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It’s after ten o’clock when the phone rings.
“Where were you?’’ Kit demands, not even saying hello.
“What do you mean?’’
“The meeting this afternoon?”
“I went with Conan instead. No football practice today.”
Silence.
“How was the meeting?”
“You should have been there to see for yourself,” Kit says.
“Hey. I have a life, too. You go to GSA meetings, you get to sit with Star, all up close and personal. I go to meetings and miss being with the one I love. So don’t start.”
More silence. Wilma is stretched out across my feet, her eyes half closed. I scratch behind her ears. She turns on her back, exposing her soft underside, wanting a belly rub.
“C’mon Kit. How’d it go?”
“Confidentiality,” Kit says.
“I’m not asking for gossipy details. I’m wondering what strategies you came up with?”
Another silence. Then, finally, “We didn’t do well with strategies. It was like, should we bake cookies and be more involved with other campus clubs, try to broaden our social base, or should we just bomb the boys’ gym and get it over with.”
“Let me guess whose suggestion that was.”
Kit laughs. “I thought you didn’t want gossipy details.”
“Dawn better not be saying that stuff. She’ll get the SWAT team on her butt.”
“Right,” Kit says, all sarcastic. “It’s nothing for Frankie’s life to be threatened, but stay away from the jocks.”
“So anyway . . . the meeting.”
“So anyway, it was frustrating. But Emmy told us about a national gay rights organization. We’re arranging for a speaker to come talk to us.”
“Sounds good,” I say.
“Yeah. I can only hope it will be at a time when Conan has football practice,” Kit says.
“Get over it! . . . ”
Kit sighs. More silence.
“SO ANYWAY . . .”
Wilma stirs, opens one eye and looks up at me, as if asking me to quiet down.
“Yeah. Okay. I looked that organization up on the Internet.”
“And . . .”
“There’s this stuff about what’s going on all over the country,” she says, finally loosening up with me.
“Check out the website. It’s awesome!”
In the middle of telling me how to find the website, though, Kit gets a call waiting beep. She flashes off, then comes back to let me know it is Star.
“Gotta go. See you in the morning,” she says.
Kit has priorities, too.
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After her shower. Mom comes to my room to say goodnight. She’s in her old terrycloth robe, with a towel wrapped around her sopping hair.
“How’d the rest of your day go, after our conference?” she asks.
I tell her about the broken display case, and Frankie’s poster.
“Do you think things are getting worse?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I never noticed how bad they were before.”
She gives me a long, thoughtful look. “It’s good that you’re standing up for Kit,” she says.
“I guess. But sometimes I want all this stuff to go away, and for things to be like they were before she started letting it be known that she was a lesbian.”
“Really?”
I consider her question.
“Really, I guess not,” I say. “People should be able to be themselves without taking a lot of . . .” I can’t quite say the word.
“Shit?” Mom asks.
“Yeah. People shouldn’t have to take shit just for being themselves.”
Another thoughtful look from my pajama clad Mom, only now she looks sad.
“I’ve been thinking about how I grew up, and how I’m afraid I’ve fallen down on the job with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how Gramma and Grampa were, always trying to make things better for other people. Or fighting what they thought was wrong.”
“Civil rights marches?”
“And anti-Vietnam war marches. They were even on some FBI list of suspected communists.”
“Gramma and Grampa?” I say, looking at their sweet, gentle faces smiling at me from the collage over my desk.
“They took a stand. They thought the war was unjust, a terrible mistake—so much death and destruction. They refused to pay their telephone taxes, because that money went directly to finance the war.”
“Did they get in trouble?”
Mom laughs. “No. I think they just made it onto a list of very good people.”
She walks over to the collage and looks closely at their picture.
When she turns back to me there are tears in her eyes.
“Remember when we saw them on the six o’clock news? They were at a demonstration at the Federal Building. Remember that?’’ I nod.
“That was only six months before Gramma died,” Mom says, again looking at their picture.
“I remember seeing them on TV, but I don’t remember what the demonstration was about.”
“They wanted amnesty for illegal immigrants. ‘Those people grow our food, tend our gardens, clean our houses! They have inalienable rights, too!’ Gramma told me.”
“What happened?” I ask. “Did it work?”
“Well . . . things got better, then the other side fought harder . . . it’s that pendulum thing. But Grampa always said that even if the road to justice is two steps forward, one step back, there is still forward movement. I like to believe he was right.”
Mom looks at the other pictures in my collage, like she’s seeing them fresh.
“I’m proud of you,” she says.
Then she unwraps the towel from around her head and uses it to vigorously rub small sections of hair from the ends to the scalp, working her way from side to back to side. She is so intent upon her task, that I’m afraid she will forget to tell me why she is proud of me.
When no hair is left untouched, she takes her brush from the pocket of her robe and brushes her hair—about eighty strokes short of the recommended one hundred. Like mine, Mom’s hair is wiry—a nondescript brown. I try not to hold it against her, that she passed her hair on to me. But why couldn’t she have hair like Jessie Dandridge’s? THAT would have been an inheritance. You can be sure I wouldn’t have wasted it, like Kit did. I’d let it grow down to the middle of my back. It would glimmer in the sunlight. Conan would run his fingers through it slowly, lifting it, letting it fall, caught by the beauty . . .
“. . . thinking about how they showed me it was important to stand up for what’s right . . .”
Oops. Unruly thoughts.
“ . . . but I get so caught up in my work, and keeping things going around here, I forget to look beyond us, at the broader world . . . Gramma used to have a sign on her refrigerator that said, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.’ Something like that, anyway . . . I wonder what ever happened to that sign?”
Mom’s getting a faraway look in her eye. I’m pretty sure I got my tendency for unruly thoughts from her.
Right now, I’m worried that Mom’s already past the part where she’s proud of me, and I missed it during my hair thoughts. And now her thoughts are all wandering, and I may never know what she first came to tell me. I’ll have to ask straight out.
“Why are you proud of me?”
She does this mom kind of thing—intent eye contact.
“Because you have the courage to stand up for what’s right, even if I haven’t been a very good example for you.”
I feel a twinge of guilt, knowing how I just blew off the afternoon’s GSA meeting. On the other hand, I know what Mom’s saying is at least partly true.
She gives me a long hug. “You’re a good person, and I’m glad you’re my daughter,” she says. Then she’s off to bed.
All the while I’m doing homework, I have this thing in the back of my mind that says my mom’s proud of me. I like it.
––––––––
In the morning, Conan gets to my house earlier than usual. We sit in the car, talking, waiting for Kit. After a few minutes, she comes rushing through the gate, her backpack thrown over one shoulder, a bunch of papers in her hand. She’s talking before she even closes the car door behind her.
“You won’t believe what I found on the Internet last night! It is so vicious! Are people born cruel, or what? And half of these . . .”
“What are you talking about?” Conan says, glancing at Kit in the rearview mirror as he pauses at the end of our driveway.
“This!” Kit says, waving around several sheets of paper. “This is from a website I found last night. It lists crimes, thousands of them, against people who are homosexual, or trans, or whatever—it’s sick! But here’s the really awful part. Listen to this!”
Kit reads from what I now see is a printout from a website.
Vincent Ratchford, twenty-four, Chico, California. Found dead in his off-campus apartment. Apparent cause of death, blunt force trauma to the head. Unsolved.
“Ratchford, like in Caitlin Ratchford?” I ask.
“Yeah, so then I clicked on his name and found more information. It’s got to be her brother.”
“Are you sure?” Conan asks.
“Listen,” she says, and reads more details from the printout. “Born in Los Angeles. Grew up in Running Springs, California. Survivors include grandparents, parents, younger sister. That’s got to be Caitlin. It’s not exactly like their last name is Smith.”
“But Running Springs . . .”
“Right. I did the math. This thing happened six years ago. I bet they moved here shortly after.”
“God,” Conan says. “No wonder she’s the way she is.”
“One of the news reports said DEATH TO PERVERTS was written in big letters all across the wall—in lavender paint.”
The rest of the way to school, we ride in heavy silence, then sit, immobilized, in the parking lot. Finally, Conan says, “Homo Sapiens. Freakin’ Homo Sapiens.”
Kit looks at him, puzzled. He turns to me, kisses me, gets his stuff out of the car and walks slowly toward the gym. Kit and I head off in the opposite direction toward the main building.
“What’d he mean by that?” Kit asks.
I tell her about Conan’s response to the “homophobia” assignment we had in Woodsy’s class. How he wrote about people fearing people, and how that’s the cause of a lot of messed up stuff. Kit’s quiet. Thinking, I suppose.
“Conan’s smarter than he seems,” Kit says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just . . . you know, that stupid jock thing . . . and he’s so big, and sort of sweet, like that big dumb guy in Of Mice and Men . . .”
“And black!” I say. “That’s what you really mean, isn’t it?”
I know a bright red is creeping from my neck upward. So what? I’m angry, and I don’t care who sees it.
“No! Oh. my gosh! You know I didn’t mean it like that!”
We’re both stopped in the middle of the hall, facing one another, with a stream of students hurrying around us.
“I’d never dis Conan. I totally respect him.’’
I stand looking at her, projecting my bright red color in her direction.
“Look! I’m half Cherokee! I know better than to believe any of that racist trash.”
I sigh. Why did I jump to the conclusion that my liberty-and- justice-for-all friend would suddenly turn racist? It doesn’t even make sense.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just . . .”
“You’ve only got one nerve left, and I just stepped on it,” she says, quoting from a poster of a harried woman that hangs over Woodsy’s desk.
I laugh.
“Spirit sisters?”
We grasp hands for a moment, long enough to remember our spirits come from the same source. Then we go to our separate first period classes.
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During physiology we go over terms and functions of the alimentary canal. Just thinking about the gunk that’s hanging out in my gastronomic tract is enough to make me want to reverse peristalsis and barf my breakfast. I’ve got to get tougher or change career plans.
––––––––
Conan is waiting for me at the end of first period, so we can walk together to PC.
“Do you think Kit’s right, and it was really Caitlin’s brother who was killed?”
“Sure sounds like it,” Conan says.
“That’s just so sad. I feel awful about it. Poor Caitlin.”
“Even if it’s not Caitlin’s brother, it’s someone’s brother,”
Conan says.
The first thing I notice when I enter Woodsy’s class is a bright, multicolored, rainbow sign over the chalkboard. It’s about four feet long and a foot high. Printed across the colorful background, in silver letters, is “NO ROOM FOR HOMOPHOBIA.”
“What happened to ‘Make Lemonade’?” Eric asks.
“It was time for a change,” Woodsy says.
“I like the lemonade poster better,” Eric says.
“Fine. When you’re the teacher in this classroom, you can put it back up.”
I can tell this will be a no nonsense day in PC. Woodsy hands out a list of what’s required for the next notebook check. In the front of our notebooks we keep a laminated copy of our PC contract—the one we all signed at the beginning of the semester, promising to maintain confidentiality, and to treat one another, and guests, with respect. The next notebook section contains a daily activity log, telling what we did and rating that period on a scale of one to ten. Then we have sections for speakers, group projects, class discussion, individual reading and other comments.
“What do you have in your log for November 3?” Conan asks.
I turn to my log sheet. “That was the day we did the role play thing, remember? You were the mean dad, and Tiffany was out way past her curfew?”
Conan laughs. “And you were the pesty little sister, and Kendra was trying to talk you out of tattling,” he says, filling in the 11/3 blank in his log sheet.
“What about 10/30?” I ask.
“Individual reading,” he says.
We go through the rest of the period, working back and forth to fill in the blanks.
––––––––
Nora is at our lunch table today, but Caitlin is not. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one without the other before.
Conan and I sit side by side, sharing lunches. Well . . . mostly I share mine.
“Mom sent extra brownies for you,” I say, passing a couple of
brownies his way.
He takes a bite and rolls his eyes skyward, chewing slowly, appreciating every last crumb.
“I love your mom.”
“And . . .?”
“And what?”
“And what about ME?” I ask, acting all jealous.
“Ummm. You, too,” he says, then takes another bite of brownie.
At the other end of the table, I see Kit showing Nora the printout she’d read to us earlier. Nora nods her head and looks away. Frankie, looking over Kit’s shoulder, doesn’t seem surprised. I wonder if he’s known all along.
––––––––
In the choir room, Mr. Michaels has a NO ROOM FOR HOMOPHOBIA sign exactly like Woodsy’s. His is prominently displayed across the top of the choir bulletin board.
We rehearse the Christmas music again, but we don’t sound as good as when Caitlin’s here.
Before we start volleyball practice, Coach Terry calls us together.
“I think by now everyone’s heard of a couple of malicious incidents that have taken place on our campus, but just in case . . .”
She relates the details of the locker incident, and also of the vandalized display case and the hate message left on the GSA poster.
“These are serious, disturbing events,” Coach Terry says, “and they must not be tolerated. Anyone who thinks this kind of behavior is a joke needs to adjust her attitudes.”
I glance over at Nicole, who is staring at the ground.
“Women athletes often are the targets of dyke jokes,” Coach Terry says, looking at each of us individually before she continues. “This is unacceptable. No one . . . NO ONE! . . . has the right to ridicule another person.”
Gail, great spiker, slow thinker, says “But what if the person really is a . . .”
“Dyke? Lesbian? Woman who is attracted to women?” Coach Terry prompts.
Gail nods.
“Is it acceptable for a straight male to be taunted and harassed because he is attracted to women?”
All eyes are on Terry, who looks directly at Gail.
“Is it?” she asks.
Gail shakes her head no.
“Listen. We are all creatures of the earth, and as such we are entitled to the utmost respect. On this team, such respect is mandated.”
Terry puts us through a tough workout, calls us back together, and talks about our coming game.
“Franklin’s the toughest team we’ve played. But we’re the toughest team they’ve played. Tomorrow afternoon’s game will either take us to the playoffs, or be our last of the season. You’re awesome,” she says. “It’s an honor to work with you.” She reminds us of the respect mandate and sends us off to shower.
In the gym, after showers, we towel off and dress, all of us near the middle of the room, instead of me and Kit at one end and the whole rest of the team at the other. I guess Coach Terry’s talk helped close the great divide.
When I stop by the library after practice, I notice there are three NO ROOM FOR HOMOPHOBIA signs posted at various places in the main room. I guess Frankie’s been busy printing signs.
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We are an awesome volleyball team. But so is Franklin. In spite of all the conditioning, Kit’s amazing serve, my set-ups, Gail’s spikes, we lose by two points. The season is over for us. When I realize I’ve played my last high school volleyball game . . . I don’t want to get all blubbery about it, but it’s been a big part of my life, and it’s a strange feeling to know it’s over.