Rainbow Gap

by Lee Lynch

  “You want me to put every minute into the stores the way you do, but you’re giving the business to Bat?”

  “Bat is more presentable than you. He’ll be a proud Vietnam veteran, and that gives a man status from the get go. Plus, he’s a man, so everything will come easier to him. If you were ever a normal girl, I’d have kept you far from the stores to stay home and take care of your kids, but you weren’t blessed like that and I’m trying to do my best by you.”

  “I should quit on the spot and walk out that door the way you give me no credit, Momma, but I love my work. I don’t want to leave it. As soon as I have my licenses, if I have to go to chamber meetings, I will.”

  “Not the way you look today, you won’t.” Jaudon wore her usual shorts and summer shirt with a Beverage Bay jacket. The ink stains didn’t scour out no matter how much she tried and there was a slit in her pants from a case cutter. “I have hopes you’ll grow up one of these days. People won’t stop if I put you in one of the better stores.”

  “I thought you put me here because it’s a tough neighborhood.”

  “The store looks neat and tidy, but I don’t know that you’d work out in another neighborhood, where the real money is.” Momma’s tone softened. She looked around the store. “This is a better match for you, Daughter. How did my baby girl turn into a man?”

  She hated how squeaky her voice became when she was holding in tears. “Momma, I’m not a man.”

  Rigo arrived in his convertible, walking in on the harangue. Momma quieted down and was nice as pie to him. She pecked them both on their cheeks and rustled off in her brown taffeta. Girlish puffed sleeves looked incongruous on such a willful woman. Momma had gained more weight and the dress fabric stretched tight across her girdle.

  She wiped at the spot on her cheek Momma kissed.

  When they were alone in the store Rigo asked, “Did that woman make you cry again?”

  She shrugged. “She cares more about the Bays than she cares about her kids. Bat’s not her son—he’s the future boss man, her poster boy brave veteran. She thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread and I’m lower than a bug’s butt. I must be one of those people who should have been aborted to stop me from taking up human space.”

  “Aw, hon, come here.” Rigo wrapped his solid, red-haired arms around her and patted her back like he was burping a baby. He smelled of his lime-scented shaving cream. “Your momma is as cold as a mother-in-law’s heart, as my mother says.”

  “It doesn’t matter how nice I keep the store, it’s me she objects to, Rigo.”

  “You and your momma were not made for each other. Mother Nature could have done better.”

  Jaudon told him about the incident with the hoodlums.

  “Did you tell her the cops won’t help us?”

  “She said that’s my fault, for not getting to know them.”

  “Who does she want? Barbie or G.I. Joe? She can’t have them both.”

  She poked him in the ribs. “G.I. Joe might be a good idea here when the county releases those boys from the slammer.”

  “Which will be today, if their records are clean.”

  They looked at each other with alarm.

  “Listen,” said Rigo. “What about Jimmy Neal? He’s six-four, almost three hundred pounds, and not beefcake material, but he’s not nellie either. He’s been looking for work. I’ll give him my wages to come stand guard. You know I don’t need the money.”

  “I don’t want the store sued if he hurts anybody.”

  “Never. I call him my Manatee Man. He’s gentle and slow moving like manatees. Let me use the phone to call him. You can’t be alone when the creeps are released.”

  “How come he’s not drafted?”

  “He’s in college.”

  She hoped Jimmy Neal didn’t act light in the loafers in public. Rigo, who she thought wore something to darken his eyelashes and outline his eyes, seemed more so all the time. How did gay guys do that? They talked alike, had the same bearing, used the same words and body language. She guessed it wasn’t any different from, say, toughs on a street corner who had a language of their own, including how they moved and walked, or homemakers chatting when they picked up their children from school. She loved it, the way gay guys spoke and moved, and found herself taking on their mannerisms when she was around them.

  Still, she walked a tightrope when Rigo was there. She feared customers saw through him, thought they were one of a kind, and half expected local guys to hurt him, or both of them. It was better than working with some man who wasn’t family, though, and Momma was obstinate about hiring more men.

  “Okay, send Jimmy Neal to Momma. You can give your wages to him if you want, but we’ll pay him too because I need his help. I hope Momma doesn’t become suspicious of you boys applying as soon as she tells me she’s going to hire.”

  “Your Momma’s suspicious no matter what, so with Olive Ponder as second-in-command, let’s see if we can get away with making this an otherwise all-gay store.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  They got together on a Tuesday evening at Samantha O’Connell’s house, when most of them had at least part of the shift off. Berry had imagined a crowded apartment. It turned out that Samantha’s husband was a contractor and had built a well-appointed, roomy place for his family. They weren’t poor at all. Samantha had arranged for him to take the kids to the movies, but he had to work late so the kids were running wild in the house. They were on and off the women’s laps, hungry for attention, excited to meet their mother’s friends, and upset to miss the movies with Daddy. The living room smelled of milk and diapers. Daddy stormed into the house as they met, grabbed a beer, muttering about his work problems and cursing the group with his eyes. They had been discussing the lesbians in their midst. He couldn’t have missed the gist of their conversation.

  A women’s equality demonstration was being planned by a larger group in Four Lakes. It was part of a celebration of women’s suffrage and its goal was to bring attention to the lack of women in local politics.

  Berry expected to go if she got time off work.

  Judy Fish and Mercie Lewis were working nights at a Tampa hospital, so they planned to join the rally by Four Lakes City Hall. Perfecta had announced long ago her ambition to be a visiting nurse and arranged her schedule to be free. She was an experienced demonstrator and at the height of the Vietnam War had brought attention to the numbers of Hispanic kids who went to war to escape poverty only to be injured or killed.

  Samantha’s husband didn’t want her to join the protest, not with a gang of what he called bull dykes. “It doesn’t matter,” Samantha told them.

  “It doesn’t matter?” Judy Fish said. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? Of course it matters.”

  Each of them was in her twenties except Samantha, who had been let go from jobs each time her pregnancy became obvious. “I don’t know how it matters if there’s one less of you. It’s not as if I can go anyway because of where I work.”

  Judy was always sheer energy and her new sexual relationship with the friend she brought to the picnic had not diminished that. Judy said, “Your husband is lording it over you and it doesn’t matter? The fact that your employer objects is the point: men think we’re less valuable than they are.”

  Donna Skaggs’s testy voice rose above everyone else’s. “This is a problem, but it’s not the one you’re talking about. I don’t mind being seen with lesbians, but I worry what others will think.”

  “You’re not making sense,” said Cullie. “Not minding and worrying—don’t they cancel each other out?”

  “Others will think you’re lucky to have so many friends,” said Berry.

  Lari showed up late, as usual. She brought her strange dimness with her, as if she stepped in front of the all the lights at once. Perfecta gave a small wave, the only greeting. The tension in the room increased.

  “The way some of you dress,” said Samantha, “I’d rather be buried in a croaker sack.�
�

  Mercie was sarcastic and accusing. “You’re afraid, aren’t you, that you’ll be tarred by the same brush?”

  “Well, I—” Donna started to say.

  Mercie cut her off. “Do you think they’re going to assume your family’s from Africa because I’ll be there?”

  “Donna does have a point,” said Samantha. “I hadn’t thought of it, but if people thought I was one of you, I might lose my kids.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Cullie. “You have the required male at home. What you should do is show up with him and your five kids. Show some real support.”

  Donna said, “Don’t be snide, Cullie. We’re in this together.”

  “Yeah.” Cullie played with the unraveling straw safari hat she wore for work, rotating it in her hands faster and faster. “All but the lesbians.”

  “It’s time for me to declare myself,” Mercie said. “I have a new lover and she’s a woman. So that’s two reasons you won’t want me to come.”

  Cullie threw her hat in the air and yelled, “Hot diggity.”

  Perfecta jumped up and put her arms around Mercie. “Hey, girl, I’m so happy for you.”

  Mercie told them she’d had a girlfriend in high school too.

  Berry wasn’t sure this merited a public announcement, but she smiled and leaned over to give Mercie a kiss on the cheek. Mercie pretended to be shy and sheepish, but her grin declared otherwise.

  Donna said, “Some lesbians are all over each other in public. That’s what we don’t need. The bunch of you should act like you got some raising.”

  “When did you ever see that?” Judy asked. Her lover took her hand, as if to calm her down.

  “At the picnic,” declared Samantha.

  “But, Samantha,” Berry said, “the picnic was a private gathering.”

  “So how come that man in the truck was watching us?”

  “You saw someone too?” Berry became more concerned.

  “Bald, beard, smoking cigarettes, parked before the line of oaks north of your house.”

  “He didn’t come up Pineapple Trail, did he?”

  “No, but here’s a gap in the growth where he was parked.” The rainbow gap again, Berry thought. “You can see through to your front yard.” Samantha sounded smug. “I checked it on my way home.”

  Once more, Berry thought about Allison’s sense that she was being watched when she was in the trailer. Was this the watcher? Was there more than one? She breathed in, calling on the Great Spirit, breathed out, calmer. She needed wisdom, please.

  “Maybe,” Cullie said. “Maybe none of our kind should go to this event for the sake of our own safety.” Cullie looked around at Judy and her girlfriend, the silent Lari, and Mercie. “It’s a fact—this might be dangerous.”

  Berry knew Cullie was trying to protect them.

  “Finally, a sensible comment,” said Donna.

  “You would think that way, Donna, the way you demean Jimmy Neal,” said Berry.

  “No, man,” Lari muttered, from a corner of the room. “I mean, women. That’s the voice of fear. We need to charge out there and do our thing.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Samantha piped up. “You don’t have a job to lose, and your family’s footing the bills for college.”

  Lari shrugged. “Fear won’t hack it. Perfecta made a difference out there on the antiwar lines.”

  “That may be true,” said Perfecta, “but the danger was terrifying. The police, they kicked us in the abdomen. They jeered at us and told one another it was a cheap way to prevent us having babies. Me?” She opened her arms to indicate herself. “I can have no other babies. I’m injured inside.”

  Samantha’s living room went silent, as if every woman there had been kicked. Berry reached for Perfecta’s hand. Mercie, who had been strumming her guitar in the background, let it fall silent and said, “I’ve known gay people who’ve been beaten bad too, just walking down the street. Women and men.”

  “So,” said Lari, in her nasal accent, “gay people, we can risk bar raids or beatings or hide in closets and rot—those are our choices?”

  “This is why we need to work together,” Berry said. “Stand together in public if that’s what it takes. I’m terrified of risking my new job, but I’ll go.”

  “How about this,” Donna said. “No radical foolhardiness. We dress like ladies.”

  “Oh, no,” said Cullie. “You honestly want me in church lady drag? Putting on white gloves may have worked for women’s suffrage way back when—today no one will pay any attention to us if we don’t cause a stir. Cameras need fascinating subjects like Kirby and me in our matching neckerchiefs to film, not a clump of ladies standing there with signs.”

  “Cameras?” Berry said. “What do you mean, cameras?”

  Perfecta said, “The national leaders will send press releases to the newspapers, and to TV and radio stations. You can’t make changes without publicity.”

  Berry’s flutter became stronger. There was a sharp side to every knife. This must be what made Jaudon nervous for them; it would make anyone nervous. She dared someone to attack. She dared herself to stand up to authority. She never imagined having her picture in the paper, although she should have because Rigo told stories about gay bar raids. He said the police alerted the papers to further humiliate the patrons and some lost their jobs. A demonstration was not a good idea this early in her career, but the problem was serious and she wasn’t closing her eyes to it. She might be dreaming, but she expected her new employers to agree with her.

  She needed to talk with Jaudon about the rally. She didn’t want to bite off more than she could chew. At the same time, she was hesitant to pile on more than Jaudon could tolerate. At her last appointment, the doctor told Jaudon she was facing permanent total hearing loss in the injured ear.

  “Why don’t you sue the county?” Rigo had said when they told him.

  Jaudon, head down, said, “Momma says it would hurt business.”

  “I swear to God, Jaudon, if you don’t get a lawyer on this, I’ll drag you to one.”

  Berry wondered if Jaudon would go despite Momma.

  The group kept arguing about how the members should present themselves at the demonstration. Mercie started a quiet folk tune.

  “I hate to be a party pooper, amigas, but are we going to let men tell us how to dress at our own political rallies?” Cullie asked. “You’re trying to dress to please again.”

  Berry had to smile. Cullie had learned a lot from Allison.

  “It’s silly,” Berry said, “to pretend to be what we aren’t. Samantha should show up with baby spit on her shoulder, Cullie should wear her pool boy shorts, Donna her largest cross necklace, and Mercie, your most colorful dashiki. If we’re there to represent American women, shouldn’t we look like them?”

  “Yeah,” said Judy, pointing to the Star of David on her necklace.

  Berry thought that putting herself out there in public would be as much display as she could muster.

  *

  As the day of the protest approached, Jaudon decided she didn’t have a problem with Berry standing up for what she believed in. She considered going with her, to protect Berry, but she had the store to mind. She was going to stop worrying and enjoy the woman she loved.

  Today she watched Berry shave her legs.

  “It’s all sorts of sexy, watching you, Berr, but I’ll never get why you have to waste time scraping your legs. What do people care?” Jaudon had discovered cargo shorts and wore them at the store all the time. The pockets of her cargos held everything she needed: price gun, box cutter, dust rag, gloves for working in the cooler and freezer, price labels, pen, stamp for vendor deliveries, damaged cans, register tape. She clunked when she walked. Momma seemed to have lost interest in uniforms.

  “I wear white hose, Jaudon. Our teachers criticized every little personal detail. Perish the thought someone doesn’t brush her teeth.” Berry grabbed a glob of shaving cream and planted it on the tip of Jaudon’
s nose.

  Jaudon nabbed the whole can and squirted it at Berry’s bottom. Berry swiped off a handful and covered Jaudon. They stumbled around each other in stitches until they had to stop to breathe.

  They were in high spirits when Berry dropped her at the store. Momma had hired Jimmy Neal and he started work today.

  “My worry,” Jaudon said, “is whether Jimmy Neal Skaggs will be quick enough on the orders.”

  “Isn’t the universe great, angel? The kid who bullied you is now protecting you.”

  “Small towns.” She pretended to squirt more shaving cream at Berry.

  She knew Berry, despite her antics, was as bothered about the upcoming demonstration as much as she was about solving women’s problems. She listened to her worries, but had no advice. Gran did that, cheering Berry on, giving her safety instructions for the demonstration, dreaming up retorts to the women who were skittish about associating with gay girls.

  Berry’s group kept growing too, as more women read about the women’s movement and heard their own dissatisfactions expressed by others. Jaudon didn’t understand why, for example, they’d dutifully do the women’s work at home when they wanted to do men’s work.

  Her shift started at six a.m. Jimmy Neal Skaggs was due to arrive at seven, when the summer school kids started hanging out to wait for their bus. She reviewed his application. Jimmy Neal had no criminal record and had experience working at a Tom Thumb convenience store. She would have hired him on the spot without Momma’s supervision.

  When she next looked up it was six forty-five and already the temperature was rising. The red and orange royal poinciana across the street led a cavalcade of flowers. In front of a small factory, a jacaranda tree was heavy with clustered purple blossoms, and a puff of clouds flew like pennants overhead.

  The kids arrived at the bus stop, dragging their feet and satchels. It always surprised her how many failing students had to give up their summers to study. A few of them started toward the store when the great lumbering young man from the bar appeared, walking like an ungainly duck. He blocked the entryway. It was Jimmy Neal; she smiled in relief.