flash fiction by Vanessa Chan
I recently injured my arm, so I cannot reach around my back. That means I have to put my bra on the wrong way around. I start with clasping the bra in the front, under my breasts, then pulling the band in a circle along my skin until the clasps reach my back, before I can pull the straps and cups in place. It chafes.
My friend Shauna used to never wear a bra. She told me that bras are symbols of the patriarchy, that they have no purpose, that the underwire served only to point and lift our breasts closer to boys’ vision. I told her she was lucky because her breasts were small, perky. She told me I was too self-conscious and needed to be more confident; she said that’s why Tommy Patrice had picked her to go the prom with, even though he had asked me out first, and I had the bigger, rounder breasts.
The other thing about Shauna was that she died a week before high school graduation. She was found face down in a monsoon drain floating in shallow brown water that smelled like trash. One of her arms had been dislocated; it twisted behind her like it was waving goodbye. Everyone knew Tommy did it, but they never charged him. Only some people blamed him. She was easy, they said. She didn’t wear bras, they said.
It’s true that breasts have no muscle mass. Except for the nipple, they don’t react stimuli; they can’t be reshaped, they can’t point at things, they can’t protect themselves. Not like arms – arms can hold you up, turn you around, beat things away, get bigger and stronger.
But lately my twisted arm means I can’t do the things I usually do to keep myself safe. I can’t grip the keys between my fingers as I walk down the street. I fumble longer trying to get myself into my door. I don’t have the strength to push away unwanted advances. I am unstable, off-center, easy prey. I tell myself that Shauna was wrong. Bras aren’t just to mold our breasts and give them a sense of direction. No, bras are like armor, the underwire protecting against the elements, the cups keeping out unwanted intruders, the clasps making it just a little harder to break in. And so, I twist myself around every day to buckle my breastplate.
I will not be hunted.
Vanessa Chan is a Malaysian writer based in New York. Her work is published or forthcoming in Atticus Review, Jezebel, and Mekong Teahouse, and she recently won the Fiction Factory Flash Fiction contest. She is an MFA candidate at The New School and writes about race, colonization, and women who don’t toe the line. Vanessa can be found at vanessajchan.com or on twitter at @vanjchan.
Armor photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash