(an excerpt from Anabel’s Journal, dated February 17, 2008)
Walking the down Loring Street at noon in my shorts and flipflops I was assaulted by “our girls” screaming “Ate Anabel! Ate Anabel!” I felt a bit like the pied piper as I was let through the gate into the Gallery, with my gaggle of girls asking 300 questions as I tried to wake up my still-sleeping brain (it was a Saturday and I had slept at 7am earlier). Romina was about, zipping in and out of the house and the gallery, trying to get things organized for the creative writing chapter of the workshop which Ginny and I would be holding. Outside the gallery were the boxes the girls have been working on, and I got momentarily lost in them- feeling partly a child, as they were- playing with dollhouses they have built. I had to supress the urge to cry- the girls put their dreams into these boxes, not unlike the way I do- though my dreams are written in journals and cocktail napkins, mostly- I too, have photographs I keep that do not have me in them or are of places I have never been to. I could relate- a lot of what these girls want is to go to college (like me, I still often dream of going to school), of a life with a few more creature comforts than a roof over their heads (which is also all that I have), a life with security, where they feel safe, where they feel loved- isn’t that what most of us really just want?
As the girls came in, I scanned their faces, looking for a specific girl- Laarni. She’s had my heart since this project started months ago, when she peppered me with questions and slipped her hand into mine walking down the street from her shanty. She is a beautiful girl, with sad eyes and long hair- she reminds me of my own little girl, Mishaela. The day I met her, she had told me she hoped to go to college and maybe take up computer science. She asked me about Mishka, what she does, what she likes. I promised her I’d find out what her name means for her, as she doe
s have such a lovely name. I still have yet to keep that promise- but now I want to give all the girls (12 of them) the meanings of their names- origin wise, anyway. They give their names more meaning than they could imagine. Anyway, there I was, looking for Laarni. Romina told me she might not come to the workshop- her mother had pulled her out. I had to supress the rage I could feel rising in me. I was tempted to go out and look for her in the shanty town of Loring and speak to her mother. But I didn’t. It is not my place. It turned out I didn’t have to- Laarni 
made it anyway, very late, but she made it.
We began the workshop and the one thing I noticed about these girls is how LOUD they are. Even hours after we ended, my ears were still ringing. They scream at each other, not talk. Silvana mused that maybe they speak so loudly since they are often overlooked and ignored, the only way to be heard is by sheer volume. It’s a theory I don’t disprove. We did the senses exercise with the girls, blindfolding them and having them taste, touch and smell different things- trying to draw out an emotion/memory/idea from these things. Later on, we played audio of waves, maria callas’ ave maria, laughter, farts etc and showed them photographs, trying to get them to tell stories about what they see or what it makes them feel. Not all the girls could be drawn out, however by the exercise. I thought the workshop we did at Women’s Crisis Center was tough- this was a lot tougher. These girls are young- but in some ways so old, too- but their age comes through with their preoccupation with High School Musical, A1 (there’s a band called A1? I thought it was a steak sauce), and the boys they have crushes on.
But several of the girls stand out: there is, of course, my Laarni, there’s Ging-Ging (otherwise known as Mary Grace) who is 10 years old and Romina or I had to shadow throughout the exercises since she cannot read nor write (her family will not let her go to school)- who made me melt when she told me (since I was writing for her) that it sounded like her mother each time she gives birth when we played the audio of the woman screaming and the baby crying. Despite her handicap, Ging-ging wanted to participate in this workshop and she has spunk, that one. Also there was Jessa, who is a girl after my own heart- everything reminds her of
food. No wonder she wants to be a chef when she grows up.
I’m still getting to know these girls, and strangely, as the process happens, I am getting to know about myself- the girl I once was, who had dreams too, who grew up maybe a little too fast….
I was exhausted after the workshop, barely able to stand (so was Ginny). I don’t know how Romina does this almost everyday, working with the girls. The project was aimed to find out who these girl’s find as their heroes, instead, they became mine.
