BETWEEN THE LINES
I was never allowed to be a ballerina or a girl scout, never rode a pony or had sleepovers. Never once did I know “take yr daughter to work” day, they wouldn’t let me behind the bars to see my father anyway and I never visited my mother’s grave, the loud airplanes that roared overhead, the yellowing grass from stray dogs pissing on graves, the flies that hung around in the death yard. The headstone cemented in the ground was proof she was never coming back and I never understood why anyone would want to be reminded of the dead. I was always told she was an angel, so I could look to the sky for her there. Never saw her.
I was guarded night and day, shuttled to Catholic school and therapists office where I could play board games and tell the doctor who touched me, why she would hit me, do I miss my mommy? Blood tests, stitches, casts. I had an empty bedroom, pristine with lace and flower wallpaper, porcelain dolls dressed up and glassy-eyed, like me.
My grandmother curled her hair by hand, head full of bobby pins and mouth soured by gin and tonics, old cigarette wrinkles and depression. My grandfather enjoyed bourbon every night and a few beers. He would sit, hunched over, grunting instead of answering questions, his weathered hands curled up into fists, like he was gonna fight the world, right there, from his chair. Not for me, because of me.
They loved me. But I was a resentment. I was expensive to fix and the methods weren’t working. I had been damaged when I was new, like a banged up lost parcel left on their doorstep.
Nothing would stop the nightmares and flashbacks, the nights I would spend howling at the moon through my window, cryin’ for my Momma, wishing she’d come back. I used to sit and wait by the door sometimes. When the phone rang I would jump up and run for it. Sometimes it would be my father and I could barely hear him underneath the crackle of the receiver and the echoes of the prison walls. He was so far away, all the time. Even when he wasn’t in jail, he was never around.
I never felt like I belonged, so when I got older and began to understand things, how my childhood really affected me, I decided to change everything. Be what I was told I could never be. Dreams instead of nightmares.
So I took my ballerina legs stunted by disappointment and stuck my chin up in the air. Squeezed my tiny doll feet into stilettos, smeared my cupid mouth with lipstick, drew on my face as pretty as I could feel to silence how ugly I felt inside. My big curvy hips bounced from side to side, my soft breasts armour over my chest, my heart that felt like a raw piece of meat, chewed up like pulp and chunks, spit out like it never mattered.
I learned how to dance on the laps and sheets of men, where I slid and slithered all over their naked bodies and every time they came I felt closer to the sky where my mother flew. Every orgasm was validation of my power and control, every bouquet of flowers that died was a bandaid on the many wounds that needed to heal, every kiss goodbye was the last.
Hellbent on salvation, each lover was just another corpse to climb over. A free ponyride. The journey is half the battle, it’s all about surviving the person that stares back at you in the mirror.
