Girlhood As Toothache
Marley Aikhionbare
I thought it was easy to be a girl. Being a girl meant eating stone fruit on the porch. It meant sticky red fingers and cherry pit desire paths. To be a girl was to press your cheek into the grass. To cover your ears. To be a pink-faced, wet-eyed brat. To be a girl was to dye each other’s hair, to kiss and stroke it when the results came back bleak. To be a girl was to pretend to be a mother, not to ever be one. To be a girl was to know everything. To run and to fall and kick and scream and take a nap in the heat. To wake up quiet and sweet. To be a mouthful of merengue and a teaspoon of vinegar. Girlhood was a toothache.
But when the poppies bloomed I could feel something had changed and girlhood meant none of those things. It meant hot baths and salt over your shoulder. It meant sticky red hands and pockets full of drugstore cherry balms. To be a girl was now to have to be a girl and to want to be with a boy and to want to be a boy but to never say any of it out loud. To be a girl was to lose. Every time. It was to be too much. To become a girl meant the death of girlhood. To become a girl, was to die.
The day the poppies bloomed in our yard I was curled in the oak rocking chair on our front porch, creating songs from the creaks and whines; drifting in and out of sleep lackadaisically. The night the poppies bloomed my mother wept.
So the next morning we slipped into our work boots and made a fete of ripping and hacking and pruning. We danced and cried and took breaks for cold drinks when it got too much. Then we got down to cream and floral underthings and ran into the lake. We ate stone fruit in the yard and left the pits in the grass. She dyed my hair in the sink, complete with kisses and fingernail desire paths on my forehead. We fell asleep on the front-room floor to the sweet smell of a night breeze through the garden. Now when the poppies bloom I let them grow and die and sneakily return under the next Taurus moon. They were never a warning sign. They were always a reminder to let the fire of girlhood burn. To be golden, wild, and perfect; to take naps in the heat. To wake up quiet and sweet. To be a mouthful of merengue and a teaspoon of vinegar. To be a toothache.