Prose
She is Our Rock
by Audacia Ray
by Audacia Ray
The eldest sibling, a long-haired butch who prided herself on her abilities to tend to the sourdough starter as well as fell trees and chop wood, started to feel a push down on her bones during her third decade. A much heralded butch top, a dear friend of hers, had been diagnosed with lung cancer though she was not a smoker and was an ultramarathon runner. The LHB tended to the top, delicately respecting her toughness while also nursing her through a decline that would be the death of her. “She is our rock,” their friends said about the LHB as they came to visit the top while she rested and wasted away on the platform bed the two friends had built together long ago. The LHB was proud to be a solid presence for these people she cared about, but she had nowhere to lean. Their friends squeezed the LHB’s bicep (strong now, not from wood chopping but from doing transfers for the top) and gushed, worshipfully, “You’re so strong. I could never do the caretaking you’re doing for the top.” At the top’s funeral, their community curled into the LHB’s arms, let themselves be embraced, and noticed but didn’t say that the LHB was shorter. Maybe the better word was compressed? All the layers of sadness other people had piled on through the top’s illness had created striations in her skin, which was getting harder and harder to the touch. Her time caring for the top had changed her. The tears of everyone who had leaned on her had eroded the softer sediments of her body. She was a rock.
The middle sibling welcomed and embraced her sister-mother role. Her fierce femme armor was hard-won, she constructed it out from underneath her family of origin telling her what was natural and right (not her). Her love was a house built of stones that many had carried a long distance to set down at her feet, for her to decide how they fit together and to make a firm foundation, for her to take the weight away and set her children free. Her daughters came to her for guidance, to learn whom to go to for eyelash extensions and silence about their stubbled chins. Her daughters wanted nothing but softness and hated the ways that others projected hardness onto them while desiring it and loathing it all at once. When friends reported her sixteenth daughter missing but the rest of the world appeared to move on just the same, the middle sibling planned a candlelight vigil for sixteen. Her broken body surfaced in the river the day of the vigil, floating home. Sixteen’s loved ones set floating candles down in the current, the flickering lights reflecting and growing small as they bobbed downstream. The middle sibling became curved and smooth over the years, as the demands on her time and energy lapped at her harder edges, as the current of young femmes washed over her and smoothed the hallways of her home. She was a river stone.
The youngest sibling wanted to run hot and free and liquid through the streets, wind through well-worn canyons like an orange snake. They didn’t want to be contained, held, or cooled down. They were molten and angry, had heard the stories of their siblings, and resented the ways that this expectation and demand for care had weighed them down, reshaped them, turned them to stone instead of allowing full, free expression, the lightness of feather boas and wild birds. But the pull of caretaking was strong. They, somehow, had the internal resources to show up for their chosen family. People leaned on them. They became a baker, kept the insides of the brownies they made soft, and added plant medicines to the batter. They delivered small packages of special brownies to community members who were homebound by their bodies and the anxieties that made the outside world too much. They were a town herald among their people, one who traveled among many households and spread joys, griefs, little gifts, and mutual aid among their people. But as they moved, their softness wore off. The movement made them round and agile, but it also made them cool and hard. They were a rock.
The middle sibling welcomed and embraced her sister-mother role. Her fierce femme armor was hard-won, she constructed it out from underneath her family of origin telling her what was natural and right (not her). Her love was a house built of stones that many had carried a long distance to set down at her feet, for her to decide how they fit together and to make a firm foundation, for her to take the weight away and set her children free. Her daughters came to her for guidance, to learn whom to go to for eyelash extensions and silence about their stubbled chins. Her daughters wanted nothing but softness and hated the ways that others projected hardness onto them while desiring it and loathing it all at once. When friends reported her sixteenth daughter missing but the rest of the world appeared to move on just the same, the middle sibling planned a candlelight vigil for sixteen. Her broken body surfaced in the river the day of the vigil, floating home. Sixteen’s loved ones set floating candles down in the current, the flickering lights reflecting and growing small as they bobbed downstream. The middle sibling became curved and smooth over the years, as the demands on her time and energy lapped at her harder edges, as the current of young femmes washed over her and smoothed the hallways of her home. She was a river stone.
The youngest sibling wanted to run hot and free and liquid through the streets, wind through well-worn canyons like an orange snake. They didn’t want to be contained, held, or cooled down. They were molten and angry, had heard the stories of their siblings, and resented the ways that this expectation and demand for care had weighed them down, reshaped them, turned them to stone instead of allowing full, free expression, the lightness of feather boas and wild birds. But the pull of caretaking was strong. They, somehow, had the internal resources to show up for their chosen family. People leaned on them. They became a baker, kept the insides of the brownies they made soft, and added plant medicines to the batter. They delivered small packages of special brownies to community members who were homebound by their bodies and the anxieties that made the outside world too much. They were a town herald among their people, one who traveled among many households and spread joys, griefs, little gifts, and mutual aid among their people. But as they moved, their softness wore off. The movement made them round and agile, but it also made them cool and hard. They were a rock.
About the Author:
Photo by Anna Carson Dewitt
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Audacia Ray’s (she/her) essays and stories have been published in The Rumpus, Necessary Fiction, and Stone Canoe, and have been widely anthologized, most recently in We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival and Hustling Verse. Dacia was an editor at Utne-Reader Award Winning $pread Magazine, wrote the non-fiction book Naked on the Internet, and won a Feminist Porn Award for her directorial debut The Bi Apple. She is a queer femme who splits her time between Brooklyn and a cabin in the Catskill Mountains that has a labyrinth in the front yard. Audaciaray.com |
