Fourteen

This is the story of what it is not to be beautiful. The first time my father told me, the second and third too until the hearing of it became like a lullaby, the truth of it settling deep inside me before I had a chance to think it could ever be anything different. In the fourth grade my best friends were boys who taught me to run fast, race worms in plastic pick-up trucks we slid down aluminum playground slides towards other girls who would scream or worry of dirtying their clothes. In the sixth grade my best friends were what was beautiful. They were delicate and foul-mouthed, all existing in perfect balance, even then fully cognizant of what can come from being aware of who you are, who it is you want to be. I was in constant denial. Determined to carve a space out of being ambiguous parts of woman sprang up as if in defiance over night, so I wore bigger shirts and stashed unwelcome bras in pants pockets or back packs until returning home. When in the seventh grade, after watching a video on "The Woman's Body" I ran home to find the same tell-tale brownness leaking from me like an insolent summer rain, I rolled toilet paper on top of toilet paper, determined not to go to my mother with the news, breaking down a week later after realizing there was a reason toilet paper was not commonly used for the job. I did not know how to accept these things, these alien things that went against everything I considered myself to be, how could I see myself as a woman? Women were beautiful, my mother was beautiful, my friends were beautiful, wanted, regarded, followed home and called on the phone, I could climb trees, play one hell of a game of kick ball, only wore dresses to church, and by the time I was nine could drink a plastic Sprite bottle full of gin and grapefruit juice and still walk home in a straight line. That was who I was. This I was happy with, I was respected, boys saw me as a person, not as a girl, slapped me five, let me in on secret conversations, they created who I was formed completely outside of curves I struggled to hide and a need to be seen as more that I swallowed down until sitting in hot southern sunshine hearing them laugh at words that flowed from my mouth I could almost forget it existed. So there it stayed, swallowed deep until the eighth grade, until I met Michael, until everything in the world ran blurred and off center unless he was touching me. We had moved, my mother finally divorced, the three of us, her my sister and I moving from everything I had ever known into a place where my accent made me soft spoken and boys who I hadn't grown up with made my skin feel tight and my heart fight against my chest. Michael was older. The cousin of the girl who lived next door, another one who was beautiful, long and thin, happy to befriend me and I happy to fall back into something familiar. I had learned how to build the pretty girl up, be the mediating sidekick ushering suitors in and through what would be her whim, it was an easy job and I longed to remember what it was not to be displaced. Over that first summer her house became mine, and he became my addiction. He had a girlfriend, brown and long haired, what you would expect his woman to look like, the kind of girl who would turn heads, fingers laced through the metal fence as she watched him play basketball, popping mint chewing gum talking with her girls. She was not me, wouldn't walk outside if it was raining, wouldn't lick melted ice-cream from her wrist instead of reaching for a paper towel, would never brush her thick hair back in a ponytail everyday instead of paying to create stiff cascades that fell deliberately over one eye, she was not me, and he was with her, so that night, standing in his cousin's house I saw him step toward me and shifted my weight allowing him to get by, instead he stood solid in front of me, lifted his hand toward me, asking to see my glasses, a new joke, one-liners made about my near-sightedness, or rather "hide-the-glasses-from-Sam" which always seemed more appealing with a group and alcohol involved. I thought nothing to hand them over, it was a joke I would play on any other and the glasses were always returned, so he took them, disregarded them, stepped closer to me telling me he thought I had something in my eye, I started to turn, go to the bathroom to see and felt him stopping me, his hand on my waist, this I had felt before, hands on the waist before, older parties prior to the move would be held in someone's basement and there would be boys with hands on the waist, moving down, trailing up, I would let them in those moments forgetting how to swallow need that massaged by alcohol stretched it's limbs and made itself known, never further than that, they were only friends, the next day it too would be made a joke, called out and passed over, pocketed in favor of one's story of the beautiful girl who had allowed other things. So when I felt his hand on waist, there may have been time to think of those things, thoughts that may have made their way as he turned me around saying he would check my eye instead, and then nothing, everything turned silent as he bent towards me, in less time then it takes to realize there will be a kiss, he was kissing me and I fell into him, wrapped my arms around him as if that had always been their only purpose and forgot all those things I had spent years telling myself I wasn't. Then he was pulling away, his cousin turning the corner from her room to see us, screaming at the top of her lungs asking what he would tell his girlfriend between exclamations of oh my god, sucked in with her the curtain that had dropped down between reality and I opened my eyes to him smiling at me, then followed his back as he walked past me. I was spending the night, he too, and I pictured the house silent with sleep, the two of us stealing away by the light of the television, kissing and kissing and kissing, I could think of nothing more important than kissing, kissing him because he had chosen me. Careful now of the details of wishes, we did that night sit alone by the light of the television, I drank stolen beer and flipped through channels that refused to register, and he spoke his late night to his girlfriend over the phone, saying those things to her I imagined he would say to me. When it was over, he laid his head in my lap and slept, asking me to stay and I could think of no reason not to, I could feel his chest rise and fall under the palm of my hand as if it were I causing it, and so I sat, controlling his breathing, making sense of nonsense running incessant in my head; he saw in me what others had seen, I was comfortable and easy, did not ask anything from him, did not require him to do those things that men stumble over requiring advance preparation or practice, he had beautiful, spoke beautiful through phones, laughing and proclaiming to keep it, he had come to me to escape beautiful, to find absolution through free-agent kissing and late nights that required nothing more. If I could not be beautiful, then I could be this, I moved my palm from his chest and ran one finger lightly along his profile, looking at eyes that even now unseen had taken something from me, I would run to him every night to in those moments be the focus of those eyes, to steal back those small parts of me as slowly as I could.

 

The next time we met things were different, there was still the girlfriend, but no phone calls, instead as the rest of the house fell dark into slumber, he sat beside me watching late night re-runs, hogging most of the blanket, telling me some story about the middle part of his day, then looking at me, closed his eyes and fell back against the couch, conversation ceased he was completely silent. I called his name and nothing, shook his arm and nothing, tickled the sweet spot on his side his mouth curving in a smile but still no sound. Bolder now I turned leaning over him, nose on top of nose I called his name again, the only response his breathing, then his palm pressing against the small of my back until I understood and leaning further kissed him again. It was as if that night the contract was signed. It became like clockwork, we would stay up, I would force eyes open until one or two a.m., until we could be sure that there would be no more bathroom breaks or other late night interruptions, and then in the midst of conversation or while playing tug-of-war with the blanket he monopolized covering his tall frame, he would fall out, leaning back against whatever he was sitting on, staying there immobile, small smiles breaking forth if he found humor in some statement passing my lips before taking my license to pull him close. During the day everything was different, all of us at basketball courts or someone's house laughing drinking, huddled in corners with the cousin and his girlfriend while the boys plotted to ambush us with water guns or came up with truth or dare questions determined to see someone naked. For me it all ran in and through like vapor, the best of me soon became centered around sunsets, quiet borrowed houses and strobe-light televisions flashing absently against brown skin. Without even realizing it I wanted more, refused to give up this small part I had managed to pull from the pieces of opportunity pretty girls left behind, content to have a love built up behind closed doors.

Reviews

[C.E.Grey]

Wow, the story captured me, everytime I was pulled away from reading it I ran back as soon as I could!

[Sam]

thanks so much, and thanks for taking the time to read it!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

wow..i am not a critic when it comes to stories..just know how i react..and this is mesmerizing...

so real i felt a bit odd..like i was sitting in chair next to the couch, trying to look the other way or concentrate on whatever was on the tv.

so real.

[Sam]

Thanks Jacob, I wanted the piece to feel intimate so I'm so glad it resonated for you in that way, thanks again for taking the time to read it!