Riding Fury Home (19 page)

 

 

KATE AND I KEPT UP our round of activities, bound by a togetherness that now included making love every day and sleeping in the same bed.

One weekend in February, Kate and I went away to a rented cabin in the Sierra foothills. Bringing enough groceries to hunker down, we arrived after dark to a cottage surrounded by pine trees. In the morning, we woke to the muffled quiet of snowfall damping the forest sounds. The cabin was set back from the road, and we could make love with the curtains open, the steadily falling snow a bright white against the dark trunks of the pines. We stayed in bed for hours. We read to each other from a new novel,
Patience and Sarah.
In the story, two women in the 1800s find a way to love each
other in spite of all the daunting societal restraints, and create a life together on their own farmstead in New York State. As I listened to Kate read, it was almost as if we were those women, alone in a cabin in the woods, finding their way to an astonishing passion. We'd read a few chapters, make love again.

In the afternoon, we pulled on boots and ran out into the snow and chased each other around the trees. Later on, back in the cabin, we stripped off our snow-encrusted layers, got back in bed, and read some more. At one point, while Kate was reading to me, I reached over to her and caressed her cheek. “Wait, rest a minute,” I said. It had struck me how loved I was, how I loved her back. It was scary, and wondrous. It made me breathless, and I needed to lie there quietly and look at her, try to take it in. Suddenly, I could feel in that moment how I'd closed down my heart to not need my mother, to bear losing my father. How I'd been encased in nineteen years of loneliness.

“You love me, don't you?” I half asked, half stated. She put the book away on the nightstand, pulled me to her. I could feel her warm breath against my ear, almost tickling me as she whispered, “I love you so much, sometimes I think I'll burst.” Then we both laughed, but I knew she meant it. Something was bursting in me, too.

ONE AFTERNOON, KATE and I took a long walk from the Pacific Heights house. We wandered through our neighborhood, with its mansions and foreign embassies, then headed downhill to Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square.

On the way back, I stopped at a phone booth to call my mother. After a few rounds of hellos and how-are-yous, I asked, “Hey, listen, there's a piano at our house, so I was wondering, could you ship out some of my piano music? Everything that's in the piano bench?”

“Your piano music? Yeah, sure.” Then, with barely a pause, she added, “Something I want to ask you. Are you
gay?”

Mom's non sequitur hit me with a wave of chest-tightening anxiety. Here it was, that question—no getting around it. I'd been sharing with her steps of my process, and had even told her about attending Gay Women's Liberation, so she'd definitely had clues. Now I took a big breath. “Yes, Mom. I am.”

My mother started right in, as if she'd been rehearsing what to say. “I don't agree with this! I think you're limiting yourself by not relating to men; you're copping out. Is this going to become your
cause
now? Are you giving up the rest of your politics?”

I'd never heard her this fierce and sharp, at least not directed at me. Her reaction stung, although I thought I understood it: her friend Ruth, the Communist Party hard-liner, was probably feeding her this “copping out and turning away from true leftist politics” bit. Still, I defended myself: “Glor, you don't get it—feminism is revolutionary! I'm not giving up my politics, I'm expanding them to include personal relationships, men's sexism. Don't you get how liberating this is?”

But it was as if she hadn't heard a word I said. “I've been talking in my sessions with my psychiatrist about you, that maybe you were gay. She told me that your becoming gay is really a plea for me to ask you to come home. Do you want to come home?”

Something in her voice caught me; she sounded tense, almost in a panic.
Goddamn psychiatrist!
“Gloria, listen, your psychiatrist is off her rocker. Kate and I are lovers, and it is the most wonderful thing. I wish you could see the power of women, of getting love and support from other women. I know you've heard the stereotypes about lesbians, but I'm still
me
.”

Mom's voice only rose in pitch and urgency. “Darling, I worry that this is a
bad
choice! That it's a lonely and alienating life. And you're taking on a lot of oppression. I don't want you to suffer!”

I tried arguing, but nothing seemed to ease my mother's panic. We agreed to end our argument and talk more another time. After I hung up, I stepped toward Kate, who had been leaning into the phone booth during the whole conversation. Kate reached for me. “Wow,” she exclaimed.

“Man, I didn't think she'd take it that badly” was all I could say before Kate folded me in her arms. We walked hand in hand back home, through the windy January streets.

 

 

OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Mom and I wrote each other letters, avoiding the phone. She was not much of a writer, and her letters were short and to the point. In her first two notes, she repeated her concern that with women I was heading for a life of depression and loneliness. I felt bad for her that she was torturing herself over me, that none of my arguments seemed to be changing her mind.

Then came her third letter. I read it out loud to Kate. “My God, listen to this!”

I wrote back a jubilant letter of joy and encouragement.

A few weeks later, another letter:

At first, I thought,
What an incredible, supportive mother I have, going to meet lesbians in order to understand me!
Then I wondered, what was she really saying? Something held me back, though, and I didn't ask. It seemed delicate; if she was wavering on the verge, I didn't want her to react by my pressing her. A couple weeks later:

That was it—I had to call her. This was incredible, since as far as I knew she'd been celibate for years, at least since she and my dad separated, when I was twelve. As soon as she picked up, I launched right in. “I got your letter about telling the women in Older Women's Liberation that you're bisexual. So, what the heck is going on? Does that mean you're having relationships with women?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

Her voice had a lilt in it I couldn't remember ever hearing. I leaned against the glass wall of the phone booth, digesting that. “Wow! Glor, that's fabulous!” She laughed.

I pushed on. “So, are you having relationships with men?”

“No.”

“Are you planning to have relationships with men?”

“No.”

“Well, Mom, I hate to tell you, but you're not a bisexual, you're a lesbian! You're just scared of the word, but it's not so scary.”

She was pretty damn nonchalant: “Guess so, honey.”

 

 

SUMMER ARRIVED AND my mother was coming to visit. I was bursting with excitement; I'd get to be with this new, joyful mother at last.

At a meeting of the Gay Liberation Front, a guy stood up and announced that a friend of his had a vacation cabin at the Russian River and was going to be away for a month; did anyone want to use it? Kate and I raised our hands like eager sixth-graders, waving vigorously.
Yes, we do, we do!

The cabin in Rio Nido was rustic. There was no plumbing, no electricity. Kerosene lamps lit the dark wood interiors, and cooking was done on a cast-iron woodstove. There was no outhouse, so we squatted over holes we dug in the steep hillside of the backyard. We loved the place, the old-world feel of a cabin nestled among redwoods, the homesteading feel of chopping wood for the stove.

My mother was arriving during our last two weeks at the cabin. The day before her flight, Kate and I hitchhiked to the Guerneville Safeway and bought the ingredients for a Russian borscht—just the thing to make my Jewish mother feel at home.

Our friend Stephanie was visiting us from the city, so I borrowed her Datsun and drove to pick my mother up at the San Francisco airport. As I waited for her at the gate, my chest thrummed with anticipation.
Then there she was, coming toward me, wearing jeans and the orange and purple tie-dyed T-shirt I had made and sent her. I noticed her formerly gray hair was now dyed dark brown, her short curls the same shade as my long hair. At the sight of me, her round face broke into a wild grin and she bellowed, “Karen!” Her arms flew out, grabbing me into a hug. We fit together, my body the echo of hers: short and pear-shaped, with ample hips and thighs curving from our waists.

I was so eager to show Mom my beautiful California that I took her up the long, windy coast route on Highway 1, forgetting about the jet lag and her fear of heights. As we curved along the precipitous cliffs, she clung to her armrest and turned slightly gray, but she didn't complain.

At the cabin, she and Kate hugged long and hard. “I'm so glad you two are together,” Mom said, beaming at us both. Stephanie, Kate, Mom, and I chatted and laughed over the steaming bowls of borscht accompanied by pumpernickel. We even had herring with sour cream, one of Mom's favorite foods and a staple of my childhood.

The day after my mother's arrival, Stephanie, Kate, Gloria, and I spent the afternoon skinny-dipping at our private little beach, just a spit of sand along the Russian River hidden from the road by bushes.

That evening back in the cabin, Mom took me aside. “I'm attracted to Stephanie. Do you mind?” she asked simply.

My mouth hung open a moment. “Do I mind? Glor, she's my
friend,
and she's my age. God, are you kidding? No, don't even think about it.”

Mom shrugged. “Okay, honey, it's no big deal, really. I have plenty of other lovers back in New York. Just thought I'd enjoy myself.”

“How many lovers do you have?” I asked this with a mixture of awe and chagrin. I was shy, and couldn't imagine finding multiple
lovers, but I covered that envy with a self-righteous superiority: I thought my monogamous relationship with Kate trumped Mom's affairs.

“Well, every week I go to the women's bars in New York City and to my Daughters of Bilitis meetings, and I usually go home with a new woman every weekend. But I tell all the women how it is with me, how I was celibate for so many years and now I'm coming back to life. That I'm into pleasure and being close to a woman, but I'm just not serious right now. It's sex, and it's fun, and it's
good.”

 

 

ONE AFTERNOON, MOM and I were alone drinking peppermint tea in the cabin kitchen. My mother reached across the table and took my hand. “I want to ask you something. Do you remember Marian, my friend at University Heights?” Mom was staring at me with a most intense expression.

The question startled me. I reached back with my mind. University Heights was the married-student housing for ex-GIs where my parents and I had lived while Dad was getting his PhD. I remembered a big-boned woman, tall, with long black hair. “Sure, Gloria.”

Mom went on, “You and she and I spent every day together for two years, from the time you were two until you were four.” My mother hesitated. She let my hand go, looked back at me: “We were lovers,” she said.

A memory flashed:
I am standing with my mother in the doorway to Marian's bedroom. Marian has her back to us, and she is sitting at a white dressing table on a backless seat, facing a mirror. Her head is bent slightly to the right, and her long hair cascades down her neck and over her right shoulder as she brushes her hair. Mom leans against the
doorsill, and I am pressed against Mom's thigh. We are both spellbound, mesmerized by Marian as she strokes with the hairbrush over and over again. There is some feeling in the room I am too young to name. The room shimmers with it.

I realized I was gripping the tea mug midchest, and set it on the table.

“At first, we were just friends. But Marian had been in the WACs during the war, and she'd had women lovers there. After we became lovers, I was happier than I'd ever been. I was really happy, and I was really in love.”

Mom's face had a faraway smile. Her hand drifted toward her teacup and she took a sip. Then she looked at me again, her smile fading. “We kept it a secret, never told our husbands. I longed to take you and just go away with Marian, but she wouldn't hear of it, and I really couldn't see a way to do that. So, during the day we were lovers, and at night the husbands would come home. Sometimes the four of us would have dinner together and play cards.”

I leaned forward in my chair, breathless.

“Then, Marian had a nervous breakdown. I didn't understand what was happening to her. One day she was gone, off to a mental hospital. No one said a thing to me—I had to go ask her husband where she was. When she came back a few weeks later, she said to me, ‘Gloria, I'm cured. We can't do this anymore.' She told me, ‘Gloria, we just have to be good wives, spread our legs, and be faithful to our husbands.'”