by Lee Lynch
Hermine was setting up a table of food with Mary. Completely in her element, Mary dished and ladled. She still wore too much makeup for Frenchy’s taste.
Frenchy scooped up the excited Banana, who’d been streaking through the room, and asked Esther, “Going south again this summer?”
“I’m not sure. Some people down south think when they get north they’re going to be home free. But there’s a lot of work I could be doing here. Maybe I should stay.”
“That would make Edie happy.”
Esther looked at Frenchy, amused. “You can stop taking care of her, you know. I’m not going to run away from her. I feel like for our relationship to fail now, everything I believe in would go down the drain. Everything from how I love to how I want to live.”
Frenchy was studying her red pinky ring. “I guess I didn’t think about it like that, exactly, but maybe I have been worrying about her.”
“I know you have. For years. I worry about Mercedes, too. She may not have been my lover, but she is my sister.”
“I wouldn’t hurt Mercedes for anything in the world!”
Esther turned to Frenchy, hand extended. Frenchy took it and shook it solemnly. “That’s just how I feel about Edie,” Esther said. “A woman like that, who can understand me needing to leave for a while so I can come back to stay. Not that they need us to take care of them,” Esther said, looking at Mercedes and Edie dancing together.
“Well, they might of once,” concluded Frenchy, “but I guess they do okay for themselves now.”
Their friends began to leave. Frenchy thought: if they come for us tomorrow, we’ve had this, and we’ll be stronger for it.
She remembered being afraid to touch in the streets. Getting kicked out of PamPams for greeting friends. Being herded into bars or having nowhere at all to go. How it felt not ever being able to tell your family who you were. Playing guessing games with straight friends. Marian’s face when Frenchy had told her. The catcalls in the street. Hiding her clothes. Being afraid.
It all added up, she thought. It’s all made life damn hard. And it’s all still out there.
Lydia and one friend were left. “I think you’re great,” said Lydia, bending to kiss them. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks for making us such a nice party,” said Mercedes.
“Yeah, well, we have to make our own celebrations, you know,” said Lydia. “Nobody else will.” She stopped halfway to the door. “By your twenty-fifth anniversary, if everybody helps, stops hiding in their closets and gets out and works or marches or tells their stories, we’ll be able to have your party — in Times Square if we want!” Everyone laughed but Frenchy.
“I don’t think I’d want a party in Times Square...” Frenchy faltered. “I don’t know exactly how to say this, what I want to say —”
“Go ahead, Frenchy, I want to hear,” said Lydia. “I think you’ve always had a lot of courage, living like you did when it was so much harder to be a lesbian.”
“Courage?” mused Frenchy. “I guess so. If courage is being scared and going ahead anyway.” She laughed. “If that’s courage, then I’m courageous every day of my life, being afraid to be gay and doing it anyways.”
She struggled for more words. “I’d settle for being able to get off the subway at Times Square instead of Fourteenth, for walking like a dyke, like myself, from Forty-second Street to Eighth Street, and not being afraid of a thing. Is that too much to ask?” She took Mercedes’ hand. “Maybe by our twenty-fifth it won’t be.” Her voice shook, but she stood tall in her low boots, she stood proudly in her home next to her lover, like a swashbuckler in the prow of her ship, going out to sea.
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