[ half of me lived in the home ]

“Mommy, can I show you something?” I stopped her in the hallway between our bedrooms.

She grunted.

“My breasts,” I said lifting my shirt, “I think they’re different sizes.”

She widened her eyes as if she’d seen a weapon.

I kept holding the shirt up, holding my breath. She kept still, her owl eyes reflecting me.

“They’re too big for your age, that’s what they are,” she finally blurted.

There, in the hallway leading from my bedroom to my mother’s, the shadows made parts of us disappear. The gray and gauzy light seeping in from under the doors wasn’t enough to give me the clarity I needed. I had too many questions I couldn’t voice: Am I normal, Am I deformed, Am I sick, Will I be able to live, Will I be able to live in this body? To all of those, my mother had only one answer, which also happened to be a question, which also happened to go unvoiced: How dare your body want to be a woman?

[ half of me lived in the world ]

We were eleven, but we wanted to be fourteen. We wore tight jeans, we talked about boys, we ran our fingers through our hair with a distracted face then let it fall back into place strand by strand. We wanted to look busy, we wanted to look bored. Most of all—most difficult of all—we wanted to look in control of our bodies.

Patricia hooked up with boys from eighth grade. “Oooo,” we said, half reverent half resentful.

Adriana bought teen magazines and opened them on the centerspread where a shirtless actor sexy-frowned at us. “Oooh,” we said, and my gaze lingered one second longer, half curious half scared. 

Juliana shared some intel: “If you jump rope, your boobs will grow bigger.” “Oh,” I said.

In my bedroom, I pushed the jumping rope to the back of the closet, half blaming it half blaming myself. My cheeks on fire, my hands an earthquake. I shut the door and promised to shrink—shrink the body, shrink the bloom, shrink the want.