There’s nothing like genuine sisterhood to bring out the best in a woman. I am fortunate to know a few ladies for whom I would do anything and go anywhere. These girlfriends and I look forward to growing old together, laughing at all the dumb things we did when we thought we had youth to spare.
We guard one another’s secrets, and will carry them to the afterworld. We trust, love, and are fiercely loyal. We stand with one another, eat, pray, and fight—when necessary—together.
With each passing year, we learn more about one another and grow closer. One of my friends who knows how shy I am, accompanies me when I have to stand in front of crowds to give a reading. I catch myself holding her hand, the way sisters might when one is scared. She’ll sit in the audience, holding me up with her protective gaze. When she cannot be there, I imagine her sitting in the front row, smiling and telling me “You’ve got this!”
A few years ago, one of my friends went through an insane separation from her partner. Children were involved. This guy was abusive, and an all-around jerk. When she told me about it, I despised him instantly. I told my friend we would fix the situation. We devised a little scheme.
Now, I don’t know much about Vodou, but certain people will swear that being Haitian automatically makes me a witch. My girlfriend’s guy had always thought I knew a lot more about magic than I said. That was one time when stereotype worked in my favor.
I went to the backyard, scraped up a handful of dirt. I dug into the bottom of my purse, got three of the ugliest pennies I owned. I went to the grocery store to buy a few chicken feet. I put the items in a brown paper bag, and made sure the guy received them. Somehow we let him know the backyard dirt really came from a cemetery. The three penies were the price of his soul. And the chicken feet…well, who wants to receive chicken feet? He panicked.
The guy thought my precious gift would make his life very difficult, indeed. He despised me now as much as I despised him. My girlfriend left him soon afterwards. He didn’t stop being a jerk, but the little voice in the back of his tiny brain made him think twice about his actions. Mister man is still a jerk and still a coward who trembles at the sight of chicken feet. I suppose this is one of the incidents my girlfriend and I will laugh about, when we’re speeding on the Verrazano Bridge fifty years from now. Ha!
There’s nothing like a good sister-friend to make life beautiful. And, based on the way things are going today, we need to band together more than ever—to prevent spermatogenesis from annihilating what is left of civilization.