Memoir of my mothers daughter
My mother wanted a daughter. I was her first, oldest, and only “daughter.” She drenched me in the sickening pink of her expectations. When I grew older I found my body bleeding and swollen with the preparations of pregnancy. A child everyone wanted except me. My parents saw my turmoil and laughed away my disdain for my growing body. The men who noticed my breasts before I did, and watched me run on the playground. Their hungry eyes and hands. The kids who they caught, like a predator and prey. Whom they swallowed and chewed up and spit out. The children were killed before they had a chance to live. Seeing my silhouette and wishing I weren’t born with my grandmother’s hips. Pressing down my chest and crying at the ache in my ribs. I never got a chance to experience boyhood. The fun of sports I wasn’t allowed to play without being treated like an outsider. My mother still cries when she remembers my name. She won’t support me. She ignores her son and babies her daughter. I cannot be both.
