The Girl Jedi

THE GIRL JEDI

I wanted to be Anakin Skywalker for Halloween. 

I was seven or eight or nine, I believe. Those ages all blur together. The events all jumble until I can’t pick them apart and place them correctly on the timeline. It doesn’t really matter, what matters is that for this particular Halloween I wanted to be Anakin Skywalker and my parents told me I couldn’t. 

Which only made me want to do it more. Obviously. 

Especially because their reasoning came out stuttered and stilted, which young me had figured out meant that they didn’t actually understand the reasoning themselves and they didn’t want me to question it. 

“You’re a girl. You can’t be a boy for Halloween.”

I didn’t know how to argue with them. I didn’t know how to put into words how I felt like a boy sometimes. How I was only more confused by the sometimes. I felt like a girl sometimes too. And, sometimes, I felt like neither. Sometimes I opened my closet and the clothes felt like mine, and other mornings I stole athletic shorts and boyish shirts from my brother’s closet and wore them in secret. I loved doing my hair and wanted to be pretty and arranged flowers into crowns. I wanted my hair cut short and wanted to be handsome and caught spiders without hesitation. I wanted to be able to shapeshift, to mold my features and body into the color my soul was glowing that day. I really, really wanted to be Anakin Skywalker. 

I couldn’t explain why. I liked his hair, the scar over his eye, the way he fit into his Jedi robes. I watched The Clone Wars animated series religiously, my alliances flipping between Anakin and Ahsoka. He had won out that Halloween. I wanted people to look at me and see him. 

I think my parents could see that and it scared them. What if the sometimes solidified into always? They didn’t want to lose their little girl, so much so they forgot she was a person before she was a girl. Who she was wouldn’t change just because their perception of her was incorrect. They, she, he– it didn’t really matter because the person at the core was the same. The presentation just changed. 

But they had been taught that the idea of someone being anything other than the bits between their legs said they were was a sin. A disgrace to God. And because they loved me, they wanted to keep me from hell. Even if it meant they put me through it. Heaven was the reward, and life on Earth was just the test. I was failing miserably. 

We weren’t allowed to call Halloween by its name. We called it Harvest Fest, which was the name of the event hosted at our church. It was less drenched in the devil, sweeter on the pallet. I didn’t care that much about what it was called as long as I got to go on the bouncy slides and play the party games and win candy I could trade with my mom later for healthier substitutes. My mom switches diets (sorry, “lifestyles”) as often as I switch genders. I’d sneak a few pieces into my pockets or socks so I could get a taste of real sugar. I had to be really careful not to get caught. In our household, eating processed sugar was worse than pretending to be a boy. 

The Halloween before I had been a princess. Not a specific princess. Disney was not a part of our media consumption because magic equals evil equals sin equals the devil. A not at all convoluted pipeline with absolutely no holes in the logic it takes to ride. I didn’t care much for the Disney princesses anyway based on what I had seen in books, so I made up my own. I had a large green skirt crafted from layers of tulle and with a white silk ribbon that’d I gotten as a birthday gift. I wore it with a puffed-sleeve white shirt and my dad painted butterflies up my arms. I made a flower crown with wild violets and clover that wilted before the night was over. I felt so pretty. 

The next year, I didn’t want to feel pretty. I wanted to be Anakin Skywalker.

My family didn’t have money to spare on Halloween costumes. We were teetering on the edge of poverty, barely holding our heads above water and waiting for the revelation that my brother needed another open heart surgery to pummel us like a wave. We didn’t like to consider that the next pile of debt might come in the form of funeral expenses. He was a miracle because he had had four surgeries and could still play baseball. God wouldn’t take him from us. God didn’t give miracles just to take them away. I think we all needed to believe that, even if I had to hold myself back from questioning it. I learned young how to hold curiosity inside to keep people from getting sad.  

We always borrowed or scavenged together our Halloween costumes. My mom’s youngest brother was five years older than me, so we often borrowed from his stash of used masks. Thomas the Tank Engine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Star Wars. He had a treasure trove. But it was all boy stuff. Not that that was an issue for me, but for my parents and the other adults in my life, it was controversial.  

My parents struggled with this conflict. Let me dress as a boy and risk their church friends thinking there was something wrong with me, or spend money to make me look like a complete girl. Money won out, but they found a loophole. As long as I told people I was a girl, nobody would mistake me for something other. But I didn’t want to be a girl. I wanted to be Anakin Skywalker. 

My uncle had an Anakin Skywalker and an Obi-Wan Kenobi costume for us to borrow. My brother and I deliberated who would get which, and he finally agreed to be Obi-Wan after I convinced him he didn’t want to be someone who turned into a bad guy. I loved Obi-Wan, but I wanted to look like Anakin. Besides, my brother had Obi-Wan’s short, sandy hair, and I had Anakin’s shaggy dark hair, which was only cut short because I’d chew on the ends when I got nervous. 

We both ran out with our respective lightsabers, already bashing them against each other. My mom reminded us that we couldn’t lightsaber fight at the Harvest Fest. We didn’t want to be the kids who poked a hole in the bouncy house and ruined the fun for the other kids. My brother and I both promised to behave, and I ran up to be my dad. I asked him if he would help me paint Anakin’s scar on my face. He looked confused and maybe a little scared. 

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“I’m Anakin Skywalker. I need his scar,” I explained, confused why that needed an explanation.  

“No, you can’t be Anakin,” my mom said. 

“But you gave me the costume. Who else am I?”

“You’re a Jedi, but you're not Anakin. Anakin’s a boy. You’re a girl. You can be a girl Jedi.”

I didn’t understand why it was so important for there to be a difference. “Why can’t I be a boy?”

“Because you’re a girl. Girls can’t be boys.”

I’d heard this before. My arguments and questions had always been discouraged with “just because.” I knew that wasn’t a real answer, but I didn’t know what to say to get the real answer. Everyone thinks kids can’t tell when you’re bullshitting them, but really they just don’t know how to get you to stop. “Okay,” I said. “I’m a girl Jedi.” That’s what I told everyone the rest of the night. 

“What are you?” someone would ask, either a curious adult or a blunt child. 

“I’m a girl Jedi,” I’d say after enough times just saying Jedi made my mom interject with the “girl.” 

“Which one?” some would ask.

“There’s not a girl Jedi.” others would argue. 

“I made her up,” I’d answer both questions. I gave her a name, home planet, and tragic backstory. I don’t remember any of it. I didn’t want to be her.

I wanted to be Anakin Skywalker.