“Can I hold the camera?” Sydney asked.
Lucia clutched it tighter. “Not yet.” She panned the crowd, taking in her mom and all their friends, her bonus aunts and uncles, leaning against the walls and perched on furniture, talking and pouring drinks; if they saw the camera moving over them, some made funny faces or flashed peace signs. The boring song came to an end and everyone applauded and Lucia shifted the camera back to the bride and groom as Beatriz gallantly dropped Topher into a deep theatrical dip. They stood and shook it off as Flynn reached over and turned off the camera. “Show’s over,” he said. “Let’s party.”
Meena and Lawrence were in the corner DJing with records and a laptop. Meena started with “Single Ladies”—Sydney knew the whole dance by heart and Lucia could follow along for most of it—and everyone put a ring on it. Then Lawrence took over and played the Delta 5, the B-52s, Gang of Four, jerky shouty bands Lucia’s mother thought were essential and that Lucia liked because she’d grown up with them, but that Sydney could not abide. “Come on, Luz. This party needs help.”
The two wove through the dancers to the DJ table.
“Can we play a couple songs?” Sydney asked. Meena said, “Well . . .” and Lucia broke out her most anime-eyed smile: “Please?”
Lawrence relented.
Sydney plugged her iPod into the system and Lucia took the microphone triumphantly. “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to dance?”
The crowd clapped and whooped obligingly. With a flourish, Sydney pressed Play.
Staccato synths faded in, smeared with a telltale swoop of canned strings. Everyone on the dance floor paused a moment, ears cocked. Then eyes narrowed; groans went up. “Not this song!” someone said. “Please, god, no,” someone else said.
“Please, goddess, yes!” Sydney thrust her fist in the air. Lucia leaned into the mic and said, “Let’s do it,” and then the Auto-Tuned warble of Will.i.am shouldered in and sentenced everyone to “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas.
Meena covered her face with her hands, laughing, and Lawrence moaned, “You guys, this is the worst,” but Carson ran up and grabbed her hands and pulled her onto the floor. Lucia just rolled her eyes and she and Sydney high-fived. Lucia’s mom and her friends had strong opinions about what songs were good and what songs were the worst, and as far as Lucia could tell it had nothing to do with the actual awesomeness of the song. The adults ardently praised songs that sounded crabbed and itchy, songs that were fuzzy and gnarled and droopy, songs that sounded like people shouting over garbage trucks crashing. But to Lucia and Sydney, if a song tasted like candy and made your body act of its own accord—foot tapping, fist pumping, a little extra swagger in your step—and it made the moment feel bigger, like a movie, like you were living now and now was huge and shimmering, it was the best kind of song. No matter what anyone else said.
And look: everyone was on the dance floor now, everyone was shouting whoo-hooo, everyone had goofy grins on their faces, they had all given themselves up to the silly greatness of a gigantic pop song that had played nonstop that whole summer—a song so vapid and so overplayed that by the end of the year, it might never be played again, and if it was, it would forever be cemented to this particular summer, a song that could invoke an involuntary twinge of nostalgia mere months after it fell from the charts. But now, the song was still number one. The moment dilated. Beatriz was married to them, and tonight was going to be a good night.
Lucia and Syd plunged into the crowd and flung themselves into the beat, and a circle opened up. Sydney moonwalked right into it and did the worm and cheers rose around them. Lucia’s mother and Beatriz appeared at the edge of the circle, clapping and whooping, and when they saw Lucia they danced their way across the circle to reach her and Sydney. Beatriz looked more herself again, face washed clean and hair shaken down, handsome even in the incongruous white dress. Andrea’s cheeks were flushed, her mascara smudged, and her eyes were so bright Lucia wondered if there were tears in them, though her smile was radiant.
“Show us your moves,” Beatriz said. “We need some new ones.”
Lucia grabbed her hand and said, “Just follow us.” And they did.
[Immigration Questions Test]
As the final step to get a Green Card, either the immigrant or both halves of the couple will have an interview with a consular or USCIS officer. The immigrant’s application will be reviewed, and both parties will be asked questions to test the validity of the marriage. It may be pragmatic to anticipate and practice common questions beforehand.
OFFICIAL ANSWERS THE REAL ANSWERS
Where and how did you meet?
TOPHER: We met through my longtime friend Andrea. Beatriz was her daughter’s teacher at this rock ’n’ roll camp for girls, and one night we all went out for pizza. Something just clicked. I thought, There’s no woman I’d rather spend the rest of my life with.
BEATRIZ: That’s good.
T: Thanks.
B: For me, it was like . . . Topher was talking about this documentary class he was teaching at PCC, and he was very well dressed and smart, and I thought, I want to take that class. And I felt this jolt in my body. Like two magnets slamming together. I thought, I could talk to this guy forever and never get bored. So that’s how it started.
ANDREA: That first time I laid eyes on her, I practically jumped. I was like, Who is that? Because after a while you’ve seen every queer in Portland a million times, even me, who doesn’t get out a lot, and here was this beautiful person who was obviously from somewhere else—you could just tell by the way she dressed, it was a slightly different translation of queer andro punk whatever. And the way Lucia looked at her—that was new too. I also saw the way she never stopped moving. When the other counselors sprawled exhausted in the metal folding chairs at the end of the day, she was still in the thick of the crowd, checking in with the kids, picking up stray cables and drumsticks. She had such purpose. This energy.
B: Andrea was, like, warm yet guarded at the same time, and it made me so curious. And I wanted to know who’d raised this kid who was so calm and fearless. Luz is only nine but she’s so cool, how do you do that? What I said about Topher, that’s actually what I felt about Andrea.
Where did you go on dates?
B: I took him to this Brazilian dance night at a place on Southeast MLK. I would not have guessed that a skinny white thing like him could shake his booty like that.
T: It’s my thing.
B: You better not sound so gay when you say that.
T: Noted. Our other dates . . . we liked to go out for sushi? Especially the places with the conveyor belts and trains of sushi. And sometimes we went to Sassy’s, where our friend Summer dances? But not when she was dancing, that’s—for me—
B: —I might get jealous if we were watching our friend.
T: Right. Beatriz gets jealous sometimes.
B: Now we just cuddle on the couch and watch movies.
T: So many movies.
A: The first time was at the rock camp showcase at the Bagdad Theater. Lucia’s first band, Taco Night, played their glorious, arrhythmic debut/swan song performance, and I went backstage to find Beatriz and thank her. I was sure she’d be going out with all the other camp people afterward.
B: No way. After that week, all I wanted was a quiet drink in a dark place. I asked Andrea if she wanted to get one and she invited me over.
A: Lucia was in bed by eight. Beatriz was in mine by nine.
B: Why delay the inevitable?
A: But we had real dates too. When Luz was staying over at Sydney’s, we would go to shows or parties. Or out with our friends.
B: Karaoke at the Alibi or Chopsticks.
A: Once we drank a whole bottle of wine at that place on Alberta.
B: And when we got home we took those pictures with your phone—
A: Oh god. I deleted all of them the next morning. I can’t even think about them.
B: Remember the one with the tie—
&nb
sp; A: Hush now.
How many people attended your wedding?
T: About thirty? We kept it kind of small. Just close friends. And my mom.
B: My parents couldn’t afford to come all the way from Brazil, so we’re saving up to go there this winter. We sent them lots of pictures, though.
A: I never wanted a wedding, but I have to admit that once theirs was all under way I kind of wished it were mine.
B: Aw, baby.
A: Don’t tell.
How do your parents feel about your choice of spouse?
T: My mom loves her.
B: His mom is super cool. My parents are very excited that I met Topher and that we are married. But they’re a little sad that I am so far from home. They were like, Why not bring him to Brazil? Our recession just ended and up there it’s so bad. But I love the USA.
T: Way to drive it home, B.
A: I would say they’re dealing. They’re a little awkward about it. They’ve only met her once. She killed them with kindness.
B: That’s right.
A: Beatriz amps it up with them and comes across as so happy you can’t be upset with her.
B: I am pretty sure my parents always knew I was gay, even though we never talked about any kind of dating ever for me. They know I’m living with Andrea and Lucia and that we do everything together. When I told them about Topher, they were stunned. But they warmed right up.
A: Ugh. Let’s go on to the next question.
Do you use contraception? If so, what form?
T: Condoms?
B: No, let’s say “nothing.” It’ll seem even more real, right?
T: Plus, it’s true.
A: They asked me this at just about every prenatal checkup I had, and after Lucia was born. Finally I said “homosexuality.”
B: I bet that shut them up.
A: It bought me a few seconds of silence.
How did he propose?
B: Actually, I proposed.
T: Ooh, I like that.
A: Wasn’t it Topher’s idea?
B: I thought it was Lawrence’s idea.
A: Anyway, I’d slumped into a terrible depression at the thought of B leaving, and then someone brought it up, and Topher volunteered. Maybe it was a joke at first. But we all thought it was brilliant. None of us realized quite how complex it would be.
B: No, all you knew was what you remembered from the movie Green Card.
A: We didn’t know it would take so long.
B: That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.
What did you get each other for your last birthday?
B: Well, I got him a bottle of good bourbon and a book of Martin Parr photography.
T: How did you know that? She really knows me.
B: It’s on the shelf there.
T: I got her . . . some guitar stuff?
B: He got me a Big Muff.
T: A what?
B: It’s a fuzzbox. A pedal.
T: Okay, yes. I gave her a Big Muff. You are really cracking yourself up with this one, aren’t you?
B: She got me a bike from Citybikes, an eighties ten-speed all fixed up. And lights.
A: She built me this beautiful simple dining table with a reclaimed fir top. It is the nicest piece of furniture I’ve ever owned. The kind of table you keep for the rest of your life.
Who sleeps on which side of the bed?
T: In real life, I sleep on the right.
B: I do too. One of us should switch so we don’t have to worry about getting it wrong.
T: Good call. Oh my god, this could have sunk us.
B: I think I should move in with you for like a week.
T: We need to study.
B: You have no side. You take it all.
A: I thought I just stole all the covers.
B: No, you get the mattress too. I hover on the edge.
A: But I’m only, like, five-two. How much space could I really take?
B: That question is, like, your personal challenge to yourself every night.
LUCIA: What are you doing?
A: Luz! We thought you were asleep.
L: I couldn’t. You guys are being loud.
B: Oh, it’s not that you were secretly reading with your flashlight after bedtime?
L: Um . . .
A: She has a flashlight in there?
B: I saw it under the bed.
A: You are so busted, Luz.
B: Problem child.
A: Actually I used to do that too.
L: See? You should just let me read with the light on until I fall asleep.
B: You guys are sneaky.
L: What are you reading?
B: The questions that Topher and I were practicing earlier at his house. Now your mom and I are just answering them for fun.
L: Read one to me.
A: Okay.
How do you feel about having children?
T: Didn’t we kind of answer that with the condom question?
B: Let’s say we want to have two kids. No, four kids! Four new consumers to boost the American economy.
T: Let’s go with two, honey.
B: Two boys and two girls!
T: I think we should wrap this up. You’re getting punchy.
B: I am going to be the best resident alien they have ever interviewed.
B: I always wanted to have kids, you know.
L: You did?
B: Yeah. I just didn’t know how it would happen.
L: Do you wish you had more of them?
A: Good question. Do you?
B: There would be no point in trying to get more kids because you are my favorite kid ever, and you always will be. It wouldn’t be fair.
A: Good answer.
L: I think so too.
The Beginnings
ANDREA HAD NOT BEEN PREPARED FOR BIRTH. She had stockpiled gifts and practical supplies and thrifted gender-neutral baby clothes for weeks, but none of it readied her for the night Lucia tore through her, opened her in a way that would never close. Birth turned her inside out, and when she saw Lucia’s face for the first time, her wondrous touchable human face, and the faces of those around her (Meena’s eyes streaming, Lawrence pale but smiling openmouthed with astonishment, her sister Annabel’s blasphemous shout of joy), she went all out and all in. Exuberant pain, excruciating love—they were one and the same. A new ferocity roiled in her heart, shot through her entire body, pulsed through her blood. The industry that marketed motherhood in pastels and cursive was a joke. In reality it was dark red and animal and iron.
Every good and bad choice, every circumstance beyond and within her control, every little thing that had led her to this point, gazing into the dazed eyes of this tiny new creature, was worth it.
The birth certificate listed only Lucia and Andrea, the father line left blank by law. “Should I give you the father’s name?” Andrea asked. The hospital attendant recording it asked if she was married, and when she said no, replied, “Then you can’t.” All right then, Andrea thought. It’s just us two.
The early years were the hardest. Enrolling in night school as a condition of receiving welfare benefits. Desperately arranging babysitting swaps with the slightly-less-new mom who lived across the street, whom Andrea came to know now that they shared this common condition, and calling in friends, sick with gratitude for their willingness to help. The handful of humiliating times she had to call and ask her parents for money. The way time reshaped itself—a sleepless night would last forever and a workday was six hours shorter than she needed to get everything done. Blessed be WIC and CHIP and Head Start. Blessed be—no guilt—the television. Blessed be the Lego phase, which it turned out Andrea had never outgrown either, and Lucia’s learning to read. Blessed be the human safety net of friends. Blessed be well-employed Meena, who hooked her up with take-home proofreading assignments, pirated design software, and commercial illustration gigs. Blessed be Sydney, and Lucia’s other friends along the way, Skyler and Raven and Montana and Miles, and
their parents. Blessed be the older lesbian parents who emerged from quarters she hadn’t known were there. Blessed be the library, the Goodwill on Killingsworth, five-for-five-dollars Annie’s mac & cheese at Fred Meyer, and a landlord too elderly to realize she could raise the rent. Blessed be the fact that you can teach at a private school without certification. Blessed be the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls.
For a long stretch in Lucia’s life, Andrea couldn’t imagine she would ever have the time or space to have sex again, much less fall in love. She was working her ass off: parenting, finishing her BA, teaching art to middle and high schoolers at a private school on the West Side. Lucia was her life partner, all-encompassing and ever-present. There was no time for art, except what she pulled together in demos for the students. The kid, the dog: her every waking moment was assigned to sheer survival, keeping them all alive and well, and no one she met was worth kicking either of them out of the bed at night.
When Lucia started preschool, Andrea thought it was time to break the longest sex drought of her adult life. But with whom? The dating pool to which her friends had free access was suddenly hard to get into. A lesbian with a toddler was saddled with a kind of adulthood from which the eternal youth of Portland shied violently away. Everyone loved Lucia, conceptually at least; she was a little mascot in her tiny Sonic Youth T-shirt and sneakers—but Andrea and kid were housebound for the night well before most people had even started getting ready to go out. The one who broke the drought was good for a couple of weeks until it became clear she was more taken with Lucia than Andrea. Then Andrea had to reassess: Lucia was off-limits to dates until Andrea was sure something would last, or at least seemed headed toward an enduring friendship. Some had little interest in hearing about Lucia; to them the kid was like a job or a pet, an element of life you left elsewhere when you wanted to enter the real world, be your true self. For most of them, there just wasn’t time. There was more than enough lesbian baggage to go around; why pick someone with extra?
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