by Lee Lynch
Someone had battered the bike into junk. There were dents on every possible surface. Gasoline dripped out of a puncture in the tank. The tires and seat were slashed, mirrors smashed and dangling.
“Oh, Truth, oh, my Sojourner,” Cece moaned, arms outstretched as if to fold the broken thing to her. “My bike, my bike, my bike.”
“Poor Cece.” When Annie looked closer she saw that someone had scratched a word into the glossy red paint—lezzie. She slung an arm over Cece’s shoulder while Cece cried. There was an aching sorrow in her chest where anger had earlier raged. “We’ll show them, Cece.” Her eyes swept the street for vandals. “They’re not getting away with any of it. I promise.”
She thought of her promise later, when the crowd overflowed from Gussie’s kitchen into the back hall, the bedroom, doorway and part way up the stairs. The original ragtag group was swelled by some Morton River liberals, the whole softball team, the Club Med gays, PFLAG and the anti-poverty group. With fists clenched, Annie told them about Cece’s bike.
There was a loud silence before Dusty burst out, “And that’s not all! My cop regulars are avoiding the diner like the plague! One of my firemen stopped by to tell me the Department bought them a microwave—just this firehouse. There goes a big chunk of our take-out business.”
Gussie, dressed for the occasion in a black turtleneck sweater with a tiny rainbow pin that Maddy had given her, broke in. “This morning someone chalked insults on our front sidewalk!”
Annie looked at Gussie with alarm.
“Sunday someone paints fags outside the Sweatshop,” added Jimmy Kinh.
Jake, the pharmacist, told them, “I’m back on pill-duty, but,” he pointed to thick scabbed scrapes across one cheek and over an eyebrow, “I went to a straight co-worker’s wedding at Bromsberrow State Park and made the mistake of using the men’s room.”
Dusty pointed out, “These things have always happened in the Valley.”
Pacing, Maddy cried, “Piled up like this in a month? You think it’s coincidence?”
“What’s happening at the Farm, Heaphy?” asked Paris Collins. “Are you ready for our ACLU friend?”
Still numb from the sight of Cece’s bike, she told them about the offer of reinstatement, her inability to reach Judy and the flak the Farm was getting because of its stand. Her sadness had passed. Now, like trapped electricity, so much anger hummed within her that she was ready to leap into whatever crazy fray Maddy might dream up.
“What bugs me is how out of control it’s all gotten. Jo tried to keep a lid on it, but couldn’t.”
“Jennifer Jacob’s a journalism major,” Maddy volunteered. “She can get all this into the paper.”
“Can you?” Annie asked Jennifer.
Jo Barker broke in, “You know we need to do this diplomatically,” she advised. “The people who started this can learn how wrong they are, the harm they’re doing to Morton River.”
“It’s not up to you anymore, paisan!” Maddy told Jo with firm seventeen-year-old conviction. “Maybe Annie’s getting her job back, but if you think that’s the end of this, you’re demented. What’s your problem anyway?”
Again, there was silence, but this time, Annie realized, Jo was expected to answer Maddy.
“Don’t jump all over the mediator,” Annie objected with automatic chivalry. “Jo’s not the enemy. It was the whole lot of us, not just Cece’s bike that got stomped. All I can see are those old World War II newsreels of Nazi storm troopers marching, kicking in doors, kicking fallen people. When I was bad, my dad would say the Nazis were coming—made me go to my room to hide.” She gave a bitter little laugh.
“I was so scared that when my Brownie leader wanted me to apply for a campership, I dropped out of the troop. No way were they putting me in a concentration camp.” The utter silence in the room made her stutter with self-consciousness. “We can’t expect Jo to stop this war all by herself. My dad was right. The Nazis are here!”
Paris came over and put an arm around her shoulder, saying, “The immoral majority has this hysterical anti-gay employment statute as a rallying cry. If the Selectmen pass it, nobody’s going to challenge it unless all of us do!”
Annie sat down hard. She wished it had been Chantal beside her, but Chantal had sent her daughter home in her car and stayed with Cece Green and Hope Valerie to deal with the police and the motorcycle. She smiled thanks at Paris.
Dusty said quietly, “Jo Barker, you’re not going to find a way around this one. Look where keeping it quiet got Cece. Might as well face up to it—it’s time to mount an attack here.”
Jo nodded. “I tried to hold back the flood, but I’m just one woman.”
“You did good,” Elly said. “Now we all have to back you up.”
Maddy whined, “If we’d stood up to them in the first place, they’d know they couldn’t get away with this shit!”
“We made the best decision we could!” said America.
“This is exactly what they do—set allies against one another,” said Gussie.
Jennifer cried, “You can all stand up and shout till you’re hoarse. What are we going to do?”
Annie felt as if everyone was waiting for her to start the stampede which would set them in motion. She drummed fists onto her knees in excitement and anticipation.
A non-gay she’d never seen before stood. “There’s more to it than the gay issue. I teach special education and I volunteer weekends at the Farm. I get sick of being told to honor the rights of my students and then told to treat them as if they’re asexual. Darn it, we give animals more credit than that!”
He looked around the room. “You know who I miss most from this meeting? Lorelei Simski. Where’s her voice?”
More people spoke, but all she heard were the words of the special ed teacher. Chantal had said the same thing, hadn’t she?
The hum inside her became an extension of the hum in the whole room. She could feel the mood shift from expectancy to strength. When she closed her eyes to calm herself, lezzie was scratched onto her very soul, right next to Lorelei cheering for the softball team.
“Who does Lorelei have to defend her?” She cried out into the hum. “Who does Cece have? And how many careers have I not even dared dream about because I’m gay? I want my damn job back. I will go to school. I’ve had it with giving up before I get started. It’s just like Elly told me once. She said, this is my little dream, and it’ll stand up to time and this Valley if I will.”
“YES!” cried Maddy, leaping from her seat. She started her pacing again, looking like a precocious tactician. “Let’s talk to the press. The other side’s got their version plastered all over the Sentinel. Tell the paper your story.”
“Me? Are you kidding? Get some other hero. I don’t want to be chewed up and spit out by the right wing or the fundamentalists or the press. You want a march? I’ll march with you. You want to have meetings? I’ll come to your meetings.”
Jennifer shouted, “Let’s do a triple profile—Annie, Lorelei and Cece.”
Maddy responded, “That kicks! Do it!”
Their passion was scary. She felt as much a pawn in their wannabe revolution as in the fundamentalists’ reign of terror. At the same time, she wanted to snatch a red flag and lead a parade singing, “Here come the les-bee-uns!”
“We’ll picket all the churches!” said a non-gay.
To Annie’s relief, Cece Green slunk in the door then, head down. Chantal Zak and Hope Valerie followed. Everyone in the room fell silent, waiting.
Chantal told them, “The cops said they’d never seen such violence against a vehicle. They kept asking if Cece has any enemies.”
“What did they say about lezzies scratched into the bike? That makes it a hate crime,” Paris asked.
Chantal, lips in a tense closed line, cast a quick glance at Cece.
“I couldn’t afford to let them see it,” Cece muttered. “I—” She drew a red bandanna from a back pocket and blew her nose, obviously trying to compose herself.
“We gouged the paint off that spot so you couldn’t read what they wrote.” Chantal glanced quickly at Annie. “One employment problem is enough, thank you very much.”
Annie checked the faces in the room. She would have erased Lorelei’s kiss too, if she could have. She motioned Cece, Chantal and silent Hope to sit with her.
The larger group shifted and talked, as if to digest—what? Cece’s survival instinct? Feelings of betrayal? She noticed Verne Prinz take a seat on a windowsill behind America. Who had invited her?
Maddy spoke tentatively. “So what about that profile?”
Jennifer explained her brainstorm to the newcomers.
Cece looked up, “Are you out of your ever-loving gourd? Find some rich white boy to stick his neck out for you. Me, I’ll have all I can do to find a way to get to work—and I don’t hear anybody offering a ride. Leave this woman out of this mess.” No one said a word.
Annie whispered to Cece, “Don’t get tweaked. I’ll drive you into work.”
“Deal,” said Cece, offering a limp high five.
“You beat me to it,” Chantal said.
“And I’ll find these dudes,” Cece muttered. “Don’t think me and my Rafferty Street bike buddies won’t take care of business.”
“We don’t want violence, young woman,” Venita Valerie said.
Cece gave her a resentful look. “Like you said, Miss Valerie, we’re a long way from third grade. Those f—excuse me, those dudes’ll never get punished unless I take care of them.”
“She’s right,” said Jimmy Kinh. “Sometimes you can’t fight with words or you lose everything.”
“You said it, bro’. And if you want in when we find them, I’ll give you the high sign.”
Dusty stood up and got the meeting under control. “We have to do something, but most of us don’t want to use violence. Although if I were younger—”
Elly looked sharply at her.
“But I’m not younger. On the other hand we’re no big city radicals—”
With a coy glance at Jennifer Jacob next to her, Maddy grumbled, “No shit, Sherlock.”
Dusty scowled. “We’re respectable citizens. We need to start off on the right foot and picketing just makes us look like flower children. We have a legitimate gripe that can bring us sympathy. There is no earthly reason the conservatives should keep their foothold here except that everybody’s scared of everybody else and ready to blame their next door neighbor.”
Elly rested her hands on Dusty’s shoulders. “But we worked damn hard for the position we have,” Elly said. Elly’s eyes slid toward Verne, then quickly away.
“You’re fooling yourselves if you think you’ll ever be fully respected,” Paris cautioned them. “A queer businessperson is queer first, the enemy to people who hate us.”
Jennifer agreed. “Do you think they spared the respectable Jews in Germany? Did ’good’ people of color get to sit in the front of the bus? Did Colorado voters make exceptions for celibate homosexuals?”
“When I was growing up in the Valley,” ventured Dusty, “the unions were strong. The Poles and the Italians and the Irish fought like mad, but they were all working people and voted Democratic, hated the bosses and the Klan. Now we’ve got Asians and blacks and Hispanics added into that melting pot, not to mention the yuppie commuters. There’s got to be a way to show all of them that this is their fight too, without irresponsible...”
A train came along and covered Dusty’s words. Across the room, Verne, with a bemused look, half-turned and closed the window.
Chantal ah-hemmed and Annie teased her, “Still think you’d be interested in Verne?” She got a gentle slap on the knee in response.
Increasingly flushed, Maddy straddled a backwards kitchen chair and cried, “Listen, guys, I’m only a kid, but even I know if we water down what happened to Annie and Lorelei—and Cece—we’ll drown ourselves. We’ve got the fire hot over this right now. Being responsible means taking back the power. No one takes a movement seriously until it gets headlines. If Annie and Cece won’t turn their stories into headlines, we have to do something else to get noticed!”
“Why are we arguing?” Gussie pleaded.
“Because there’s no center to hold us all,” came a strong voice from the doorway. It was Thor Valerie. “I’ve been pushing all you liberals away from Valley Opportunity Watch’s door for the longest time, wanting the black people to do for ourselves. But this is a beautiful sight here, this rainbow of humanity.”
Someone began to applaud and quickly everyone joined in.
Thor continued, “I have to tell you, though, that good intentions and sit-ins, sit-downs and walk-outs and running to the press don’t cut it anymore. You need a board of directors and a strategy, accountability and coalition building. I’ll be the first volunteer for the Board. We’re facing fascism and it’s going to take every one of us to stop it. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition has finally come to town and we are it.”
Gussie’s voice was hoarse, her face red, her white hair all cowlicks. It was plain that she was both primed for battle and exhausted. “You’re all right,” she rasped. “We need to do a little of everything. For everybody. And the last thing we want to do is run off Annie and Cece asking them to represent all the rest of us. We need every solitary soul to hold back the forces of evil. It’s time I faced the music myself. Let them see who they’re so frightened of. Little old me. Write a profile of Augusta Brennan in your newspaper.” There was deafening applause and cheering.
“Now stop this bickering and let’s have positive ideas about how we’re going to get this show on the road.”
“Before all this,” Annie said, laughing and making a sweeping gesture that included everyone in the room, “I thought politics was a boys’ game, what they did when they got too old to fight in wars and had to find a new way to flex their muscles. Now I see that politics can be narrow and abusive, but it’s really about the people. When you care what happens to a community, a law, a party, zap—you’re a political being. Gussie, if you’re dyke enough to be in the paper, then I want to be, too.”
“Right on!” Thor called out when the new round of applause died down. He laughed. “You’ve been co-opted by the democratic system when you discover you can make a difference.”
Annie said, “It makes me feel powerful. But I’ve never sat on a board.”
“Board’s are for some people, getting your name in the paper is for others,” said Thor. “There’s a place for you in this.”
She laughed. “That’s what I’m afraid of!”
Paris was nodding and smiling.
Maddy looked close to levitating with excitement.
“I’m only a bookkeeper and a mother,” Chantal said, “and I don’t know a thing about revolutions or coalitions or politics, but I’ll volunteer to get our side sending letters to the editor.”
America Velasquez announced another meeting of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. “Sign up before you leave!”
“You see?” said Thor. “This is what we need—action, first one, then the next and the next.”
Finally, as if suddenly filled with ideas, the crowd split into small groups to draft details. Jo, who had joined Verne at the window, said she’d get them a list of businesses that were pressuring United Way. Paris would write press releases. The teachers promised an educational series. Maddy would expand the action at her evening graduation with the help of the Yale group. Thor would talk to V.O.W.’s board about coalition building. Peg passed a softball cap to collect money.
“I still want to be more than a poster girl,” Annie complained.
“Help me on the letter writing committee?” Chantal asked, her manner flirting. “You have some college; you can be in charge of grammar and spelling.”
“I can do that,” she replied.
“And writing sample letters.”
“And,” Jennifer said, sidling up to Annie, “coming with me to talk to the editor so he can meet one of the main
players.”
Buoyed by the power of the group, she assented. “Sure. I can do that too. Who knows? Maybe the more public I am, the less likely it is that employers will hassle me because of my big mouth.”
“Now you’re talking,” Jennifer told her. “Letterman here we come.”
“That might be a little too prime time for me. What if my family was watching?”
“Don’t they know you’re gay?”
Her coward’s secret. “I never told them.”
“That’s too weird for words.”
“Hey, I came out twenty-five years ago. You told no one back then. Why do you think it’s so difficult for me to be showcased now? Old habits die hard.”
Jennifer looked pensive. “The behaviors of oppression die hard.”
Her arm on Cece’s, Chantal said, “I’ll bet I can persuade Cece to help with the mailings. We’ll need a good licker.”
Cece gave Hope a broad wink. “I’ve got a flair for that.”
Hope grinned at the floor and then surprised everyone. “I think we should have a speakers group. You know, go round to the schools, be on the radio and the local TV, talk to churches and ladies auxiliaries. Like that. I’m no speaker, but I’m okay at getting people to say yes.”
Jennifer lurched forward with a hug. “This is awesome. You women are so cool. I love you all.”
The cookies Gussie had baked were long gone and the coffee pot empty. Toothpick had worn herself out attacking feet and now slept, despite the clamor in the kitchen, curled on Annie’s lap, a furry oasis of peace.
Chantal’s eyes shimmered with excitement as she patted the kitten. “Want to come over to my place after?” she asked.
Annie’s palms were sweaty. She hadn’t made a decision about Chantal yet, but they couldn’t seem to say anything to each other without half-serious simmering looks. She imagined that Chantal would be as forceful in bed as she’d been at the meeting. “I’ll have to check my calendar this time,” she teased.
Toothpick looked up, moved to Chantal’s lap and began to knead with desperate speed.
“Maybe,” said Annie, “you should be one of the speakers at the rally. You’re good at it. And you’re a respectable mother of two.”
