Secrets and Silence: A Better Way?

SSY girls gather for morning assembly

When I decided to become a classroom teacher eight years ago, I did do so for a very specific reason.  I wanted to teach at The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (TYWLS).  I wanted to connect with black and brown girls and prepare them for a world that could be vicious and unforgiving to American girls not fortunate enough to be born white and middle class.  In the six years I have taught at TYWLS, I have never had a moment of regret about becoming my girls’ teacher.  As a matter of fact, each year I find myself more humbled by the divine opportunity to be taught by them.  What I have had are many moments of despair and utter shock at the realities my students face in the 21st century.

Being placed at Shri Shikshayatan School (SSY) this summer has been perhaps another strategic move on the part of the universe.  While I had no influence on where American Councils for International Education placed me, I ended up at a school very similar to TYWLS.  Not only is it an all girl’s school, but SSY educates the Indian equivalent of TYWLS students.  Girls who are full of potential and eagerness, but whose parents lack resources and social power.

I wondered if SSY students faced the same challenges as my students back home.  Because marriage and female modesty are weaved into the fabric of the Hindu culture, I assumed that fielding problems with sex and dating was the one area where my Indian collegues and I differed.  I was sure they had to deal with mediating friendship break ups, random acts of crying and the persistent clinginess that comes when adolescent girls outnumber grown women in one  building.  But surely, pregnancy scares and risky sexual behaviors were blessfully non-issues here at SSY.  How lucky these teachers were to have circumvented this pesky problem!

According to a teacher at SSY, the teachers have circumvented this problem, but only because their students don’t share these problems.  Sharita made it clear to me, though, that a growing number of her older students are “engaging in affairs.”  When my mouth dropped open, she continued with, “Oh, this is not a new occurance.  Girls have done this type of thing before.”  Sharita says there is a misconception that good Indian girls don’t find themselves in the same sexual situations as good American girls.  The difference lies in the silence in which these encounters take place.

A good Indian girl will allow herself to be courted by a boy and if her parents are more liberal, she will go out on dates with this boy.  Like American girls, she will gab excessively about her “boyfriend” to her friends, showing them pictures and arranging “accidental” meet ups with the boy and her besties.  But, this is where the sharing with friends stops.  The good Indian girl will allow this boy to touch her.  In wholesome ways.  And not so wholesome ways.  This, she will not share with her friends.  The good Indian girl might then engage in sexual activity with this boy.  This, she does not share with anyone.  Not even her closest friend.  And if that sexual activity leads to an unwanted pregnancy, the good Indian girl finds her way to the medicine shop and whispers a request to a knowing attendant.  She goes to this medicine shop alone.  Although sometimes, she might bring along the young man who is the reason she is at this shop in the first place.  Sharita made it explicitly clear: she DOES NOT bring her best friend.  “Her best friend does not even know she is no longer a virgin,” Shamita reminds me.  When the medicine is taken and the good Indian girl’s menstrual cycle continues, so does her life.

So, the difference in my girls and these girls has nothing to do with premature sex that results in an unwanted pregnancy.  It is the secrecy that occurs during these universal teenaged catastrophes.  “That’s odd,” I say to Sharita.  “My girls definitely keep the secret from their parents and adult family members.  But, their best friend ALWAYS knows; she is normally the informant and confidante every step of the way.”  I can understand why a good Indian girl would not want to advertise the losing of her virginity to girls who are not in her friendship circle.  And an unwanted pregnancy…heck yes, she would be very selective in whom she confided with this mishap.  “But. why,” I badger Sharita, “would she not tell her bestie?  If only for consolation, not so much consultation.”

“Well, the friend will talk about her.  She will gossip to other girls that this girl is no longer a virgin and then, too…a baby?!”  I find myself feeling even more despair for the good Indian girls at SSY than I do for my girls at TYWLS.  To go through such a difficult predicament without the support of your best friend?  And to take it a step further, to know with certainty that your closest friend should not be trusted to do whatever her naive little self could do to help you get back on track?  Or to hold your hand (while scolding you for being so careless), reassuring you: “It will be alright.”  It seems terribly isolating.  And more judgmental than I thought even American girls could be.

I do not propose Indian culture become so accepting of teenaged sex that a girl is given a cursory, “Oh, you shouldn’t have done that” when she finds herself in what I am coming to learn is a common predicament for women across the globe: unwanted pregnancy.  I firmly believe every culture SHOULD find the mere thought of teenaged girls having sex, well…as not a very good thing.  Harmful, even.  However, when I listen to Sharita explain to me the shame and secrecy in which her students have to abide by for making the not so smart choice to have sex too early, something about this feels cruel. I was not having sex in high school, but I imagine if I were, it would seem completely unnatural not to share this momentous news with Megan Kimbrough.  How could I not?  And if I had missed my period, I can only imagine how completely terrifying that experience would have been.  15 year old girls are already fragile emotional creatures.  How cruel is it to not only make it difficult for them to go to a knowledgable adult about this rather common problem, but to make it just as difficult to simply say to a good friend: “I messed up and I am scared shitless about it.  Please hug me.”