One of the most radical ideas in Bones and Ash is that of a mutually nurturing exchange. Zollar builds on the ideas of nurture and care by releasing them from their usual location in the traditional family, which can often be an oppressive institution for women. Thus, she expands on Gomez's narrative and resists the increasing sociopolitical emphasis on the patrilineal family to portray an alternatively defined family in which the members do not have to fit into societally-fixed roles: mother, daughter, or wife. Yet, the household of Gilda, a "Creole," and Bird, who was brought over from the Philippines, is full of warmth, nurture, and healing possibilities. It becomes a "home" for two orphaned, homeless girls who are not so much "mothered" in traditional terms by the two lovers as they are guided and cared for by them. Care and nurture persist in the way the vampires "enter" the bodies of people suffering pain. Though they go inside the bodies of these people to draw out pain and leave behind comfort, they regard forced entry as violent and abhorrent. The movement used in such scenes is extremely gentle and sensual; it issues from deep within the psychosomatic complex. For this is not a matter of acting or role-playing only. In this context--which resonates with memories of countless female bodies that have wasted away from violence done to them--the artifice of performance is necessarily transformed with the power of conviction. For Zollar, who shows that the bodies of women, certainly of African-American women, are valuable and worth caring for, this is sacred territory and must be approached with sensitivity and sincerity: any pretense at approximating the desired effect is taboo.