---
Mimi is three.
Her family consists of Mama, Abuela, herself, and whatever man Mama brings home each night. Calmly, Abuela explains to Mimi that those men aren't family, they are Mama's fun, but Mimi doesn't understand what that means and decides that it is simply easier to group them among the other family members. She makes the classification of family based upon where people sleep, which is rarely accurate, because Mama does not always sleep at home with Mimi and Abuela; sometimes, she does not come home until long after Mimi falls asleep with the sun tucked under her pillow, and then the door opens, failing to wake up the tiny, fragile girl in the middle of her untroubled sleep. When her eyes flicker open come morning, Mama and Abuela sit at the table, exchanging secretive glances and eyes flickering back to the "sleeping" girl on the sofa.
The men Mama brings home are scary, Mimi knows. When they do stay 'till morning, they leer at Mimi and ask Mama how old she is in a tone of voice that makes Mimi tremble. Their voices buzz, their breathing cologned with alcohol, leaving trails of hair in the shower and thundering through the tiny one-bedroom apartment. Mama does not explain these specimens to Mimi, but Abuela sits with her granddaughter and muses aloud in Spanish, her words translating into "I wasn't like this after my first kid." Mimi does not know what she means, but she knows that Abuela is angry, so she huddles up close to Abuela's warm body and lets her eyes flicker closed, eliminating the chocolate orbs' contemplation of the room as she falls asleep.
Abuela strokes Mimi's sleeping body, praying frantically that the child will not grow up to be like her mother. But then again, children are impressionable creatures. All that can be done is to give her another role model… but there seem to be none to spare in the house of the Marquez clan.
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Mimi is four.
Far from the tender stereotype of feminine perkiness in four-year-old girls, Mimi is like a tiger, all teeth and sharp nails and fierce passion. Preschool is, for her at least, in which she has allotted time to socialize. Rather than making friends by way of shy greetings and invitations to play-dates, Mimi forms her acquaintences in a particularly unorthodox way. Teeth bared, nails poised to scratch, Mimi leaps onto her fellow classmates, one at a time, with only the slightest warning: her low squeal as she zooms toward someone. Fights of this magnitude were, prior to Mimi's arrival, not the norm in her Chicago elementary school, but due to Mimi and her energy, they become a regular occurance, and the number of children signing up for next year's class drops severely.
Mimi's victims are far from enemies. No; they are more like siblings to her, fighting as much as they do. Mimi fights like the youngest child in a family of twenty-odd attention-stealing individuals, claws scraping against flesh as she rolls over and over and over and over, jerking bony elbow and knee into tender spots. Her teeth dig into the shoulders of the particularly bothersome people, but for the most part, Mimi's fights are almost playful. As painful as she can be, she controls herself, deliberately only hitting as hard as her companion. And they are not, by any means, opponents. She does not fight for a victory and a loss, nor for a smug self-satisfaction telling her who is more powerful.
Mimi fights for sport, and it is evident in every playful tussel from which she walks away, unharmed beyond cuts and bruises that fade with time.
-----
Mimi is five.
There is a brief scare in her household when Mama's boyfriend (of the week, a record in length for Mama's upholding a relationship) brings home a pregnancy test, and suddenly Abuela observes loudly that there is a new curve in Mama's stomach. Filled with terror, Mama shuts herself in the apartment's only bedroom – hers, although it should be Abuela's – assumedly to perform the test. When she emerges, she is silent, and Abuela is frustrated. "Tell me, chica," she insists, but Mama turns away. Mimi watches in horror as Mama eventually confesses, a week later, that yes, there was a child growing inside her – but now, it is no longer.
Mimi does not understand. "What happened?" she asks again and again. "What happened? Where did it go?"
Abuela shakes her head sadly. "Your mama did a bad thing," she tells Mimi in broken English, most of the sentence Spanish save for maybe a word or two. In English, she says, "She had a baby, but she knew that the baby would never have a daddy and didn't want to make it grow up so lonely."
Mimi remains puzzled. "I don't have a daddy," she points out placidly.
"You're right," Abuela agrees. "But Mimi, mi vida, your mama thought that you would. See, Mimi, love, I had a man. He would have been your granddaddy."
Mimi understands.
------
Mimi is six.
Stubborn, she refuses to agree with her teacher that "Mimi" spells her name when "me, me" means something else entirely. "It sounds the same," she protests. "It has to look the same, and it has to be the same." Her arms crossed over her chest, Mimi tucks her legs beneath her body as she peers at the teacher from her tiny first-grader-sized chair.
The teacher desperately searches for a comparison she can make to explain the difference between "me, me" and "Mimi." She struggles at first, explaining that English is a very strange language – which Mimi agrees, already speaking about half as much Spanish as she does English, a fair accomplishment for a six-year-old – and then falls to the alphabet chart in the front of the room. When Mimi still refuses to believe this, the teacher seeks out another explanation.
"Mimi," she says calmly, "your name is a name. It always means you. But depending on who says 'me,' it means different people. It isn't always you?" Mimi still shakes her head, and at last, the teacher finds another way to explain this to the little girl. "Listen, Mimi, sweetie. You know how lots of things can sound the same? Like some people, when they laugh, it sounds the same as their crying."
Mimi knows of these people. Abuela, for example, has the same noisy tears as laughter. She nods, and the teacher continues, "Well, the same happens with words, too. For example, 'two,' the number, sounds like 'too,' which means also. Do you know those words?" Mimi nods again, hating this patronizing way of her teacher, and ignores it when her teacher makes more silly comparisons.
"I hate you," Mimi tells her teacher calmly. "I don't like people who act like I'm little. My name goes Me-Me."
It is nearly nine months before Mimi learns the real way to spell her name, but then again, it is her name; isn't it up to her to spell it how she would like? In fact, Mimi believes, she ought to be able to decide other things about her own life as well. Her first way of doing this is by telling everyone that she is nine, and old for her age.
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Mimi is seven.
Although she has had short hair up until this year, she has never really liked the feeling of having nothing warming her neck. It takes time, and it takes patience, but Mimi steadily grows her hair out more, following the instructions in a library book teaching her how to make her hair grow more – certain types of vegetables are reccomended, and Mimi follows the guidelines with ease. Carrots are for her eyes, lettuce for her figure, and according to this book (which Mama calls "trash" and "untrustworthy"), celery is for the lengthening of her hair.
It is October when Abuela at last tries to cut Mimi's hair, still at a medium length. Instinctively, Mimi wrestles away, digging her sharp nails into her grandmother's arms as she slides out of reach. Once in Mama's room with the door closed, Mimi hears the lock opening. Frantic as Abuela enters, Mimi flails about, her arms flapping, her shoulder-length hair keeping a safe distance from the silvery instrument of torture that is a scissor. She adores her hair this length, but wants it longer; so she tells Abuela.
"Your funeral," mutters the old woman as she exits, although she promises Mimi that "you're not gonna like it when it's long like that and turns gray."
"Well," says Mimi petulantly, "at least mine won't fall out like yours. When it's long, it stays, like the more glue you put on a paper, the more it sticks."
Abuela says something very rude to Mimi and leaves. Mimi smirks and runs her fingers through her hair, which already feels longer.
--------
Mimi is eight.
Abuela and Mama have someplace to be, so Mimi is entrusted into the care of a neighbor for an evening. She is quiet, not wanting to disturb anyone or anything, and merely goes along with the family when a daughter leaves for her dance lessons. Mimi watches with the girl's parents, staring in awe as pirouettes and spins and turns are performed. She adores the flowing bodies, arms flailing as art is acted out before Mimi's very eyes. She gazes at the leotards and wants one of her own; she strokes an abandoned pair of dancing shoes and tries them on. Her eyes flick over to her temporary guardian, who turns out to be in the bathroom, and impulse compels Mimi to get up and join the dancers. The too-small shoes clutch her feet, digging into the skin, forcing every move to be correct.
"Can I dance?" Mimi inquires softly, but nobody gives her an answer. The teacher is explaining a rather complicated turn, and Mimi flows with the group as she imitates the instructor's directions. The other dancers stumble through it – some even electing to ignore the instructions altogether – but Mimi's legs glide through the motions without a single argument. Her long hair and long skirt, once Mama's, billows out around her as she spins again, again, and again.
The instructor paces the rows of dancers, correcting some girls' stances and straightening boys' toes and postures. When she comes to Mimi, she does not ask if the little girl's parents paid for the lesson, but breaks out into a smile. "Perfect," she says, and pats Mimi on the shoulder. "What's your name?"
"Mimi," says Mimi, and she smiles and repeats the movement. The teacher beams at her, proud and pleased and just impressed.
The teacher suggests, "Maybe you should be a dancer when you grow up. Come back to next week's lesson. I'm sure some girls who aren't doing anything are paying your way."
And although it is not to be, Mimi appreciates the gesture and continues spinning and spinning, a flicker of of sunlight peeking in through the window. She pretends that it is her spotlight as she continues to twirl and swirl and spin.
---------
Mimi is nine.
Her sinewy body strained toward the left, and then the right, Mimi tries her warm-ups. They aren't hers, precisely, nor are they official warm-ups, but they are ways for her to remember that she loves dance, and that she wants to be a dancer. Then again, what other career choices are there? Mimi loathes school, loathes being told that this means this and that means that; it feels almost like a dictatorship, where the teachers hold the power and the students are all merely cogs in the machine. She will not take a job that requires schooling, which severely narrows her choices.
In the end, art and athleticism are all that remain of Mimi's options. Both sound pleasant enough; she is physically gifted enough to be an athlete, and dance is a sport, surely? Just the same, art requires heart and soul in a way that sports do not, and Mimi surely has that as well. Dance, however, is an art just as it is an athletic action. No other form of art is a sport as well, Mimi realizes, save perhaps for gymnastics, which is almost a dance just the same.
I will be a dancer, Mimi tells herself decisively. I will.
So it is said, so shall it be.
----------
Mimi is ten.
Young though she is, it is almost commonplace for young Chicago girls to stumble across the dark world of drugs and alcohol. There is cocaine and marijuana, nicotine and – that which Mimi stumbles across – heroin. It is nothing more than a syringe and a packet of powder, bestowed upon her by a man in a park, but Mimi ponders it. To try, or not to try? It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth when she sets the drug aside, as though she is giving up a potential vice that will help her through her challenges. A young man sees her on the park bench, turning the needle over and over, and he escorts Mimi to her apartment. Something about him makes Mimi wonder who he is, where he comes from – why, she wonders again and again, is he so helpful?
But Abuela and Mama are not home, so this new man escorts Mimi inside and to her stove. "This is what you do," he explains patiently, hands guiding hers as he makes powder into liquid, inserts it into the syringe, and hands it to the ten-year-old. "Have fun!" he calls almost mockingly as he leaves, the needle still in Mimi's hands as she gazes at it.
She takes the drug.
She loves it.
She never sees the man again.
-----------
Mimi is eleven.
While her classmates are studying up on knowledge of their favorite celebrities, Mimi is practicing dance. She has music in Mama's bedroom, music on a casette in a beat-up casette player stolen – no, borrowed – from her school. The wire snakes down to an extension cord in the living room, holding the door slightly open as she dances and twirls and pirouettes. Abuela enters once, intending to put away Mama's laundry, and when she sees Mimi writhing and spinning, she wrinkles her nose. "Silly girl," she mutters. "Foolish dreams."
Mimi laughs and kicks her leg out, mildly injuring Abuela and sending her out of the room. "Thank you," she says, poised and perfect, "for viewing the show of Princess Mimi." She swirls beautifully, sings, "have a nice day," and flops on the bed with a smile on her face.
Dancing is truly her passion, and she loves it even more with an audience. Even, she knows, when her audience is a cranky old woman with no friends, no husband, and a daughter who is a slut.
Is Mimi a slut? Or are her dreams simply unorthodox?
------------
Mimi is twelve.
It is headline news one day: a gifted professional dancer, youthful and beautiful, has been injured in a simple dance – normally standard procedure, an easy feat involving little skill. Mimi spends the day in Mama's bedroom, attempting to master the very thing that was the other young girl's downfall, and manages it at four-thirty in the afternoon. Her hair, which now reaches her waist, swoops around Mimi's body like a cocoon. When the movement is perfected, Mimi leaves only to snag up every free newspaper and magazine she can find, devouring the story of the girl's injury with the intensity of Mama's never-ending boyfriend hunt, or Abuela's deep longing for serenity.
Mimi understands the situation by dinnertime. The girl was not injured accidentally in her dance, but rather set up by an opposing dancer, whose fevered passion filled her with a desire to win. A single still shot appears in nearly every magazine Mimi finds: the injured dancer, her scarlet hair short and piled atop her head, stood poised and perfect in the instant before her foot slid across the floor, forcing her into an impossibly wide split with her arms and hair suddenly splayed out beneath her. Although the photograph is a "before" shot, the image of the girl prior to the injury, Mimi can imagine the horrible contortion of the dancer's body a single moment later, the image in her mind created from the words of eyewitnesses quoted in newspapers.
"Abuela?" Mimi asks softly. "Abuela, why are people mean?"
Abuela turns her head. "They're only mean with a motive, Mimi," she explains patiently. "It's jealousy, it's hatred, it's lust, or it's one of a million other things. But people aren't mean."
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Mimi is thirteen.
She rarely goes to school – rather, she rarely goes to class – but one day, she decides to go. That day, she is called down to the office and sent home. Baffled, Mimi is picked up by Abuela, brought back home, and is told what is going on.
Mama is HIV-positive.
The disease was given to Mama by one of her many one-night stands, a particularly attractive but untalkative young man maybe five years Mama's junior. Mama is twenty-eight, and insists that it is impossible for her to have AIDS. Mimi, who knows the difference between HIV and AIDS from a few health classes, just watches in silence as Mama leaks tears all over the couch. Abuela casually exits the apartment, probably to get tested, leaving Mimi alone with Mama.
Mimi stares into Mama's cold eyes, trying to see what Mama has done to deserve this fate. She can come up with no real explanation, and merely slides her knees up into her zippered jacket, closes her eyes, and ponders her query before falling asleep. Yet the answer comes to Mimi when, the same night, Mama disappears for three hours and returns with another man, his body pressed tightly to her chest as they make their way into the bedroom. Mimi stares at Abuela, who just sighs deeply. "Do you think he knows what Mama has?"
Abuela laughs hollowly. Translated into English, her response is, "Mimi, love, if she even knows in this state of intoxication, it's a wonder."
--------------
Mimi is fourteen.
It is a wonder it has not happened before, considering Mimi's unbringing and raw beauty, but it is this year that she has sex for the first time. It is only that: sex. It is not love, because Mimi does not love her partner, and it is not a crush or even simple attraction, because it is something else. It is desparation, Mimi's young curiosity leading her to wonder what it is all about, this collision of bodies that makes every adult and teenager in the world do stupid things, risky things, desperate things. She needs to know, needs to be prepared and ready for eighteen, for seventeen, for sixteen and fifteen, the years that are closing in around her, stifling her with adulthood, with the promise of living with Mama and Abuela all her life, having a child and raising him or her in this environment.
No. Mimi isn't doing all that just yet. All she does is tumble into bed with a nameless classmate of hers, a boy whose blondish-brown hair dangles just above his shoulders, tickling Mimi's own skin as he lies on top of her. He is just as curious as she is, his hands rolling over curves and caressing exposed skin. Mimi wants to writhe away, but finds herself enjoying it – as much as Mama? No. Surely not. This is one time. She isn't a whore, a slut, the words that Abuela mutters in Spanish and learns in English just so Mama will understand every word, can hear what Abuela thinks of her daughter. Surely she won't think that of Mimi as well?
Mimi doesn't really care, to tell the truth. She is enjoying her ecstacy, enjoying the contact and crushing lips against her own, and lets all other thoughts drain out of her mind as she rolls onto her side to kiss her partner again before, hours later, getting up and leaving and never seeing him again.
She still doesn't know his name.
---------------
Mimi is fifteen.
Having had enough of the frustration that comes with watching Mama infect hundreds of new men with her fatal disease, Mimi decides to stop pressing her face into the pillow and ignoring it. She approaches Mama and calmly announces, "Mama, you have to stop living like this." The response is negative; Mama crosses her arms over her chest and demands to know what Mimi has to say, and whether it holds any worth. Mimi serenely admonishes Mama, "You're living as if your life has no end. Fucking people and giving more people the disease that is going to kill you. You're living with no remorse."
Mama shakes her head. "I have to enjoy my last years," she whispers.
Mimi knows differently. "You aren't enjoying them," she points out. "You're just throwing them away. If you finished school, that would be enjoying them. If you got a job, if you got a real boyfriend, if you…"
"Shut up!" Mama shrieks. "Shut up!"
Mimi continues to talk, now explaining the flaws that Mama has. Outraged, Mama grabs Mimi's arm, tears off a bandage from her own hand, scratches Mimi's arm, and presses the two cuts together. "There!" she yells.
Her eyes closed, her feet moving of their own accord, Mimi gathers her few belongings – clothing, a syringe, and heroin – and exits the apartment for a final time.
The city is the light that guides her away from home, and Mama the force pushing her. "Bye, Abuela," she calls before the door closes behind her.
From New York City, months later, Mimi can squint back and almost see the Chicago skyline, its buildings throwing smoke into the eyes of tourists as Mimi curls up on the street of this new city, fingers blue and already-skinny frame turning into that of a skeleton. It is a hard life, but Mama and Abuela's home was far from luxurious, and the newly-HIV-positive young dancer keeps her artistic dreams in mind as she tries to let her long hair shield her from the cold.