The Virgin Chronicles by Marina DelVecchio

Author:Marina DelVecchio [DelVecchio, Marina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781647423377
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2022-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

THE SACRIFICE OF VIRGINS

During our trip, Janipp and I signed up for a tour of the Chichén Itzá Mayan ruins. I remember standing at the edge of the cenotes, looking into the depths of water-filled sinkhole caves in which the ancient Mayans used to toss the small bodies of their children to appease the rain god, Chaac. They chose children between the ages of three and eleven because they were the most innocent, untarnished by corruption and life experience. Children were sacrificed because of their purity. They were still virgins. It was an act of reverence, for the gods only desired pure sacrifices, according to the sacrificers. The good are sacrificed for the bad, the undeserving, whether it’s for droughts or famines. The bad aren’t tossed into the natural wells and drowned, their bodies dismembered first—the good ones are— the ones we should be honoring and loving instead. Children killed before they could live. Children killed by their community, by their own parents.

A twenty-year-old virgin holding onto the strands of my own innocence as if it is my only lifeline, I recall feeling uneasy by the site of sacrifice for people like me. The irony does not fail to make me stand up straighter, pushing my already burdened shoulders up and back, a solid wall holding up my chest. I try to keep a clean life, to keep myself clean and unsullied, so I can look at my reflection in mirrors without shame or regret, but no one else sees this as honor or as a virtue. They see it only as a hindrance to their pleasure or as a judgment. It is neither. It’s for me. My virginity is mine. This is how I want to be, for me. Not for religious reasons. Not for political reasons. But for Kathy reasons. For me reasons that allow me to keep my shoulders straight and proud. And when I return to New York, this is what I face: Disgrace. Sacrifice. Rejection for abstaining from the one thing that will erase my difference and make me like everyone else.

Before I left for Cancun, I was seeing a boy I called Boo. Boo is not his name, of course. His name is Michael, but he calls me Boo, so I call him Boo back.

I meet him through my friend Diane and her boyfriend Jacob.

Diane is a pale, dark-haired Jewish girl I meet in my psychology class at Queens College. She’s studying social work and wants to help children find homes to shelter them and people to love them. Her parents are well-off, but they live in Westchester. Diane attended all-Black and Latin-American schools where she was one of the few white kids among them. She is a white girl who dances to hip hop and swishes her head in circles when she’s angry. When we go dancing, we do hip-hop together, but where my movements are all girly and swirly, hers are tough and gritty— what she has learned from going to a

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