Caught In The Shadow [Jenlisa]

Chapter Three -

Jennie

I was seven the first time I was warned about being a whore. It was one of the very few times I spent time with my father and I remember it vividly because he scared me.

We were watching Return to the Blue Lagoon and the character Lilly had just panicked over blood she found between her legs. I was too young to understand what was happening so I asked my dad. He said, "Women are dirty whores and full of dirty blood, so every month they have to get rid of it."

I was stunned into fearful silence. I imagined myself being emptied of blood, my skin shrunken down the bone. "Am I a woman Daddy?"

My father drank deeply from his rum and coke, "You will be someday."

My eyes misted over with tears as I imagined the horror of being exsanguinated, "How do I get more blood?"

My father smiled and hugged me. The smell of the liquor on his breath would always be a comfort to me, "You will baby girl...just don't be a whore."

I squeezed my father, "I won't!" I leaned back and looked in his drunken eyes, "But what's a whore?"

My father laughed outright, "Ask your mother."

I never did. I never told my mother about the things my father said, though she asked whenever he brought me home. Instinctually, I knew they would only fight if I did.

Two years later, on my ninth birthday I had my first period and cried pitifully for my mother to call a doctor. Instead, she burst into the bathroom and demanded to know what was wrong. I looked up at her, shame radiating throughout my body and whispered, "I'm a whore."

I was thirteen before I saw my dad again. And by then I had a deep understanding of what a 'whore' was.

My mother had been a 'whore' for falling in love young and becoming pregnant with me...and my brother...and my sister...and my other sister...and my other brother...and well – the rest. I was destined to become one because of her. Whoredom, it seemed, was in my blood, my dirty blood.

My grandparents believed it; my aunts believed it, as did their husband's and their children. My mother had been the youngest of her siblings and their opinion weighed heavily with her. So most importantly – she believed it. She made me believe it.

She dressed me in floor length dresses, forbade me make-up, earrings, or anything more exotic than a barrette for my hair. I could not play with my brothers or my male cousins. I could not sit on my father's lap. All this was to keep my inner whore at bay.

By the time I was thirteen, I was fed up with my families Puta Manifesto. I rebelled at every opportunity. I borrowed shorts, skirts and t-shirts from my friends. I saved money from birthday cards and the occasional stipend my mother gave me for babysitting while she went out to search for her next boyfriend to buy tinted lip gloss and fingernail polish.

My mother was thrown into fits of pure rage whenever she found these things in my room. "Disgraciada!" she would yell while pitching my pilfered items at my head. I was a disgrace in her eyes. "Is this what you're doing behind my back? Wearing this...this...nothing! Showing your tits and your legs like street trash!"

I always cry when I'm angry, overwhelmed by emotion, I can't control my face leakage or my mouth, "Fuck you Mom. Fuck you! You're the whore, not me. I just..." I sobbed, "I just want to dress like other girls my age. I'm sick of paying for your mistakes. I didn't do anything wrong."

My mother's eyes swam with tears and fury, "You know Jennie, you think you're so much better than me," she swallowed, "but you're not. We're more alike than you even know and...I'm telling you...act like a whore and you'll get treated like one."