Sunday, February 11, 2007
I'm distracted by your too-white little teeth, interspersed with gaps where bigger teeth will dwell and I call you
― Girl
rather quietly. Perhaps so quietly that you didn't hear and kept playing. You stand with your arms akimbo the size of my forearm, and pat the tip of your foot the size of my turtle, in the pose of the lady you are not. But will be. I called you quietly to tell you that pose is going to have a body. A body of the woman you already are, even though you don't feel it and I know you don't even know it. I wanted to tell you not to keep that grumpy air ― I know the boys wouldn't let you play ball ― and not to be sad. All the other girls went home and on the break nobody wants to play with the dolls, but tomorrow you'll come back to fill the tiny pans with the muddy food, little sticks, leaves for the scent and a few pebbles for the flavour.
You know, on a further tomorrow, you won't pout when your friends say "don't you want equality?", when you ask them to change a flat tyre or they help you to take dozens of supermarket bags up the stairs of the building. With that pose you already display on the school patio, you'll know how to explain that you don't want equality, because equal is what you are (and you didn't know how to juggle with the ball, but to this day they won't dream what the mud soup recipe is). That you don't want equality, because you will feel your body and you will know it is different: your face doesn't scratch, your skin is silkier, your hands delicate and soft, the shapely curves belong to your shadow, and between your slender neck ― where no apple has been clogged ― and your navel runs a causeway bereft of fur. You won't manage alone to take the box off the higher shelf, or strike the blow your pervert neighbour will deserve whenever you cross him, and such thinking it's of an ultimate masculinity citing catchwords learnt in the midnight hours, watching the channel the slumbering wife wouldn't even dream to be decoded.
Now your little teeth are showing again, as soon as you heard
― Girl
your mother call you, not as quietly as I. I'm distracted by your unbridled dash to snuggle into her arms. She is telling you today she is too tired from the day at work, but as soon as she's come home
― Just for my girl
she's going to make some chocolate mousse. Don't worry, I know at the hour your future neighbour will be sprawled on the couch envisioning new techniques of approach, she will be ironing the butterfly wings for your play on the Tree Day. She won't forget, but before, she has to tidy up the house; to do the laundry, to dry it, to prepare dinner ― she wants to make the stew your father likes so much ― and to set the table, unset the table, do the dishes, change your Carebears sheets, fill your lunch box for tomorrow, make the snacks, defrost some meat for when your father comes home for lunch.. but don't worry, even in the middle of the night she won't forget your butterfly wings.
Before you dash again, out of the colourful gate of the school towards the car, before you shut the door behind you, I want to tell you I did notice your grumpy air filled with the foot-tip patting. I know that you want equality, that you want difference. That it's not even about wanting because sometimes it's just the way it is. That differences sprout and amass on a common base and principle, made of flesh, made of bones, made of thoughts, emotions, made of humanity. When my feet too were the size of my turtle, I wished it were like that. That's why I called you quietly
― Girl
and you didn't hear. You kept playing. I couldn't tell you. But I think that when we have not-so-white teeth interspersed with gaps where other teeth have dwelt, we will still keep patting our foot.
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