by Sonia Patel
“She’s Indian…”
I stare at him. I can’t move.
“It’s you, Rani,” he whispers.
“Me?”
Rani, you idiot. Is that all you can say?
“Yeah. I’ve liked you for a long time. That’s why I broke up with Emily. All I could think about was you.”
The butterflies rustle and slowly start flying around. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I wanted to, but you were with Mark.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I pause. “Pono, I never told you this but I’ve had a crush on you since the beginning of junior year. Right when you started going out with Emily so I had to hide it. Then I tried to forget about my crush on you because of Mark.” I cross my legs and rest my elbow on my knee. I drop my chin on my hand. “Recently I’ve let myself remember.”
“Really?” he asks, with that sexy smile of his I love.
“Hey, can you spit a verse or two of your new rap. Pretty please?”
“It’s a surprise. You’ll have to wait until I perform it.”
“Oh, man. Come on. A couple of lines then?”
“Ok. The first two lines only.” He takes a breath and spits.
When she arrived on the scene,
I knew there was something about this Indian queen…
I grin so big. “I can’t wait to hear the rest.” The butterflies gain momentum and I imagine Pono’s Melle Mel and I’m Chaka Khan. We’re on stage and he’s rapping.
“So now what do we do?” Pono asks.
His questions get me off stage and back to the porch. I want to say, “Duh, Pono. I run into your arms. We passionately kiss and live happily ever after.” But what I say is, “I don’t know.”
We both got into our first choice colleges. Me, NYU. Pono, Columbia. When I found out, I was stoked that we’d be in the same city. Not only in the same city, but in a hip hop mecca.
We sit in comfortable silence.
After awhile he says, “Well, we’re definitely friends.”
“Yep. No doubt. Best of friends.” I bite my thumb. “Now it’s your turn not to laugh at me. It’s about to get all cheesy up in hea’. Full on cheddar.”
He laughs.
“Remember how you said you’d do anything for me?” I ask.
Pono nods. “I still would.”
“That’s the thing, Pono. I know you would. You already have. My dad and Mark only said the words but did what they wanted. What was good for them. Not you, Pono. You always do the right thing. Even if it’s not the best thing for you.”
Pono smiles.
I continue with my trés fromage parle. “I really want to be with you. My heart says, ‘Jump on it, girl!’ My head says, ‘Hold up. Check yo’ self first.’” I drop my head and eyes. “I’m hoping my heart and head connect soon.”
He moves to my side of the porch. Putting his arm around me, he says, “That sounds good, Rani. Take your time. That’s one of the things I like about you. You think a lot.”
“Some people would call that crazy,” I say, laughing.
“I call it queen-like.”
I lean my head on his shoulder. We sit listening and watching the rain as it drenches everything. I remember the question I had about the rain. But instead of asking him about it, I decide that everything about today is a blessing.
And I decide to trust myself and go with it. Taking the leap of faith, I say, “Hey Pono, I think my heart and head just connected about one thing.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” he asks.
“That I really want to kiss you.”
He grins and gives me a chin-up. Then he changes his expression to a serious one and says, “I don’t know, Rani.” He crosses his arms tight and shakes his head. “What kind of guy do you think I am?”
I give him a look. “Really?”
“Ok, ok. But just one kiss. Don’t try anything else,” he says with mock sternness, wagging his finger at me.
I slide closer to him. I think he was expecting a little peck.
Suddenly, it’s like we’re in Casablanca. And he’s Rick and I’m Ilsa. I confess that I’ve never stopped loving him. Then we kiss like we did in Paris.
RANI REVOLUTION
“Yo, 4eva Flowin’, you ready?” Pono calls out.
Applause, cheers, and whistles come from everywhere. Pono, Omar, Stan Lee, and I are keeping the monthly 4eva Flowin’ hip hop jams going. Without Mark.
“The first MC to throw it down brings a fresh perspective that only a rani—a queen—can. Give it up for MC Sutra!” Pono yells.
I’ve climbed these steps to the stage a few times before. But tonight’s different. I climb, knowing more who I am. I climb, knowing that I have worth. I climb, knowing who my friends are. I climb, knowing Mom’s got my back. All this makes me a hot stepper.
I take the mic from Pono. Louder whistles and clapping.
“It’s MC Sutra here. The girl in effect who’s about to put you in check with this important subject. Cuz boys, if you brought up correct, then ladies get the foremost respect.”
DJ Skittles lays out the tight beat and I spit.
Don’t call me Sultana.
Blazin’ it down settin’ off the alarm-a.
I’m a charma’ with plenty of armor.
more like Cleopatra spittin’ your mantra.
Brain so big I attain my own rain.
Don’t need your ball and chain
cuz I’m gonna sustain my reign.
What I’m sayin’ got you obeyin’.
Crushin’ your cranium—mantis prayin’.
You be crass, checkin’ on this ass
while I be smashing your rhyme window like glass
Call my solution a female revolution,
retribution in the form of rhyme electrocution
Tonight, the rhymes flow easily from my lips. As I lay out another two verses, I’m grateful. Grateful that rap isn’t my savior anymore. Nope. I’ve saving myself. And now, my rap is part of me. By the time I get to the last verse, I’m high. On life.
To my ladies, it’s up to you—
stay strong through this life like you are bamboo.
His control ain’t love, do not misconstrue,
you be Marie Curie,
free to disagree and get a degree,
not under his lock and key,
your true potential set free.
Stand up to the persecution
and make your contribution.
Call my solution a female revolution,
retribution in the form of rhyme electrocution.
My name is Rani Patel—aka MC Sutra—and I’m in full effect.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am a physician who practices psychiatry. Like Rani, I’m also a Gujarati Indian who’s lived on the island of Moloka’i. And I’ve loved hip hop and especially one of its elements—rap—all my life! To make Rani’s fictional story gripping in a unique way, I wove in pieces of the three cultures I grew up in—Gujarati, Hawaiian, and hip hop.
I am wondering if some of you readers are angry or frustrated with Rani Patel. Why couldn’t she become empowered sooner? Why does she depend on guys so much? Why did she keep going back to Mark? Didn’t she have any sense? And then there’s Meera Patel. Why wasn’t Meera angrier at Pradip for sexually abusing Rani for so long? Why didn’t Meera do anything to protect Rani?
As a psychiatrist, I’ve spent over fifteen years helping children, teens, adults, couples, and families—from all walks of life—steer through the murky waters of emotional struggles. Sadly, many of my patients have been sexually abused. By listening, understanding, bearing witness to recollections of abuse, and providing guidance to facilitate healing, I’ve gained insight into how people who are sexually abused think, feel, and act, as well as how overarching family dysfunction can enable it to continue.
In creating Rani, I wanted to give readers a realistic view of how one form of sexual abuse, incest, can affect the lives and interpersonal relationships of gi
rls who suffer through it. Rani’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are characteristic of many of my patients who have survived incest.
Incest has tragic consequences on the lives of children and adolescents. Yet in treating these youth or adult survivors, I know many can recover. But what happens in between? Rani’s story is one version of this.
There’s a reason Rani does not display crystal clear girl power throughout her journey. Incest typically takes away a girl’s power. She may appear to have it all together on the surface. But underneath, she is sad, anxious, confused, not confident, dependent on male attention, and not able to socially connect with females. Just like Rani.
Why is it difficult for sexually abused girls to become empowered? The most basic answer is that sexual trauma affects brain development. Plain and simple. It can damage the hippocampus. It can affect brain circuits that connect the body’s response to the brain—the autonomic nervous system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis, and the neuroimmune process. This physical damage results in emotional symptoms that the abused youth unknowingly thinks, feels, and acts upon. These symptoms can include, but are not limited to: overthinking, intrusive memories of the trauma, flashbacks, physiological reactions to trauma triggers, negative automatic thoughts, self-blame, nightmares, inability to experience positive emotions, and self-destructive behavior.
Rani exhibited all of these symptoms at different times throughout her story.
Sexually abused youth may get “lost” in these symptoms. They may accept the symptoms as who they are instead of as their brain’s reaction to the abuse. So they may “speak” through their symptoms without being able to talk about how the abuse affects them. Remember when Mark first French-kissed Rani? His kiss unlocked memories of her dad’s abuse and she immediately got confused because in her experience intimacy was always linked to incest. Of course, she didn’t have the insight to connect these dots so her body reacted with a panic attack. And when Rani tries to tell Mark about her father’s abuse, she can’t find all the words. She ends up thinking about how her mind would “escape (dissociate) when it happened.”
Youth who suffer through incest aren’t aware that they’re missing out on the normal development of trust, autonomy, self-care, selfworth, assertiveness, or stable platonic and intimate relationships. Instead their personalities are shaped and damaged by serving as a sexual object and/or playing a sexualized role even without improper physical sexual contact. This leaves the youth with clashing feelings of being needed, loved, and special but also used and trapped. Ironically, they, like all youth, have an innate need to preserve their primary attachment to their parents. They may desperately hold onto their abusive parent because it is only in the context of the abusive relationship that they have learned to function. They have not formed their own identity separate from their abuser.
Sexually abused youth suffer emotional turmoil in silence. And, particularly with incest, discussion is discouraged by family and society. Stifled, these youth will not focus on how harmful the abuse is. Rather they will fixate on what feels good in the relationship with the abuser. They will pursue the good feeling relentlessly because it is the only thing they can control. Or so they believe. Abusers take advantage of this and manipulate the youth into keeping secrets about the wrongdoing. And so the cycle of sexual abuse is perpetuated. As they grow up, the abused youth may be vulnerable to being in relationships that replicate their abusive relationships. They may end up with older, abusive, and controlling partners.
So how do sexually abused youth heal?
Healing starts with insight. And insight begins when abused youth escape the muteness of trauma, when they begin to find words both to separate themselves from their symptoms and to verbalize their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. This allows empowerment because they realize they are not what their thoughts and feelings tell them. They recognize that they are experiencing a biologic trauma response.
In reality it is difficult for many youth who’ve suffered sexual abuse to gain insight. To help my sexually abused patients achieve insight, I recommend they engage in some sort of written or artistic expression as part of their treatment. This can help them establish order to the chaotic memories in their mind and construct a trauma narrative which they can then connect to their symptoms.
Rani used poetry and rap to express herself. But the fact that Rani was able to gain insight as quickly as she did is unusual. If anything in the story is unrealistic, it is that.
The ensuing healing process can take months to years to complete. I might explain it to my sexually abused patients like this: even though you may be seventeen-years-old chronologically, you are still only about eleven or twelve emotionally because the sexual abuse forced you to remain stuck at an earlier emotional developmental stage. And this isn’t fixed overnight. It takes time to catch up on the emotional development. I also tell these patients that for every year they suffered the sexual abuse, it may take that many years to fully recover. This is not to make them lose hope, but rather to encourage them to go easy on themselves and to be open to taking time to complete each phase of healing to the best of their abilities.
—Sonia Patel
For more information on the phases of healing from sexual abuse, or for more information on sexual abuse in general, please refer to the following books and websites.
BOOKS
1. Adams, Kenneth M., Ph.D., Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners, Revised & Updated. Health Communications, Inc. 2011.
2. Herman, Judith, M.D. Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, 1992, 1997.
3. Siegel, Daniel J., M.D., The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. The Guilford Press. 1999.
WEBSITES
1. Kluft, Richard P., M.D., Ph.D. Psychiatric Times. January 11, 2011. www.psychiatrictimes.com/sexual-offenses/ramifications-incest
2. American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Facts for Families, #9, Child Sexual Abuse, March 2011. www.aacap.org
3. Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network. www.rainn.org
4. Survivors of Incest Anonymous. www.siawso.org/page-5143
GLOSSARY
808: the sound of bass from stereos. Also, the area code for the state of Hawaii.
A’a: (Hawaiian) lava flow that’s rough, loose, broken, and sharp.
Agneepath: (Hindi) title of a 1990 Bollywood action-drama film. Translates to path of fire.
Agni: (Gujarati) fire.
Ali’i: (Hawaiian) chief, chiefess, ruler or monarch.
Aloha: (Hawaiian) love, affection, compassion or sympathy.
Aloha mai no, aloha aku: (Hawaiian) When love is given, love should be returned.
Akamai: (Hawaiian) smart.
A’ole: (Hawaiian) no.
Ba: (Gujarati) grandmother.
Banava: (Gujarati) to make or create.
Bachao: (Gujarati) rescue.
Batu: (Slang in Hawaii) crystal methamphetamine.
Betta: (Gujarati) dear or my dear.
Bhadran: (Gujarati) a chha gaam village in the state of Gujarat.
Bhagavad Gita: (Sanskrit) Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata.
Bhatt: (Gujarati) rice.
Bhus: (Gujarati) enough.
Bolo head: (Hawaiian pidgin) bald.
Buss up: (Hawaiian pidgin) bust up, broken or damaged.
Chee: (Gujarati) feces.
Chha gaam: (Gujarati) refers to six villages in Gujarat: Dharmaj, Sojitra, Karamsad, Vaso, Bhadran, and Nadiad (Savli is also considered by some as part of chha gaam).
Chicken skin to the max: (Hawaiian pidgin) goose-bumps.
Choke: (Hawaiian pidgin) a large quantity.
Chuup: (Gujarati) be quiet.
Da kine: (Hawaiian pidgin) any person, place, thing, situation, action, or description.
Dada: (Gujarati) grandfather.
Dharmaj: (Gujarati) a chha gaam village
in the state of Gujarat.
Dirty lick’ns: (Hawaiian pidgin) getting spanked or beat up.
Ganesh: (Hindu) Hindu diety with elephant head who is known as the remover of obstacles.
Get ‘em: (Hawaiian pidgin) you got this.
Ghadhedo: (Gujarati) donkey.
Giloda: (Gujarati) tindora or ivy gourd. The immature fruits of this tropical vine are cooked as a dry curry in Gujarati cuisine. The taste is akin to bitter melon.
Gooso: (Gujarati) anger.
Gopi: (Derived from a Sanskrit word) a cow-herding girl famous within Hindu religion for her unconditional devotion to Krishna.
Grind: (Hawaiian pidgin) eat. It usually means to eat voraciously.
Guarenz: (Hawaiian pidgin) guaranteed.
Gujju: (Slang in Gujarati) Gujarati.
Ha: (Gujarati) yes.
Haole: (Hawaiian) foreigner. nowadays, usually refers to a white person.
Hanabata: (Hawaiian pidgin) childhood days. Also refers to mucus.
Hawaiian homestead: an area of land, aka Hawaiian home land, in trust for Native Hawaiians by the state of Hawaii under the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921.
Hele aku: (Hawaiian) to go away.
holoholo: (Hawaiian) to go for a walk, ride, or sail.
Huaka’i po: (Hawaiian) night procession, especially the night procession of ghosts that’s also called ‘oi’o.
Jah betta: (Gujarati) go, my dear.
Juguu: (Gujarati) peanuts.
Jus makin’ any kine: (Hawaiian pidgin) unrestrained behavior.
K’den: (Hawaiian pidgin) ok then.
Kam vaari: (Gujarati) woman who works. Usually refers to a woman who helps clean house. A servant.
Kanak attack: (Hawaiian pidgin) intense feeling of fatigue after eating a big meal.
Kava: (Tongan) roots of this plant are used to produce a drink consumed by various Polynesian cultures. The drink sedates and is used mainly to relax.
Khaarob: (Gujarati) bad.
Kilauea: (Hawaiian) an active shield volcano on the island of Hawaii (the Big Island).
Kutri: (Gujarati) female dog.
La’akea: (Hawaiian) sacred light or sacred things of the day, as sunshine, knowledge, happiness. It can be a name.