“Have you gone on any more dates?” Lithie asked, a tease in her eyes. I shot her a look and glanced at Mom.
She made a noise in her throat, rolling her eyes. “Oh, what, like Mom cares?”
“Date?” my mom asked. “You’re dating?”
“Shay made a profile on adating app,” Lithie said, eyes glimmering with something sharp. “You should be so proud.”
“Oh good!” My mom clapped her hands together. “Just wait until you get fisted for the first time,” she said, returning to her tarot.
“What the absolute fuck, Mom?”
“I’m kidding, honey. That takes time to work up to. Trust me. My first time, I really needed to stretch the?—”
“La la la la la!” I put my fingers in my ears. “I’m not hearing my mother tell me about getting fisted.”
Mom sighed and turned her brown eyes to me, still shuffling cards. “I don’t know where you get your prudish nature from. Is it me?”
“You?” My sister placed a hand to her chest in faux shock. “Never.”
My mother was a trippy, dichotomous combination of sex and structure—a corporate lawyer and sex shadow worker. On the side, she helped people access the “shadow” side of sex, understand what their kinks meant and the traumas they came from, and how not to feel shame.
So, for us, sex was never shamed and always encouraged—safely.
Mom shot Lithie a look. “Your sister doesn’t suffer from the same affliction.”
“It’s not anafflictionto be monogamous,” I said.
She went back to the cards. “My wish for you is to have many lovers.”
Most mothers gave their daughters the not-before-marriage talk. But at thirteen, my mother sat me down and handed me my first vibrator.Because you should never rely on someone else for your own pleasure,she’d said.
“It’s my fault,” she continued. “I let you go to that Catholic school.”
“It waspreschool, and only four months when I was three.”
“Long enough to imprint on my little girl that her body belongs to someone else.” She huffed. “Complete erasure of Asherah, of the female divine in favor of patriarchy, a religion and world centered on man?—”
We both groaned.
We’d heard this rant many times before. It was impossible not to when it was my namesake.
“The idea that man is the creator.” My mother took a deep breath, sifting through the tarot. “With what womb did he create?”
Lithie and I shared a look.
“They don’t need one,” Lithie said. “They had a rib or something.”
“Lilith,” my mother said, shooting my sister a look.
My mother’s witchy, spiritual nature lived in my and my sister’s names. Lithie was named for Lilith. While modern scripture marks Lilith as some kind of demon or succubus, my mother was certain to remind us that Lilith’s only sin was refusing to submit to a man.
“If it’s truly what you want…” my mom said.
“It is?—”
“But”—she cut me off—“I worry you’ve internalized the lie that you lose value when deeming your body yourown.” Before I could respond, my mom pulled out a card, turning to me. “For you.”
She placed a black-and-white card with a drawing in silver foil, a building being struck by lightning. Burning and crumbling.
