by Candice Iloh
but maybe this is something I could try
I would hear them talk and talk
about who taught what
whose class was the hardest
how long they were training
would eyeball their beautiful bodies
their sculpted arms
firm thighs
told myself I wanted that
I wanted to be that
I wanted to make my body do that
too
I don’t know what you’re supposed to do
when you come across something you aren’t
supposed to be watching
when all of a sudden you see something
that might be someone else’s secret
like something tucked inside a pocket
something pressed underneath a bed
something within a locked notebook
something kept behind a cracked door
but there are mirrors everywhere
surrounding and following a body
a girl who isn’t expecting
to be seen
I’m sure making a sound
I’m sure exposing yourself
isn’t what you do
no
definitely not that
Dad always used to say that I don’t know where my mouth is
so when I go to take that last big sip
from my water bottle, missing
my mouth
it was no surprise
to feel the cold splash
come down
my chin
come down
my neck
then soak
my chest
and though
it’d already happened
trying to stop it
I jump
knocking the door
I was hiding behind
further open
loudly
looking back up
to her stopped
standing still
staring back at me
We couldn’t have been staring
at each other
for more than five seconds
five seconds
is all it really takes
to blow a first impression
to remember a face
I don’t think I’ve ever turned
around so fast as I do today
not stopping when behind me
I think I hear the girl say something like
wait
or maybe she’s telling me
that I shouldn’t have been here
that this isn’t my space
I don’t wait to find out
or look back to see if she’s
standing there
watching me run off
after she’s caught me
studying her
like a creep
Too many things creep into my dreams
that night
the fact
that in the next bed
there is a girl I
I share a room with
sleeping
the fact
that she’s probably already
got plans to bring one of those boys
she met
back here soon
the fact
that I ran away the first chance
I got to make a new friend
today
and stupidly
made my first gyno appointment ever
at the student health clinic
for tomorrow
I’d never done it before
but all the signs
in my new dorm
tell me everybody’s been
doing something I haven’t
figure that it is something
that might happen soon
figure I should go
to the school clinic anyway, ya know
before I even thought
about doing it, already
seeing these posters in the stairway
pamphlets on the way through campus
talking about knowing
your status, and
how we could catch
anything on contact, and
making sure
you’re clean
now having to share showers
a nasty bathroom
and a whole floor with
girls I don’t know
an old twin bed that on sight makes me itch
with all its . . . history
I make my appointment the first sign I see
cause for students it’s free
and clean? I already feel
anything but
I heard
you’re supposed to go
when you turn eighteen or
or when you’ve stopped being
a good girl
well I’m eighteen now and
I guess it’s time
so I walk into that old
brick building that smelled of
latex and cough syrup
on the corner
of Shaw and Fourth street
so they could look at me
make sure everything’s
all right
make sure
I’m normal
cause this is what I’m supposed
to be doing at eighteen
taking care of things
taking every step to be safe
9:00 AM is when they told me to be here
now checked in
sitting in a chair
waiting for someone
to call my name
ask me questions
about what I’ve done
just the way
Mama has always
accused me, they’ll ask
who I’ve done it with
cause doctors get to ask
those kinds of things
so when they call me
I follow the nurse to the back
prepare for the routine
feeling like
a real college girl
who’s doing it right
Fifteen minutes later the questions are over
and I’m on my back
here like I have to be
but suddenly my body is so dangerous
I can’t control it
they’ve called back the nurse
to give me her hand
and she obeys
just beneath this gown
nothing but my naked body
spread for the woman with gloves
a light shining bright
enough to see the place
where I am both dead and alive
my heels rest
in the plastic cups along
each side of her
she tells me
we are going to do this
my body, having heard this demand before
begins to kick from its bottom
begins its convulsions
begins its ritual
where nothing can numb me
where I am possessed by my own fear
Before I can take this back
I see that I am already here
I am already naked
I have already said yes to
this thing women who’ve come
of age must do
before we can waste
any more time
she is already two gloved fingers inside me
probing for a
nything
abnormal
I have already tightened
my fist, purpling the nurse’s fingers
a little girl who lives inside me
is demanding that this stops
feels knives clawing at her middle
is wondering if it will always
feel like the first time
someone touched me
inside
There are things they tell you get easier with time
that one day you’ll grow up
and be able to take it all
they say this is what you have to do
to be an adult
this is what you have to do
to survive
you will not own your body
you will not own your things
you will not own your feelings
you belong to the world
to them
to Him
No one told me
that the room would be this small
that I would be this small
that the nurse would treat me small
would ask me questions
about the first time
and this would be my first time
so I would have nothing to say
and they would keep asking
they would laugh in my swelling face
they would ask me more questions
my pounding head would spin
I would wet the table beneath it
my knees would become a tremble
the nurses would look up
beyond my unyielding body
they would ask me
if somebody
had ever touched me
down there
Down there
is forbidden
is a safe with no key
is a hazard
is a pit bull’s jaw snapped
is a venus flytrap
is a danger zone
is a dungeon
is a clenched fist
is a place you don’t touch
is a place he touched anyway
is a place I could not talk about
is a private thing
is secret
is unknown
is reason my head
hung low, leaving
my eyes only
proud enough
to trace
my feet
FIRST GRADE
Ever since I could remember
Dad
had a problem with me
staying too long at Granny’s house
said
a lot of people
go in and out of there
said
the people on the first floor
never saw what happened
upstairs
said
I don’t feel good
about you staying overnight
but I would beg
and he would
say
okay
It was okay
to do a lot of secret things
in Granny’s eight-bedroom house
this old three-story box of stuff
where Mama had most of her firsts
we would slide down the stairs
lying on our backs
we would hide in forts built
from pee-stained mattresses in the tv room
we would sneak and eat the penny candy
Granny sold to all the kids on the block
we would play every game
we could make up from morning
till it was dark
What was with adults
and upstairs
and behind closed doors
and with the lights turned off
they all seemed afraid
or oblivious
to the violently joyous
things young boys and girls
could do that mimicked
their mothers and fathers
the rhythmic squeak
of a bedspring
when all eyes in the house were shut
the front door cracking
to usher in
a stranger’s sneakers from
the outside
when anything of the night
could be brought in like dust
But this dust was a boy
coming through the door in the dead of night just to lay down, he said
but began to press a hard thing against me the darkness
giving him permission to touch my everything this time
a thing Daddy said grown-ups should never touch but what was my
cousin? a grown-up? a man. and I? a girl? six?
a kid. said this was to be kept under my bathing suit
under my panties my cousin, having different parents mustn’t have
learned
the same thing
said
hushmoveyourhand
openyourlegs
doesthisfeelgood
I said
no.
After that night I don’t like
any of my clothes
all of them beginning
to fit too tight
around my chest and thighs
my belly poking out
a little at the bottom
my butt becoming
big enough to see
big enough for boys
to try and squeeze cheeks
slyly as they walk past
another hush game
I suddenly hate
these matching short sets
Daddy bought me
in pink, purple, red
none of it screams
loud enough
none of it screams
hands off
this girl
all of it making it
too easy to see
what I got
underneath
Days later Daddy drops me off at Granny’s again
and we are playing some type of game
my cousins do not explain, but begin to
play when all the grown-ups are out
to play this game all you need is your
body and questions like what if and
what would you do if I and how come
cousin asks me what would you do if
I squeezed your titties right now and
everyone laughs at this strange joke
I laugh not understanding the question
not understanding the test, I look him
in the eye, mean like Daddy taught me
and tell him
I would slap you
My daddy never said
it was good to fight
but if someone was
stupid enough to put
their finger in my mouth
they are looking
for me to bite
SECOND GRADE
Tonight Daddy and I enter
this strange building
we have never been to
where he holds my hand and
says nothing
I know this means
we’re going somewhere
I would refuse to go
had I known before this minute
he tells me we are going
to the eighth floor and then
lets me press the number
eight
as if this will feel like
some kind of accomplishment
as if this will take my mind
<
br /> from this dark unknown place
The eighth floor
is a place where we’re welcomed only by the ding
of this slow and dim elevator that Daddy
still holds my hand strangely in
my hand becoming a damp home
of all of my questions
I know we’re getting closer
to wherever we’re going
after the eighth beep
and a quick bouncing jerk
where this lifting thing stops rising
right after the jerk the silver doors
that have been protecting
me and Daddy all this way split open
releasing us to what looks like
somebody’s house
There are two couches
and a chair
black and
leather
a glass table
with all
kinds
of magazines, these
are something
to
do while we
wait for
whatever
is coming, I
tell Daddy
that
I’m scared
and that
I
want to go
home and
think to tell him
I take back
whatever
I said
the other day
Daddy gives my hands a quick
squeeze and says,
it’s okay, Nwa m,
you can tell
Doctor Matthew
all about how
you’re scared
you can tell the doctor
whatever you want
Before I can cry
and tell Daddy that
he should have told me
that we were going to the
doctor, that
he should have told me
we were coming here
where a man named Matthew
is going to get to ask me
all kinds of questions
about things
I don’t know, that
he should have told me
so I could tell him
I don’t want to go to
some doctor with a name