by Lee Lynch
“Can’t we go find her, Ma?” Lydia pleaded.
“You can’t stop somebody from doing what they think they have to,” I said, wishing my own mother had told me that at the age of twelve.
Sunday, knowing the worst was over, Edie felt better. We did what marketing we could at the few shops that were open, including the produce market off Roosevelt Avenue. Lydia earned some pocket money on occasion working for Henny, a tall older woman Esther and I suspected of being gay. She saw Edie was down and shooed us out of the shop, telling us we should go somewhere nice and relax. Reluctantly, Edie let me lead her to a bus and we smelled the flowers over at the Queens Botanical Gardens for a couple of hours. It got us through the day more pleasantly than I would have thought possible and the next thing I knew it was Monday morning. I wondered if Esther would show up for work. I left early to find out if Rosetta had.
I had never told Edie about tracing Rosetta because I didn’t want to mention her physical beauty. But if she was at work, I decided to call Edie and ask if Esther was at school. We could conjecture from there.
Rosetta was with a patient. After the tension of the weekend I needed to do something positive. So I waited. When she came out, I approached her. I tried not to look angry.
“Excuse me, but do you sing with a woman named Esther?”
Her eyes lit up. I wondered how much power I myself would have had against such beauty as hers. I said, “I’m a friend of hers and was expecting to see her. She wasn’t around all weekend. Was she at church yesterday?”
“No.” Her voice was very quiet, almost timid for a woman so attractive. “No. And was the director upset. Esther never misses. She didn’t even call. I thought maybe there were family problems?”
I knew what she was trying to ask. But I wouldn’t give the worm the satisfaction of showing I understood, no matter how much I liked looking at her. “Wish I knew. Thanks,” I said, tearing my eyes away. Mmm-mhm, I thought, butching it up as I walked down the hall. Esther has some good taste in women. I wondered how soon I could handle a relationship, Frenchy or not. Things were beginning to really get to me. Beginning! Hell, they’d got to me long ago.
But I still had time to call Edie. After a long time, she came on the phone, breathless. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “You probably thought I was Esther.”
“No. Actually I was afraid it was bad news, like she’d been in an accident.”
“I have news slightly better than that.” I explained how the worm worked in the hospital with me and hadn’t seen Esther either.
Edie was naturally suspicious of my source. “She’s not lying?”
“She seems pretty innocent. And Esther wouldn’t pick a liar.”
Edie laughed. “Obviously she’s not here either. Hang on, let me ask if she’s called in.”
I held on, visions of Rosetta’s eyes in front of me.
“Mer, she asked for some time off to go South, someone in the family was sick. Think she could have gone there?”
“Sure, but if she did, it’s herself that’s sick. Look Edie, she doesn’t call you; she doesn’t call church; she doesn’t call the worm. That’s just not like her. I bet she ran home to Mama.”
“Where life was simpler. She said that the other night.”
“Then that’s where she is.”
“But putting us through a weekend like this?”
“She couldn’t make all those phone calls.” The damn operator wanted another nickel. I fed her. “When she can talk again, that’s when she’ll show her face. I know that feeling well. Things get too much for you. You run away through liquor or the crazies or going home to Mama and you got to build up strength till you can take real life again.”
It sounded all too appealing to me. In hiding, like Esther, I could screw up all I wanted, even love a woman for a few days, then come back again and live day by day.
“Why didn’t she know I’d help her?”
“You have to be alone,” I said, too harshly.
Edie was quiet. Probably wondering what I was mad at. All of a sudden I had to get off the phone. “I got to get to work. Talk to you later.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just late.” I hung up on her. If only I could get away too, I thought, feeling panicked. Just get away from all these problems. This day-in day-out everything’s-the-same. I was fed up. I felt crazy.
Chapter 7
How To Make Something into Something Else
Spring, 1967
Frenchy and Pam were putting a jigsaw puzzle together on the kitchen table. While both were increasingly restless spending so much time at home in bed or eating together, Frenchy was at a loss to recognize the exact source of her discontent, much less propose an antidote. It was Pam who had stopped at Brentano’s and bought a huge and expensive puzzle with one of her last unemployment checks, despite owing Frenchy a considerable amount of money. Frenchy’s mother had left for Florida, but Frenchy still paid her share of the apartment in the Bronx in case she should need it. That, and Pam, were keeping her nearly insolvent.
Outside, the Sunday afternoon streets were empty. Sunlight was fading, taking with it all the splashes of color that made the disorganization in their small apartment almost attractive in the daytime. At night, Frenchy thought, sighing as she stretched and looked around, it was just a mess. “What do you say we clean up tonight,” she suggested lazily.
“Ah! That’s where it goes!” said Pam with satisfaction.
“This could take all night,” Frenchy warned.
“All night? These puzzles take weeks!”
“Weeks? Where are we going to eat with this on the table?” Frenchy got up and paced, bored.
“Oh, we’ll find some place,” said Pam, absorbed in the puzzle again.
She looked over Pam’s shoulder, then looked down at her own feet and wiggled her toes. Living with Pam, she had learned the joys of bare feet. However, in an un-cleaned apartment, she had also learned the hazards and wore bandaids on both feet. “How about it?” she asked.
Pam leaned back against her. “Now?” she asked, tilting her head back and rubbing it against the workshirt covering Frenchy’s breasts.
“Not that. Cleaning.” She didn’t feel like making love. She was upset by the state of the apartment, the way her life felt.
“But we’re doing this, Frenchy.”
“Like you said, it could take weeks. Aren’t we going to clean for weeks?”
“Sounds okay to me,” said Pam, moodily turning back to her puzzle.
“Doesn’t to me,” Frenchy muttered. She was thinking of her trip to Edie’s and how nice the house had looked, big as it was and with four people living in it.
When Edie had called to invite her, she’d hesitated, afraid Mercedes would be there. But Edie had tactfully reassured her and she’d gone. It had been disconcerting, seeing Mercedes’ eyes in Lydia’s face. But she liked the kid. She’d been determined not to mention Mercedes, but Edie did it for her when Frenchy asked questions about how the housekeeping tasks were shared, looking for a model for her own. They all shared the jobs, Edie had said, except for Mercedes who couldn’t, or wouldn’t cook. It wasn’t her kind of thing. So Mercedes, it was clear to Frenchy, was still butch.
Mercedes had gone back to school and now worked in a hospital, operating the machines that could diagnose illness, other machines to help with the cure. The more Frenchy thought about Mercedes studying such hard stuff, then working in a hospital, wearing a white coat, talking to doctors, the farther away she seemed to get. Her heart had begun to ache that evening in a new way as she talked to Mercedes’ child and was warmed by what had become her family circle. Just when she felt ready to love somebody deeper and differently than she ever had before, and live more like Jessie, or Edie, she’d found Pam — and couldn’t make it work with her.
Later, at Frenchy’s shy urging, Esther had talked about the difficulties in her relationship with Edie. Mostly, she’d advised, “You have to talk ab
out it. Talk till you’re blue in the face.” Esther had stopped herself there, looking puzzled in a silly way. “At least, till Edie’s blue in the face.” They’d all laughed. Then, more seriously, she’d continued. “Especially about that, about being black and being white.” Frenchy had felt there was a special message in that for her — not about her and Pam, but her and Mercedes.
Before Frenchy left, Lydia had asked, “Are you coming to Fire Island this year?”
Even now her heart beat faster as she tried to answer that question. All the old crowd would be at the annual Fourth of July picnic on Fire Island. And all of Edie’s new family. Should Frenchy go? Mercedes would be there. Would she want to see Frenchy? There was time to decide yet. And Lydia, meanwhile, had gotten Frenchy to promise her a day in the City together. What would Lydia think of this home, this mess, the feeling in the apartment she shared with Pam — not of family, but of camping out?
“Then go ahead and clean it, lover. I don’t feel like it.”
Frenchy sighed again and bit her lip. She looked around. Everything seemed to be Pam’s. Almost timidly she said, “I don’t know where your things go.”
She felt like crying. Since that weekend in Provincetown when just about everything made her cry, she’d gotten in the habit of letting herself cry more and more. She seemed to do it often. But if she cried now, Pam would press her to her breasts and she would feel comforted into thinking everything was all right. “Pam,” she started to say, but couldn’t think of what to say next.
Pam had apparently heard the frustration in her voice and turned around. “Hey, I’m sorry. If you want to clean, we’ll clean, Frenchy lover. Let’s do it. It’ll be fun.”
Overjoyed, Frenchy watched Pam begin to sort things while she searched out the broom and dust pan. They didn’t have a carpet sweeper or vacuum so Frenchy hoped Pam would help her shake out the big rug.
“Look at all this dirty underwear!” Pam marvelled. “It’s a good thing my family gives me underwear for my birthdays or I’d never have enough.” She made a pile for laundry, pulled out some clean clothes, began to stuff them in the closet. Frenchy was happily sweeping the kitchen and cleaning the countertops. “Speaking of underwear,” Pam said, “I have one of those pesty yeast infections.” Frenchy stopped. “What’s that?” she asked, frightened. “You never had one?” Pam asked, incredulous. Then she answered herself. “No, of course you wouldn’t have.” She looked up at Frenchy. “Don’t worry, lover, it’s nothing to get upset over. I mean, it’s not VD or anything like that.”
Frenchy began to polish again.
“But if I have it, you probably do too.” Frenchy remembered the strange smell the month before, right after her period. She’d worried briefly that it might be the first sign of cancer, then forcefully put that out of her mind.
“Are you itchy down there?”
Frenchy shook her head, realizing that she might be, a little — she had an urge to scratch.
“Do you have a nasty discharge?”
“Cut it out, Pam.”
“Well, Frenchy, it’s important. Lovers usually pass it on to each other and believe me, you’ll be miserable if you let it go.”
“Let me worry about it then.”
“We’ll just be passing it back and forth,” Pam said in a warning voice.
“I can handle it.” Embarrassed, Frenchy swept viciously.
“What do you think, butches are immune?” Pam joked. “Maybe you used to be immune, but you aren’t now!” Frenchy didn’t respond and Pam grew quiet, folding and sorting again. “This is what I hate about cleaning up,” she said. “It just makes more work. Now we have to go to the laundromat.”
The buzzer sounded. “Saved by the bell!”
Annoyed, Frenchy venomously hoped it was just somebody trying to get in to rob an apartment. But there was a knock on their door.
“What a sight for sore eyes!” said Pam, throwing her arms around Dorene. “My girlfriend here was introducing me to slave labor.”
“Don’t you know this girl doesn’t know how to clean?” Dorene teased Frenchy. “Before you moved in with her I never knew she even had rugs, they were always so covered with her junk.”
Dorene and Pam laughed while Frenchy smiled without enthusiasm.
“What are you doing here anyway, Dor?” asked Pam.
“Missed you is all,” Dorene said, kissing Pam lightly on the lips. She glanced over at Frenchy who had stiffened. “Hey, just kidding. I’m not pining after her or anything. But she is my best friend, you know.”
Feeling she was being unreasonable, Frenchy made more of an effort to be friendly. Still, when she saw Pam wasn’t paying any more attention to cleaning, but was explaining to Dorene her latest work, she knew the battle was lost for the day. She put away the broom and sat on the couch, leaving the friends alone. She picked up a magazine and leafed through it, then moved over to the puzzle and tried to fit in a few pieces. She thought of going out, but she was hungry. Pam was a great cook, but ate so irregularly that Frenchy often had to fend for herself. Maybe she’d make some eggs. But that’s what they’d had for breakfast. She took spaghetti from the cupborad to mix with some of Pam’s leftover sauce.
Pam and Dorene were walking toward her, moving in the close way of people familiar with one another’s bodies. “I have two more unemployment checks coming,” Pam was saying. “It’s too soon to get a job.”
“But you’d love this.”
“Are you cooking, Frenchy? I’m hungry too. Why don’t you make some of that for all of us?”
It was one thing to heat something for herself and Pam and maybe burn it, or not get it hot enough — but to cook for Pam and Dorene?
“Why don’t you make some of those sausages you brought home yesterday?” Noticing the look on Frenchy’s face, Pam moved to her. “Did you ever cook sausage?” she whispered. Frenchy shook her head. “Look, it’s easy. Just put them in the pan and keep turning them until they’re brown all over, then pop them in the sauce. Voila! Can you handle it?”
Frenchy knew she was being challenged and said, “Sure.” It did sound easy. So while Pam and Dorene talked, she pulled out pots and pans and began to cook. It felt funny, cooking for them. She spattered hot fat on her shirt. “Shit,” she blurted.
“What’s wrong, Frenchy? You need help?” called Pam.
“Nope.” Pam would suggest she put on an apron. Damned if she’d wear an apron on top of cooking for them, she felt enough like a girl. She took out a cigarette and lit it one-handed while she stirred the sauce. It wasn’t easy, but she was doing it, and feeling pretty confident.
The spoon hit the bottom of the saucepan and she felt a lump. What was this? She put her cigarette down on the edge of the counter and peered into the pot, exploring the whole bottom with the spoon. It was covered with goo. She spooned some up, scraping the bottom of the pan. The sauce was sticking. Why in hell was it doing that? She took a drag from her cigarette. Maybe the flame was too high. She turned it down and looked at the sausages as she heard another spatter of fat. “Shit,” she said again, but to herself this time. They were blackening on one side and not cooking at all on the other. She’d forgotten to turn them.
“Okay,” she said to herself and returned to the sauce, noticing on the way that she’d burned the counter with her cigarette. She threw it in the sink and heard it sizzle to a soggy mess — the way she hated to see Pam’s cigarettes. The stuff on the bottom of the pan was thicker and she thought she’d better try to scrape it off and mix it in with the rest so Pam wouldn’t see it. She turned the heat down more, but little specks of black began to appear. What had she done now, she wondered, close to tears. She began picking out the little black specks, then ran to the sputtering sausages and gingerly turned them again as they spat at her. There were grease spots on her shirt and spatters of sauce where the bubbling stuff had exploded at her. She started, finally, to ask Pam’s help, but Pam and Dorene were sharing a joint, giggling and cuddly with one another.<
br />
Disapprovingly, she turned away. She didn’t like dope, it made people act strangely. How would she ever set the table with all this going on? She went back to work on the black stuff again, figured out that it was burnt sauce, said the hell with it and scraped out all the solid stuff, threw it in the garbage and added some water to replace it.
Pam stood behind her. “I’m here to help, lover. Want me to take over or to set the table? I sent Dorene down the block for some Italian bread and wine.”
Frenchy sighed in relief. “I’ll set the table. You might want to spice things up a bit.
“Hey, you did pretty good for the first time, hon,” Pam praised.
For once Frenchy was glad Pam was too stoned to notice details. “Thanks,” she said proudly, moving to Pam and kissing her neck. Pam was more than ready for her and fell on her, kissing her lips, her face, touching her breasts. A little too ready, thought Frenchy. Had Dorene gotten her in the mood? If Frenchy hadn’t been there, would Dorene be getting this?
“Hey, hey, she’ll be back any minute,” Frenchy warned.
“I don’t care. She’ll wait at the door till we buzz. We have her dinner. Besides, she’s broke, you have to give her money for the bread and wine.”
Frenchy didn’t want to make love like this, much less to a stoned woman. But Pam apparently couldn’t keep her hands off her. So she became her old self, unfeeling inside, yet sensitive to Pam’s needs as she reached under her robe and found Pam’s warm, soaked vulva. It gave her a rush of feeling until the thought occurred that Pam had been like this when she sent Dorene out for bread.
“Frenchy, Frenchy,” Pam groaned and Frenchy remembered to stroke her, to bring her to climax. She held her a few moments afterwards, her mind on the dinner, on Dorene, until the buzzer sounded. She disengaged herself, leaving Pam leaning against the refrigerator, her smile sultry and satisfied.
“Dinner’s going to burn,” Frenchy said.
“Mmm,” said Pam, still not caring.
Frenchy let Dorene in and took the bags from her. Dorene took in Pam’s state and winked at Frenchy. Frenchy wanted to belt her. Instead, she didn’t ask how much everything had cost.
