“I do.” Lisa looks back over her shoulder, through the propped-open patio door at the show about to start. Some baby dyke with an eyeliner mustache and glitter stars on her nips is roaming the crowd, warming it up and urging women to put dollars into sock-stuffed red Jockey briefs.
“Bullshit.” I slam my hand on the table and everything, everyone, jumps.
“Then here’s to bullshit.” Lisa holds up her glass and we’re toasting the goddamn Hindenburg.
We sit quietly for a minute. Finally. And in that moment we’re back in the bookstore together. Not just a bookstore, a women’s bookstore. I can feel what we felt then, the pull to freedom and each other. God, the struggle was glorious.
Lisa looks again to the shit show inside.
“You don’t have to stay out here.” I offer her a fucking way out. Just like always. “What is this, pity?”
“No, Cheryl. It’s an old friend wanting to catch up.”
“Then let’s catch up. You still with what’s-her-face?”
“Sandy? She passed eight years ago. Cancer—”
“No. Christ. I’m not dumb. That new one. The nice one.”
“Gloria? Yes.”
“You love her as much as Sandy?”
“We make each other happy.”
“That’s not what I asked.” I drill my finger into the table for emphasis. People are squirrelly as hell. “Do you love her as much as Sandy?”
Lisa considers me with those watery blue eyes. There’s flint way down, still. But no fire. “You know, Cheryl, you always had a way of seeing through the bullshit, the sexist propaganda. No one had the insight you did. But you always turned it on your own. I know you hated Sandy, but it didn’t make me love you.” She pauses and look out, someone’s got something profound to say. “I always wondered how you and Kathy ended up together. And more than that, why someone that good would stay with you. No one deserves to die that way, but at least she was free of you.”
“Well, I’m sure she and Sandy are fucking in the great beyond, so don’t feel too sorry for her.” Maybe I was wrong about that fire. Maybe I can forgive myself for wanting Lisa when lust didn’t feel like a waste of time.
“You really haven’t changed, have you?” she says.
I don’t take the bait this time and she wanders off. Christ. I told Jackie I didn’t want to come here, and can you see why, now? Goddamn that woman. Where is she? Probably clapping at some girl waving fake balls in her face. What happened to us? I mean, what the fuck happened to us?
That twit Taylor Swift is cranked all the way to twelve and it’s too goddamn much. I walk into the bar to call for a ride home. The airhead behind it only shrugs at me when the cab company says they’re booked two hours out. I have no goddamn idea how far it is from Sappho’s last stand here to my house, but even death is better than this circus. I turn toward the door and what do you know. Here comes Jackie out of the bathroom.
“Made room for more,” she jokes, and orders another Diet Coke. “I’ll buy your next one, Cheryl. Then we can go home.”
By the stage, the lesbians are losing their fucking minds over some asshole dressed up like a cop-stripper. One more time in case you missed that. A cop-stripper. A rapist and an opportunist. Like I said. Fifty years of my life and it’s come to this.
I want to talk about Faven. Jackie won’t listen to me talk about her. But now it’s gotten so I can’t not talk about her, even if it’s muttering to my goddamn self like an asshole while I’m walking down the street. People give me space when I talk to myself and that’s a real goddamn plus for the half an hour it takes to get to work. The library’s named after a woman, a real fireball. Sarah Decker got what she wanted out of this life and then some. Outlasted three husbands and I’m sure you can guess she really got going after she stopped giving the best of what she was to a man. We don’t think women ever did anything because no one bothers to tell us about it, but can you vote today even if your driver’s license has an F on it? You sure can, and you can thank her and the rest of the suffragists for it. Thank her for your national park and your local library too. The branch in Platt Park named after her does the woman some justice, at least. The place is wonderful, and I’ve never been unhappy a day of my life there. It’s not that assholes don’t use libraries, but at least they’ve picked up a damn book in their life. Now we lend out all kinds of crap that doesn’t belong in a library, but that’s progress. Shit, I’m up to my neck in progress.
The walk up Logan is nice. In spring, the eight blocks feel like you’re strolling through God’s vagina if the snow hasn’t snuffed out all the blossoms. I take my time on my way home in autumn and stop in Platt Park. Fall in the park, the grass is still green but smells dusty, it’s sunny and warm enough, and it feels like death’s always tomorrow but today’s just fine, thanks. I’ll sit on a picnic bench under the big rusty purple maple by the playground, all the kids screaming but it fits, and I’ll have a Lucky and think, it’s all going to die in a couple weeks, but now — now, where no one wants anything from me and I can pretend women aren’t getting beaten to shit in houses all across the city — now is good. Now is good.
Half an hour walk and I’m shelving books and talking to people who want to learn things. Best is when they bring their kids. We don’t have a big section like they do in some of the other branches, but I always manage to find the right something for the kids. Last year I fell in love, I mean absolutely in love, with this eight-year-old girl who came in with her mother all the time. Her dark-brown eyes were just light itself. She always wore pants with a dress over, her mom insisted she wear a dress but Faven knew what was up, I’m telling you. Eight and you could see in this girl’s eyes she’s going to light shit on fire and kick ass and take names and not swallow a second of the shit our culture feeds us.
“Excuse me, miss. Do you have any books about gardening?” This was Faven’s first question to me, and she asked it boldly. Not hiding in her mother’s skirts, not mumbling or vague. Brass set on her out of the gate!
“I do. Where are you planting this garden?”
“Eritrea. My big brother farms there and I want to do what he does.”
“I see. I think.” I cast her a friendly sidelong glance, just to test her out and see if she’d pay off down the line. She held that glance and I knew we were in business. “Just what are you planning to grow in your garden?”
She replies quick and smart as a whip: “Mama says Jemal grows wheat, so I want to grow wheat.”
“All right then, that clears it right up. Follow me.”
I’m not sure if her mother, Mariam’s her name I learned later, expected me to take the kid at face value. She’s a good woman is how I ended up figuring her after a while, but honest to God, I think the kid intimidated her, because she sure as shit intimidated me. If you’ve ever had a little girl intimidate you and not punished her for it, I wouldn’t mind knowing you.
Faven followed me that afternoon, and most afternoons that summer. Mariam worked out at the Purina plant, so it was either the library or at home with her father who slept days and worked nights. Faven seemed to greatly prefer the library, though she was always much quieter when she arrived than when she left. Books brought her out of her shell, opened her world. I remembered why I started working at a damn library in the first place. I actually didn’t mind the helpful shadow who gave me regular crop reports.