The Milk of Human Kindness

by Lori L. Lake

  Although I had sworn never to visit my father in the hospital again, my girlfriend of the time talked me into it a few days later. Turned out, dad had been released from the hospital that day, and mom forgot to let me know. That day I saw him at the house and knew he was going to die soon. It was the only time in my life I saw him cry.

  When I left that day, my mother came to me in the driveway. She noticed I was wearing suspenders. “Don’t buy too many of those. After all, if anything happens to your father, you can have all of his.”

  BY THEN, I had come out. And I found my family within my family. When I first played nice with my mother’s brother’s family, mom was worried. After all, they were the underachievers, the ones who got in trouble, and...

  “If you hang around with Raymond, people might think you’re like that.” Ray was the token queer in more than 35 first cousins. But not for long.

  He and his lover, Jeff, held my hand through my coming out, and for years thereafter. They became my new basis for understanding of family. And thus I was allied with the black sheep.

  MY MOTHER’S PARENTS had nine children, my father’s, three. All of my grandparents came over on boats. My mother still speaks with an accent, although I don’t notice it. She always said I had a different bearing, a different accent. And she remarks on people being “Americanized,” down to Jill, my brother’s ex-fiancee, who was Japanese; and all of the blacks on TV. It doesn’t matter that they’ve all been here longer than us.

  Now that I live in the Nation’s capital, people remark on my accent. But when I lived in Michigan, where I had lived all my life, people kept asking me where I was from. Because of my accent.

  At this moment, my mother has four grandchildren. At the most, she might end up with one more. We’re a Catholic family...the greatest truth of how we were raised is that we’re not reproducing at the rate good Catholic children ought to.

  Unconsciously, we’re stopping the trend. Five kids, maybe five grandkids. Max.

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we have feelings. When my brother’s girlfriend told him they either had to get engaged or break up, I was the third person he called. He called our two sisters-in-law first, figuring they would be more likely to have actual feelings—emotions—than we did.

  Then he called me. Figuring I was the most likely of our parents’ kids to have emotions. And thus to understand what he was feeling, going through.

  It was that brother who first, unbeknownst to me, taught me about unconditional love.

  My mother always talks about family always being there for you, and that you have to pay attention to family and be with them so that it’s the one constant in your life. Apparently she forgets how great biological family was to me when I first came out.

  “OH GOD, I almost forgot about the VCR!” Maria says, sitting in my apartment in the here and now, laughing as she leans back into my futon with her whiskey and water. “I still can’t believe that!” Our random drunken reveries brought me back, and made me remember yet other things, in the way beer-thoughts go.

  “I was just so thankful you were there.” My father had just kicked the bucket, about a month after the suspender incident, and although my brother Mark lived five minutes from mom, she kept calling me with her problems. I lived an hour and a half away, worked full time, and went to college full time.

  That particular night she first called me because the clock on her VCR was blinking and SHE COULD NOT LIVE WITH THAT. I talked her through that crisis, telling her which buttons to push, what to do to fix it. (No wonder I was so good at telephone tech support later in my life.)

  Then she called back because she wanted to watch a video on the machine and it wasn’t working. It wasn’t taking the tape.

  “Yes, is Maria there?” I asked Sally Sue when she answered the phone.

  “One moment please.”

  “Hey, how’s it going?” Maria asked a few moments later.

  “Big, big favour to ask. My mom’s got this problem...”

  “I mean, Reese, all I had to do was push the tape into the machine!” Maria now says.

  “I know. And I knew it then. She was just lonely, and wanted me there.”

  “Isn’t that when you moved back in with her?”

  “Yeah. I gave in and moved in with her. I was there for like a month when...” I turned to look at Bruce’s wedding picture on one of my many bookshelves. “We know I can’t lie. I came out to her. I had moved in with her, even though it gave me a huge commute, in summer with a car without air, to school, but I did that for her. And she freaked.”

  “Didn’t she disown you?”

  “Yeah. Not that night, but shortly thereafter.” I went into the kitchen and grabbed another beer. I couldn’t stay put discussing this. I needed to pace and move and walk. Maria kept silent ’til I continued, “I came out, and then she told me dad had been fine and suddenly gave up—and now she knew why. She told me I killed my father. She disowned me.” I grinned and extended my beer-holding hand toward her. “And ya know, that’s something you’ll hear a lot of in this life. It’s gotten easier, and nicer, and folks keep coming out younger and younger, but...”

  “But you still talk with her...”

  WHEN I WAS sixteen, Mom and I had a huge argument. It lasted about an hour, and had me digging through our encyclopedias and other reference tomes to prove my point.

  It ended when mom said, “Oh, Alaska’s a state now!”

  She had been insisting there were 49 states.

  SINCE I GOT my driver’s license, there have been three times I have been in a car with mom and allowed her to drive. Once, when I was sixteen, I was too drunk. She believed me when I said I was too tired to drive.

  The other two times were when I had my wisdom teeth taken out, so I was on serious drugs. The second of those times was awful because I had to pull my brain out of my drug-induced state to tell her not to go the wrong way on one-way streets. Although she had lived most of her life in that area, she was still confused about it.

  When I suddenly needed outpatient surgery years later, on the 22nd of December, she would not drive me. It was out of her way. And even though I could be called from further away to fix her VCR at 11 pm, she could not, with several days’ notice, drive me for surgery.

  The girlfriend of an ex-boss ended up doing it.

  That same Christmas, my mother told me we’d be celebrating Christmas on the 26th, when my brother Kirk came to town.

  Kirk got in on the 25th, and mom only called me after that day’s festivities to ask where I was. She had forgotten to tell me about Christmas.

  And yet my mother still tells me to pay attention to family, because they are the only ones who will always be there.

  THIS PAST CHRISTMAS, I flew to L.A. From there, my sister and I drove to Denver, skiing along the way at Vail, Aspen, and such, and then spending Christmas with my brother in Denver. This is the second time we’ve done such a thing.

  And it was the second time my sister asked me to change my flight plans at Christmas for her. This time I did. Under guarantee that my sister would not have some guy going with us. (The first time she wanted me to fly into L.A. and out of Denver. She ended up having her male friend, whom she liked, fly into Denver and accompany us on our drive from Denver to L.A., with all the skiing that involved. He was an obnoxious pig who wanted to control everything.)

  This time I had planned on simply spending all my time in Denver, in order to get to know my new niece.

  My sister and I were as close as we could be—considering that she’s thirteen years older and lived in a different state—until I came out.

  “We raised ourselves,” Sheila said this past Christmas, flicking the windshield wipers. “Isn’t it amazing to watch Nancy with Peyton? The way she cuddles her and tells her she loves her?” Nancy is my brother’s mother-in-law, and Peyton is my brand-new niece. First one in eighteen years.

  MARIA HASN’T COME out to her folks, but it’s no big because she doesn�
��t even see them annually. They’re not an active part of her life.

  It took me a while to realize that my mother needs me more than I need her. More than I ever needed her.

  Yes, she wants the perfect little cheerleading daughter—but one who can also fix her car, mow the lawn, shovel the snow, and perform household repairs. Without tools, for she gave all dad’s tools to my brothers when dad kicked, so I have to use my car toolbox to fix anything at her place. Even though my brother lives less than a mile away.

  But the trouble is, she still won’t admit to her own need.

  BECAUSE OF WHO I am (a writer), I have helped many young women come out. It is always tough for me to answer questions about whether or not they should tell their family. After all, I cannot unequivocally tell them they should.

  AFTER ALL, WHAT I want is for her to say she’s sorry for telling me I killed my father.

  And I know that will never happen.

  “ONE OF MY worst fears,” Maria says, referring to Nu, “is that her mom will get roaring drunk some night and call my mom and tell her all about us.”

  I can’t lie worth shit, so I always support honesty, and telling folks what is. Nonetheless I replied, “Be grateful you live in Alaska.”

  SOME THINGS HAVE changed, and we may now be legal, but other things may never change. Some parents will love their queer children, others won’t. Sometimes you’ll meet your sib’s potential in-laws and discover they couldn’t be happier than to realize they’ll have a lesbian novelist in the family soon.

  Sometimes people see one of my mother’s sides and think she’s cool, but then they’ll hear her tell people at a play, “I wanted two boys and two girls. I got three boys, one girl and one I don’t know what.” (One of my exes almost clobbered this seemingly sweet, Smurf-like 4’10” woman when she walked by her and heard that.)

  WE’RE BORN WHO we are, and we can either fight against it, or try to be reprogrammed for a short period of time, but in the end, we are who we are, and to find love, we have to be who we are. Whether we are gay/straight/bi or something else, and whether we need to tell folks or not, or if we’re a roaring nutcase, or have emotions, or whatever, the road to happiness is in who we are.

  WHEN MY FIRST play premiered, for a two-night run, at the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts, with the bill footed by Michigan State University, my mother, Maria, and Jackie came for closing night. I cooked them all dinner before we went to the show—a real Polish meal of pierogis, kielbasa (cooked in beer, then browned in the oven’s broiler—my father’s recipe, which leaves the cook quite happy), sauerkraut, and blood sausage. This last item has some cool Polish name, which I can never remember. It’s really fun to serve to guests—you fry it up with mushrooms and onions and put it on the table, without telling anyone what it is. They are never happy later on to discover what they just ate.

  Jackie almost had a heart-attack when she saw me: I, wanting to muck with folks’ stereotypical images, was in drag, with make-up, skirt-suit, and curled hair.

  After the play, before the cast party at my apartment, I cleansed my face, donned cut-offs and tank top, and combed out my hair. Jackie was thankful for that, because then I was the Therese she knew and loved.

  At that time, I wasn’t out to my mother about being a smoker, so folks kept joining me outside for cigarettes. The party continued until about four a.m., after several cases of beer and a few games of Trivial Pursuit. At some point, Maria crashed on the floor of the spare room, with my mom on the bed; my girl and I slept in our room; and Jackie ended up on the living room floor with a boy whom it took a bit to hook her up with. Because she was an old friend of mine, he assumed she was gay. And the first time she saw him, he was kissing another man (during the play). It took some work to make them realize they were both het, and...I gave them condoms.

  Later the cast informed me they had been expecting my mother to be evil incarnate, and they didn’t see that.

  But skin is only so deep. As are appearances.

  I STARTED PAYING for my own food and clothing when I was sixteen. I went to college when I was eighteen, and, since then, except for six months, I have been self-supporting, living on my own.

  But it wasn’t till I was 30 that I really and truly ran away from home—that’s when I got out of Michigan. A two-hour drive is nothing for a lesbian daughter when her mother needs help. But nine hours is another thing—it is enough to give me freedom for moments.

  She no longer cries on my answering machine telling me that her children have abandoned her, since she knows I will not come running.

  MOM TELLS ME family is everything. But as a writer I know words can be five cents each, or less.

  During my last trip to Detroit, my mother proudly displayed the homophobic flyers she had been passing out in church—she showed me the hatred that she had been helping to proliferate, even while she tells me to “be careful” because of what people think.

  Family is those closest. There are some blood relatives I call on a regular basis, and some I want nothing to do with. But there are also friends who are closer than any which I am related to—these are the folks who understand and accept me no matter how dysfunctional I am, no matter how lost in my muddles I may be...and they also turn to me in their times of need.

  We make our own families. And mine has changed, as one’s life does, from school days to adulthood. But there are some who stick with you, and others who don’t. Those who understand, and those who don’t.

  I will never forget the mother of one of my girlfriends, who, soon after finding out we were together, patted me on the shoulder and thanked me for taking care of her daughter.

  MARIA LOOKED OVER her drink at me. “Do you remember when you were in the shopping cart and I ran it into a curb?”

  I got up to grab another beer while I growled. I had forgotten about that.

  “Hey, c’mon, we were about to be run over!” she called from the living room, referring to a night when the four of us had a sleepover at my place. Mine was the place we could leave for midnight adventures without my parents knowing.

  Actually, Jackie hadn’t been at the full sleepover. We just went a-knocking at her bedroom window in the middle of the night and kidnapped her. Took her with us for our midnight adventures, which my parents never knew happened.

  I leaned against my entertainment center, which was actually the bookshelf my parents bought me when I was eight. Since then I have butchered it to make it into an entertainment center. “I think I told you, back when you first called me for advice, that you’d do whatever you wanted. And later on, I laughed at the idea of two women ever being able to casually date. I knew you couldn’t just screw her and move on!”

  “But why didn’t you tell me before?”

  I shrugged, and sat down on my La-Z-Boy. I had told Maria earlier that I wasn’t going to jump her bones, and in my drunken state, I was way too...horny and seductive to be allowed into the general population. “Have I mentioned that young women can be wicked hot, but older women...who know what they’re doing, and what they’re about, can be so hot?”

  “Are you sure you’re not just saying that because we’ve been talking about mothers and families all night?”

  I got what she meant. “You’ve seen my mother. Would I ever even think of a woman in that way?”

  “Point taken,” she said as she drunkenly saluted me. “Not everything can be interpreted by a misogynistic old German, who probably suffered seriously from Oedipus Complex and Penis Envy himself.”

  You’re stuck with your mother. And no one can ever replace her, no matter how much you wish it so. And we build our own families. And I could only reach such a conclusion while stumbling drunk, with someone with whom I had no blood connection, who was still family without any reason for me to consider her so. I stared at her for a few moments.

  Finally, she said, “What?”

  “Can you really get me a copy of Once More with Feeling?”

  ***

&nbs
p; ABOUT TALARAN a/k/a DL Pawlowski

  Talaran was born in New York in 1961 and continues to live there, happily married for the past two decades-plus to Barbara, the woman she calls her rock. In “real life,” Talaran is computer programmer and analyst for a Fortune 500 company. She also designs book covers, graphics, wallpaper, and logos. The cover to this anthology was designed by her.

  With a background and education in Electronics and webpage creation, Talaran is imaginative and analytical, able to approach both business and creative projects with a unique point of view. Though she's written on and off since her early teens, it wasn't until she was turned on to fan fiction that she seriously delved back into writing. When she is not glued to her computer, she spends her time golfing, kayaking, and listening to Jazz music. Talaran is currently working on the sequel to Vendetta and on a book about a Federal agent protecting a witness she is trying desperately not to fall in love with.

  Ramblings of a Lesbian Daughter

  Memoir by Talaran

  IF YOU ARE lucky enough to be loved by your mother, then you are among the most fortunate of people. A mother’s unconditional love is one of the treasures one can only hope to experience in this life. So many people in this world are not so lucky. I am happy to say that I can be counted among the fortunate. I have never truly doubted my mother’s love, even when she said the worst thing in the world to me – that she wished I was dead. At the time those words tore through me like a knife, but I do not believe deep down they ever really shook my faith in my mother’s love. When my anger and hurt subsided and when I had an opportunity to digest the exchange between us, I knew she did not truly mean what she had said to me.