You have lots of them, Barbies. You sit out on your porch with your favorites, introducing each one by name to your visiting cousin. You point out the homemade dresses your mom made for them and explain which ones got pregnant by Ken, and which ones aborted the babies before it became a sin. You explain the weird triangles between Ken, Barbie and her younger sister, Skipper. There are so many Barbies and stories, it becomes too much to handle with out raising my thick eyebrow and putting my hand to my head to stop it from exploding.
"Come play!" you tell me rather than ask.
"Ok, let me go ask my dad" I say "come with me, he'll have to say yes if you're with me."
We go up the stairs to the one bedroom apartment me and my sisters and my parents live in. He's drinking a beer and talking to his friends and you stand behind me and I go and I ask him.
"Papi, can I go next door and play? Her cousin is here and they want me to play." He looks at you and asks,
"Oh how nice, what's your primos name?" you giggle and correct him,
"Not primo Señor, prima. We're down stairs playing with my muñecas."
"Is that right?" he asks no one, "Why would you want to play with Barbies, Mijo? No, I don't feel comfortable letting you go to other people's houses."
"But there isn't anything for me to do!"
"Ya te dije que no!" he says clenching his fist. My cheek hurts just looking at his fist but I know he wont hit with you next to me. You get nervous and back away. Doesn't your dad hit you, I wonder. "Go play with that baseball I bought you."
"But Dad, I'll play with the boy barbie, I swear!"
"I don't care if you play with Barbie's" (a lie) "I just don't want you in other people's houses. What if you break something?"
"But I'm not going in! I'm just going to sit on the porch." My eyes water and yours ask me if you can leave.
"Hijo de tu pinche madre, no!" He pounds his fist on the table and you run--scared, back to the safety of outside. I don't say anything else and just walk away. What's wrong with playing with Barbie's?
You have lots of them, Barbies. You sit out on your porch with your favorites, trying to pretend like you don't see me staring. You with your Barbies and me with my ball that I will never throw, well at least not the way my Dad wants me to. And I sit and stare with a confusion that burns inside me--a fire burning a question into my swishy hips and flared wrists. The answer is "Yes."
My answer is "Yes!" but I won't know it until much later.
You tell your cousin about the time Ken sent Barbie to the hospital because he caught her sleeping with his brother, talking louder and louder to make sure I can hear you, so I can at least hear, if not touch. And your voice raises and fills me like smoke.
"One day," I think, "One day I will play with Barbies and no one will be able to stop me." But for now I sit with this clean ball in my hand, afraid of what will happen to me once my Dad's friends leave.
