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Chapter 5 ♚ A Victim

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Never thought I'd say this but when Monday came, I was glad to get away from the nice people.

All weekend long, Margaret and Lena Lee had given me their full attention. As soon as the latter found out her old jeans and sweatpants didn't fit my Caribbean bootie, she took me on a shopping trip to Calgary that resulted in one good addition: a brand new pair of safety boots. I'd been planning on buying them with my first paycheck but now more than ever I believed in safety first.

The bad thing was that Lena Lee chatted a lot and her son, Luke, who tagged along with us, wasn't much quieter.

At some point, the kid looked up at me and asked, "Are you a boy or a girl? I can't tell."

"Luke!" his mom chastised. "You don't ask people what their gender is."

"But how will I know if I don't ask?" his eyes were wide with the innocence of someone who didn't understand what they did wrong. Seemed pretty typical of a six-year-old kid to me.

"They'll volunteer that information if they feel comfortable."

Little Luke blinked at his mom. "But didn't you once think that Aunt Charlie was a boy and she wasn't? I don't want to be confused like that."

My eyebrows shot all the way up to the sky as Lena Lee's face flushed crimson. She gave me a pained look and said, "It's a long story, I'll tell you later."

No doubt she would.

Turning my attention on her kid, I said, "I'm a girl."

"Then why is your hair like that?" he asked, staring at my buzzcut.

"Okay, that's enough." Lena Lee gave him a look that shut him up. "You're being rude."

"Sorry."

I rubbed my head, feeling the soft bristle of my very short hair against the palm of my hand.

Years ago, I'd had hair so long it reached my waist. I'd been really proud of how gorgeous it was. Thick, glossy and perfectly straight, darker than night and illuminated by thin highlights that I retouched regularly at a good salon. Some women had envied me for the lucky genetics that gave me such a healthy mane of hair, others envied me because I had the means to keep it beautiful.

It was the signature of someone I no longer was. A hypocrite. A product of the expectations around me. I had wanted both to be the mold of what a beautiful Venezuelan woman was, a country that produced Miss Universes like it produced oil, despite that being one of the least important markers of a country proud to be the flagship of what twenty first century socialism was supposed to be.

I went to protests to defend the revolution one day and to the gym and the salon the other, without ever having to line up for hours to get government aid like some of my friends did.

One day, after months living with Alina up in Edmonton, I woke up one morning and saw myself in the mirror. The highlights that I'd maintained regularly had begun to fade. As my natural dark hair had grown, everything from my scalp and down to about my ears was black. Natural. Just like Cata's hair was.

If I let it grow, I would look just like her and I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't bring myself to look at someone in the mirror whose life hadn't been so fucked up.

So I picked up a pair of scissors and got rid of who I'd been.

Later, when Alina took me to a salon to repair the mess I'd made, I asked for this, a buzzcut close enough to my scalp that I barely had to feel any hair at all. It was a lot easier to slip into a new life after that, despite the fact mami spent something like two days crying for my lost hair.

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