I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World (4 page)

She passes back
Crossover dribble
They are double-teaming me at the intersection
Color
Girl
Girl
Color
Ganging up on my consciousness
Not sure in which court I stand
or if I’m either one
or both
or something else
like poor
or maybe all
or maybe none
or maybe
just ball burning in my hands
just weaving darting dribbling
down the court
Each basket defies what is expected
because nothing is
even though they expect us to play ball
but not me
not girl
even if I’m tall

Which part of me do I ally myself with?
Which part do I ignore?
At what moment?
Which part doesn’t belong?
Which group will it piss off?
Which group do I represent?
I am an athlete
A girl with strong legs
and arms
I train
I am also the child
of a Dominican mother
and a black father
so I am black
well brown
brown and black
Canela
Morena
Indian and girl
Weave cross
What goes between
What stories
What past
What ropes around my neck
What scholarship
What affirmative action plan
What resentful boys in my hood
What champions
What being best
What talk show hosts

What Spanish French U.S. invaders
of our land
What ho
What manly arms
What nappy-eadedness
What muscled ugly lesbian
What never get a man
What postracial
biracial
nonracial
multiracial
I almost trip and stumble over ball

What land they stole
What bodies in chains
What indigenous Taino people they killed with their
white diseases
What Indians
What Africans
What women bound and raped
What legs
What race have I been running
What identity have I been ducking or too defiantly embracing
What president
What civil rights leaders dead
What country
What team

What right do I have?
Who do I think I am?
What legacy that never ends?
What Katrina
What Jena Six
What Detroit, Watts, Lower Ninth, South Bronx,
Soweto, Kibera, Eastland, favela, Dharavi, barrio
What eastern Congo
What prisons
What brothers who could have been dribbling
Who am I girl to take their place?
Pass now
Weave
Think
What future
What opportunities

Must win
Must get control
Fake
Duck
Lay up
Overcome

Break open
Free of guards
In possession
Dunk Score

SOPHIE

I started at a party
I wanted to join in
I wanted to do what everyone was doing
At the beginning I didn’t want to smoke
all the time

APOLLINE

I am anxious about the future
My studies
Work
It is very expensive
How will I ever live in Paris?
How will I find something I like to do?
I smoke to avoid the future

SOPHIE

I smoke when I’m not happy
I smoke when I’m sad about my friends
and family
When they lie, when they betray me

APOLLINE

Sophie is my best friend
We share a lot of things
We are supporting each other
We don’t like the same people
We don’t like the same girls
The ones who are really self-confident
and put the other girls down
One group totally popular the other not

SOPHIE

We are not popular
You have to talk loud
You have to be the center of attention
Popular girls smoke for style

APOLLINE

Unpopular girls smoke for stress

SOPHIE

My mother is a closet smoker
She hides like me
She thinks I don’t see her.

APOLLINE

My father thinks his daughter is the perfect girl
That means good results at school
No boyfriends
No sex
No smoking
No drugs
First time I had sex I was sixteen
It was very bad
The boy wasn’t my boyfriend
Just a friend I didn’t want to have sex
I was a little drunk
I regret that he wasn’t the boy I liked
I am with my boyfriend now
He is gentle. He pays attention to me.
We have sex one or two times a week.

SOPHIE

The first time I was with a boy I didn’t know
It was very good
He cared about me
He said he wasn’t a virgin but I think he was
He was shy and didn’t know what he was doing
He was kind with me
I talk to my father about sex
He asks me questions
He asks if it is good for me and what we did.
Sometimes I don’t answer
He says I have to be careful
Don’t get pregnant and diseases

APOLLINE

I wish my parents knew I had a boyfriend
They wouldn’t approve so I don’t tell them

SOPHIE

I like the way I look, the way my hand moves when I smoke. I feel more confident and grown up.

APOLLINE

The good future:

A wonderful job

A family, three children, two boys and a girl

I always wanted two brothers, one older, one younger

I wanted to take care of the younger and wanted the older to take care of me.

SOPHIE

The good future:
I want to have money
I want to play in the theater
I want a girl because she’s cute. She will be a princess.
Beautiful clothes. No problems.

APOLLINE

Bad future:
People don’t care about other people
They only care about themselves
People sleep in the streets
A lot of poor

SOPHIE

Teenagers do bad things.
Drugs and fight
They don’t realize reality
They are in a dream
They only care about themselves and no one else

APOLLINE

I can talk to Sophie
She is my best friend
I can laugh with her
When I’m sad I know she will be there for me

SOPHIE

I can be myself with Apolline
She won’t judge me
I know it’s bad to smoke but I don’t think I’m an addict

APOLLINE

I know I’m an addict
I will stop when my studies finish
Peut-être

It’s loud and scary
My mother and father were doing it once
in the next room
I thought my mother was dying
It can kill you
It can free you
Just say no
You can say no
You won’t want to say no
It’s natural
It’s healthy
It’s evil
Boys want it more than girls
Girls want it more than boys
Guys don’t know what they’re doing
Only allowed to do it when you are making babies
My mother says it’s spiritual
I wish my mother wouldn’t say anything

Know your vagina
It’s yours
Ask questions
Practice abstinence
Get birth control
It can take you over
You can catch dirty things
Bleeding makes you want it
Bleeding is the beginning
It can ruin you
Consume you
Masturbating is important
Masturbating is illegal
Sex is only about love
Sex is another sport like gymnastics

It makes you lose weight
360 calories an hour.

Heart
Beat
Sound
Move
Make
Shake
Body
Want

Girl
Hips
Girl
Feet
Girl
Ground
Girl moving now

I dance to disappear
I dance to know I’m here
I dance ’cause I’m horny
’Cause it’s holy
’Cause I want to forget

I dance ’cause I’m pissed off
I dance ’cause I can’t
study anymore
I dance ’cause it’s better
than sexting
R u naked?
What r u doing with ur hands?

I dance because everything is possible
I dance ’cause it gets me high
’Cause it’s the one thing
you can’t take away
I dance ’cause it keeps me
separate
from everyone else’s
opinions and ideas
I dance ’cause I’m
bleeding
bleeding
becoming

I dance ’cause I can touch
the music
in the discos of Reykjavik
Mumbai, Manhattan, Barcelona
I dance till my mascara
runs down my chin

I dance to the drums of the forest and rivers
I dance to the beat of the cicadas
I dance to the traffic
to the crowds
to the silence
I dance to the end of unkindness
I dance past the killing fields
I dance past Wounded Knee
I dance past the skeletons and bones
I dance past slave branding
and Holocaust tattoos
I dance past inflicted identities
and demeaning looks
I dance past the limited determinations of my
abilities and worth
I dance past your lustful eyes
Your dirty interpretations of my teenage body
I shake off the burqas and bindings
and corsets and diets
I shake off restrictions and illegitimate rules
I shake off your suffocating warnings
I dance to the heartbeat of life
I dance because girls are the ultimate survivors

I make altars everywhere
I wear 16 bracelets on my arm
I write your name in red felt tip pen on my pillowcase
I wallpaper your posters above my bed
I engrave your initials on my closet door
I get to the stable
2
hours early so
I can brush your brown shiny coat 125 times
I run 6 more miles without stopping
I only wear sky-blue socks
I practice chords until my fingers cannot bend
I tattoo 56 stars on the right side of my face
I fast for Ramadan
I hand out every flyer for peace in Sudan
I memorize Hebrew
I memorize for the open slam
I collect 100 glass horses
I chant my mantra at dawn
I don’t step on the cracks
I don’t eat meat
I hold my breath when the light is red
I stay awake for 3 days
I learn anorexia
I do jump shots for 7 hours
I compulsively practice Latin
Latine loqui coactus sum

I read every poem
I recite every word
I watch every film
I know your every move
I play your video and I memorize every step you make
I receive your tweets
I know your pain
I sing your songs
I make you presents out of twigs and shells and feathers
I put them at the foot of the stage
I scream when the lights come up
I call you and hang up 7 times
I know you can see my ID number
I am searching
for mother
for answers
for a reason
for tomorrow
for God
for Allah
for more
for less
for my teacher Mrs. Martin
for everything
for nothing

I bow down
I pierce
I starve
I smoke marijuana
I go to church
I sing louder
I call your name
I stay in the water
I cut off my hair
I grow it long
I get on my knees
I build it with stone
Devoted.

When a group of children who were interviewed on
20/20
were asked if they’d rather be fat or lose an arm, they unanimously answered that they’d rather lose an arm.

The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is twelve times as high as the death rate of
all causes
of death for females aged fifteen to twenty-four.

BLOG 1

i don’t really like celery. tastes like disappointment. egg whites taste like baby skin. learning to graze. used to watch cows. they move their mouth around the grass. hover, hang, munch a little, rest. don’t swallow too much.

BLOG 2

everyone’s mad at me. here’s a picture of my hips. bone jutting. love those two words: bone jutting. just right for jeans. sade, sexy music, and espresso help a lot. perfect combo. slow music and caffeine annihilate hunger.

BLOG 3

bad taste in my mouth. this girl jewel said i was sick in gym class. she’s jealous. last night i ate cooked vegetables naked in front of the mirror. it grossed me out so much i haven’t been hungry for almost 24 hrs.

BLOG 4

everything sucks. had to stay home from school. too tired. dad gave me a big lecture. said i wasn’t fooling anyone. tried to exercise. only got through a hundred sit-ups. watched tv. saw this program about hundreds of people in Africa forced to leave their land ’cause of war. they were drinking dirty water. everyone was so hungry and sick. my mother was crying. she said i look just like them. she made me soup. wanted to share it with the people on tv. i like soup.

BLOG 5

can’t stop crying. disgust myself. family forced me to eat a meal ’cause it’s christmas eve. now i’m gross. putrid. foul. holidays make me so sad. we’re not happy like everyone else. always feel there is something i should be doing, somewhere i should be going. don’t know where that is. maybe santa claus will leave me diet pills under the tree. had christmas nightmares. dreamed my family was making me eat reindeer meat. there were sad antlers on my plate. then i was trying to run in really deep snow and it turned to jello and i was happy ’cause jello is a safe food but it turned out it was radioactive and i was going to die.

BLOG 6

i believe in splenda. i like all substitutes. even miss hammer who only teaches on occasion. she never makes me feel bad. i can tell she was really skinny once ’cause she’s got wrinkles like that. she asked me what i felt like when i was thin. empty, not full of bad stuff.

BLOG 7

my doctor said he is going to sue me for malpractice to my own body. he was gentle the way he examined me. i got so cold and was shivering. exciting to see bone. like finally getting to water after digging for years. almost pretty.

BLOG 8

was sent to an eating disorder clinic. today we planted a tree in the yard, which symbolized our bodies growing healthy. i like my roommate china a lot. she has a tattoo of a hamburger on her ass. a reminder. reimagining our bodies in art therapy. i saw myself as a belly dancer with sparkly shaking bells and things. it was good for about two hours. then i got really depressed. beautiful is a country with gates around it. i’ll never be invited.

BLOG 9

the therapist just doesn’t understand. its not like i think about it, okay? it lives there. must be thin. logo stenciled across my consciousness. like a permanent demand, like a mental coffee stain. maybe the whole system will just crash and they’ll have to program me with something else. shrink asks what would that be? i don’t know. annoying shrink asks again. okay, okay. maybe new logo reads: must not hurt so much. must be MORE PROFOUND. must be easy. must not be about only me. must not take up all this time. must not make me feel left out. MUST NOT MAKE ME WANT TO KILL MYSELF. i think i sound angry. everyone is really quiet for a long time. then china says maybe there’s no more logos or demands. maybe we just make it up as we go and so there’s no pressure or point. we’re just here, okay. with each other, doing stuff.