29.12.09








Sometimes, she thinks about being a man. She always wanted to be a boy, but no one asked her about her desires. She tries to hide her perfect breasts, but it is very hard. It’s hard to hide who you really are. She thinks about her blond and curly hair. Maybe she will shave it, just like boys do, when they go to the army. Her mother taught her how to make up, which she does perfectly. Her soft skin disturbs her, when she thinks about those big, dry, rough hands of her father, back to the times when they lived in the farm. She loved that harsh man, though he was not her real father. She usually stared at him for hours, watching him cut firewood. She followed him to the barn, and helped him take care of the animals. Two cows, three sheep and a white horse called Starlight. She waited for the big man, as he washed his sweaty body, filled with strong muscles. His arms were darker than the rest of the hairy body. Usually he spoke very rarely, preferring the silence, and she accepted it. But sometimes, when the day had been good, he would look at her, a small girl, happy as the free wind, with a strange, yet intense look. Some years before, her mother had fallen from the old well by the river, and her spine had broken like a dead leaf when it is bruised. Since then, she had spent all her days in bed, like a forgotten vegetable, till it rots. She was a rotten woman. So, when the man looked at her, he would see a poor girl, similar to her rotten mother. The hair was similar, so were the eyes and the mouth. Even the voice reminded him of her. He was getting old, but still felt the strength in that forbidden zone, below the navel. And there she was: always curious, always smiling, and always happy. He was kind to her, like a father cares about a daughter. She didn’t know that his warm body against her had a name. She didn’t know that his male breath, a mixture of grass and chewing tobacco, was forbidden. She didn’t know that there were names for all those things he taught her, for the world she discovered in him. Not until someone saw them, and called him a rapist. Not until her neighbors called her witch, and accused her of enchant that poor man. Not until the policemen took her, and that old judge forced her to live in an orphanage, as if she were alone in the world. The old nuns accused her of witchcraft and wanted to purify her. They beat her with strong wooden sticks, leaving scars of the size of snakes. They said that girls should not show up like that, that women are sin. All that she wanted was to be a boy, free like those boys which swan naked in the river, on those hot summer afternoons. Now, the boys say she is like Norma Jean, when she became Marilyn. And that is painful to her. Sometimes she thinks what it would be like to have been born a man. All that she wanted was to be a boy.



1 comment:

territorius@gmail.com