STAY

By Sarah Leamy

STAY is a hybrid visual story of a British tomboy & clown negotiating place/identity, trauma/neurodiversity, friendship/play, sexuality, and violence. Mixing illustration, photography, and narrative non-fiction, this experimental work transcends the binary, bravely imagining a world that makes space for all of us. What happens when an awkward and shy tomboy doesn't always feel safe at home or at school? Leamy has fantasies of another life—and at 18 she finally takes flight. She leaves her small town to study languages and migration patterns in London before setting out with a rucksack, teddy bear (John), and juggling toys to hitch across Europe and the States. Leamy begins to wonder: Will she ever find her people, her place, her purpose? Or will each new home be forever as inconsistently hospitable as the first?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madville Publishing
• Release date: May 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781956440447

Sarah Leamy

Sarah Leamy is a gender-queer writer, editor, and non-traditional academic, currently living on the road. She is the author of When No One's Looking (2011), Lucky Shot (2012), Lucky Find (2014), Van Life (2016), Hidden (2021), and G'Dog (2022). http://www.sarahleamy.com/

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Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Leamy

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

Requests for permission to reprint or reuse material from this work should be sent to:

Permissions

Madville Publishing

PO Box 358

Lake Dallas, TX 75065

All photos and drawings by Sarah Leamy

ISBN: 978-1-956440-43-0 paperback

978-1-956440-44-7 ebook

Library of Congress Control Number: [pending]

With thanks to family, friends, writers, readers and especially to all at the Corporeal Writing Center who are such a force of creative nurturing.

Prologue: A Decade of Denial

What do you do if the neighbor’s dogs chase you back into your old Toyota truck, claws scratching at the windows while your own dogs are trapped safe within their yard, unable to protect you—not that you’d want them to—not with these dogs, a pack of six or seven inbred pit bulls, raised on too little food and abundant violence, they’re full of fight to survive and that means they chased you at your gate, and you’re unable to get home, it’s only yards away, but you can’t get out, not now, not while they’re there, teeth bared at windshield, nails on glass, barking snarling scratching, trying to get to you and your dogs howl, Harold, an older Husky/Collie mix, and Rosie, a mini-Akita, both stuck on the other side of the fence, wanting to help and you cry, no, please no, don’t fight these dogs, no, they’ll kill you.

Contents

Prologue: A Decade of Denial

Part I: Backwards

Part II: Towards

Part III: Away

Part IV: Both

Part V: A Coda of Sorts

Further Readings

Acknowledgments

About the Author

I

Backwards

When are you coming home?

I don’t know. I’m scared.

You should be, and my brother put down the phone.

My mum lay in intensive care and I didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t know where to call home

and to be honest, I still don’t, because what happens if as a kid or as an adult you’ve rarely felt safe?¹

Origin Stories #1

I was not funny.

No, I was serious, shy and a tomboy, one who was bullied or ignored all through middle and high school in small town England. I read the Famous Five, imagining myself as George. I wandered my gran’s farm with her retriever, Jesse. Mum and I used to talk about the books we’d read while eating baked beans on toast, sitting at the wooden table under the kitchen clock.

On Tuesdays at six, Dad and I sat in the two armchairs, cats on our laps, munching on apples as we watched Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd.

My formative years were silent.

I’m often asked if I get homesick, do I go back to England?

In the beginning was Bromsgrove and living with my parents.

•I open the fridge door and Mum asks, are you looking for something? I put the kettle on, Dad says, are you making a drink?

•I do my laundry, Mum asks, do you know how?

•I walk in with a shopping bag of groceries, Dad says, what have you got there?

•I open the front door, they both ask, where are you going now?

I returned to Worcestershire for Christmas 2003.

After staying for a few days, I stumbled downstairs in the chilly brick farmhouse for a mug of something warming to start the day.

In the kitchen sat Mum in her thick maroon woolen housecoat. Without glancing up, she asked, Don’t you have a hairbrush?

Time backtracked to my awkward teens, standing in front of her with a hand stuck in scruffy short hair but this time, at thirty-six, I muttered, yes, do you need to borrow it?

Mum put on her thick glasses to peer at me, halfway down the doorway’s step. Silence but for the ticking clock. I offered, or would you like a mug of tea?

Mum half-smiled, saying, No thanks, I wouldn’t want to put you to all that trouble; I’ll have half a cup instead.

I put the kettle on and sat down, my own grin hidden and passed her the shortbread.

Speak Up #11

I don’t talk about how brains are wired one way and my rational mind knows I’m not trapped, caught in the corner of the room on my bed, stuck, trapped, terrified, teddy bear lost in the sheets, cats hiding underneath, with my mum screaming and yelling and shaking me so hard that my dad has a heart attack, unable to protect me, incapable of stopping her rage at this teenager who’d been busted for stealing from the supermarket, chocolate, nothing much, too much, how could I, the shame, the disgrace on the family she screeches, a wave of noise and motion that pins me in place and I can’t escape, can’t leave, can’t breathe, and then she screams that I’m responsible for the doctor’s call, the threat of losing dad, and it’s true, it was my fault, and confused I don’t talk about how my dad told me decades later that he’d faked that pain to save me.

I’m scared of stairs.

Vermont, 2017-18

Starting Over

In New Mexico, I’d gone as far as I could as a writer on my own: Wide open landscapes and limited writing opportunities. And as much my friends had kept me company, chatting and laughing and drinking beer over campfires on the weekends, it wasn’t enough. I’d even ignored the stress of living with the threat of the neighbor’s dogs attacking us and focused instead on new beginnings. I hadn’t noticed the pattern of leaving home because of bullies, real and imagined. Bromsgrove. London. Ojo Caliente. And now again. If I’d wondered why I always had to move after a year or two, even though I’d come back