Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

Content Warning: This Symbols and Motifs section includes references to the sexual assault of children and physical abuse.

The most significant inheritance that Allison received from her mother on Ruth’s death includes photographs that symbolize Allison’s relationship to her family, particularly the women in her family. Allison incorporates these photos in the memoir and uses them to deepen her representation of women in her family and herself as something more than the stereotypical Southern woman (an unloved, unbeautiful source of labor and children). For example, Allison includes photos of her mother as a traditionally beautiful and happy adolescent, as a stylishly dressed young woman, as a smiling young mother and (eventually) as the buttoned-up, sometimes dour Gibson family matriarch. By showing her mother at these different ages, Allison reinforces the notion that Southern women evolve—rather than being frozen in the past and incapable of being agents in their own lives—no matter how limited their choices due to economic inequality.

In addition, Allison uses photos to highlight gaps and silences in the stories that the Gibson family members told about themselves. Ruth, for example, was unable or unwilling to provide the names of family members, likely because some trauma or scandal was attached to the people in the photos. Other photos are of Allison and her siblings, and these happy photos contrast with the content of the text—accounts of severe abuse—around them. The contrast between the photos and the narrative reinforces Allison’s effort to use multiple forms of storytelling to break the silence around the issue of sexual abuse in her family and community.

Finally, Allison uses photos to show the evolution of her gender identity. In photos of herself as a young girl, she wears traditionally feminine clothing. The clothes in these photos, presumably given to her by her mother, reveal the expectation for Allison to present as traditionally feminine. In one of the few photos of Allison as an adolescent, she’s dressed in clothes in keeping with her identity during the years when she was one of those “smart, smart-mouthed tomboys” (45) who infuriated her controlling, violent stepfather. Allison then includes two photos of herself holding guns, and these photos represent the stage in her life when she acknowledged the power of her anger at her stepfather’s abuse in shaping her sense of herself as a woman.

Several pages later, Allison includes a photo of herself sitting while a person stands behind her. Allison is unsmiling in this photo and wears a dark leather jacket, while the figure behind her wears soft, light pants and no top, leaving her breasts exposed. The contrast in these photos in color and draping reflect Allison’s guardedness as a young woman who’s still so damaged that she can’t afford vulnerability even in her romantic relationships with women. During this unhappy period, Allison had a series of volatile relationships and ultimately decided to be single until she got a grip on what kind of woman she wanted to be.

The later photos in the memoir show Allison having at last come into her own through personal happiness and living in community with people who accept her as a lesbian woman. Page 70, for example, includes a photo of Allison smiling as she participates in a Pride parade. The last photo in the memoir is of Allison, her wife, her son, and her dog. This picture of cozy domesticity is Allison’s final representation of how she understands herself—as a lesbian woman, a wife, and a mother who is capable of happiness that Ruth Gibson never managed to achieve because of the conditions of her life.