Lubi Barre
Fingers
Fingers
I dated only men with slim, long fingers. I knew why but never said it out loud. Short, fat fingers repulsed me.
Yet when it all happened I did not yet contain the world “violated” in my third grade vocabulary. Nor illegal, immoral, betrayal. I was headstrong and independent because I had no choice to be childlike. It was all a survival technique, underneath just the small girl seeking attention and love from one cold parent and one warm one that wasn't around.
He used to take me to my dance lessons in the afternoon and the mornings with my siblings to the American school. But the afternoons was just us.
I loved the tap dancing class. The movement of my nimble feet, the coordination that would help me in my later years to play soccer and competitive basketball. I was a quick learner, talented when engaged, inspired. There are memories of large mirrors, a nondescript teacher leading the way, happiness those hours. I was the only who did not have a parent watching in the back when the class was near to an end. My chauffeur always came on time, taking me and my dance bag with him.
What happened on those rides were secret. I knew it instinctively, savoring them, parched for familial love and confusing this intimacy. I don't remember how they started or how they ended. I just have two scenes in my memory. Leaning my untouched body over from the backseat to the front, spreading my tiny legs open on either side, underwear uncovering what it was made to cover. I don't remember wearing leotards, or how he got to me. Just that he did, and one time was too overzealous that I cried out from the pain. He would keep driving and smelling his fingers.
Those chubby, stubby fingers. Tan in tone from a DNA mixed. The rest of him was like those fingers; short, plump, peppered with dark soft hair, fine features. He drove our Opel car, white.