When 6

Gabriela Rocha

When my daughter was 6 

a friend of hers said she couldn’t kiss me on the lips

because she wasn’t really my daughter

as she hadn’t come out of my belly

My daughter is still her friend.

My daughter, her friend, and I, we have hurt ourselves.

When I was 6 

my father drowned me

to teach me that I couldn’t drown my little sister

he has always been a big man

and I have always been a little girl

the pool was in our backyard

surrounded by high walls

No one heard me screaming under the water

it was always useless to scream out of the water

When my mother was 6

something terrible must have happened

somebody must have made her feel dirty about her body

dirty about her own thoughts

somebody must have hidden things from her 

and used her little girl feelings 

When my mother turns 6 

she’ll wear the dress her sister is wearing today at mass

she’ll twirl and feel bright and colorful

as if the fabric isn’t patched up

and she isn’t crying

When I turn 6 

I’ll travel alone to a beach that’s all mine and I’ll swim with no floats

I’ll surely be able to catch fish with my own hands

and I’ll sleep in the ocean

I won’t be cold

but if I need a blanket, I’ll cover myself with sand

No, I am not afraid of sharks

When my daughter turns 6

I hope she screams

The world needs to hear 6 year-old-girls’ entrails

To bear, to respect, and to finally be transformed by whatever new or ugly things comes from them

spinning under the rhythm of their voices.

Quando 6

 Quando minha filha tinha 6 anos de idade

uma amiga falou que ela não podia me beijar na boca

porque não era minha filha de verdade

não tinha saído da minha barriga

Minha filha continua sendo amiga da menina

Eu, minha filha e a menina fomos todas feridas por nós mesmas.

Quando eu tinha 6 anos de idade

meu pai me afogou

para me ensinar que eu não poderia afogar minha irmã mais nova

ele sempre foi um homem grande

e eu sempre fui uma menina

a piscina da nossa casa ficava no quintal

cercada por muros altos

Ninguém ouviu quando gritei embaixo d’água

não adiantava gritar em cima.

Quando minha mãe tinha 6 anos de idade

alguma coisa terrível deve ter acontecido

alguém deva tê-la feito se sentir suja com seu corpo

suja por suas ideias

alguém deve ter escondido coisas dela

e usado seus sentimentos de menina.

Quando minha mãe tiver 6 anos de idade

vai usar o vestido que a irmã dela está usando hoje na missa

vai girar e se sentir tão luminosamente colorida

como se o tecido não estivesse remendado

e ela não chorasse.

Quando eu tiver 6 anos de idade

vou viajar sozinha pra uma praia só minha e nadar sem boias

certamente já vou conseguir pegar peixes com as mãos

e vou dormir dentro do mar

eu não tenho frio

mas se quiser um cobertor vou me cobrir com a areia

Não, não tenho medo de tubarão.

Quando minha filha tiver 6 anos de idade

eu espero que ela grite

O mundo precisa ouvir as entranhas das meninas de 6 anos de idade

suportar, respeitar e finalmente se transformar pelo que vem de novo e de feio delas

girar sob o ritmo de suas vozes.

Did this number mean anything to you before this project?

No, I just remembered the devil’s number, like six six six? But just in a joke way! It didn’t mean a lot to me.

What happened next? Where did you go with it?

I am currently isolated with my family. My little daughter (she’s two years old), my husband, parents and sisters. So first of all, I thought number six, I can do anything. Let’s travel with my mind out of here because I’m already so isolated. But it got too hard to me. It’s getting hard to imagine other things. I have always started to write from here, from really familiar things, things from my family. I just understood that that’s what I can do now and that’s okay.

So I got number six. I imagine when my daughter will be six, what I imagine for her. That’s really hard for me because when my daughter was born, we didn’t know her sex. We decided to discover her sex when she was born. And for me it was really tough because I’m from a part of Brazil, the northeast, which culturally is very sexist. When she was born, I was like, shit, I’m sorry for you. It’s something I’ve already moved on a little bit, but I still do. When she’s six years old, I don’t hope for anything from her, I hope from the world... I hope the world listens to her.

And then the other parts just came. My sister is adopted. I don’t have contact with 6-year-old girls- I don’t know how 6-year-old girls are. I know how 1-year-old and 2-year-old girls are. I just remember my sister was 6 years old when it happened. This fact with her adoption and her friend telling her that she couldn’t kiss my mother.

I wrote it and then I changed it because I wanted to end it in a hopeful place. I wrote it not in a poem way because I never write like this. But as soon as I wrote it, I thought maybe I can change the lines and it turned into a poem and I was like, “I did a poem!” and I was very happy.

Wait, this is your first poem?

Yeah!

That’s so cool! That’s amazing!

Yeah thank you! It’s because of this opportunity!

I didn’t write in a poem way, I wrote it like text. But then I changed the lines and I thought it worked better. Of course, I changed it a little bit after it. I had a little problem with the English translator thing because it’s very different. And I had also never translated anything that I’d written before. I did it and I asked for some friends’ help because I wasn’t very sure.

I love how you seem to travel through time in this. Like, “When my mother was six”, “when my mother turns six.” That is a really cool way of thinking about time, too. You know? It’s this fluid thing and we’re always thinking about the past and we’re always thinking about the future.

In a way, it’s always existing isn’t it? The other times in our times. It’s always existing. I also think it’s cool. Thank you.

Is there anything else you wanna say about this process or about what you wrote?

Writing this gave me a feeling of freedom. I don’t know. I think maybe this time travel made me feel this way. I also put in there some things that really happened to me and some things that I created, so it gave me a freedom feeling that I liked.

 Do you have any advice for someone else doing something like this?

 I think it would be to enjoy this freedom, to go wherever you go. Not thinking too much in advance, just enjoying it.

Gabriela Rocha is a brazilian writer living in São Paulo. She has been a lawyer and a journalist who nowadays writes and works as a freelancer reviewer and editor. Gabriela is a feminist and mother of a girl.