The Swashbuckler

by Lee Lynch

  They didn’t think I could take it, you know. After my first year of school, this counselor called me in. They’d been checking out my records. You have to be stable for this job, they said. I told them I was stable, now, more stable than somebody who never went through what I did. It took awhile, but seeing this counselor a couple of times a week was good for both of us. She was convinced, finally, and I learned even more about how to stay well. Now the patients and staff all think I’m good, respect me. My father would be proud. I think I made the right choice.

  The course was offered by a community college, didn’t cost much, even with getting my G.E.D. at the same time only took about two years. Because I’ve always read so much, Esther said.

  Lydia. The poor kid didn’t understand why she couldn’t live with me after I stopped being so “sick” and being put away all the time. Why couldn’t I live with Grandma and her and my two sisters and their kids? Or why couldn’t she stay here? She loved Edie and Esther. Esther and Lydia were close right away because they’re both so dark. Lydia is darker than me, darker than anyone in my family, so it was always she and Esther against me and Edie.

  I’m listening to old records as I write this. It helps keep the gay fever down. Keeps me away from the bars. I’m afraid of what would happen to my life if I went back to the bars. I sit here for hours listening and dreaming of women and yet stay in one piece because I’m not drinking or getting hurt in a love affair. When I get to the point where I want to ask Edie and Esther to strap me down because the fever’s on me so bad, I come in here late at night with a glass of seltzer and a pack of cigarettes and I sit and listen, dancing, loving women in my head until I’m exhausted.

  But back to Lydia ... It hurts to write this.

  Our neighborhood made up my mind for me. Some kids told her I was queer. How they knew it or why they said it I don’t know.

  But they told her I’m queer and they told her what a queer is. The kid wasn’t even upset. She just wanted to know was it true.

  I just stared at her.

  “Hey, Ma,” she said. She’d just turned ten. “They said it like it was a dirty word. But I don’t think so.”

  I knew I couldn’t freak out on her. For maybe the first time I wouldn’t allow myself the luxury of carrying on when I was upset. “Just because your mother is, doesn’t mean you have to be, little one.”

  “What if I wanted to be?”

  “Sure then. Whatever’s right for you.” And I wasn’t thinking; this was instinct. Instead of warning her what a hard life she’d have, I’d let her decide.

  How did I deserve this special child? Was it her intelligence that made her see things more clearly than others? Or did I pass along something of myself?

  “And Aunt Edie and Esther are too, aren’t they? I can see they love each other a lot,” she rushed on. “Are they ashamed?”

  I was laughing through my tears and trying not to hug her to death. “No, they’re not ashamed. But all those hateful people, they make you ashamed of yourself and your own. Because of them we have to hide who we are. We have to be careful especially about Edie and Esther. They’re teachers and could lose their jobs if people knew.”

  “Why?”

  How do you explain something like that to a kid? “Straight people are afraid gay teachers will teach their students to be gay.”

  “But the straight teachers teach us to be straight.”

  “For some reason, I don’t know why, they’re afraid. So they want to convince kids that being straight is right.”

  “Weird,” said Lydia, moving away and picking up the teddy bear she’s had since she was a baby; he probably gave her more security than I did.

  “Can I go tell Edie and Esther I know they’re queer?”

  I laughed again. “Some people don’t like being called queer.”

  “You mean gay?”

  I explained the history of the word lesbian. “This woman Sappho lived on an island and taught school. All the girls in that part of the world would go to her school. They all loved her and learned to love each other. It was okay, see, to be like me back then. The island was called Lesbos. Like we’re from Puerto Rico and we’re proud to be called Puerto Ricans.”

  It seemed to make sense to her. “Then can I tell them I know they’re lesbians?” I grabbed one last hug from her and we went off to find Edie and Esther.

  I can’t say I hadn’t felt proud to be gay before that. Sometimes, all dressed up to go out, I’d strut around. Or dancing with a pretty girl who was making eyes at me... But that was only sometimes. Not enough. And not as I had felt that moment, knowing my daughter knew I was gay and thought it was okay.

  So I was thinking about Lydia and feeling pretty good, when Esther came down here a little while ago, all sleepy-eyed.

  “Did I wake you with the records?” I asked.

  “No, no. I was lying there and lying there and couldn’t sleep,” she said, sitting heavily on a chair near me.

  I got up and put on a new stack of records.

  “When I hear you playing these records I know you have to be wanting,” she said, leaning back and laughing a little.

  “Yeah,” I admitted because I can’t resist Esther’s warmth, “I’m wanting. But I can handle it.”

  “You’re wanting,” she said again through a yawn.

  Something about the way she was talking made me suspect it wasn’t me, but herself, she was talking about, that it was Esther who was a little bored with her life, who was wanting. The thought terrified me. What if something was wrong between her and Edie? I needed to know.

  “You sure you’re just worried about me, girl?” I asked.

  She didn’t look at me, but I could feel her closing up. “If you don’t want to talk about it,” she said, rising, “I’d better get some sleep.”

  I watched her go back upstairs. I’d never seen her in this mood. It scared me. Esther and Edie had become a fixture for me, the one thing in the world besides Lydia I could depend on.

  It occurred to me, as it sometimes did late at night, that all I had to do was put some shoes on and go downtown for that part of my life to start all over. Going in to work every day, since I got out of school, was not a habit I couldn’t break. I was tired, really tired, of being sober and sane and regular. I liked parts of being crazy. I was still part crazy, but had to hold it in. And I was tired of no sex and of being a mother. I felt like I was tied down to this damn house, to Edie taking care of me like a goody-goody white girl, to Esther psychoanalyzing me, to Lydia hanging onto me.

  What it feels like here sometimes is dull desert. All white, bleached out, bland. Nothing to excite me, upset me. Deserts are supposed to be beautiful once you get to know them. But this white, middle-class neighborhood is still an unfamiliar desert for me. I miss my neighborhood, where every night in the summer some wino walks down the street singing drunkenly in Spanish. Where there’s always a siren going by. My heart gets so heavy, it’s too much to carry — this keeping myself from any life real to me so I can keep life.

  If only I were strong enough not to go crazy. Or still crazy enough not to have to be strong.

  I’d set the record changer wrong, Downtown was playing over and over. Why shouldn’t I get out? What if it set me off? What if I kissed a girl and lost my head and disappeared for a week? I had enough money. If Edie and Esther didn’t like it I’d get my own place. Downtown. Go out every night if I wanted to. I could work second shift.

  Why not?

  Because it would drive me crazy, that’s why, I answered myself. What would I do on my own, without anyone to help me, to hold myself together? Then I did cry. Because I did need holding together. I wasn’t anything but a near-empty bag of tricks.

  I crossed the room and shut off the stereo. I’d never go downtown again, much less live there. I didn’t have what it took. I was a messed-up PR dyke hiding in a white girl’s house. And I had the fever. Gay fever. I wanted a girl so bad... I had to stop wanting. Had to shut it out. If on
ly Frenchy were different, if only I could have felt safe with her, if she could have understood. Because it’s Frenchy I see in my mind when I feel the fever.

  I climbed the stairs to bed slowly, shaking.

  * * * * *

  That was one of my bad nights. I was lucky the stack of records didn’t wind down to Timi Yuro’s Make the World Go Away. That would have finished me for good.

  The whole next day I was distracted and worried about Esther and Edie. I hurried home after work.

  “Edie!” I said, not expecting to see her there in the kitchen getting supper ready as always. “What’s wrong?” she asked, startled.

  “I don’t know. Something is. You tell me.” Lots of times we’ve had a wordless communication; she wasn’t surprised that I was tuned in to her distress.

  “Rosetta is what’s wrong.”

  “Another girl? For Esther? You want me to beat this Rosetta’s head in?”

  “Oh, Mercedes, I wish it were that simple,” Edie said, collapsing in to a chair.

  “Does she want to leave you?” Edie shook her head. “She wants to have an affair and still go with you?”

  “Yes,” Edie said with such misery in her voice I could hardly stand it.

  “Maybe I should go beat on Esther.”

  “I can’t believe it. In the beginning she wanted me so badly, she said she’d never want anyone but me. Maybe if we’d had an understanding that we might want to see other women ...” Her voice broke. “... Then I could understand it, try to go along with it. But this just came out of the blue.”

  “Is she black?”

  “Yes. She sings with Esther.”

  “I can see the attraction.” Edie looked up at me, surprised. “Edie, you know what a problem it’s been for her to live two separate lives. Half with you, half with her own people. I’m surprised she wasn’t tempted long ago to try an easier way.”

  “But it isn’t any easier. She knows that. The problems are just different.” Edie sounded as if she were pleading with me.

  “Yeah, but when you’re working on one set, sometimes the other set looks easier to handle. I should know.”

  “The grass is always greener,” she said bitterly.

  “You said she doesn’t want to leave you.”

  “How long can that last with this cutie in the wings?”

  It was time for me to get a hold on things. I couldn’t afford, for Edie’s sake, to think of the consequences her breaking up with Esther might have for me. I had to get Edie in the mood to fight. “You want to lose her?”

  “No,” Edie flashed back, angry.

  “Then why give up like this? She’ll never come home to a woman who acts like a loser. Not when the cutie is all smiles and sunshine.”

  “Let her have the smiles and sunshine then. If she wants to give up all we have together, then let her.”

  “You just said you didn’t want to let her go.”

  “Mercedes, stop it. I don’t want to, but what can I do?”

  “Hey lady,” I said, walking over to her and taking her hands. “You’ve had other problems in your life. You didn’t just sit back and let them happen, did you? Then why this?”

  “Maybe I don’t know how to fight this. I can’t turn black.”

  “You won’t have to. If you were black, Esther probably wouldn’t have been interested in you in the first place.”

  “You think so?”

  I smiled at her. “You weren’t black, were you? Sometimes it’s these obvious things that are hardest to keep sight of.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Somebody’s got to think this out. Maybe I’ve already thought it out about myself.” I had Edie interested, I had to keep her like that. “So let’s start there. Esther wouldn’t have loved you in the first place if there wasn’t something good about you, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “We have to figure out what it is and make sure we remind her of that. The cutie may offer her other things, but she can’t give her the same things you do. You know?” My brain was working so hard I felt like I was back in school.

  “She’s new,” Edie said, beginning to cry again.

  “That’s where we can start. Newness might not be a bigger attraction than what Esther already knows.”

  “Still,” Edie said, taking a deep breath and getting control of herself, “we just don’t know. It’s all up to Esther. If she doesn’t forget the value of the things I can give her, then I have a chance. But if she decides she doesn’t want those things anymore ...”

  I sat next to her and put my head on her shoulder. “You’re giving up again, Edie. Sure, the final decision is hers, but you get to influence that final decision. Is she coming over tonight?”

  “She’s singing. With her.”

  “They can’t do much when they’re singing.”

  Edie was able to laugh.

  “Don’t assume she’ll be with Rosetta if she doesn’t come here, Edie. This is pretty heavy for Esther, too. She might just go to her sister’s house, where she can be alone to think.”

  Edie looked up. “That gives me an idea. She could have a space of her own here.”

  “Good thinking. A place she’s used to, but where she’d be more alone than with her cousins crawling over her.”

  “After dinner I’ll clear out the sewing room. If I make it comfortable... But you know, somehow this isn’t kosher. I’m using the house to lure her back to me. Rosetta is probably poor and can’t fight on the same terms.”

  “But that’s one of Rosetta’s attractions. She’s more the poor side of Esther. Rosetta’ll fight with her own weapons. You have to use what you got.”

  “That makes sense,” Edie said slowly, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes.

  “Besides, you share your house enough, there’s no reason to feel guilty about owning it. Where would I be without your house?”

  I could see I’d convinced her. She was beginning to believe she didn’t have to stand there and watch Esther go. “How about that dinner you’re talking about? I’ll go up and get started cleaning things up in Esther’s room.”

  “Okay. And I’ll be thinking too, about my winning points.” She smiled sadly.

  I went upstairs and got to work.

  * * * * *

  The tension in the house was awful. Afraid for both of them, I was a mess. Edie was trying to show Esther what she offered her and yet leave her enough space to think in. Lydia, on the weekends, tiptoed around the house, as if afraid to upset the delicate balance of anyone’s feelings. And Esther, Esther the joker, the one who was always there to help you through a rough spot, walked around moody and obviously torn apart by her feelings.

  Lydia was staying with her grandmother during the week. She had ties in the old neighborhood she needed to keep and was more comfortable in a school with her own. Soon after she left that Sunday evening Esther came home from church. Early. Edie and I looked at each other. Esther went into her room and stayed there. Edie fooled around the house for a while then went to bed. I had just settled into Make the World Go Away when there was a padding on the stairs and I felt Esther come into the room. I was smoking and drinking seltzer, doodling pictures’ of girls faces on the margins of a magazine.

  I’d never seen Esther so gloomy. She’d obviously been crying and her hands moved nervously on each other: wringing, scratching, cracking her knuckles.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “Doing okay.”

  “It don’t sound it from the song.” Just then Timi was at her most desperate. I moved over and put my arm across Esther’s shoulders in a friendly way. I hoped she didn’t mind. Esther hung her head. I guessed I better take my arm away, but I stayed next to her.

  “I’m all tore up about this, Mer,” she managed to say. I really hoped she wouldn’t cry in front of me. I mean, I loved Esther, but I never felt that close to her to want to see a butch — which is how I thought about her — cry in front of me. The old ways ar
e strong.

  “When I get near Rosetta,” she blurted, “my mind just swims away. There ain’t nothing but this big puddle of my body melting toward her so I just know it’s going to wash over her some day when I’m not even noticing what I’m doing. I can’t keep away from her, Mer, you hear what I’m saying?”

  “I sure do.”

  “I wouldn’t have chosen this to happen, no way, but it is and all’s I can see to do is let it happen till it’s all over.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I got to wondering why Esther hadn’t let it happen so far if she wanted it so much.

  “She’s in my mind so strong, there’s no room for Edie, but I know I didn’t just stop loving Edie. That’s not possible is it?”

  “You would have known it was coming, I think.”

  “You’re probably right. She works where you do,” she added.

  “What’s her last name?”

  “Young.”

  “Technician?”

  “Nurse’s aide,” Esther said as if confessing it. “She’s only twenty-two. Saving money to go to college.”

  “Sounds nice,” I said without really meaning it. Esther picked up on my empty words.

  “I know it’s plain ridiculous to say I can’t help myself, but that’s how I feel.”

  We were quiet for a while. I let Timi sing once more. She was really wailing, sounding like a gospel singer. I got up and shut off the record. Time for me to say something. I didn’t want to sound preachy. “When I used to go drinking,” I said. Esther looked up. “I knew where it would lead, to the looney bin or some other kind of trouble. I’d say to myself, I don’t want to go through this. And my self would say, but you got to, you feeling bad, girl. You feeling so damn bad, what else can you do?”

  Esther was looking at me like she wanted me to go on, but that was all I was going to say. All I had to say. I sure didn’t have any advice, not with the mess my life had always been.

  A long time later she asked, “You ever feel like this, Mer?”