She came home and her mother was up waiting for her, tipsy on gin. Her mother grabbed her and kissed her mouth. The daughter locked her teeth. The mother’s tongue pushed and thrust against them. Unable to enter, it angrily slimed the girl’s lips.
Can’t I even kiss my own daughter? she demanded.
Detecting her opportunity, the girl pulled free. But as she backed away, her mother rushed furiously after her, and caught her again. The girl could scarcely endure the loathsomeness of that embrace. Freezing into stiffness, she permitted the sallies of her mother’s tongue against her closed lips.
My Karen doesn’t love me, the mother wept.
7
Suppose that a child refused to listen to her mother and skipped out into Nebraska Street, where a passing car almost runs her down. I can dream up any number of unfortunate psychological outcomes. Here are three. In her fear, which for many parents easily catalyzes into rage, the mother shouts at the girl and maybe shakes her, causing her to believe herself despised. Alternatively, suppose the mother quietly reasons with her, explaining why she must be more careful, and from this what the girl takes away, because what affected her most dramatically was the squealing of the brakes and the exclamations of other people, is that her mother has failed to show sufficient psychological affect, so that she seems fundamentally indifferent to her. Or finally, what if the mother were to embrace the scared child and weep over her? Why couldn’t the child link this expression of affection to the trauma that precipitated it, in which case she might engage in risk-seeking behavior, or perhaps masochism, in order to potentiate a feeling of being loved, which discharges itself in a climax?—With such thought experiments I used to construct my hypotheses as to how we all became whom we were. None explained her, let alone myself.
8
For E-beth’s birthday they checked into a motel. It was only for the day; Karen had to be home by dinnertime or her mother would worry.
We need one bed, said E-beth.
You mean one bed each, said the desk clerk, who was a watchful, bitter-looking lady of a certain age.
No. One bed. One big bed, said E-beth. We’re a couple. We’re girlfriends. Do you get it?
That’s disgusting, said the clerk.
There’s nothing disgusting about it. I suck her pussy and she sucks mine. You have a pussy, too. Now, will you rent us a room or not?
I need the manager.
Fine, said E-beth.
The lobby seemed to be full of people, who were all listening. (As Lana Turner once said: It’s very difficult, growing up in public.) Oh, how ashamed Karen was . . . !
The manager emerged, plump and worried.—What’s the trouble here? he said.
We want one bed, said E-beth. Your employee wants to rent us two beds, but we want one bed.
One bed, repeated the manager, as if he could not understand.
To all the people who were waiting in line, the clerk now said: I’m sorry about the inconvenience. We’re trying to get this straightened out.
The manager said: You know, I don’t really—
We’re lesbians, said E-beth loudly, at which Karen blushed. And we have a right to be accommodated. Now, will you rent us a room with one bed, or do you want a lawsuit?
We don’t have any more king suites, said the manager. All we have left is one queen in the smoking section.
Fine, said E-beth. I smoke—
It’s not ready yet, said the manager. It won’t be available before three.
E-beth said: My girlfriend and I are going to keep standing right here. And if we see you rent a double room to any of these other couples, we’ll report you for discrimination.
Miss, I’ll tell you what. Please let me wait on all these other folks and then I’ll see what I can do.
We’re at the head of the line, said E-beth.
The manager said: I’m sorry, everybody. We’re trying our best to get this sorted out. It’s not our . . . All right; I’ll need to see identification from both of you. Your friend appears to be under eighteen.
Fuck you, said E-beth, and she took Karen by the hand and led her out. They got into E-beth’s car. E-beth laughed shortly, and drove them down the street to another motel.—Wait in the car, she said.
In ten minutes she came out smiling, waving a brass key in the air.
9
From E-beth she learned that to love and be loved was beautiful. As a favorite lover once said of Judy Garland: Christ Almighty, the girl reacted to the slightest bit of kindness as though it were a drug.
10
Because she had woven protective fantasies around herself from a very early age, her pain had not degraded her into self-pity. Indeed, she never understood the sadness of her situation. And now in E-beth’s arms it seemed to her that she might finally be living the effortless life of a mermaid even here in sight of the high school’s long white buildings with their grid of not quite square black windows. E-beth’s wide red Pontiac Conspiracy 76 was parked in front of the swimming pool. One Saturday night they drove to a basement club in Berkeley where she got to meet slender tall T-girls in black vinyl suits, black beehive wigs and huge dark sunglasses, and there E-beth taught her how to smoke marijuana. Two women danced, one with her hand around her partner’s neck while the other embraced her waist, and they swung back and forth in each other’s hands like rocking horses, longhaired and young. Their joy in each other brought tears to Karen’s eyes, not that E-beth noticed.
Then they were at home together. E-beth yawningly paged through magazines while Karen scrubbed a sinkload of dishes. Just as she was untying her apron, E-beth came running up and kissed her.
At five in the morning E-beth dropped her off at her other home, where her mother sat waiting up for her.
11
Her purpose (although she could not have expressed it so) was to love and be loved “purely” and “truly”—which, like most things said about love, sounds shopworn—but when we love, it matters very little to us that others have done the same. Perhaps if I labeled her mother’s love for her impure, and went on to propose that she needed E-beth’s love to be the opposite, that might attach some individuality to her “purely” and “truly”—but why not less parochially assert that she sought to experience an eternal secret intimacy warmed by inexhaustible desire and illuminated by ever-altering joy? This she had found.
Perhaps she was partly to blame for what happened, because she thought to become mermaids with E-beth without any renunciation.
12
After they caught her kissing E-beth, the other girls liked to chase her to the bus stop, shouting: What the fuck is that thing?
Karen tried to keep it secret from her lover, but the next time it happened, E-beth was there, throwing rocks at the cruel girls until they ran away screaming.
On the bus, when she was alone with them, they started calling her the lesbian.
13
What are you so fucking ashamed of? said E-beth. Stand proud.
Marcie told the science teacher I was touching her. She called me a pervert.
Then what?
The teacher asked me . . . and I said no . . . and a week later Marcie complained again.
I’ll put a stop to it, said E-beth. What’s the teacher’s name?
Honey, please don’t.
Then what will you do about it?
I don’t know. I feel so bad—
That’s just your internalized homophobia. You need to feel better about yourself.
Haven’t you ever . . . ?
I’ve experienced a variety of things, said her lover with that same crooked smile she wore while making herself come.—I’ve been called awful names. I have been called pit bull dyke and like that. I’ve probably been discriminated against without my knowing it, just because I’m a woman. I’ve been sexually assaulted—
&nb
sp; The girl wondered how much E-beth knew or guessed about her case. Instead she asked: How did you handle it?
Like every woman. You laugh it off, Karen. With the name-calling and the stares and threats, well, before, I felt embarrassment and shame, and then it evolved into anger and frustration, and now I’m just tired of it, and ignoring it the best I can. When the really bad things happen, the first thing you’re thinking is your career. You immediately think survival.
(Karen was thinking the same.)
I was unemployed when it happened, her lover continued. He was using that power over me. I thought I had to keep quiet. Most women do. They try to play around it; they end up protecting him. I forgot it, too, to be real frank. Until now.
And silently, protectively, E-beth touched up the other girl’s eye shadow.
14
E-beth began to grow her hair out, so Karen did the same. She loved to comb her sweetheart’s long brown hair, which smelled like lavender and smoke.
She set out to be more beautiful for E-beth. The key was to lose weight. Once her mother got up to clear the dinner dishes, Karen quickly swept her food into her napkin. Then she went to the bathroom, shook the napkin into the toilet, hid the napkin at the bottom of the wastebasket beneath her mother’s stinky old, hairy old menstrual pads. Whenever that was impractical she locked the door and made herself vomit.
Karen? said her mother, rattling the doorknob. Karen, I heard something! What are you doing in there?
In the morning Marcie was waiting in the hallway with three other girls.—We all know you’re queer, Marcie said.
The girl tried to run, but they encircled her and pushed her against the bank of lockers. She closed her eyes and pretended to be somewhere else while they slapped her face and spat on her. Finally Janet, who was Marcie’s best friend, began to get squeamish. She laid out her position: I’ll say one thing for the bitch. She’s never ratted us out. Isn’t that right, Karen?
The girl nodded.
Then how come your lezzie friend threw rocks at us? demanded Marcie.
I never told her to.
I believe that, said Janet. But I’ve seen her spying on us. What’s her lezzie name, queer?
Who is she? said Emily.
The girl would not answer.
You know what? said Janet. She’s got heart.
She does not, said Marcie. Didn’t you see her lick our spit off her face? She’s disgusting.
Janet said: How about this? There’s Justin over there. Hey! Hey, Justin, c’mere. We’ve got a bitch for you. Stick your tongue in her mouth and make her like it. Karen, open your mouth. You two give each other some tongue. Then we’ll leave you alone.
And Karen did it. She always aimed to please.
So Justin thought to be her boyfriend. He gave her a sweatshirt with the high school colors: Go, Apaches! Go, go, Valley Joe! And two years departed. Each and all those nights cut themselves into her bones, like the white picture-incisions on the back of a bronze mirror. On her special days Karen waited and hid in the grove of young redwoods by the stadium, until E-beth rolled up in her red Pontiac.
15
When they entered the bar, which from the outside looked derelict, it seemed to the girl that E-beth had brought daylight in with her, for the regulars, hitherto noiselessly unmoving, being middle-aged at least—extremely old to her—now all (excepting the tattooed muscleman in the tank top who played pool by himself, racking them in by means of sniper-perfect single shots) looked up in delight, chaffing E-beth on the new tint in her hair and on the young thing she had brought with her. E-beth sparkled politely back; Karen was thrilled to see her starring over everyone.—Still the same! cried some geezer, shaking his head in a gleeful mimicry of disapproval.
The establishment was called Jingle’s. Creeping toward them, the ancient barman inquired concerning their pleasure, and E-beth said: Two Hot Bitches on the rocks.
You like what you like, he tittered, mixing up those famous sweet pink cinnamon-fired concoctions, then sliding them inch by inch across the wraparound Formica bar with its cracked vinyl armrest. Karen felt very special that E-beth had ordered for her without asking. She began to drink the first Hot Bitch of her life—what a red letter day!
E-beth pointed out the black-painted cinderblock ceiling.—It’s like the night sky, she said, a remark which Karen found beautiful. She looked up for an extra second. Since this place pertained to E-beth, the girl tried to love everything about it.
Now the glow around them subsided, much as when Karen’s mother killed the porch light switch on summer nights and the incandescent filament slowly faded, releasing moths from their orbits of unwholesome attachment, the oldsters wilting ever lower over their beers and cocktails; at which E-beth turned back to the only face which still yearned toward her, and began to complain about a certain someone who had mistreated her at the Country Women’s Festival in Mendocino.—I want you to take her something from me. If she sees me she’ll close the door in my face.
Not daring to ask: Do you love her?, the girl said: Okay.
The thing is, she won’t know you, E-beth repeated. Once you get inside and give her this letter, look around for signs of someone else. Do you understand me, Karen?
No, said the girl.
Just pay attention and tell me what you see. Don’t mention me. I’m counting on you.
The girl nodded, staring across the shining bloody reflections on the bar. Out of nervousness she had drunk her Hot Bitch too quickly, and now she was feeling tipsy-sick. Fortunately, E-beth would teach her how to drink.
Are you ready? Then let’s do it.
E-beth left a dollar on the bar. The barman said: Good hunting, killer!—and E-beth gave him two thumbs up.
Now they were in the car, turning left by the Electric Shaver Center, then left again on Tennessee Street, and E-beth was saying: You wouldn’t believe it. I mean, she’s so sweet on the outside, but then . . .
Where did you meet her? asked Karen in a whisper.
What’s the difference? Stanford.
At once knowledge came to the girl, like one of those hallway slaps which she had learned to expect at school. A month before, when they were turning E-beth’s mattress, she had discovered a color snapshot caught between the boxsprings. E-beth, her view blocked by the upraised mattress, failed to see her take it. They remade the bed; then Karen went straight to the bathroom and locked herself in; E-beth never disturbed her there. The subject was a young woman with long brown braids who sat on some other bed, outstretching her arms and opening her fingers almost like some Indian goddess, with solarized likenesses of the Beatles on the wall behind her. On the back was an inscription in ballpoint pen: Waiting for E., Stanford ’74. Karen hid it in her bra, transferred it to her schoolbag, looked at it when she was alone, then slid it back under the mattress.
It’s that blue house over there, said E-beth. Give her this envelope.
What if she doesn’t answer?
What do you think? Bring it back.
Numbly, the girl crossed the street. The night was cool. She wanted to throw up. First she rang the bell, then knocked. When no answer came, she returned apprehensively to the car where E-beth sat in the driver’s seat with the lights and engine off.
I did my best, she began, at which E-beth said: I know you did. Come give me a kiss.
16
Trying to slink away down Nebraska Street, Karen got all the way to the stadium before they caught her. They hemmed her in, pulling her hair, spitting on her and bitch-slapping her face. They advised her: What you are, it’s illegal and it’s sick. They should lock you away.—She stood still, while their spittle ran down her cheeks.
Then she went home, where her dear mother waited to bestow her kiss.
17
So now she had E-beth’s place, the red Pontiac, and the long wilting string of red lig
hts over the mirror at Jingle’s, where sometimes a certain sweet, harsh-voiced old barmaid with tinted bangs looked at her so gently and lovingly. How thrilled was Karen there to sit next to E-beth, underage! (At Jingle’s nobody cared about such trifles.)—Later they started taking their beers to the round hightop in the corner, where they could whisper in the dark.
E-beth taught her myriad ways of giving and getting pleasure, of gratifying oneself by fulfilling the other, of turning self-denial and even pain into joy. One might point out that anyhow the first lover is by certain criteria necessarily the best, but I who never met her prefer not to underestimate E-beth’s talents. The joy when Karen’s young fingers learned to know the long thin lips of E-beth’s vulva, which she stroked up and down, on command up and down forever, with E-beth’s tongue in her mouth and her heart pounding and her nipples so hard they ached, might be chalked up to mere novelty, but Karen was soon presented with a more advanced curriculum requiring all-night stays, toward which her mother grew surprisingly permissive (my Karen has her little secrets!) In short, she learned both to magnify her senses and to suffocate herself in desperately delicious acts of submission. Sometimes E-beth liked to bite her nipples, and when that was very painful Karen cried out. That made E-beth very hot, and soon they were clashing clamshells, as the Japanese might put it. Sometimes E-beth controlled her seeing, her urinations or even her breaths; such was Karen’s gracious teacher, with coolly careful fingers around a sweetheart’s throat. (I who was not there cannot be prevented from insisting on the difference between Karen and E-beth: the difference between joy and pleasure.) And sometimes, after Karen had washed the dishes, started the washing machine and scrubbed the kitchen floor, when she used to lay her head in the other woman’s lap, E-beth would tell a fable to beguile her, murmuring of an island where only women lived; and all those women were in love.
The Lucky Star Page 6