Frankie’s story about family, identity and language

In this short story, Abuela & Me, Frankie explores what it’s like to be non-binary in a family where language and tradition don’t always match your identity. It’s a story about how coming out isn’t just a one-time thing, but something that is discussed again and again – especially with older relatives. Even when words are hard to find or don’t fit, family can still communicate with love and care.

Abuela & Me

To be nonbinary is to come out not once, but every time someone reaches for you with a word that isn’t yours. It is to wait for their favour – me or their syntax. 

And sometimes, the words don’t fit, not by gender, but by tongue. Not just another language, but an older one. I don’t speak hers. But I’ve learned to catch tone, to read the air where words fail. I know the shape of her disappointment, the pitch of her affection. But not the words, not the grammar she brought with her, nor her country.

I wonder what words she heard first, 'I can’t' or maybe 'I won’t'. Either way, she didn’t respond, not in any way I could translate. She stayed quiet, like she was giving the moment space to settle before deciding what it meant. There’s a way older people sometimes treat what they don’t understand. Not with curiosity, not with anger, but with grace. As if difference is a thing to be left undisturbed.

There’s a photo in her bedroom: her, my mother, and me – three bodies arranged in a triangle of resemblance. The same jaw, the same hands. A lineage shaped womb to womb. I’ve come to understand expectation not as law, but by the weight of its pull. I am the point where her bloodline tilts, neither daughter nor son but a third gravity. She could have bound herself to tradition, to the certainty of what came before. But she didn’t clutch to it. That surprised me. 

I had learned to want a confrontation. I wanted her to tell me I’d broken something, so I could take it in my stride, be a good little queer with thick skin and practised understanding. Instead, she gave me nothing to push against, only a quiet that felt much like love. And that felt harder. Harder because I couldn’t be sure whether I was still being seen, or seen differently, or not at all.

But she kept feeding me. Kept calling. Kept setting aside the things I liked without asking if I still liked them. She started praying out loud again. Not just before meals, but sometimes in the morning, standing near a window. She didn’t mention me by name, not directly, but I knew when the prayers were meant for more than just her God to hear. Her phrasing had changed – less specific, more inclusive – as if she was casting a wider net, just in case. As if by expanding the boundaries of who counted, she could still ask for my safety without betraying her faith.

Her words outside of prayer became more careful, more chosen. I noticed how she never used the old terms anymore, not the ones that hurt. And I noticed, too, the ones she still couldn’t let go of. She is the only thread I have to a culture I haven’t yet learnt how to carry. I want to stay near her, even if I remain slightly misseen. 

I’m willing to be a granddaughter in her mind, because I am now a grandchild in her language.

Frankie was the overall Year 9/10 category winner of the 2024 What Matters? Writing Competition .