The Girl
Innovative in style, this poetic essay recreates the challenges faced by a girl who develops a comfortable identity in early adulthood despite having spent her childhood amidst a family torn between cultures.
- Citation:
- Permalink:
The Girl
The girl is born, healthy and well loved,
A seemingly
perfect combination.
A Greek father, a Greek Cypriot mother, a
non-Greek hospital,
Mixed from the day she is born.
The
first years are spent, ignorantly if you will.
The girl lives
with her family, in their own self-employed world.
The food is
Greek, the language is Greek, the traditions are Greek. The
neighbours are not.
The home sees neither Anzac biscuit nor
hot cross bun.
The mother is weak, but loving, her children
are her world.
The father is vehement and absolute: Greek is
the ultimate culture: Greek is the only culture.
The brother
is the girl’s protector. He protects her from the zealot
father.
He takes the fall for her. She is ignorant of
this.
The day comes. The necessary schooling must
begin.
The girl has never schooled before. She has also never
socialised before.
The closed mother has not explained school
to her,
Much like she never explained her pregnancy with the
girl to the brother.
The girl is ignorant, playful.
The
other children are scared.
They immediately sense the
outsider,
The curly hair, pudgy body, foreign words of
communication.
They reject.
Some see a
weaker,
Bullying.
The girl, at the core quite a happy
and social girl, feels rejected.
She sees children her age for
the first time. And they reject her.
Painful to the core. Her
tiny core.
She is rejected, so she decides to reject
Not
her compadres, but her Greek. Anything Greek.
Her small body
seeps with loneliness, longs for camaraderie. The girl
must.
There are betrayers: the darker skin, the
Greek-inflected speech.
The girl attempts to socialise, to
learn.
But she is like a jungle girl.
The parents
have long divorced.
The girl is at peace.
Finishing high
school,
Her last year, finally.
She is happy.
Top
student, great friends, Greek only in ethnicity.
To be happy
she is stripped.
She is multicultural,
Accepting of both
cultures
No longer fighting, just being.
One day, a
knock at the door.
The girl is at her desk, in her
robe;
A thousand books and a cold cup of tea surround
her—
finals finals finals finals finals.
The girl is a
top student, university is her goal.
A knock at the
door.
She looks out the window.
A car. A red car. With
silver door handles.
No it can’t be him;
The door
handles are the wrong colour
She convinces herself.
The
mother sees from the parlour;
They answer the door
together.
He is a loser,
Broke and
friendless;
This is his last option.
It fails.
The
girl never flinches,
Never believes.
Resilience has made
her strong.
Her negatives are now positives.
She is
shaken, the mother also.
He persists. For days.
He is
unsuccessful of course.
Weakness, strength.
Weakness has
matured into strength.
The brother is swayed,
But his
loyalty is to the girl. And the mother. More to the girl,
His
younger sister—
The girl he instinctively took bullets for. And would do so again.
The father is not heard from
again.
Greek nationalism did not help the
father.
Acceptance would have worked better.
The
mother is unhappy.
She misses her homeland,
Uprooted
with her children.
The girl is in a new culture.
She is
in shock.
She is a teenager.
She longs for her
friends,
Her social life.
This move is
permanent.
She attempts.
Checklist: learn the language,
adjust to social norms.
She tries, and again
She is
derided, frequently—
What are you trying to say? Huh? (giggles
giggles giggles)
The people are loving
Yet
cold.
So she rejects.
Rejects her culture.
Rejects
all things Greek.
There are betrayers: the whiter skin, the
English-inflected speech.
Her newly grown body seeps with
loneliness, longs for camaraderie.
Graduation
Day.
She is happy.
The mother is so proud.
Her
little girl,
First in her school.
Full
scholarships,
Full life.
An identity has been
formed.
The girl is strong,
courageous,
Unafraid.
Doing things alone for
years.
Independence.
Doing things on her own
terms.
Creativity.
Bullying, friendship;
Weak
people, strong people.
Overcoming bullying
Tactics,
strategy, strength.
Not being understood.
Character
building.
Resilience.
Resilience.
Greek
patriotism.
Family, honour, tradition, history.
Past
upset.
Future strength.
Happiness.
Greek
qualities.
A multicultural mind.
A formed
identity.