Chapter 2

“Thank you for your hospitality, I will be back tomorrow night?”

“I’ll make sure the room is clean for you,” I promised.

“Don’t worry too much about that,” she smiled, “I can also clean.”

The last thought that entered my mind before I fell asleep that night was wishing I’d asked if she was a communist but surely a woman as sophisticated as her couldn’t be a communist?

Michelle arrived the next afternoon not long after I arrived home and after unpacking insisted on cooking dinner and that night I was treated to a sumptuous feast of Cajun chicken and rice. She is a wonderful cook as I’ve discovered but has a distaste for American fast food.

“Fast food is not for me,” she confessed, “I take time to prepare a meal.”

That night I did ask what she thought of the communist threat and her answer surprised me.

“There is no stomach for war in Europe. We have had two wars that devastated the continent and now they have divided it in two with their Iron Curtain. If the politicians want war then perhaps they should put on uniforms and fight it out with other like minded politicians and leave the rest of us out of their disputes. What does it matter? Communism or democracy? They are just political systems with their own failures and successes, there is good and bad in both but one cannot say one is totally wrong and the other right. Both systems feed off the bad in the other but that does not make one system the only legitimate form of government.”

It was a novel idea and it was not the first novel idea she advanced. Over the next few months she broached the subject of equal rights for women, the novel concept of a woman in a position of power and the stupidity of forcing women into marriages just to appear normal. I once joked that she should have been a beatnik but she scorned the idea.

“Don’t get me wrong, it is good to question the old ideas but I found many beatniks had no answers to the old questions, just more questions.”

Nevertheless, she had read many of the books written by the Beat generation. That spring I got to read the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Salinger. The school library would never have allowed On The Road or Howl on their shelves and I was reminded of her comment that day about giving students just enough knowledge to whet their appetites but not enough to satisfy them. These books exposed me to radical new ideas, but my favorite book was The Feminine Mystique. I felt as if Friedan had somehow reached out to me, I too wanted something more than just to be a good housewife for a man. Michelle seemed to be one of those women Friedan called self actualized women, confident of their own abilities and curious about the world around them. She went out with men but unlike me, she didn’t wait for a phone call. She regarded men with a bemused detachment, mere playthings with which to amuse herself before putting them back in the basket and moving on to something more important. Perhaps that should have alerted me but I was young and I just thought she found local men as tedious as I did.

In retrospect I should never have discovered her sexuality if not for my absent mindedness. I came home one hot day with the urge for iced tea. There was mail in the mailbox, some for Michelle and two letters for me. By coincidence, two letters had exactly the same envelope and very similar writing on the front and so I opened Michelle’s letter by mistake and at first thought I was the butt of some odd prank. It was a religious tract denouncing homosexuality and it was only when I looked at the name on the envelope that I realized it was for Michelle. The name on the back was H.G. Harding. Henry or Harry? I read the tract again and then I heard Michelle’s car in the driveway and my blood ran cold as I turned towards the front door. She came in a few minutes later to find me leaning against the kitchen bench with the tract and envelope in my hand and at first she didn’t see it because she too was thirsty.

“I could use a root beer,” she opened the fridge and then looked over her shoulder at me.

“Are you feeling sick? You look pale.”

“I,” I swallowed, “I think this is for you, I’m so sorry.”

I handed the tract to her and ran to my bedroom and threw myself on the bed, not knowing what to do or think but a minute later her shadow darkened the door and I rolled onto my back. She had an odd look on her face as if she was actually worried because she bit her lip and looked away for a moment before speaking.

“Henry was my husband, we were married for six weeks but he had the marriage annulled when he discovered my secret.”

“Are you?” I sat up slowly and smoothed out my skirt nervously.

“I am,” she put her back to the wall, “I didn’t want you to know.”

“Because I was afraid of the effect it might have on you, and if people find out then it could affect my job at the school,” she paused, “he should never have sent this but Henry is a stupid little man with little principle beyond satisfying his need to humiliate others.”

I said nothing, my throat felt constricted and she put her hand to her throat.

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered.

Michelle walked out of the room leaving me staring at the ceiling. I sat bolt upright as her footsteps receded. I had never seen her so scared. This was a woman who in my opinion was afraid of nothing, not even when we were confronted by a well endowed woman, who took offense because Michelle embraced a black man she knew who’d just gotten engaged. She faced that shrill harpy down with a razor sharp retort that made me blink. She almost seemed to welcome the hatred of the segregationists with gleeful anticipation. One of her favorite tactics was to share a table at a diner with blacks and the reactions could be both entertaining and worrisome. Segregation might be on the way out in Texas but there were plenty of folks who longed for the old days.

Thus to see her so frightened actually scared me and I saw myself in her eyes in that moment, I was the timid one who tried to avoid confrontation and controversial subjects. I’d stayed silent when colleagues and friends vented their racist spleen for all and sundry, hoping I wouldn’t have to offer up my opinion. It was in the spirit of that very recent past that I jumped to my feet and ran into the hallway, catching her at the bathroom door.

“No, wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please stop.”

Michelle turned around with her hand on the doorknob and I bit my lip and did my best to pour on the Southern charm.

“I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t know that about you, I never met anyone like you but there’s no need to be afraid, I won’t tell anyone ever. Cross my heart,” I touched my breast.

Her expression softened noticeably and she wiped her eyes and acting on instinct I embraced her but she felt as stiff as a board and I retreated just as quickly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” I trailed away.

“You did nothing wrong,” she sounded distant, “I should have told you sooner.”

“It’s never too late,” I reassured her, “you can tell me more, if that’s all right?”

“Perhaps I should,” she turned the doorknob, “but first I must,” she opened the door.

“Of course,” I glanced over my shoulder, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Over the course of the next few hours my eyes were opened to a new underground world and it was one that until then had been very much a shadowy world. I had been raised on tales of the Lavender Scare and my father used to say the best thing Ike ever did was sign the Executive Order barring government agencies from hiring homosexuals. It was one of those inanely silly laws that inevitably created the very situation it was supposed to eradicate. It drove them deep underground where they were easy prey for communist agents and indeed some had defected to the Soviet Union where homosexuality was legal if not exactly promoted.

The thing that impressed me the most that night was her frankness. I have always valued honesty highly, even if that honesty exposes uncomfortable truths. She made no excuses for her condition and did not ask for pity or even prayer. I suspect it was the shock of being dragged out of the closet that caused her to speak so openly and I sat there listening to every word, only interrupting when I had questions of my own.

One of my questions related to wanting to know how she had become a lesbian. Had she been hurt by men or seduced by a woman? Her reply set me back a little I must admit.

“I have always been attracted to my own kind, I did like boys but only because it was the way I was supposed to act. Deep down I longed for the company of women, I felt safe with women. I only married Henry to satisfy my mother but the marriage was a sham, we were never intimate with each other.”

I went to bed with my head in a whirl and for the first time I actually questioned my own sexuality for although I talked about being married one day, deep down I had no real desire for marriage. I found the conversations of my peers claustrophobic whenever they talked about men and how to attract men, it was as if our only purpose in life was to attract men. I understood the need, life begins with the union of man and woman, but what if some of us did not possess that desire? I loved my work at the library and found I savored each moment as if storing up for myself memories that would sustain me when I too had to submit to marriage.

I came to no firm conclusions before sleep finally claimed me but I resolved to find out more about Michelle. I was attracted to her and not in a sexual way. She did not talk about attracting the eye of men although she was certainly polite enough to them. I wanted to be more like her and less like me and yet I found the idea of having sex with a woman somewhat alien.

In the morning I found a note on the kitchen table next to a book, Odd Girl Out, by A. Bannon.

I have gone downtown, I read this book a few years ago but kept it hidden for obvious reasons. Please do not read this in public.

The cover showed a woman massaging another woman lying on a bed, the implication was obvious but I found myself in a quandary. Michelle had exposed herself so frankly I felt both drawn and repelled by homosexuality. Now she had given me a book to read that was purported to portray lesbian love in a graphic and shocking way. Was it indeed possible to love a woman in the same way as a man?

It was set in a fictional university in a mid western town. The main character was a lot like me, Laura was shy but drawn to Beth. By the time Michelle returned from downtown I was halfway through the third chapter. I read sporadically over the weekend but by late Sunday afternoon I reached the climax and my heart cried out for more as Laura gets on the train but Beth rushes off to catch Charlie.

Thankfully it was only the first book but it whetted my appetite for more, something that amused Michelle as she dutifully handed over I Am A Woman where Laura arrives in Greenwich Village and falls in with Marcie and eventually Beebo. The ending stunned me when Beebo and Laura walk out of the apartment arm in arm and I was hooked.