Dear Girl
A letter to the body that gives and is never expected to take
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A Guyanese family begins and ends with a mother. Tenement yard mother. Coolie mother. Negro mother. Mother who cooks. Mother who cleans. Mother who bathes her brown little children. She lathers their hair with a cake of Blue Soap, fingernails digging into scalps, scrubbing away days of lice, sun, and dirt. Mother never recoils. Her children can never be so dirty in her eyes. Mother empties the poseys of worms that pass through their infected bodies. She says, bend yahself as she cleans them, so that their hands never touch their body’s own waste. Under the wire lines — with sweat trailing down temples, teeth biting down on plastic clothes-clips, and bleach wrinkling her fingertips — Mother bows and stands against the land, hanging clothes day after day. Her voice is sugah-sweet on quiet days. Mother sings — Hear Auntie Bess, Market Women, Shetira, and Janey Girl. But when you are far, her voice cracks the shells of the tamarinds hanging on the tree. Mother becomes violent. You cry from the sting of her hands until you sleep a sound, dreamless sleep. Is fuh you own good, she says. Everything a mother does is for her children’s own good. You’ve seen a mother slap her children. You’ve seen a mother burn their skin. She says they never learn. Why don’t they learn? Stop crying, running, and calling after her, tenement mothers scream. All mothers tell girls that men only want wan thing. It’s your fault when you give it, Girl. It’s your fault when they take it. One little girl never told her mother about the young man that called her boy in dark corners after he and that long, dark, strange part released white snot onto her thighs. She hates the skin there the most. Mothers tell girls don’t ever talk about boys. Don’t ever say the word vagina or pat-a-cake. It’s not a nursery rhyme here. It’s another name for that thing between your legs. The girls who want to know things are fast. We heard of that kind of girl. Five boys raped that kind of girl. Years after they still say, she look fuh it. Wat she was doing out on the road dat time? Nine at night. Deh furst boy dat rape she was bad, yes, but all ah dem boys dat went one aftah de otha was nasty. Pure nastiness. In deh same hole! All the mothers shake their heads. No good can come from roads they tell little girls. You never tell anyone about the…
