I had just gotten off the train when my little sister texted, “When are you coming home?” Wearing a heavy jacket and my mom’s slippery old grey gloves, I nearly dropped my phone into a puddle while trying to reply. The temperature had risen 15 degrees since the morning, and a bead of sweat rolled down my forehead. I planted myself in front of the bodega at the corner of the block and typed, “2 minutes.” Today was a special day for my sister and I, and she wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be late, but my mind was distracted by a deadline for the school newspaper and a meeting with a faculty member.
It was 6pm by the time I got home, and as soon as I finished my homework, I paced into the living room for my sister’s special day. The beam of light that was usually on her face had diminished. I glanced at the clock. It read 9:30pm, her bedtime. She’d waited hours to watch “The Karate Kid” with me, but it was too late. In an attempt to make up for it, I asked her how her day went, knowing that her anger might keep the conversation from going beyond a few nods and grunts. To my surprise, she went far past that.
You see, we didn’t talk all that much because of an awkward age difference. We’re seven years apart, and she was at that odd age where we could relate but she wasn’t mature enough to understand everything. Nonetheless, I grinned, happy that she felt comfortable enough to share something with me. About two minutes into the conversation, my grin flipped into a frown.
Her fourth-grade class was doing a Native American project, and in her group were two boys who we’ll call Tony and Lucas. They wanted to use iMovie, but she didn’t know how it worked. Instead of teaching her, they gave her a five-minute task to keep her busy because she was “just a girl” and the “boys would get the job done.” As her fingers traveled across the keyboard, she kept herself from tearing up. She didn’t want them to think she was a coward, and she was already ashamed to be “just a girl.”
Telling her story, tears streamed down my sister’s face. She couldn’t express how she felt because she didn’t really understand it, but I could feel my eyes welling up and my throat closing as I knew exactly what this was. My sister had her first taste of what was called “being a girl.”
A part of me wanted to ask her why she didn’t speak up, but then again, what could she have done? She was only nine and didn’t understand the nuances of sexism or the hidden elements of it in society, present even at a young age. Girls can’t take charge without being called “bossy.” This early label greatly hurts one’s self-esteem, and although my sister couldn’t tell at the time, she had experienced what nearly every girl has in her life. I looked into her eyes, red and puffy from the crying, and said that girls would always be pushed down, but it’s why we work so hard. We stand up for ourselves because sexism is inherent.
That one talk with my sister doesn’t just apply to girls like her, but to anyone who feels that they don’t have a voice. I don’t want a single person to feel that way—helpless, like they have no value. I’d been trying to find ways to make change in my classes and through my extracurriculars, but sometimes all it takes is starting a conversation. It’s amplifying the voices of people who can’t fight for themselves. It’s changing someone’s life, and for me, it’s what makes life worth living.