Soon, she is not a little girl anymore. She becomes a woman with saltwater in her hair and sand between her toes. She grows up in many ways, but she's lonely. The fishermen see her at all hours, playing like a child on the beach, amongst the tourist families who watch her with caution. "She's a slut for wearing that swimming costume all day," the fisherman say. "It's disgusting." They call her a siren.
At home, she bares her teeth and looks in the mirror, but she only sees girl-teeth grinning back—no shark or piranha in her smile. After a while, she comes to like the idea of being a creature from the sea.
In school, teachers ignore her answers and scoff at her work. Her notebooks are stolen and scrawled on. "Go back to the sea, bitch," they write.
The boys are told to watch themselves around her and the girls check for webbed toes as they change for gym class.They say she's a witch; a devil. Sometimes, they make her cry and watch curiously. As her shoulders shake, they wait for tiny pearls for drop down her cheeks.
YOU ARE READING
They Thought She Was a Mermaid and Drowned Her to Prove It
Historia CortaI wanted to write a story about a girl who people think is a mermaid and they drown her to prove it. It's about otherness and people's wariness of difference, and also about slut-shaming. The extended metaphor of the mermaid is a message that no mat...
