Dolls

bend, don't break

Chapter 69

"I wore my first corset when I was three. At the moment, it sits in a closet of my childhood home, the pink laces thin and collecting dust. It was made—and worn—to get rid of any imperfections a three-year-old could have. I was a growing girl, but I needed to be limited already. My body was already imperfect, already undesirable. But that... that is the way of my home.

"I say 'home' loosely. Because homes for our women often end up being found in our children, or, if we're lucky, someone who will go steady with us away from the harsh hands of our husbands. But until then, we walk on eggshells to not anger our fathers so our mothers are left alone, and our brothers are not tempted by our legs. We train and we starve and we smile to cover up the pain of existing for pleasure and pleasure only, until someone puts a number that dictates our looks, a price over our heads to dictate our worth, and we are sold like cattle and carted off to a new place to live.

"And we walk on eggshells there, still. I lived with a man who had—apologies, has—a temper, and never let me forget it. Not when we married at eighteen, or when I gave birth to our daughter, or when our son was born and carted off to a different home to be raised under a different name. Even through all those moments in which I gave my entire body, sweat, blood, and tears, I never forgot that he has a temper. Because even though I did all that, he did not deem it necessary to thank me. No thanks for birthing a daughter that would most definitely be sold at a hefty price, or lying about the fatherhood of a son he made money off of. No, he has a temper and an ego—set off one of them, or stars forbid both, and I knew I would be sorry... after all, abuse is normal.

"I expected it. All women do. My mother was beaten by my father for seemingly no reason at all. I used to take showers in the bathroom across from their room, and the hot water would beat down on me to hide my tears as my mother's screams sounded through the door. My father was an angry man, and always found something to blame her for. Always something imperfect. Always something wrong. And I imagined myself in her place, being beaten by my husband and then having to service him, raise his children, make him money to have other children who are fathered by different men. It terrified me. But my mother always, always taught me one thing: 'always submit.'

"It was easier, she said, even though she never seemed to be better off. Submitting never made my father beat her less, or yell at any of us less. But she always said it. With bruises and black eyes, she would whisper it as she brushed my hair, as she got me ready for my first time meeting Luther. I followed her advice during my marriage, but submitting to my husband only led to me being raped by his senator.

"So what are women supposed to do? If we do everything right— we look pretty, we sit pretty, we raise pretty daughters that will be sold for a large amount, and we do everything that his mind can desire in the privacy of our room—what is our right move? We do everything we possibly can and yet it is never enough. Not for him, not for society. We can never be too fat, or too thin, but being completely healthy is still wrong. We can never have hair in places they do, or choose not to wear makeup, but if we do wear makeup it cannot look unnatural because if it does then we must be hiding something. Be grateful he even gives us money at all, but we cannot be trusted with work to make our own. We have to look attractive, but cannot be a tease. Be experienced, dirty, but remain a virgin—pure and untouched. We cannot be so uptight, so prudish, because men want experienced women. We have to get rid of our scars, cut our hair to his liking, get rid of any sign that our bodies have gone through trauma. We are always too loud and too quiet and our words are vulgar and why would we ever walk along the streets without a man? We are always supposed to say yes, yet that makes us easy. Always supposed to say no, but that makes us a prude. Say it or don't, they will always take what they want.