Because I Was a Girl Page 6

  “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” they said.

  But why would I want a bunch of dead flies in the first place?

  “This is for your own good,” they said. “After all, you don’t want anyone to think you’re angry.”

  But I am angry!

  “No, you’re not,” they’d say with assurance. “You might just be getting sick.”

  Here is what they meant by “angry”: Having strong opinions. Objecting to being mistreated. Disagreeing without apology. Raising my voice. Saying no.

  They told me all this until I was worn down. Until I no longer trusted any of my feelings. Until I no longer trusted myself.

  * * *

  Sometimes, I glimpsed a stiff-bristled tail flick out around the edges of the mothers and grandmothers and crossing guards telling me to keep my anger hidden. A hint of their own feral anger muzzled deep within. I could sense it the way one can feel the heat coming off the eye of a stove that someone has forgotten to turn off. I’d even seen them explode when they could take the pretending no more. I watched in awe as they breathed fire like glorious, beautiful dragons. But the people rolled their eyes. Shamed them. Shunned them. They hurled words like stones to bring the dragons down: “Hysterical.” “Irrational.” “Hormonal.” “Ornery.” “Nag.” “Impossible.” “Bitch.”

  “One of those angry women.”

  Some other woman would grab hold of the angry one then. “C’mon now, honey. You don’t really mean that,” she’d say with a smile, words like a leash around the dragon’s neck.

  She was only passing along the message she’d gotten from her mother, who’d gotten it from her mother, who’d gotten it from … well, you get the picture.

  I watched it all, absorbed it like a punch. I began to equate anger with shame. With not being feminine. With being wrong. My anger was not a righteous truth-teller, a barometer of who to trust and who was an asshole. No. It was unseemly. It could make people not like me, which was clearly the very worst curse a girl could bring upon herself.

  Now I, too, was afraid of what lived inside me. The sooner I locked it up, the better. Down in the basement of my soul, I held the leash of my anger and plucked the teeth from its mouth as it looked at me with sorrowful, betrayed eyes: Why are you doing this to me? To us? “It’s for our own good,” I parroted. My belly hurt like I’d swallowed boiling eels. “I can’t let you out; it’s too dangerous,” I said as I latched the basement door. “Because we are a girl. And girls should not be angry.”

  * * *

  Once upon a time, when my anger had no muzzle, I howled for three hours straight. I don’t remember the particular injustice. I only know that I was outraged and wounded as only a four-year-old in full possession of herself can be. My rage was full-throated. Stiff-fisted. Tight-legged and arch-backed. Punk AF. People from all over the neighborhood came to watch the spectacle of my fury as I threw myself onto our front lawn and yelped my indignation even after I’d long run out of gas and was going on pure fumes.

  “You still at it?” Mrs. Celeski said on her way to get her mail late in the afternoon. Her sons were off at war. She drank whiskey and cursed with abandon. She was the angriest person I knew, and even she did not like the thing growing inside me. “Don’t you think you oughta quit by now?”

  I did want to quit. I wanted to go inside. Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Drink some Kool-Aid. But I had not yet been heard. I just needed someone to hear me. My rage was impotent. Worse, it had made me an object of ridicule and scorn. Like so many girls before me.

  * * *

  When you’re a girl, they expect you to numb what you really feel. What you know. They expect you to ignore that ache of angry truth creeping up the back of your throat while you try to swallow it down. They expect you to gaslight yourself. And after a while, you begin to question all your feelings. Maybe I’m wrong? I must be wrong. You hear yourself say things like:

  “I mean, I’m not mad or anything.”

  “I hope this doesn’t make me sound like a bitch.”

  * * *

  … GET ANGRY. DON'T DIE A MARTYR FOR THEIR COMFORT.

  * * *

  “Oh, sure, I know it was just a joke.”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “Sorry.” “Sorry.” “Sorry.” “Sorry.”

  You forget how to howl. You forget that your feelings matter. You forget how to snarl along the fence: Stand back or I swear I will come for you. This is your only warning.

  By high school, I had internalized the lessons well. I made friends with the angriest girls I could. I let them carry the water of my unbearable emotion. I hung behind as they stood out front, shouting truth to power, biting back—snap, snap, snap—taking their lumps. I envied them, of course. The girls who didn’t pretend to feel anything other than what was real. Who called bullshit with deuces raised.

  My own beast did not go away. Captivity made it shrewd. With no teeth in the way, its tongue grew large and clever-bladed. Why throw a direct punch when you could slip a shiv of sarcasm between the ribs, one-handed and unobserved, served with the polite smile they’d taught you was acceptable? I was only joking—can’t you take a joke?

  My hands ached from holding my own leash. My beast gnawed me from the inside, drawing blood. Better to bleed on the inside, I thought, than to let the thing out where everyone could see its ugliness. Occasionally, it got out anyway. It nosed the latch out of place to stand in the light of the kitchen. I laughed at it—“Oh that? That’s just a joke!”—and it slunk back down the steps, stung by my smile.

  Oh, I was a good daughter. A sweet girl. So very likable. I burned in silence.

  * * *

  One day, I was in an accident. A terrible accident. A slick spot in the road, a mangled car, and a mangled face. I was so broken that all the latches inside me came undone. No one wanted to look at me, at my scars, my new ugliness. No one wanted to hear my pain, so much pain. God, the pain.

  “You’re so strong. You just have to go on being strong,” they said with a pat on the shoulder and those same narrowed eyes. They did not care if I choked to death on my razor-blade feelings as long as I did not make them uncomfortable. As long as I didn’t howl with rage and hurt. And I began to understand: I would never be likable enough to have their love. Because I was a girl, and even a broken, bleeding girl needed to keep quiet.

  * * *

  It was the beast who came to the rescue the night I poured out the bottle of pills on my desk. It crept stealthily up the dark stairs into the light and nudged me with its cold nose. Hey. New teeth were coming in. They shone along its gum line like tiny seed pearls. “I have learned magic in the dark all these years,” it said. I had not realized how much I’d missed its snarl.

  “Write your pain,” it said as it slipped into my pen. “Tell your story. Tell it with teeth.”

  “I’m afraid,” I said. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember how to howl.”

  “Yes, you do,” it promised. “I will remind you. But for fuck’s sake, get angry. Don’t die a martyr for their comfort.”

  The beast inside saved my life. Words saved me. Anger and truth saved me. The thing with teeth did not fear me. It did not abandon me when all else did.

  * * *

  Because I was a girl, they told me not to get angry. They told me no one would love me if I did. But I know who I am: I am the thing with teeth. I am the messy, too-much-feeling girl who can smile and growl at the same time. I am the dragon slipped free of its leash.

  “Would you like to see what lives inside me?” I say, the beast scratching at the locks of my soul.

  I part my red lips in a grin, exposing a mouthful of glorious teeth.

  And then I throw open the basement door.

  * * *

  Maybe there is a thing with teeth coiled within you, too?

  Don’t be afraid.

  Its bite may save your life.

  * * *

 
I AM THE THING WITH TEETH. I AM THE MESSY, TOO-MUCH-FEELING GIRL WHO CAN SMILE AND GROWL AT THE SAME TIME. I AM THE DRAGON SLIPPED FREE OF ITS LEASH.

  * * *

  THE 1970s

  •    CONGRESS PASSES TITLE IX, A COMPREHENSIVE FEDERAL LAW THAT PROHIBITS DISCRIMINATION ON THE BASIS OF SEX IN ANY FEDERALLY FUNDED EDUCATION PROGRAM OR ACTIVITY.

  •    MORE WOMEN THAN MEN ENTER COLLEGE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

  •    BILLIE JEAN KING FAMOUSLY DEFEATS BOBBY RIGGS, A VOCAL CRITIC OF WOMEN’S TENNIS, ON THE COURT DURING THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES IN HOUSTON, TEXAS.

  •    RENEE RICHARDS WINS A LANDMARK DECISION FOR TRANSGENDER RIGHTS WHEN THE NEW YORK SUPREME COURT RULES THAT SHE MUST BE ALLOWED TO COMPETE IN SPORTS TOURNAMENTS AS A WOMAN.

  •    THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT, A PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION DESIGNED TO GUARANTEE EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN, IS DEFEATED.

  •    BARBARA WALTERS BECOMES THE FIRST WOMAN TO COANCHOR A NETWORK EVENING NEWS PROGRAM.

  •    NEW YORK CITY’S SHIRLEY CHISHOLM IS ELECTED AS THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN TO CONGRESS, THE FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION, AND THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN CANDIDATE FOR A MAJOR PARTY’S NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

  •    A SMALL GROUP OF WOMEN FORMS THE WOMEN’S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND, WHICH WINS A KEY COURT CASE ESTABLISHING THAT SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS ILLEGAL JOB DISCRIMINATION.

  •    RITA MORENO BECOMES THE FIRST HISPANIC WOMAN TO WIN AN EMMY, A GRAMMY, AN OSCAR, AND A TONY AWARD.

  #1 NEW YORK TIMES–BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  Photo credit: Cathryn Farnsworth

  MELISSA DE LA CRUZ

  Design-Options, the computer company that recruited me out of college, had an interesting hiring philosophy—bring in English majors and train them in computer programming. “It’s easier to teach English majors programming than to teach computer majors how to communicate” was how Mr. Desmond, our beloved boss and patriarch, put it.

  One of Mr. Desmond’s other practices was to pay above and beyond the competition so that none of his employees ever left. We were loyal and grateful, and every year he took us to Le Cirque in New York City during the holiday season, where he would hand out fat bonus checks. During employee reviews, he would discuss art and opera, never clients or computers, and never once would he even mention anything about your performance other than to praise it. He and his executive team were old-fashioned gentlemen. It was almost like having lunch with your grandfather, if your grandfather was old and rich and lived in Boston. I have such fond memories of the man and the job.

  Once my training was complete, I was sent off to Bankers Trust in New Jersey. At Bankers Trust, we were in charge of keeping the thirty-year-old finance programs running. We programmed in COBOL, one of the original computer languages, so old that our manuals dated from the 1960s. But the bank’s servers still ran on it, and so they kept a staff of consultants to maintain it. The only actual bank employee on our team was the supervisor, a woman named Pat, who was unmarried and had a lot of cats. There were almost no married or working moms in our department, only young, single female programmers like me (there were three of us), Pat, and loads of men—married, old, young, single, the whole gamut.

  I liked my job. The computer programmers I worked with were an eclectic bunch, from forty-year-old dads, who shared their kids’ gymnastics pictures and regaled me with stories about tournament trips to Russia, to young Jersey guys, who wore gold chains and went out to the clubs five nights a week. I have pictures from this time of my life: the same group gathered for “Crazy Hat Day,” “Crazy Sunglasses Day,” and “Crazy Hawaiian Shirt Day.”

  Then Mr. Mercury joined our group (not his name, his name was Hermes—get it?—names have not been changed to shame the guilty, LOL). Another consultant, just like us, he had an attitude and a reputation for being brilliant but difficult, and from the moment he joined our team, he and I butted heads. He didn’t like the casual camaraderie in the office. He spent hours on the phone on personal calls and then complained that none of us worked hard enough, especially me, since everyone knew I was writing a novel when my computer work was done for the day. (To be fair, most of us did something else—maintenance programming work was easy and rarely needed, and at any given time, Solitaire was open on almost all our computer screens.)

  Pat, to her credit, asked me to stick it out. Once we put this project to bed, I would never have to work with Hermes again. But I made no pretense of my loathing for him and took to pointing out every mistake in his code, a game of gotcha that he played as well. I made sure to document every flaw in his design, and he made sure to tattle every time I was on the phone making plans with friends. I thought I could stomach it, and I gave as good as I got, but after a while, his daily complaints about my job performance—when I had had a stellar record until he arrived—got to me. Mr. Desmond learned I was having issues and begged me to stay as well, at least until the next bonus season, which was coming up in April.

  But I had never encountered such loathing before—and believe me, Hermes hated me: because I had graduated from a better college, because I was younger, because I was smarter, and because I was a girl. His machismo could not understand how I could write better code than he and still find time to write my book, play Solitaire, and have a personal life.

  It was a toxic environment, and the memory of the harassment I suffered still makes my breath catch a little and turns my stomach. I quit my job (giving up my April bonus) and found another small consulting firm to work for.

  I was hired as a tester, which was a bit of a step down from a programmer. (The new company used software I was unfamiliar with.) As a tester, I worked with one of the database programmers, whom I’ll call Ron (he looked like Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy character). He was a white guy in his thirties, married, with babies, who lived in Jersey, and I was twenty-five and Asian and lived in Manhattan.

  We had absolutely nothing in common but the work we did together. But we were friends. I found him hilarious, and he found me the same. There was no sexual tension between us at all. I can say this with utter conviction—our relationship was the very definition of platonic. We were good coworkers, and we cracked each other up. DAILY. Ron treated everyone the same, male or female, with his signature trash-talking, needling, and mocking.

  Then, one day, it stopped. I popped by Ron’s cubicle and started teasing him, as I did every day, expecting him to needle me back, before asking him to reset the database. Instead of playing along, he said, very politely, and in a somewhat small voice, “Yes, I will restart the database.”

  * * *

  HIS MACHISMO COULD NOT UNDERSTAND HOW I COULD WRITE BETTER CODE THAN HE AND STILL FIND TIME TO WRITE MY BOOK, PLAY SOLITAIRE, AND HAVE A PERSONAL LIFE.

  * * *

  I was like, “Dude, what is up with you?” But he wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

  I asked around, wondering if anyone knew what was up with Ron. I was so confused. Where had my friend gone?

  Finally, I learned that someone had “spoken to him about his behavior.” Apparently, some of my colleagues were uncomfortable with the nature of our friendship. One of the supervisors had told Ron that he had to stop treating me in such a casual manner, that it was inappropriate, that I might find it harassment.

  WHUT?

  I was so shocked. No one even asked me what I thought. I couldn’t believe our joking around had gotten him in trouble. To this day, I am frustrated and sad that the corporate environment we were in did not know what to make of a friendship between two coworkers of the opposite sex.

  A few years later, I left computer programming behind for good when I sold my first novel to Simon and Schuster. I’m happy to write that I’ve not run into any barriers in the publishing industry because of my gender. Though it has now been two decades since I switched to writing full time, I still receive emails from my
former coworkers in the computer trenches. Frank from Jersey, with the gymnastics kids, sent me the sweetest congratulatory email when my first book was published. Jaime, who planned his wedding on his downtime (while I wrote my novel), did the same. Chris, a fellow recruit from Design-Options, sent the nicest note about how proud he was upon seeing my name on the bestseller list.

  I never heard from Ron. He’d quit the firm a few months before I did. I never knew what happened to him, nor did I ever get a chance to talk to him about what had happened, because we never even had another conversation after he’d been dressed down. And that still makes me sad. To this day, I’m sorry we couldn’t be friends at work because I was a girl.

  FOUNDER AND CEO OF GLOBAL CITIZEN YEAR

  Photo credit: Tom Kubik (tomkubikphoto.com)

  ABBY FALIK

  When I turned twelve, the parents in my Berkeley neighborhood started calling, inviting me to babysit their kids. I remember a conversation with my childhood friend Jacob. “It’s so unfair,” he said. “Why don’t they ever call me?” But we both knew the answer: I got the gigs because I was a girl.

  I was always excited about opportunities to work. My younger siblings and I were fortunate to have everything we needed, but purchases beyond the basics were up to us. Our allowance was equal to our age in dollars each month. So, when I was twelve, I got twelve dollars a month, or three dollars a week … which, I quickly discovered, was what I could make in a single hour babysitting.

  I was thrilled when the phone started ringing. At the end of a Saturday night after feeding babies mashed peas or wrangling toddlers to bed, I was exhausted but lit up. I felt responsible, accountable, and accomplished—and it felt great.