Week 6 Story Lab: Biography

Personal image of my brother Jackson, me, and my boyfriend, Jake. (In order left to right)

Hot Sauce

when I was eight years old, I created new daily plot to kill my four-year-old sister

I locked her outside in the “too scary” dark

I rolled her down the driveway in my “too big” rollerblades

I left her hanging at the mercy of the “too tall” monkey bars

I always knew my little sister was different,

shit, for a solid month of her four-year-old life the only word she would utter was “hot sauce”

thus, earning her the appropriate nickname

Hot Sauce

it was not until eighth grade that I realized just how “weird” that kid was

acting out in class, being sent home from school, never felt herself

my senior year of high school, Hot Sauces’ freshman year

we had a class together, physical science

I noticed that the name “Jackson” made a reoccurring appearance across her notebooks

The name scrawled in loving calligraphy obsessively across her lab journal

she must have had a crush

“who is Jackson?”

I shouted at the top of my lungs, in perfect embarrassing big sister fashion

“no one”

“just a pretty name”

a few short months later, a confession arose in the cosmetics section at Walmart

“I need to tell you something…”

“I don’t feel that I am a girl…”

“this body does not feel like mine…”

those words hit me like a water balloon that wasn’t filled quite enough

rather than bursting it slaps the skin, falls to ground

in that moment I realized Jackson was a crush, sort of

someone untouchable, unobtainable, someone that Hot Sauce has longed for

I knew that when my brother said that Jackson was “no one”

he was right, this world made “Jackson” no one

I have been an ally as long as I could remember

but no amount of ally training prepared me for a transgender brother

how do I let him fight his own battles while looking out for him?

how do I advocate without infantilizing?

how do I sleep at night when I know that nearly half of all transgender teens will attempt suicide at some point in their life?

how do I protect him from the family member who tells him that he would be much prettier if he grew his hair out, if he quit wearing such boyish clothes?

how do I stop the bigots?

How do I stop my manager who I overheard say “oh, Mikayla has a shim for a sister”

how am I supposed to stop my little brother from hating his body more and more every day?

how do I stop the symptoms of female puberty?

what do I do when my brother has to change his pronouns around certain groups, certain family members for his own safety?

It’s been four years since my brother came out as transgender

and every gift addressed to a dead name is a fresh whip across his scarred back

at home, we still call him Hot Sauce

every time there is a substitute at school, the roll call still sounds like a car crash in slow motion

every “excuse me, miss” is the dodgeball in gym class that keeps finding its way to him

although I have made my mistakes

and admittedly at times been a bad ally

I have been fighting for my brother every day for the last four years

when we were kids, I plotted everyday to kill my little sister

but today

I am doing everything in my power to keep my brother alive

Authors Note:

       When I think about the bravest and most interesting person, I think about my brother, Jackson. He came out as Transgender his freshman year of high school, and seeing how he has grown from his journey is absolutely amazing, and I am so glad I got the chance to be there for it. I wrote this narrative style poem last semester, and I decided that I wanted a place to showcase it. I am unsure if this is technically within the rules, but I figured that this piece needed to be shown off, for Jackson's sake. I wish that I had more to say about this piece, but I hope that it just speaks for itself. Enjoy!