Jessica Hoffmann and Daria Yudacufski - Feminisms in Motion: Voices for Justice, Liberation, and Transformation

2018 Jessica Hofmann and Daria Yudacufski

All essays to the individual authors, as noted

This edition 2018 AK Press (Chico, Edinburgh)

ISBN-13: 9781849353342

E-ISBN: 9781849353359

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932237

AK Press

370 Ryan Ave. #100

Chico, CA 95973

United States

www.akpress.org

akpress@akpress.org

AK Press

33 Tower St.

Edinburgh EH6 7BN

Scotland

www.akuk.com

ak@akedin.demon.co.uk

The above addresses would be delighted to provide you with the latest AK Press distribution catalog, which features books, pamphlets, zines, and stylish apparel published and/or distributed by AK Press. Alternatively, visit our websites for the complete catalog, latest news, and secure ordering

Cover and interior design by Morgan Buck

Printed in the USA

River

By Jessica Trimbath

Originally published in make/shift no. 4 (fall/winter 2008/2009)

Were sitting by the river and hes telling me a story about his boyhood. He was thirteen. He went with a friend to the Youghiogheny and they spent the whole day building a raft from driftwood they found along the shore. They rode it downriver, but it eventually fell apart, crashing them into the bank.

Little Huck Finns, I say, laughing.

This story was his answer to my question, What was it like to be a boy? He doesnt ask me what it was like to be a girl. I listen to his story and I like it because I love him, but I kind of hate him, too. When we were thirteen, my friends and I werent building rafts. We were fucking and getting raped and getting molested and binging and purging and falling apart, much like their raft. Its kind of ironic, considering theyd learn their roles well and ride the backs of women their entire livesmothers, lovers, wives. Just like we learned to be pretty at any cost and were facing our own rivers. Were fighting them tooth and polished nail. Were sometimes drowning, sometimes swimming, but were in our bodies and our bodies are in the water so when all is said and done we knew the river better. We survived.

Do you remember that time... she starts to ask.

I already know what time shes talking about. Maybe its the way her eyes are kind of stunned as she delicately approaches this taboo memory of shared humiliation while we lie on my living-room floor surrounded by her sleeping babies. We smoked a joint and something about being together and being older has given us the strength to confront all the forgotten monsters. Weve already talked about her brother raping her when she was little. Weve lit a candle for her older sister Marcy, who committed suicide when we were in elementary school. Weve taken down shoeboxes full of pictures and old letters. Were ready.

Yeah, I say, cutting her off, looking away, I remember those guys in that car.

She laughs bitterly and looks into my eyes, That fucking car.

Theres a literal heat in the trajectory of pain and love between our eyes. I can feel her so distinctly because I know her so well. Twenty years and counting. We fought once at a party in first grade. She scratched my arm with her long nails and made me cry. Weve already covered that base tonight. She apologized so sincerely and we both burst into laughter.

I smile and look up at the ceiling, consciously keeping my face joyful because I know shes so sensitive and I can see shes scared of this one. That car was so fucking dorky, I say. Remember the neon purple license plate?

We laugh again. I love her laugh. Its a laugh of knowing. A laugh that has survived so much shit and can still shake her entire body.

She grows serious.

Every time I see an electric license plate like that, I remember it.

Me, too, I say, feeling strange about the dj vu sensation. It seems I am anticipating every word of this conversation, like it all happened before, lifetimes ago or, at least, over and over again privately in both of our minds throughout the years when we just couldnt bring it up. She looks at me and her eyes are calm. She sees I am okay with talking about it and she feels safe.

Without asking, I know she remembers this in her body in the same way I dowith that sick feeling of shame and embarrassment localized in the solar plexus chakra, where people store power and self-worth. Those guys took us for a ride, literally. We were only fourteen years old.

I feel like I made you do it, she says, biting her lips nervously.

No fucking way, Jen. I grab her hand under the blanket. We both decided to do it.

I know why she feels that way. She was that girl . Everyone knows that girl: the one who was getting molested pretty early on, although nobody understood that part of it. The girl giver of forbidden secrets; the little broken girl playing it big by bragging to all the other little girls on the playground about all the dirty things she knew about sex. And we listened uncomfortably, unable to walk away because she was giving secret teachings. We felt her pain, but we couldnt name it or console it.

I need a cigarette, she says, sitting up. She pulls a pack of menthols from under the table behind us.

Ill share it with you.

We sit with our bare legs stretched out in front of us and I see we havent changed that much physically. Jens legs are still so girlish, although the rest of her is womanly and mature. She sees me looking and laughs, kicking her heels together playfully. The smile fades.

She lights up and takes a long drag and hands it to me. How many cigarettes have we shared in the dark, stealing menthols from Jackies mom while she was asleep on prescription meds in that secluded trailer in the woods where we were coming of age in a very dangerous place? Wed all crowd into Jackies tiny bathroom and pretend we knew what we were doing. Wed talk about who we liked, who we were gonna fight, how to get a ride to go drink. Wed cover our cigarettes with toothpaste, believing it got us high. Wed do stick-n-poke tattoos with crusty safety pins and ink from broken pens. Now Jackies in jail and were we ever children? I thought about it all day while Jen and I watched her kids play in the fountain downtown. As you get older, kids become smaller and smaller and you are hit with it one daythat blunt realization that you were once that little and, when you were, people were fucking you up in so many different ways, obliterating your innocence with their own fears and fucked desires.

Jens legs are smooth and skinny. Together, stretched out from under her nightgown with one foot over the other, they are a timepiece, taking me back to places and memories I cant forget. They are innocent.

We were so young. Do you realize how young we were?

Yeah. She takes a drag and nods, letting the smoke out slowly. Aint that fucked-up?

Its real fucked-up. They were at least twenty-one because, remember, one of them went into a bar and bought beer?

Yeah.

Shes in a daze. I watch her eyes glide down the length of her body toward her seven-year-old daughter sleeping at our feet. Dezmarie. I can read Jens thoughts through her eyes and I know shes doing exactly what I was doing all day by the water: shes measuring her own losses against Dezmaries sweet age. Dezmaries seven , shes thinking. Seven years old. Thats how old Jen was when her older brother started molesting her. Now shes thinking about how small and beautiful and vulnerable little Dezzie is and shes being flooded with that out-of-her-body feelinga symptom of her post-traumatic stress disorder, a survival mechanism that kicks in for us when things are just too horrible to comprehend or be present for. Shes realizing that, at the time, because no one protected her, she felt like she deserved it. Shes seeing Dezmaries small frame and how it radiates love and spontaneity and childhood and shes realizing that, despite the distorted memory of being ugly and damaged and dirty (the way molestation makes you see yourself), she was just a little girlas little as Dezmarie is now.