I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World (6 page)

They hate it when we hurt the machines. They hate it when anything happens to us ’cause it slows everything down. That’s how LiJuan died. There was a fire one day and she was scared to leave her station ’cause she needed the job to feed her family and she was burned too badly.

But I can’t lie, I couldn’t really write you a letter ’cause I can’t read. I’m thirteen and I have been working since I was a kid. I speak good Chinese, I just can’t write it or read it.

But I have a lot to say and I think I can help you.

You may not think some poor girl who only makes a few cents an hour has anything to teach you. But I know a lot about
Barbie. I am one of the people who makes her head. I actually see what goes into it.

As you can tell by now I have found a way to get this message to you. It isn’t a letter or Internet or phone. It’s what I call
Head Send
. Can you feel it? It is very strong. I started doing it when I was five. You have to think a thought very very intensely and then you have to imagine someone receiving the thought and then you close your eyes and concentrate and your head sends it.

Because I make Barbie’s head I
Head Send
my thoughts into each one of her brains. So whatever girl gets her will hear my thoughts.

I have made many, many heads so my message is in a lot of places. If you listen very closely to your Barbie—put her head to your ear like a shell—you will hear what I have to say.

Many, many of us girls are needed to make Barbie because three Barbies are sold every second. They told us this the first day of the job. They said girls like me were working in a lot of countries to make Barbie perfect. Her body comes from Taiwan. Her hair gets stuck on in Japan. Then she comes to China to get clothes and get her head put on her body. They said that 23,000 trucks a day go back and forth to the harbor crammed with Barbies so they can all sail to America and get packaged in pink and sent out.

They told us what we did here in China was the most important part and that we had to do it fast or we would not keep up and then little girls couldn’t get their Barbies.

At the beginning I used to worry about this and I would always be very nervous. I cut my hand a few times in the machine.

Then I saw a picture of Barbie’s dream house and it made me start thinking about where I live. I live in a nightmare house. It’s not even a house, a dormitory. It’s like prison Barbie, all us girls shoved into one ugly place. I started thinking about how one Barbie costs 200 yuan, but I work here where it is so hot, all day, six days a week, and I don’t make that much in a whole week.

I have never been anywhere else but I do not think anyone really looks like Barbie. She is so skinny, I heard she can’t even get her period. And my cousin who lives in America told me that Barbie makes the girls who own her stop eating because they try and look like her.

I started thinking about how it’s actually hard to love Barbie the way she is now. She is very tough, so much plastic. She’s not cuddly at all. She can’t even put her arms around you. You have to do things for her: worship her, dress her, buy her things. She wants everything. She is very greedy and needy. That’s how they get you to spend more money.

Listen, it’s not Barbie’s fault, she doesn’t even have a chance. So many people control her—from the first plastic mold to her final accessory. In many ways she has less freedom than even me. She has no ability to walk away. Her legs probably wouldn’t hold her up anyway. So many people abuse her. You know, there is a whole group of Barbies—here at the factory we secretly call them the unfortunate ones—they get sent to Barbie headquarters in Los Angeles and a room of Barbie experts throw them and kick them and bite them to see if they can take it.

My cousin also told me that many girls love their Barbie at the beginning and then when they get older they turn on her.

They cut off all her hair or even her head or put her in the microwave oven.

The people who are in charge make her say really stupid things. They put words in her mouth:

I know Barbie doesn’t really want to say any of this ’cause I know what’s going on in her head. She talks to me. She’s really angry. She’s really hurting. She is really guilty. She hates shopping and feels bad about all the girls who are starved to make her and are starving to be like her. She’s actually very messy and surprisingly loud. She is not at all polite and she hates being shoved into really tight clothes and pointy high uncomfortable shoes.

Barbie isn’t who you think she is. She’s so much smarter than they will let her be. She’s got great powers and is kind of a genius.

There are more than a billion Barbies in the world. Imagine if we freed them. Imagine if they came alive in all the villages and cities and bedrooms and landfills and dream houses. Imagine if they went from makeover to takeover. Imagine if they started saying what they really felt.

   Let Barbie speak.

   Ow! I just got my hand caught! It hurts. It’s bleeding. They are going to be very angry.

Dear Khalid,
I keep touching my hair
A kind of pastime
Running through
Running through.
It was thicker before.
Now it is water.
Something has left me.
I am not sure what it is.

Dear Khalid,
When I stood by your grave
I imagined them assembling
the pieces of your body like a puzzle.
Always this missing piece
and your hand
I kept thinking about your hand
gripping mine when you believed
in something enough
to die.
You would get excited.
Not happy excited like receiving a present.
More like determined.
No one was going to take your future away from you.
I kept thinking about the pieces
of your body
and how I loved each piece
but never separated before like this.

Dear Khalid,
Later I realized it began as a fever, the rage.
Two weeks after they threw the dirt on you
and gave me the scarf you wore for good luck.
I thought it was one of those illnesses
that we get from the bad water
from the lack of light
when there is no bread
when there is no baby’s milk
when everything gets shut down and off
when we are forced into one broken room for weeks,
months sometimes.
I thought it was an illness.
I was burning and I could not stop.
I wrapped myself in the fabric of your scarf
in your smell
thinking it would hold me in
or keep things out
but it didn’t.

Dear Khalid,
It was simple
the voice
when it came to me
so perfect, so clear:
Suicide bomber
.
I said it out loud
in front of my friends
in the café
and the fever finally broke.

Dear Khalid,
They told me not to think about it.
They told me I’d be a hero.
They told me I’d join you in paradise.
They spoke too quickly.
They moved too fast.
I needed to take time.
There was a boy who would go with me.
I could tell he was afraid.
He was sweating.
He had acne.
Someone or something had sent him there
and like me he was trying to catch up.

Dear Khalid,
Maybe if they had sent a car that had lights
or a car that wasn’t broken or rusty.
Maybe if they hadn’t rushed me so fast.
Maybe if they had let me dress like myself
but the idea of dying
in a tank top with my belly exposed
the idea of dying in their jeans
the way they were rough and squeezed me in …

Dear Khalid,
It could have been your baby
I was carrying against my skin
strapped on like that
sucking life out of me
but it was a bomb
the size of a torso
extending now, like an overgrown tumor
sucking the life
there could have been
little fingers instead of nails
something
we created out of tenderness
but it was something to blow
people up.

Dear Khalid,
In the plaza
where they play backgammon
we were sent to our places
like we were bad in school
to stand
to get ready to explode, to die
in our places.
I knew the boy wanted to turn back
but he was a boy and had no choice.
Then suddenly the plaza became
faces
faces, faces.
My mother, my father, my aunt, and you,
Khalid, were there in those Israeli plaza
eyes.
I looked up then
It was blue
Life-giving blue blue sky
bigger than the plaza
or Palestine or the Jews
or even you, Khalid.
There was sky sky sky
and I couldn’t do it
and I turned as his body exploded
his boy head
shattered and now
there were more missing pieces.

Dear Khalid,
I do not understand why
they are keeping me here.
I changed my mind.
I turned back.
You would think they’d appreciate me.
You would have to imprison every Palestinian
for having bad fantasies or thoughts.
How else would we survive?
I don’t really mind being in prison.
At least I no longer have to pretend I’m free.
I do not have illusions.
I do not have hate.
I do not have a boyfriend.
I cannot go home again,
I am older.
My hair is water.

My friend Adina takes me to the other side of
the West Bank wall.
I am surprised at what it’s like over there.
It somehow seems taller
You would need a helicopter to get over it
Hard mean cement dividing energy, houses,
land, and friends
I go back.
I hear more stories.
No water on this side,
No wells
No pomegranates or figs
No jobs
No way out.
I protest on Fridays
with mainly Palestinian boys.
They do not understand what an Israeli
girl is doing there.

It is a secret.
No one in my family knows.
This goes on for months.

The wall changes me.
I stop shaving my legs.
I stop eating meat.
Eventually I refuse to join the army.
I see the heartbreak in my grandfather’s
tender old face.
I am told I am not giving back.
I am told I am not a real Israeli.
My father will not look at me
the way he did.
My older brother gets louder
and brags in my face
that he killed an Arab today.
I still say no.
I refuse to agree that I have mental problems.
I will not learn to shoot a gun.
I go to jail.
I refuse to wear the army/prison uniform.
I am put in solitary
I do not say how much this scares me.
Each night
a girl my age, eighteen or so,
wanders into my cell.
Her head is shaved.
She is naked and hungry.
There is something she wants me to know.
Then she is choking.
Her bony hands
claw at the wall.
I can’t tell if she is a dream
or a memory.
Haunting
or releasing me.

A new report says of the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world, about 40 percent of them are girls. The girls are often front-line fighters or used as porters or cooks.

Many are sexually abused.

I live in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, but I think this guide applies to any girl anywhere in the world.

People ask me all the time how I survived. It wasn’t that I was smarter or even stronger than anyone else. I didn’t even know what I was doing. It was just that something inside me couldn’t go along. My friends, they got taken at the same time as me. I don’t think we will ever get them back.

RULE 1. GET OVER THAT GIRL THING: “THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING TO ME”

When it happens, and trust me it happens to thousands of us, you will not believe it.

You will think,
These are just crazy soldiers fooling around. They must be bored or something. They couldn’t be hurting me, grabbing my arms and legs all rough like this, throwing me into their truck
. Your brain will start telling you things.
They are old enough to be my
father. They know better than this
. This will be confusing. It will make you feel stupid. It will make you feel like what is happening is not really happening. It will make you will feel like you did something wrong.

I watched my best friends—Alisa, Esther, and Sowadi. We were on holiday. We took the boat together from Bukavu to Goma. We were joking around a lot on the lake—Lake Kivu. It’s a really huge lake. It takes five hours to cross it. We were drinking Fantas and making fun of Esther’s big crazy hair. We were going to Goma to swim and hang out. We went shopping. Sowadi bought these gold shoes. I remember thinking I wanted them too, but I didn’t want her to think I was copying her.

As we walked out of the store and down this street, it didn’t seem real. We were just shopping and now these crazy soldiers … that’s why they didn’t run. I wanted to run, but I didn’t want to leave them. When we tried to refuse, that’s when we got how serious it was. One of the soldiers, the real big one, started beating Alisa and she was screaming. My best friends were all screaming and crying.

I got very quiet. That’s what I do. I wasn’t going to let those soldiers know anything. That leads to

RULE 2. NEVER LOOK AT HIM WHEN HE IS RAPING YOU

He will call your name in that grating, craving voice. He will beg you to look. He will turn your head with his big rough dirty hands. Never move your eyes to his. Close them if you have to. He is nothing. He isn’t even there. He is a teeny tiny meaningless speck. He doesn’t even exist.

RULE 3. BUILD A HOLE INSIDE YOURSELF AND CLIMB INTO IT

He will be on top of you. He will be old enough to be your father. He will smell like the woods, alcohol, and marijuana. He will hold his hand over your mouth. You are a virgin. You are only fifteen. He will remind you that no one is coming.