Chango

All the girls in my paintings wear gasmasks and pretend they are not afraid. I make voodoo dolls, to bring the wrath of Chango on the girls in my gym class who hurt me. How discreetly I steal strands of their hair, how studiously I invent incantations. My mother doesn’t understand when she finds the careful dolls, even when I tell her what they say about our family: Send them all back. Criminals. One girl gets a pin in each eye, and the second gets a paperclip tight around her neck. But first I paint the toenails, the nipples, the anus—all with the same candy pink nail polish. Then I take a black marker and draw a six-foot man on the shell pink wall of my bedroom. He is just an outline, but he’s got a semi-automatic weapon. It’s not that he’s bad. He’s just had enough. Don’t you understand?