Suzie Q gave some smart answer, parrying the knife thrust, as cold bovine eyes of the older hos studied her, however they didn’t have long to judge her expression—to see the effect of their words—time was precious and there was too much other stuff to gab about. Secretly all the whores were eager to say their piece—their piece about something, even if they had to dream up a piece to say, being they didn’t have nothing exciting to talk about—except millions of bragged up dollars that they would never see again (that they never had in the first place, but if they had had, they still wouldn’t have, because they greedy mens choked their purses wringing every last cent out and made them turn it loose).
Ms. Q kept up her front—a nonchalant smile, eyes behind sunglasses wouldn’t reveal much anyhow. But her brain was smoking. Now that had been on her mind for weeks. A white bitch Flash had met in a club waitressing. She worked the San Francisco stroll and dealt dope on the side. She meant plenty money, and Flash was trying to get her to choose, but he had blown his cool by buying her more than one drink. The dice shook up in the fickle fist of fate, rolled out—no dice.
He’s blown $100 taking her out—she’d out-hustled him. A bill— flushed down the toilet for all the good it had done them. Now, this had been working in the back of Suzie Q’s mind for weeks. How she’d worked tooth and nail for that hundred, hustling her ass up and down Grove street. At least Flash could have got him an outfit, or put the down payment on a ruby ring to show for it. —But what did they have? Hard feelings.
“The more I thought about it, the madder I got.
“4 am rolled around and I didn’t have the first penny to break luck of that evening. —And I’d been out since 9 p.m. Well, I was mad as a muthafucker. Mad about not having my kids. Mad about not having no money. Mad about that $100 Flash had blown. Mad that I haven’t got nowhere since I been in the fast life—but empty praise from my man, and yes he takes care of my clothes and the room rent, but I’m not getting nowhere, and I’m mad, but I’m scairt too. Eight hours at work and nothing to show for myself. —In Flash’s book that’s enough warrants for a whupping. And I didn’t have change for a dime girl. Not even to call one of my regulars. A trick who’s always good for $30.
“I was mad, so I went in the toilet of Pappy’s and wrote with my lipstick on the walls:
“‘flash gorden ain’t shit, the nigger spends his ladies $ on square bitches. ask anyone. one of the best niggers today is billy the kid.’
“Then I pulled down my panty hose hiked up my skirt and pissed into the toilet.
“Now I knew Billy the Kid my man couldn’t stand. The nigger was lame. Wore a pee-yellow hat, piss pants and a yellow suit jacket the color of dried pee, and it was the ultimate insult to use my man’s name and this lame tin-head nigger’s name in the same breath. But I was smoking. And then I lipsticked a big red X thru the notice that said: ‘flash gor-den gives cock and coke to his bitches.’
“That I’d wrote the week before—to brag him up to the other ladies down on Grove street, tho we all knows ain’t none of them niggers no good ’cept Charlie Brown, and he an old nigger and can’t take care of but one bitch. And also X’d out:
‘flash gordon is a bitches delight, gives plenty cock and coke and treats his womens right.’
“I smoked a joint, and adjusted my wig in the mirror, and reapplied my makeup—using a purple tube, being I’d squashed the color I was wearing making signs. When I got out it was 5 am, and the streets was empty. But it was still dark, and it looked like tricking time to me! But no action. —The hos ain’t heard of daylights saving time I guess.”
Suzie Q walked wide-legged down the street in her too-big shoes grumbling to herself and trying to think up an excuse to tell Flash when she got home and didn’t have no money to show. Down past the stoplight in the middle of the Boulevard some fucked-up whore was challenging the world with sex. A sorry creature in a maxi coat, red, with a red hood, down to her ankles, short skirt, hard painted face. She had reached the border line between her profession and psychosis. And this was apparent. Slowly she sauntered in front of a lane of traffic. The car slowed to a stop and the whore strutted across its path terribly slowly, staring at the occupants of the car in a manner, suggestive.
“do you want a date?” Sex power welled up in her body. It was sad. The totality of her being focused into this one act—screwing for money. The complex human organism reduced to one function. Her face was stone. Painted many colors, and many fools had worshiped her. Now she was getting ugly, her heart was a hideous mess. She might spend 16 hours on the street and only come back with $5. —Which she sparechanged. Her manner was frightening. She was insane.
The little trooper in the pink dress strode along, pointed toe shoes first, thick mouthed with a wad of gum. Her eyes in the gutter contemplating. Where oily water was green with streaks of silver.
“And I think about Janice. She’s not pan’ the police and the reason her not pan’ the police ’cause she’s got something on the judge. Because he the one bought some pussy. She know the whore-detective too, for the simple reason he’s getten’ some leg. I think about Janice and I gets mad. See, Janice a call girl, and she don’t give up no money. She’s her own selfs private call girl. I know this broad don’t have no pimps or nothing. And I don’t care what my man tell me about how all self-respecting call girls he know has a nigger they gives their money too, I knows for a fact all call girls don’t give up their $.”
Suzie walked on, grumbling. The motel lights were on, and a few cars drove down the boulevard. Her shadow was 15 feet high diagonally on the pavement cast from an angle of the neon lights.
She ambled past the “yo’ mammy is a ho” sign spray painted in huge red letters. Where as in Berkeley the hippies spray paint buildings with things like “down with the facist puppet government in vietnam !” But on Grove street, ’bout the best they can do is: “yo’ mammy is a ho and so is yo’ pappy.” And somebody chalked, “yo’ pappy is a punk,” under that.
She walks up from Grove street to the main intersection and sashayes into a fancy restaurant. Air-conditioned, rows of booths, roomy, tastefully covered in gold imitation leather, with a view out of plate glass windows. Decor of wrought metal and wood. Several waitresses bustle about, check pads in their hands, in spiffy uniforms. Her heavy lidded eyes appraise the scene—nobody’s in there she knows. She sits down at the counter and orders a coffee and stirs 4 teaspoons of sugar in it; takes the metal container in her brown hand with chipped nails, and pours in as much cream as will fit in the cup. And vows to sit there ’till somebody she know comes in—because she don’t have a quarter to pay for the coffee.
“I has my 2 twenties, even, hid in my stocking, but I ain’t gonna break that, that’s to give to my momma for the kids. And so I sit there waiting, and stirring. And waiting, and stirring. And waiting, and stirring. And I think back to how life bes like when I was a square bitch.”
JULIE BLACKWOMON
[1943–]
BORN JULIA CARTER IN SALUDA, VIRGINIA, THE AUTHOR renamed herself Julie Blackwomon to affirm her newly realized identity after she came out as a lesbian in 1973.
Blackwomon’s first major poem, “Revolutionary Blues” (1977), brought her to prominence as a lesbian writer of color. Soon she began to write fiction as well. Among the major themes in her writing are intra-racial tensions between African American lesbians and homosexuality in the black community. Although she has published only one collection of stories, Voyages Out 2: Short Lesbian Fiction (1990) (a two-author story anthology that also features the writing of white lesbian author Nona Caspers), and a chapbook entitled Revolutionary Blues and Other Fevers (1984), Blackwomon’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Lesbian Poetry: An Anthology, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, and She Who Was Lost Is Remembered: Healing from Incest Through Creativity.
From Voyages Out 2 comes “Symbols,” a humorous though insightful story concerning Barry, whose wife Dee has recently ended their
marriage with the sudden announcement of her lesbianism—a plot mirroring Blackwomon’s own life. With her focus on Barry, Blackwomon speaks to the ways in which coming out of the closet is more than just a “gay thing.”
Symbols
[1990]
I “Do you have to wear that?” He was walking down Walnut Street without looking at her. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring down at his spitshined brown shoes.
“Do I have to wear what?”
He looked over at her now. She wore a short Afro and large hoop earrings that brushed her neck when she turned to look at him.
“Do you have to wear that thing around your neck?” he said. They were on their way to a play he’d already seen months before. The tickets were a Father’s Day gift from his brother, Arthur. They had come inside a white envelope and were hand-delivered by a thin woman with ultra long, flame red fingernails. She was supposed to have been his blind date. This had also been arranged by his brother. On the way home from seeing the play the first time the woman had casually dropped her hand into his lap. He wasn’t interested though. He was afraid he’d catch some disease that he would take back to Dee, the woman walking beside him now.
It was late afternoon and sweltering. As Barry and Dee walked toward the theater, Barry carried his beige jacket draped across his arm because he expected the theater to be air-conditioned and also because this was a special occasion: the first time they’d had dinner together after a six month separation. He was disappointed that she had shown up in jeans and a short-sleeved Danskin but he refused to accept this as a negative omen. He had picked her up a couple hours earlier and they had dined in the quiet restaurant with the hanging chandeliers. It was the same place he had taken her to celebrate their eighth year together. The other celebration had represented their third year of marriage. They had lived together five years before his divorce from his first wife became final. His ex-wife got the house, the second car and a third of his salary until Joshua, then six, and Elizabeth, then seven, turned eighteen. He got the right to marry Dee and introduce her to his kids.
He’d seen her a total of six times since he reluctantly moved out of their apartment, four times when he’d returned on the pretext of picking up some clothes. Once she’d called him about two a.m. because she’d lost the keys to her motorcycle in Fairmount Park. He’d gotten out of bed at half past two, driven around in the semidarkness until he’d found her, then he’d driven her home to pick up her extra set of keys. He had waited there with his motor running until she’d kick-started the bike and then he sat watching the red and amber taillight and the reflection of her helmet moving down Kelly Drive. Then he’d put his Chrysler into gear and headed for home. He noticed that she had appeared depressed and anxious but she had allowed him to hold her hand in the car. He had driven back to his parents’ house wondering whether or not that was significant.
At the restaurant earlier today, he had not become upset when Dee insisted on splitting the bill. He found the idea amusing, as if this were their first date and she had to make sure she didn’t owe him anything, wouldn’t have to go to bed with him afterwards. Still, he knew better than to laugh. He could be liberal if he had to, but mostly he was just satisfied to be spending time with her again.
When he picked her up for their date he had already angered her by inadvertently extending the boundaries of their agreement for seeing each other. As he stepped inside the apartment she embraced him, and when their pelvises touched it ignited a spontaneous bolt of electricity that coursed through his groin and he had been unable to suppress a groan. She had pulled away embarrassed and he’d had to listen to the ground rules of their relationship again. Friendship. They got past that once he explained to her quite truthfully that he was just happy spending time with her again. He had not added that friendship was acceptable only if that was all that was offered.
Everything was fine until he noticed the thing around her neck. Even after he’d first seen it he walked several blocks distracted in his conversation, trying not to say anything. But then she looked over at him with his hands in his pockets and asked, “What’s the matter?”
He said, “Nothing.”
And she said, “You know I can always tell when something’s bothering you.” It was then that he’d asked if she had to wear that thing.
She reached up and grabbed her double women’s symbol as if it was so much a part of herself she could find it at night in a room totally devoid of light, as she might find her arm. “This?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he nodded his head and looked away at passengers erupting out of a bus at the corner of 16th and Locust Streets. “That’s a lesbian symbol, isn’t it?”
“Why, yes,” she said, a trace of irritation (or was it defiance?) in her voice. They stared at each other in separate pools of silence.
“Does it bother you?” she asked finally.
“Well, yeah…” This was no time to lie. He started to say something else but stopped himself.
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why does it bother you?” She stopped walking and stared him in the face, trying to hold his gaze, but he looked away—down at his shoes, at the bus about to pull away from the curb.
It bothers me because I love you. Because I need you to want me the way I still want you. Because the symbol suggests you never will.
“I don’t know, it just does,” he said aloud.
“And you want me to take it off?”
“I don’t want to fight about it, Dee.” He touched her elbow and nudged her forward.
She allowed herself to be led a few steps, then balked. If there was one thing he could not stand, it was a public scene.
“Look, this is what I am, Barry. I wear it with a degree of pride, alright? Asking me to take it off would be like asking me to take down my freedom flag.” He pictured the red, green and black freedom flags that were sewn on the pockets of her work suits. The ones she wore as a gym teacher.
“Dee, I know you’re a lesbian,” he said softly. From the comer of his eye he peeped at the passing dyads and, leaning closer, said “lesbian” without moving his lips, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear the word “lesbian” coming from his mouth. “I know you’re a lesbian,” he repeated with the same strained effort, “but you’re with me now.”
“I’m lesbian wherever I go, and this goes wherever I go.” She held it out in front of her as if it were an amulet warding off evil spirits.
He sighed deeply and moved his jacket to his other arm. Telling her to be quiet now, he decided, would be the worst thing he could do. Changing the subject wouldn’t work either. When Dee was being self-righteous there was no hushing her up. Once during an argument he’d made the mistake of asking her to be quiet so the neighbors would not hear and Dee started yelling at the top of her voice while he ran around the apartment furiously pulling down the windows. The memory brought a frown to his face.
A tall, blond man in horn-rimmed glasses bumped into Barry and Barry stepped back and apologized. He moved to the side of Anthony’s Pizza Parlor where Dee was leaning against the wall, one foot propped up behind her. She was still holding the women’s symbol, cradling it protectively, her hand resting against her orange Danskin. She wore a button pinned to her shoulder bag with “Hera” stamped on it. Hera was the name of the women’s bookstore where Dee did volunteer work. Actually it was a lesbian bookstore but he didn’t like to think about that. He didn’t like to think of Dee referring to herself as lesbian at all. Thoughts like that confounded and depressed him, creating questions about their relationship he hadn’t the courage to face.
He looked across Walnut Street at a block-long line of people waiting to see Star Wars. A patrol car was passing slowly, the officer inside watching Dee, an “Is he bothering you miss?” expression on his face.
“Why don’t we just forget about the play.” She sounded as tired as he felt.
“And waste forty dollars!” He took her elbow and nudged
her forward then felt the weight of her resistance and stopped again. Depression engulfed him like a wet cloud. When he turned to face her again she had both hands on her hips and she was frowning. He sucked his teeth and leaned back against the wall, his hands in his pockets. This was not supposed to be happening. He was ready to just give up, give Dee the tickets and go on home alone. Only Dee wouldn’t accept the tickets.
“Why do you always manage to make me feel guilty?” she asked.
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty,” he said, “I just don’t want to see the play anymore.”
“Maybe it’s too early for us to try to spend time together,” Dee said. “Or maybe it’s too late,” Barry mumbled. He held no hope of salvaging the evening.
“Huh?”
“Never mind,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
II Later in his apartment, with his feet on the coffee table and a beer in his hand, Barry wondered how Dee could suddenly decide at twenty-nine that she liked women better than men. Shouldn’t there have been some clues? In her adolescence? Eighteen months ago she’d told him she “thought” she might have “homosexual tendencies.” She borrowed books from the library. They both borrowed books from the library. And since he had no doubt that she did love him once and perhaps loved him still, deep down, why now, in the tenth year of what she’d referred to as the best relationship she’d ever had, was she wanting to be with women?
The only other lesbian he’d known was Myrtle McHenry, a tall thick-shouldered woman who, even in junior high school, more closely resembled a man than a woman. Once, three of the boys from Bainbridge Street had grabbed Myrtle and tried to yank her clothes off to see what she wore underneath. They succeeded but Barry wondered if the razor slash that still puckers Junebug’s left eyebrow had been worth finding out that Myrtle wore her breasts tied down with an ace bandage and that she donned white cotton panties under her men’s pants. At any rate, Barry saw no connection between Myrtle and Dee except that Dee maintained that North Philadelphia stroll she developed as a kid growing up in the Raymond Rosen projects.
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