Throwback: the butterfly

I wrote this essay/story for a class a few years ago, and mentioned it last week when I was talking about everyone talking about sex. Its all true, with the original names of people, and it was posted on myspace for a while to no real response. Anyways, enjoy it. For such a short piece I think it says a lot about me and my life. PS: I did do it again. But that's a whole other story.

The Butterfly

I lived the first half of my life in Connecticut. Until I was 11, I and almost all my family lived in Bridgeport, the biggest city in the state. It wasn't the average town you would find; no big houses or really nice cars you would see on TV. But we had an attitude of aristocracy. It seemed as though a person ran the risk of being disowned, or at least that's how I felt, if she did something that made her mother's lips tighten or eyes widen. We were to carry ourselves with an underlying stodginess and self control, never to do anything scandalous or shocking.

Bridgeport is a beach town among other things, and I was a little girl who loved to swim. Luckily for me, I went to one of the two schools in the city with a pool. In fourth grade, when most of us were tall enough to stand in the shallow end, we started swim class. Being able to spend an hour a week in the middle of a school day in a swimming pool was great. Fifty of my friends and myself, kicking our legs and fighting over inner tubes, and three P.E. coaches to watch over us. My favorite thing to do was back flip in the water, or handstand, my feet out of water from the ankles down. Later that year I would scar myself mentally by jumping into the deep end during a lesson, forcing one of the meaner coaches to have to jump in after me and pull me out. His big hairy hand flung out, banishing me to the shallow end. I still don't know how to swim in deep water.

After class we would shower and dress. Despite being 10 years old, small and curveless, we would shower in our bathing suits, and have our best friends hold up towels while we put on our training bras and underwear. I think that "Your Body and You" movie we had been forced to watch that year may have made us self-conscious, despite having nothing to be conscious of. This applied to all of us except Brandi Brown. Brandi was a lively girl, fearless, who would speak her mind after the age when most of us had learned not to. Brandi would stand right at her locker, on top of her towel, and strip out of her bathing suit, not caring who was watching. A boy could walk in and I don't think she would have noticed. But we surely noticed her.

"Brandi, God, what size bra is that?" a very disgusted sounding voice echoed in the locker room. 34C, for an adult, might be normal. But for a girl not out of elementary school, well, she was not normal, or so we felt. Some of us made it known.

Brandi stood her ground. "My mother told me to be proud of my body." And she was. One day she wore an actual tutu to dance class, while the rest of us wore sweats and leggings. And when Sam Morales pulled her bra out of her book bag in front of the entire class, she wasn't near as embarrassed as I would have been.

Later, looking back on these memories, I thought to myself: had my mother taught me the same thing? She taught me about my body parts, and told me what would look good on my small, boyish frame. But I was never in the room with her when she would dress, and I never saw her be proud of herself. After my brother was born and she would take us to the beach, I wore my pink and checkered bathing suit, and she wore an oversized tee shirt and never got in the water. I never saw my parents kiss, or for that matter, hug. Where I was affectionate and casual with the opposite sex, she was stern.

No, my mother hadn't taught me to love myself. But I never knew it until she said it.

One week before my 20th birthday, a work friend, Toiya, invited me to be in a body art show that she was putting together. It was for a women's organization that she was a part of, and I agreed since it was for a good cause. I felt good about it, knowing I'd be in costume, like any other show I had done. It wasn't like I'd really be naked.

The day of the show, I arrived at the venue in the middle of downtown Atlanta. As I entered, a woman asked me, "Are you the Butterfly?" I just looked at her. I thought she was being hypothetical. "Is this the butterfly?" she turned to someone else, clearly in a hurry. It turned out I was.

I was to wear hand-airbrushed wings made by a local artist. As for my own body, I was to be airbrushed too, which I later found out hurts very much in certain places. I stood in the middle of the backstage area, on a box, while he sprayed 90% of my body, except my hair and what was covered by the wings. Everyone watched him do it, which was weird, because that meant everyone was looking at me, almost naked, standing on my own tiny stage. When he was done I felt clothed, comfortable. I wasn't a naked person, I was a walking canvas. When they told me I would go out on stage first, I was fine with it. I took pictures of myself and others and showed them off at work and too my friends. Everyone loved them. They were amazed at the job that was done. No one saw me, really. They saw a butterfly. Then I showed my mother.

"What would make you think I am OK with this?" She was the only one that didn't smile when she saw me there. "What do you think Jesus would say if he were in the audience?" I didn't tell her I thought Jesus would appreciate someone creating art. To her, I might as well have been dancing naked, swinging on a pole. I left her, crying. It was the only time I hadn't felt proud of what I'd done.

A few days later, Toiya came to me at work and told me how successful the show had been. Her charity had raised lots of money, and magazines and newspapers had given it great reviews. They wanted to do another soon. "Don't tell anyone, but I think you looked the best," she whispered to me before she walked away.Those words echoed in my head all day. Later, before bathing, I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled. It didn't matter what people thought of me, what I did, as long as I was fine with it. The way I felt that night, almost naked in a room full of strangers, is the way I should always feel. That night, and every night since, I showered without my bathing suit.
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