Moving to a new neighborhood meant new opportunities, but it also meant new strange boys and men. We were from a place where men harmed pretty little girls. So I made a decision, I was no longer going to be a girl, I would be a boy.
My best friends were, and are, my brothers. I not only played football and baseball with them, I dressed like them, wore baggy pants, large shirts and converse sneakers like them. While other girls wanted perfect ponytails or locked curls, I wore two french braids to the back. I would tuck my long braids under to give the appearance of short hair.
It wasn’t long before everyone started calling me a tomboy. A little girl who wanted nothing to do with her girl identity. It was working. The pretty little girl was disappearing. She was safe, for now. I did my best to hide in a boys world with my tonka trucks, playing baseball, wearing oversized clothes. Mother became concerned. Although she didn't say anything, she would put dolls on my bed and buy me girl clothes for the summer. I rejected it all. Picture day at school was the worse when she would make me wear a dress. In my mind, a man is going to see me.
The women around me reinforced that “pretty” on me, was nothing. If someone said, “You are a pretty little girl. Look at all that hair”, mother would immediately say, “You are nobody special.” More than once my aunt Yvonne would say, “Pretty girls come a dime a dozen, it is better that one finds one with a brain.” Although my aunt’s message was intended to encourage and push me in academics, my injuries caused the message to land differently.
I loved my brothers and I enjoyed playing baseball, but I was also a girl trapped in a “tomboy’s” identify for survival. Now, no one will ever see me.
S
Comments