There
is a tiny dancer that is living with her tiny grandmother in her
house. The tiny dancer likes to play all sorts of games while her
tiny grandmother is cooking dinner. Her favourite game is playing the
Witch. The Witch is always played in the fancy dining room; a musty
unworldly room, with heavy furnitures, where the curtains are always
shut, because 'the sun eats the furniture away' as the tiny
grandmother always says. The spooky dining room is perfect for the
Witch because of the old pictures of the scary people on the dark
tapestry. Although the tiny dancer loves to play in that room, she
avoids looking at the frames because she knows that all these people
are dead now. Dead people can move when they live in frames, she
knows it, she's read it in a book. And as much as she loves hearing
stories about them from her tiny grandmother, she doesn't want to
hear the stories from them. One afternoon she is playing the Witch
with the Taro cards she's made on her own and somehow her arm is
stuck in the frame of the chair. The tiny dancer is now panicking
because she is convinced that the dead people in the frames are going
to get her. But she doesn't cry because she knows that this is what
they want. So, she sits there, stoically, trying to keep herself
calm. She sits there with her arm trapped, and silent tears are
falling down her tiny face. After a while – or a couple of days,
time is hard to track in the spooky dining room - her tiny
grandmother comes in and sees that she is trapped. Her tiny
grandmother thinks that it's a good idea to tell her a story about
the dead people instead of releasing her arm.
'Back
in my village there used to be two children that were so young they
couldn't talk yet. One day, they were playing in the backyard when
one of them put his hand in a hole of the stone paddock. His hand was
stuck in the hole and when he started to cry the grown-ups were
gathered around him
trying to release him. They were trying for at least two hours –
maybe it was a couple of days, time was hard to track in the backyard
– everything they could think of, but nothing seemed to be working.
Finally, his friend approached him and asked him in a language that
no one understood: ''Packa-Packa or Poocka-Poocka?'' and he
immediately answered ''Packa-Packa'', while removing his hand on his
own, with no effort at all. When he was asked what those words meant
years later, he simply answered that his friend asked him if his arm
was straight or if it formed a fist, when he first put it in the
hole. Because, they only way to get something out, is to pull it out
with the same shape it had when you got it in. If his hand was
straight when he put it in the hole, there was no way he could get it
out while he had a fist, because there was not enough space to fit a
fist out.'
After
telling her that story, tiny grandmother asks her tiny dancer
'Packa-Packa or Poocka-Poocka?'. Tiny dancer answers 'Poocka-Poocka'
while she is easily releasing her arm on her own.
The
months are passing by, and the tiny grandmother is teaching her tiny
dancer about life. She is telling her stories about the Amazons, and
Judith and her cousin, Yolanda. Tiny grandmother says that Yolanda is
so strong and beautiful that when she walks the pavement breaks from
her power of her presence and men around her faint from her beauty.
Tiny grandmother insists that tiny dancer should be like Yolanda:
beautiful and powerful, untouchable and fearless. Tiny dancer has
tried in multiple occasions since then, to break the pavement but she
hasn't succeeded. She runs and stomps and jumps but the pavement is
not bowing in front of her power and men definitely don't faint from
tiny dancer's beauty, just yet.
Tiny
dancer is to trust no man. Tiny grandmothers teaches her well and
reminds her that her dignity is what will make her great, and her
brains is what will make her powerful. Now tiny grandmother has to
leave and visit her old village for a couple of weeks and tiny dancer
cries at the train station
while
her mother is consoling her. What will tiny dancer do for two weeks
on her own?
When I was a tiny dancer, I used to lie that I hate pink because I
didn't want people to think that I am weak and girly. Now that I am a
grown up I tend to buy pink shampoo because I have a need to feel
more like a girl. I get pink razors, my tongue is pink, my
underwear is pink and when I scratch my skin too hard, it also
becomes pink.
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