Little Girls Die Young

Naomi Carr, United States

“Alright, I’m coming,” said K., moved forward, took hold of her, kissed her on the mouth and then over her whole face like a thirsty animal lapping with its tongue when it eventually finds water. He finally kissed her on her neck and her throat and left his lips pressed there for a long time. He did not look up until there was a noise from the captain’s room. “I’ll go now,” he said, he wanted to address Miss Burstner by her Christian name, but did not know it. She gave him a tired nod, offered him her hand to kiss as she turned away as if she did not know what she was doing, and went back into her room with her head bowed. A short while later, K. was lying in his bed. He very soon went to sleep, but before he did he thought a little while about his behavior, he was satisfied with it but felt some surprise that he was not more satisfied.” 

—Franz Kafka, The Trial 

⁕ 

January begins at midnight, when the clock resets to four dreaded digits on the cable box—daunting new beginnings, new endings, new year. January begins hunched over a shrine, bleeding onto the pages of The Trial until the white spaces between words disappear like magic. January begins quietly at the kitchen table, with the gentle golden glow of the kitchen light lingering—with a mother and father and brothers asleep. 

January begins in silence. 

⁕ 

A Hawaiian dish marks a new year—and the cycle begins of steaming rice, of soaking mushrooms, of eating to a year better than the last. An identical start promising a different end. 

The ringing of the phone clashes with the rhythm of boiling broth, two voices competing for control—conflict marks a new year. That ringtone demands silence. It owns the halls of my home, it lives in the walls, such a familiar sound—so foreign. Exiled for its meaning. 

My mother pacifies the shrill sound, calmly telling the listening line that she will not work. It is New Years. She will not work on New Years. 

⁕ 

The Trial marks the gaps in my memory. Remembering marks a new year.

I remember Josef K. grabs Ms. Burstner, kisses Ms. Burstner, does not hear her say no. His hands are on her body, on my body. Ms. Burstner struggles, screams, surrenders. 

He did not hear me say no. I do not remember if I said no. 

⁕ 

Here is what I forget: 

the fear in his face as I was called from room, the thick silence of the office, the jaundice of the incident report form, the stiffness of the chair that swallowed me, the way the admin toyed with his wedding ring as I talked, the way my voice shook as I talked, the way nobody seemed to listen as I talked. 

Sometimes, I forget that I was just 12 years old. 

⁕ 

My mother is gone again. She occupies an empty kitchen, a quiet bedroom, the hollow halls. There are remnants of her in this house—in my father’s voice, in my brother’s questions, in my grandmother’s hands—but death takes my mother every day. People don’t stop dying when she’s off-call. Death doesn’t know family time or vacation or PTO. 

I study her, in her scrubs—the pants slightly too long because she lost the genetic gamble—before she leaves. She’s tired, but dying people don’t care that she’s tired. There’s something fatally angelic about her, about the graceful way she slips away from her mother and husband and children and disappears silently into the night. 

⁕ 

Here is what I remember: 

foreign words, the admin’s assault of intrusive questions, begging for death, dreaming of death, forgetting my math homework because I could only think about death, trying to escape my body, his blaming me for ruining his reputation, the burning of the blade against my wrist for the first time, 

then the second. 

⁕

Raley’s for dinner after dance class—where I forgot about death for a few hours until my mother asked me to choose a soup. She told me that boys will be boys while holding chicken noodle. I told her I think I’ll look back on this in a year and laugh while holding clam chowder. I couldn’t find the words to tell her I was dying. I was still holding the clam chowder. 

Choosing soup was easier than choosing life. 

⁕ 

I watch my mother—the keeper, the nurse—change the bandage on her mother’s face. 

That damn dog. Stitch. Tripped Grandma. Stitch. With his leash. Stitch. Chasing. Stitch. A cat down. Stitch. The sidewalk. 

Dried blood spoils the purity of the white gauze, offering five pristine stitches its protection. 

My mother's hands—the tender, the soft—work the gauze with the same skill used to calm the dying. My mind fumbles over those fingers, wondering how my mother will care for her dying mother, wondering if I shall outlive my mother, wondering if my dog deserves to die. 

⁕ 

March begins between short breaths on the bedroom floor—abrasive, as the carpet against my cheek. March begins under a weighted blanket, while I hold my body, trying to coax its mind to sleep. March begins at three am, with my body as the living memory I beg to forget. March is the struggle for breath, the struggle for death, the struggle to forget. 

⁕ 

As Morning speaks its arrival, I lose myself for the first time in my memory. 

Inhalation: You’re under him, just like he wanted. He’s fucking you. Hard. Just like he wanted. You’re grabbing at the sheets out of some sensation between pleasure and pain because you’ve slowly learned to love what hurts you. 

Inhale to remember what he wanted. 

Exhalation: Skin and bones on the bed’s shrine, hollowed out for your convenience. Come, claim what isn’t yours. Come, touch me. Come, choke me with your fantasies. Come, feed me with your fetishes. Come, all over my body that isn't mine. 

Exhale to forget who you are.

Hyperventilation: in and out and in and out and in and in and in. You asked for this. Slut. You deserve this. Whore. You owe him your body. Cunt. 

Hyperventilate to forget how to breathe—lungs spasm and scream, tears, down my face, blood, from my wrists, from my ribs, from the body that isn’t mine. 

I am an empty body, absent of air, in my bed, alone. 

⁕ 

Josef K. and essays as Honors English says to scrounge A-worthy analysis out of trauma. The white void stares back. I drill holes into memory and the sick stench of repressed things spills onto the screen in Times New Roman. 

I turn outline to obituary. In the break-out room of office hours, my teacher calls me bleak. The break-out room becomes one of a break down. 

⁕ 

Socratic seminars are superfluous suicide notes. Something about Josef K. and free will. “Like a dog!” they screamed. I screamed that this is not about Josef K. because Ms. Burstner won’t leave my memory. She was twelve, then fourteen, and sixteen once. We talk about the sweet normalcy of violation. At least my harassers know my first name. 

Knee-deep in existentialist philosophy, my class learns I can’t cope with female existence—fuck female sexuality. My voice cracks. My teacher cries. 

I wonder if their bodies forgive them—Burstner, Leni, Grubach, all of them. I learn the salt and silence of something unanswerable. 

In the doorway, someone tells Fulton today’s my birthday. 

⁕ 

A Swedish Princess cake marks an unsweet sixteen—and the cycle begins of presents, of panic attacks, of caressing the thought of cutting into my skin as I have done on this day since I was twelve. 

But I break this tradition of celebrating life with scarred skin. It is my birthday. I will not cut on my birthday. 

I find a red marker instead and repent in the color of blood. Body, Forgive Me. I write upon my wrist. Body, Forgive Me. Upon my ribs. Body Forgive Me. Upon the body I have betrayed, the body that isn’t mine.

My written plea bleeds onto the bed sheets, staining them with desperation and the despair of mercy in my sleep. 

For the first time in four years, I do not cut on my birthday. 

⁕ 

The white noise of rushing water fills the air, and the bathtub I wished to drown myself in fills. I imagine water washing over my mother’s body as she lies in silence. I see split seconds of serenity for her before awaking to the reality of work and dying and death . 

I think of speaking lovely words to my mother, of feeding the fantasy of peace with the sounds from my tongue. 

The ringtone ripples through the calmness, echoing off the marble tile, splintering the serene silence. I cease to breathe to make room for the drone of the dreaded ringing. 

I cannot hear the words from my mother’s mouth to the listening line. Tranquility disappears down the drain. 

In the absence of parting words, the closing front door dares to speak. 

⁕ 

Suicide is seductive. I ask my best friend why bodily autonomy tastes like autopsy. Why females are only free in death. Why does my last name read like Burstner. 

She is silent for a century of suffering. 

I comprehend I am incompatible with compatibilism. 

⁕ 

Time for car talks and trying to care. I sit shotgun, shoes off; somehow, just four hours of school is still too much. 

Sexuality is on my mind, yet I mind my own business. Instead, I raise questions of race to my mother. Somehow, that is easier. 

Assimilation is not shame, she tells me. But I am not my mother. I do not claim to care for the collective when I cannot help but cling to foreign far-off fragments of Japanese. Unnative is all I know. 

⁕

Seasonal depressions springs not from snow but from sizzling sidewalks under summer sun. So-called summertime sadness, so June knows unmade beds and unwashed body. Unclean bedsheets know of holding unwashed body as days breed weeks bleed into a month of unsanitary sorrow. 

⁕ 

Work can wait. Dying people now Covid; They must understand why my mother has taken off work to take me to this vaccine appointment I’ve procrastinated. She reminds me she wouldn’t be here if I could drive. What if crashing my car two lessons in was asking her to be here? 

My mother, my chameleon, not color-changing but blue like Kaiser scrubs. She could be any one of them, interchangeable, removable part, part of a whole. The dying disguise themselves, sometimes. Their care-givers must disguise themselves, too, as pediatric nurses and people with PTO. 

⁕ 

Sleepless suffering in the silent softness of comforters is no comfort. Comforters do not comfort. The moon bears witness to the malaise of memories unearthed at midnight. Down pillows know tight grips. 

He is on me, in my mind, my body, on top of me, inside me, 

Fingers pressed between ribs, body pressed into mattress, I can’t push this from my mind. You agreed to this, but not this, do you know what this is? Cry for me at the crossroads of consent and coercion. The cool girl cracks, then cries. 

But cool girls never cry— no, never. Amy Elliot Dunn claimed that cool girls never cry, only consent to anal sex they’ve been coerced into then say thank you for the contravention they didn’t want. 

⁕ 

He spoke softly, whispered questions of race into my hair. I forget I am anything but Japanese, a white flag in a white boys arms. 

⁕ 

Babe, I think of you when a faceless boy gropes me at Great Wolf Lodge. I think of you when I say nothing. I think of you all the way down the water slide, when my mother does not see his hand on my ass. Babe, I almost scream your name because my mother does not know you. Fetishization manipulation coercion babe where does it end. I called it love because I knew your name.

Naomi Carr is a young writer from San Francisco. She is an alumna of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and she has found a home in creative nonfiction. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Marble Review, Apprentice Writer, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, and Paper Crane Journal, among many others. When she isn't writing, Naomi enjoys long walks through parks and reading essay collections.