I AM A PERVERT

A Non-Inertial Reference Frame, with Shame

When I was 8 or 9, my parents took a new helper, a girl a year or two older than me, who came from our ancestral village, deep in the bush. There were less restrictions about employing children at the time, and as the distant cousin who brought Fari to our doorstep on a Sunday afternoon said, it was really a way to help her, since she was the youngest of nine and her family couldn’t afford to keep her.

My first memory is of her crying constantly because our apartment was on the fourth floor and she was afraid she would fall. “People aren’t meant to live that high,” she said, sobbing desperately—in the villages, there were only ground-level huts and shacks. After a week of her whimpering, I was so annoyed that I took her forcefully to the balcony, pushed her against the iron railing, and yelled: “Look! You’re stupid, we ain’t gonna fall if we don’t want to.“ Struggling to break free, she stared at me with wide, white, bloodshot eyes, helpless and scared. When I let go, she scrambled away, figuring out a safe distance from the void, and remained crumpled there, still sobbing: having made my point, I stuck my tongue out at her and left. She pouted for another week, but quit crying all the time about heights, only at night about missing her village.

I was very aware of her lower status as a helper because she sat on the floor, while we used chairs and couches. I also knew that she was dirty, because Mom had her eat her meals in a different plate and drink in a different glass, which were washed and stored separately from ours—something she’d stopped doing for our other helper, Bintoo, a girl of 17 who had taken to brushing her teeth and showering daily, even asking for more soap and toothpaste when she ran out. Fari smelled like the goats that roam everywhere in the villages, in and out of the huts, keeping the children warm at night, but she didn’t care nor understand why we did, stubbornly resisting my mom’s instructions to get clean. Mom had to stand outside the bathroom to make sure she showered, otherwise she would just let the water pour out over the bar of soap, and later show how it had become thinner, claiming not to know why the process had left her own body unchanged.

I reckoned that I could order her around, if there were no adults present, and she seemed to find it natural also. I would come up with tasks for her to do in my room, like taking all my toys out of their basket, arranging them according to my current preference, of which I expected her to keep track, running the feather duster over all of them, but certainly not play with them, after which I would perform an inspection. Whenever I found fault with her work, and I always did, I would chastise her, verbally at first, then, since “she really didn’t understand, the stupid village girl”, physically. I would push her, beat her, and usually end up riding her, holding her down on the carpet while I rubbed myself on her hip or bum, rubbed myself hard.

After a while, she would stop resisting and just wait for me to be done. Then, as I got up, panting, she would smile at me timidly, and I would feel a strange sweetness toward her for a moment, but she still smelled like a goat, and had darker skin than the rest of us, and did not deserve any nice words: just tasks to do, the food we gave her, and her place in the family, the lowest one, while I was the little princess, pretty much an only child after my older brother had left for military school.

That’s it. There’s not really a story there. I just feel bad, now, for using her in that way. Although she never complained, and it only happened at the beginning, I feel so wrong about it. No one found out, I just stopped at some point, I don’t remember why, and later on, we became rather good friends, I think, almost like sisters. She learned to shower with soap and brush her teeth, she even learned to read and write a little, and when she got married, my mom cried as if her own daughter was leaving the house. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this, I hope you won’t repeat it. I’m so ashamed, I wouldn’t want anyone to know.

You better not write about it! she exclaims, realizing, but too late, what she has done.