Sisters
Sometimes ‘LGBT’ just means family
We’d been chatting awhile, my sister, her wife, and I, a casual sit at the table with mugs of coffee and tea. It was our last afternoon together before my flight home last summer, the most relaxed I’d felt all week as it had been a very full trip. The rhythm of conversation flowed easily between and around us.
Somewhere along the way, a question was asked of me by my sister’s wife: “When did you find out Cecily* was a lesbian?” My smile was immediate as this is one of my favorite memories, even if the details were a little vague so many years down the road.
I turned to my sister, grinning, “Mom and I came over to your house, right Cecily? and I found your love note to Pam* written on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick…..didn’t I?” I suddenly questioned, turning to my sister for confirmation.
“No!” she replied, “I sent you in there! You and Mom had suddenly shown up and I grabbed you saying, ‘Oh my god I can’t believe you’re here! My housemate is really my girlfriend, go wipe the lipstick off the bathroom mirror!’ as Mom came in the front door right behind you.”
I laughed, remembering. “That’s right, I was so excited to be in on your secret…..I must have wondered before though. You did giggle a lot about attending Dykes High School. And I definitely remember that because you took woodshop in high school, I did too. In middle school. I was the only girl in the entire school, probably in all of 1970s’ Atlanta besides you, who took woodshop.”
“That’s right, didn’t you have some biker guy for a teacher?”
“Yes! He was great, he took me under his wing. He thought it was cool I braved the class. I made a red plywood apple-shaped key hanger-upper thingy. Mom used it for years.”
Cecily smiled at me, “Oh, I have it, it’s hanging up by the back stairs.” My return smile wobbled a little.
You still have that old apple-shaped key hanger-upper thingy?
The conversation moved on with my sudden thought: “Hey! Did I tell you I met a fellow writer from my online writers group last year? She was traveling to visit her sister. We ended up talking for hours, realizing we had lived in Atlanta at the same time. We liked the same restaurants and bars, lived in the same neighborhoods, we even changed careers and ended up working for competing engineering firms! She also lived down on M. Ave. when you did! She must have been only a couple houses away from you…”
“What was her name?” Cecily asked, rather quickly, I noticed. I replied. Then, her quick retort:
“Oh good, I didn’t sleep with her.”
My glance grows sidelong as I take in this interesting information about my sister, but decide not to ask questions, merely,
“Sorry, she’s not a lesbian — a neighbor who got away, I guess,” said in a teasing tone.
Topics changed as the afternoon went on, the conversation curved and meandered, until my sister’s wife asked me, “When was the first time you came up here to Boston?”
“Cecily and I drove up together when she moved here for grad school. I was 16, I think, and Cecily had a new apartment on Marlborough St. For the ride up Cecily had picked out a book for us to take turns reading aloud to each other.” I laughed, “It was Rubyfruit Jungle **.”
“Cecily! You didn’t!” laughed my sister’s wife, Caryn*, a little shocked.
“Yeah, I did.”
I add, “I remember getting about half-way through, two-thirds through, maybe, and we decided to quit reading…..” I start laughing. “God, that was funny….and weird.” Cecily and Caryn agree.
We grow silent, sipping from now lukewarm mugs. My mind skips and starts across time, thinking of various moments from our past.
The day Cecily told our mother she liked girls. (Women, I correct myself. Anyone over 18 is a woman. My sister taught me to think that way.)
There had been no smiles, no family bantering that day. I’m not sure there was any dinner that day, either. Our house felt so stern, so cold and lonely — I remember silence most of all, echoing throughout the house. (Eventually though, Mom came around.)
The kids at the lake, my childhood friends, pointing to my sister’s nonconforming friends’ unshaven bikini lines while whispering behind my back. I began to get asked if I was gay. When I looked confused: “Well, your sister is…”
There were the pursed lips on some of those conservative southern adults at the lake, some of our town neighbors too, carrying their judgment high, front and center.
Their whisperings echoed, too. I began to feel insecure. I turned to makeup, high heels, cheerleading, boys. My sister had moved away. I felt so alone.
Inevitably, I think of — years later — the time I called Cecily in the pouring rain from a public phone booth in Portland, Oregon. I was three months’ pregnant with my second son under not very auspicious circumstances (fortunately, the circumstances grew much better over time).
“Oh my god, what are you going to do? How will you break the news to Mom?” Cecily asked, then she added, “Well, I have some news as well — I’m pregnant, too!” And just like that, a terrible dark night of the soul became two sisters, giggling over having future children two weeks apart in age.
Years later — that dark era long washed under the bridge — there was Cecily’s wedding to Caryn, her second long-time partner and her first wife, married in Massachusetts, in a beautiful UU church.
Cecily and Caryn’s celebration that day was the most lovely wedding and reception I’ve ever been to. It is the only wedding I’ve ever cried at, as well.
Our complicated past had begun to ring too loudly in my ears. I turned my head and stored all the memories away again, peering at my now cold mug of tea.
Another, lighter, thought popped in my mind — I smiled a little impishly at Cecily.
“Remember that crazy night when you took me to that lesbian bar ?”
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- *names changed for privacy
- ** from Wikipedia: Rubyfruit Jungle is the first novel by Rita Mae Brown, published in 1973. It was remarkable, in its day, for its explicit portrayal of lesbianism. The novel is a coming-of-age autobiographical (some have suggested picaresque) account of Brown’s youth and emergence as a lesbian author. The term “rubyfruit jungle” is slang for the female genitals.
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