Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

  Raging Flower

  * * *

  I woke up the next morning with my phone in my hand. Checked my call history and Ava was the last person I’d spoken to. She’d ended last night’s phone call by telling me to “emotionally drop that uppity gringa” and focus on myself and of course, to dip out early and come visit her. But the phone didn’t wake me, the smell of breakfast did. It smelled like home on a Saturday morning and for one half-second, I forgot I was in Portland.

  Maxine stood in the kitchen dressed in a denim shirt with cutoff sleeves, a faded yellow apron wrapped around her waist. She poured sliced potatoes into a hot pan. News radio hummed over the crackling. Maxine was so dreamy. I wished I’d gelled back my hair or put on cleaner, cuter shorts.

  Maxine offered me coffee with cinnamon and cane sugar. It was thick and strong, the type of coffee that needed a cigarette to accompany it. I lit one from a pack on the counter. Maxine scrambled eggs and set them aside. The dish wouldn’t be ready for a while. Tortilla Españiola took time, something about it tasting better if the person cooking wasn’t in a rush. That’s all she said. I didn’t press for a story and I wasn’t given one. I’d heard stranger things about food. We drank coffee in silence. It’d been awhile since I’d had any time with Maxine, since she was even in the house.

  Harlowe burst in through the front door. Banshee-like, as usual.

  “None of the lezzies were working at Anarchy Books today,” Harlowe said, sighing, as she dropped two used books onto the table, “So I just spent the last three hours with bearded man hipsters, one of them wearing a “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt by the way, and we discussed why it’s important to purge the soul of male authors and focus solely on women writers. And by discussed, I mean I spoke and they listened.”

  “I’m already exhausted,” Maxine said, as she poured the eggs into the potatoes, “I don’t know how you’re able to entertain fools.”

  “I mean, someone has to push these guys, you know? I know it’s not my job but I look at it like I’m doing their daughters, girlfriends, mothers, lady co-workers, any women they know,” Harlowe said, as she looked at both of us, “I look at it like I’m doing them the favor, like I’m helping them become better men.”

  Harlowe grabbed a flier from the back pocket of her denim shorts. “And I picked this up for you,” she said, and handed it to Maxine.

  Womanists United Against Bush.

  Discussion topics: 9/11 cover-ups, Capitalist-Based Fear Mongering, Anti-Blackness, and Islamophobia.

  “What should I do with this?” Maxine asked, flipping the flier over.

  “Duh, it’s for Womanists only. I obviously can’t go, but you can and you should and maybe Juliet can go with you? Does a closed space mean Puerto Ricans can’t go either? I don’t know?”

  Maxine sighed. “Harlowe, we’ve talked about this before. Just because you see something that is targeted towards Black people, doesn’t mean that you need to bring it home to me and encourage me to do Black people things with other Black people, okay? And if Islamophobia is one of the topics, it won’t be just for Black women.”

  I rose to leave but they both stopped me. They said it was fine, that these conversations weren’t a secret. They were discussing something major but no one had to leave. In fact, a third-party might be useful if they needed a mediator. I stared into my cup of coffee and listened to them.

  “Max, I’m just sharing information,” Harlowe said. “I was there when Janae from Black Womanists United came in and set out the fliers.”

  “Yeah but when there were fliers at Anarchy for acoustic guitar lessons, you didn’t bring those my way. Maybe they should have said ‘Black acoustic guitar lessons,’ maybe then I would have gotten those fliers from you.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Maxine laughed too. She stood up, checked the potatoes and eggs.

  “What do you think, Juliet? Do you think it’s okay for a white partner to assume that they need to be the one to bring their partner of color information about their race or ethnicity?”

  Harlowe attempted to clarify that it wasn’t all the time but Maxine stopped her.

  “If it was on some racist tip where Harlowe was bringing home stuff that was messed up against Black people and saying you should go,” I said, shifted in my seat, “like if Harlowe brought me a flier for a rice and beans eating contest, I’d be like ‘This is type racist,’ but if she brought me some Puerto Rican power feminist shit then I’d think it was pretty cool, you know? But I don’t know, if it bothers you, then it should stop, probably.”

  The conversation continued over breakfast. Maxine’s main points were that Harlowe shouldn’t be concerned with her Blackness and that in essence Harlowe was committing microaggressions against Maxine. From the context clues, I understood “microaggressions” to mean “little bullshit acts of racism.” Maxine felt that Harlowe should be focused on fusing anti-racist beliefs into her particular brand of white feminism and vagina empowerment. Basically, Harlowe should worry about herself before she worries about Maxine’s involvement in the Black community. Harlowe believed her job as a supportive partner was to spread and share helpful information, especially regarding race and community issues. I held on to my original points. If Maxine didn’t want it, Harlowe shouldn’t do it. But I still didn’t understand why it bothered Maxine so much.

  “But Maxine, if Harlowe wasn’t white, would it be okay? Like if you were dating a Latina and she brought home something from a Black Feminist Collective or whatever, would it be weird too?” I asked, and helped myself to more eggs and potatoes. I continued, “No disrespect, you know, just curious.”

  Maxine took a deep, slow breath, crossed her muscled arms across their chest.

  “The thing is, Juliet, I’ve never appreciated someone else’s unrequested guidance on my identity. I don’t want their interpretation of who I am or where they think my politics should lie. My Blackness, my queerness, my theological inclinations, what I’m like at a family reunion, who I am in the classroom or in a relationship, all of that is mine,” Maxine said, each word chosen, thoughtful, “And if Harlowe had asked, I would have told her that Janae called me two days ago to tell me about the event. Black people speed dial, you know.”

  “I just get so excited about things, Max,” Harlowe said, “And I want people I love to know about all the rad political and racial and gender-y stuff.”

  “I know Harlowe, I know,” Maxine replied. “But you’d do better if you listened to what I need and not run off at the start with what you think I need.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my back pocket. It was my mom. I excused myself from the table and answered.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said. I shut the door behind me and sat on the porch steps.

  “Hi, Mom, yourself. It’s been days since you called me, nena. I’m over here worrying about you in the corn fields and you can’t even call,” she said, in one breath.

  “Mom, I’m sorry. Things have just been... busy.”

  “Why do you sound tired? Are you sick?”

  “No, Mom, I’m not sick, I just…”

  “You just probably haven’t been sleeping on a good schedule. Always up late like your father. But anyway, I got your letter,” she said. Her voice softened. She paused.

  The distance between us was palpable. She cleared her throat.

  “Your letter was beautiful. I remember that day with you and your brother. Your attitude, the way you dared to look me in the eye. But you came back and apologized like a good girl. I didn’t even need to spank you. I loved you then as I love you now.”

  I teared up. I smudged some of the writing on Harlowe’s steps with my fingers to give my hands something to do and my eyes somewhere to focus.

  “I love you too,” I said. “Mom?”

  “Yes, Juliet?”

  “Oh, Mom.” My voice cracked. All the anguish of the breakup built up in my throat. Her voice erased my reserve.

  “Juliet, what’s wrong? What happ
ened? Talk to me.”

  “Lainie broke up with me, Mom,” I said. I didn’t trust my voice to remain steady.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “She sent a letter, a stupid breakup tape, and that was it. She didn’t even call. I didn’t do anything to her. She fell in love with someone else, Mom. How could she?”

  “Well, nena, these things happen. Best to just move on, move forward. Give it to the Lord.”

  “The Lord, Mom? I can’t just give this to the Lord. Or move on. Mom, come on.” Wrecked, all of me was wrecked. I hated all the birds chirping around me. I wanted metal train tracks and car alarms.

  “Juliet, you have to calm down. It will be fine. Listen, I know it will be better soon,” she said, “You know how I know?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I know because just yesterday I bumped into Awilda from my old job. We were both at the bus stop. And guess what? She asked about you and told me that her son, Eduardo, is home from school and will be here the week you get back. We’re all going to have dinner together. You and Eduardo would make such a good match.”

  “Mom, I don’t think that’s the thing that’s gonna make this better,” I said, biting my lip, angry, annoyed.

  “Juliet, Eduardo is a good man,” Mom said, in that reverent voice she often used to talk about other good men.

  “No, Mom. Eduardo is gross. And Mom, I don’t care. I can’t believe that I’m here crying about Lainie and you’re trying to set me up with Awilda’s gross son, with anyone’s son for that matter.”

  “Nena, you never gave men a chance. That’s why your heart is broken right now. That love with Lainie wasn’t real, not like the love between a man and a woman is…”

  “I gotta go, Mom. Like right now, I have to go.”

  “Juliet, I love you. I just want you to grow up and be the person we raised you to be.”

  “I’m never going to be that person, Mom. I gotta go. I can’t do this with you.”

  We said hushed, strained goodbyes and hung up at the same time. I stretched out on Harlowe’s porch and stared up at the sky. At least Mom said she loved me. Tears slipped out of the corners of my eyes. The neighborhood and the sky around me were still, calm. They were the absolute opposite of the tectonic plates of grief and confusion that shifted inside of me. There was other shit that rumbled around inside of my heart too but I didn’t know what to make of it all. Did I have to be the one who guided my mom towards understanding all this gay stuff? I just got on board with it myself and still didn’t have it all settled. And fucking Lainie. Literally that’s all I had for her, just a bunch of swears and questions and the suffocating shock of being cheated on and dumped like I was nothing.

  I lay on the porch for a while. I’d spent the last week laying around Harlowe’s house. The summer was about to pass me by. Harlowe’s big reading at Powell’s was next week. I still had an entire box of women to research. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t get unstuck. Something had to give and give quickly.

  16. I Wish She Would

  Post-breakup and still alive, my desire to get lost in research kicked into overdrive. Having come to the realization that I wasn’t going to marry power dyke, young Democrat Lainie Verona, I focused on the work. I wanted to show Harlowe that I took the internship seriously. I didn’t come all the way to Portland to flop around her house consumed with melancholy like a character on Dawson’s Creek. I was there to research amazing women, assist Harlowe with her speaking events, and become her best friend forever. Well definitely the first two, and hopefully the last one.

  I spent every one of the next five days at the library. Scraps of paper spilled out of my pockets and my notebook. The other librarians recognized me and offered their help. Kira helped too. She made no mention of me not calling her. I didn’t bumble around trying to explain why I hadn’t. I worried it would make me sound self-absorbed and pathetic. “Hi, girl I kissed on a motorcycle. My girlfriend and I just broke up and I want to eat a bucket of nails and I cried so much that I couldn’t call you. Still wanna hang out?” Yeah, nope. We worked around each other. The rhythm between us was secure, open. I hoped we’d ride together again and maybe even kiss again. I left it up to the universe.

  Like before, I started with a few scraps of paper at a time. Harlowe didn’t want an entire biography on every woman. She needed the basics and if possible, a little extra. I wanted to have enough information for Harlowe that she’d be able to build up a strong foundation for next book. Thorough, not overwhelming: that was my approach. The names I had with me were as follows:

  Crumpled blue paper: Del Martin

  Stained napkin: Boudicca

  Georgia O’Keeffe Stationery: Fu Hao

  I stared at the piece of blue paper. Harlowe’s left-handed scrawl swerved towards the bottom of the page. Del Martin. I’d never met a woman named Del. I hoped she was a dyke. I didn’t want to assume that at first but why not? Why assume she wasn’t? I knew Del had to be a woman, at least. Perhaps Del was also an activist? Or a maybe a softball player?

  I sat in my favorite computer cubicle near the window. Wrote some notes down, took my inquiry to Lycos.com. I searched for Del Martin.

  Del Martin: Born May 5, 1921. Co-founder of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) in 1955, a social organization for homosexual women that evolved into a feminist group. They published The Ladder in 1956, the first print lesbian news publication. The Daughters of Bilitis disbanded after the Stonewall riots due to differences in newly emerging lesbian politics.

  “Differences in newly emerging lesbian politics”? I guess even back then women dealt with high levels of lesbian drama. The word “Bilitis” struck me as something one could be afflicted by, like gastritis or tonsillitis. “Lesbian, Bilitis, dyke;” why didn’t words for gay women ever sound beautiful? I printed out the paragraph on Del Martin while looking up “Bilitis.”

  What I found next was that “Bilitis” was the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of Sappho by the French poet Pierre Louÿs in his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis.

  So, Bilitis was Sappho’s butch girlfriend. I wondered if the Daughters of Bilitis were all white women. Would I have been a member of the DOB? I collected my information and moved forward.

  I raced through the next two names. Boudicca and Fu Hao were both warriors that protected their people from invasions. Boudicca was Queen of the British Iceni Tribe and led revolts against the Roman Empire. Fu Hao was a military general and high priestess during the Shang Dynasty. Basically, they were like Titi Wepa and Titi Mellie but like from way back in the day. I filled my purple notebook with battle dates and names of countries that didn’t exist anymore. I turned to the library database and looked for books. I’d review them in the same way that I’d reviewed The Ladies’ Gallery but at home, with Harlowe’s moon cycle calendar and all of my highlighters.

  I found books for all the women before the library closed. Kira wasn’t around. I’d written her number in the margin of my notebook before it wore off. I stared at it. As I exited the library, I decided that I would call Kira later and invite her to Harlowe’s reading. Like a date or something. I pulled the hood up on my black “Righteous Babe” hoodie. If she said no, I’d die a thousand deaths on Harlowe’s porch and find another library but I’d be okay.

  Instead of waiting for the bus, I decided to walk. I was more comfortable with the route and finally had a general idea of where Harlowe lived. Dusk cooled the air around me. I let the night envelop my skin and my frame. I envisioned different scenarios of how to ask Kira out. I straight up dorked it out, had imaginary conversations with her, and role-played how it would all go down.

  My phone buzzed in my back pocket. For a moment, I thought the universe had delivered Kira to me, but when I pulled out the phone, I froze: Lainie. I still hadn’t deleted her from my contacts. I stared at the phone as it vibrated in my hand. Lainie. I wasn’t prepared to talk to her. I’d assumed I could avoid her until September. But why the hell was she calling me now when
she hadn’t returned any of my calls pre-breakup? I pressed the ignore button. Fuck her. Fuck her breakup CD and her letter that was mainly about some other girl. Sarah. Fuck you too, Sarah. My phone vibrated again. Voicemail: Lainie. Jeezus. A voicemail.

  “I’ve got like 20 seconds to explain to you that I think I made a mistake. Juliet, baby. I fucked up. The CD, the letter, even mentioning Sarah. Terrible. I’m terrible. It’s all a mess. Please call me. Let’s fix this.”

  As the message ended, I heard Lainie tell someone she’d be right out. I wondered if she made the call to me while she was with Sarah. I listened to her message a few times while standing in the middle of the Steel Bridge. I missed the way her lips pressed forward when she said the J in my name. Juliet. She missed me. She thought she made a mistake…

  People made mistakes sometimes, right?

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t call her. I was afraid. What if she was with Sarah? I’d be so pissed. It’d ruin everything. I’d curse her out. I’d curse her out if she was alone too. Even though I don’t really curse people out like that. I didn’t do fighting in the streets, mad loud, airing out all the business type of fighting but damn if that’s not how I felt. Lainie deserved it and more. I wished I had that type of free-spirited strength that goes with calling people out on the ways they’ve wronged you, loud enough and public enough for the world to feel it too. For me, everything was internal. I had all the what-if words and fuck-yous in my heart, but they didn’t ever come out.

  I couldn’t call her because if none of that happened, if it was sweetness like when she slipped love letters under my door, then I’d crumble. I’d be vulnerable. I’d give in to her.

  I feared that the most. I’d waited for her to call me when things were good and she didn’t reach out. Lainie could wait to hear from me. She could sit with herself and wonder what was I was up to and who I was with. I didn’t want to jump for her and make a brand new decision on our relationship based on her remorse.