The Girls Who Grew Big

by Leila Mottley

I couldn’t leave my daughter with some strange grown men like I’d been left with Tooth. I couldn’t let her grow up thinking it was normal to be alone with someone who had learned how to drive a car at the same time that she was still pissing her bed at night, someone who she would meet years later and who would claim to love her when really he wanted to own her. I couldn’t let my son learn how to slink into a room like his dad had, sit down among the boys and learn all he had to do to feel powerful was clench a girl in his fist and never let her go.

Unrequited love is like believing in fairies for a little too long, past the age it’s acceptable. Sure, there’s the eventual devastation that this thing you thought was real suddenly evaporated into nothing. But the worst part of it is the shame that you ever believed at all.