“María Victoria,” yells my father from the master bedroom. My moccasins “click-clack” down the hallway, and I lightly push the wooden door ajar. The smell of shoe polish hits my nose. “Me pusiste a hacer el sánduche?” he demands, forehead shimmering with sweat. My heart drops to the floor and I lie: “sí.” My father returns to polishing his shoes and I stealthily run to the kitchen. I reach the small, cold convection oven with an uncooked ham-and-cheese sandwich within. My Baby-G watch tells me I’m missing my school’s morning prayer. I turn on the oven and raise the temperature up to 450°F, hoping it’ll toast quicker. I tiptoe back to my room and sit on my Lalaloopsy bed covers. My vision blurs and I place the palms of my hands together, praying for God to help me, so I won’t get in trouble for being late again. “Shh-shh … shh-shh,” the polish brush hits the shoe.
When I first began developing the idea for this article, I didn’t expect to mention the domestic violence situation my mom, brother and I fled from. I intended to write about recent experiences of misogyny I’d experienced in the classroom, as well as harassment beyond it; how I went from being a full person in my woman-dominated community in Miami to being a Latina woman, dehumanized and objectified here at Swarthmore College. Once I began to write that eulogy, however, I realized that the full-fledged human being I was mourning had never existed. My gender cost me my personhood and dictated the limitations of my existence from the outset.
As a Venezuelan “young woman,” there are certain standards I was taught to meet. I had to get perfect grades if I wanted an education — what a privilege it is for a woman to be allowed to get an education! — but I could never have my own thoughts, especially if they challenged systems of power; I could learn environmental science as long as I didn’t believe in climate change, study history as long as it rejected modern feminism, and be an English and Latin American literary scholar as long as the works upheld conservative, Catholic values. I had to be thin but curvy, eating like a man because I was not one of those women. I had to know how to cook, clean, and take care of multiple people whose needs went before my own; I got the cold plate of food. Finally, when the time eventually came and I was chosen by a “good” man, my career would become my children and my husband. Don’t get me wrong, I want a family, good grades, and a house full of laughter and good food. I don’t want them to be my only options though, especially because they leave me vulnerable to codependence and abuse.
My mom followed this pre-determined path immaculately. She went to a private French school in Costa Rica and then got a degree in marketing in Venezuela. Straight out of college, she got a good job at “Movilnet,” a popular telecommunications company in Caracas. She was really good at it, but when she got married and decided to have children, she left it behind to focus on raising us. Some of it might have been institutional pressure, but unlike me, she had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. In fact, according to her, the only thing that had stopped her from becoming a Catholic nun was her deep desire to have my brother and me. However, the man that she chose was not who he had presented himself to be. After my younger brother was born, he became a monster. It took my mom almost twenty years to flee her abusive marriage. In her sprint, she ran straight into the arms of a world that continues to punish her for having had the courage to stand up for herself, simply because she strayed from its plans.
I’ve spent the last four years of my life fighting to undo my internalized beliefs about womanhood, wanting to reconstruct the person I am out of hope for peace and fear of walking into the arms of domestic violence again. However, the more I try to find myself, the more lost I become. When I remove myself from who I should be, there is no way for me to know who I am. If I were not expected to be a stay-at-home wife, would I still want to have a prodigious career in law and public service? If I were not expected to give birth, would I still prefer to adopt? If I were not expected to be quiet, would I still choose to be loud? When I try to conceptualize myself beyond my ethnicity, race and gender, I’m met with emptiness. I don’t know who I’d be if I were born in a world that did not limit me to becoming an incomplete being; a condition that no person, path or place can change.
Despite its notoriously liberal campus, Swarthmore cannot liberate itself from the society it belongs to. In turn, it cannot grant me personhood even if it desired to do so. My professors, regardless of their intentions, cannot always protect me from men who get pleasure from putting me down and reminding me of my place in their world. It hurts, especially when I can feel how my academic experience is being constricted by men who blindly succumb to systems of power that will hurt them in the long run. However, I’ve found a glimmer of hope in the people I have met here. Friends who would rush to my aid with hugs and caramel popcorn, professors who — despite having just met me — are always willing to provide help and support, and strangers who offer a tissue when I cry, help with my bags up the steep Parrish hill, and give free advice on how to weather the Swarthmore storm. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be happy to be an unfinished person, despite feeling somewhat proud of my womanhood, but I hope to find joy in the person I become while fighting to be whole.
