I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World (5 page)

I was funny once. Really funny. Like everything I did and said funny. You would probably be laughing right now. I wish you were laughing. I wish I could give you examples of the funny I once was, but then I would still be funny. I know it’s hard to believe looking at me now. I look so pretty, right? Aren’t I pretty? Pretty girls don’t really look like anything particular. They look like everyone dreams of looking, but they do not look like anything you can really identify. When you describe someone pretty you say things like, “Oh, that girl, Ashley, she’s so pretty.” But when you describe not so pretty girls you always say something special about them, something about how they look. Oh, Maria, she’s the one with the wild hair, or Taina, her legs are a little short but she has great breasts.

Before when I was funny I looked funny. I looked like something unexpected about to happen. It all had to do with my nose. It was big and ugly and funny. My nose was funny. When you met me you met my nose. Hi, welcome to my nose. I wouldn’t even
say I had a face. Just nose. Just big funny ridiculous nose. Noses are so intense. I mean have you ever really looked at yours? I used to look at mine all the time. It fascinated me. God, what is a nose? Even the word is so funny. Nose. The idea of nose.

My nose put everyone at ease. It was a conversation breaker. Somehow it let everyone know I could be trusted. It is hard to describe, but my nose gave me permission. It inspired me with wicked ideas. It made me daring. It was like you’ll never be one of them so you might as well be yourself. I was the one in my classes who was the clown. They called me Gonzo. Like the muppet.

My parents are not bad people. I know they love me. I know they want what’s best for me. But that involves their idea of what is best. And it has meant they know better than me. My parents who loved me planned, strategized, and eventually succeeded at killing my nose. Murdering it.

On my sixteenth birthday they paid a man to take my nose out. They hired a hit man to take my poor nose down. The only problem is that my nose was attached to me.

I didn’t even know what was happening. They kept telling me I would be happy and everything would be better and I would thank them for it because my life would be so much easier. I thought they were taking me to Paradise Chang restaurant. I thought we were going to have my favorite Chinese food. Then we were at this little hospital clinic place. I didn’t understand. There was a doctor who oddly had a big nose himself. He told me it was a really simple procedure. My mother looked guilty, but she kept making herself smile. Then the doctor drugged me. I don’t remember anything. When I woke up I was so nauseous
and they were all hovering strangely over me and I could tell something terrible had happened. I started vomiting flesh and bone and blood. My nose was coming out all over me, ruined hammered destroyed. I was crying and I didn’t even really know how to cry without a nose. And my father took my hand and said, “You will be a princess now,” and I said, “I don’t want to be a princess. I was happy being a clown. My nose protruded but it gave me history and mystery. It made me what I was. There is nothing now. Just this stupid mess in the middle of my face. I was once Mesopotamia and now I’m a mall.”

I know this is hard to believe but I never dreamed of being pretty. I felt sorry for the pretty girls ’cause everyone was always staring at them. They never really talked or did anything. They were just there, like … pretty. Goldfish in a bowl. Just swimmering around, being looked at. Occasionally nibbling at the fish food, but nibbling ’cause we all know skinny is the same as pretty. That’s the thing about being pretty. There are so many things you have to not do to be pretty. I mean it becomes your life. Not doing things. I stay pretty. I do pretty. I don’t eat. I pick. I circle. I visit. I deprive. I starve. Because I do not eat, I do not have much energy. Food actually makes your brain function. So pretty people move slower. They can’t do too much. They do not have very expansive thoughts. But then again, they don’t need to. They’re pretty.

Funny people can eat all they want. I used to love food. You can enjoy it ’cause funny people enjoy everything.

Pretty people mainly hang out with other pretty people. That’s sort of what they do. Then it’s all about who is prettier. Your whole life becomes about being the prettiest.

I miss my nose. Every day I rub it and dream of telling lies like Pinocchio so it will grow back. I went on this secret date with a boy who told me I was pretty. I’m not really. He thought I was being coy. I wasn’t born pretty. I’m not naturally pretty. I’m fake pretty. He didn’t understand and so he kissed me ’cause that’s what boys do when they don’t know something and don’t want to look stupid. When he kissed me there was nothing in the way. It was too easy. I didn’t even have to make a joke about it. And that was sad ’cause the joke about my nose always made the guy laugh and then we both relaxed and kissing was always so much better then.

GIRL 1

Would you rather get caught stealing or cheating? Would you rather ask him to put on a condom or give him oral sex?

GIRL 2

I don’t want to play this.

GIRL 1

Would you rather lose your mother or your father? Be in a tsunami or an earthquake? Be buried alive or freeze to death?

GIRL 2

I’m going to sleep.

GIRL 1

Why won’t you ever play?

(Silence)

It’s just a game.

(Silence)

You’re no fun.

About one in three high school students have been or will be involved in an abusive relationship. Forty percent of teenage girls ages fourteen to seventeen say they know someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend.

Dear Rihanna,

I used to really respect you. I even got your haircut, all cute and straight shaggy shaped even though I have blonde hair. It looks better on you. I thought you were a caring and compassionate girl singer artist so I just don’t understand why you were so mean to Chris. I see the way he looks at you. He just loves you too much. You know that. How could you dump him after one bad thing? It’s so shallow to drop someone after they mess up. You have everything, Rihanna. You’re perfect pretty and mega talented and sparkly and shiny. It must be hard for Chris to be with you. I mean I’m jealous of you and you’re not even my girlfriend. Everyone wants you. Everyone wants to be you. In his apology video Chris seemed so nervous and sad. People say he was just reading his lines, but they were heartfelt. He was so scared about screwing up. He was so sad. I could tell. That’s what happens after. I mean they feel so bad. They don’t have anyone to help them. They don’t know how to talk. I mean I can tell he wants to cry. Take him back. He loves you too much, but at least he loves you. One mistake you can’t just fire him. What if he did that to you? Chris made you a video and put it out in front of the whole
world. That’s a lot to do in front of his friends and stuff. My boyfriend, Brad, didn’t make me a video. I mean once he brought me this bracelet with a silver heart after he made my lip bleed. But he’s never been as nice as Chris. My mother hates him. Brad, that is. She just doesn’t know him. She judges him by one aspect of his personality but that’s only a part of who he is. I heard Oprah say if a boy hits you once, leave ‘em right then, but that’s so cold, so mechanical. Like push boy delete.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not perfect. I’m naggy and I complain, well that’s what Brad tells me. I make him feel bad. I mean you shoved Chris and threw away his keys. That’s serious for a boy. A guy’s keys are like his self. I know if I did that I would be expecting a confrontation and you really shouldn’t dish it out if you can’t take it. We’re all part of this. You can’t even really say where it begins or ends. It’s like my parents’ arguments. They feel like they’ve been going on since I was born and they basically are always pissed off about the same things and she makes him feel so bad about himself and then he gets ugly. And sometimes he hurts her and then she gets meaner and we all just go to our rooms and pretend we don’t hear, but really we’re all part of it. I mean sometimes it’s one of us that makes them start arguing. Usually me. My dad says someone’s always asking for it.

Chris loves you. Just like Brad loves me. He knows me better than anyone. It’s just sometimes this thing goes off in them. It’s like all the hurt they feel and all the bad things they’ve seen and all the ways they couldn’t help. I mean Chris used to wet his bed after his stepdad hit his mother. What are we gonna do, throw all the boys away? Put them forever on some punishment island? Then how are we gonna have babies? And who’s gonna kiss us?
They’re all crazy sad you know. I can tell even when Brad slaps me sometimes. It doesn’t hurt as much as seeing how alone he is and confused and sad. My dad has that same sadness and it makes me smoke when I think about it. It really rips me apart. Brad isn’t buying your music anymore. He said if you were his girlfriend he would have to keep you locked up in his room. He couldn’t bear everyone staring at you and dreaming about you. That made me a little jealous. I mean he doesn’t let me out much and if I talk to another boy he gets real crazy, but the way he talked about you was different. Like he really had it for you. So imagine what poor Chris feels with so many guys everywhere having it for you. How is some guy gonna handle that? Most of the time they can’t even find a good job. Well, Chris had one. But most guys my age are tripping about what they’re gonna do. You’re so strong, Rihanna. I watch you in the videos. Your arms and the way you move and your confidence. You look right into the camera. You are so much stronger. You could help Chris. Otherwise how are these boys gonna keep up? It’s like when we’re on the lake and I look at the water behind our motorboat and there’s this wake and it stays there after the boat has passed. There’s just these light waves of where something was once. It fills me with dread and makes me really scared. Sometimes I stop breathing. It’s like none of us were ever really here at all. I don’t want to be looking back on Brad like that. He’s the one real thing.

Girls between thirteen and eighteen years of age constitute the largest group in the sex industry. It is estimated that around half a million girls below the age of eighteen are victims of trafficking each year.

I am sixteen.
I am trembling.
I am always trembling.
The trembling is like
a body flinching after
it’s been shot.
I am dead inside.

He will come back.
I must speak quickly.
I hate my hair.
I was sold two years ago.
I can’t get out.
I am meat.
I am an animal.

I am sixteen.
I am owned by them.
They do what they want.
I am tall.
My legs are long.
There are burns.
I am an ashtray.
A garbage pail.
My hands trembling.
Sometimes they refuse to use condoms.
If we refuse them, we are beaten.
Look my back
There are gashes
I was twelve.
My father always drunk.
Always angry.
His friend, his best friend
who was forty started raping me.
Whenever he saw me.
He threatened to ruin me if I told.
He threatened to tell my father.
Two years
I did what he wanted.
He gave me syphilis.
This is herpes on my mouth.
I hate my hair.
    
(She stands up.)
What, what?
Are you sure he doesn’t know?
Are you sure he isn’t coming in?
    
(She sits down.)
We got caught. My father’s
best friend. Someone walked
in when he was raping me
against a wall.
He told my father I put him
up to it.
My father believed him.
My father beat me with a
wooden piece of furniture
and threw me out.
I could not walk for weeks.
But I was on the run.
17 minutes
My father exiled me,
and my mother,
because she was with him
twenty-two years,
did not speak up.
Fourteen, no place to go,
on the streets,
a man took me in.
Then my brother
my only friend
turned his back on me.
Then the man started
beating …

No place to go.
No way out.
Next to the police
Went there for help
A stolen wallet
A young one with a
crew cut
told me he knew of a job.
He brought me in. He sold me to them.
If I try to leave
they will kill my family.
I still love them.
The police
tied me to a bed
for seven hours
handcuffed my hands
made me naked
and six of them …
I am a garbage pail.
I am a receptacle.
I have been sick
There is no time
5
minutes
I don’t know why I was born.
I do not feel pleasure
I am only vulgar
Only flesh
If someone could see my heart
they would see it isn’t there

I hate my hair
I haven’t heard from
my mother in a year
This is not a choice
You go to the police to protect
You go to
Your father
Your mother
Your brother
Your boyfriend
I am sixteen
I am an animal
I am property
I am a receptacle
I am trembling
I am found on the streets of Paris
I am Bulgarian
I am from the Philippines
I was taken from Sierra Leone
I am Russian
I am from the killing fields
Sold in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam, Atlanta
I’m from Kosovo, Bombay, Ghana, Lebanon
I am a raped opening

I am about to become extinct
There will be nothing left of me
   Elephant
   Eagle
   Girl

Barbie was based on a German doll called Lilli that was sold as a sexy novelty for men.

Hello, my name is Chang Ying. I wish I could write you a proper letter, but I’m in a factory and I work twelve hours a day and if I’m late or I complain they will throw me out. Even thinking these thoughts could get me in trouble ’cause I could mess up and get my hand caught in the machine.