1. When my mother first came to the United States in the 1970s, she was disappointed by the treeless tenements my father brought her to. She had grown up on a bustling island beach in what was then called…
Later, you’ll claim there were warnings. Unusual bird calls. That double rainbow you snapped for Instagram. A knowing gleam in the eyes of the hibachi waitress. To make sense of a thing is to make it your own, and…
Content Warning—self-harm and/or suicide attempt When I visit from the states my cousin Marco becomes wind. In the car to the restaurant where our mothers wait he’s all curls dancing, all cheeks stretching, speeding so fast I’m sure…
1. The first ghost I ever learn about is God, circa 1998, in a kindergarten classroom in Queens, New York. My parents have sent me to Catholic school not out of religious devotion, or some need for strictness, but…
Content Warning—domestic abuse He likes to wear a cowboy hat when he fucks her. She is eighteen, wears her hair traditional—its length snaking down her athlete’s body, a body slowly giving way to womanly curves. She doesn’t know enough…
This is a story about oranges. The fruit the rich kids ate when the rest of us ate mandarins. Those kids were nicknamed Orenji-jok and rode fancy cars in Apgujeong. We waited for the winter to buy boxes of…
Essay by Cavar Sarah • I have never understood the fear of birds. “Because they are so far from us,” I am told by well-meaning humans. “Because we lack ways to tell what they are feeling.” I try to…
The day I discovered pleasure was the day I lost my mother. It happened in the fall of 1995 when I was eleven years old. That afternoon I was standing naked on the balcony of our apartment, my skin…
They always knock with questions and promises. They assure me that checking these boxes will only take a few. forward. minutes. But time winds serpentine when so many voices crescendo with each box that asks me to fit inside.…
I We’re closer than sisters. That’s what she tells me on the night of the full moon. We undress in her bedroom and wrap our hair with twine. This is what sisters do, she says, spreading a deck of…
I started writing this story as a means of uncovering something about myself—something about my experiences as a girl, in girlhood friendships. I love stories that are phantasmagorical because once the expectations of realism are removed, you can focus on the subjective experience.
This story focuses on the subjective experience of the protagonist—the way she views friendship, motherhood, family, love, loyalty, boundaries. There are no names, no locations, no real grasp on reality. All we see is her, feeling through little moments and experiences, grappling with her identity and her sense of power. There is the saying, “Watch out for the quiet ones,” and this story is in conversation with that message. By the end, it’s the “innocent” and “naïve” one who lives, not because she stays small but because she reclaims her power and revels in it.
In a way, this is a coming-of-age story that isn’t necessarily pretty or soft. I’ve always thought of girlhood as a kind of inescapable terror. Girlhood is where I found and lost myself, where I created imaginary friends, had one best friend after another, was ditched in school bathrooms, sometimes coerced to be cruel. But it was also where I heard the scariest stories of my life, kept pinky-promise secrets, practiced summoning spirits with makeshift Ouija boards, chanted Bloody Mary in mirrors, felt my body threatened by the neighbor boy, had sleepovers with best friends where we prank-called every boy we knew, and where my mom bought me my first tarot deck.
At that age, every best friend is like a sister.
I find myself endlessly fascinated by girlhood and the psychology of girlhood friendships because it is an age of transformation, which can be both empowering and terrifying. “Terrible things” lurk in every corner, whether real or imagined. How we escape this moment is beyond me. (I still cringe when I read my girlhood diaries.) I chose to write this story with a twinge of horror because it feels most honest that way. What is brutal is also what is innocent.
I’d like to say this story is a love letter to the sister I never had, but maybe it is a love letter to my younger self, who did escape.
ADELINA SARKISYAN is an Armenian-American writer from Los Angeles. She holds an undergraduate degree in anthropology and a graduate degree in social work. She is currently studying Jungian fairy tale analysis. She was a therapist in her former life. Follow her ever-changing moods on Instagram @adelinasarkisyan and Twitter @sheisadelina.
