Cherry Ice Cream Girl, by Laura Vidarte
Once made of acne-prone skin, my flesh now exists as a mass of gooey pink cream, sprinkled with red splashes of cherries here and there. I thought being a ghost would require the absence of the matter and weight humans need to stand, but now I can see it was a foolish interpretation of what being dead really is. After all, how would I know what death feels like? Such a thing can only be experienced when you are, well, dead.
Right now, as I stare at what is left of my broken fingers, rage fills my hollow chest. Really? After everything I’ve been through, this is what I’m supposed to be? A figure that resembles a broken, marred doll that impossibly stands on its own due to my own sorrow? A soul doomed to wander a land of shades and to be ignored by the living?
No way. I’m too stubborn to rest in peace. Not until he is dead, too.
Here’s the thing about girls like me, born in cities bordered by lush green mountains and sugar cane fields: As much as we love to wear gowns shaped like pastries and use soft shades of pastel pink, the city we live in won't allow it. The sun shines too bright on the broken pavement, the same that has yet to be restored by the local administration. The heat turns the skin sticky and sweaty, making you feel like you could melt away at any second. In the end, the unbearable warmth renders any chance of using puffy sleeves or pretty wool sweaters impractical and impossible. And all your life, you are told that soft pink is the color of little girls, a time that lasts no longer than the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. So why would you like to go back to that?
Ever since I turned twelve, my mother told me I shouldn’t wear dresses or skirts anymore. You are a big girl now, she told me. That same afternoon, she bought blue jeans from the nearest department store and crowded my closet. I never told her that I wanted to keep using floral dresses or that I wanted a beautiful ball gown I saw in a boutique the other day, the same one girls wear on their quinceañeras. I already knew what she would do if I did that: scrunch her nose, give me a look of disgust, and then say, “You’re so childish. No boy will love a childish girl.”
I don’t blame her for wanting to protect my heart. This is the age of popping chrysalis, of acting like rebels and believing that the world knows nothing—a time for being petty and cruel. And the city, widely known for its legendary party scene, fuels that idea.
To this explosive cocktail of revelry and debauchery, blood is added into the mix. It’s on TV every single night when the news broadcast is flooded with the never-ending armed civil conflict, ever-present and yet invisible to the urban eye. But while the massacres and dismembered bodies are found in the countryside, the city has its own form of violence, not-so-slasher-like: armed robberies and hitman killings either by rival gangs or by drug lords.
And if it’s unsafe for the average man to go out, girls don’t have it easier. Having to deal with the eternal dichotomy of existing as a woman, we go out with keys between our knuckles, eyes glued to the ground, and feet walking fast. It’s a horror movie playing under spicy, tropical sunlight. The roads are over-stuffed with cars and motorcycles that have engines that shrill like chainsaws going after you. When you least expect it, a male voice hollers in the distance, his mouth hanging open, showing hungry teeth. Then another one joins, and soon they flock towards you like flies to a corpse. If you are lucky, they remain quiet. Their eyes and their salacious tongues are enough to carry the message across.
I found myself between these crossroads as well. I thought it was normal for girls to forget their dreams of being princesses and just accept this life of being objects.
But the truth is that only applies to a certain type of girl. The girls who do not look like they were made out of whipped cream, the ones who do not blush the color of soft strawberry gelato. We, the girls with skin the wrong color of dulce de leche, are not seen as sweet nor saccharine. No, we girls are troublemakers, spiteful beings who are ready to open up our legs.
But we aren’t tomboys either. The city hates those even more.
So we are stuck with being the cherry: the aphrodisiac alternative. We tie ourselves in knots with our tongues. We hang playfully from their lips. We go great with tobacco, heart-shaped sunglasses, and blue-striped towels. They can turn us into whatever you want: wine, juice, pies, coke, ice cream. Squeeze, crush, lick, and bake us into what their hearts want. They can do all that because they think they have a right. And they think they are right because cherries come a dime a dozen, and we are all the same at the end of the night.
How I died is not important. The story is the same for all cherry ice cream girls: she falls in love with a boy who only sees her as a doll and sells her a promise of love, but in return, she receives isolation, fear, and bloodlust. Her ending is always violent and cruel. She is another number in the news, another black and white photo and flower garland, another case for people to fight for.
You see, not even in death I was granted the privilege of being ethereal. What I had thought was just darkness at the beginning of my journey to the afterlife had been, in reality, the crushing pressure of dozens of industrial-made ice cream in a barrel. I came screaming into this world again, gasping for air that I no longer needed to survive. And the worst thing about it is that I wasn’t delicate.
After all, pale girls become ghosts, and brown ones become monsters.
It turns out my killer was a coward, too: he dumped my body into an ice cream tank in the local factory. He chopped me up first to make the ordeal less suspicious. And probably played with my curves and my chest because how could he let a body like mine go to waste so soon?
But he will not get away from me easily. I’m still a monster for a reason. I’ll haunt him in his sleep, in the midst of the day. Whenever he thinks of quenching the hotness of the day with popsicles, I’ll be there to remind him of what he did. When the sweet taste turns sour, he will know it is because I’m near. He’ll tremble in my presence the same way I did.
Some will say I should forgive him, and others will say I should move on.
But if I couldn’t be an angel in life, I’ll be the monster the city made me in death.
Laura Vidarte is a bilingual writer, illustrator, and designer from Colombia. Born and raised in the tropical city of Cali, she is currently a senior student in the Visual Communication Design BA program at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali. Cherry Ice Cream Girl is her first published work in English. She can be found as @vidartetheartist on Instagram.