One sunny day we sat on the park bench. A few mothers with kids were out strolling. The outdoor basketball court was silent, deserted. In twenty minutes it would be filled with boys. On the rail behind our bench, they would soon line up like pelicans, joking about some poor girl or remarking on a baseball play, looking important and moving their heads from side to side. But now we were alone.
“My father is such an asshole!” Maria burst out angrily as we unwrapped our sandwiches. “He totally insulted my brother last night, he threw his dinner in the garbage, and now he won’t let me go out this weekend for some stupid reason. I don’t know why my mother puts up with him. I get so depressed at home I don’t feel like being alive.”
“Sounds like my house.” I shook my head. Her face was pale and stony, her voice had changed to a monotone. I watched her take the pop-top from her can of Coke, flick off the thin curl, and before I realized what she was doing, she had pressed it firmly against her wrist till it drew blood.
I grabbed the ring out of her hand. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”
“Yes,” she said, laughing.
I wanted to protect her, but it seemed overwhelming, what she was going through. One day after this scary experience, I sat next to her in the lunchroom. I noticed her eyes growing hard as rocks. She looked down at her lap a couple of times as if she were trying to lead my eyes there. She had a pop-top poised at her already marked wrists. Again I grabbed it out of her hand, again she laughed in a creepy way.
Sometimes Maria stayed over at my house because it was closer to school and she would rather be with me than go home. My mother set up a folding bed for her right next to mine. We would get into our pajamas, laughing about the day at school.
“Did you see the look on Bernadette’s face?” Maria said that night, her eyes gleaming as she spoke about the nun who taught us French. She “seemed to have forgotten all about the pop-top incident. “It was so great when our two rows started swinging seats at the same time. She didn’t know what was goin’ down. Maybe she thought she was losin’ it.”
She imitated Sister Bernadette screaming, “Stop it, stop it!” We laughed like kids.
Maria was tall with brown eyes and short brown hair. Her skin had a slight olive tone, and her smile drew you in. She wasn’t one of the popular girls, but she was friendly and well liked, smart but not too interested in school. I always admired her proud posture and, also, her breasts, which were bigger than my nothings.
I felt her gaze as we stood in my bedroom one night. She caught my eyes, then I saw her looking at the rest of me. Something stirred in my pelvis.
“Can I hug you, Sonja? I’m so glad you’re my friend. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” her voice was soft and full of some kind of yearning. I went to her. She held me. She felt so good, the sweet warmth of her breasts against me. Overcome by shyness, I know I needed something but didn’t know what. When we parted, she kissed me lightly on the lips.
I felt confused afterwards, under the covers alone. I wanted her with me. It didn’t seem right for her to be so far away in the next bed after what just happened. I wondered if she too felt scared. I turned over on my side to face her. Her eyes still open, she watched me as she lay under her covers. The street lamps lit my lavender room like moonlight. I saw her smile.
We talked a little more from our beds.
”Are you okay?”
“Do you have enough covers?”
“Did you set the alarm?”
“My mom’s going to wake us up.”
I didn’t know if I could sleep, but I did.
What was I supposed to do about these stirrings inside me? I felt them at odd moments while walking or even talking with Patty, or dancing with Maria at one of the bars. I had heard the word “lezzie” used hatefully. I knew I wasn’t one of those and didn’t want to be. I got the message that these feelings I was having for Patty and Maria were not right. I never spoke of them to anyone. I was ashamed. I set them aside.
My senior year was a hard one for me. I lost Patty to Bill. I lost Maria too. It was all Miss Martini’s fault. We’d never had a guidance counselor at St. Paul’s before that year. She was fresh out of college and raring to practice her psychology on us. Maria went to see her about some routine matter but ended up telling her about the voices and her wrists. Miss Martini asked to see her once a week.
Maria’s home life got worse and worse. Her mother, who was freaking out about her own life, called Miss Martini one day. She railed on about Maria, who had tried to kill herself. Then Maria’s mother, who should really have committed herself, along with Miss Martini, who thought she was God, actually committed Maria to Bronx State Hospital. Maria’s friends and I were in shock. I went to see her a few times, but she seemed drugged and not herself in that place with all those people. It was very sad.
Years later after Maria was released from the hospital, she contacted me. I was married and living in a nice apartment in Greenwich Village, trying very hard to be a professor’s wife. High school seemed like a different world to me.
“Sonja,” said Maria earnestly, “remember that poem you wrote me in senior year, the ‘Rose Poem?’” I remembered it well. A love poem. Why was she bringing it up now, after all this time?
I felt uncomfortable and wanted to get off the phone. Maria sounded strange. I tried changing the subject. She persisted.
“Sonja, I have some new friends.”
I said I was happy for her. Why did she sound so mysterious?
“They’re lesbians,” she said.
Was she trying to shock me? I didn’t want to hear that word. Wait, was she a lesbian?
Then I heard her say, “Do you want to get together?”
I paused and said no. Her life was so marginal and dangerous compared to mine, with my husband, my apartment and my track to a Ph.D. How could I give that up? I felt sad and torn because I still loved Maria—we had shared so much—but it was all too scary.
Patty and I remained friends through our various life experiences and hardships. She raised two beautiful children and eventually split up with Bill. She had a career in business management and computers, told me she was involved with another man and they planned to marry soon.
While I too got married, shortly after Patty and Bill, I had no children. My husband and I too eventually split up; I left him for a woman. When I told Patty at one of our get togethers that I was a lesbian and that she was the first girl I fell in love with, she looked away, flipped her hair behind her ear, and said, “Wow, I feel honored.”
One day Maggie McCarthy, Patty’s teammate from St. Paul’s, called her out of the blue, after twenty two years! Maggie was in San Francisco for a visit, did Patty want to meet her for dinner? Of course.
She called me right after their reunion to tell me about it. She sounded excited. “And you’ll never believe what came out.” She paused. Somehow I knew, but I said, “What?”
“I knew it before she even said anything,” Patty chattered on. “‘How’s your mother?’ I asked. ‘Okay,’ Maggie said, ‘but we don’t get along anymore. You see, Patty, I’m a lesbian.’ I said, ‘I knew it! That’s great!’”
It was fun to be the one approving and affirming someone else’s positive reaction.
“I wish I could have been a fly on the wall,” I said feeling a little jealous. “Did you tell her about me?”
“Oh, of course, how could I not? You know, Maggie had some fascinating observations about me at the time, while we were at St. Paul’s.”
“I’m sure she did,” I said with a little sarcasm, but she didn’t seem to notice.
When I went back to New York once to visit my family, I tried to find Maria’s name in the phone book. First I tried the Manhattan directory, but her family must have moved away. Then I took a chance and tried the Bronx book—there she was. I dialed, my heart quickening. The voice on the answering machine was definitely hers. I didn’t leave a message, but tried again later.