Chinese Jump Rope

When I was little my mother took me to the Pacific Ocean. She took me a week after birth. That is what my father told me. He said she sang to me about the waves. My first memory of us in the ocean is when I am around four or five. She is holding my hand and we are walking right into a wave. We go under and she’s smiling as bubbles go up. We come up for air and she carries me inside this cave where all these glowing things are under the water. She tells me they are lanterns for the mermaids and mermen. That we came from the ocean and if I look closely, I will see a mermaid.

She took me to the redwood trees when I was four. I remember going around the trees and being in awe of how big they were. I remember on my fifth birthday party she had a cake made for me from Sam’s Club. I remember she took my hand and we cut the cake and later at night I was twirling under a full moon. There were bubbles everywhere. It felt unreal. I remember telling myself I must remember this. I focused on things I wanted to remember. Like the moon and the bubbles and the cake with the flowers and princesses. I remember the candies falling out of the pinata. I remember being a princess fairy on Halloween and getting candy. These memories are all linked together in one reel like the Chinese jump rope I made and played with when I was six. You know, because one rubber band goes through another and that through another until you run out of rubber bands and you tie the end. My memories from before are all tied now. I constantly go through the reel jumping from rubber band to rubber band remembering a time that once existed. I mean what else can you do when you see the world against you. When your mom who helped more than you understood before is in the hospital?

You can sit and stare at your mother linked to neuro monitors. You can watch the green line hoping it stays going up and down. You can watch her breathe through the tubes and you can wonder and wonder when the doctor will come in. I like to jump on my memory Chinese jump ropes. Step on all the links and walk the halls of the hospital.

Wave at Megan who was the night nurse last month. Ask Brittany about her new baby she was pregnant the last time you came in. Stare at the picture of the waves in the hall and remember staring at the coral reef with your mom for the first time. Trace the frame with my eyes. Tilt my head and remember how the water felt washing over you. Walk a bit farther down the hall. Remember how when I was five, I played in the sprinklers and my mom cheered me on with my jumps. Touch the rough walls and take in the familiar smell of hospital.

I remember falling in the thorn bushes when I was five from my bike and my mom pulled all the thorns out. I think about how I can’t take her thorns out. I think about how she watched me dance. How I spun out balanced on my pointe and jumped landing like a cat. I remember her smiling proudly. I remember her playing hide and seek with me the way Helena did with Merida in Brave. I have made it all the way around the sixth floor and am back at my mom’s door. I push it in and see her still covered in wires. Sit down in the plaid uncomfortable lazy boy. Glance at her face. Still asleep. I put on some music. Stare at the door. Look at the wires until I almost puke. Call from dad. Pick up. Tell him she’s still out of it. Tell him you aren’t hungry because you can’t think about eating. Walk again out the door.

I have been in and out of hospitals for the last ten years. I’m used to it now. It no longer shocks me to find out she’s hooked up to another monitor. But I think about my Chinese jump ropes often. I have these memories to touch and weave my feet through. I remember dancing to a Bollywood song with my mother. I remember her braiding my hair into a braid that touched my feet. My mother gave me memories that my younger sisters will never have. I have these memories weaved like a Chinese jump rope to jump on in my head. I remember that she was not always stuck in a hospital – she used to be normal. They do not. Sometimes I think it would be good if I did not either. If all I had was the days I have now. It would be easier to think I always lived like this.

Hospitals. Home. The occasional smile. The laughter that she sometimes has when she talks – days that she feels okay. I wish I could go back. But now I know. I know that the lights under the water were bioluminescent not lanterns for a mermaid. I know that the wind doesn’t blow just for me. I know that redwood trees are endangered and that coral reefs are dying. I was not the special one. She is. My mother fades and with her every breath a piece of the world she put in front of me disappears. My mother likes to tell me that one can always start another Chinese jump rope. Take one rubber band and put it through another. Keep going until you run out of rubber bands. Take one good memory and weave it through to another piece. One polaroid snap hung next to another. Skip over the pain. Slide the loss of grandpa away and weave the wedding of your aunt in instead. I’m not good at it. She weaved so many of them. My grandpa weaved some … mom weaved some… grandma weaved some. Your marks are on so many Mom. I seem to have forgotten how to make the jump ropes. Let’s walk. I can’t focus.

My hands fiddle with an imaginary Chinese jump rope. Weave. Put in the good. Tie the ends with a good one. I struggle to find the good. I struggle every day. Pick up my sisters. Come home and cook dinner. Watch you lay on a bed and speak nothing. Watch you come and yell at me for things only you see. My eyes have become rocks – I no longer cry. I am made of stone. My sisters are fragile and cry quickly when you yell momma. They don’t remember you ever being soft. The days you are; you scare them. I am the mother they never wanted. They tell me you aren’t mom when I tell them to go to bed. Mom, I grow frustrated. I never know what to do. I am a sister and I am not mom.

Find the happiness. Be brave and have courage and be kind. You say that all the time – I hear you in my head even when you are not here. Weave. Maybe this is what life is. You just weave Chinese jump ropes. Take the happiness and weave each moment into one long jump rope until you run out. Maybe sometimes I will have to dig in the couch sides searching for a rubber band. Maybe I will have to look under the coffee table like I did when I was five. Maybe a memory will be bittersweet and maybe I will have to share one with someone else. Maybe a part of it will make me teary and later it will make me laugh. But in the end, we just weave so we can skip and jump on them when the tears are welling, and we are stuck in one place. We weave so we can walk on the links and remember we were happy and have a world to visit when we are old. We make Chinese jump ropes, so we have something to call our own when we feel alone. Like I do when I’m in this hospital. But trying to make them has become increasingly more difficult mama. There is so much I hide now, so much I crave to show. Secrets that have built up inside me and I boil mama, to let them out. I accidentally let it out one time.

One time I gave in to selfishness. I wanted to know mama. I wanted to know what it felt like. To feel love the way everyone else does. I know when I first told you that, mama, I don’t see the fun that is men. That I don’t understand why my sisters, cousins and friends like them. I told you how I think I like Lenna. She's beautiful. I want to know her mama. To feel her lips on mine. To know what it's like to lose your mind as you melt into someone else’s arms. You told me I was losing my mind. That it was selfish, that I needed to give myself time and that I’ll grow to like men someday. That it was my assault that made me this way. But I got selfish mama. I kissed a woman while you slept.

The kiss was like nothing I expected. It was soft, mellow, and made me blush. I couldn’t catch my breath, I didn’t want to stop. I could feel myself be loved in a way I have never felt before. I felt my body come alive. I felt like I finally found a lost rubberband and could start a new jump rope. She is soft, she is kind, she is everything you would want for me except… she is a woman. I wish I could tell you why I am like this. Why I became so selfish. Maybe it was because I was thrusted into responsibility at age ten. Maybe it was the making of beds, dressing of my sisters, and the hours I spent crying because my feet were tired from washing the clothes and making lunch and dinner and saying no to friends that came knocking asking me to play. Maybe it made me selfish. I wanted to feel something for my own sake. I had done so much for us. For this family. Besides, you had always told me to make a new Chinese jump rope. Is it so bad? Will I really have to give up who I love to keep those that I still have? It's starting to feel like that.

I step out of the room and walk back down the halls. I trace my fingers on the coral reef aquarium in the waiting room. The clownfish seems to know how I feel. I watch as it turns and goes into the anemones. Even the clownfish change genders… God made them that way. Why would he be mad at me for loving a woman? I close my eyes as tears drip down my cheeks and I remember the fight that shook our weak glasshouse just last week. I had been caught by my sisters. They had found my love notes, my photos, my keepsake box and my secret chinese jump rope was out. I’m gay. Their words echo in my head. I hear them asking when, where, why. Why. Why would I hurt this already broken family? Do I have no shame? Our mother is sick, our grandpa just passed away and our grandmother on the brink of death from grief that she can’t live with.

“Do you really want this?” Holly had asked me.

It echoes in my head. That question. I know the answer. I do. I want it. I want it so bad that tears won’t stop and I crave feeling loved because it has been years since I was loved properly. Loved as an equal. Not as a substitute mother or cook. The girls had asked Dad that day. What would he do if one of us were gay?

He slammed his fist down on the table. Not to my surprise, he usually was a bit unstable. Anger festering from a wife too ill, an immigrant parent, culture here that just doesn’t fulfill what he had wanted for us, for himself. I get it.

But this time a plate broke.

And he said, “I’d kill you.”

The heart had stopped in my house a long time ago but that night it felt like nothing lived here anymore. Like the laughter that was lingering had been sucked out. That was no tomorrow, no today and no nothing. Fear had filled my sister’s eyes and they knew he would never change his mind. You see they had already witnessed our fights and arguments. Me begging to go out, begging to see friends and him declaring that the food can’t make itself and that I never have things done in time when he returns home from a long day at work. If this was all that had happened in the past, and all they had seen was some yelling … not the cuts or the broken glass. Maybe they would have believed that hey, he could change his mind.

“Hoorayan.”

I hear my name and swiftly turn around. My dad stood there looking at me holding a McDonald’s bag.

“Why aren’t you with your mother?” He asked.

“I was. She was asleep so I came to see the fish.” I replied looking down at the brown floor. There was something pink stuck in the weave.

“Did the doctor come by?” He asked a bit louder. He was irritated.

“He didn’t come by.” I replied meekly.

“You probably didn’t go ask for him either. You’re such an irresponsible piece of crap.” He muttered, pulling my arm along.

I didn't have the energy in me to tell him that I did ask, that I did go to every nurse and asked over and over. It had been a long day. All I wanted was to melt into a bed and sleep for years. But he wasn’t done with me. I knew that. You see, just like bright beautiful red jump ropes of fun, there are black ones and blues ones and my life had more of the black and blue. And I knew what he was about to do.

We ate the fries and I braced myself in my mother’s hospital room. He talked to some nurses and told me we are going home so I could feed the girls. I grabbed my books and walked to the door so we could leave. My body began to go numb as my mind started to turn off as we got to the car. As soon as I got in, he began to yell.

Yell about the office. Yell about my mother. About how I’ve been useless. Yell how my grades aren’t high enough and how I was a waste of time, money and space. That I’m selfish and worthless and everything I do is for no one else but me. I know deep down that these things are not true but when a parent says them it just does something to you. You start to lose your mind and begin to think it must be true. But this time it was true. I was being selfish. I was loving a woman. I was spending time on my own. Falling in love with the idea of her and our life. The new Chinese jump rope we would make. A happier jump rope to reel through. One where I am a mother, and I marry a woman and I have a home. A place where I belong as no one else but myself. The car slams into the driveway and my trains of thought come to a complete stop.

He opens my door and I go inside and before the door can close I see black. He has already slapped me. He continues to go on, showing me all the shades of blue and black in every way you can imagine until it's been an hour and my sisters are to come home. I get up and wash my face. Apply ointment on my ribs and Biofreeze to calm my muscles and go on to make some pizza. He goes and sits down and waits for me to bring him tea. This is my life. A life as a daughter who became a wife and a mother.

He didn’t always beat me.

I didn’t always see blue and black.

When we used to go to the woods he would carry me on his shoulders and tell me stories of ghosts and fairies with my mother. He still does this with my sisters. He has tea parties and fashion week. He’s everything to them and close to everything I’ve lost to me. He loved me once. And mother - when she’s not sick - tells me he still does. But I don’t see it. All I see is the punching bag I have become but hey - rather it be me and not my sisters. Rather they at least grow up with a father than neither mom or dad. I deserve this anyway. I’m gay. I’m the one that is hurting everyone around me. The door bursts open and in tumble my sisters. I smile.

“Pizza is ready!” I say. “Did you guys have a good day?” All I get is a hi and they run to dad. He laughs and they talk and I find myself wishing I was the wall. I’m already not in this family. Just an outsider. “What happened to your cheek and arm?” Miles asks as she grabs a slice of pizza.

“Ran into a wall.” I replied, ruffling her hair. “Do your homework then I’ll let you watch TV.”

“Okayy.” She replies as she wipes pizza sauce off her chin.

I smile as I watch her finish eating and dump the plate in the sink. My red rubber band in this string of blue and black. These two are the only red rubber bands of happiness I have. Well them and the woman I hide in the locked folders in my phone. Beka. Beautiful Beka. The best pack of rubber bands I have ever gotten. Rebecca. She brought thousands to weave. Filled me with hopes and dreams of another world where we are together. One where I can fit in her arms on a sofa and we watch The Proposal. To kiss and feel loved. I wash the dishes quickly and walk quickly to my room. I had a few minutes alone and I wanted to spend them with her. Telling and asking how her day was. She was struggling with money at the moment. They hadn’t had food on the table in the past month. I had good news for her. I had saved money from tutoring people at university. I had made four hundred dollars working day and night this past month. I had scooped coins and spare dollars from my father’s forgotten jean pockets. Roughly five hundred dollars - that’s 2,535.65 Brazilian Reais. That could feed her. I sent a text and waited for a reply. Nothing.

She must be sleeping. I sigh and count the cash quickly again and hide it in the little box under my bed. She would tell me to save to leave. To not spend on her. But it is the little joys of giving her what she needs that makes me feel that I am being a good girlfriend. Being so far… giving is the best I can do to remind her that I love her and think of her. Besides, who can stand the one they love to be starving? Not me. I go and prepare tea for dad and silently place it on the table in front of him. I fidget and go back to my room and refresh the chat again.

“Waiting for her to answer?”

I jump startled. Holly looks at me with a faint smile. I nod and continue holding the phone tightly in my hands like a lifeline.

“You know that I love you, don’t you? I want you to be happy. I just worry it will tear open this halfway ripped paper family.” She said, laying her head on my shoulder.

I nod. She had grown since she found out about me being gay. She had suddenly seen the anger in our father. Or maybe she had always known and my new truth forced her to see me.

“She needs money. She hasn’t eaten in a month. I have to help her.” I say quietly. There is a silence between us and then she sighs.

“What if she’s lying? What if she doesn’t need you at all?” Holly says looking at me.

“I can’t believe that. I can’t.” I say shaking my head. “You don’t know her. She would never do that to me.” I say looking at Holly. I know she was worrying genuinely. People get scammed all the time. But I could not bear to think everything - all our love being a lie. A lie for a couple thousand dollars.

“Okay. Tomorrow I’ll say I need some snacks from Price Chopper. You go and send the money while I go look for these snacks.” Holly said, wiping my cheeks. “I want you to be happy. I’m on your side. I just … I don’t know.”

“Okay.” I murmur quietly. She gets up and leaves to go study. I lay in bed wondering about the feat it would be to accomplish this tomorrow. My mind wanders to what a perfect life it would be to wake up next to her. Safe. Not in the best apartment, but one that we can call ours. A home that is always cozy, and caring. Where no one yells and we sit and drink coffee as we look and see the world wake up at seven am. Maybe we would save up and vacation in the Bahamas. Maybe we would have a small ceremony when we get married and save the money from the wedding to go on a cruise. I lay there, still, weaving invisible, non existent rubber bands together, imagining a world where these rubber bands become a chinese jump rope for me to carry. Something happier. Something I will be able to hold forever.

Morning came faster than I anticipated and before I knew it I was picking up my sisters from school. Holly called dad to tell him she was going to have me grab a brownie mix box from Price Chopper. We walked into the Price Chopper and I began to fill out the Western Union form and start placing the money on the counter. I felt as if the whole world was watching me. As if someone was going to recognize me and let my father know I was sending money. Or God forbid, he himself walked into the store and saw me. But nothing like that happened.

I walked away and got in the car. Shakily I sent her the tracking information and waited as she called me crying saying I really shouldn’t have done this. “Baby, you need this money. I know you do.” She says between her sobs.

“I can’t bear you not having any food. I can’t live with that. I’ll figure out something else for me.” I say into the phone as tears streak on my cheeks. I felt astonishment at the fact that I had accomplished this. I had managed to trick my father. I had sent her money and saved her from another month of starving. She could get food now. I glance at my sister and see her smiling faintly as she sees me talking to her. But she doesn’t realize I saw the worried lines on her fifteen year old face. That there is a fear of everything that can happen. I hang up and I begin to drive us home.

“Is loving her truly something you can’t do anything about?” She murmurs to me later as I cut cucumbers and onions for dinner.

“If you are asking if I will always love a woman then yes. Yes I can’t change that at all.” I replied quietly. “I can’t change who I am, I’ve tried.”

“Maybe you just… need time?” She said but trailed off as the realization came to her we never say such things about those that love the opposite gender. She gets up and places the plates on the dining table and guilt fills me up for the horrors I imagine her having to go through because of me

. Parents yelling, the family breaking apart.

My mother blaming herself or my father screaming at them saying I’m the worst that has ever happened. Taking away the freedom’s I have fought to give them. Things I wasn’t allowed to have such as social media, art supplies, television shows, and the ability to go out with some friends. What if he takes these things from them? What if they struggle to get by… would he make them struggle and make dinner and do the laundry? Will they have to give up every single freedom the way I have?

Am I really going to choose love over family? I deserve happiness and I deserve more. That's why I am pursuing this freedom. I deserve to love who I want. No one else would have to give up anything for love. Regardless I know I deserve more - don’t I? I repeat it to myself. I deserve more. I deserve more. I know I do. Maybe the more I say it the easier it will be to believe it. That it’s okay to move on. I can move on. In the middle of convincing myself I’m sitting at the table and watching everyone serve themselves. I wait to whisper to Miles to pass me a piece of bread. I didn’t want to anger dad again. He gets mad when I speak at the table. I begin to float to another dream as the conversations flow between my sisters and my father.

I dream of sitting at a table with Beka. We would talk about our day. She would ask me if classes were hard today. I’d ask her how her classes were too. Maybe I would say I need some water and she would give the jug and I would pour it. Maybe we would smile and she would say how spicy the food is and I need to tame it. We could talk about the paintings she’s been working on and decide what movie we should watch. Maybe we would watch historical fiction because she knows how much I adore it. We could watch Emily Dickension or Victoria or Zelda. I smile as I take a bite of the food only to be startled out of my thoughts.

“What the hell are you smiling about? The food isn’t that good for you to be smirking in happiness!” My dad says angrily.

“I’m sorry I was just -” I struggle to speak the food slipping out of my spoon.

“God you’re useless. Get the hell up and make me tea.” He said glaring at me as I got up shakily to go make the tea my daydream shattered to nothing. I was awake to reality. I was in a home where what I think wasn’t a thing that mattered and my dreams were only meant to be lived in alone in my room. Daydreaming to survive had to be done much more carefully. I picked up the plates and started to wash the dishes and put the kettle on for the tea. I remember mom was much more graceful at taking his rough temper but then again when she was here his temper was nonexistent. He was kinder, not cruelty free - but kinder. I remember watching TV with him and laughing. I haven’t been allowed television ever since mom has gotten ill. I have always been working unless he’s out. Then sometimes I get to watch with my sisters. Happiness has become nothing. But peace has become the moments I get alone, driving or simply laying down to sleep.

I get the kettle off the stove and pour him the tea and go to do the dishes. From the dishes to the laundry, from there sweeping the floor, mopping, fixing his bed, getting his pills out for the night, walking my sisters through homework, fixing the living room up and finally I settle on the computer to do my own work. I sit angled so he can watch me work and see what tabs I have open. After about an hour he tells me I can’t work because he is tired. I sigh. I barely got any work in. I clear my throat. I feel it clenching and choking me.

“I have a lot of homework. Can I please stay to finish?” I say looking down at his feet.

“Fine. But only a few hours more and make sure that my clothes are ironed for the morning.” He replies and goes to his room. I nod.

Finally as he shuts his bedroom the world goes quiet. I can hear the silence and feel the peace in my bones. I am alone. I add a rubber band to my memory of today. Not blue or black… a simply light pink. Just peace. Silence and happiness of being able to work. This is my life. A mother and a wife. I can’t complain - at least I get the occasional clear memory that I can weave in as a good rubber band in my chinese jump rope. Some people don’t get any. Some people are stuck in terrible times with no freedom and no room to even breathe. At least I can go out for a drive and see other people. I can enjoy their happiness.

Sometimes I sit under the trees and imagine the thoughts of anyone walking by. I see their smiles and think maybe their father told them they were loved. Once I came up with an entire love story between two people. They would always walk by at different times but if they ran into each other they would always smile. I imagined a day where one of them drops a book and the other grabs it and somehow a world wind romance begins. Maybe they go on picnics. Maybe she’s quiet and the other is loud. Maybe they both are quiet and sit together and read books and write together on some sofa. Who knows? I think a part of me yearned to live and so I lived through every stranger I could see a glimpse in.

Once I was driving and I took off my headscarf. It was exhilarating. Like I was choosing something myself. I was making a choice at that moment to take off my headscarf and feel the rush of air in the car and outside as I drove. I remember so many women smiled at me. Waved. So many more than ever before from when I wore the scarf. With a scarf I got no kindness. Not a single woman waved or smiled at me. Most seemed to think I was emotionless. I felt robbed of care. Of human decency. I had no one unless I took off a headpiece. Then, I was someone who could be suffering. If I cried with a headpiece on - no one cared. If I cried without one on someone would mouth at me through the window, “Are you ok?”

No. No, I was not ok. I was disgusted by what it took for the world to see me. Do we all carry such bias? Am I also part of the problem? I do make stories about strangers I'll never know and most of those strangers are not Muslims like me. Not to my knowledge. Maybe we all reach to and give to what we see as the norm. The main characters. I think in my life I am not the main character. I am the lost, forgotten, side character that keeps the ball rolling. That's my job. I keep the ball rolling. I finally crawl into bed and wonder about tomorrow. I play with my black rubber band for my hair and think, wow. I even tie my hair in unhappiness.