My Trouble with Islam

Just minutes after he was done sexually assaulting me, the man drove me home and gave me a religious lecture along the way.

“It’s too bad you’re not a Muslim,” he said, words I will never forget or forgive. “Because god sees everything that you do, and he knows that you are a bad woman.”

Life: the Teen Years

My grandfather is dying there of lung cancer, except no one will tell him he has lung cancer. He’s kept doped up on morphine. On our last day there, I play him a song on the violin and he calls me over for a hug.

“My darling, you came here a girl, and now you leave here a woman,” he said, and I blush awkwardly. “Now, we have to get you on the pill.”

Life through age 10

My parents take me aside. They sit me down and tell me quite seriously that when I grow up, I can be absolutely anything I want to be. I think about it a minute and proclaim, “I want to be a daddy!”

“Except that,” they say.