FOUND IN ONE STORY 98: “FIRE SEASON” BY AMELIA KAHANEY

One Story, that triweekly short story litmag published in Brooklyn (Colson Whitehead on Brooklyn lit scene here), keeps a pretty fast production pace. As we are just now getting around to praising (adoring, to be honest) their last issue, the newest issue has already been slapped into our mailbox. We are in awe of such expediency, of course, as we are in awe of Amelia Kahaney’s story from that last issue, One Story 98, a captivating tale of wildfires and the young stirrings of sexual awareness.

“Fire Season” is Kahaney’s impressive fictional debut. The story begins the morning after protagonist Marni’s thirteenth brithday. Almost as if overnight, Marni has moved from the safety of childhood innocence into the frightening and magical world of the sensual body. “Looking at what her body has become–the bright taut skin, uncreased and unburdened by baby fat–Marni nearly swoons. It’s almost too much to bear, like stepping into sunlight after a long, wasting disease….for a while longer, she cannot tear her eyes away.” Later, Marni explores what this new body is capable of, and, as she might have imagined, it is hypnotic. Outside the men “look at her until she gets scared she won’t be able to stand it.” As a writer, Kahaney is fascinated by the body, and keeps this quote by Aimee Bender tacked above her desk: “Everything a human experiences happens on the body. That’s the place where pain happens, and love happens; all the good and bad things.” Similarly Edna O’Brien once wrote that, “The body contains the life story just as much as the brain.”

In the middle of one of literature’s most famous novels of female awakening, Jane Eyre, Jane’s aunt explains how she could never comprehend Jane’s childhood rebellions, saying, “I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence.” Like Jane, Marni, too, breaks out all fire, manifesting itself in emotions of lust and trepidation throughout the story–from letting a neighborhood boy she is attracted to nearly choke her, to exposing her breasts to her mother’s boyfriend. Kahaney writes of this last scene, “[Marni] fights the impulse to cover her breasts, leaving her arms at her sides, letting the delicious horror of the moment wash over her, wondering what it means.” As Marni stuggles to understand her new body, wildfires consume the California landscape around her. But Marni hardly notices, even as the fires reach her own neighborhood; there is larger world even closer that she is only beginning to explore, one where “bodies will catch on fire, incinerating into beautiful balls of light.”