When We Were Outlaws

by Jeanne Cordova

  My insides relaxed. Rachel was with me now. My eyes fell to the small cleft in her chin and down further to the hollow in her neck. She was wearing my jade heart. Her pink nightgown that I knew so well soothed me to be close to it once more.

  She opened the door a crack, saying, “Here, give me that thing.”

  I slipped the knife into the opening between us, wanting to pull her through it too.

  “I can’t believe you drove out here with a weapon!” Rachel’s voice filled my senses. “What were you thinking?”

  I grinned for no particular reason. I didn’t mind Rachel scolding me. “I came from the dance to get my hat; you forgot to give it back to me.”

  “You came for your hat?” Her blue eyes widened.

  “Yes, and to collect you too,” I explained. “I had to go and get supplies, and when I came back you were gone. I know you want to be with me tonight. You said so. It’s New Year’s Eve.”

  “Do you know what time it is, babe?”

  I sighed and leaned against the rickety door. Talking to each other in the dark felt like old times. “I know it’s late, so just go pack your things and come with me. We can go out to breakfast and then home to Effie.”

  Rachel looked over her shoulder toward the bedroom door into which Jacki had darted. She seemed afraid.

  “Open the door, sweetheart,” I coaxed, “I need to hold you. Why did you leave me like that at the dance?”

  “You’ve been drinking, Jeanne.” Rachel’s voice broke and she reached through to take my hand. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. God, I didn’t mean to do that.” She kissed my hand and pushed it back out toward me. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

  The dim porch light bathed my lover’s face in a stunning yellow hue. I’d never seen her look so beautiful, so hauntingly open. The door between us was only a membrane to be pushed aside.

  Jacki’s large frame emerged from the bedroom and began coming toward us. “Get away from that door, Rachel!” she roared. “I called the police. They’re on their way.”

  Jacki was going to take Rachel from me once more. I heaved my shoulder against the door. It flew open. And I stepped in to face her.

  Rachel stood in between us, frantically looking back and forth.

  “Go get my hat and come with me now,” I ordered her calmly.

  Jacki stepped closer. Rachel balked, paralyzed with fear. She whispered to me, “Your hat isn’t here. I stopped and left it at my house. It’s safe. I promise. But it’s not safe for you here…or for me,” she sobbed.

  I couldn’t fathom her inaction. Why wasn’t she coming with me? That’s it! Jacki stood between her and her things. “Never mind packing,” I pleaded and reached to grab her. “Just come home with me.”

  Rachel stepped away from my grasp. “I can’t!” she screamed, looking wildly at me in front of her and Jacki behind her.

  I yelled at Jacki over Rachel’s head, “Back off! You’re scaring her.”

  Jacki stood still, watching Rachel’s small frame shake.

  “Back off,” I screamed again, “or I’ll come in after you!”

  Jacki’s large body retreated. She backed away, to the bedroom.

  I stepped forward and took Rachel in my arms. “You told me if I waited long enough, we’d get back together. You said we just needed time.” My voice tightened. “You said every Wednesday and every weekend. But I think you…you must have lied to me. Why won’t you be with me?”

  Rachel looked at me like a small whipped animal. “I’m afraid of the power between us. I can’t trust my feelings around you. I can’t trust where they will take me.”

  “What does that mean?” My voice came out hoarse and perplexed. “I can be brave enough for both of us. I can knock Jacki down and go get your things.”

  “Oh, please don’t do that, Jeanne,” Rachel whimpered. “You’re frightening me!”

  The moon’s light had darkened behind a growing cloud cover. I heard sirens, piercing background music to the dance of losing Rachel.

  “If you love me.…don’t understand.”

  Rachel had wrapped her arms around her shoulders and was rocking herself. She took a step backward, sobbing, “I can’t handle opening my heart again.”

  “The cops are coming!” Jacki’s soprano trilled from the bowels of the house.

  Rachel’s face turned gray. “Please go, Jeanne. I’ll call you tomorrow from Effie. You can come get your hat. We’ll have breakfast; I’ll make you scrambled eggs, just the two of us. I’ll call you, I promise, at first light.”

  The sirens were louder now, but the tension in my jaw relaxed into a silly grin. Rachel and I would be together for breakfast. She’d promised. I held my watch up to the porch light. “First light is seven o’clock, that’s only a few hours from now, right?”

  Rachel nodded. “I promise,” she said, pushing me back out into the night, closing the door between us.

  I watched her disappear into the blackness.

  Her words echoed in my head. I’d gotten what I came for: a promise to return my hat and be together. I tore back through Jacki’s side gate and jumped into Lionheart. Driven by hope, I sped away from Venice. The dawn would bring Rachel and me together once more.

  Chapter 31

  Return of the Hat

  [Los Angeles]

  January, 1976

  New Year’s morning dawned clear and sharp, but I was too ashamed to open my eyes. Thankfully, BeJo was pulling a holiday shift, so I heard the front door close behind her. The silk sheets were a comfort for once, and I pulled them up over my head. Today they hid me, and a raging hangover headache, from a world I couldn’t face. Was that really me in my memory of last night? How could I have done such a thing? I, who had never felt violence toward a woman before, had gone to another dyke’s house, acting like violence was exactly what I intended. Yes, I’d had fantasies about removing my father from the planet, and I had explored my capacity for political violence, but violence out of jealousy? I must have looked like a crazed nutcase. In one blindingly drunk night, I’d lost all control and damaged my sense of self as a woman. And if Jacki told the whole lesbian community, as she had a right to do, my rep as a responsible leader would also be in the toilet.

  I threw off the sheets and sat up. Rachel! She’d promised to call at first light. My watch read seven a.m.

  In the kitchen, BeJo had left the pot brewing and next to it, a note. Honey, it read, Forget about your hat. It will show up. Try to have yourself a quiet day!

  So BeJo sensed that something extraordinary had happened last night, something she knew better than to ask me about, something I knew I would never tell her.

  I reread her note: Forget about your hat. It will show up.

  Yes, but would Rachel, I wondered, taking a cup of coffee and walking into The Tide’s office in the second bedroom. Sitting at my desk in my pajamas, my hair standing up like a hedgehog, I lit my first cigarette. Smoking calmed my nerves, gave me the illusion of control. My eyes rifled through the neat stacks piled on the desk. I had to find something compelling to take my mind off the loud quiet of the phone not ringing.

  Surveying my well-organized command central, each item from stapler to standing files arranged for maximum efficiency, I spied the red file marked, “National Lesbian Feminist Organization.” Aha! Here was a promising distraction.

  During the long summer months of the strike, I’d felt repeatedly that lesbians weren’t organized enough to command a strong voice. Dykes stood on thin ice, in both the gay men’s and women’s movement, trying to negotiate power with no leverage. The Women’s Movement thought Lesbian Nation was part of the gay movement. Gay male leaders sought to palm dykes off onto the Women’s Movement. During the frustrating negotiations with Morris, it had dawned on me that we lesbians needed to harness our power by creating a national political identity rather than just build a separate Amazon culture. Politically, we needed to identify the whereabouts, cohesion, and agenda of Lesbian Nation. {1}<
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  The week after I’d resigned from the Great Strike, I’d gone to work on my new idea. I’d called lesbian leaders on the east coast, in the Midwest and northern Pacific states and detailed my thinking to them: we needed to organize on a national level and create a political power base. The National Lesbian Feminist Organization would be patterned after the nine year old, but already wildly successful, National Organization for Women (NOW). And this time there’d be no huge arguments like at the ’73 Conference because this time we’d only invite lesbians who agreed with a simple and defined agenda—creating a national political organization. {2}

  The small silver clock on my desk struck eight. I stared at it. Rachel had probably just left Jacki’s to return home, intending to call me from Effie Street. Wise of her.

  I took out sheets of bond and carbon paper and rolled them into my typewriter. A pressure began to assert itself at my temples, threatening to scatter my thoughts. Too many cheap beers last night. I rarely drank. I stood up and opened a window. Watching the traffic below, I tried to re-read a letter Kate McQueen had sent from Maine. That state’s leading lesbian organizer said it would be impossible to find enough minority lesbians to racially balance Maine’s delegation to the national convention we were planning. {3} This was in response to an issue from a few big city coastal organizers who felt any national dyke organization would have to seat fifty percent minority women on its governing board. I thought fifty percent was too high. Not only were some places like Maine predominantly white, even where there were a number of third world lesbians, most of them were active in the Black Power and La Raza movements. There weren’t enough out-of-the-closet organizers from those communities active in the gay or feminist movements to make a fifty percent goal attainable. Seating one-third, or even twenty-five percent of third world women on the NLFO Board seemed, to me, more realistic. But “realistic” was not a strong suit among lesbian feminists. {4} I sat back down and began a reply to Kate. Leadership was a delicate balance between advising people what to do, and listening to what they wanted to do.

  A knock at the door! The clock read nine as I jumped out of the chair. Rachel had never been bold enough to come to the apartment I shared with BeJo. Peeking through the living room window curtains, I saw two neatly dressed men with Bibles in their hands. I reached for and placed BeJo’s and my handmade slogan card in the window. “I AM A PAGAN. LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  Returning to the Tide office, I picked up the phone. The dial tone rang loud and clear. Surely a promise meant something to Rachel? Had she just been trying to placate me and get me away from Jacki’s house? Again, I sat down. Of course she’d call. And when she did I’d apologize profusely for last night. I’d tell her I hadn’t meant to scare her, or even Jacki, that I’d been drunk and had felt like she played me when she came and kissed me at midnight and then ran away. And then, she’d say she was sorry too and that she realized she couldn’t be with anyone else, that she missed me too much. Everything would be like it was last summer.

  Smiling to myself, I began replying to another letter to an anarchist leader in Minnesota, this one saying that dykes should not get structured into a hierarchy, even to compete politically in a male world. I was always happy waxing political. Strategy felt solid, grounded in real time and space, and so much more stable than things personal.

  Happily I finished and sealed both envelopes. Suddenly, I realized it was almost eleven o’clock. My fingers froze as I licked stamps and stuck them to the envelopes. A thought occurred to me: why would Rachel meet me for breakfast if she wouldn’t come with me last night? The two realities were separated only by a few hours. I turned off the typewriter. The silence rang permanent. Rachel wasn’t going to call anymore than my desktop was going to magically unbend and straighten itself from the weight of my typewriter. It was permanently deformed, just like my relationship with Rachel. Who was I kidding? There would be no phone call from her this morning.

  I banged my fists on the desktop. The rattle shook my framed degrees above it.

  Again and again, I pummeled it, wanting to pulverize Jacki…Rachel…anyone.

  The pain in my knuckles fed my powerlessness. The desktop swayed on its sawhorses. I stood and screamed aloud. Bitterness felt metallic on my tongue. No! I am not gonna let her leave me. I’d throw on a jacket, go look for her at Effie.

  I sped to the closet, never mind my pajamas. But wait. What if she wasn’t at Effie, then what? She was probably still at Jacki’s. And if she was and I showed up again, what new humiliation would await me this time?

  I threw my jacket on the floor and kicked it back into the closet.

  It took a few minutes to realize the ringing was not the reverb of my anger. I picked up the receiver.

  “Córdova?” the voice demanded.

  I was too sad to answer. It was Robin.

  “I know it’s you,” she continued. “I can hear your smoke-filled lungs.”

  “What do you want, Robin?”

  “My, aren’t we pissy.”

  “I’m in a black mood. Go away.”

  “I know why you’re down,” my buddy whispered gently. “Listen to me. I want you to put down the phone, get dressed, and come up here immediately. I have something for you.”

  “I’m not interested,” I began to hang up.

  “It’s from Rachel,” Robin added.

  “What are you talking about? Have you seen her?”

  “I did. This morning. Now get up here.” Robin clicked off.

  “You look like shit,” Robin said when she opened the door. I stumbled into her condo. “I should make you wash and comb your hair before I talk to you.”

  “Don’t push me,” I muttered. “Where’s the letter from Rachel? And some aspirin. Please, get me some aspirin.” I flung myself into the black and silver striped couch of the Chrome Palace.

  Robin stared at me, a hand over her mouth. “I’ve never seen you drunk. You’re such a lightweight on two beers. What’s happened?”

  “Quit being such a maternal fag,” I retorted. “I’m not drunk. I have a headache from not sleeping all night.”

  Robin sat beside me putting her hand on my thigh. “Rachel told me what you did last night.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “We don’t have to. It speaks for itself.”

  “Just get me her letter and get off my case. I feel bad enough about it.”

  Robin got up and leaned over to find something behind the couch. She sat back down again with an ungainly plastic bag in her grip. “I never said it was a letter,” she said. “Rachel gave me this.” She opened the bag and lifted out my hat.

  My eyes closed. I couldn’t bear to look at it. A tightness began to assault my brain even before Robin crowned me with the leather flat-brim.

  “And that’s where it belongs,” she grunted.

  I opened my eyes. “Where did you see Rachel?”

  Robin stood up, backing away from me and shifting from foot to foot. “She called me this morning. Asked me to meet her. She said she was in a hurry.”

  “A hurry?”

  “She looked like you, like she’d been to hell and back. We only talked for a minute. She asked me to return your hat.”

  “She had no message? She said nothing else?” My pitch rose.

  “All right.” Robin’s eyes grew sad. “You won’t like this. She said to tell you…by the time you get your hat back…she’d be gone.”

  “Gone?” I stared up at Robin, my voice a plaintive whisper. “What does that mean?”

  “That she had packed all morning and now she was saying good-bye. She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” I jumped to my feet and shook Robin by her shoulders.

  Robin dropped her head, looking down at our feet. “She said Idaho. Or was it Iowa. Or, maybe—”

  “Why the fuck would Rachel go to Idaho?”

  “She said her mother lives there.”

  “What kind of a reason is that to leave her life?”
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  Robin shrugged. “Maybe she needs her mother.”

  “Is she going with Jacki?” I lunged to shake Robin by her shoulders.

  “No! She’s broken inside over you, and the strike. Political life I think. She’s running home to mother in a panic.”

  My heart winced for Rachel in her grief. Then, I leapt toward the front door.

  Anticipating my exit, Robin jumped in front of me, knocking us both to the floor. Quickly she disentangled from me and scrambled to her feet and then to the front door, where she threw her back against it, blocking me. We stared at one another.

  “Get out of my way or I’m gonna push you out of my way,” I warned, glaring.

  Robin folded her arms across her chest, but didn’t budge, her feet firmly planted. “Rachel’s gone,” she said. “Córdova, you have to let her go.”

  “She’s still at Effie,” I begged. “I can stop her!” I prepared to shove my buddy aside.

  “You couldn’t stop her last night,” Robin said without wavering. “No one can stop someone if they don’t want to stay!”

  For a fraction of a second my mind climbed out of my body. This was the second time in twenty-four hours that my dearest pal was standing in front of me, trying to stop me. Something was terribly wrong with this picture! Clearly, I was obsessed. I’d never seen Robin so butched out. She was afraid—not of me, but for me!

  Her words repeated themselves in my brain, No one can stop someone if they don’t want to stay. A line from a book continued in my head—something about slings and arrows and letting birds go if you really loved them.

  Rachel didn’t want to stay. I had to let her go.

  I crumpled to the floor. Robin slid down next to me. Together we held the front door closed. Covering my face with my hands, I broke down crying. “Nothing makes sense any more,” I whispered, my tears flowing freely onto Robin’s lap.

  “I know, I know.” She took me in her arms. “You’ll stay here at my house for a little while. We’ll talk till you’re out of words. You’ll get better.”

  The room was damp with mid-January’s cold. The marine layer, with its shroud of depressing fog, had followed me from Culver City to Robin’s condo in the Hollywood Hills. Robin had parked me in her guest bedroom. A black and grey comforter lay over me. Memories tortured me, a catalogue of loss—Morris my mentor and father, the strike battle, Rachel my lover. I was alone in a hole that had taken over my psyche. Where was Idaho anyway? I’d find it. There couldn’t be that many states with yellow stones. I could still get on a plane if I could get past Robin. Escape. Find clothes. Pack a suitcase.