Short Story Her Eyes Were Looking for Me By Don Reuker She was my best friend. We did everything together and we were often side by side with sweaty palms together and fingers interlaced. She built something positive in me, and at that time, if I could choose to be with her, I would. We were both Army kids. Our fathers were soldiers stationed in West Germany standing at the ready to fight the Soviets. The family’s job was to support the dad and if allowed, go where he goes. We all bought the Cold War narrative about countering the Communist threat. Containment of the murderous hoard was the first priority. Our brave dads faced down the wily Reds across the Fulda Gap keeping them in the Worker’s Paradise of East Germany where they belonged. I first met her at the base bowling alley. Her father, the colonel, brought her in to sign up for the Saturday morning summer league. All of those brave dad bowling coaches became unnaturally stiff and ridged as the colonel escorted his daughter to the registration table. Cigarettes were crushed out and morning beers were slid out of sight. The normal hustle and crashing of pins slowed and many of us were shushed into silence. I just knew that she’d be assigned to my team. Because we were already short one kid—ugh, not a girl. Of course, just as I thought, the league director brought her and the colonel over to my lane. We were introduced and the colonel looked over my motley teammates and then spoke directly to me. “I won’t be able to pick her up after she’s done bowling. Will you walk her home after you finish up?” I was an Army kid. I knew an order when I heard one. He was really saying, you will walk her home after you finish up. I also knew how to speak to officers. There was only one answer. “Yes, sir.” I liked her right away in spite of myself. Confidence seemed to waft off of her and she wasn’t daunted by failure. She rolled three gutter balls in a row before she managed to knock down her first pin and then hooted about it. She was free to express herself in a way that I wasn’t. She was having fun while she learned to bowl. She cheered for her new teammates right away and she was loud. Leaving pins standing embarrassed me but she didn’t seem to mind at all. For the rest of the morning I was unexpectedly drawn to her. Every time I had the chance I sat right next to her on those hard smooth fiberglass seats and notice the sweet scent of her perfume in the air. I didn’t know that girls smelled good. While walking her home, I learned that we were neighbors more or less, separated by fewer than two hundred yards. She lived on what was called Colonel’s Row which was a tree lined street with two story homes, driveways and large yards. If you didn’t know any better this could be a section of most any suburban bedroom community in the States. This street followed a long curve that partly encircled my neighborhood of rather drab three story apartment buildings that housed captains and majors with a smattering of warrant officers like my dad. Her next-door neighbors were other colonels, with lots of battalion and a few brigade commanders. The officers on her street were the commanders of the junior officers housed in the apartment building of my neighborhood. The adults of my community were rarely guests on Colonel’s Row but the adults of hers were never guests in mine. On the other hand, I was over at her house a lot. I got to know her well that summer. She read books like All Things Bright and Beautiful and Watership Down . She took piano lessons and played The Entertainer all the time. She was from Michigan and liked President Ford and baseball. She taught me how to dance. We practiced the polka and the jitterbug. Counterbalancing on the swing moves was a fun trick to learn. She was full of instructions: “Look in my eyes. Don’t be shy, put your hand in the middle of my back and hold on—tight. Don’t be afraid to touch me, I don’t have cooties.” School started in mid-August and that meant football for me and cheerleading for her. She was the captain of the Junior Varsity cheerleaders and I was on the JV football team. Her enthusiastic encouragement for the team and for me was always in her voice. I could often hear her from the sidelines while I was in the game. Often hearing her while I was in the game is somewhat misleading, because I wasn’t in the game that much. But, the smell of sweat and bruised grass, the feeling of cool fall air on my face, and the sound of her voice in my ears made football so great. For a teenaged boy, it’s a good thing to know that the cheerleader is cheering for you. She earned great grades and unlike me, she always did her homework. And she was really good at math. She invited me to the library to improve my dismal grades. I sat there at the heavy wooden table hunched over an equation with my head in my hands trying to work out the value of X. Algebra was mystery and magic to me, but it came very easily to her. She knew mathematical incantations I didn’t know. I was unable to see the next step, but she always could. This mirrored our budding romance, but that was equally unrecognizable to me at the time. I sat back in frustration and looked away at the rows of books placed neatly on the shelf and ask, “How do you know that the next step is to multiply by negative one?” I wasn’t too bright back then. But she seemed to believe in me, that I could get it, and she gently explained the steps, her pale blue eyes darting from mine back to the page, and even in math she led me through the steps. I didn’t know it before that, but I preferred the company of smart girls. Our high school sponsored a full day tour bus trip to the see the Bavarian Alps in spring. She selected a window seat for us on the right-hand side of the bus near the back. I thought I was so lucky to enjoy the ride in her company. Her fair, slightly freckled face and wavy strawberry blond hair were in the foreground and European fields and farms, factories and freeways, passed by over her shoulders in the background. Then, she asked me the most surprising question. “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me?” I was enchanted, clearly she knew non-math charms too. She always knew the next step. This was a moment for playing it cool. But my heart pounded in my chest and my ears began to burn and felt hot. For once, I had already given this prospect a great deal of prior consideration and had a little plan in place for such an opportunity. You’ll look her right in the eyes and softly cup her right cheek with your left hand. Next you’ve got to say something smooth, like—I’d really like to kiss you. Of course, she’ll nod her agreement and you’ll lean in most of the way to her pink lips and close your eyes. Your hand on her cheek will tell you if she shies or leans in the rest of the way. And then the two of you’ll share the gentlest and most tender first kiss ever. That was the plan, but she had taken the initiative and I was caught unready. I mumbled some general agreement with her proposal. Slowly and cautiously I commenced execution of my choreographed plan. I moved my hand toward that freckled cheek and said, “Why, yes, yes I would.” It seemed like a nice reply. She closed her eyes, tilted her head and parted her lips slightly. Another curve, I was fond of French Fries and French Toast, but their kissing method was a mystery. I forged ahead anyway. I leaned toward her just as the bus followed the mountain road sharply to the left. Our faces smashed together and our heads clonked. How we laughed, I could not be embarrassed in her company. We got around to that first kiss later. It was a delightful day. I thought the Alps were nice, too. That was a good year for me. But I should have known that it couldn’t last. Late in May as we walked home from the last day of school she casually mentioned that she had some news. Her father had received orders to attend the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. While her parents were planning to stay in Germany for most of the summer, she already had a plane ticket for the States. She was headed for Michigan and her grandmother’s house north of Detroit for the summer. She told me about her cousins, and the Lions, and the rooky, Fidrych, who she hoped to see, and something and something else…I had stopped listening. I looked away, embarrassed by the tear welling in my eye. I blinked it away. She didn’t notice and prattled on happily about her prospects for the summer. This young girl, whom I liked quite a lot, was going to move back to the States, and my very comfortable and secure life was about to be upended. My entire cluster of friends was going to be leaving Germany within the next several weeks. That was just life as we all knew it. The dad gets a new duty assignment every second or third year and off you go. “Moving back to the States.” This little phrase is clear enough in its meaning to non-military families. We’re going to return to our home country. Some would say that they were moving back to the World. Friends and families being constantly and systematically ripped away was part of our shared lifelong cycle of moving again and again. All of this moving is like a betrayal, just as you find a home and feel at ease it was time to move again. The Army, the government, the soldier-dad, perhaps the Soviets, had forced yet another move to a foreign place, and some of my friends resented it deeply. And while we lived in a fully American enclave, smack dab in the middle of Germany, there was for many, an urgent, even palpable need to go home. To go back to the States—to get back to the World. But not me. I didn’t feel a strong connection to any singular place back in the States. Germany was my ideal home. And I liked it a lot. But she was moving back to the States. It was mid-June and she was leaving the next day. Her folks had made it clear that she was to be in the house by early evening and our goodbye was nearly over. She seemed like she always seemed, calm and confident, but I was falling apart. We hugged and kissed and whimpered. But I did most of the whimpering. In our last moments together, she withdrew a tiny perfume bottle from her pocket and sprayed me with it up and down. I didn’t step away or resist. Leaving her scent on my body was her final flirtation. She gave me the nearly empty bottle and I stuck it deep into my pocket. The time had come and she was overdue at home. She asked that I not accompany her to the doorstep as I usually did, and I obeyed. I stood under the drooping limbs of a tall tree next to a gate in the chain link fence that separated her neighborhood from mine. I watched her walk away, cross Colonel’s Row and disappear behind the door to her house. She didn’t look back. I stood stone still in the deepening shadow of that tree as twilight turned to darkness. Alone, I tarried in that familiar scent as it lingered and wafted around me in the cool evening air. My heart was breaking and I wept. Teenage angst, the torments of a boy’s tender feelings for a girl, or intense infatuation; are these the makings of a broken heart? Perhaps, but if it wasn’t broken, it was surely cracked and dented. Slowly, I stumbled toward my building and trudged up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. When I arrived, I didn’t chat with my family, I just sulked off to my bedroom. As I undressed and flung clothing into the corner, I found the small bottle in my pocket. I used the tiny remainder of the perfume and sprayed the last of it on a page in a photo album that I kept. The page held an 8x10 glossy black and white photo safely behind a sheet of clear plastic. The image was of my girlfriend, the cheerleader on the sidelines of a football field during one of our games from earlier that year. Her face is in profile and is turned toward the field. She has an expression of excitement, and I always believed that her eyes were looking for me. I hid the album in the bottom drawer of my dresser. For the next several days I fought the urge to throw it away. I had come to understand some of the meaning of betrayal in the way many of my peers knew it. It’s painful to have friends pulled away. In my hurt, that album stood as something real to act out against. I wanted to attack the army, but they were too well armed. I wanted to throw rocks at the government, but I didn’t know where to find it. Somehow, I wanted to punch my dad right in the face, but he was too tough to fight. Doing anything against the Soviet Union might start World War III, therefore, that was out of the question. So, I kept the album and brooded with a powerful feeling of having been betrayed by someone. From time to time, Army Brats like us might cross paths, but it was more likely that we’d never meet again. Nothing in my power could change it. I was in the slow process of recovering from the blow to my adolescent ego. Just beginning to hold my head up, I was mostly ready to forge bravely ahead and reengage in my now diminished life in Germany. Mom told me to clean up my room, which was, in fact, a perpetual dump. But it needed to be done and I needed something to occupy my time, so I got to work. I changed the sheets on my bed, dusted the dresser that stood next to the door and arranged the various knickknacks and mementos that were displayed around the room. All the while I avoided the bottom dresser drawer with the album and all the reminders of her hidden away with it. While I had rejected the thought of throwing it away, that was not the time to pick at a fresh wound. I turned my eyes to the pile of laundry in the corner and began to sort the items to prepare them for the wash. I pulled out stiff stinky socks, jeans and sweaty t-shirts, and neatly separated them. It was a good task, necessary and simple. Light and dark things were separated and set to one side and jeans and t-shirts were placed in another stack. At that moment it was just me and my laundry. I was OKAY. I was getting the job done, no problems, I was productive. I thought things might get better. And then it happened. My fingers found the forgotten perfumed shirt and I pulled it from the pile with a snap. Instantly, her scent seemed to fill the room and she was there. I was bowled over by the power of it. She was there within the bouquet. The sound of her voice, her confident and encouraging smile, the color of her hair, the happy moments we spent together, math and football, and field trips; they all flooded over me in an uncontrollable cascade of raw emotion and memory. And in the midst of it all, the thing that set those memories in motion was that perfume, its alluring fragrance was just hanging in the air, and it mocked me. It seemed to say, you will never see her again. Falling over onto the wooden planked floor with a heavy thud, I wrapped myself into a ball and hugged that shirt to my chest as if it was her. In that moment I understood, she was part of the betrayal, she had a home in Michigan and she left me without even a look back. But I was incapable of being angry with her. Quietly sobbing, I gulped down air but I couldn’t catch a breath. My face and shirt were wet with my tears and my throat was on fire. Slowly rocking on the floor, I eventually found some small shred of self-control and dignity. I must have been a pitiful sight, alone, crying on the floor. Even now as I type and remember, my face is hot and red. But, thankfully, time slips forward into the future and I eventually stopped pining for a lost love. Decades have passed since then and this bright girl is fixed in my mind as part of a pleasant memory of an ideal place that I once called home. The time for considering an old wound waited for much later. It came when I happened upon that photo album in a musty box of my old stuff that was stored in a corner of the basement. Its brown plastic cover seemed to call to me and I opened it. Slowly, I turned the pages and savored the certificates, photos and cards that I had not studied for many years. And then it happened again. The sweet smell of her perfume was still there all these years later and it drifted up from the page where her eyes were still looking for me. I didn’t cry or wish for another chance. But I did gasp at the intensity of the feelings and memories that washed over me as that still familiar fragrance flooded my senses. There is no more sorrow in her memory. I don’t know where she is, but I hope she’s happy and well. Because I am.

Read Kameryn Thigpen 's essays in the following order: The Antithesis of America A Symphonic Affirmation Are You Mad At Us? I have dreams

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Representation matters. I hear these words a lot these days and they are absolutely true. As I think about representation, I can’t help but reflect on my own professional journey and the role representation, or lack thereof, has played in my career trajectory. ​ Over the years, many colleagues have told me about experiencing imposter syndrome. That nagging feeling that they are “faking it” in their professional lives, and any day they will be found out for the imposter that they really are. I have had enough of these conversations to feel confident in writing that many people, regardless of race, gender, or background feel like imposters. I can honestly say that I have never suffered imposter syndrome because I know there is absolutely no way I would have achieved what I have achieved in life without having a certain level of skill, intelligence and drive. I know that because I grew up in a community where there were very few professionals that I could emulate or even people who encouraged me to go farther in my education and career. The fact that I had completed high school was more than enough, so anything beyond that was gravy and I treated it as such. If I wanted something, I tried for it. If I didn’t get it, well, I shrugged it off as not for me. ​ What I have felt, though, was lack of belonging. When I have entered certain spaces as a Puerto Rican woman, who grew up poor and left high school before finishing, there were certain assumptions around what I could expect to achieve. When I dropped out of high school, I vividly remember the social worker who asked me why she should help me find a job when I would most likely get pregnant and become a welfare recipient anyway. Those low expectations heavily weighed on me even as I did eventually finish high school, earn a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and, most recently, a doctorate. Low expectations were sometimes set by my family because they didn’t know what was possible. More often they were set by others outside of my family or community because of strong narratives about people like me (see previously mentioned social worker). In either case, I entered a lot of spaces alone and without a road map. As I moved up in my career, I saw fewer and fewer people who looked like me or who had similar experiences to mine. There was a lack of representation at all levels, and it caused me to hold back and go the safe route for fear of standing out or, worse, for fear of failing and causing some folks to continue to believe negative narratives about people like me. Stereotype threat, anyone? ​ On the surface, I did just fine despite all of that background noise and despite the lack of representation. I built a great career where I had senior level roles in quality organizations and, most recently, started my own organization appropriately titled, The Untold Narratives. I do wonder, though, what my life would have been like if I had been surrounded by more people in my professional life who looked like me, who came from similar backgrounds to mine and who pushed me beyond where I safely thought I could reach. ​ I remember a conversation I had with a member of my team many years ago. We were discussing long-term career goals and they shared that they did not see themselves in a larger leadership role. As this person’s boss, I had to admit I was surprised, because I did see that for them. This person had strong analytical skills, strong collaboration skills and a willingness to learn and reflect – all attributes I consider to be the foundation for larger leadership-level positions, so I had to carefully contemplate my response. This person is a person of color who I know from discussions also did not see many people like themselves in leadership positions. I couldn’t tell if they were saying that they didn’t want to be in a leadership role because they truly did not see themselves in that type of role, or if they were reacting to the fact that there had been a lack of representation in their professional lives. ​ When there is lack of representation, many people don’t live up to their full potential. From my observations over the years, living up to one’s full potential is part internal drive and part external opportunities. With a lack of representation, it seems impossible to achieve certain positions unless you are exceptional or unless you have a champion. If you in any way feel like you don’t belong, then how can you achieve? You honestly need an internal drive that’s made of steel, or you need that strong champion. A champion can create opportunities for you and push you into roles you may not see for yourself. I know I personally shied away from certain roles because I didn’t want to stand out. I didn’t want to push harder because, really, what I had achieved was enough, wasn’t it? ​ My response to my team member actually was easier for me to formulate than I had expected. I said “I understand that you don’t see this for yourself, but as your boss, I see this for you. This is a role you can accomplish and excel in, so I wonder if you are hesitant because of lack of representation or if deep down a leadership role like this one is not one you want? If the latter, that’s fine. If the former, let’s discuss ways that you can start to visualize the role for yourself and discuss the ways I can support you in this journey because the profession, the organization and I need you.” No pressure, though! ​ It’s not easy to be on an island when you want to succeed and want great things for yourself and your family. That’s why I have made the commitment to be a champion of people who are simply trying to come up in the world but have few role models that look like them or who understand what it’s like to move beyond low expectations. Until we change the narrative of imposter syndrome to truly understand the role of representation and how lack of it affects our growth, we need champions and people willing to see beyond us as individuals faking it until we’re making it. Let’s create the representation we need and be there for each other as we continue to create spaces of belonging. Elizabeth Santiago, PhD is an author, educator, learning experience designer and founder of The Untold Narratives. Contact her at info@theuntoldnarratives.com

By Elizabeth Santiago, Founder, The Untold Narratives and author of The Moonlit Vine When I wrote The Moonlit Vine, a young adult novel that interspersed Puerto Rican history with present day occurrences, I wanted to shed light on aspects of history that are often ignored or even suppressed. Puerto Rico’s status as a territory of the United States is nuanced and complex. While the island’s political standing is not the focus of this blog, this dynamic plays into why Puerto Rican women were used for years as unwilling test subjects for birth control and forced to undergo horrific and unethical sterilization procedures. If you haven’t read The Moonlit Vine, the story starts with a vignette from 1492 where the Taíno leader, Anacaona, is navigating the aftermath of European invaders on her land. She understands the Taíno people are outnumbered and will not win. She hands her daughter a precious object to save and pass along to her future daughters to help keep the Taíno alive. This is an extended metaphor for how Taíno survival was based on the matrilineal line. Now, imagine, the year is 1950 and you are handed a precious object that has been in the family for almost 500 years. You might feel honored, humbled, awe-inspired and eager to keep the object safe so you can pass it along. You try to have children but discover that you have been sterilized against your knowledge. When I conceptualized this scene, I put myself in the shoes of the character, feeling her anguish, anger and deep disappointment. I wrote a historical vignette I wanted to include, but it didn’t fit with the overall tone of the book. While not including it was the right decision for the story, I have been haunted ever since by what I developed. I still cannot fathom what it would feel like discovering that the choice of having children had been stolen from you. I recently re-read the excerpt and decided I would share this more widely to shed light on the barbaric and racist practices Puerto Rican women endured in the name of science and progress. Before you read the vignette, explore some of the context for why and how this was allowed to happen. The Historical Context La Operación In the 1930s, doctors in Puerto Rico falsely pushed women into sterilizations as the only means of contraception. Between 1947-1948, it’s estimated that 7% of Puerto Rican women were sterilized and by 1954, the rate had doubled (see reference 1 below). In many of these cases Puerto Ricans were told their “tubes were being tied”, medically known as a tubal ligation, which was agreed to, but patients were never informed this was an irreversible procedure. In 1982, La Operación, a documentary directed by Ana María García showed the widespread sterilization operation led by the United States during the 1950s and 60s in Puerto Rico (see reference 2 below). Women and their families were promised security after they underwent “la operación,” or sterilization. The operation was marketed to them as a way out of poverty and many women thought that once their “tubes were tied”, they could be “untied.” This was not the case and they ended up losing their reproductive rights. The filmmaker was quoted as saying, “All the women interviewed could be you, your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter, and your friend. One way or another this issue touches everyone's life." (See reference 3 below) Test Subjects for Birth Control Puerto Rican women were also used as test subjects (unbeknownst to them) for the then considered experimental birth control pill. This started with Margaret Sanger, a birth control advocate who in 1916 opened the nation’s first birth control clinic. Sanger also supported eugenics, a theory that non-white or less desirable populations could be reduced or eliminated by controlling their breeding. While she believed that women weren’t free until they had control of their bodies, she did not believe that all women were of equal value. She partnered with Gregory Pincus, a biologist who specialized in mammal reproduction, to create a large-scale, modern form of birth control. Pincus had preliminary success in Boston through small trials for the Pill in 1954 and 1955, but without large-scale, human trials, he knew he would never get FDA approval, which was necessary to bring the drug to market. Given the strong opposition to birth control in America in the 1950s, he had to find an alternate place to conduct his experiments. In the summer of 1955, Gregory Pincus visited Puerto Rico, and decided it would be the perfect location for the research trials he needed. There were no anti-birth control laws and there was already a network of birth control clinics in place. I also learned that Pincus thought that by showing Puerto Rican women could successfully use oral contraceptives, he could quiet his critics' concerns that oral contraceptives would be too complicated for women in developing nations and American inner cities to use. (See reference 4 below) Dr. Edris Rice-Wray was in charge of the trials. After a year of tests, Dr. Rice-Wray reported that the pill was 100% effective when taken properly. She also informed him that 17% of the women in the study complained of nausea, dizziness, headaches, stomach pain and vomiting. Pincus quickly dismissed the conclusions believing that the benefits outweighed what he considered minor issues. Although three women died while participating in the trials, no investigation was conducted to see if “the Pill” had caused the young women's deaths. In later years, Pincus's team would rightfully be accused of deceit, colonialism and the exploitation of poor, brown women. The women had only been told that they were taking a drug that prevented pregnancy, not that the pill was experimental or that there was a chance of potentially dangerous side effects. In other words, they were given no choice as to whether they would want to participate in these trials. Pincus and others believed they were following the appropriate ethical standards of the time. In the 1950s, research involving human subjects was much less regulated than what we see today. Would he have gotten away with the same behavior toward middle class white women in the United States? Probably not, which is why the argument that they thought they were following the appropriate ethical standards rings completely false to many. The medical community thought they could easily exploit Puerto Rican women and they did exactly that. Unused historical vignette from The Moonlit Vine San Sebastián 1950 Ides gazed toward a vast piece of green land that stretched out into nothingness. The sun was rising, but the beauty of the morning light illuminating the countryside was lost to her. All she could think of was how she could never have children. Hot tears filled with loss, anger, and frustration sat on her face. She held the amulet her mother had given her for safekeeping and for passing on to the daughter she would never have tight against her chest. A sound escaped her mouth and soon she was screaming. Why would they do this to her? What had she done? She had been treated like a nothing, a thing unworthy of a future. THEY approached her at the hospital where she was being treated for appendicitis. Do you want children? No, not now. We can help! THEY helped alright. THEY helped themselves to her daughters and sons. Now that Puerto Rico was ruled by the United States government, they wanted to keep the population under control. We are like rats to them, Ides thought. They wanted to control the spread of us and they did this without permission or mercy. Ides dropped to her knees – the weight of her unborn children pulling her toward the soil. Who might she have given birth to? She thought. Perhaps one of her daughters would have set them all free. She opened her palm and looked at the amulet wondering what would happen if she unlocked it. If she called her ancestors and if they came. What would they do? Could they help? No. Ides thought. No one could help her now. She would have to give the amulet back to her mother and tell her to give it to Juana or to Isaura. She would have to reveal what she learned at the clinic just yesterday. She had gone there to inquire what she might do to get pregnant since she and her husband had been trying for three years without luck. It was then she learned that she had had “la operación.” Ides walked back into her home, which consisted of two rooms. Her husband lay asleep in one room while she put all of the items back into the box with a note for her mother. The note simply read, “fallé.“ She left the box in the hiding place her mother had shared knowing her mother would look there first for the items. She then walked off never to return. No one knew what happened to her. One day she was there and the next she was not. Esmerelda, her mother, did find the objects and tried to understand the message, “I failed,” but never figured it out. Three years had passed before Esmerelda passed the items onto Isaura, her youngest daughter. References: The Role of Sterilization in Controlling Puerto Rican Fertility, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Nov., 1969), pp. 343-361 (19 pages) La Operación (Short 1982) - IMDb "La Operacion" by Kimberly Safford The Puerto Rico Pill Trials | American Experience | Official Site | PBS Want to learn more about this topic? The long history of forced sterilization of Latinas | UnidosUS The First Birth Control Pill Used Puerto Rican Women as Guinea Pigs - HISTORY The Untold Narratives is a website to help you learn the art and craft of storytelling so you can tell whatever story you want to tell and bring your voice to life. Not seeing oneself or one’s community represented in narratives can make you feel like you don't belong. It can also give an inaccurate representation of history and reality. Visit us to learn more. We look forward to experiencing your amazing stories!