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I bite back a scream.
Abuse is its own kind of reincarnation, isn’t it? We become the ones who made us.
I could have been a Stalin But I was born with Nadia’s body If you knew how much anger I had in me you’d say Thank God she’s not a man She might destroy millions Thank God the only person she has the power to destroy Is herself
Trauma inflicted, trauma incurred, trauma passed on. The reincarnation of abuse.
“You were not a very nice person, Aunt Nadine,” I say to the hasty-looking pile. “Then again, what reason did the world ever give you to be nice? Still. I could have used your … I don’t know, wisdom? Experience? There was more to you than people saw, and I wish we could have found a little peace together.” I wipe my hands on themselves. They’re gritty and caked with earth. “I hope you’re reincarnated into … a tobacco plant. Or the Loch Ness Monster.” I stop and consider, surprised to find tears stinging my eyes. “No. I hope you’re reincarnated into a bunch of big, bright, actually real
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I don’t call them beautiful. It’s not that they’re not beautiful—my God, they are—but that word has too much baggage. It’s an outsider’s word and it was weaponized to render these women invisible in the first place. They are full of so much more than beauty. I tell them they’re amazing. Powerful. I tell them they’re here. I will learn all their names in time. Tonight, we are just beginning. Baby steps, as the books in the Personal-Growth section liked to say.
We invest so much in certain objects, don’t we? More vessels, dipped into the waters of life, holding identity inside. Which I guess just goes to show how little of what we think of as identity is really real.
They will always try to condense our complexities into something simple and dismissible, because that’s what being a woman is, being too much for definitions and being defined anyway, out of fear, and my God, will we be fearless!
