If she relaxes her posture and her legs begin to spread, hit both kneecaps with an open palm or the back of a pan so that she associates opening herself up with pain.
If she spends too much time running after the boys or allowing them to chase after her, call her a fast-tailed girl even if she won’t know what that means. Remember: she’s not allowed to ask questions. And frankly, she’s better off that way. Ambiguity will undo her sooner rather than later.
When she bleeds for the first time, tell her how inherently dirty she is and that what she is down there is nothing but a cesspool of stench and waste rather than a channel that brings forth life and takes in pleasure. Tell her that she’s a woman even if she has no hair besides that on her scalp and arms or no sprouting breasts because the weight of that word “woman”
makes her feel as if she can tip the scales. It’s not about what she feels but what she is made to think that will do her in.
You can pinpoint the exact moment when she begins harboring sexual feelings for the opposite sex: her stare lingers a little longer than normal; her voice tapers off while she shakes her head and tucks her bottom lip into her mouth; her blushing, her lack of eye contact. Tell her what happens to black girls who want to be “fast.” Tell her that they will get pregnant and never achieve anything. Tell her that the boy will leave her and that he won’t give her the respect of his pants hitting the floor when it’s time to do what grown folks do. Tell her, tell her, tell her. And before you know it, the next time she so much as lays eyes on another man, her vaginal muscles will tighten. Her opening will produce an extra layer of skin as a fortress so that no man can get in, and if he does, that in and of itself is her punishment for not keeping it tight.
Instruct her that being complimented on her looks is much better than being complimented on her brains. Everyone wants a black woman who makes him or her feel at ease. Her face is the easiest way to comfort people, and if she isn’t pretty, then her silence is even more necessary, for it is better to be present in the room than never in it to begin with, and she must get in, even if she cannot participate. She must access whatever it is that they have by any means necessary.
If she tells you that a man calls her pretty, pour yourself a glass of Merlot because men don’t give compliments easily, and then figure out a way to get her vaginal muscles to unwind themselves. The only thing worse than being a black woman is being a single black woman, and it’s time to reel a man in. Black is ideal, but whoever will have her works, especially if she’s doing well professionally. Ain’t too much of her kind up at the top, and love is love anyway. The only thing worse than a successful black woman is a single and successful black woman.
Tell her to let the man be the man. Don’t argue with him. Don’t share an opinion unless he asks her to. Let him be right even when he’s wrong. If she takes care of him in this way, he will take care of her.
Tell her that when he’s ready to make love, she should lie on her back and spread her legs as far as they can go. She’ll remember you beating her kneecaps with open palms and backs of pans, but at least this will distract him, breaking through her skin to find a home inside of her. If she screams out in pain or cries, he’ll probably ask her if she wants him to stop, although this is not what he actually wants. Urge her to not make him stop or slow down. Instead, tell her to focus her attention someplace else, even if that place is unreal. Let her think of Elysian fields where black girls receive more mercy. She can stay there until he comes. Then after that, she should either rub his chest, watch him as he rests, or bring him some food from the kitchen, before he wants to do it all over again.
Once he decides that she doesn’t excite him anymore but is too comfortable to officially break up with her, he’ll cheat on her and you must blame it all on her. There must’ve been something that she was doing wrong to not keep him around, and she better make things right so that she won’t embarrass you.
If they do decide to get back together, she’ll shrink even further. The next time you see her, you’ll mistake her for your own shadow for her light will be gone.
When she finally enters those prized spaces that you told her about as a child, she’ll have everything she’ll need to succeed: looks, deference to man, suppressed sexuality, silence. A good ol’ twenty-first-century mammy, ready to give, ready to serve.
She will be the talk of the town, the new Negro socialite, the one whom countless black girls must emulate if they want to get anywhere and have a man on their arm while doing it.
After a few years, you will notice some other things about her: she’s getting physically smaller until she needs a booster seat to sit at the table. Her man can’t enjoy fucking her because he feels like a pedophile, but he feels too comfortable to leave her so he cheats on her again and with more than one woman this time around.
Her voice gets higher-and higher-pitched until the register she reaches is so high that no human ear can detect what she’s saying, not even her own.
Without her body ever reaching orgasm, without ever housing a penis that recognized that her vagina was not a ground for domination, the only hole that hasn’t closed up down there is the one through which she urinates. Neglect will do that to the body.
Soon, she won’t be able to move. Doctors cannot diagnose her as comatose simply because she can’t speak when spoken to. They believe she can still feel; she simply cannot move. Perfect, you think. The less she moves, the more mobile she can be. People will remember just how comfortable she made them feel, and they will take pity on her.
But they don’t. Her name rings a bell, they snap their fingers to try to conjure the letters of her name, but they ultimately give up and return to eating their watercress sandwiches or cheese and charcuterie. They do not remember her name or how she made them feel. They blame it on her not speaking up enough when she was around. Her body collects dust. She stops menstruating.
She stops urinating. She does not speak. She cannot eat. You are waiting for her to die, but not sorrowfully because this was the plan all along. Black girl children aren’t supposed to live; they’re supposed to exist. When she dies, you know you should not mourn for her because now that she’s dead, she lives more expansively than ever before. Where there is no man, there is no world that can make her feel less-than. Yet you do mourn for her because maybe it was not her time to go. Maybe there was something else that you could’ve done to make her shrink but not die, as if one can happen without the other.
Nevertheless, you fold back into the community, where you teach other black girls the same ritual but with more fine-tuning.
You’re sure that you’ll get it right this time. The world forgets the former black girl child when they accept another token who whets their palate like a new flavor of the month. The man finds another woman, and he makes love to her with all his clothes off, pants and boxers hitting the ground, watch on the nightstand, and that woman comes over and over again. When he closes his eyes the moment after orgasming, he sees your child’s face and silently thanks her for preparing him to be the man that he is today.
This is how a black girl becomes docile.
3
The Stranger at the Carnival