The Swashbuckler

by Lee Lynch

“I used to. I was just thinking about it. This little femme named Nancy. Me and Frenchy were hanging out downtown, you know?” This was going to hurt — but I thought maybe it would help. “We’d both sit there and talk about the chicks and she’d tell me who she was hung up on and I’d point out some cute ones. After a while I felt like I ought to be having some feelings too so I picked one out and got this crush on her. After a while I was feeling about her almost like you are about Rosetta. And I could’ve had her, I know that. But, you know, I sat in that damn chair next to Frenchy night after night and never did a thing but stare at Nancy. All week I’d dream about her at home. I couldn’t wait to get down to the bar and see her. But I never even asked her to dance.”

  “Why?”

  “It was Frenchy I was in love with. You couldn’t have torn me from beside her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither. I didn’t know it was Frenchy I wanted. For a lot of reasons. We were both butch for starters, which meant I couldn’t love her like a femme. You know what I’m saying? I had to let those feelings out, but there was something stopping them from going where they ought to be going.”

  “But you never let yourself feel for Frenchy.”

  “Oh yes I did. One night. But it didn’t work out. It takes two to work something out. She wasn’t ready. I wasn’t either, but I was readier than her.”

  “Why don’t you see if she’s readier to work it out now?”

  “’Cause I can’t teach it to her if she doesn’t know. And she’ll come to me when she knows. I hope.”

  And I hoped Esther knew I was talking about her, too.

  She was quiet. She finally asked me, “What were the other reasons you couldn’t feel like that about Frenchy?”

  I’d thought so much about all this I could tell her. “I wanted more from Frenchy than I’d ever wanted from any girl. I wanted her for life and that meant learning new rules, meant we both had to settle down, stop running around. She wasn’t bigoted, but she did have some stupid stubborn ideas about racial stuff I knew would get in our way. She lived with her mother and I didn’t want any girl who was going to run home to Mama every night after making love with me. There may be more. You get the picture? It was a very scary thing.”

  “So you just aimed your feelings elsewhere.”

  “And fooled myself with them for a long time.” I was getting sleepy and wanted to lay my head on Esther’s shoulder. I sat next to her again, but that was as far as I could go. Always this barrier between us.

  “But you don’t know Rosetta,” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “But then, I guess I don’t either.” She shook her head like she was clearing cobwebs out of her brain. “I don’t know,” she sighed, rising. “I just don’t know. I have to get some sleep. Got to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Me too.” I turned off the lamp and took my cigarettes and glass. She stood in the doorway while I rinsed out the glass.

  “Thanks for talking to me.” She shuffled back up the stairs.

  I felt so useless. What could I do? I’d said all I could.

  Suddenly, the tension left my body and I slumped against the sink. “Ohh,” I groaned. I’d come on so sure and strong, and I couldn’t even have the girl I wanted. Was love ever easy? I’d thought once you got past the beginning you could settle down and be happy — like Edie and Esther.

  * * * * *

  The next morning at work I searched for a nurse’s aide named Rosetta Young. If she sang with Esther she probably worked the day shift. I just wanted to check her out and size up the opposition. I asked around on break and at lunch. I’d gotten to know a lot of people and especially everybody gay, but it was harder to find gay girls than fags. The few lesbians I knew about were so obvious most of us tried to stay away from them at work, afraid people would catch on by association. So I figured my best chance was with the gay boys. Finally, about halfway through my fifth cup of coffee (I’d had one with every group I questioned to make my search look casual) I found a fag who knew a fag who roomed with a dyke named Rosetta.

  “She’s cute,” he said. “Works on the fifth floor. How’d you meet her?”

  “I haven’t — yet. Friend of mine’s interested. But,” I whispered, “my friend wants to get to know her in her own way. I just want to get a look at her. So don’t say anything, okay?”

  “Sure, doll,” he said and I changed the subject.

  There were only fifteen minutes left of lunch. I got away and rushed to the elevator, already filling up with workers getting back to their floors. I checked my watch, still trying to look casual. I thanked my lucky stars for nametags.

  Two aides were at the nurses’ station, probably ready to take off for late lunch. Having picked a name from the floor chart, I told the ward clerk I wanted to check on a patient I knew. The aides eyed me and I tried to read their tags. The ward clerk told me that that patient had just checked out. I snapped my fingers, pretending disappointment. I hadn’t figured how to get out of that one, and at this point I was going to be late getting back to work. The name tags were still too far away. I chatted with the clerk until both aides headed for the elevator.

  Rosetta was the tiny, delicate-looking girl. She talked real soft to her friend, but glanced shyly toward me a couple of times. She was truly beautiful. More competition than Edie could handle in that category. Real petite, with dark, dark skin and lively, laughing, yet shy eyes. Her hair was long and tied back in a severe way that made her eyes all the bigger. I wondered how anyone that size could lift heavy patients. I wondered, also, if Esther’s attraction was mostly physical.

  I was back at work by ten past. Now that I knew who she was and where she worked, I wanted to fix things, make everyone feel better, relax myself. How?

  I couldn’t decide what the hell to do about talking to Rosetta or not, so I lived through the week in a frustrated sweat. Before things had become so rocky between Edie and Esther, Jessie and Mary had asked us all over to their house for the coming weekend. Something, I hoped, would be resolved by then.

  Esther didn’t show Friday night. Usually she went to her sister’s to get her things and joined us by dinner. Edie waited to start dinner, face drawn. By that time Lydia had arrived. She took one look at us and knew something was wrong. The minute she could get me alone she asked what was happening.

  “Esther hasn’t come home yet is all. We don’t know any more than you do, kid.” I was so worried I hadn’t even properly greeted her.

  She gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. “You sound like Frenchy now.”

  I froze. Edie had wanted to see Frenchy again and asked her out to the house. I made myself scarce, went up to Harlem to see the old gang. But Lydia was there, eager to meet Frenchy who must have become by then, a mythical figure to her. When Frenchy’s name was mentioned around the house it was carefully, in hushed tones, as if dropping it would set off tremors in the earth. And after she’d met her, Lydia was still awed by Frenchy — in love, I suppose, just like her mother. She’d told me Frenchy had played with her, like a kid. I’d like to have seen that.

  “She calls me ‘kid’ too. Hey, Ma,” she said, “why don’t you come with me and Frenchy next time?”

  “Next time?”

  Lydia looked embarrassed. “If there is a next time.”

  “Did she say there would be?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then there will. Frenchy’s like that.” Lydia hugged me again and stayed close to me. “Come on, I don’t want to leave Edie alone that long.”

  That night was when I started to learn how to cook. Edie just couldn’t. I knew if she was going to eat, I’d have to concoct something that would appeal to her. I made a mess, but she ate. The appreciation in her eyes made me want to cook again. After dinner Lydia normally practiced her drums, but that night silence was the only sound in the house. It was spring outside, though, and we managed to get Edie out on the porch.

  “There’s nothing like spring in
New York City,” I said once we were settled. “Shoves up through the old concrete like it’s too strong for even eight million city people to ignore.”

  Edie sniffled. She hadn’t cried yet that night, but I was expecting it. If only she’d talk. The crazy Queens houses seemed full of gloom next to the blossoming lilacs. Across from us were a few semi-attached houses, a four-story building that must have been built around 1920, a few aging houses like Edie’s. The vacant lot at the end of the street was going crazy with wildflowers. Just the scents of spring, mingled with the gritty smells of sidewalks and subway trains, made me half crazy. To hold a hand, to kiss a girl, to dance all night long...

  The darker it got, the brighter the old lavender lilac bush outside glowed and the deeper was Edie’s silence. Around us life went on: the almost-summer noises of kids playing kickball in the street, babies crying as they were bedded down, the muffled rumble of the subway. Edie’s eyes kept glancing up the street toward the subway. Her hands lay motionless and white-knuckled in her lap.

  Lydia was running out of stories to tell us about school. “Ma,” she said, startling me, “when we go to Fire Island do you think Frenchy will be there?”

  “How should I know?” I hate it when I’m short with Lydia like that, but why was she bugging me with Frenchy tonight of all nights?

  Edie stirred. Maybe it was seeing my pain. Maybe she thought something was going on in Lydia’s head — like she wanted to push me into a marriage in case Edie’s failed.

  “Why don’t you ask her if she’d like to go to Fire Island with us for the picnic?” Edie suggested to Lydia.

  It was my turn to sit rigid, staring ahead. I could see how that lilac bush might become monstrous, glowing more and more, menacing me with reminders of spring urges.

  “Could I, Ma?”

  My nerves were brittle thin ice I could feel everywhere in my body. My mind felt as if it would crack open and everything inside spill out. If Frenchy was seeing Lydia, then maybe she was trying to say she wanted to see me. If I said yes, would that make Esther appear on the street? If Esther came home would that guarantee things would work out with Frenchy? I fingered the little herb bag around my neck, as if it were full of hopes, not weeds. “Ma?”

  “If you want to, Lydia.” I wasn’t going to influence this thing one way or the other. Then I smiled at myself. Here I’d told Edie she should fight, take an active part in winning back Esther, and I was refusing to take a step to help Frenchy.

  She conferred with Edie over dates and times and where exactly we’d all be on Fire Island. Soon afterward I heard her in the basement playing her drums along with some of my Supremes records. Like mother, like daughter, I thought. She studies my records for their beat, I study them for love, for the beat that runs through my life.

  Edie and I sat there in the glowing dark, listening to my child beat drums like some crazy tribal witch. I reached over to take Edie’s hand. It was ice cold. “We both got our troubles, don’t we?” I asked.

  She looked at me mournfully. The sky behind her head was lavender. I felt so much love for this woman — I’d never realized it before. She’d done so much for me and we’d shared our lives for over two years.

  “Why couldn’t it be you and me in love?” I asked regretfully. “We both want the same things.”

  “Life isn’t like that.” Edie sighed. “For some reason we have to earn with blood everything we have.”

  “I don’t like to see you suffer.”

  “And here I’ve only been suffering two weeks. Look at you.”

  “I’m not suffering, just waiting,” I said.

  “Think she’ll come to you?”

  “I think between you and Lydia she won’t have any choice.”

  Edie laughed. It was good to hear. “We aren’t conspiring you know.”

  “Maybe not on purpose, but you got something going.”

  “Yes, we both love you and want to see you happy.”

  I squeezed her hand, tears coming to my eyes. “Want to go in yet?”

  “I keep hoping she’ll walk right up that street there, getting bigger and bigger till she fills up my life again.” Our awareness of Esther had made her so real I half-expected her to be just out of eye range. Mothers began to call their children in for the night. Crickets chirped in the grass. Even after two years this sure was a new New York to me.

  “Edie, I think she’s somewhere thinking.”

  “How long will it take her?”

  “How long will you give her?”

  “A while. I’ve been doing as you said and showing her, even telling her what she’d be missing if she left me.”

  “She can’t have both of you? Not that I think she should,” I hastily added.

  “I don’t know.” In the deepening darkness I could hardly see her face. “I worry about that a lot. I couldn’t live with the pain of knowing she was with another woman — a woman who might take her from me for good. Or change her in ways that would change our relationship. And I would change too — from the pain and resentment. It might well kill my love for her. I’m risking all of her to refuse to give away part of her. But am I forcing her to refuse a part of herself she needs to express? So many, many questions.”

  “And I don’t have answers. Except you shouldn’t forget that whatever her decision is, it’ll be hers. You haven’t made it for her. And you have a right to decide how you want to live — and love — too.”

  “Still, it’s as if I’m attaching conditions to myself.” Like the conditions I’d given Frenchy. I wouldn’t put a clamp on a whole part of me to fit her and the way she thought she had to live. I was forcing her to change if she wanted me. Maybe I didn’t have the right either — but did she have the right to demand me with the clamp on? “We all do,” I said. “Attach conditions. I don’t think we’d be human if we didn’t. The conditions we have to have to survive, the ones we take on out of fear.”

  “Why do you think Esther wants this woman?”

  I took her hand again. “I have an idea. I think she’s all plugged up inside. I think, much as she loves you, she hasn’t let herself love you all she can yet. Maybe because you’re white. Maybe because she’s scared of committing herself. Who knows?”

  Edie was staring at me. “I’ve always felt that too,” she said.

  “So this unused love, or energy, whatever it is, has to go somewhere. I think it spilled out on some handy woman.”

  “But what is she afraid of now?”

  “Let’s hope that’s what she’s trying to figure out.”

  “I still want to know how you know all this.” I laughed bitterly.

  “When you’ve been to as many shrinks as I have — shrinks to make you straight, shrinks to make you stop drinking, shrinks to teach you how not to act like you’re Puerto Rican, shrinks to teach you how to be a woman — you learn the things between the lines.”

  “They really tried to do all those things to you?”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re the only ones who can be right, you know. First I thought it was only white American men shrinks who stuff that crap down your throat. But I saw Indians, Orientals, blacks, once in a while a woman. I think they can’t get to be doctors unless they’re totally normal according to the white American men at the top. Psychology — the religion of normalcy.” I laughed. “How’s that for a dumb P.R.?”

  “Pretty good, Mercedes.” Edie was laughing with me. “Pretty good.” She looked around one more time. “I’m getting chilly. I can’t keep us out here all night. Either she’ll come or she won’t.”

  “Wherever she is,” I said with sureness, “she’s thinking about you.”

  “And you. And Lydia. Thank you for being family. That’s one of the plusses I have over the other woman.”

  “Still can’t say her name?”

  Edie put her hand against her heart. “It hurts.” She paused. “I do think our lesbian family is important to Esther, you know.”

  We walked inside. “But don’t forget,” I
teased, “with you pushing Frenchy at me so hard, I may run off into the sunset anytime.”

  “We’ve talked about what would happen if you found someone,” she countered. “Not necessarily Frenchy Tonneau.”

  The name jolted me like an earthquake. “And what did you decide?”

  “Oh, we came up with all kinds of solutions to losing you.” She smiled. “Lydia would go to Queens College eventually and live here during the week and with you and your lover on weekends.”

  “That kid is a born commuter.”

  We were hugging when Lydia came in.

  “Consoling each other?” she asked innocently.

  “Lydia!” I scolded through my laughter.

  “That’s all we need,” Edie said, “is for Esther to walk in now and catch the two of us together.”

  “Edie,” I said, “she won’t be home tonight. She needs this time. Don’t expect her.”

  Edie nodded. “Will she be back tomorrow night? What will I tell Jessie and Mary?”

  “The truth. And we’ll cancel. It would be too painful to go there without her. We’ll wait till we’re all together.”

  “Optimist.”

  “Right. Shall we all go to bed?” I asked, stretching my hand out for Lydia.

  “Sure.” Lydia smiled at us, obviously reassured by our talk and laughter that somehow everything would be all right. How I longed to spare her all the suffering that would go into making things work in her own life.

  * * * * *

  The weekend’s agonized waiting couldn’t have been worse if we’d all been locked in the House of D waiting for bail money. We didn’t go to College Point. By Saturday night there was no convincing Edie of Esther’s fidelity. She believed that the little worm, as she now called Rosetta, had gotten at her own bad apple. Which meant, of course, that Edie no longer had a lover since she wouldn’t share her.

  “Well, maybe,” she said at one point, “if Esther finds out the worm’s not very pleasant in bed, she’ll come home with her tail between her legs.”

  Lydia giggled at the idea of Esther with a tail until Edie started to cry.