the city
Shana Mirambeau
uneasiness in the pit of my stomach and looked over to my brother for help, but he did not receive the signs and instead saw it as an opportunity to continue his game. “Go ahead, he’s calling you. Be a good girl and listen,” said my brother. I didn’t want to, but if I were bad then I would get in trouble. I walked over and my babysitter grabbed my hand and closed the door. He instructed me to lie on the bed, stomach down, and I began to cry. I could not follow through with his instructions to take my undergarments off; he did it instead. “Shhh, do as I say and don’t say a word.” I began to shake with fear as he shook within me with pleasure. I went numb and entered a dark shadow of me. I left my city that day. It became an unsafe place that created a memory that I wanted to forget. Years passed and I walked shivering through winter ’s storm everyday. A glimpse of Fiona Apple’s “Sullen Girl” is what became of me. Every man that I saw reminded me of the one who took something from me. He took my innocence and pushed me into a sexual act that might have been pleasurable for him but not for me. As years passed, I would play out ways to confront him in my mind, but still weekly nightmares of being raped appeared. Sometimes on the playground, other times on my school bus. Most common were the ones of me being chased by men I’d never seen before. Simultaneously, sex became an action of revenge, my weapon, but there was also a hidden space underneath all that anger that held a desire to be released and find my own place of pleasure. How could I do this? In the United States I was surrounded by a culture that constantly sent singular
messages, especially through social media, that my female pleasure was to be understood through sexual engagements with a man. I chose guys who were only concerned with the performance of my body. I repeated this destructive pattern because I didn’t feel or know that I was good enough, that I, with all my parts, was enough to be touched tenderly, heard eagerly and understood compassionately. Finally, I put those ludicrous thoughts of performing, of being a doll, of not recognizing myself in order to be noticed by another away once I read feminist literature. My classes, the literature and the community of women all gave me the courage to place fingers on my lips that were below my waist. For months, I touched the parts of myself that were abused and gave them tender love. My clitoris and I began a relationship; she began to speak and I listened. Sometimes all of us: my pussy, vulva, lips and clitoris, would cry together. I acknowledged a history of pain and without judgment helped us all release it. I took the time to travel my own city within and heal. I had a block, a shield protecting me from getting hurt. I also began to practice yoga. This helped me to create trust between my body and myself again. I listened to my inner voice and began a journey that didn’t rely on the exterior validation of the material world but one of spirit, of listening to the internal signs.
The snow had stopped falling and gray met the day as I stepped out of the cab. The snow storm had just passed the day prior and I, ejected from the shadow of my California gloom, escaped broken emotional ties of another boy wearing the skin of a man. I was exhausted from my third day at a
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