The Heart Begins Here

by Jacqueline Dumas

  The trustee had examined my financial records and advised me to bail out as soon as possible. “Your age and everything,” he said. “If you don’t declare bankruptcy, you’ll be in debt for the rest of your life.”

  He had told me not to be ashamed, that mine was a business failure, not a personal one.

  But I would need to cut back on needless expenses.

  “You can’t be stopping for that cappuccino every morning,” he said, and supplied other money-saving tips. “Sell the car. Take the bus. Buy your clothes at Value Village. Make your own gifts. People appreciate a homemade gift more than a store-bought one anyway.”

  Did I own a dog or cat?

  “No,” I said, thinking, Snuffles is Wanda’s cat.

  “That’s good. Pets are expensive.”

  What was my marital status?

  “Single,” I said, thinking that in his eyes, Wanda probably didn’t count.

  “Good,” he said. “Play, don’t stay. That’s the rule. And you’ll want to keep it that way until your discharge. But you might want to find a housemate to share expenses.”

  “I already have one.”

  “Excellent. You’re on the right track.”

  I doubted that Carmen would be surprised if the store shut down. After all, she was also on the end of the ever increasing calls from Accounts Receivable departments.

  ONE DAY I CAME HOME from work and, as usual, the TV was blaring from the living room. I recognized the current segment being rebroadcast. A camera was zooming in on the photograph of a smiling woman with curly dark hair, then it zoomed out to the wretched face of the woman holding the photo. I knew her to be a middle-aged woman with a crewcut, a woman about my age, desperate for some anonymous viewer to come forward with information about her girlfriend.

  I had viewed this scene several times. The second time, the station had abruptly shifted to the CNN studios where the King of Jordan was on hold waiting to talk to Larry King live.

  Now, once again, the camera was singling out the crewcut woman from the hundreds of other people who didn’t know where to even begin to look for their vanished sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, children, pets. Once again, a reporter with a microphone was asking the woman who she was searching for.

  “Roseanna,” she said.

  The woman looked directly into the camera. “Roseanna honey, please come home now. I’m waiting for you.”

  The woman turned to the reporter. I mouthed the words with her: “She needs to come home. We’re leaving for Hawaii tomorrow.”

  Roseanna and her lover had missed their chance. They would not get to go to Hawaii or anywhere else together ever again.

  Wanda and I, on the other hand, had not missed our chance, but we had squandered it, our stab at potential bliss a pile of wasted moments, never to be salvaged.

  The terrorists had come from outside. We’ve learned to be on guard, to anticipate hostility, even atrocities, from outsiders—another species, a lion, say. Or an adult if you’re a child; a man if you’re a woman; and if you’re lesbian, the straight world.

  But what about when it’s one of us who’s the assailant? All the missile interceptors directed at the outside world cannot protect us. We cannot save ourselves from one of us.

  Those few weeks, all I wanted when I got home from work was a few hours of peace. It was true that compared to what had occurred in the U.S., my problems were trivial, but I had also had my psyche crashed into. And I still had the store to run. We were busy, not so much with sales, but with people coming in to discuss both the attacks in the U.S. and the murder that had occurred in our community. I had decided to go ahead with the Brossard reading, which was fast approaching. In my absence, Carmen had forgotten to order the books, so I had been scrambling to get them in time, as well as arrange refreshments.

  Evenings, I vegged out with some of the stripped magazines from the bookstore that had accumulated on the bedside table—old issues of Girlfriends, Curve, and The Advocate. What better than an outdated, gossipy article on Anne Heche’s breakup with Ellen to distract me from my own defunct love life?

  THE FIRST SUNDAY FOLLOWING 9/11, I crawled out of bed to hear Wanda shuffling around the kitchen. I could hear her sighing and banging pots and pans around. The fridge door squealed open. Perhaps her appetite was coming back. I had stocked up on fresh vegetables and fruit and cheese the day before, so she would find plenty to eat.

  The day before, on the way home from the market, I had passed a small contingent of Women in Black who had stood silent and upright on a street corner. Their banner read, No to War, Yes to Peace. I agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiments—of course I did. After all, I owned and ran a feminist bookstore that rejected violence, and along with many of my customers, I worried that any day now, the U.S. would begin bombing the hell out of the Middle East.

  Yet, I’m ashamed to admit that when one of the Women in Black caught my eye, I cringed just like I still do when my mother sends me one of her martyred looks.

  I understood that a silent protest by the voiceless could be a powerful statement. Witness Argentina and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. But here, in this country, where we were free to voice our opinions loudly and publicly? Choosing sanctimonious silence over speaking out for those who could not was a lazy cop-out. You got to feel righteous without lifting a bloody finger.

  I was in the midst of these irritable thoughts when a group of men on the other side of the street started to heckle the Women in Black. I recognized the men, having passed by them on my way to the market—or rather, passed through them. The men had sauntered toward me like a giant horizontal centipede, blocking the sidewalk as if they were entitled to it, and rather than move aside, I had held my ground, marching straight through them, elbows out and managing to poke a soft waist on one side and knock elbows on the other (albeit painfully). But I doubted that any of them had gotten the point, aware only of themselves and whatever important matters they were discussing. Witnessing the men’s open mockery, I was thrust into immediate, silent solidarity with the women.

  Now, hearing Wanda in the kitchen, I wanted to talk over this fickle allegiance with her, but it had become quiet downstairs. She must have gone back down into the basement.

  It was where she slept now, with that wretched painting called Hope keeping watch above her.

  Every day, after parking her car, Wanda passed a small art gallery on her way to work. One morning, a few weeks before we left on our holiday, she had spotted a painting called Hope in the gallery window. She had thought about the painting every day for a week, she said, until one morning it was gone. That day after work, she dropped by the gallery to find out about it, and it turned out that the staff had merely changed the window display.

  So, what had Wanda done? Whipped out her credit card, of course, even if she couldn’t afford it or any other extravagance, given our financial situation.

  She had trembled with excitement that evening as she ripped off the brown paper to display an epically unremarkable acrylic of a female nude reclining in some green rose bushes under a mauve sky. The young nude was reaching up to the stars, long blonde tresses cascading down onto a pillow of rose petals.

  If there is always something new to discover in a relationship, it was then I discovered that Wanda’s sophisticated taste in books did not extend into the realm of art.

  “Would Hope really be looking so relaxed?” I said. “I mean, with those prickly thistles jabbing into all her soft bits?”

  “Oh, for chrissakes, Sara. Where’s your imagination? It’s metaphoric.”

  Hope was hanging in the entranceway when I came home from work the following day, and from then on, it was the first and last thing I saw going in and out of the house.

  Two days after we got home from Maui, I lugged Hope down to the basement and hung it above Wanda’s bed—to give her comfort, I told myself. Bu
t really, I just wanted it out of my sight.

  15.

  NINE DAYS AFTER RETURNING from our trip, and the Brossard reading was finally upon us. The books had arrived, with one of the publishers temporarily unfreezing my account so their title could be shipped. The dismal political situation, Cindy’s death, the ongoing situation with Wanda, and the secret knowledge that the Brossard reading in all probability would mark the end of my brief bookselling career—all this lent a bittersweet quality to the evening.

  Alice’n’Peggy were the first to arrive—one hour early in matching hoodies and river pants from Mountain Equipment Co-op. Arms entwined, they freed each other long enough to give me a crushing hug from either side, almost squeezing the breath out of me.

  I was going through my mental checklist of ongoing preparations. One: Retrieve the podium (don’t forget the water) from the back room. Two: Install the podium in front of Self-Help so that no one can come up from behind the author and startle her (and don’t forget the water). Three: Set up a small book-signing table with a single chair. (A second chair placed at the author’s table was an invitation for someone like Griselda Woods to plop herself down and blather on with no consideration for others waiting in line.)

  “How are you doing?” Alice’n’Peggy asked, scrutinizing my face.

  “Just fine, thanks.”

  “You sure? It’s bad for your health to hold things in.”

  As if I was going to stand there and purge my emotions just before hosting a reading on my own. Carmen had volunteered to work late, but she had opened up that morning, and it didn’t seem right that she stay.

  I excused myself and Alice’n’Peggy reluctantly went to check out the Death and Dying books in Self-Help, from where they continued to direct soulful gazes my way as I finished setting up.

  Missy the Treat Lover was next through the door, and by seven-thirty, the last available fold-up chair and stool had been claimed by a steady stream that included a group of feminist activists from the seventies and a small group of young feminist writers who had started their own literary magazine. (Dressed in black as they were, back in the day, they would have been dubbed “Nicolettes.”) Five or six academics arrived, notably Griselda Woods accompanied by one of her junior colleagues, the most recent hire in the English department.

  The excitement in the room was palpable.

  Andaya Brinn, a writer who had launched three modestly successful books at Common Reader, arrived behind a small group of lesser-known authors, one of whom was the smug-looking Georgina Lemon, a nascent romance novelist with her latest conquest on her arm (a married woman apparently oblivious to her role as Georgina’s most recent trophy). When the Hathaways came through the door with their transgender daughter Theodora, I embraced the three in turn.

  I first knew Theodora as Teddy, before her transition. When I heard about the Hawaiian wrasse that has the ability to change gender, I immediately thought of Theodora. For me, she was one of the bravest, most authentic people I had met since my own coming-out.

  Wanda had different ideas about it.

  “Whatever happened to the idea of gender as a socially constructed identity?” she said in defense of what she considered to be an attack on her hard-fought-for butch identity. “If I see one more snapshot of Teddy in a tasteless polyester gown and rhinestone tiara, I’ll barf. Smooshing around in ruffled skirts and getting men to open doors for you doesn’t make you a woman.” she said. “Nor does ingesting hormones to grow boobs change the fact that you grew up as an entitled he.”

  Wanda spurned any other analysis and refused to refer to Theodora with a female pronoun.

  As for the Hathaways, Wanda grudgingly acknowledged that they did important work. As president and vice-president of the local chapter of Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the Hathaways battled tirelessly to raise awareness of queer issues. They set up information booths at teachers’ conventions, organized workshops in small towns across the province, gave information talks at churches and schools, and diligently carried the PFLAG banner in the annual Gay Pride Parade.

  “There’s only one problem,” said Wanda “It’s as if this one unexpected occurrence, the birth of a queer child, is to define the rest of their lives until the day they die.”

  According to Wanda, it was high time the Hathaways released their child into the world and got on with their own lives.

  Not surprisingly, the main topic of conversation at the reading was still the terrorist attacks.

  “Fucking brilliant,” Griselda’s junior colleague was saying. “Imagine smashing those grand symbols of American capitalism. Imagine even conceiving the idea. This one relatively simple act has instigated fear and paranoia in the entire population. The terrorists won’t have to lift another finger. Americans themselves will finish the job for them. The country will terrorize itself to death. I mean....”

  The junior colleague cut herself short as Freddie’s best friend, Chris, came through the door, her arrival eliciting more whispers than expressions of condolence. Even Alice’n’Peggy took their eyes off me long enough to direct solicitous looks her way. Chris looked in rough shape, like she hadn’t slept in weeks, but she refused the stool offered up by a young dyke.

  I thought back to a day when a drunk hanging around outside the front of the store had taunted Chris, who had come in for a copy of Stone Butch Blues.

  Which would be worse: To endure the scorn of a stranger or the gossipy prurience of your own community?

  Brossard arrived just before eight, clothed in her trademark black. I promptly ushered her into the stockroom and hung up her coat. We confirmed that the format of the reading would be fifteen minutes of French sandwiched between thirty minutes of English.

  For once, I did not have to prepare excuses to the author for a poor turnout. And I was eager to be the one to introduce her. I had prepared a personal introduction that outlined how Brossard’s writing, in particular her poetry, had played a huge part in my sexual self-discovery.

  To my surprise, as I was in the middle of delivering my longer-than-usual introduction, Wanda arrived, which generated enough buzz to cause Brossard to look over and examine her with interest.

  Wanda looked terrible. For the first time, I noticed how much weight she had lost. She stood shifting from foot to foot in the doorway as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to stay or flee. Then she spotted Chris and went over to her, and the two women embraced and held on to each other for a long moment.

  The power of Brossard’s writing was just what the community needed at this moment. Perhaps this event would mark the beginning of our recovery.

  My introduction at an end, Alice’n’Peggy took advantage of the applause to push through the crowd to Wanda and Chris. Griselda and her junior colleague had propped themselves up against the side of the cash desk, and I squeezed my way past them to where I could better observe both Brossard and the audience.

  Brossard smiled warmly at us and began to read from She Would Be the First Sentence of My Next Novel. “In several of her novels she had tried to begin a story, had done her best to believe in it the way one believes in life,” she read.

  Griselda appeared to purse her lips in displeasure. She turned to her colleague and whispered something I couldn’t make out.

  “Yes, too disappointing,” tut-tutted the junior colleague.

  Alice’n’Peggy shot disapproving looks at the two rude professors.

  The last time the junior professor had been in the store, she had spent more than an hour scribbling notes from some university press titles without so much as acknowledging my presence. Later, I had reshelved the books only to discover that one now had a broken spine, and a second, ballpoint smudges on the first few pages. It had left me with no choice but to mark down the books—both new titles that would easily have sold at full price.

  I sighed inwardly and glanced arou
nd. Despite the distracting presence of Chris and Wanda, everyone but the two professors seemed engrossed in the reading. When Brossard came to the end of the chosen excerpt, Wanda wiped her eyes and Alice whispered in Wanda’s ear. Peggy handed her a tissue.

  Brossard read three or four poems in French that probably left more than one woman wet, then finished in English from a work-in-progress.

  Just the right length of time. Not too short, not too long. Always best to leave them wanting more than praying you’ll stop.

  Rather than push back through the crowd, I thanked Brossard from my perch across the room and invited comments and questions from the audience, a task always carried out with more than a little trepidation.

  Not surprisingly, Griselda was the first to speak up.

  “Mlle. Brossard, this space of which you write, this hermeneutic urbanized site that might upon further examination reveal itself to be the very locus of anti-hegemony: Do you not agree that such a non-space might evidentiate itself as inimical to the very multicultural environment necessitated by your non-narrative?”

  At least that’s what I thought Griselda said. Tension filled the room as Brossard gazed back in bewilderment.

  “I’m not sure I understand your question,” she answered.

  “Let me rephrase. How can it be feasible or even desirable for this anti-space to manifest itself as the diversified locus of intersection for one’s bodily and intellectually inhabited, or for that matter, uninhabited body? The subtext here is New York City, of course, that and my own consideration of the recent events that have so tragically befallen it.”

  Griselda went on, as far as I could understand, to decry the lack of lesbian hangouts in our city.

  “You’d think she’d help create some spaces in her own community rather than jet off to New York in search of them,” muttered Georgina Lemon, who was leaning on the short side of the counter in front of Magazines. Her trophy date, meanwhile, had been flipping through a copy of On Our Backs. She dropped it quickly, as if her fingers had been burned.