Aria of a Brown Girl

By Sarita Vargas

Aria of a Brown Girl is the true story of the perilous journey one girl takes after experiencing trauma over and over beginning in her formative years and continuing on through young adulthood. Placed into adoption at birth, this sets the tone of abandonment she feels from the start and creates an overall mindset of not b

• Language: English
• Publisher: Siren Songs, LLC
• Release date: Mar 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781087965574

Sarita Vargas

Sarita Vargas was born in Odessa, Texas, but has lived most of her life in Minnesota. Her love of writing started at an early age, and that love of writing continued into adult life. Her dream of becoming an author is now a reality with the creation of her first book:Aria of a Brown Girl.Sarita resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband Devante, her daughter Brianna, & their fur-babies.You can find many of her blogs and poems on her website: www.saritasiren.com.

Book preview

1

Violations

1

The Girl & the Kiss

Iwas five years old when I received my first grown-up kiss. Later, in middle school, I would lie and say it was from Danny Sims in the seventh grade. I knew even then that what happened to me as a trusting little girl was unseemly, but I couldn’t tell anyone; that was out of the question. I had no idea that would only be the beginning of numerous unwelcome sexual advances throughout my young life.

I grew up in a strict Christian home, and you could find us at church Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday evenings come hell or high water. There we were, sitting in the pew, singing the old hymns, and then listening to the pastor. I was at church for what feels like the first 11 years of my life. Our church was in an old school building on top of a hill in McKinley, Minnesota. The space was also used for our church’s Christian School, called McKinley Christian Academy. I attended, along with just about every other kid in the congregation.

McKinley Christian Academy was originally for grades K-12. I’m not sorry I attended church school; I feel like I learned a lot of things there that helped me later in life. However, it wasn’t without rules that I found to be hypocritical at worst and tedious at best.            

We had to wear dresses every day to school, come fall, winter, or spring. For gym class, we would put pants under our skirts. Skirts and dresses had to be below the knee, nothing to suggest worldliness was allowed. Boys usually wore slacks and not jeans. It wasn’t a rule, per se, but it was a strong expectation. I so wanted to wear jeans; I loved jeans. I hated dresses, I was always cold in them. Some days, I would have to wear tights under the dress or skirt, and I developed rashes behind my knees from how much they itched. I also had a smashing pair of saddle shoes, along with some brown ones with crocodiles or alligators on them. I wanted some cool shoes, but that wasn’t in the budget nor was it considered important. So off to school I went, usually in my parent’s station wagon or the minibus, all dressed up in my homemade dresses and saddle shoes. You read that right— I wore homemade dresses. My mom lovingly sewed my clothes, whether out of necessity or enjoyment, I am not entirely sure. Maybe it was both, and at the time, I didn’t know anything other than that. There were patterns by Simplicity, McCall’s, Butterick, take your pick.

We also received demerits. Demerits were a tally system at the school that ended up in spankings. If you misbehaved, you received a demerit. If you talked out of turn too many times, yup, another demerit. If you didn’t do your homework, or you didn’t have your parent sign your bad grade on an assignment, you guessed it— you got a demerit. Once you received a few demerits, you were the winner of a spanking with the paddle. The paddle was wooden and shaped like a very short canoe paddle, but with holes in the wide flat part for easy motion. You would get three, and it was not a fun experience. I received a spanking once or twice in school. It was horrible because not only was it humiliating, but it was awkward having to be in front of an adult you didn’t know, with your ass in the air as you bent forward.

We all brown-bagged it for lunch, there were no hot lunches at my school. My mom was one of those moms. She always had to feed us something healthy, when all I wanted was a PB&J with Doritos, or maybe cookies. I would die for fruit roll-ups or some of the other crap my friend’s moms packed them; Jell-O pudding cups, anything. But no, instead, good ol’ mom insisted on packing us a wholesome meal of some sort of sandwich on brown bread, a handful of carrots, a banana, (usually bruised and super ripe) and, if we were really lucky, Fig-fucking-Newtons. Pardon my swearing. I think I swear a lot because swearing wasn’t allowed in our house. Every now and then I heard my dad say, Doggone it! That was only if he was super mad, otherwise he would just fume, clench his teeth, and say nothing. Let’s get back to the lunches. Sometimes I talked my friend Rachel into sharing her snickerdoodles with me. Rachel was my best friend besides Jake, and she would always have some scrumptious, fresh-baked bakery in her lunch. I think her mom baked all the time, because Rachel was pretty sturdy until her adult years. I loved that about her.

Another thing that plagued me about being in a small private school, was the fact that I was adopted. I had known this about myself for as long as I could remember. My mother would tell me the story of me; she would do it in such a loving way, that although I felt like I was different, I did feel loved by my parents very much. Being adopted, I obviously didn’t look like them, especially my dad. He was Norwegian and thus, blond, and blue-eyed. He had light skin, and so did his side of the family. My adoptive mom was, in fact, Mexican- like me, so I looked a little bit like her. Even though my mom was a lighter-skinned Mexican, she was darker than most of the women in the area we lived in. She didn’t have an accent, as her parents taught her English as a first language. She could speak Spanish, but we never heard it at home.

I was brown, with long, jet-black hair that was so black, it gave off a blue sheen. I also had big teeth and stick-out ears. You learn early on that if you’re brown-skinned in a sea of white, you get asked why is your skin like that or what are you or are you Indian? This boy I had the misfortune of having a crush on would ask me, What tribe are you from, especially if my hair was braided. I begged and begged my parents to let me have short hair, this way it couldn’t be braided, pony-tailed, or pulled back in any way. For three years, all my pleading was for naught; I wouldn’t get my short hair until a bit later in elementary school. Oh, how I hated my brown skin, my blue-black hair, and my stick-out ears. I just wanted to be cute and blonde or at least have light-brown hair like the rest of the girls in class.

Being adopted and not knowing anything about my birth mom meant I could imagine I was anything. Once I went to school and told everyone I was French. Being French sounded so cool and sophisticated. I don’t know if anyone believed me. I got a few stares, but no one volunteered any praises or asked me anything about France, so I made it through the rest of the day mostly unscathed. That wouldn’t always be the case.

I was in Kindergarten I think, maybe 1st grade, and I was at my personal desk space when the urge to pee hit me. Now, we had little flags that we would insert in a small hole at the top ledge of our desk; blue flag for a question, yellow flag if we needed to use the rest room. I don’t know why I waited until last minute, but finally, I put my yellow flag up. My teacher was busy helping another kid named Justin. I never liked Justin and the fact that he was the reason my bladder was bursting without release was not lost on me; I just hated him even more. I grabbed my yellow flag and waved it above my head rather vigorously, but the teacher seemed to take her time getting over to my desk to give me permission to get up and go.

I stopped looking at my flag pleadingly, because the yellow color was making me need go even more. Finally, I could no longer contain the waterfall of urine that I had been holding for what seemed like forever. There it went, all down my tights, the side of my chair, and onto a puddle on the hardwood floor beneath me. I blamed Justin. I blamed my teacher. I blamed the school. I blamed the stupid flag rule. My teacher ended up rushing me out of the classroom, and somehow, I had dry clothes to change into and the floor got cleaned. Later I told everyone it wasn’t me that peed. I blamed it on Chad, the poor the kid that sat next to me. He was the peeing criminal, not me, I told them. A few of my friends seemed to believe me, I don’t know if they really did or if they were just coming to my rescue. In any case, I think this is when my battle with dehydration started. To this day I don’t like drinking water and I’m terrified of peeing my pants.

My mom was a teacher at the Christian school. She taught penmanship class. Yes, that was a class back then, and even now my mom loves to write lists. There we would sit, swooping our endings on certain words and looping our loops just so. The letters needed to be slanted properly, and of course be the proper height. People don’t really write in cursive anymore; I find that I still rather enjoy it.

Because my mom was a teacher, we would often stay after school on Wednesdays, because that was church night. Before the evening service, we would get to eat dinner with Mrs. Erb, the sweet older lady that lived in our church building. She had an apartment there, and she also taught school. She was widowed, and the church took care of her. Mrs. Erb was a fantastic cook. Absolutely nothing went to waste, so she would come up with all kinds of uses for what she had in her fridge. There was dandelion salad, scrapple, and Mexican lasagna, all things I grew to love, as we ate at her home countless times over the years.

I’m pretty sure school ended around 3 p.m., so I would have between 3:00 and about 4:30 to kind of wander the school or play outside if it was nice weather. Our sermons would be in the gymnasium, and people would arrive early to set up all the chairs for service. After church, the chairs got stacked up again so the gym could be used for school during the week.

On one such Wednesday afternoon, I believe I was in kindergarten, or first grade, I found myself wandering around the school, gleefully going up and down the floors, when I ended up in the gymnasium. I grabbed a basketball and shot hoops by myself, pretending to be a superstar athlete, when I saw the side door swing open and one of the older boys from school sauntered in. He was a teenager, and I dribbled as I watched him take a seat on one of the chairs that would later be set out for church service. I felt self-conscious as he just sat there watching me. Eventually, he beckoned me over, and being as he was older, I obediently went. I don’t remember every single second of that moment, but I do remember him coaxing me to sit on his lap. I thought it was strange that he would want that, and after a short time, I reluctantly obeyed.

So, there was little me in my homemade gingham dress, on the lap of this teenage boy, with my legs dangling over the right side of him. The next thing I remember is him telling me to kiss him. Just one kiss, he promised. At this point I wasn’t exactly afraid … I was confused more than anything. Why did this big teenager want me to kiss him? At length, because he seemed to be begging, I finally decided I better kiss him, just to get him to stop. I leaned in to kiss his cheek and was surprised when he turned his head and was suddenly facing me. This was the first time I felt alarm flood my body, and it made me want to jump down from my perch. As it was, he had a gentle but solid grip around my waist, so for the time being, I was immobile.

It didn’t end up being a peck on the cheek the way my dad did it, or a quick peck on the other cheek the way my mom did it. His kiss was directly on my lips, and I felt his tongue touching the inside of my mouth. I am pretty sure I froze. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I was able to wriggle free of his firm grip. I felt scared, wrong, panicked even, and I hopped down, terrified. I ignored his husky sounding pleading with me to stay, and instead ran out of the gym, seeking the comfort and safety of Mrs. Erb’s apartment.

All that evening I fearfully thought about that kiss. I knew there was something about it that was hazy, and fuzzy, wrong, and weird. I felt like I had sinned, and I didn’t dare tell anyone for fear that I would get a spanking. There was no kissing outside of marriage you know, not in this church, not in my family, or anyone’s family. Was I married now and just didn’t know it? I was horror-stricken, and so I packed up that moment, and filed it away with all the other moments that were weird, fuzzy, hazy, and panicky.

2

The Girl on the Farm

Iwas always a town girl growing up. I didn’t like being in the country, and when my parents moved us to the lake house when I was in 9th grade, I thought I would die. It was kind of comical. All the kids in my class would go to the cabin on the weekends and they would come back talking about waterskiing, tubing, and being at the lake like it was the best thing in the world. I lived on a lake and all I could wish for was one weekend in the city. Not Virginia, the town that was biggest in the area, but something like Duluth, or Minneapolis even. I just wanted to get away from the country. I’m not particularly outdoorsy, in fact, I’m not outdoorsy at all, not even a smidge.

This may sound like I was an unthankful girl. Maybe I was. Or maybe I was just a girl who didn’t like the woods, didn’t like the dark lake water, didn’t like frogs or reptiles, didn’t like worms, mice, bugs, or the incredible darkness that falls on a country night. Yet there I was, stuck in an area that had all the above. My opinion didn’t matter at all of course. It was always my mom’s dream to live on a lake. I think to her it represented calmness, leisure, fun, and status. My dad loved the lake as well, and it was probably a joint dream. I also think he wanted to make my mom happy; happy wife, happy life and all that. My brother also liked the lake, as he loved to waterski and speed across the waves in our boat, so it was three against one anyway.

I realize how incredibly spoiled I sound. I don’t mean to sound unthankful for a set up that many kids would dream of. Being in these surroundings left me feeling very exposed. I tried waterskiing, and was even good at it, but in truth, I hated it. If you fell, you were out in the middle of the lake where there were often tall weeds that would wrap around your legs. I didn’t like lake swimming that much because you couldn’t see, and it was dark waters. The wooden ladder going up to the dock was always slippery, who knows what from. Ducks would often swim by, and that left me feeling like the water was dirty. Don’t get me started on frogs and the occasional leech. All of this was too much for a girl who had already experienced too much, and only added to the anxiety I was feeling and hiding. Instead, I came across as a brat, hiding out in my room on the second floor with the window overlooking the beautiful lake below.

Despite my dislike for everything outdoors, I was confused by the beauty of my surroundings. The lake was haunting and cozy feeling in winter. In February, the ice would crack, and you would hear the most deep, frightening, lonely and bizarre echo that would travel from one end of the lake to the other. When spring came, the sun would shine bright on the blinding snow that covered the lake, and little by little, you would see the ice lose out to the warmth of the April temperatures. When summer finally arrived, the trees surrounding the lake were emerald-green, and the loons would call to each other on still and balmy evenings. In the fall, there would be the smell of autumn leaves all around us, and the lake would be so still that it looked like glass, with a few colored leaves laying delicately on its surface.

Yet there I was, terrified of it all, and wishing I were anywhere else. The lake gets blamed for a lot of my discomfort; it was this huge bubble I felt trapped in. I now recognize that the lake was only the scapegoat for everything else I was experiencing at that time in my life on the Iron Range of Minnesota. The Iron Range is the name for a string of little close-knit towns, consisting of Hibbing, Chisholm, Mountain Iron, Virginia, Eveleth, Gilbert, Biwabik, Aurora and Hoyt Lakes. Everything has to do with mining iron ore, and all the towns look like small-town America. It was in this place that I experienced most of the trauma that would wreak havoc on my life.

Like I complained about earlier, I had the kind of mother that made us nutritious meals. She always made sure we ate something healthy, none of that sugar cereal or fruit in a cup nonsense. If we had cereal, it was Raisin Bran or those wheat things that literally felt like straw when you broke them apart and soaked them in milk. We had Grape Nuts cereal and sometimes if mom was in a generous mood - Corn Pops. All I wanted was Boo Berry Cereal, the kind that came out at Halloween, with the ghost on the cover and little blue ghost marshmallows in it. I received some from my dad for Christmas one year and I was so grateful. Why couldn’t we have Lucky Charms on the regular like my friends did? Why did we have to have oatmeal or an egg? And always fruit on the side. My mom was big on fruit. Looking back on all of this, I can say with absolute certainty that she cared about our health and was a 5-star mom. At the time though, it felt like torture.

In keeping with healthy, natural foods, another phase my parents went through, was buying unpasteurized cow’s milk from a local farm. It tasted revoltingly sweet, and even grassy, and the scent made my stomach lurch. To my relief, my parents took pity on me and would buy me store-bought milk. I was so thankful, because for them to do that was not in keeping with their usual eat what is put in front of you thought process. When I think of fresh farm milk, it makes me envision cows and dirty cow udders and the smells and the sounds of the cattle lowing in the meadow. However, those things aren’t the worst thoughts it brings to my mind. Dairy farms remind me of an incident that happened a long time ago…  

Before we moved to the lake, we lived in Aurora. My parents knew a few people who lived on farms outside of the town, and one night we found ourselves visiting a rather large family at their farmhouse. This was a family that was a bit of a name around the area. They had cows on their farm, and you could hear them as you drove down the driveway.

At this point in my life, I was a very little girl, maybe five years of age, and I knew the rules, especially the main one: Children should be seen and not heard. You just don’t bother the grown-ups over anything really, and you stay out of sight and let the big people visit. So, there we were at this farm, and I was downstairs with all the other kids. I was the youngest, most of the kids were teenagers and maybe even young adults. They were all watching something on the TV, I don’t remember what it was. I just remember the couch was not big enough and I was squished next to an older teenage boy. I kept looking around at all the big kids, kind of feeling happy that I was down there with all of them. I tried to be quiet so they wouldn’t notice me and make me feel like a baby.

It was quite dark, and as I sat there, I became aware of the boy to my left that I was wedged up against. I recognized him as one of the farm owner’s sons. I could hear him breathing kind of weird, but it wasn’t so loud that anyone else noticed. Out of nowhere, he slowly reached over and grabbed my hand. I sat there, wondering why in the world he would want to hold my hand. I barely knew him, and he was a teenager! I could feel my heart starting to pound loudly in my chest as I contemplated what to do. Do I pull away? Would I get in trouble for being rude? Was this going to be like the kiss I had experienced in the school gym?

As I sat there scrambling for an answer, the question was answered for me. He proceeded to take my hand and slip it across his lower stomach, which was hard and slightly hairy. I became paralyzed. My instincts were right- this was not good! I quit breathing, and as I sat there motionless from terror, he pushed my hand further down, under his jeans, where I could feel his erect penis. I don’t know how I knew that’s what it was, but I knew that’s what it was. He proceeded to try and get me to really feel it, and for a second or two, while I sat there frozen to the spot, he moved my hand back and forth on it. Then, as if snapped back to motion, I yanked my hand away, and full of shame and panic, I sprang up off the couch.

Trying to calm myself, I slowly made my way toward the stairs, hoping no one would notice me as I crept out of the family area. The kids were all deeply absorbed in what they were watching, and I could feel a lump forming at the base of my throat. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I chanted to myself as I climbed the stairs. If I cried, someone would ask me what was wrong, and I would probably be