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Show Black Tears The same two boys who would trap me in the bushes when I am five found me first atop the bomb shelter that sat in my backyard. With long sloping sides and a wooden door for a mouth, the shelter made a great place to play. And in the early 70s when we lived in military quarters on Hospital Point, I spent afternoons digging in the sand on top of the hill, my already-brown skin that much closer to the Hawaiian sun. On this day, I was alone, my mother inside our two-story duplex taking care of my baby brother Scott, who in his good graces slept for long periods and had to be woken to eat. As was often the case, I dug in the sand wearing only my bathing suit bottoms, my chest as brown as my hands, my hair bleached blonde by the sun. Two boys came up the hill behind me, neighborhood boys from down the street, one of them also named Scott. Looky here, the one said, standing between me and the sun and casting a shadows across the castles I had been making, is it a girl or a boy? I stopped my building and looked up. They were several years older than me and many inches taller. Normally they left me alone. A boy, the second decided. A boy, a boy, a boy, he then chanted, kicking sand over my feet and blocking the view of my house. I am not, I said, standing. I'm a girl. Where's your top then, girly? Or do you like being naked? I had no answer to his questions; it had never occurred to me that I was naked. Looking down at my tiny, pink bottoms, sand sitting in the creases of the cotton fabric, 41 |
