When We Were Outlaws

by Jeanne Cordova

  My jade shirt was splayed over the avocado beanbag. I put it on, taking time to neatly tuck it under my belt. Then I walked through the kitchen, past Rachel and out the front door.

  Chapter 30

  The Rage of All Butches

  [Los Angeles]

  “A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion.” —Radicalesbians NYC, 1970

  December 31st, 1975

  And yet, I couldn’t leave Rachel.

  As fall became winter, her words and actions increased in contradiction. She and I saw less and less of each other, but she insisted that her feelings for me remained the same, that she loved me “more than the storybooks speak of love.” And it was her words I listened to, returning each time to Effie Street where we sat on the back porch, held each other for hours and stared into the palm-cordoned horizon trying to find our way back to each other.

  As her inconsistencies grew, so did my brooding and desperation. A part of me was dying, although the living part found me parked at Effie Street writing her poems and prayers. As Thanksgiving came and went I began to accept that being non-monogamous was not Rachel’s way of stabilizing our relationship, it was her way of leaving me. No matter how tender my lovemaking, how desperate my words, nothing reopened her heart. Mine grew more bitter. And I began to hate her as fully as I loved her.

  It was finally New Year’s Eve, and I was seeing 1975 out as I had lived it, working for the movement. Our annual fundraising dance tonight at the Woman’s Building was critical to the financial survival of The Lesbian Tide. L.A.’s feminist art institute, the building itself, was the marvel of the night. It had recently moved from the downtown ghetto on South Grandview to the uptown ghetto area of North Spring Street and a former three-story warehouse built in the 1920’s by the Standard Oil Company. The night that Angela Davis had spoken had been one of many nights that the old building had been too small and too crowded to house the rapidly growing feminist movement. They’d needed more space.

  The new Woman’s Building was run by the Feminist Studio Workshop, an art school founded by artist Judy Chicago, art historian Arlene Raven and graphic designer Sheila de Bretteville. Once more the FSW hoped the building would continue to be the center of women’s culture in Los Angeles. They didn’t have the money to pay carpenters and painters to gut the massive structure and turn it into necessary offices, art galleries, and theater rooms, so the school told their students that the renovation was part of their education. Each pounded nail, all of the newly plastered walls, and every arc and design were the result of women’s ingenuity and sweat. Just as our personal lives were the raw materials of our politics, the process of reclamation was as important as the product. This was the feminist way. Over the summer, hundreds of feminists and dykes had knocked down walls, nailed sheet rock, and laid new floors into the former warehouse.

  By Christmas the new building was a happening hub. The third floor had been completely denuded of interior walls to make a space for large gatherings and dances. Tonight I was ecstatic to see it densely crowded with upwards of five hundred women. The Tide was dependent on the proceeds from this benefit to pay the printer during months when our meager advertising and subscription money ran short. We had no money for a band, so we relied on disco tapes for non-stop dance music throughout the night. Despite the high cover charge of three dollars per dyke, and fifty cents per beer or soda, no one was complaining. They were all Tide readers. They all wanted their paper.

  Leaning against one of the dozen cement pillars which held up the ceiling, I wondered if I’d ever get to go to a lesbian event and not be responsible for something, or everything, about it. Tonight I’d assigned myself to stay close to the bar, and quarterback the shift changes and restock the fast dwindling supplies of soda and beer. It was 11:45 and the crowd of about four hundred was playfully tipsy.

  “Did you wear that hat for me?” The voice was slurred and provocative as Rachel appeared before me.

  Instinctively, I reached to my head, unsure what Rachel was talking about. Then I realized I’d worn the flat brimmed, Australian leather hat that I’d had on the day we’d met. “No, I didn’t wear it for you,” I retorted, my tone surly. What right did she have to approach me so intimately? It had been weeks since we’d been together. “I wear it every winter.”

  Rachel swirled and twirled around me, dancing playfully, and I could tell she was too lit to hear a word I’d said. “I’ve always loved that hat on you,” she drawled.

  I’d spent the last hour wretchedly watching Rachel arrive and dance with Jacki. Rachel’s flat-faced carpenter wasn’t even butch enough to cut off her hippie pigtail, I noted, heartbroken that Rachel and I were not welcoming in the New Year together. I’d tried to look away and treat the two of them as strangers. But now Rachel had left Jacki and was preening in front of me.

  “Since it’s only my hat you love,” I said, “here, take it.” I lowered my head and Rachel snatched the hat and placed it on her own head. The brown leather capped her translucent white face, and I looked down to see a form-fitting black V-neck sweater frame her low neckline. She was giving me that bewitching, come hither smile I knew so well.

  “Dance with me,” she said, and took my hand, pulling me onto the floor.

  “Stop torturing me, leave me alone,” I countered, but allowed her to drag me with her.

  She brought her body next to mine and wrapped both arms around my neck. Her hair brushed against my cheek as my body responded automatically, losing its center of gravity as it poured into hers. As we moved around the room time and space became other people’s reality, as it always did with Rachel.

  “Perfect fit,” she murmured, tucking her head into my shoulder. “And you know damn well that I love every part of you, not just your hat!” She played with my fingers, kneading each tip like the edges of raw piecrust. The roughness of her chef-worn calloused palms made my belly tighten.

  “Why does our chemistry never die?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, babe,” she sighed. “You’re the only one I’ve ever felt this with.” She reached up and began to track my lips with her forefinger. “Whenever I see your face I want to hold it and have you hold me. It doesn’t make sense to me how there can be so much love and yet we are not together.”

  I brushed her fingers off my mouth. “What are you doing, Rachel?”

  “I know I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Then why are you?”

  The glittering strobe ball lit our faces as if only for each other.

  “It’s midnight,” Rachel replied. “I had to be with you. Jacki is walking her ex-lover out to her car.”

  “Just a quickie then?” I said, acidly. In the distance I heard someone begin the New Year’s countdown.

  “I came so you could kiss me,” Rachel confessed.

  Hoping desperately for some kind of new beginning, I leaned down and kissed her long and hard, my mind going back to the GCSC parking lot, back where we’d begun. My hand fought with her curls as I pressed her lips harder against my own. I felt the familiar shift of weight as her knees buckled. Rocking in each other’s arms, we rested with each other, washing away the hurtful months of distance and dissonance. Gradually, I began to feel whole again, resurrected and restored. She burrowed deeper between my shoulders. Sensing something odd, I looked up and saw other couples staring. Like the first time, only rougher, we’d kissed in front of the entire L.A. lesbian community. Everyone knew that Córdova and Rachel were coming back together, and that Rachel belonged to me.

  A jostle behind me made my backbone stiffen. “Jacki is coming back,” I spoke urgently, clasping Rachel’s waist. “Stay with me!”

  Her eyes widened as she stood on tiptoe looking over my shoulder. Terror filled them. A hand roughly grasped my shoulder and I knew it wasn’t kind. It pulled me backwards away from Rachel. I heard her gasp, “I can’t,” as she tore herself out of my arms.

  My body twisted free from the foreign arm, and I went into a
crouch and spun around to face the threat. Dad was coming toward me with his belt. But it was Jacki who stood there, momentarily shocked by my spring into animal defense mode.

  I snarled at her, “You gotta stop pushing me around, Jacki. Just because you’re bigger than most women, you can’t push me around—not with your truck or your body!”

  Two weeks ago, Jacki and I had accidentally met at the mouth to the Westside Women’s Center’s driveway. In her truck, she’d butted me aside, demanding right of way. I’d felt humiliated.

  Now she crouched too, and her stance widened. “I didn’t push you off the road,” Jacki shot back, her black eyes narrowed. “You got in my way!” She stepped toward me, both fists clenched.

  “And now you’re in my way,” I growled, filled with fury.

  Jacki crowded closer. Suddenly, my body passed into another state. I was back in my West Covina bedroom, cornered by my father waving his belt. And just as suddenly, I felt my mind alter. I felt no fear. My body was impregnable, my mind sharp and clear.

  I lunged forward, a fraction before she did.

  Out of nowhere, Robin jumped into the crevice of space between us, her voice shrill, “No fighting! You can’t hit me!”

  The sight of Robin, the world’s most faggy excuse for a butch, standing there, hands above her head, fingers wiggling madly as though she were going to be shot at the OK Corral, brought me up short. How could I slug Jacki with my best friend clowning between us?

  The group of women, who’d formed a ragged ring around us, began laughing. Robin was laying on the slapstick heavily. She tiptoed around Jacki and then me as though we were her props in a piece of performance art. Rachel’s other butch and I gaped at each other, two gladiators too adrenalin-hyped to know that they’d been saved.

  And now, BeJo appeared, her firm arms taking hold of my shoulders and leading me toward the bar. “We’re out of sodas and beer, honey,” she commanded. “You have to make a run for more. Now!”

  Drowning myself, and the whole lesbian community, with a new load of cold beer, I lost the last hour of the dance, and I lost Rachel. It was time to pack up. BeJo and I were in back of the bar, sorting the empty beer cans from the full ones that we’d take back for a refund. BeJo passed me with a trolley of cases heading for the stairs, and she called back, “Don’t forget your hat!”

  I reached to my head. My hat! Rachel had taken it. It was probably at Jacki’s house right now. Jacki’s face, a blackness surrounding it, resurfaced in my mind. That numb-nut knew it was mine, that it was my signature Córdova hat. What had she said when she saw Rachel with it? In my mind’s eye, I saw Jacki fling my hat into a trashcan in her house when Rachel wasn’t looking. Or she was secretly planning to wake up in the middle of the night, throw it into the fireplace and burn it? Wobbling with rage, I reached out to steady myself against the bar counter. Rachel’s resurfacing had led me to drink far more than my usual two beers. I was so drunk I could see my hat curling in flames, the once proud crown caving in upon a melting brim. I couldn’t let her destroy the only thing that Rachel and I still shared.

  A point of light gleamed from the shadowed shelves beneath the bar counter, catching my eye. I stepped forward and bent over. It was a steak knife from BeJo’s kitchen. She must have brought it to open the cases of Coke and beer. I held it up. The weapon glinted powerfully in the dimmed third floor loft, its worn wood handle a “perfect fit,” as Rachel would say, in my palm.

  I thought of Rachel preening in my hat, but she was in Jacki’s arms—in Jacki’s bed. Rachel, who loved to fuck when she was drunk, just like tonight. Only tonight, she’d fuck Jacki. The thought filled me with a rage I’d never felt before.

  I darted past BeJo on the stairs, tore out of the Woman’s Building, yelling to her, “I gotta find my hat!”

  And I knew exactly where to go to get Córdova’s hat. I knew where Jacki lived. Driving west on the 10 Freeway, I got off at the last exit before the ocean, took a sharp right on Olympic, and drove into the residential darkness. There it was. A soggy melon-colored house with a basketball hoop on the garage. Turning into the driveway, I cut my lights and parked in back of Jacki’s sorry green-chipped pickup. I should just ram it, I thought. That’d tell her I was here. But it wouldn’t get my hat back. Wouldn’t get Rachel back. I was determined to get both.

  The moon was full and strong, the marine layer was not going to come in tonight to shroud my access. Softly, I closed Lionheart’s driver’s door and strode quickly toward the front porch, my chest heaving, and my arms swinging loosely. Jacki was bigger and outweighed me by twenty pounds, but I was faster and lighter on my feet. I’d just knock on the front door and tell her to get out of my way.

  I paused, wondering, should I knock? What if no one heard me? What if they were both sleeping? The bedroom had to be at the back of the house away from the street. I should try to see if Rachel was in there with Jacki. Maybe Jacki had dropped her off at Effie. I snuck around the front bushes, down the side of the house, opened the gate to the back yard. Crouched down, I made my way to the back door.

  Peeking through its screened window, I saw a long hallway that ran from the front of the house to the back. The bedroom had to be to the right. But a tall, thick hedge rose in front of me, blocking access to the bedroom window. No problem, I’d climb right through it. Thorns wouldn’t stop me tonight. My senses were acute. I was invulnerable, coarsely alive.

  An almost full moon edged over the crown of the house. A sliver of light fell on my hand. Good, I still had the knife. I didn’t remember driving with it. Studying it now, I realized it wasn’t a steak knife. It was slightly longer, with a serrated edge that had wide scallops. The blade looked firm and cold, devoid of feeling. I breathed heavily, wishing that I could feel as dead as the knife.

  Suddenly, the thought of plunging a knife into a body composed of real flesh felt nauseatingly abhorrent. I couldn’t even handle the sight of Joe Tomassi’s blood. Bile poured into my windpipe and I gripped my stomach and doubled over. Gratefully, my retch was silent. Nothing came out.

  Still, the knife looked ferocious enough to plant the fear of God in Jacki—make her give me my hat back. My courage returned. I wasn’t afraid of her—or anyone. She had pushed me around for the last time. When I’d left my father’s house, I vowed that I’d never let anyone else back me into a corner for the rest of my life. No one would ever humiliate me like that.

  The knife glimmered as I held it upwards in my fist, poised to cut the bedroom window screen. Still low to the ground, I listened intently for any sound coming from the supposed bedroom. Nothing. Did I really want to crawl through the window, into the bedroom and see Rachel being held by someone else? No way. And somehow breaking in felt…too low-life and cheap; I might as well just knock.

  I retraced my steps to the back door. It was old, its dark blue paint peeling off. A rusted screen protected a window set into it at chest height. The whole structure was frayed and warped by the battering ocean mist. It would break easily against my shoulder.

  I kicked the door hard with the toe of my boot.

  “Rachel!” I cupped my mouth and shouted through the screened window. “Rachel, it’s me. Come out and talk!”

  The house was silent. What if Jacki and my lover were out at an all-night restaurant? What if Rachel wasn’t here at all? I pressed my face against the window screen trying to peer in. My breath released a hot cloud. “Rachel! Are you in there?”

  Overhead, a naked porch light bulb snapped on. I snapped to attention, sucking in my gut and jutting out my chin, like Dad had drilled into us. My backbone went rigid; I was centered and primed, ready for Jacki. This time she wouldn’t push me aside.

  Through the rust pocked window screen I saw Jacki’s face. And she saw mine.

  “If you come out here I’ll take you apart,” I shouted in a cold quiet tone. I brought my fist up to where she could see the knife in my hand. “Go get Rachel!” I commanded.

  Jacki’s flat face appeared to sp
asm. Her dark brows rose halfway up her forehead. Her eyeballs fixated on the knife and she whitened with fear. A hoarse scream began in her throat but ended with a whimpering, “Córdova!”

  In the dull yellow light, she jumped backwards, mumbling, “Oh my God!”

  Then, she disappeared.

  Once more, I pressed my face against the screen. Should I cut a hole in it? Wasn’t that damaging personal property? Maybe Rachel hadn’t heard me. Perhaps she too had been unnerved by our New Year’s kiss and had gone to Effie or was sleeping somewhere else in the house like a sofa in the living room. How could she get into someone else’s bed after that kiss?

  “Rachel?” I shouted again, ensuring I could be heard throughout the house. “Talk to me! Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

  Deep in the hallway, at the front end of the house, another light went on. I waited.

  A shape in a blur of pink was coming down the hall. Rachel’s face appeared through the screen. She saw me and opened the slider window. Her eyes were small and red. She’d been crying. Seeing her, my heart melted and I reached out to touch her cheek. The screen blocked my fingers. “Why are you crying?” I asked.

  “Jacki and I had a big fight.” She paused, her forehead pressed against the filthy screen, as she whispered, “I miss you, my love.” Her voice was sad and broken. “But what are you doing here?” she added.

  I brought both hands to the screen forming a private circle to comfort her.

  “Good Lord! Is that a knife?” Rachel asked, horrified.

  I looked. The knife was clutched in my fist. I felt foolish and embarrassed. “Don’t know why I brought it,” I mumbled. “Guess I wanted to scare Jacki into letting me talk to you.”

  “That was really stupid, darling,” Rachel shook her head in wonder.