Thinking about her now he could still see a trace of the adolescent Dee. Six months in charm and modeling school had not erased her tendency to bounce like a Philly corner boy. When she wore her hair straightened and curled, and when she wore those cute little skirts and pumps she did not appear as, well, androgynous as she did now. There was a boyishness about her that her voluptuous ass could not deny. That was what first attracted him to her, her ass.
They met in Washington, D.C. during Ralph Abernathy’s first mass civil rights demonstration after Dr. King’s death. Barry had been separated from the bus he rode down on and it had taken off without him. He jumped on the bus chartered by the union from Dee’s job and asked it if was going back to Philly.
“Somebody got left. Somebody got left,” the voice in sing-song fashion came from a seat just behind the driver. Barry looked over at an attractive young woman in a powder-blue shell wearing a curly brown wig. He smiled but he did not think it amusing. He was embarrassed and concerned about getting back home. He turned to the woman with the teasing voice. She had full lips and a mole on the side of her face.
“Is this bus going back to Philly?”
“Yep,” she replied with an impish grin.
“Can I ride with you?”
“I guess so but you’d better check with the shop steward. “ Barry sat down in the seat in front of her and rode with his head craned backwards, talking with her for about forty-five minutes. Some boozed-up coworkers were singing golden oldies in the back of the bus and he was beginning to get nauseous from riding backwards. Finally, she asked him if he wouldn’t be more comfortable if he sat beside her. At a rest stop he got his first glance at her ass and, although there were other things he liked about her, it was the sight of her exiting the bus in front of him in those tight jeans that made him ask her out.
She stood him up the first time they were supposed to go out. Left him standing in front of a laundromat in South Philadelphia while a group of white teenagers on roller skates played hockey in the middle of the street. He waited an hour in his charcoal gray suit and black tie and then he went home. When he called her later from a pay phone she told him she had forgotten. Later she told the truth: she had gotten cold feet. Never before had she dated a married man.
The second time they went out he took her to a race track, partly because he liked horse racing but mostly because the race track was in New Jersey. He didn’t want to have to concern himself with being seen. Afterwards he dropped her off at an address in North Philadelphia and Dee would later tease him about going home horny while she made love with her ex-boyfriend. She said he shouldn’t have been jealous because he went home each night to his wife. He had tried repeatedly to explain that he hadn’t slept with his wife in a very long time. Sometimes Dee believed this and sometimes she didn’t, but it was more or less true. For the year before he met Dee he had rarely slept with his wife. Sometimes he just went into the bedroom with a “you’re my wife…” attitude. But it was rarely worth the effort to make love with a woman who just laid there and waited until it was over. Even at that he was afraid of getting her pregnant. They already had two children and a marriage that was obviously finished.
In contrast, he and Dee had had an almost idyllic relationship. He didn’t believe it when she said she was attracted to women. It had surprised him when she started going to the lesbian community center. Next had come the volunteer work at Hera, then the consciousness-raising group followed promptly by a slew of “dates.” He had withstood the casual flings much better than he had endured the first weekend she spent out of town.
That Sunday he read the sports page, did the New York Times crossword puzzle and she still hadn’t come home. She called from the train station but there was time only for “hello” and “got here safely” and reassurances that she would be back in time to go to dinner with him Sunday evening. Then the phone went dead and he imagined she was walking towards a cab, her lover carrying her bags. It was already half past two and he wanted to get out of the house, walk over to Hank’s, or maybe drive over to his parents’ house to see if the kids were visiting. Mostly he just wanted to get out of the house to make the waiting easier. Since ten that morning he had been preparing for her arrival, straightening up the living room, fielding questions from family and friends. “She didn’t tell me she had a friend in New York,” her Aunt Bertha had said. It was the absurdity of it all that prompted him to call her at her lover’s apartment. Why was he sitting home acting like her secretary while she carried out her long distance affair?
He was sitting on the couch, the T. V. tuned to a talk show featuring some politicians all dressed in suits of varying shades of gray. They were debating something Barry could not hear because the volume was turned all the way down. The radio was on, tuned to “Amazon Country,” the local women’s radio station. Dee had discovered it from a newspaper she picked up at the lesbian center. On Sunday afternoon he and Dee usually listened to that station and, although he now thought of changing the station to some music, he sat leaning over the coffee table staring, eyes unfocused, at a book on the aerospace industry. He was supposed to be studying for a test for a promotion at his job in the accounting department in city hall. He thought about Dee’s journal/ telephone book on the nightstand next to her side of the bed.
He stood up then and, as he leaned over to switch the dial, his jealousy aroused, he thought suppose she didn’t go to New York to see a woman. Suppose she went to see a man? The thought of Dee impaled beneath a naked, sweating man filled him with such despair he immediately sank back down under the weight of it. It had brought back memories of his ex-wife, Jeannie, and her “cousin from Georgia.” One hot August night when he’d come home early from his Friday night poker game, he had seen what he thought was his wife getting into a car with Georgia license plates. It had been dark, the street poorly lit and he’d been almost half a block away. He called out her name, then chased behind the car running hard the way they taught him in track. He’d been gaining on the red taillights too until the car suddenly sped up and he stopped, exhausted. It had looked like his wife, in the car, the height was the same, she wore the same curly bush. But later, in their bedroom, he in his jockey shorts and she in her yellow nightie, the door closed so the kids couldn’t hear them, she’d denied it all.
The more he obsessed about it, the more he convinced himself that the only reasonable course of action was to call Dee at her lover’s apartment.
“Hello,” the husky voice on the other end sounded almost like Dee when just awakened. Why was she asleep at two in the afternoon?
“Hello,” he said tentatively, then more confidently, “May I speak to Dee Spicer please?”
“Who is this?” the voice asked suspiciously.
“Barry—Barry Spicer,” he said struggling to keep his voice calm and free of hostility. Had they been making love? “May I speak to my wife please?”
There was a loud clatter that hurt his ears, the phone being dropped. “Why did you give that man my number? I don’t play that shit!” The voice coming through the dropped receiver, crisp, angry.
“I didn’t give him your number.” Dee now, annoyed and defensive. He could deal with Dee’s anger, but a more horrid fear took away his breath. What if Dee refused to come to the phone? What if they hung up on him? He realized now that the question of male or female was trivial. It would be no less painful if she were with a man.
“Hello,” Dee was on the phone now, her voice guarded.
He breathed a sigh of relief and then his mind went blank… “Uh, Dee?”
“Why did you call me here, Barry?” She sounded unconcerned. Suppose he was sick? Suppose he needed her to sign him in or out of a hospital? He was angry then as if he were actually in a hospital and his wife responded as if she were more concerned about appeasing her girlfriend.
“Where did you get this number, Barry?”
“I got it out of your telephone book.”
A voice in the background,
the girlfriend, “Hang up the phone.” “Barry, you shouldn’t have called me here.”
He heard the intrusive voice again, “Hang up the phone. You can’t talk to your man on my damn phone.”
“Tell that bitch to shut up,” Barry said.
Both voices through the receiver, muffled conversation he could not decipher.
Dee back on the line again. “Is everything alright there?” she asked. “Yeah, you coming home soon?”
“I’ll be catching the five forty-five.”
“I’ll meet you at the station, okay?”
“Sure…you really shouldn’t have called me here.”
“I miss you,” he said.
“We’ll talk about it,” she said and hung up.
They talked about it three months later on the tennis court. It was like old times; an impromptu picnic on a lazy Sunday morning, a six-pack of beer, potato salad, fried chicken and barbecue from a rib joint on South Street.
The difference in their relationship was reflected in Dee’s tennis game. She had always been a fierce competitor. She hated to lose almost as much as Barry did and would play any ball at which she had the remotest chance. He liked that about her. But that day she hit the ball tentatively. Even the suggestion that she was letting him win was not sufficient to prevent her lackluster taps across the net or her flailing helplessly at balls that the old Dee would have chased down at top speed. When Barry won the last set, Dee broke down and cried right there on the tennis court. He was embarrassed. Not knowing what else to do he put his arms around her and walked her off the court.
“Why are you crying?” he asked her.
“I don’t know, I’m just so unhappy.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin but the tears kept flowing. She was sitting on a picnic table, her tennis racket lying across her lap.
Dee had broken up with the woman from New York. He didn’t fool himself into thinking that it had anything to do with him. The bottom line was that even though she went to Gay Activists Alliance meetings on Monday nights, the Lesbian Center on Saturdays, Club Olympia, a Black Gay/Lesbian club once a week, Dee came home to sleep every night. He thought things were returning to normal. It shocked him to hear of her acute unhappiness.
“I’m sorry I’m making you unhappy,” she said.
“I can take care of myself,” he said. He had been afraid she would bring up the subject of breaking up again. The last time they discussed his unhappiness was that Sunday evening three months ago after she had returned from New York. Afterwards they had split all the bills and divided up all the housework. At least in theory they were roommates.
Barry looked with envy at a couple in identical white short sets who were kissing at the net. He grabbed another napkin and helped Dee dab at her eyes too.
“Maybe you ought to talk to somebody…” he said. He was afraid of offending her and said the words softly so she could not hear him if she didn’t want to, “…like a therapist or something? I mean,” he rambled on, “I mean it wouldn’t imply there’s anything wrong with you or anything.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I saw one myself right after I got out of the Marines.” She squirmed in his arms as if he was holding her too tightly and he released her. For the first time he allowed himself to consider the possibility that she might feel smothered.
“Maybe I should just move out for a while,” he said. “Give you a chance to decide what you really want to do?”
As a last effort to salvage his marriage he moved out of the apartment and returned to his parents’ house. It was intended as a temporary move.
He had been out of the house a month when Dee agreed to see the shrink. Twice they both went to see a young white woman with long hair and sandals who told Dee she wasn’t really a lesbian, but that she just wasn’t dealing with some resentment she had against her father.
They both went back to the library for more books. He became drawn to the ones on bisexuality and began to think of her in those terms. He lowered his expectations. It occurred to him that they could go on like this forever: Dee going to gay bars and gay activist meetings a couple days per week, and being Mrs. Barry Spicer the rest of the week. It worked with other couples, why not with them? He had called her up, invited her to dinner and a play to talk about it.
III The next weekend Barry sat with Arthur in the living room of their parents’ house with the still-unused theater tickets in his pocket. He had inadvertently pulled them out when he reached into his jacket pocket at the Garden State Race Track.
“Do you notice how Dee walks sometimes, man, the way she bounces when she walks?” Barry asked.
“Yeah, man,” Arthur said casually chewing on his pipe stem. They were waiting until their father returned from the circus with the two sets of kids. Arthur’s wife, Helene, was visiting her relatives in South Jersey. “I don’t think Dee and I are getting back together, man. “ “You like Donna’s cousin, Terry?” Arthur’s eyes brightened, which irritated Barry. Arthur never liked Dee. Terry was the thin one with the red fingernails, the woman Arthur once fixed Barry up with. She didn’t know who George Jackson was and saw no reason Ray Charles should not perform in South Africa. And her nails were too long. She was not Dee. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Terry, it’s just about Dee and me,” Barry said.
“No problem,” Arthur said. He sat watching while Barry drummed his fingers on the end table.
“What’s the longest time you’ve ever been separated from a woman and still got back together with her?”
“About a year and a half. I used to go with this bisexual who came to me to get tuned up between affairs with women. She was a neat lady,” he said with some regret. They were both silent for a moment, then Arthur said, “But, you know if a woman likes chocolate ice cream she ain’t gonna settle for vanilla for too long.” He relit his pipe and studied Barry’s face.
“But wouldn’t they rather have both if they could?” Barry said.
“Maybe. But you can’t have both, man. Not for long.”
He met Dee’s new girlfriend when he went to get the rest of his clothes. When he saw her in the hall he knew immediately who she was. Partly it was his sixth sense, but mostly it was because she wore a lavender T-shirt that had “Killer Dyke” silk-screened on the front in large silver letters. She had passed him on the second landing. He found her standing in the kitchen when he let himself in with his key. Dee was standing at the stove frying steak. Dee, too, had on one of those absurd lavender T-shirts, only hers read “Sappho” on the front.
“I think I passed you in the hall,” the girlfriend said, holding out her hand and smiling the smile of a current lover who could afford to be gracious.
“Pleased to meet you.” He could play the polite game too. Well, at least the girlfriend wasn’t offering tea as if she had already moved in. He shook her hand. It was soft. Much softer than Dee’s. Dee’s lover had no ass but she had firm breasts that sat up under her shirt. She wore no bra. There would be no mistaking her for a boy. She was soft, petite and feminine and he could have forgiven her everything except the “Killer Dyke” T-shirt. If they walked down the street like that—advertising— everybody would know. Suppose his parents saw them? Or his kids? Except for Dee’s earrings and her breasts, which were smaller than her girlfriend’s, she might easily have been mistaken for a teenaged boy. The idea revolted him and he frowned involuntarily. He disliked lesbians now. All of them.
He walked into the bedroom closet and pulled out two suitcases Dee had already packed. On the way out he stopped in the kitchen again, curious. Dee was chopping cucumbers for a salad. The girlfriend sat at the table reading to Dee from what appeared to be a poetry book. He put the suitcases back into the closet. He would get them another time when he would not have to walk past Dee’s lover to get them out. He motioned to Dee from the kitchen doorway. “Can I speak to you, Dee?” Dee looked up at him then over at her lover. She rinsed her hands at the sink and followed him out into the hallway.
“You’re in love w
ith her, huh?”
Dee nodded her head.
“I guess this is it.” He handed her the key and stood there as if he couldn’t decide what he should do next.
“Maybe in a few months we can talk some more?” Dee said.
“I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on that,” he said. But he smiled when he said it. Almost as an afterthought, he threw her an air kiss. And then he walked out closing the door softly behind him.
Outside it had begun to rain, but he didn’t want to go back inside the apartment to get his umbrella. He walked past his car parked across the street, then stopped and looked up at the apartment window. Dee was at the sink washing dishes. He rolled his collar up and continued walking towards Center City. He decided to call Terry. Maybe he could get her to cut those damn fingernails.
ALICE WALKER
[1944–]
NOVELIST AND WRITER ALICE WALKER REDEFINED BLACK women’s fiction with explicit depictions of women’s sexuality, including taboo subject matter such as lesbianism and incest among African Americans. With groundbreaking works such as The Color Purple (1982), she not only affirmed lesbianism as a source of liberation for black women but also established her voice as an internationally renowned author and activist. Indeed, The Color Purple won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 1983, as well as becoming a major motion picture in 1985.
Born the youngest of eight children to a sharecropping family in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker as a girl was blinded in her right eye by a BB gun accident, leading to a self-imposed isolation in which she discovered books and fed her early love for reading. After finishing high school and being named valedictorian in 1961, Walker began her college career at Spelman College, graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1965. She then married Mel Leventhal, a white activist attorney, whom she met while working in the civil rights movement of the late 1960s, and with whom she had a daughter, author Rebecca Walker. It was during her marriage to Leventhal that Walker published both her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), and her first volume of poetry, Once (1968).
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