Girlhood

It’s easier to think that we did something to deserve it. That it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was. We’re just crazy. We wore mascara, pushup bras, dyed our hair. We had big tits. Etcetera. Whatever woman means is something invented. We were young but not naïve. We knew we weren’t worth our minds. I was kicked out of choir because I would not be quiet. Acorn shaved her head, ran out of the school. Someone told us we were wild animals. We ate as little as possible. We drove around Evanston and wandered near the Lake to imagine ourselves out of our lives. If I tell you we chose what we could—each a violent man—See? you’ll say. You chose. We wanted to know what it felt like to be wanted. To be the thing they said we were. This went on for years, with different men, different brown-carpet apartments, broke-down cars, dive bars and rum and cokes, dirty sheets, dirty bathrooms with hair in the sink. Our lives diverged. We both divorced. We woke up in our own lives with a drawer full of knives. We have always been difficult women. I know we had the same dream: something heavy moving in the underbrush, something clawed and hungry, something that screamed like a woman.