by Lee Lynch
“Damn shame,” Annie said. “Don’t you wish we could somehow reach out to women like that? Like you were before Rosie and Claudia told you about themselves and you met me? Like I was before Natalie? Dusty said the other night she’d like to help the little dykes. Educate them, so they wouldn’t be afraid to come out or to stay out.”
“I can’t think of a greater life work.”
“Or one where you could earn less money,” Annie laughed. “I’m going to make a cup of tea. Want some?”
“You’ve been reading my mind.”
Annie went inside and admired the way Victoria’s possessions fit into her living room. The items that had made Victoria seem so inaccessible before—the candles and wall hangings—added class to her home. She was beginning to understand Victoria’s attachment to them and to feel their pull herself. There was something deep and mysterious about the light of her colored candles. And the pattern of her mandala poster. They stirred something very deep in Annie. Something that lived in the same place that got stirred by Victoria. That woman reached inside her and shook up her core. They had some profound and wordless tie, Annie thought. Almost as if they’d known each other for centuries and been wandering the earth searching for each other again. Often they did read one another’s minds.
If they could just know their own minds about the future they could really make something powerful of themselves. Annie straightened her sturdy body and moved to the window where one day, months ago, she’d seen the mourning dove. How lonely she’d been then. And now? Maybe she, Annie, wasn’t listening hard enough to what Victoria was really saying. She tried to tune in more clearly to her mind as she took teabags from the cabinet. Victoria had brought her favorite mug from the dormitory and now their two mugs sat side by side on a counter. It gave Annie a little thrill when she saw them.
“They are officially late,” Victoria said as Annie rejoined her.
“That’s okay. I feel like I can wait forever if I’ve got you by my side.” They held hands across their chairs. Very few cars went by the beach at dinner hour and they felt isolated from the whole world.
“Were they borrowing a car to get here?” Annie asked.
“I don’t know, why?”
“Because that looks like them in that red car about to pull into our driveway.”
It was a long red convertible with tail fins. Rosemary patted it as she got out. Claudia bent to polish the insignia on its hood with a kerchief. Annie and Victoria tried not to laugh.
“Well, what do you think?” called Rosemary, still at the car.
“Come see it,” Claudia waved excitedly toward them.
Annie groaned. “How much?” she asked as she got near the car.
“Five hundred,” Rosemary replied proudly. “My graduation money from my grandparents.”
“It’s only got a hundred-thirty thousand miles on it,” Claudia boasted.
“We’ve named it Sojourner Truth. We’ll use it to give out pamphlets, take women to rallies, go to meetings in other cities.”
Victoria regained her composure first. “It’ll certainly be a trademark. I guess that means you’ve decided to stay with your graduate school plans.”
“We’ve made a lot of decisions which we’ll share with you. And,” Rosemary continued, “we have a proposition for you. But first, I need Annie’s opinion on Sojourner.”
“Striking,” Annie said evasively. “Red, even.” She looked up at Rosemary. “A hundred-thirty thousand miles?”
“That’s not too bad, is it?” Rosemary asked, looking like a kid who’s done something wrong. “My parents’ Volvo has a hundred-fifty thousand miles on it and it runs great.”
“Maybe they rolled the odometer forward to impress you,” Annie teased. “I don’t know a lot about cars, Rosemary. Maybe it’s okay. But I don’t think you can expect it to last a long time.”
“Then I just have one more favor to ask you.” Annie found herself thinking that she hadn’t known Rosemary knew how to look coy. “We can’t figure how to put the top up.”
“I’ll take a look at it,” Annie sighed patiently. “You go ahead in, I won’t be long, I hope,” Annie mumbled to Victoria.
The three graduates went inside. Rosemary fell despondently into a chair. “We’ll never be able to survive in the real world,” she concluded.
“Sure you will,” Victoria assured her, moving to Rosemary and gingerly patting her arm.
“No we won’t. I don’t understand anything about it. I don’t know the rules about fixing a car or buying a car. I wouldn’t know how to look for an apartment without the University’s help. I can’t even think about someday looking for a job. What if one of us gets sick? How will the other ever take care of her and organize survival?”
“You’re still hung over, Rose,” Claudia suggested.
“I think you’re right. One thing I’ve learned from Annie’s friends is not to drink. Makes me depressed and sick. Yesterday was my last attempt to be part of the gang,” Rosemary told them.
Claudia had been walking around the house. “I see you’ve already made your mark here, Vicky.”
“I couldn’t help it. I feel so at home here. In Anne’s little toothpick house.”
“Toothpick house?” Rosemary asked.
“You remember,” Claudia said. “When you were little, didn’t you ever try to build a house out of toothpicks? With Elmer’s Glue all over your hands and probably a soggy mess of sticks after two hours? My mother could do it. She showed me one she built as a girl. Out of rough toothpicks my grandfather whittled as he carved a cane. Such little tiny breakable parts and it lasted, then, about thirty years. She still has it.”
Victoria smiled. “When I first came here I thought, ‘How can she live like this? Why don’t the winds blow her away?’ I guess she’s the glue that held it together. I like to think with two of us it’ll be even stronger.”
“It sounds,” Rosemary observed, “as if you’d like to stay here.”
“If everything works out that way, yes, I would. I’d even like to take my graduation money and see if that would make a down payment on it. We could fix it up.” The three smiled at one another, their eyes full of the promise of the future. “Shall we celebrate? Want a cup of tea?”
“What are we celebrating now?” Annie asked as she slammed in the back door.
“Our new car!” Claudia and Rosemary said together.
“I’m not sure why you’re celebrating the damned thing.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Rosemary asked in a panicked voice.
“Nothing new that I know of. Except that the electric button that’s supposed to put the top up and down doesn’t. I did it manually.”
“Oh, no.” Rosemary watched, horrified, as Annie cleaned blood and grease from her hands.
“Poor Anne,” Victoria said, moving toward Annie at the sink. “Are you badly cut?”
“No. I’ll recover. It’s just a cut.”
“Can’t I help?” Victoria asked, looking helpless. Annie’s irritation seemed to disappear and she laughed. “If you really need to, my love. You can get me a bandaid and some antiseptic.”
But Claudia was already coming from the bathroom with both. She’d quietly disappeared and now firmly rewashed Annie’s hand and bandaged it. “Hey, you guys always leave your mail in the bathroom?” she said, handing two envelopes to Annie.
“Turkey told me at some point yesterday she’d brought the mail in and couldn’t remember what she’d done with it,” Annie said, slightly annoyed. “This is from the landlord, Vicky.” They stood together reading the letter.
Claudia had moved to Rosemary who sat with her head in her hands at the kitchen table. “It’ll be okay, Rosie. Honest it will.”
“How? What will we ever do if it rains when we’re using the car to get people—or worse, written material—anyplace?”
“Rosie, you wanted a convertible, but if I could offer a suggestion . . .” Rosemary looked pleadingly to Claudia. “Now t
hat Annie’s got the top up, we could keep it there.”
Rosemary looked at Claudia in wonder. “What a great idea. What a soldier you’ll make in the revolution.” Greatly cheered, Rosemary went to Claudia and proudly placed her hands on her shoulders. “What a team we’ll be. Me, the theoretician. Claudia the practician. I love you, my stolid, midwestern woman.” She put her arms around the blushing Claudia.
Victoria and Annie looked at one another. “I wish he’d told me the price he wanted months ago. I’ll never be able to afford this,” Annie said, dejectedly. Victoria said nothing. But her eyes sparkled with hope as she comforted Annie. The teakettle whistled.
“Tea’s ready, ladies,” Victoria announced and soon led them all to the living room. When they were all settled she proposed a toast to Sojourner.
“And that’s why we’re here, women,” Rosemary announced. “Buying a car was all part of it. We have a suggestion for your future. And ours.”
“Leave it to Rosemary to plan our future,” Annie said, only half-joking, still disheartened.
“You asked for help,” Rosemary reminded her.
Annie surrendered on the legless couch, her legs spread, leaning forward. “Let’s have it.”
“Claudia and I were thinking about how hard it is for someone like Dusty or Turkey or me or any of us, to understand what’s happening as we come out. It’s as if no one has ever done it before. Claudia has studied every phase of heterosexual development, but not one word about lesbian growth. There are some books out there, but not many. We know nothing about what we’re going through as lesbians. We don’t even understand what we’ve been through when it’s over. And we can’t tell anyone else about it, because of our own ignorance and because it’s not talked about. So the next woman who comes out is as much in the dark as we were.
“And we’re coming out in the more sophisticated places in the world. Can you imagine what it’s like for a kid in the midwest like Claudia, having those feelings like she had for her friend, and knowing no better than to deny them? Or being a poor woman who just doesn’t know that she has a choice, that she can say no to men and babies?”
Victoria was pouring from the teapot again. Annie had leaned back and was listening intently.
“I’ll get to the point,” Rosemary said. “We’d like to develop some way to show other women that they’re not the first ones this is happening to and that they do have some positive choices. It could take the form of a magazine, but nothing slick. Or maybe a newsletter. Or pictures—like the slides parents show when they get back from another country. Because we’re in another country now. And our country has a history and a literature and even a language all its own. We have heroines and leaders we’ll never even discover unless more of us begin to research like the women at The Ladder do. And we have to learn how to tell the people what we’ve learned. Then we’ll know we are a country and a people and we’ll be less lonely, we’ll understand more, we’ll be stronger.”
The others sat in silence, staring at Rosemary. Finally, Annie said, “You ought to give speeches, lady.”
“That was quite impressive, Rosemary,” Victoria agreed.
Claudia grinned and bounced up. “What do you think? Want to work on a project like that with us?”
Annie and Victoria looked at one another. “Sure,” said Annie.
“In fact,” Victoria explained, “that’s exactly what we want to do, too. We were talking, before you came, about how we wished we could reach out to women who are making a mess of their lives because they don’t know what to do about their feelings about women. And how we wanted to educate them—and ourselves.”
“And,” Annie added, “Vicky couldn’t think of a better life work.”
“We’ll be educators,” Rosemary concluded, “however we decide to do it.”
“What about money?” Annie asked.
“We talked a little about that,” Claudia answered. “Rosemary and I will be in school and can still count on our parents. We can get part-time jobs if we need to. The project itself shouldn’t take much money. But you two will still have to work to support yourselves.”
“I could keep driving,” Annie said. “It’s not that bad a job if it’s not your whole life. Though someday I will want something better.”
“This is getting into the land of dreams,” Rosemary interjected, “but if the Project becomes a success in some way—a book we can sell or a movie that earns us money—we might be able to make some sort of career of it, though that is almost beyond my imagination now. I’m thinking of changing my graduate major to business in case that should happen.”
Victoria seemed about to burst. “I have some ideas too, Anne. I wanted to wait until I was more sure, but I think, with my graduation money, we might begin to look into buying the toothpick house. I’m certain a mortgage would be lower than what that man is charging you for rent and we wouldn’t have to leave.” She watched as Annie’s face got pink and her eyes lit up. “If we could get our expenses down that way we could both work part-time to make ends meet. I saw a poster recruiting adult education teachers. I’m sure I could do that.”
“You’d feel okay about using your money to buy the house?”
“Yes! It’s what I’ve wanted!” Victoria answered.
Claudia bounced out of her chair again. “I’m so excited about all this opening up for us. And I feel so very lucky that we have the advantages we have so we’re able to do it.”
“We have a responsibility to use those advantages,” Rosemary reminded them, “for the good of lesbians everywhere.”
Annie looked suddenly disconsolate. “I wish Peg and Turkey would get turned on to this stuff.”
“They may yet,” Victoria soothed Annie.
Annie shook her head, pulling her hat over her eyes. “No,” she mumbled, “I don’t think so. Even Peg, who introduced me to feminism, she’s scared of it. She’d rather just be a gym teacher. I think she’ll keep going to meetings and readings and maybe someday marches too, but I don’t see her sticking her neck out any farther than that. She wants to be comfortable. And I don’t blame her. It’s so damn uncomfortable being gay, that you take your comforts where you can get them. But, now, I’d sure like to expand the gay world beyond bars, so we could take our comfort a lot of places. And, Rosemary, I’d like to do it for all women, like you said, not just lesbians. Because then more women could see their choices and more women who want to come out could if they were freer to be themselves.”
“We’re agreed on the project, then,” Rosemary concluded. “When do you want to start talking about what we’re going to do and what the structure will be?”
“Want us to come to your rooms tomorrow evening?”
When Claudia nodded eagerly, Rosemary looked suspiciously at her. “Don’t you trust Sojourner to get us out here again?”
Everyone laughed and got up to say goodbye. It was an excited, hopeful group that hugged goodnight. Annie stood leaning against the porch rail looking tiredly after the retreating Sojourner. Then she turned toward Victoria coming up the steps. “I get to keep you here with me, now, don’t I, lady?” Annie said, pulling Victoria up to her and kissing her neck. “Got enough energy to walk to the beach?” she said into her neck, still kissing her.
“Annie, please stop,” Victoria said weakly, “or we’ll go straight to bed.”
“Okay, okay. I really need the beach first to clear my head, you sexy woman.”
* * * * *
The moon was large and round in the sky and they walked under it, hand in hand. At the water’s edge they stopped.
“That was really nice of you, Vicky, to offer a down payment on the house.”
“Would it be okay? I wouldn’t want it to be all mine. We’d both be the owners and we could work it out financially in the long run.”
“How did you know what I was thinking again, you witch?” Annie asked affectionately, turning to hold Victoria. “That would be important for me. To really know it belonged to both
of us.”
“I get excited every time I realize how well I do know you, Anne. And toothpick house could never not belong to you. It wouldn’t be the same house.”
They walked in silence for awhile, their arms around each other. It was clear enough for the sky to look crowded with stars.
“How do you think it will work out, this project?” Annie asked.
“I think it will become a life work. Maybe not always with Rosemary and Claudia, but always for me, and I hope for us.”
“I think you’re right. I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time.”
“I know, you’ve been a lost spirit, looking for a cause. Full of energy and talent and nowhere to use it.”
Annie nodded in agreement, then turned back to look at their home. “Do you still think it’s a toothpick house?” she asked Victoria.
“It’ll always be a toothpick house for me, Anne. But that doesn’t mean I think it can be swept away, like in your dream. Listen. I can’t even hear the foghorns. There’s nothing for them to warn us about.”
“To tell you the truth, except for that dream, I find the foghorns kind of comforting. They sound like home to me. I hope you’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
“How, my wise woman?” Annie teased, falling to her knees in jest before Victoria. She looked up and saw her lover’s head half-crowned by the moon. The sight was strangely moving for Annie who stayed where she was, as if entranced.
“Come up here with me, silly.”
Annie rose and stood touching Victoria, her eyes still on the moon. Victoria continued. “The house won’t be swept away because we won’t let it be. We’ll take our four strong hands,” and Victoria drew Annie around so they faced each other, taking her hands, “and we’ll do what we must to make it solid. And then we’ll bring our work into it. I can’t think of a stronger cement, can you?”