FOSTER DAUGHTER FOR A DAY
Dressed the same we held hands. Hair tied back, good hair …straight, with curls that resembled a mix of colonial invasion and African dance.
Mine, no sign of European take over….every sign of the Haitian voodoo priest as he holds a squawking chicken by the neck willing it to shut the fuck up…because it is in his death the priest will be compensated….the blood will fall on the good and the bad….giving hope and despair to those who are still alive.
Blue and white….the dress….white socks, black church shoes. With a white collar that almost reached the lower ends of our fragile tiny ears. Same height, but stick-like arms …as if she had not been fed in days.
Thin nose, another sign up white….identifying as Dominican….the good kind. Long legs …frail but petite…as she sat spread eagle …her posture, that of someone who had yet to be tamed….
Did she need to be tamed?
My mother thought so.
“Cierra las piernas” my nanny would whisper …for you are a girl…and girls don’t sit that way….especially beautiful girls with pelo bueno like you.
My nappy head, too difficult to manage, too hard to put up….one more chemical, another eight hours waiting for the braiding to finish….it was expected that my legs would be open….my dark skin, a symbol of prostitution and baby making, and pain. As if somehow, I deserved it. .
Somehow, we both picked straws, and mine was the shortest…..or, was it the longest?
She was with us only for a day…another visual of saviorism, of altruism gone wrong.
But she didn’t conform, she couldn’t conform to the rigorous requirements it took to live in a home that cared not about her well-being, but what the color of her skin would depict to the world.
As I stifled a yawn and opened my eyes from deep sleep, I saw her dress folded nicely on what used to be her dresser. Gone with the old….in with the new …beside me lay a soul…..will we be dressed the same too?
