i was eight years, five months, and three days old when my mother taught me how to do sit ups
so i could have a flat stomach, and the refrain of âsuck it in, suck it in, suck it in,â
was the anthem of my formative years: i pledge allegiance to the mirror, cross my heart and
hope to die, my not-yet-fully-grown feet hooked under the edge of my bed
and my little hands crossed over my chest like a mummy with porcelain wrists,
a wind-up toy with single minded focus; turn the crank and watch me go, up and down,
five hundred times a night or else - or else what?
did my mother hear the creaking of the floorboards after i said good night?
the bruise that painted elegant purples and sunflower yellows over the stegosaurus knobs
of my spine has only just now faded after the years of the rough caress of hardwood floors,
and of all the things i have left behind as ghosts in the rooms of my childhood, the specter of a
little girl, counting each step up to imagined Barbie perfection, was the hardest to let go of.
my mother never taught me how to put a cartoon curl in my pin-straight hair or
purse my lips and color them blood-red, but she taught me to be skinny, skinnier, skinniest;
no little girl is born with the taste of disgust on her tongue: we force that down her throat
until she vomits up the hatred she feels for her own skin -
if red is the color of love, it is also the color of hatred: i have never loved anything as much
as i loved hating my body, thin red lines drawn up and down arms and legs and once,
a cut across a cheekbone that didnât stand out enough without painful art.
my someday daughter, you should know i prayed for sons, but i will love you fiercely, because
i will remember what itâs like to be sixteen and trapped -
a rib cage is no place for a woman and the only way out is through, because
you will have a great-aunt who ate nothing but asparagus for one whole summer and
our family still talks about how pretty she looked when she was thin, and
your grandmotherâs sister ate only lettuce for lunches every day of high school, and
your grandfather once mentioned how my mother starved herself to fit in a wedding dress but
she says it was worth it because the guests all told her she was too skinny,
and you have a cousin who runs miles every day to keep her weight down, and
strangers on the street tell your teenage aunt she looks like Twiggy and
your own mother, me, remembers the rush of stepping on the scale,
three times in a row, like a superstition, never once, never twice, always thrice,
and seeing the number drop daily.
i will not lie to you, my daughter.
my mother did not show me how to be pretty, so i tried to teach myself,
with make up brushes and 5K races and pocket knives dragged across hips, dating a boy who
never saw my naked face, eyeliner wings sharp enough i wish
they could have sliced his hands that day in the backseat of his fatherâs car.
if pretty is skinny like i always thought, was i the most beautiful when i was dying?
if my lips are the color of my own blood on my hands,
can i wash it off in time to save my daughter?
yousharknotpass
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