At Sabbath School, we sing Jesus loves me this I know and I fantasize that I’m there, a stick-figure brown girl, a hyphen in the spectrum of red and yellow, black and white kids on Jesus’ lap as per that idyllic painting on our bedroom wall. Creamy robe and skin, butterscotch hair, sad sky-blue eyes.

The Bible that Mama quotes mostly admonishes us to serve, purify, labor, eke our way to heaven. Gawwd, God. You’re Mean Joe Green. Meek, depraved, unworthy us, pining for your son Jesus’ ivory lap. For the Bible tells me so. My timid heart does not tell me so. Little ones to him belong. My itchy, rashy body does not belong. They are weak but he is strong. I’m curled on the ground, a question mark at Jesus’ legs…

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in the hospital with me there was a tall blonde boy with angry scrapes on the back of his neck, sockless in his institutional orange sandals. he walked laps around the halls, the skin of his feet opening to the unforgiving plastic. when i suggested socks, another patient suggested that i was witnessing organic harm reduction. there was wisdom in that blistering walk & it was not cure.

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I’m a bony brown girl, tipping absolutely NO scales with my forty-four pound body at ten years old. Fifth grade is when my hips spurted out a teense and I grew a whisper-and-a-half taller. Ah, but that height promotion graduated me from a kiddie banana seat bike to a woman’s adult bike. I wobble and tippie toe to balance the bigger wheels and frame. The most important thing? I now pedal alongside my Ateh Elise’s (elder sister) biker ‘gang’ of other 7th grade Filipino teens. I am not-at-all ready for womanhood in my mom-run-fundie Christian home, but here in America, this ten speed, one-track mind bike popped my cherry…

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