by Angelina Nguyen, Oak Valley Middle School

When I was born, I remember fighting the light and universal truths of the world. They said I shouldn’t live—the little miracle I was—and they said my arrival was too early and I was too small and I was to die in my mother’s arms. Her skin was polished obsidian—beads of sweat racing down her forehead, her thumb drawing across my cheek. There was so much blood—crimson honey pooling around us—sticky as sugar and smelling like death. Maybe I was born amongst death, watching my mother’s rheumy eyes, empty as a corpse’s. Her irises were gray as sand and when she squinted down upon me, her bow-shaped lips pressed in a hard line. I didn’t know the word for her face at that age, but now I know better.

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The village was a living graveyard of dead women cradling dolls. Mother never cradled me that way, and I liked her for that. She didn’t break herself and pretend she could be pieced together with my frail body in her arms. Instead, she grew to dissipate into silt among the breezes when he was around, and she crawled after his every step, like every other living creature. It had nothing to do with respect and everything to do with spite, the way her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed when breathing the same air as he did. She grovels, always pressing her face to the floor to hide her smirk, numb to every time he strokes his hand across her cheek in a bloody rage. She would be silent when he leads her into his room, when he slips of her armor and strips her of her voice. Then he lays her bare, dissecting every duty she owed to the village. I never understood how strong she was until I was undone.

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I was a child born of a man and a woman, as most children were. My father was a man built of sinewy muscle roped around his limbs and his stout frame. The soil he treaded was licked as though blessed by divinity, and he thought the sun shined to please him. I knew how he met my mother, the diaphanous nymphet she was. In her prime, she was said to be the color of a fresh midnight and had eyes that glittered like amber in the light. She was a fresh rosebud basking in her youth, and naturally he wanted that youth, half his age. He wanted all things he could not have, and there were not many things he could not have. I would not be born if that were the case.

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You once told me that my hands were your favorite thing about me. I didn’t know what you meant until you took my hands into yours and caressed every callus and cut and bruise. You thought my scars were beautiful and admired them like jewels under the sunlight, turning them over and examining how the leathery skin of my palm was paler than the chocolate shade of the back of my hand. I never liked my skin—I wanted my mother’s complexion, dark as a starless night. I was bronzed and toned as my father, lacking my mother’s gentle curves and femininity. Father said I looked like carved bones: a byproduct of a corpse, of broad shoulders and sharp edges. You said I looked like melded gold-pressed with crisp edges and built like royalty. Your eyes gleamed as you complimented me; your face tilted up and thoughtful, round pools of honey and glistening like they were looking at some precious treasure. I never knew the meaning of precious until you taught me.

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When I first bled, I would never forget the way my mother held me. In the darkness of her room, the candlelight played upon the poetry of her face and drew out lines I never knew existed. I had always known she was beautiful—but her beauty was that of carved marble and vacuous at the same time. That night, she looked like liquid fire melting with every second. That night, she drew me close and cupped my cheeks with her calloused fingers, which was the second time I had ever felt their touch. That night, she pressed my face into the supple nook of her collar, her chin resting on my head. Mother, I wanted to call her at that moment. But she was no mother to me, and she could not pick and choose when to hold me. Mothers did not stare upon their daughters with unspoken pity in their eyes. Mothers did not hold back tears as they whispered into their daughter’s hair over and over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were born.

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I did not cry when it happened, nor did I scream nor understand. It was numbing, the vulgarness of being undone from inside out. To have my frayed seams picked and tugged and played with, to feel the woven formula of my being be picked like harp strings. I screamed when they brought out the knife, its cool metal pressing against my thighs and carving alleged tradition in my body.

 

They bound my hands, my wrists, and held them down as I writhed like a fish on the chopping block. Cold, it was cold winter slipping under my skin and burning me from inside out. It was swallowing sand and dust with a sore throat. It was to be killed, one slash at a time, over and over, while also being so vividly alive.

 

I had lost my soul, but you reclaimed it for me. I had lost my body, but nothing could reclaim that.

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‘Why must you weep?’ You asked me, and I could not see your features in the dark. You were just shadow and bones, a memory of light moving through the small straw hut. I once thought your eyes were beautiful, but at night they were flint and coal. It was an uncanny resemblance, your eyes and his.

 

I have been broken.’ I said simply, and the instruments that had played my voice once now were frayed and out of tune. They had been crippled beyond repair and could no longer echo any form of grief or bitterness. Those were foreign languages. Yet, as your hands drew up my neck and lifted my chin toward your face, I felt death peering over my shoulder once more.

 

I had realized that the night had us shed our masks, and yet your true façade appeared to me as you pried me of my skin. Your lips were dry as pressed sandpaper on my scars.

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‘You have been absolved and cleaned of your sin.’ You whispered into my neck. ‘Just as your mother, and your mother’s mother. Now shhh.’

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It was strange to understand her. I never thought I would fathom the way she looked at me like meat rotting on a bone.

 

But now I did. When I bled and drowned in a wake of vultures.

 

I felt pleasure and I felt joy for them, and I was everything I would never taste. I forgot what sunlight felt like because I had been stripped of my skin. I forgot what my voice sounded like because I could not use it. When they whispered to me like I had sinned, I wondered what atrocity they were.

 

I always thought you were a testament to change, and that you were a flaw in the system. A beautiful, lovely flaw. When you held my hand, was I a miracle to you or was I a promise of that night when you held me down, and I wept, and I died over and over and over again.

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I held the doll in my hand. It was a hideous creature to look upon. It was dreadful to see such a beautiful child wearing the features of a monster. It had your honey eyes in the sunlight and your hazel skin. Even down to the button nose, it was all you. I wanted to drop it as bile built up in my throat. My hand drew across its cheek, skin soft as a newborn. She was a very beautiful doll.

 

She was innocent. She fought to be in my arms and yet She was sin and sorrow. She was wine to be downed like sugary syrup. She was the victim of tradition. She was unwoven by uncommitted crimes.

 

She would bleed and be sheared of her identity, all because She is a broken girl born from a broken womb in a broken world.