I lay amongst the stones

by Cheryl Skory Suma

TW: Rape

Across our lifetime, each of us will have countless firsts. Special milestones that we collect to recollect. First word, first day of school, first lost tooth, first ride on a bike without training wheels, first best friend, first betrayal by a best friend, first kiss, first fight, first apartment, first love, first time.

Sadly, my first time was not sought nor consensual. It buried me whole, an avalanche tumbling over and through me until I became lost beneath the wreckage.

*

Children often have an affinity for collecting things. As a small child, I gathered water-polished stones. Black, white, amber, green, speckled, ocean blue; as long as they were smooth, I would pick them up, take them home, and place them in the bowl of my long-deceased fish. A collection of once jagged, miss-matched things, now smooth, their edges erased until they could never fully touch one another — my unbreakable eggs, warily leaving spaces between themselves and those around them. Spaces that would never be filled.

*

My mother grew up on a farm in northern Ontario, just a few miles walk from the single intersection that marks the township of Clute, which is a bit north of Cochrane (a more-than-one intersection town, but only by a few). Although she fled to the south for nursing school and the city’s promise of new opportunities when she was seventeen, she loved to return to the quiet and vast wilderness of her childhood. When I was a child, my parents took my brother and me camping up north every summer.

Along the way, we would pass towers of stone placed roadside or set upon a protruding rock. I marveled at those stones, long ago polished smooth by the riverbed, now stacked precariously, one upon the next. I asked my mother who had balanced them and why.

“It’s called a cairn. It can be used to mark a trail or simply to let us know that someone was here. For many, its construction represents grace or spirituality.”

At seven, I couldn’t see the grace. For me, these precarious towers that dared to defy gravity seemed to taunt that all was not as it seems, suggesting that the world could come crashing down at any moment. I marveled at their defiance while simultaneously fearing for their ultimate demise.

*

From a very young age, my parents taught me to find pleasure in work: the value of persistence, the joy of accomplishment, and the satisfaction that arises from a focused drive toward a purpose beyond your immediate desires. I also learned to enjoy the hunt — the promise offered by a goal within reach.

At twelve, my parents swapped our camping trip for a tropical vacation. I spent hours walking alone on the beach after the tide had gone out, searching for the perfect polished stone. I wanted to find a stone similar to those I had collected at the lake on our past camping trips — a smooth gem that would be kinder in my hand than the broken shells that glimmered with false promise amongst this foreign sea’s waves.

Years later, as a young adult entering the dating world, I viewed taking a chance on a new relationship as akin to my polished stones — born from the ruins of previous flawed encounters, new love makes it possible to forgive and forget. It permits you to let go of all the others you released back to the sea, knowing the tide will eventually erase their edges.

*

The evening of my first time, I was calm. We’d only been on a few dates, so I didn’t know him well, but I wasn’t afraid. There was no sign, no clue of what was to come. I wish I could claim that I’d picked up on something, that my women’s intuition had led to my decision to move on, but that simply wasn’t true. I just didn’t feel at home with him, so it was time to go.

After I finished explaining my reason for ending our relationship, he put his hand on my arm — not in an adoring way, in a stopping-you-leaving way.

“You don’t need to go,” he spewed before smiling through me as he locked the front door. His words left ashen smoke trails to drift on the air between us, an invisible threat now made visible, too thick to take in. I couldn’t breathe in the space it left behind. Moments later, when he snarled, “Don’t play innocent,” I still couldn’t gather up his words — they were heavier than I could carry.

He was deaf to my fear. At that moment, in that now, he became a stranger. He pinned me down, his hands tore to reveal.

Consumed by his needs, he would become a thief. My first time was here.

*

Since the day he took what was not offered, my perspective changed. To survive, I chose to lay amongst the stones. I buried myself beneath their history, became one lost within the cracks. For a long time, there was no more searching for the one — years would go by before I could manage to just let myself be found. My defiant cairn had toppled, after all. It would take time, too much time, before I could rebuild it alone.

*

Eventually, I did heal. Time can be an adroit gal; she loves to repurpose the past. I discovered an unexpected gift — by offering compassion, support, and a sympathetic ear to other abuse survivors, I was able to hear my own inner voice when she screamed. This allowed me to find my center again, to quiet the trauma. To trust again. So, now, I watch and listen. Occasionally, I pick up on the miss-matched edges another woman has buried herself with — the signs that something terrible has happened to her, something that should never have happened.

To all my scarred sisters, my brave stone carriers — you’re not alone with that weight you carry. Pass someone a stone.

Previously published in Glassworks Magazine’s Issue 24, spring 2022.

The kids are all right

Repairing lost time