Host: Sarah Austin Jenness
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Sarah: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness.
We, at The Moth, include stories from everyone. But this episode is dedicated to the young women of the world. It’s about girlhood, with five unexpected stories of beauty and brawn.
The Moth’s first Mainstage in Nairobi, Kenya, featured stories of women and girls. The show was held at the Kenya National Theatre, and packed with people who had braved Nairobi’s traffic, even in the midst of a rainstorm.
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And that theater is where we begin this hour. Here’s Sisonke Msimang, who hosted that inaugural event inaugural event.
Sisonke: [00:00:50] Hello, and welcome to The Moth.
[applause]
Before we begin our official program, please stand and join us in the national anthem.
[Keny’s National Anthem]
Sarah: [00:01:21] After the national anthem, Her Excellency, the First lady of Kenya, Mrs. Margaret Kenyatta, took the stage. She was dressed in a perfectly tailored deep blue suit. And on her suit jacket were five pink embroidered Moth’s in a semicircle.
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Margaret: [00:01:39] Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I'm delighted to join you here for the first presentation of The Moth in Kenya. We are here to celebrate an initiative that provides a platform for girls and women to reach out and share personal stories and personal reflections. We will hear voices from diverse backgrounds spanning multiple generations.
Traditionally, Africans have been known to be great communicators. We are great word collectors, and that explains why so many of us understand the power of storytelling in the cultural context. I cannot think of a better way that allows our girls and women's voices to be amplified by shedding light on many urgent issues that they face in their daily lives. We will always require examples to emulate, stories to give us hope, stories full of courage and optimism that will inspire and encourage us to promote gender equality and women's empowerment.
Finally, I thank the partners here for their unwavering support towards girls and women. And I congratulate every storyteller here for having the courage to share. I wish you all a good evening. Thank you.
[applause]
Sisonke: [00:03:24] Thank you so much, First Lady. My name is Sisonke. Sisonke Msimang. I will be your host this evening. I am a South African writer and a Moth alumni. And I am very, very pleased to be here in Nairobi. Sasa. Ah, I've been practicing my Shang. [audience laughter]
So, tonight's Moth Mainstage, Global Stories of Women and Girls, will showcase graduates of The Moth's Global community program. Before we begin, please, people, can we turn off our cell phones? We want these stories to be broadcast in perfect sound all around the world, so please do not stand in the way of African progress on the global stage. [audience laughter] Can I get a sense of how many of you have heard of The Moth before you arrived here today?
[cheers and applause]
So, it's time for us to get started. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the stage-- She's already here. [audience laughter]
Hi.
Sandra: [00:04:34] Hi.
Sisonke: [00:04:34] Hi, Sandra. [laughs] Welcome to the stage, Sandra Kimokoti.
[cheers and applause]
Sandra: [00:04:45] Thank you. As a child, I idolized my brothers. I wanted to be just like them. They were the cool kids in the neighborhood, they were the cool kids in school and they played sports. So, by default, I did too.
So, one day, when I was about 10 years old, we had been playing basketball outside, and we were heading back into the house. So, just as we were in the doorway, my brothers were comparing the size of their biceps, as teenage boys do. I got into the flow and I said, “Look at me. I have big biceps too.” One of my brothers turned to me and said, “Who told you girls with muscles are beautiful?” Strike one.
I'm not sure how to describe what I felt at that point. It was a combination of confusion and hurt and I was wondering why it wasn't okay for me to look the way I did and I wasn't sure why somebody else should tell me what I'm supposed to look like. But at 10, I didn't have the words to articulate this, so I just kept it in my mind. But from that moment, I carried it with me that as a girl, it was okay to be athletic, but I couldn't be too athletic, because at the end of the day, what I looked like took precedence over anything else.
So, life goes on. When I was in the sixth grade, my classmate and I were walking from class, going to take the bus home. Her older brother and his friend were walking behind us. So, as we walked, her brother says to me, “You have such big curls. You look like a boy.” Strike two. Wow. So, this kind of teasing about how boyish I looked continued for about a year or so.
I joined high school. I went to a public boarding school in Kenya. In my school, we were not allowed to have permed hair. I had permed hair, so that meant I had to cut my hair or the school would cut it for me. So, I took myself to the salon, cut off my hair, I was walking back home. On my way, I passed by two men walking in the opposite direction. As they walked by me, I overheard one of the guys say to the other man, “Is this a girl or a boy?” Strike three.
I was hoping that high school would be some kind of a new beginning and I could start afresh. But at that moment, I felt like I would never be able to shake off this perception that I wasn't feminine enough and I therefore wasn't beautiful enough. So, as I said, life has to go on. All through high school, I played sports because that's just who I was, and that's just what I did, I played sports. After high school, I started uni in the US and decided, I'll try something different, something new. So, I had seen these posters on campus asking girls to come try out rugby, so, I thought, why not?
So, I walk onto the pitch the first day. I find a few girls getting ready, wearing their boots, getting strapped. One of the coaches walks over to me, starts talking to me. She stretches out her arms and puts them on my shoulders and feels my shoulders for about five seconds and then she says to me, “You're so solid. This is awesome.” I just bask in that glory for what feels like hours, but it's just a few seconds. And then, she has me make some tacos and I realize I really enjoy hitting people without having to go to jail. [audience laughter]
So, in short, I fell in love with rugby. I loved how we would compete on how strong we were, how fast we were, how hard we could hit. And it was about what our bodies could do. It was about how our bodies could perform, not what they look like. My coach mentioned to me, “You know, Sandra, if you really want to, you can play professional rugby.” And at the time, I didn't take it too seriously, but it was always at the back of my head.
A few weeks into the season, we were in the gym lifting weights. Now, our school gym had mirrors all around. So, as we were lifting, I was looking at myself in the mirror, and I realized that my muscle mass had increased significantly and I had a lot more muscle definition now. And as I looked in the mirror, all those emotions from when I was 10 and in primary school and in high school of feeling too boyish, too masculine, too muscular, all those feelings came back. The more I played rugby, the happier I was with what my body could do, but the more frustrated I became with what my body looked like. It was like this internal conflict where I want these two things really badly, but I can't have one without compromising the other.
So, at the end of the year, we have to break for the summer. The coach gives us a training program that has both cardio and weights. And I think, okay, this is my chance. So, I go home, I reduce the weightlifting, I amp up the cardio. I do way more cardio than I'm supposed to do for my position and I also cut my meal sizes by half. That summer, I lose 10 kgs and feels awesome. I feel amazing, because now my body is morphing into this thin ideal that I believe it's supposed to be.
So, at the end of the summer, I go back to school. I walk into my coach's office. I'm expecting a warm welcome. As soon as I walk through the door, she looks at me and says, “What the hell happened to your body?” So, for my position, my biggest assets were my strength and my size. Before the weight loss, I was already the smallest person in the league in my position and I had gone and made myself even smaller. So, what I had essentially done was self-sabotage.
So, for the next two years, I played this game where I did just enough to be good enough with my position, but always toning down the weight gain and the muscle gain. And at the end of my third year, I come back home and I get this opportunity somehow to train with the women's national team in Kenya. And I think, okay, this might be the door to that career in professional rugby that I've been waiting for. I walk onto the pitch that first day and these girls, man, these girls are big, [audience laughter] they're strong, they're fast. We do a gym session. The smallest person on that team lifts more weights than I've ever lifted my entire life. They're a lot more muscular than I am. They're just great athletes and they're so unapologetic about it.
And I know this is the competition. If I want to wear that jersey, if I want to present my country, this is who I have to beat to make the squad. And at that point, I know that something has to change and I know that the self-sabotage has to stop. And deep down, I always knew that the body that I needed to perform optimally as an athlete might not be the body that society thinks is ideal for a woman. But in that moment, I was finally ready to just go out there and be the best rugby player that my body would allow me to be. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:12:18] That was Sandra Kimokochi. Sandra has since retired from competitive rugby, but she remains a self-professed gym warrior and works as a strategy consultant in Nairobi. She's noticed a recent trend of more women embracing the strength of their bodies. And she says, “When you walk into a gym here in Kenya, there are a lot more women lifting weights and there's more women rugby teams now, because more schools are investing in women's programs.” If you'd like to see a picture of Sandra in action on the rugby field and photos of Her Excellency, Mrs. Margaret Kenyatta, the First Lady of Kenya and who introduced this evening, visit themoth.org.
There were five other stories told at this Mainstage in Nairobi, and you may have heard some of them on The Moth podcast. But all of them are included in the Women and Girls playlist on our website, themoth.org. And video of the stories is on our YouTube channel, so check those out.
For some women in the early part of their lives, strength has to be found, almost like a quest. We need to go out into the world and prove to ourselves that we are tenacious. And that's what our next story from Wanjiru Kibera is about.
Ciru, as she likes to be called, was part of a Moth Global Community workshop that we also held in Kenya. This recording is from the end of that workshop when each person shares their story with the rest of the storytellers in the group. So, there were only about 15 people in the room to hear this. When people tell these stories, they can be emotionally overwhelming at times as you'll hear. Here's Ciru Kibera in Naivasha, Kenya.
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Wanjiru: [00:14:02] Okay. In my high school, before we did our final exams, the school had a trip that would go for at Mount Kenya. The trip was to prepare us for our final exams and it was to teach us endurance and patience and courage. And so, I was very excited for the trip. But I was not very athletic in high school. I was sick before, and I had asthma. So, this prevented me from playing a lot of sports, because when I would participate in physical activity, I'd get an attack and I was unable to continue. My mom and my sister had also previously taken the same trip, so I really wanted to prove that I could also do it as well and I was just as strong and capable as everyone else.
Going on this trip, I found myself not in the fast-paced group, neither was I in the slow-paced group and I would be in the middle and I'd be walking alone for most of the journey. It was very tiring. It was an exhausting trip. The point was to get to a place called Point Lenana, which is the third highest peak in the mountain. The journey was very tiring, as I had said. It took us three days to get to the place where we'd start the ascent onto the summit and the ascent would do it at night. And this was to trick our minds, so that we wouldn't see how far we'd have to go and we would keep walking, we would keep moving forward.
When we got to this place, we started the ascent at around 07:00. And just as the rest of the journey, I found myself alone as I was making this ascent. We were told that there were guides along the way in case we got lost or in case we veered off the path, there would be someone to guide us back. So, I knew that I would be fine even if I was walking alone. So, they got to a point where I veered off the path and I was walking towards the glaciers. We'd been warned about the glaciers because people had actually lost their lives falling into the glaciers, but I knew I was fine because there were definitely guards watching us. As I was walking, someone yelled at me, and they were like, “You're going to get hurt. Come back to the path.” And that frightened me, that I wasn't seen at that point, but I kept walking.
It was dark, as I said, and I was alone and I got an asthma attack. I had previously taken already two shots of my ventilation, and I was weak and I wasn't allowed to take another because of course, medical reasons. And so, at this point, I thought I should just sit down and wait for the group behind me to catch up and then maybe we'd go down in the morning. So, I thought, you know, this is as far as I can go, and I sat down. I was just crying and I was frustrated and I was tired. And then, a guide came up. He wasn't part of our group. He was leading this other man, and he saw me in this mess. He saw me with all this dirt around me. You know, the whole trip, you don't shower. I was dirty and I had mucus on my face and I'd been crying and I was disturbed by myself.
The way he looked at me, he had so much kindness in his eyes and he's like, “We'll go together and I'll help you up.” And so, the man next to him actually [chuckles] looked a lot worse than me because he had mountain sickness. We were going very slowly up the mountain. He held my hand. So, we went up with him and he kept saying, “You can do this. We can go together, and you'll make it.” And just as we reached the top, the point is called Point Lenana. As we reached it, the day broke, and it was the most beautiful view I've ever seen. And he was like, “Look, you did it.” I saw the first team there and they were like, “Hey, you made it. Hi, How Are you?”
I don't think they really expected anyone after that point to make it. And there I was in this place, and I was just like, “This lesson isn't about exams. It's not about success. It's a lesson in life.” Up till now, I didn't realize how much the story has affected me in my life. I've had mountains that I've had to climb alone, figuratively. I didn't go up another mountain after this, but-- [audience laughter] I realized that it feels dark and you're not alone. [sobs] The people were there to hold your hand in the darkness. There's this quote that I later read, and it really just summarizes this whole story for me and it says that, “Tell the story of the mountains you climbed, because your words can become a survival guide in someone else's book.” Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:19:31] Ciru Kibera is a visual artist who dreams of opening an interior design business. In Moth workshops, people choose which stories they'll tell. Ciru chose to tell about a literal mountain, but she said she's had figurative mountains in her life too. It's just that she's not yet ready to share those stories. She told me she draws strength from knowing that every mountain journey will come to an end and she will be proud of getting through it.
For gorgeous photos of Ciru on Mount Kenya and to hear more stories from our Moth Global Community Program, go to themoth.org.
After our break, two stories, Gabrielle longs for a career as a welder and Catherine realizes she and her male best friend have identical taste in women. Uh-oh.
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Jay: [00:20:42] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
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Sarah: [00:21:54] This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness. And this hour is all about growing up female, finding yourself, being yourself and moving through the world according to your own rules.
Gabrielle Shelton told this next story at an open-mic StorySLAM in New York City. The theme of the night was Persuasion. Here's Gabrielle, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Gabrielle: [00:22:19] Every single welding shop in Manhattan refused to hire me. It wasn't my youth or my inexperience, they said, “It was just simply the fact that I was a girl and they didn't know what to do with a girl welder.” The first guy who was just straight up disgusted, he said, “No. It's not right.” But one of the other guys said, “I'm sorry, honey, we don't even have a girl's bathroom.” The corpulent Italian metal shop owner on Grand Street in soho, he leaned back in his chair, put his cigarette out, he literally shoved my resume back to me and he said, “You know what? Don't get me wrong, we wouldn't mind looking at you, but you're just going to be way too distracting to my men.”
So, I kept looking and everybody turned me down. I had just driven across country from Chicago to New York in my 1973 Chevy. It wasn't the young, it wasn’t hot rod one, it was the dorky cream puff post catalytic converter one. [audience laughter] I had been working as a welder and in foundries in Chicago when I was in school and I'd just come off a six-month gig as an iron worker in Georgia. I was a really fucking good welder and I didn't understand why nobody would hire me.
The union wasn't really what I wanted. The iron workers apprenticeship wasn't for me. You had to start as a flag waiver, as a girl, and it was about a four-month program to even touch a piece of metal and I wasn't going to wait for that. And so, I kept looking and broadened my search and I got a job in this little theater on Greenwich Street in Spring. It was this cultish theater community center. I was doing props and helping in their tiny little shop, and then they expanded into the room next door. And on the first day that the contractor came in, this guy Joe, I just put my hooks in him right away. I knew he might be a way in, and so I started stalking him. [audience laughter]
I would get there before he did, so I could help bring the tools up in the elevator. I started showing up on days that I wasn't even on shift or on call. I would nonchalantly bring him a coffee or a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll as if I had just had an extra one. [audience laughter] I got to know his guys and Esteban, his head carpenter, he looked at me one day, he's like, “Do you like working for free or you know, what's going on here?” I just told him I needed a job, I wanted a job and I wanted to be a metal worker and I wanted to be an engineer and I wanted to figure out cut list and order steel and I wanted to learn how to build everything I possibly could and weld every possible thing I could and design and be a mechanic and engineer everything.
And he's like, “Well, you got to ask for a job first, you know?” [audience laughter] So, on the last day that they were wrapping up the construction at theater, I followed Joe down and put his toolbox in his truck. I was standing there and he was looking at me. He’s not really sure what to do with me. I was about to ask, but I was in the way. He got in his truck and he sat down and was standing there still. He did this half, like bye, nod, and he drove off. The guys were walking to the subway and I ran after him and I said, “Hey, you guys want to get a beer?” And they said, “Sure.” And Esteban was like, “Let's tell Shorty. Let's get her Heineken and tell her how poorly she swings a hammer.” So, we went to the Ear Inn, which was right around the corner.
This was 1995, by the way, almost 22 years old. And so, that night, they told me-- Actually, that afternoon, construction is pretty early. We were drinking and sun hadn't set yet and they told me a lot of crazy stuff. It was the whole crew. The most important thing they told me, is that Joe was starting a new job on Forsyth Street the next morning. So, I picked up Steve and Dave at 26th and 2nd Avenue? 2nd Avenue. About six o’clock in the morning, we drove down. Steve was this wild ex-heroin addict. He'd played drums in every punk band in New York. He looked like scrappier version of Kramer, if you can imagine that. [audience laughter] He had real fucked up teeth.
And Dave was this sexy, cool carpenter millworker. Sorry. [audience laughter] He wore this single conch shell on a leather [audience laughter] piece around his neck. He had tight jeans and his hair was in front of his eyes. The only real turn off about Dave was that he was a huge Pat Metheny fan and he used to do this fusion air guitar.
Anyway, so I got the job on Forsyth Street. The first day, Amani and I had to bring up 300 sheets of drywall and chip tile and pull pipes and all that. At the end of that job a couple months later, Joe liked me and we were buddies. He told me he hired me full time and I told him, “I really wanted to be a metal worker.” And he said, “Yeah, that's what the guys say.” And he said, “You know what? You got to Williamsburg. That's where all the scrappy metal workers your age are going.” [audience laughter]
I know a guy over there and I'll tell him you're a hard worker. So, I took the L-train to Bedford Avenue, got a coffee at the L-Cafe and walked to North 6th Street, made a right old meatpacking district back then. Right as the delivery truck was pulling up in front of the shop, smiled, dropped my backpack, started unloading the truck before my new boss even knew my name. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:28:29] Gabrielle Shelton lives in New York with her husband and two teenage children. She's been running her own business, a custom metal fabrication studio, in Brooklyn for about 19 years since this story took place. She's also just opened up a restaurant called Five Leaves in Los Angeles that is filled with her metalwork.
She says, “I'm happy to report that there are a lot more women welders out there today. I've trained many women and offered apprenticeships to every woman who's come to me looking for employment or experience.”
By the way, if these stories are reminding you of your own, we want to hear from you. Record a two-minute version of a story you'd like to develop with a Moth Director by calling 877-799-M-O-T-H. That's 877-799-6684. Or, visit themoth.org and record it right on our site. Your story could find its way to the Moth stage or this radio show.
Deborah: [00:29:27] My name is Deborah Neurith. When I was 14, I was given a horse for my birthday. It was wonderful. I did a lot with him, but he got sick. He rolled on a rock and he pinched a nerve in his back end and made the muscle collapse. My parents couldn't afford for me to keep him, so he gave me to a little boy. I had no idea where he went.
I found him. The way I found him is I went and worked as a riding instructor at a camp, and he was one of the camp horses. The people told me about this strange black horse with a sunken rear end and a crooked tail, and I found him. I had a wonderful summer with him and I purchased him and I got him back. I had him for quite a few years after that until he passed away.
Sarah: [00:30:25] Remember, you can tell us your story at themoth.org.
Our next storyteller is Catherine Smyka. She told us at our open-mic StorySLAM in Seattle, where we partnered with Public Radio Station KUOW. The theme of the night was Unintended. Here's Catherine Smyka live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:30:49] So, I never intended to develop feelings for my friend Scott. It's not because Scott is not a really wonderful guy, but because I'm gay and I don't like guys. [audience laughter] He and I met through a friend right after I moved to Seattle, and he actually asked me out. I remember telling him, “You're awesome, but I like women.” And he was like, “Hey, you're also awesome, and I also like women.” And I was like, “That's so perfect. Let's be friends.” [audience laughter]
So, Scott and I worked at the same theater for a little bit, and we realized pretty quickly we have almost identical taste in ladies. So, it became this really funny running joke between us where we'd usually see the same woman at the same time in the lobby and try to figure out from afar who got to ask her out. Because if we figured out that she was probably gay, then she was mine. And if she was straight, she was Scott's.
And then, we were out at a bar the first time, we couldn't quite determine if this really beautiful woman was gay or straight. And so, Scott had said, “Catherine, I have this incredible vision of us walking up to either side of her and saying, ‘One of us would like to buy you a drink.’” [audience laughter] We hung out all the time. We both loved good food, action movies, going running, playing Scrabble and talking about feelings. We talked about feelings all the time. [chuckles]
We both run into some pretty crummy dating luck in the past. We started talking about what our ideal partner would be like, and I had told him like, “Dude, you are so smart and funny and reliable, and you're a grown up. I just need to find the female version of you.” He's sitting right there. [audience laughter] But then, sometime over the summer, things began to feel a little bit different. He'd walk into my apartment and I'd think, that's a really attractive shirt you're wearing. Or, he would play me this new song on his guitar, and I'd think, I want to make out with you right now. [audience laughter] And I'd be like, “What?”
This terrifying feeling. It was nice, but mostly terrifying, because it had taken me years to become the token lesbian in all of my circles of friends, and I was not about to give that up to be with a guy, even a guy that was really incredible like Scott. It was this very strange feeling, like, I didn't know who I was for a little bit, because it wasn't like I was sitting around thinking that I'd gotten my sexual identity wrong. Like, joke's on you, you do like men, because it wasn't actually a question of liking men or women or both. It wasn't even a question of liking women or Scott. It was the realization that I thought I liked women and Scott and scared the shit out of me.
So, I didn't tell anybody. Didn't talk about it. Certainly, didn't tell him. The first time I said it out loud, I was hanging out with my sister and I was like, “Yeah, so, Scott and I. What would you say if we were together?” She was like, “Isn't he a dude?” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Yeah. You know what? Never mind. Forget it.” The only other time I brought it up was it was at a girls’ night and very casually slipped into a conversation we were having and then nobody thought it was weird.
My friend, Katherine, had said, “So, just sleep with him and see what happens.” I was like, “No, that sounds gross.” And she was like, “Well, maybe that's your answer.” [audience laughter] It seems pretty obvious. But someone else had said, “Look, you're never going to know unless you try new things. What's the harm in trying?”
So, one night, I was getting ready to go to his apartment, and I thought, yeah, I am. I'm telling him how I feel. We're going to take the plunge. It's going to be great. I started walking to his apartment and I got really excited. I was thinking about all of the awesome movie dates we'd go on and the dinners we'd make each other and the adventures we'd have. We could be each other's plus ones at weddings. We could do all kinds of coupley stuff. I got so excited, I started to run.
So, I'm running up Pine into Capitol Hill, and I'm passing all of these couples who are out walking their dogs with these great arm tattoos and I was like, “Yeah, we're going to get dogs and take walks and get more arm tattoos. It's like the best idea I've ever had.” [audience laughter] I turn the corner at his apartment. I go running up the steps and I ring the bell and I'm out of breath and I was like, “Yeah, we're going to be together. It's going to be great.” And then, he answered the door.
All of those feelings just rushed right out of me. Because here he was, he's my best friend in the city, standing there with a spatula in one hand and a James Bond movie in the other. And very quickly thought about all of the, awesome movie dates we'd gone on, and the dinners we'd already made each other and the adventures we'd had in the last couple of months. I realized we don't have to be a couple to do coupley stuff. We're already doing coupley stuff, just about the complicated parts, like having sex or arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes. We had a really great thing going. It didn't need to be a romantic thing, because it was even better than that. It was this blood brothers type thing, this family type thing and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
Later that night, we ended up talking about us. It turns out he'd had the same thought process as I did, that he thought about us together and then realized it was a bad idea, because it was just really great the way it was. So, we sat at his kitchen table eating tofu and gearing up for an Indiana Jones marathon and talking about feelings. We were both like, “We really are meant to be together.” I never intended to develop feelings for him the same way he never intended to find somebody who liked Sean Connery as much as he did. We never intended to become family, but sometimes the best kinds of intentions are formed from the strongest kinds of love. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:36:38] That was Catherine Smyka. Catherine and Scott never did get together romantically, but they're still very good friends. I asked her if Scott approves of her current partner, and she says, “Yeah, he does.” She's been happily married to her wife, Courtney, for three years, and Scott was the best man at their wedding.
After our break, the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran tries to get her dad's attention, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:37:27] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
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Sarah: [00:38:40] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin Jenness.
Christal Brown tells our last story in this hour, all about girlhood. Maybe you've noticed, but even though this hour is about young women, men play significant roles in all these stories. Christal's story explores her relationship with her father. She told a version of this with a group called Cocoon at Middlebury College in Vermont. We asked her to expand it a bit for a Moth night dedicated to stories of the Vietnam War. Here's Christal Brown.
[cheers and applause]
Christal: [00:39:16] So, my father was loud. He was loving, but he was also distant. He was a mystery. He could put all the curse words in one sentence, even when he wasn't mad. [audience laughter] He loved to make people happy, but he also didn't mind pissing them off. I have this collection of memories, these stories that I told, that I was told, these stories that I overheard, maybe in my imagination I made some of them up, but it's who he is for me.
I know that he was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in a little swamp. I know that he loved to play football. I know that he loved to play football so much that he foregoed a college scholarship to go into the army, because they guaranteed he could play football. I know that he was an athlete through and through.
He joined the army. He was stationed in various places. I know one of those places was Greensboro, North Carolina, where one night, he and his buddies went to a party, and he wrote a girl, a pretty girl, a note on toilet paper and she ended up marrying him. [audience laughter] My mother. I know that they traveled. He was stationed in many places. They lived in Germany for a little while right before he was deployed to Vietnam.
But I know that his athletic spirit was always there, even in that military training. And that he followed behind the men in his platoon so closely that when the guy in front of him stepped on a landmine and lost his life, he lost both of his legs. Then football was no longer an option. He and my mother moved back to a little town where she was from called Kinston, North Carolina. They had two kids, a boy, then eight years later, a girl. That's me.
My brother didn't fulfill my father's athletic vision of life. He really didn't like to get dirty. [audience laughter] And so, then, somehow, in a snafu of a carpool, I found myself sitting in my friend's ballet class when I was supposed to be at a piano lesson, and that's how my athletic career began.
I started dancing when I was nine. Tap, ballet, jazz, acrobatics, modern pointe. And I tried to convince my father, those 10 years that I was an athlete too. I invited him to all the recitals. He came to one. He left at the intermission. Couldn't figure out when it was time to clap, why all the people were dressed alike, when was a good time to yell. [audience laughter]
So, I wanted his attention. I wanted to prove to him that I was just as strong and just as athletic as he was, or that at least I had heard he was. So, in high school, I started running track. And so, I translated those hurdles into grand jetes. I was running, and he loved it. He did not miss one track meet. He was so loud that I remember distinctly at a home meet, when the PA system went out, they asked him to announce all the events. [audience laughter]
He would lean over the railing right where the track would meet, and I'd be in a starting block and he'd be like, “All right, let's go, girl.” And then, he'd say to my opponents, “Hey, you in lane three, can you beat my daughter?” [audience laughter] And instead of being encouraged, I was mortified. I took off running just to escape the embarrassing moments. Most of the time, I would win. But one day, I came up out of a starting block, and I pulled a muscle in my back and that ended my track career. So, I went back to the studio and kept on dancing.
By that time, I had earned enough collateral to ask him to do something for me. So, being a little girl from the south, there are these things called cotillions. So, you get a sponsor, you raise this money, and your family presents their daughter to society and you have to dance with your daddy. So, I asked. He grunted, “Hmm.” My mother asked, he fanned her away. Every father in the neighborhood came by to encourage him and tell him how important it was to dance with me for the cotillion. He listened and then quickly turned the conversation to the sports scores of the previous night.
Finally, he relented. He came to at least three of the rehearsals. And in the rehearsals, we would saunter back and forth. He would figure out his spacing and then go back to his seat and grumble. But I distinctly remember him having a hesitation, maybe because he spent a lot of his time in his wheelchair at home, and he put his prosthetic legs on just to run errands or to be out in public or to yell at track meets or football games. But that was in his overalls, where he felt like he could stumble and the left swagger of the gimp in his prosthetics didn't matter to anyone.
But at that community college gymnasium, he was going to have to stand in front of a little girl who he may not have paid that much attention to before, and in front of hundreds of people who were watching and waiting for the beauty or maybe for his mistakes. We stepped out onto the floor. Me in my big white dress, crystals, sparkles, nails done, hair done, big, long white gloves. He stepped out in his tuxedo, already foreign. He grabbed my hand and we started to dance.
He was sweating bullets. He was so afraid that he would do the wrong move or embarrass me or him. So, I kept whispering in his ear, “One, two, three. One, two, three.” He followed me, and I held onto him and our hearts connected and all that space that had been between us evaporated. I think for that moment, I saw the guy that my mom fell in love with that night at that party. I saw someone I had never seen before, but it was still my dad.
After the cotillion, things went back to normal. He watched his football. I went to my dance classes. He took me to that swamp one day where he grew up, that's how I know it's real. I'm not making that part up. It was a long, arduous truck ride. Pickup truck, two radio stations, me and a guy, my dad, who doesn't talk. [audience laughter] We pulled up on this dirt road. And at the back of the dirt road in the middle of this swamp was a little shack and a woman came out. She was my grandmother. Maybe I had met her before, but I didn't remember. He left me there with my grandmother for 48 hours with the strict warning of, “Do not go in the backyard. There are alligators there.” [audience laughter] I'm pretty sure he was lying. He didn't want my grandmother to have to chase me around and he wanted to go to the dog races.
So, I stayed there for 48 hours, and I explored every nook and cranny of that little shack. I didn't find any distinctive clues about who he was or anything like that. But I got the feeling that being confined by those four walls is what made running on that football field for him so amazing. Same thing that I feel when I step on stages like this and I get to dance for audiences like you. All over the world, I get to step on stage and feel that same adrenaline that he felt. I get to be immortal for at least 15 minutes.
I think about him often and how our athletic hearts may be won, even though we just didn't see eye to eye. My father died before I graduated from college. He never saw my professional dance career, even though he said I got my dancing talents from him. [audience laughter] He'll never be able to give me away when I finally do get married, but I have the memory of me and him in that big white dress.
Five years or so ago, I was blessed to have a son. He was born 11 days shy of my father's birthday and three weeks earlier than his due date. He's surprisingly athletic. He moves to the beat of his own drum. He seems to be an old soul and he's a mystery too. But I love them both. I think that as I listen to him and the small stories that are becoming a part of his life and remembering the big stories that I think give me clues about my father, I think I learned to know both of them at the same time.
[cheers and applause]
Sarah: [00:49:21] Christal Brown is a native of Kinston, North Carolina, where she remembers cleaning up on Saturday mornings as a child to the music of Marvin Gaye, The Chi-Lites and Shirley Caesar. She says she's danced since she was released from the confines of piano lessons at age nine. Christal is the founder of Inspirit, the creator of the Liquid Strength training module for dance and the chair of dance at Middlebury College in Vermont. I sat in the green room of the Shubert Theatre in Boston and spoke with Christal just after she told this story.
Christal: [00:49:54] And there were 1,600 people here and it was sold out and I was having some déjà vu of being here as a dancer and then starting this new adventure as a storyteller. I tell a lot of stories with my body and make dances about stories that are important to me, but being able to just stand and recite the story or give people an entry into the linguistic manner of how my memories work was really important.
Sarah: [00:50:21] Did you feel, as you were telling the story, like you were seeing your father again?
Christal: [00:50:27] I did. I felt like I was unearthing even more information about who he is. I think like I say in the story, he and my son remind me of each other in various ways. And me putting together the memories or the connotations of the memories that I have give me a more in-depth sense or a more authentic sense that the man I grew up with is still the man I'm getting to know.
Sarah: [00:50:58] How do you think your dad would have reacted to the story?
Christal: [00:51:02] I think he would have loved it. I think he would have been hooping and hollering in the audience. [Sarah laughs] I think he would have been co-signing and [Sarah laughs]probably challenging some of the things that I said. [Sarah laughs] But at the end, it would have all been true. Yeah. The man I grew up with is still the man I'm getting to know.
Sarah: [00:51:26] To see a photo of Christal Brown and her father and to see other extras related to all the stories you hear on The Moth Radio Hour, go to our website, themoth.org.
So, that's it for this episode on girlhood and growing up. We hope you'll join us next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:51:53] Your host this hour was Sarah Austin Jenness. Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Larry Rosen. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.
The Moth would like to thank the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation for their support of The Moth's global community program.
Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour was from Stellwagen Symphonette, John Scofield, Kelly Joe Phelps and Marvin Gaye.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.