finally closes in exquisite pleasure.
     Afterward Sonja and I sit on floor with Sally. We word paint impressions of each other. I think Sonja is a yuppie. Sonja jokes “well I can be.”  This moment of intimate sharing between me and the two women, helps coax me to rejoin the human family. The room hums with the healing vibrations of an earthquake receding into oceanic quiet.
     However what is to come will test Sonja and my friendship to the limit. One dreary winter afternoon Sonja and I take a walk outside. She is quiet.
     I ask her, “Are you ok, Sonja?”
     She says, “I feel like killing someone.”
     I ask, “who?”
     She says, “myself.”
     We sit outside. She begs me, “Please don’t tell the staff what I said. I’m going on an  outing with my parents tonight.”
     I say, “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”
     She pleads with me, “I promise I won’t injure myself.”    
     That night I stop the administrator as he is leaving. The woman with him says, “He is tired.  Can it wait?”
     I say, “Sonja made a suicidal comment today.”
     The next night at the Cafeteria, I tell Sonja, “I jumped in the pond for you.”
     “You mean you told Dave about my suicide comment” she nonchalantly replies.
    Finally the curtains fall with the medicine blackout of my feelings. She wears sunglasses and sits next to me. “I can’t express myself anymore” I say in desperation.
     “You have to make yourself. Don’t you have any fucking emotions?” she says in exasperation. She looks away like a stranger.
      Discharge is the only time patients are allowed to touch. She embraces me like an old friend. Her hands rub by back stones like a nymph caressing a fawn. I watch her silhouette vanish into the blinding light of day.