Kari had never heard her mother speak with such vitriol. The woman had grown harder since the passing of her husband, but this… borderline hatred was something new to Kari. She had never expected her mother to throw that at her like that. She knew the woman would be disappointed when she told her, but this level of disgust hurt her more than she ever thought she would be by her mother.
She tried to placate her mother, tried to calm her down.
“Mama, it’s not… it’s not as bad as you’re making it. Plenty of people are gay –”
“Plenty of people aren’t my daughter!”
“Mama,” Kari pleaded. “Please. I… I like her. I think I might even love her. You’d understand if you could talk to us, maybe if you meet her and see for yourself it’s not –”
“No,” her mother interrupted. “No. I’m not meeting that woman. I’m not having that defile my house.” Her mother’s eyes almost seemed to pop out of her head, bug-eyed and deranged, infuriated. “Get out,” he mother said suddenly. “Get out, get out. I don’t know who you are. Get out!”
Without a word, Kari stood. Her tea left behind, unfinished, and cold, she walked away from her mother. It pained her, the way her mother stepped out of her way, as if she were intent on not letting Kari touch her – as if she were some sort of contamination that needed to be avoided. She grabbed the bag that she had left by the door. The slamming of it behind her jolted her a bit; she had barely hit the porch before her mother had done so.
Kari was on autopilot as she made her way back to her car. She got in, her bagged tossed to the passenger seat. She gave a forlorn look back to her mother’s house, the house she had grown up in. Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes, but she drove off, down the long and winding drive that lead to her mother’s house.
Somewhere around a mile or so down, she pulled to the side of the road. There was too much weight on her, too much sorrow in the way her mother had kicked her out of her house, for her to be able to drive any longer as the tears came down in full. She sobbed, her forehead on the steering wheel of the car.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She was supposed to have been able to tell her mother, her friends, everyone… when the time was right. Not have her relationship with Mary spied on by a child and then gossiped about to the entire town, leaving her open to have whoever felt the need to nose themselves where they didn’t belong give their input! How was she going to fix this… how was she going to tell Mary? Her own mother had looked on her in disgust and disdain…
How was she going to survive with this out in the open?
***
“Hey hun. You feeling better?”
Kari sat on Mary’s couch, a blanket wrapped around her and a cup of cocoa in her hands. After pulling herself together and wiping away her tears, she had decided to make her way over to Mary’s house, and tell her what had happened. Mary had experienced something similar before, and reacted better than she had, but she was still worried. The town knowing about them was the least of their worries – it would be rough, yes, but they had known that once they decided to be open in their relationship that it would be, regardless. The pressing matter was how much had been seen by the boy who had caught them – and how much would be reported. Their jobs were at stake. It was one thing she was having a relationship with Mary, and an entirely different one that they had fooled around in her classroom. Something so daring and thrilling at the time now seemed quite foolish.
She sighed, shaking her head, trying to will away the bad thoughts that piled and piled up on her.
“As well as I’m going to be, for now,” she said, sighing. She looked over to Mary. “What are we going to do?”
“Well,” Mary said. “We can lie, and say it was nothing more than a nasty boy making up rumors – oh don’t give me that look, you know Frank Nessa is a nasty little pervert.” Kari frowned, knowing that Mary was right, but she didn’t know if she wanted to lie on this…
“I don’t want to lie, though. Especially now that so many people are apparently talking about it, and I’ve already told my mother that it’s true. I said that I wanted us to be out at some point –”
“But not like this, Kari. I don’t want to force this on you too soon.”
Silence fell between them, and Kari mulled that over. She hadn’t wanted it forced, either, but what were they to do about that now? The rumor was already spreading. If Frank Nessa told more people than his mother, than all the more people were gossiping than just those who her mother had spoken to. It would reach the school – the principal, likely. Could they honestly deny it at this point?
Kari looked to Mary, determined. She set aside her cocoa, and took Mary’s hands in hers.
“It may have been forced, but I don’t want to back out on this,” she said, voice shaking but resolve steady. “It isn’t the ideal way that we wanted to do this, but this is the way that it’s been and this is what we have to deal with. It was going to happen sooner or later… we just have to deal with it sooner and the fact it came about before we wanted it to. But… I’ve got you, and you’ve got me. Right?”
Mary smiled at her, bringing their hands up so she could brush her lips over Kari’s knuckles.
“You’ve got me, hun. You always will.”
***
The coming months were a roller coaster for Kari and Mary. The saving grace was that, while Frank Nessa had certainly seen them kissing together in Kari’s classroom, that was all he had seen. He hadn’t noticed their hands wondered in places they shouldn’t during work hours – or if he had, he had kept that information to himself. They couldn’t get fired for kissing, but they were warned that anymore inappropriate conduct would be punished.
Kari and Mary knew that that meant any obvious displays of affection together would not be tolerated.
They also couldn’t be fired on the principal that they were gay, and together. Even in a town as small as theirs, they had to adhere to federal law, no matter how much parents wished that they didn’t. When neither Mary nor Kari were fired after returning from winter break, several students were pulled from both of their classes by request of parents, regardless of the fact there was no second art instructor and any children pulled from Kari’s class would not be able to continue art classes.
There were small slivers of sweet, however, interspersed in the sour. Despite the tone her mother had set, hardly the entire town knew or gossiped about her and Mary. Those who did, Kari didn’t associate often with, and among them only a few actually had a problem with how she and Mary were. That didn’t stop stares, nor did it prevent people from making snide comments when she would walk by, or go out on a date with Mary. Kari had to think it was because she was already liked by most people around her in the town – and most people who liked her seemed to decide that it wasn’t worth picking a fight.
Mary, to her credit, took everything in stride. She didn’t have the luxury of being well-known in the town, and most of the fault of Kari’s ‘gayness’ tended to fall onto Mary. Gossipers theorized that it was Mary who turned Kari gay – that such a nice girl like Kari was simply brought in by the teacher from the city with too many big ideas and not enough humble pie. Mary let the accusations slide right off her back, knowing they held no weight; Kari was glad for Mary’s resilience.
The thing that effected Kari the most, then, was the fact that her mother still refused to talk to her. She was surprised to find that the comments and the stares were something that she could handle, that she really didn’t have a hard time blocking them out. She’d have easily taken more of the negative reactions from the town if only her mother would talk to her again, accept that she was in love… that she had found someone that made her happy and understood her. The fact that Mary was another woman should have been inconsequential – but Kari knew her mother, and knew that it would be a long, hard battle to get her mother to see things the way that Kari wanted her to.
So the months wore on. Kari would get letters from angry and supportiv
e parents and neighbors alike, until the hype from her and Mary’s ‘scandal’ died down and those who had paid so much attention to it began to either get bored – or used – to the fact that there were two happy, gay women in town, and they were together and they weren’t going to stop being together. It was… a shaky acceptance, but it was better than Kari had expected. It was something that she could deal with – imperfections of the situation and all.
***
The summer came, and school let out. Kari had decided to forego summer classes for a break from teaching; Mary was too willing to follow suit. They both thought that it would be best for them both. The year had been long, and tiring, even with the good occurrences that had happened – they always tried to look to the positive, to keep each other on the right side of sane.
“Throw open those windows, will you? Let in some nice fresh air. It’s far too hot in here.”
The air conditioning in Kari’s house was, unfortunately, broken. It liked to do that off and on from time to time. Kari had learned that letting it sit and be grumpy, as she called it, for a while usually set it right. But while it was being ‘grumpy,’ it was hell (almost literally) for her in her home.
Mary did as asked without question, opening the front windows, and then going to open the kitchen windows as well to get a decent breeze to run through Kari’s house. When it started, both sighed in relief, and collapsed on the couch, fanning themselves.
“I would almost take teaching over the summer where there’s constant AC than this,” Kari said.
“You and me both. I love you, K, but if you weren’t here I definitely wouldn’t be. Your house is an oven.”
Kari laughed.
“Oh, so you love me now, do you?”
She swatted at the pillow that Mary tossed her way, letting it fall to the floor with a soft, near silent thud.
“You know it, hun. You know it.”
They slipped into a comfortable silence, as they often did when there was nothing more they needed than the presence of each other’s company. Kari even began to doze, finally soothed by the cool breeze wafting through the house. As with many nice things, though, it was interrupted by a knock at the door, and the sound of a voice that Kari hadn’t heard in almost a year.
“Kari? Are you home? I see your car outside.”
Kari’s eyes opened and widened as she sat up, looking towards the front of the house.
“Who’s that?” Mary asked, watching as Kari stood and made her way to the door.
“My mother…”
Mary was silent as Kari opened the door, and Kari herself wasn’t sure what she was supposed to make of the woman standing on her porch – the very woman who had told her that she needed to get out of her home, that she hadn’t raised her to lay with other women. Kari, admittedly, was unsure of how to receive the woman. She didn’t know why her mother had come or what she wanted, but she was on her guard.
They didn’t say anything. Kari waited for her mother to speak. The woman seemed to not know what she was going to say, and stood there, almost nervously, before she decided to speak.
“May I come in?”
Kari’s brows furrowed. She looked over her shoulder, to the living room where Mary sat. She looked back at her mother.
“I have company,” she said. “Mary’s over.” She let that sink in, knowing her mother had to know by now just who Mary was. Her mother also glanced in, and then looked to her.
“May I come in?” she repeated.
Kari stepped aside to allow her mother entrance. She came inside, looking around as though she thought that something might jump out and get her. Mary greeted them at the living room, standing and looking between Kari and her mother. She gave the woman a warm smile and held out her hand to shake.
“Hello. I’m Mary, Kari’s girlfriend. Pleased to meet you.”
To her shock, Kari’s eyes widened as her mother shook Mary’s hand. She hadn’t expected that.
“…Mrs. Anders,” she said. “Or Martha. Nice… to meet you.”
There was another silence, and then Kari spoke.
“Um… should we sit, then?”
“Yes, yes,” Kari’s mother said. “I think we should.”
Mary and Kari sat on the loveseat, giving her mother the choice of chair and couch. Her mother took the chair, and sat, staring quite keenly at Kari. She shifted, as though thinking. Kari gave her the time to do so, deciding that if her mother had come here willingly, there was something important she wanted to say.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” her mother said. “About… all of this.” She gestured between Mary and Kari. “And what I said when you visited me last.”
“Oh?” Kari shifted, swallowing, and glanced to Mary. Mary squeezed her hand for support, offering her a smile. Kari turned back to her mother. “What about ‘all of this?’”
Once more, Kari’s mother seemed to struggle. Kari gave her the breadth to gather her thoughts, and speak again.
“I think I was… wrong,” she said. “About you. About the two of you. I was ashamed and angry that you had kept that from me, that people were talking about it and you the way they were. I don’t… I don’t understand,” she said honestly. “I don’t understand any of it. Two women together… it’s just like two men. I don’t get it. But I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”
“Mama…”
Her mother held up her hand, continuing. “I’m not… I still don’t know what to make of you two,” she said, once more gesturing between the two of them. “But I want to try. I miss my girl. I want to be a part of her life.”
Kari swallowed, not believing what she was hearing. She hadn’t thought that her mother would come around – and certainly not this quickly. Though she wasn’t praising her daughter and coming forth with unconditional acceptance… what she said meant something. It was more than Kari could describe.
Without thinking, she launched herself at her mother, wrapping her arms around her tight. Tears were at her eyes, but unlike the last time that she and her mother had spoken, they were happy tears, streaming warmly down her face.
“I missed you too, mama. So much. I can help you understand. We –” She pulled away, looking back to Mary. “We can help you understand?”
Mary smiled at her.
“We can definitely help. You know I’m always here for you – both of you.”
***
“Ah –!”
It was their wedding night, just three years after that day with her mother. A night that, with a certain honesty, Kari hadn’t thought she would ever have. Weddings were for people who weren’t like her – dashing grooms and blushing women, not school teachers with damming life-long secrets. Two women – it was practically unheard of in her tiny little town.
But there she was. Her body pressed so sweetly against the woman of her dreams, the slickness of their bodies mingling with the moans in the air. Mary was above her, rocking her hips against hers as they clung to each other, tangled in the bedsheets of their honeymoon suite. She could still scent the sweet perfume that Mary had worn at their reception, and her hair still desperately clung in the curls that had been painstakingly twisted into them. She was a vision.
“I love you,” Kari breathed out against Mary’s lips. “I love you so much… so much…”
“I love you too,” Mary said. “More than anything.”
Words stopped there. There was nothing more to say between the two of them, and there was something immensely satisfying in how eagerly Mary’s body pressed against hers. It was insistent, needy – as if she needed to take and savor as much of it as possible. Kari could understand. Her legs were wrapped so tight about Mary’s middle. She didn’t want to let her go – this was as close to one as they were, and she wanted to stay that way, wanted to savor it to its fullest.
They kissed, and kissed passionately. Undulations sent Kari’s body into a sensitive overdrive, and it wasn’t the first time she had found her release that night – it would
n’t be her last. Mary left her no time to recoup, no rest. Her fingers were insistent, pushing into her flooded sex even as she continued to rock her body against it. Kari’s legs spread, limp at Mary’s sides as Mary had her way.
“Don’t stop –” Kari arched, feeling Mary’s fingers deep, pressed against her womb and the sensation left a shocking, insanity-inducing feeling. Moans fell readily from her lips and in her pleasures she gripped the sheets, pulling at them and straining the fabric between her fingers.
Mary’s lips moved from her mouth to her jaw, down even more to kiss and nip at her neck. More gasps came from Kari; Mary’s teeth sank into the tender column of flesh, and Kari knew she’d be marked. The thought of that – bearing a sign of Mary’s indulgence, made her insides pulse and flutter around Mary’s fingers, and she rocked her hips, wanting more, more – always more.
When Mary’s lips came to her breasts, she gasped. More kisses given, and teeth grazing tenderly in before a nipple was plucked between Mary’s lips. Her fingers buried in Mary’s hair, tightly, tugging, before she pulled Mary away.
They panted, looking at each other. A fiery spark – passion, desire. That’s what Kari saw as she looked at her love, her wife.
“On you back,” she said breathily.
Mary smiled, stealing a kiss as compliance followed. Kari knew what she wanted – mutual exchange. She wanted to come undone as she made her darling love do the same beneath her. She slid her legs at either side of Mary’s head, facing so they could each have free access to the wanting sex of the other. As Mary grabbed her hips, tugging her close to slide the flesh of her tongue inside her, Kari lowered herself, eagerly mouthing at the sweet liquid coating Mary’s precious lips.
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