“Fatty Fatty two by four, couldn’t get through the bathroom door…” The
sounds of children I knew many years ago, the voices of children I wish I had
never known rise and fill the space around me, laughing in the increasing heat
of the music. I want to relax, to open up my body, to think of happy things,
good things but a little girl stares at me. The little girl I once was,
standing infront of the Trevi Fountain in Rome. A girl from photographs locked
in my memories - Her breast just sprouting, the barely visible colors of a
woman painted lightly on her body…a blue polyester dress, small earings on
freshly pierced ears and a frozen smile on her face. The only memory from this
day my mother bought my first bikini, are the large hands of a sales woman,
grabbing my breasts and screaming “bambina!” in delight. Her laughter joins the
laughter of the children and fills the music. Other women, other laughters and
other hands, join them, each leaving their shame on my body, locking down all
the doors.
“Relax, just allow yourself to loosen up” The balerina’s voice seems
distant now…hot, it is very hot here. I’m sweating. A drop of sweat rolls down
my back and comes to rest at the bottom of my spine. I want to wipe it away but
I cannot move. Hot African days fill the
room now. Blue and white striped school uniforms wrap my body. “Killing me
Softly” plays somewhere in a darkened room where young bodies lock into one
another…and boys want to kiss my sister. The boy I kissed on a dare smiles at
me…I don’t remember his name…I thought he loved me. My shame like a blanket wraps around me. Was
I always looking at the men who wanted my sister or was it her thin body I
couldn’t take my eyes off of…I just don’t know. I’m walking in an African
market and young black men reach out to touch my hair… “my wife! My wife!” they
call out to me… it is very hot. I want to go.
“Get up, go…move around the room, walk around if you want to.” I try but I
can’t move. To go….far far away…to go back to the years when I loved my body…those
short few years…clean, ironed white shirts, black pants and a black apron. The
years when I waited on tables. I remember standing on my feet for 14 hours,
remember running from the kitchen to the tables and remember my knees I
couldn’t bend when I finally got home. I remember the pain when I finally bent
my knees and the pain when I tried to open them again and I remember my thin
body. I had pushed it those years… and could feel its every move. I liked when
it ached… it was alive then. There were
bars, discos and dancing in those years… my body would flow freely… dans on top
of bars… paint itself. It had lovers that looked at it with desire. Suddenly I remember the salads, the diets and
the growing fear within me, fear that one day this body would not belong to me,
that it would leave me. A drunken stupor falls over my memories.
“I won’t look like them will I?” I had asked my sister one day as we waited
at the Izmir airport. Fat women
surrounded us. I had decided to live in
Turkey. “You? Never!” my sister had replied and we had laughed. 17 years, a
thin body, a fat body, blonde hair, black hair, straight hair, curly hair, long
hair and short hair have passed over that day. I am sitting in a disco in
Ankara. My hair is bleach blonde, my dress a blood red, wraps tightly around my
body. Sitting in this corner, I look at the people looking at me. There are
lovers and there are those who can’t take their eyes off me, men and women who
turn to look at me when I enter a room… look at me… because my hair is blonde
and my body is thin.
“Don’t fight it. Release yourself into the music.” But I always fought
it...always fought with this body of mine. It didn’t do all the things I wanted
it to...I said lose the weight...it lost babies. Was it that hard to make a child...it just
didn’t listen, didn’t want to. It threw them out. I stuffed it with injections,
medicines, wanted to train it and then I thought I had won...it gave me Yusuf.
Then I didn’t need it anymore. And like a snake slithering out of it’s skin, I
left it in my past and chose a life without it. I called what remained, what I
had left a victory. Never did I realize
that in the years that followed, I stuffed the emptiness left behind with my
fears, disappointments, my anger and shame that wouldn’t go away.
The music changes, slows down, grows lighter. It is as if one of those
people who look at everything in a positive light, those people who aren’t true
to themselves has just entered the room, ready to trick me. I grow tired of
sitting and get up...pretend to be happier. I see Süreyya, my first bale
teacher in elementary school. I remember her long blond hair, her thin body and
how I never wanted to leave her side. “Let your fingers dance across your face”
says the thin ballerina. They search, and search, my fingers grope for a door
to enter. So many years have passed I’m not sure we’ll find one. I turn to look
at my body, discarded, abandoned, pick it up, dust it off and wear it once
more. There is still so much work to be done inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment