Somebody’s Son
By Laura Santi
The first time somebody’s son tried to touch me on an unlit street, only a block from my apartment, a scramble of words came to mind: loud and fire and people will listen and eyeballs and kick and run. And then I screamed. Screamed the name of the doorman (who was, in truth, also a son), who would possibly hear my cry. This son bolted, a moment too soon: I was prepared for a fight, prepared to unleash the rage that lived in the body inherited from my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother and those before them.
From my mother’s side of the family, I inherited bones prone to breaking, a genetic heritage of fragility. Drink more milk, it’s good for your bones. In this body they made, I drank glass after glass, a liquid prayer to stay unbroken. I once read, from a source long forgotten, that women should scream fire rather than help when attacked by a son. Bystanders are more likely to hear the inherent danger in the threat of flames. After the incident, I befriend everybody who works on my street: other doormen and shop owners and night guards. I wonder if any of them would come if I screamed help instead of fire.
***
Months earlier, another son had used my body for what he wanted, in the tradition of his father and grandfather and great-grandfather and those before them. Afterwards, everywhere I traveled became a sea of bodies. Bare skin, wandering fingers, spread legs. My body contorted to avoid touch, twisted sideways to prevent an accidental brush against passerby, squeezed tight to make itself less noticeable. The grip of my Midwest home began to suffocate me: I wanted to see the world beyond the miles of wheat fields and highways. Beyond cities competing for tallest building and biggest museum and world’s largest ball of twine. Beyond sons who hollered at me from the lowered windows of their pickup trucks. I left with a bag the size of a small child on my back and another in my hand. I craved freedom—of escape, of being lost.
In southern Poland, I found a volunteer position as a hostel receptionist at a wooden home that may as well have emerged from a fairytale. Beams of sunlight warmed the porch bench in the mornings, illuminating the vines of purple and pink irises that trailed along the sideboards and the surrounding field of knee-high wildflowers. If I had stumbled upon the cabin while lost in the woods, I never would have left. When I went into town, I dropped breadcrumbs as I walked so I could find my way back. I met women I instantly loved, who could draw beautiful sketches and cook delicious meals out of the most basic vegetables and whose laughs were contagious. I wanted to ask them if they, too, had been touched by somebody’s son. We worked together in the wooden home, letting people stay and eventually watching them leave. We hung keys in an unlocked cabinet and counted bills in the cash register drawers and folded cotton linens on top of mattresses. We were a powerful team of collaboration and compassion—until somebody’s son came to work with us. He touched me when he passed by me with a squeeze on my shoulder or a wandering hand on my hip. In my mind, I yelled at him to keep his hands off me, met the bone of his nose with my knuckles. In the wooden home, I stayed silent. Everything in and around us was easily flammable, waiting only for a lit match.
In Prague, on a weekend trip away from the wooden home, the tour guide told the story of when, decades earlier, the Soviets invaded the city and somebody’s son lit himself on fire as a protest against the occupiers. Two of his peers followed suit, an emboldened sacrifice for the city they called home. In modern-day Prague, crowded with tourists and their selfie sticks, it felt too distant to be true. Later, in a beer garden courtyard, the bitter foam had just reached my lips when somebody’s son sat beside me. He wrapped his arm around my waist like it was an extension of him; he rubbed my back as if he was trying to comfort me, yet he must have felt the tension in my muscles. Somebody’s son had had too much to drink. Somebody’s son could not keep his hands to himself. Somebody’s son was slipping, falling, would one day disappear beneath the ground which had carried him. Perhaps he was the son of the son of one of the sons on fire. The son of flames searing through skin until all that remains are bones. The son of a city’s male legacies, whose stories are shared with tourists as a reminder of its noble history: and here this son is, sloppy drunk in this beer garden with his unwanted arm around me.
***
On the journey through the land from which I come and the land on which I stand, people I meet tell me how brave I am to move across the world in the way that I do. I want to ask why they call me brave, but I already know the answer: brave because I know the nature of sons but I still choose the plane on the runway, the twin mattress in the shared room, the trust in a stranger. Brave because I do so without the protection of a son. When the thoughts of the legacies of sons becomes too much, I come instead to the generations of my foremothers, now underground layers of beaten hearts and brittle bones and breathed-in lungs. I imagine them in their wooden coffins, hands outstretched toward the sky they can no longer see, raising the earth as high as they can lift it. I want to ask them not only how they survived, but how they persevered. How I can persevere?
***
One sunny morning in the south of France, I broke all the rules I had learned about strangers, and cars, and danger. From the side of the road, my thumb pointed up to the sky in the universal gesture. I was with a friend, the woman from the hostel who drew. Two was better than one, if it came to that. Although it was February, the sun beat down on our exposed forearms, which we had slathered in sunscreen that morning. Two boys at a nearby bus stop, reeking of weed, asked if we had a lighter. We didn’t. A car slowed, stopped, asked where we were going. The son in the passenger seat spoke softly, eyes darting to the backseat, said he wasn’t sure if there was enough room for both of us. He could not make up his mind, so we said thanks anyway, someone else will stop. Finally, the son found his words in a nervous rush: “I’ll take you if you suck me.” My friend said no: not loudly, but defiantly. The car’s back tires kicked up gravel as he sped away, as if he had been preparing to escape all along, empty car seat still in the back. Was it meant to hold a son?
In Bogota on a layover, I was lost, a foreigner in an airport in a country whose language I did not speak. Somebody’s son, wearing a suit with an employee badge clipped to the chest pocket, approached me to ask if I needed help finding my gate, and I said yes. As we walked, he asked about my travels, told me about his wife and kids waiting for him at home. Right after he had directed me to my terminal, just before I entered the security line, he asked me for a kiss, please. I said no, adios, and somebody’s son watched my back grow smaller in the distance. I imagined him going home to a hot meal and a honey, how was work? I imagined how he would raise his sons, if they would grow up to have the audacity of their father. I don’t—can’t—imagine him as the father of daughters. A lineage of son to father traces back to the first time somebody’s son touched a body he shouldn’t have—grabbing at something he knew didn’t belong to him, but that he wanted nonetheless.
***
And still, I continue to move through this world in which my mother and grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought to carve out space for me, this world that echoes with the refrains of what we tell our sons. People tell me I am brave, then they ask me if I am afraid. Beneath my façade, of course I am. Not of the rumbling planes or foreign words or unfamiliar streets, but of the sons who inhabit them. And yet from beneath me, there is strength. A slight push raises me upward: the weight of the women before me. Their bodies have been squeezed and grabbed and degraded; they know what it is like to call for help that isn’t coming. Still, they are always with me, their legacy a reminder of how we can set ourselves on fire without burning alive.
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About Author
Laura Santi (she/her) is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared in Business Insider and Literary Namjooning. Having spent the past six years living and traveling abroad, she thrives off solo travel adventures and exploring new places. She can be found on Instagram and Threads @thecandidconnection.