Girl felt the pressure of bills and impending snow and it was too heavy to bear alone. Mother and Stepmother had no suggestions. Responsibility pressed down on Girl and she just wanted to sleep all the time. Girl gave the horse back to the waitress. She didn’t tell anyone what it cost her—the black sadness that hung on her body like fog was invisible to everyone else.
“Well, at least you had a horse for a summer,” Stepmother said, as if that was any consolation. Girl never heard what happened to Gilli, but she doubted that he ever got well.
notes from the fourth wall
this is what you hear when you have lesbian parents
You hear your parents tell you over and over again how you must not tell anyone. You hear how your stepmother lost her job at the YWCA because she was gay. You hear about Stonewall and Harvey Milk and all the unnamed men and women beaten and sometimes killed by gay bashers. You are told how if your parents lose their jobs, you will lose the house and you don’t want to be homeless. You don’t, however, hear the word lesbian. Gay is the word your mother prefers, as it sounds more neutral, less sexualized. Lesbian is a word she will claim much later.
You hear a rock hit your living room window one day, and the whole family goes outside to look at the golf-ball-sized hole in the glass. Your stepmother cries, “They threw a rock through our window because we are gay!” But you didn’t hear any name-calling, and you didn’t see any note, nor did you see anyone running away. You live on a busy street and think it was just as likely that a truck kicked up a rock as that someone threw it intentionally. This assumption of harassment doesn’t sit quite right with you, but you are quick to use this story as an example of how you were persecuted, even though you were never really sure if it was true. It was only one way to look at the hole in the window.
In eighth grade you no longer had to keep the secret—somehow the students at school found out, and the story was everywhere. Unfortunately, your name starts with “L” so “lesbian” pairs up with it quite nicely. You are called Lara the Lesbian for the rest of the year. “Lez,” “Lesbo,” and (inexplicably) “Fag” are yelled at you in the halls between classes. Even a few people you thought were your friends write, “To Lara the Les” in your yearbook. You get into a fight with one of your closest friends, and she gets the last shot in, looking at you with hard eyes and saying, “Maybe you really are a lesbian like your mother.” Years later, you will forget the reason you were so mad at each other, but her parting words still echo clearly in the cavity of your chest.
You are asked, “But don’t you have a father?” over and over. Back in the seventies and eighties, artificial insemination was not an option for gays and lesbians. The first test-tube baby was not born until 1978, so it was a legitimate question. But your father happened to move across the continent and not all of the kids at school believed that he even existed.
“But who is your real mother?” This question infuriates your mother. She and your stepmother want to be viewed as equal parents. But they can’t erase your father, and you don’t want them to, because not only do you love him, he is your one connection to the straight world. He is the one parent you can talk about without hedging pronouns, and he looks really good on paper. Besides that, you want to be very clear to all interested parties who you got your DNA from. Any ambiguity as to who your mother is diminishes her importance to you.
Teenaged boys will ask to look in your windows, even though you assure them that nobody wants to see your parents naked. You compare your stepmother to the androgynous Pat on Saturday Night Live, and it is an accurate description, even down to their shared first name. Your Pat loves the skit and tries to mimic the character as much as possible.
In high school, every single straight male you meet asks, “Did you ever think you were a lesbian?” or some other permutation of that sentiment. You spend your teen years on a quest to prove your heterosexuality. It sounded like, “Look, I have a boyfriend, so I can prove I’m not gay.” Of course you don’t tell anyone about the tingling rush you feel when you look at the supermodels on Cosmopolitan magazine’s covers in the checkout line. You push any thought of women as sexy deep down inside, as deep as you possibly can. At night, you are afraid that you might wake up and find that you have turned into a lesbian in your sleep, and then you would have to live this sad, furtive life forever. You know that your stepmother knew she was gay since she was twelve, and you were relieved when you passed that age and still liked boys, but you also knew that your mother didn’t turn gay until she was in college and became involved in the feminist movement. College was still a few years away but you refused to become a feminist, just to be on the safe side. You don’t want to be the kind of feminist you see—unshaven, man-clothed, angry all the time. You want to be Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Anybody, and you want, more than anything, to be beautiful, sexy, a head-turner.
But you also don’t see why anyone would think girls aren’t as good as boys. Of course girls can be anything they want. Of course they are just as smart. Why can’t they be anything they want and still shave their legs and wear high heels and stay at home with their children? You want, more than anything, for your mother to stay at home, but she works full-time and that’s not something that is ever going to happen in your lifetime. When you tell your stepmother that you want to stay home and have children, she follows you into the front yard, yelling, “You will not be a housewife! You will be a business woman!” You jump over the hedge at the side of the yard and take off running for high school. You don’t know what a business woman does exactly, but it sounds boring. You only know how much you yearned for your mother when you were small. You want more than anything to raise children who don’t have mother-sized holes in their chests.
You hear your stepmother berate your brother over and over, like a broken record. “If I had been born a man, I could have been a minister, or a doctor. If I had been born a man I would be so much more successful. White men have everything—all the power, all the money, all the good jobs. Look at you, you were born a boy, you were given every opportunity from birth and you just squander it. You’ll never amount to anything.” So many words tell you that men are the ruling class, and you want to hitch yourself to a rising star, so you don’t have to rise yourself. You’re not sure you are as smart as your mother thinks you are.
If you have to choose between being a man-hater, an abuser, and being soft, feminine, gentle—if those are the only options you think you have, you will teach yourself to be submissive, you will make yourself as sexy-beautiful as you can, and you will even vote Republican. You will look for a strong man to defend you against everything that scares you.
the memorial day parade
The seventh-and-eighth-grade band at Dake Junior High was marching in the Memorial Day parade. Of the dozen percussionists, only eight could play snare drum, so Girl made sure to audition on the first day to secure a spot. No way was she playing bass drum or cymbals if she could help it. Snares were the lifeblood of the band, repeating their cadence over and over while everyone else marched in place, the only instrument that never rested. She might let the boys intimidate her into playing triangle and bells during daily band practice, but she was claiming her spot on snare for the parade. Mr. Bell, the conductor, let her pass, even though she wasn’t able to hit the emphasis right on the sixteenth notes. She practiced every night, but she just didn’t quite have the coordination down to really nail the accent notes. DA-da-da-DA-da-da-DA-da-DAH-DAH she chanted as she played, trying to get it down. The band got to miss afternoon classes the week before the parade to march around the neighborhood, learning to walk in step. She marched next to James—the coolest boy in eighth grade—not that he spoke to her or even once made eye contact. Girl was sure that he wouldn’t have looked at her even if she was an eighth grader—not with her braces and glasses and bad jeans. James was kind of chubby and didn’t follow clothing trends, preferring to wear button-down shirts over his jeans. But James’s father was a famous jazz drummer who died
of a drug overdose, and just about every girl in school wanted to tousle his chestnut curls and stroke that baby doll face. The boys said that sometimes, when he practiced, James made all the teenaged hang-arounds leave because he was channeling his father, playing long into the night in a fit of rage and sorrow.
Memorial Day morning Girl woke up lazily, then remembered the parade with a jolt, and grabbed the alarm clock that she had forgotten to set. She had to be there in fifteen minutes—fuck. Her parents were still asleep—no one had bothered to make sure she got up in time to shower, but she was twelve, after all, she was supposed to know how to set an alarm clock. Girl ran a brush through her hair, but she didn’t have time to tame the messy sleep-swirls out of it. Mr. Bell said if you were even a minute late they would leave you behind. She pulled her navy blue, hooded sweatshirt with the school insignia on it over her head and hoped it would at least cover the cowlicks at the nape of her neck. Her big glasses were covered in fingerprints, but she didn’t have time for makeup, let alone washing them off. She slid her lavender drumsticks into the back pocket of her jeans and ran for Irondequoit Plaza, where the parade was lining up. She made it with five minutes to spare—luckily not the last one to arrive. When the drum line stepped off right-left-right she no longer cared if her hair was unruly or if her pimples were showing. Her sticks bounced on the drum head, and she was part of the music that had always made her cry.
scar tissue
Girl had an inch-long scar on the right side of her abdomen, nearly parallel to her navel. It took five stitches to close it, not as impressive as the seventeen Brother got in his hand when he was seven and accidentally put his hand through a window pane. (Girl had intentionally slammed the playroom door, which always stuck and required a lot of force to open. Brother shoved the glass door as hard as he could so that he could resume trying to kill his sister, and his hand went through the glass.) But five stitches were more respectable than the one stitch he got in his finger when he was eight. (That time, Girl slammed the door on his actual finger. She supposed she should feel bad about these injuries, but in her opinion, he shouldn’t have been chasing her in the first place.)
One morning, Girl opened the brown, vintage 1940s cabinet in their kitchen to get the peanut butter out so she could make her lunch for school. The handle was a bronze, round knob with a sort of four-pointed star behind it. When she opened the cabinet, a ceramic pitcher fell from the top shelf, hit the counter, and shattered, sending a shard into her stomach. Stepmother was in the kitchen, getting ready for work. Brother was there too, which was a lot of bodies for the small space, but that’s how it worked every morning. Their kitchen table was tucked in the corner and pushed close to the wall. There were only a few feet left to walk around the other two sides. Girl turned around to face the middle of the room as she pulled the shard from her stomach. Blood flowed freely from the wound, and although she thought she should cry, she froze. Girl had just wanted to make a sandwich, and it had happened so fast. But Stepmother started to cry.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Stepmother repeated as she cried. “I knew when I put that pitcher in there that it was going to fall, and I just closed the door anyway. It’s all my fault. I’ll take you to the doctor—you’re going to need stitches.”
Girl was afraid of stitches. She had only had them twice before, both times before she was in kindergarten, and both times in her face. Once she had fallen off the ladder of a backyard swing set at daycare, the rusty wing-nut rising toward her face and gouging her above her eye. The second time, also at daycare, Girl had stepped on a coloring book on the floor, skated across the hardwood, and face-planted into an old iron radiator. She remembered the feel of flying, but not the landing. She did remember being strapped to a blue “buddy board” in the hospital. She kept tearing at the stitches, pulling them out as fast as the doctor tied them, so they Velcroed her arms to her sides. She had tried to bite, but a nurse held her head. Girl still remembered watching her mother walk out the door, ignoring her screams. But despite those two incidents, Girl wasn’t an accident-prone child, like Brother, and she didn’t get hurt all that often.
“Can I bring my Pound Puppy?” Girl asked. She knew that at twelve years old she was too old for stuffed animals and dolls. She was on the cusp between child and teen, aware of how she lagged her peers in small social ways. She figured Stepmother would say, “You’re too old for stuffed animals,” but she had to ask. She needed something to hold against her body when she was afraid—something that wasn’t her stepmother.
“Of course you can,” Stepmother said, still crying. They drove to her pediatrician, and Girl got five black stitches. It hurt. A lot. Watching that curved needle poke through her skin gave Girl the heebie-jeebies, so she held her Pound Puppy and tried not to look, but she couldn’t help it. Afterward, Stepmother dropped Girl off at school and went to work. The cut wasn’t bad, but Stepmother’s reaction was. Her guilty tears ran down her face, her words spilled over Girl, sorry, sorry, sorry, as they pulled in the school parking lot. Girl didn’t think it was her stepmother’s fault. Girl didn’t understand why Stepmother was so sure that it was.
Stepmother was all creamy skin over thick body meat. She was a mountain of a woman, soft, but not snuggly, like her mother. There was something stiff under her softness, the way she kept her spine straight, or how she turned her face away when Girl went to kiss her, so Girl only got her cheek, not her lips. But this time, she was all tears and love and this weird, inexplicable shame. Girl did not know what to do with this emotion-leaking parent. It was like Stepmother had been switched by aliens. Girl didn’t know how close the sadness and the rage lived inside Stepmother, or how they both flowed from the same place. Most days, she only saw the rage.
bravery
It takes a certain kind of bravery to step in front of a moving train, and once your foot leaves the sidewalk, the rush of terror makes the very air lighter, less oxygenated, giving nothing of substance.
Mother only had two rules for Stepmother: spanking the children only on the bottom, and no swearing at them. Of course, as soon as Stepmother started yelling, Mother always left, slamming the side door behind her, peeling out of the driveway, leaving the children alone. Although Stepmother mostly kept to the rules, there were a few exceptions. When she called Brother an asshole, Girl stepped out in front of the train.
“Don’t you swear at my brother,” she yelled, running out from behind the living room chair where she had been hiding, standing in between Stepmother and Brother. Stepmother’s hand was still raised from striking him. Stepmother turned and looked at Girl, her face contorted, eyes narrowed. Rage turned her pale skin the color of watermelon flesh. Uh-oh. Girl was suddenly less brave than she thought she was.
“Run!” she called to Brother.
The children ran up the stairs as one four-legged animal, feet pounding the wood floor, down the hall to Girl’s bedroom—Brother didn’t have a lock on his door. Girl slammed the door and flipped the arm of her little hook-and-eye latch into its metal ring. Stepmother was only a moment behind the children, her feet already thumping across the hall. The door shook as Stepmother threw her shoulder into it.
“Open this door!” she ordered, but even if Girl was foolish she wasn’t pure stupid. Stepmother hit the door again, and the door gave just a little, the metal lock gouging a line into the wood. She tried a third time, the lock rattling, the doorknob turning uselessly. Thank God the lock held. Stepmother gave up and went downstairs. Girl and Brother didn’t come out until Mother knocked on the door.
“I told her she is not allowed to swear at you,” Mother said, as if that made everything all right. As if that evaporated the fear out of Girl’s bones. After that, Girl stayed on the curb when the train was coming. She wasn’t as brave as she wanted to be. When Stepmother degraded Brother—“You’ll never amount to anything”—or screamed at Mother for not knowing what road they should take, Girl pushed her lips together until they were hard paraffin wax, safely
keeping her voice inside, and wished she were braver.
a poorly thrown punch
Stepmother punched Girl’s arm, closer to her shoulder than to her elbow. Even in the moment, Girl thought it was a stupid place to hit someone, and Stepmother did it like someone in a cartoon—she was as red-faced as a villain on Looney Tunes. Girl wouldn’t have been surprised if a thermometer popped out of the top of her head. Stepmother raised her ham-hock arm like Popeye, her little fist pulled back. Time froze when she cocked her arm. Stepmother wore two rings on her right hand: her gold college ring, and a second ring with a weird, brown, rectangular stone. Luckily, neither of her rings were sharp or scratchy.
Girl didn’t understand the fight, even when it was happening. She wasn’t trying to be disobedient. She had been responsible for doing her own laundry since fifth grade, but on this occasion, Girl went to the basement and the dryer was filled with Stepmother’s clothes. They were cold—the dryer had been finished for at least a day or two. No big deal, Girl thought, and found an empty laundry basket. She tossed Stepmother’s blouses and white cotton underpants in a basket so Girl could continue her wash. It was how laundry was always done—if Girl neglected to get her clothes before someone else needed the dryer, that person would simply pile them in a basket or on the folding table. When that got full, they’d use the top of the dryer.
When Girl carried her laundry upstairs Stepmother’s demeanor changed suddenly.
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