Ratty taffeta
gauze, chiffon bandage grime
sewn over parts of me
You demanded I hide;
nails no longer bitten raw,
I have now the sharps to rip into
truth:
the things He did For me
will not erase
(despite Your sequined mirror-
twisted stories)
the things
He did To me.
What has your mind chosen to remember, or not?
Would you prefer to forget, or does retaining memories help you heal?
Is remembering something we've forgotten an opportunity or a burden?
Two things collided here: One, a memory jolted loose in conversation with my father. He’d asked about a dynamic in which I wasn’t permitted to show my upper arms – because they were deemed too fat, not because it was immodest.
Standing on a tailor’s step, a three-way mirror, a strapless dress to wear to a bar mitzvah. An old(er) woman, her tape around the meat of my tricep, clucking, shaking her head, crafting poufs of chiffon edged with iridescent sequins. To match the dress, to cover these shameful parts of me.
The car, my mother, on the way home: I should thank her; she was doing me a favor. These were the conditions. I certainly couldn’t wear it the way it was. The faux sleeves viciously scratchy; they bit into soft skin, left marks, like the grandfather’s beard. I remember the event, dancing with a friend, him telling me I should just rip them off. As if I could.
And Two: Like the guilt and shame of this body, this hateful Thing for which I was to blame, the echo. “Dis is what I get?” After I bought you this, after your grandmother waited in line to get you that.
A toy, a coveted doll, nothing extravagant, though I know they stretched dollars sometimes. More of his dramatic largesse, his belief that money could buy respect, esteem. Never contradicted, never the brutal truth: if you want your granddaughter’s love, treat her like a human being, not a piece of meat.
What if they hadn’t asked what I wanted? What if I hadn’t told? What if I hadn’t sold myself for the price of the latest TV commercial must-have?
How did He get away with this, with all of it?
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