vodka
I vaguely remember the coldness of the tiles where the skin of my thighs touched them, the scent of Cherry Garcia ice cream in the air, and the hysterical laughter coming from what seemed to be too far away to care, as the tiny kitchen grew misty in my eyes, and the face in front of mine started to blur into the likes of an abstract painting. My own face felt dreadfully wet, and the dryness of my throat that must have come from chugging straight vodka with a side of Cherry Garcia ice cream was trying to clutch at the words escaping me.
“It’s not fair,” I cried (leastwise, I think I was crying. If not, then I must have been extremely sweaty), “I was a child, it’s not fair. It happened over and over again, and I was a child over and over again, it wasn’t fair!”
Well, that is, at the very least, what I remember sobbing out into the Cherry Garcia aroma of the kitchen, on the cold tiles, to the sound of hysterical laughter coming from what seemed to be too far away to care. In retrospect, I might have slurred it out, I might have placed a word or two elsewhere via the aforementioned vodka chased by ice cream. The night itself is blurry in my memories, like the abstract face in front of mine that was whispering sweet nothings to me and petting my hair, but the one thing that feels clearer than the look a Middle Eastern mother gives you when you make a joke about her in public is that these vodka induced hysterics were the first time I had ever been able to shed a tear (or, I suppose, a whole lot of sweat) about the years of sexual assault I had gone through as a young girl.
“In a remote corner of my mind, I knew that my body was public property - no longer mine. I knew this from the crudeness of that first man’s touch - the firm, possessive grasp.” (Nicole Dennis-Benn, “A Woman-Child in America”)
I clutched at my own cold thighs, stuffed my head into the gap between my elbows and knees, and looked down at the tear (or sweat) droplets falling onto the tiles. In this particular cloudy memory, the sound of the droplets of salty water exploding against the hard tiles was louder than the hysterical laughter coming from what seemed to be too far away to care.
“I didn’t even know what my body was for if not to appeal to a man,” I whispered to no one in particular. Not to whoever was hysterically laughing far away, not to the face in front of mine or the arm around my shoulders. I whispered to the salty drops of water crashing against the floor and to my cold thighs.
“On Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming… this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming… and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming.” (Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl”)
I lifted my head and the kitchen seemed to sink underwater. The face in front of mine had moved to sit next to me, and the arm around my shoulders was saying something about how it was okay.
It was not okay, I thought, I was 18 years old and sobbing on someone else’s awfully cold kitchen tiles about every time I had been molested, every time I had been assaulted, every time I had been made to feel like I was nothing without a man’s hand around wherever he pleased to put it on my developing body. It was not okay, I thought, I was 18 years old and sobbing on someone else’s awfully cold kitchen tiles about the six years of anorexia that I believed would give me any control of the body that was claimed to be mine (whose?).
“I thought if I were skinnier, I’d look less like what they would call a slut, less like what they would want to touch, what they would want to fuck.”
“It’s okay,” the arm around my shoulder said.
It wasn’t. I was 18 years old and sobbing on someone else’s awfully cold kitchen tiles with hysterical laughter tickling my chest.
I must have been too far away to care.