Parenting

Published on December 12th, 2023 | by Brittany Sirlin

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Are You Nervous?

When it’s dark and the tiny stars stuck to the ceiling glow above our heads, my daughter asks the questions that press at the corners of her five-year-old mind. One night, as her freshly washed hair dampened my shirt, she asked, “What’s the meanest thing someone ever called you?”

I inhaled her honeysuckle shampoo, biding time while I wondered just how truthful I should be. “Why are you asking?”

She kept her eyes on the ceiling. “Matthew wanted to play with me today, but when I told him no, he called me a loser.”

A tightness gripped my chest, remembering the many times I felt responsible for someone else’s emotions, often at the peril of my own. I kissed her head, apprehensive to give her an honest reply, but even more so not to. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an answer to her question, it was that I didn’t know where to start.

When I was ten years old, my parents signed me up for sleepaway camp. I was excited to leave New York and spend eight weeks in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. Many girls go to camp seeking out lifelong female friendships, but I already had three sisters. The connection between the four of us was solid and fulfilling in a way that even then, I sensed wouldn’t exist between me and other girls. By the end of elementary school, I had learned not to trust the foundation of some of my female friendships, always shaky at best. But I didn’t find this with boys. At home, there were always boys I could ride bikes with, watch horror movies with, walk the wooded path at the end of our street with. I found an ease to those friendships. My words flowed freely, and my smiles were never forced.

At camp, I discovered this same easy connection with a boy named Jared. On the days when homesickness would strike, Jared would be waiting at the evening activity with a joke or a bag of Funyuns from the canteen that we could share. When we grew tired of counselor-led relays and karaoke, we would sneak around camp looking for secret passages and hideaways, both feeding off the thrill of doing what we shouldn’t.

One night, as we sat in the shadows just off to the side of the basketball courts, he asked me if I’d heard of a game called “Are You Nervous?” He explained the rules: he could put his hand anywhere on my body and ask, “Are you nervous?” If I said no, the game would continue; if I said yes, then it stopped. He said I could do the same to him.

His hand began on my knee and when he asked if I was nervous, I looked at him with hard defiance and shook my head. I said no because I was curious, and excited, and fearful of losing his friendship for the remainder of the summer. His palm lightly pressed against my inner thigh, the curve of my stomach where I could feel my skin jump under my shirt. When I laughed and said I was too ticklish, he grabbed my hand and told me it was my turn. Even in the dim light, I could see the shift in his navy mesh shorts. I told him the game was stupid and he told me that I could make it up to him by sitting next to him on the bus for our trip to Dorney Park the next day. I agreed, feeling pulled into a game I wasn’t sure I wanted to play.

By morning I convinced myself that everything was fine. Other kids at camp played that game and they didn’t seem to mind; their friendships weren’t ruined because of it. Besides, even if Jared did like me in that way, shouldn’t I feel lucky? I began to think maybe I could like him too.

The brightness of morning dulled the thoughts that came the night before. Jared saved me a seat next to him on the bus as promised and when we arrived at the amusement park, the two of us joined the “advanced” group so we could ride every twisting rollercoaster together and go on the Lighting Falls waterslides. At the end of the day, when we stepped back onto the coach bus, a different energy pulsed under the dim yellow lights that lined the windows. It was quiet and damp, everyone defeated by the adrenaline of the afternoon. The driver turned on the engine and the lights snapped off. I leaned my head against the window feeling the cool glass press against the burn on my forehead.

“You can rest on my shoulder if you want,” Jared offered.

I smiled and silently settled in just under his chin. The motion of the bus rocked me into a dream, but I could still hear the hum of the engine, the soft chatter around us. When Jared’s hand rested against my inner thigh, I willed myself to stay still, to keep my eyes closed and see what might happen. He reached under my shorts, and I turned my hips slightly away, keeping my eyes shut tight. He didn’t touch me for a moment, but I knew he was watching, waiting to see if I would wake up. I felt him again, this time on the waistband. He slid his hand under the elastic and ran his fingers along the nylon of my one-piece Speedo until he found the seam pressed against my skin. I moved back to the window, pretending to be asleep, my rapid breath fogging the glass until we arrived at camp. The driver turned off the engine, the lights snapped back on, and I finally opened my eyes, my reflection fuzzy and skewed.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

We walked off quietly. Girls to one side of the camp and boys to the other. Our counselors asked us about the day as we crossed the field to our bunk. What was our favorite ride, favorite snack? The kinds of questions that shaped positive reports in letters written home. One of the girls, the one I felt closest to, asked if everything was okay, but I wasn’t sure of the answer. Was it? Was I okay? I began to tell her what happened and as bits of the story reached the ears of the other girls, a unified fury was sparked. “He did what?!” they spat. “He can’t get away with that!” they fumed. I was comforted by their anger and felt closer to them than I had all summer.

At their first chance during the next evening activity, the girls of bunk six pounced.

“We know what you did!”

Jared was stricken with embarrassment and faux confusion. He looked at me pleadingly.

“Well, you did,” was all I could muster.

He disappeared into the protective swell of the boys from his bunk while I did the same with mine. I hid out until Jared’s prepubescent entourage called me forward.

“Liar!”

The boys presented a convincing retelling of events. A story that instilled doubt in the eyes of the girls and spawned hatred in the boys. The protection I thought I had vanished because what ten-year old girl wants to be disliked by a group of boys? Who would want to risk that? And besides, why would he lie?

I could have told my daughter that the worst thing someone ever called me was a liar, but names tend to worsen with age. At ten years old I was a liar; rounding sixteen I was called far worse.

So I learned to be agreeable; to play by the rules of the girls and say yes to the games of the boys. By the end of high school, I prided myself on being easygoing, but easygoing isn’t always best for self-preservation.

I considered the response my daughter sought, the question behind the question: What should she do about it? For a moment, dated advice almost spilled from my mind. Ignore him. He just likes you. But then I looked into her eyes, eyes that pierce and sparkle and flare. This is a girl who possesses a ferocity, even at play, as if already aware of the need for it. I wrapped her in my arms with a conviction that she would know how to speak up for herself, and then I told her the truth.

I was 16, an age when names stick to your heart and forever hide in the shadows of memory. He was a friend. He was kind and I trusted him, but when I couldn’t be more than just his friend, his gentle plea turned volatile. At a party, where his words were slippery with shots of vodka, he called me scorpion girl and said that I was poison. He turned into the villain of my story, and while I knew that I was once the villain in his, I never considered myself a scorpion—I never even fought back. Now I wish that I had possessed more of a venomous sting when I was younger instead of the people-pleasing attitude taught to so many young girls.

Easygoing.

I wish I’d had the strength not to feel shame for wanting to say yes or needing to say no because it’s not always that simple.

Sometimes it’s:

I want to, but I’m scared.

I want to, but I can’t.

My daughter is six now and still asks me to stay with her until she falls asleep, and I do, maybe more for my sake than for her own. The night before her first day of school, I looked up at the glowing stars and reassured her with different variations of, “It’s going to be great!” She replied sleepily, “I know, Mom. I’m not scared.”

This is a girl who will know her worth, who will know how to sting back. Perhaps she’ll even be the scorpion that I never was.

Cover photo by André Simões on Unsplash

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About the Author

Brittany Sirlin is an educator living in New York, New York. She has a Bachelor of Science in secondary education for English Language Arts from Penn State University and a Masters in Literacy from Hofstra University. She teaches English Language Arts at a local middle school and facilitates after school book clubs. Brittany is an aspiring writer who, at odd hours between teaching and being with her three kids, works on a YA novel and other shorter works of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her first published work, Playing Dead, was released in March 2023 in an anthology titled Our Magical Pandemic.



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