“That boy...he is so handsome,” said Auntie Sis. “If I were fifty years younger...” She hooted and shrugged out of her smock to reveal an egg-shaped figure of wrinkled flesh and sagging breasts. But she wasn’t bashful. Jenny averted her eyes, but there was nowhere to look. Following Auntie Sis’s lead, everyone began to drop their clothing onto several hand-hewn log benches.
“Come on, ladies. Let’s go get rinsed off.”
Jenny dropped onto a bench to untie her shoes and watched Auntie Sis, Auntie Martha, and a few of the faster disrobers step into the pond. She pulled off her socks and wriggled her toes on the burlap which served as some sort of carpeting to protect their feet from the dirt ground.
“Come on, hurry up.” Kate pranced into the water, her tiny, pale figure delicately smooth against the wrinkled skin of the older women. She dunked her head down in the water, though Auntie Sis and Auntie Sara opted to pour handfuls of water over their heads.
The whole scene reminded Jenny of some woodland nymph theater production where faeries gathered in the forest to bathe and groom each other.
Jenny watched the women frolicking in the water and gritted her teeth. She would not run from this! She stepped out of her sweatpants and pulled her voluminous sweatshirt over her head, dropping both on the bench, before she covered herself as best she could with her two small hands and trotted across the burlap flooring and into the pond.
The shock of the cold water took her breath away, but she submerged herself all the way up to her neck as quickly as possible and worried about breathing later. The pond was fairly shallow. If one stood up, it would reach only to waist level. No sooner had she got in than Auntie Sis stood up.
“Let’s go. Who wants to put the rocks in the lodges?”
Several camp attendees rose from the depths of the water with Auntie Sis and Sara and followed them to the fire pit. Auntie Sis, gray hair dripping about her face, pointed to a shovel and the rocks and then opened the flap of the nearest lodge.
Kate nudged Jenny. “We’d better help out. No free rides here.” She laughed and stepped out of the water, free and unhampered by self-consciousness.
Jenny followed, doing her best to continue to cover herself. A chill swept over her body as she stepped into the cool air of the surrounding forest. Goosebumps popped up on her skin. She approached the fire and the rest of the naked women, wondering if she’d wandered into some surreal nudist event.
Auntie Sara held the burlap flap of a second tent open and indicated it needed hot rocks. As the closest person to the nearest shovel, Jenny swallowed hard, dropped her protective hands and grabbed the weathered wooden shovel. She maneuvered her way around the fire pit, the better to scoop one of the glowing hot stones into the shovel. The weight surprised her, and she moved quickly toward the lodge, hoping against hope she would not trip and lose a burning rock on all this burlap.
“There you go. Put it right in the pit in there.” Auntie Martha grinned and nodded toward a metal ring inside the small domed lodge. Jenny dropped the rock into the pit and watched small sparks fly off and float away into the inside of the sweat lodge.
“Okay, we need about five more.” Auntie Martha turned to the group of women waiting nearby. With no other shovels available, they could do nothing but wait, chilled and ready to jump into a warm lodge. “What do you say, ladies? About five rocks? Or do you want it hotter?”
“Five is good,” sang out one Native American woman. With a nervous chuckle, she added, “You guys don’t want it too hot. Auntie Sara can put on a hot, hot sweat.”
Jenny trotted back to the fire with her shovel, wondering how in the world she was managing to ignore the public jiggling of her body parts. There seemed to be no time for shyness.
She hauled several more rocks back over to the lodge, until another camp attendee took over and relieved her of the chore. Just then, the girl named Lisa dashed across the bridge.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she called out as she quickly shed her clothes and ran into the pond with a splash. Jenny wrapped her arms around her chest and hunched as the cool air kicked in again. It was too bad the women could not have the luxury of the darkness as the men most certainly had.
“Are we all set?” Lisa approached the group with a diffident smile.
“Glad to see you, Lisa,” Auntie Sara said. The last rock was tossed in, and Auntie Sara lowered herself to her hands and knees, turned around, and crawled backward into the lodge.
“You enter a lodge backwards so that when you emerge it is like coming out at birth.”
One by one the seven women waiting backed into the small dark enclosure on their hands and knees. The sight was at once comical and yet endearing as the naked women appeared so vulnerable. Jenny hung back and was the last to enter the lodge. Once inside, she could barely make out the other women inside but saw that all sat cross-legged with their knees often overlapping each other in the tiny quarters.
“Drop the flap. Seal it and make sure no light shows through.” Auntie Sara, across the pit of glowing rocks, instructed quietly.
“Close it?” Jenny squeaked.
“Yup, tight as a drum.”
Jenny reached for the flap and brought it down. She tucked in the edges and turned back toward the group, assuming a cross-legged position, her most private body parts exposed for the world to see...if anyone could see. The oppressive blackness inside the lodge terrified Jenny, and she kept her hand on the edge of the flap...just in case. A bright orange glow emanated from the hot rocks, and Jenny’s goose bumps disappeared with the warmth inside the blackness. She breathed deeply. The thick, musty smell of the burlap overpowered everything.
“I’m going to pour some barley water on the rocks. It’s going to get real hot. Anyone who feels faint just say so, and we’ll let you out. We’ll sweat, sing songs, pray a little, and then run down to the pond to cool off. Then we start all over again. We’ll go three times today, three rounds.”
Jenny heard rather than saw the hiss of steam as the barley water hit the rocks. The temperature inside the confined area rose significantly. The sensation was a pleasant one, as if she were in the steam room at the gym, although burlap never scratched the delicate skin of her backside in the steam room.
Auntie Sara began to sing, a disembodied voice in the dark, as another hiss from the rocks indicated she had poured more barley water. The heat increased correspondingly, and the air thickened enough that it became hard to breathe. A trickle of sweat ran down the space between Jenny’s breasts. She wiped at it, wishing she had a towel to capture the moisture. She ran her tongue over her lips to capture the salty sweat which beaded on her upper lip.
Auntie Sara’s song ebbed and flowed in a language Jenny did not understand, her voice deepening like a man’s at times and evoking a heavy sadness, until it rose to a high-pitched keening. Jenny strained to see Auntie Sara’s face in the dark, to watch her lips move, to read her expression, but the faint orange glow of the rocks shed no significant light.
The singing came to an abrupt halt, and Auntie Sara began to talk.
“A long time ago, I had a husband that was no good. He beat me all the time. I hated that man, but I had nowhere to go. I had three kids at home, and I couldn’t take care of them alone, so I was stuck there.”
Jenny held her breath, shocked at the unexpected intimate revelations of a stranger outside of the confines of a therapy room. Even clients took much longer to open up about their experiences while they learned to build trust.
Another woman gave a sound much like the “hoh” spoken in the group room.
“Lucky for me, that man died. He got cancer, and he died. I haven’t married again. Don’t need to go through that stuff anymore. Never let a man smack me around again.” A hiss of the rocks increased the steam and heat. Jenny fought for air and wondered if her companions were struggling as much as she.
“So, I was singing a song of freedom. I’ve got a man now. He treats me pretty good, but I’m never gonna marry him, and he knows it. We’re happy together.” Another ladle of barley water, and Jenny wondered if she could make it through any more heat. The air inside the lodge was thick with hot moisture and her lungs ached for fresh air.
“Is anybody getting faint yet?” Auntie Sara’s voice seemed to hold a hint of laughter.
Jenny waited for everyone to say yes, but no sounds were forthcoming. She pressed her lips together. She would not be the first to bail out. She swayed just a bit as a lightheaded sensation swept over her.
“Okay, another few minutes, and we’ll go jump in the pond. How about it? Does anyone else have a ‘man gone wrong’ story?”
Jenny wracked her brain for a story, but she couldn’t think of any “man gone wrong” stories...well, except for Clint. And he hadn’t really gone wrong, had he? His face appeared before her in the dark, a beacon of strength in a swirling world of heat and barley water. She closed her eyes and touched her fingertips to the burlap floor covering to ground herself.
“I have a short one, Auntie Sara.”
Jenny alerted at the soft voice across the sweat lodge from her. Who was that? She couldn’t see.
“Go ahead, Lisa girl. We’re listening.” Another hiss of the rocks, and Jenny wondered if she might truly faint from the heat.
“I’ll make it short, because I’m feeling pretty hot right now. I’m sure some of the other ladies are, as well.”
Jenny blessed Lisa’s intuition.
“Well, I just broke up with my boyfriend.” A vague sighing sound like an “aaahhhh” was heard in the dark, perhaps from Auntie Sara. Lisa continued. “We’ve been together for three years. I found out two months ago that he’s been seeing someone else behind my back.”
“Awwww.” Jenny couldn’t hold back a sympathetic sound. Several more women joined in on Auntie Sara’s response of “mmmmmmmm.”
“Thank you for letting me share,” Lisa finished, on a quiet note.
“Men!” Auntie Sara’s voice pronounced. “What are ya gonna do with ’em? They’re awfully hard to live with, but the world sure would be boring without ’em.”
The women of the group joined together in a soft “mmmmmmm” before Auntie Sara grabbed the flap and pulled it aside to reveal blinding, bright light. Jenny blinked momentarily before her eyes adjusted.
Auntie Sara shifted to her hands and knees and crawled out of the lodge. Lisa scooted out after her, and one by one the women on the opposite side followed. Jenny found herself unexpectedly reluctant to emerge from the confined space, which she had longed to escape only moments before.
“Hurry up! I’ve got to get out of here.” Kate, already on her hands and knees, nudged her. Jenny threw her a quick glance, noting Kate’s dripping wet hair and beet red face, before she turned and crawled ignominiously out the flap. Once out of the lodge, she crossed her arms over her chest and hesitated, allowing her gaze to follow the sound of laughing voices and splashing water. Several naked women lined up to gingerly step into the pond and join the rest of the group. Squeals indicated the water would be cold. Jenny eyed her towel on the bench longingly, but Kate grabbed her arm and propelled her in the direction of the pond.
“Come on. Let’s go get rinsed off. I know you’re feeling awkward. But everyone’s naked.”
“This is all so surreal,” Jenny said. She failed the struggle to keep her arms protectively crossed over her breasts while Kate pulled her. “I can’t believe I’m running around outside in broad daylight with no clothes on. It feels so odd.”
Kate chuckled and stepped into the pond. From the way she shivered and drew herself up before moving slowly toward the middle where the rest of the women cavorted, Jenny knew her teeth would soon be chattering. Though she’d longed for a break from the heat of the lodge, she wasn’t sure an ice-cold dip in a mountain stream-fed pond was quite what she had in mind.
With the uncomfortable vulnerability of her nakedness, she hesitated no more. She gritted her teeth and forged into the pond. The frigid water took her breath away once more, but she bent her knees in the shallow pond to cover her body. Goose bumps sprang up on her arms and, she suspected, elsewhere. She caught her breath and dunked her head under the water to cool it. As she rose, she sputtered and saw Auntie Sara stepping out of the water, followed by several of the women.
“Time to go back in.”
“What?” Jenny squeaked to the unhearing backs of the naked women who moved back toward the lodge. “I just got here.”
“That’s because you took so long to get
in
the pond,” Kate said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Jenny dipped her head one last time and followed Kate out. Assuming she’d be able to grab her towel and dry off before entering the lodge again, she was surprised to see the women begin their backward “birth” crawl back into the lodge. Apparently, they would reenter the lodge soaking wet. She hurried to catch up to Kate, who was already on her hands and knees.
Once inside, Jenny closed the flap securely, and Auntie Sara began the process of heating the lodge up once again with ladles of barley water over the burning rocks.
“Hoooeee, that water is cold! How’d everyone do on the first round? Do you need it hotter?”
Jenny longed to throw out a passionate “no,” but she remained silent to the murmurs of “yes” and “no” vocalized in the dark. Another hiss of steam indicated which direction Auntie Sara had chosen.
“Okay. Any more ‘man gone wrong’ stories?” One feminine disembodied voice spoke up, and she began to speak hesitantly of an early youthful marriage. Jenny breathed in the thick steamed air and soon found herself mentally “floating” as the speaker’s words faded in and out.
Clint’s face reappeared, and she longed to talk to him. What would he say to her now? Did he think she would look ridiculous sitting cross-legged with her intimate regions exposed for all to see...if anyone could see? Sweating, light-headed, her face no doubt shiny and red? She imagined him in the lodge...later that night, with the men. A shine on his golden skin, his wet hair down around his face, singing, laughing, perhaps praying.