She had to have him inside her.
Only that could satisfy her hunger.
Her certainty thrilled and terrified her all at once.
With the smell of cinnamon filling the kitchen, her mother leaned back in her chair, hands over her stomach as though she had some voluminous belly.
“I don’t think I ever eat again.”
Donika smiled, but it felt forced. They had followed the same recipes they had always used, brought over from Albania with her mother years ago, passed down for generations. Somehow, though, the food had tasted bland. Even the cinnamon had seemed stale in her mouth. The smell of dessert had been tantalizing, but its taste had not delivered on that promise. She had eaten as much as she did mainly because she hadn’t wanted to hurt her mother’s feelings. And the hunger remained.
How she could still feel hungry after such a meal—particularly when nothing seemed to taste good to her—Donika didn’t know. She chalked it up to hormones. Today was her sixteenth birthday. According to her mother, she had become a woman all of a sudden, like flipping a switch. She had never believed it really worked that way, but given the way she felt, maybe it did. Maybe that was exactly how it worked. She always craved chocolate right before she got her period—could have eaten gallons of ice cream if she’d given in—so this might be similar.
Or maybe it’s love. The thought skittered across her mind. She’d heard of people not being able to eat when they were in love. It occurred to her that this could be another symptom.
She tasted the idea on the back of her tongue. Did she love Josh?
Maybe.
She hungered for him, certainly. Longed for him. Could that be love? No. Donika had seen enough movies and read enough books to know that desire and love might not be mutually exclusive, but they weren’t the same thing either.
But desire like this? It hurts. It burns.
“—you listening to me, ’Nika?”
“What?” she asked, blinking.
Her mother studied her, concern etched upon her face. “You okay? You feel sick?”
“No. Sorry, Ma. Just tired, I guess.”
A lame excuse. She expected her mother to call her on it, maybe to make some insinuating comment about her walk in the woods the night before, about how maybe if she wasn’t always out talking to boys and running around with her friends, she wouldn’t be so tired. Her mother didn’t let her do very much, and she’d been hanging around the house all day playing guitar, and then cooking, but logic never stopped her mother from suspicion or judgment.
But Qendressa didn’t say anything like that.
“You like dinner, though, right?” she asked, and just then it seemed the most important question in the world to her. “Your sixteenth birthday the sweetest. You should be happy today. Celebrate.”
Donika felt such love for her mother then. Sometimes she became so angry and frustrated with the woman’s Old World traditions, but always she knew that beneath all of that lay nothing but adoration and worry, a mother’s constant companions. She thought she understood fairly well for a fifteen-year-old girl.
Sixteen, she reminded herself. Sixteen, today.
“I love you, Ma.”
They both seemed surprised she’d said it out loud. It had never been common to speak of love, though they both felt it all the time.
Her mother smiled, took a long, shuddering breath, and then began to cry. Donika stared at her in confusion. Qendressa turned her face away to hide her tears and raised a hand to forestall any questions.
After a moment, she wiped her eyes. “You all grown, now, ’Nika. Walk with me. Tonight, I tell you the story of how you were born.”
“What do you mean, how I was born?”
Her mother smiled and slid her chair back. It squeaked on the kitchen floor. “Walk with me,” she said as she stood. “In the woods. How you like. And maybe you learn why you like it so much.”
Donika got up, dropping her napkin on the table. Bewildered, she tried to make sense of her mother’s words and behavior, doing her best to push away the hunger inside her and to not think about the fact that Josh had said he’d be out on the corner later, waiting for her if she could manage to get out tonight.
Her mother took her hand. “Come.”
Together they left the house. The screen door slammed shut behind them as if in emphasis, the house happy to have them gone. The porch steps creaked underfoot. When her mother led her across the driveway toward the path, Donika hesitated a moment. The woods were hers. She might see other people in there, but something about going into the forest with her mother troubled her. Much as Donika loved her, she didn’t want to share.
“Ma,” she said, hesitating.
“It won’t take long,” Qendressa said. “But you need to know the story. Should have told you long time ago. I am selfish.”
Donika shook her head. What the hell was her mother talking about?
They walked into the trees. The summer sun had fallen low on the horizon. Soon dusk would arrive. For now, wan daylight still filtered through the thick trees, slanted and pale, shadows long.
“My mother, she knew things,” Qendressa began. Her grip on Donika’s hand tightened. “How to make two people love. How to heal sickness in body and heart. How to keep spirits away.”
Donika tried not to smile. This was what their big talk was about? Old World superstition?
“She was a witch?”
Her mother scowled. “Witch. Stupid word. She was smart. Clever woman. She used herbs and oils—”
“So she was the village wise woman or whatever,” Donika said, and it wasn’t a question this time. She thought it was kind of adorable the way her mother said herbs—with a hard H, like the man’s name. But this talk of potions and evil spirits made her impatient, too. “I get that she taught you all of that stuff, but how can you still believe it after living in America so long?”
Her mother stopped and pulled her hand away. “Will you be quiet and listen?”
The anguish in her mother’s voice stopped her cold. Donika had never heard her mother speak that way. The daylight had waned further and now the slices of sky that could be seen through the thatch of branches had grown a deeper blue. Not dusk yet, but soon. It seemed to be coming on fast.
“I’ll listen,” she said.
Her mother nodded, then turned and continued along the path. Donika watched the ground, stepped over roots and rocks. The woods were strangely quiet as the dusk approached, with the night birds and nocturnal animals not yet active and the other beasts of the forest already making their beds for the evening.
“She knew things, my mother. And so she taught me these things, just as I teach you to cook the old way. When I married, I made a good wife. Even then, I made money as a seamstress, just like now. But always my husband knew that one day the people in our town would start to come to me with their troubles the way they came to my mother. The ones who believed in superstitions.”
Donika couldn’t help but hear the admonishment in those words. Her mother wanted her to know she wasn’t the only one who still believed in such things.
“There were spirits there, in the hills and the forest. Always, there were spirits, some of them good and some terrible. Other things, too. Believe if you want, or don’t believe. But still I will tell you.
“I loved my husband. He had strong hands, but always gentle with me. Some people, they acted strange around my mother and me, but not him. He was so kind and smiled always, and when he laughed, all the women in our town wanted to take him home. But it was me he loved. We talked all the time about babies, about having a little boy to look just like him, or a little girl with my eyes.
“And then he dies. Such a stupid death. Fixing the roof, he slips and falls and breaks his neck. No herbs or oils could raise the dead. He was gone, Donika. Always his face lit up when he talked of babies and now he was dead and the worst part was there wouldn’t be any babies.”