How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair;

Author:Safiya Sinclair;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

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In high school the condition of a girl’s body was always on trial—who was hairy, who was pudgy, who smelled like ketchup, who had no boobs, who was too skinny to have a period. My classmates all believed that my blood had not yet come because I didn’t eat meat and looked underweight. We all knew, or would all soon learn, that by thirteen or fourteen our bodies no longer belonged to us, our hind parts and innards were now some communal meeting place for review and commentary. We knew who all the schoolboys thought was sexy and why. We knew the details of JonBenét’s underwear and the contents of her tiny stomach. We knew, because every day American newscasters and comedians reminded us, that the seminal shame belonged not to the president but to Monica Lewinsky, whom Heather came to school and decreed was a slut. “What kind of girl says she was sad he wouldn’t let her finish?” she asked. Yes, what kind of girl, we agreed. Though I didn’t even understand what the question of finishing meant.

At home, with the US president’s sex scandal dominating the news, my father fixated nightly, shouting his opinions from the backgammon board that was usually open between my parents after dinner.

“Babylon waan demonize a man for being a man,” he said, and shook his head, as I sat squirming through the evening news with him. “See, this is just proof of nature,” he said, pointing at the looping newsreels of Bill Clinton.

“This is proof that men not supposed to be monogamous.” Then he threw his rattling dice across the backgammon board, his face lit by the television’s blue light. I sat and listened at a kettle’s boil. My heart fumed at what I could not say. I looked over at my mother, and I knew what he said upset her, because she got up and shrunk away with a spliff in her hands, staring out into the night-sounds that beckoned from our front door. She didn’t confront him. She never did. Instead she said nothing, her face fixed in disgust. I rose in a huff and stormed away from him.

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