Sing You Home

be traveling together.

The day after I told my mother that I was a lesbian, the shock had worn off and she was full of questions. She asked me if this was some phase I was going through, like the time I’d been hell-bent on dyeing my hair purple and getting an eyebrow ring. When I told her I was convinced of my attraction to women, she burst into tears and asked me how she had failed me as a mother. She told me she’d pray for me. Every night, when I went to bed, she slipped a new pamphlet under the door. Many trees have died so that the Catholic Church can preach against homosexuality.

I started to wage a counterattack. On every pamphlet, I took a thick marker and wrote the name of someone famous who had an LGBT child: Cher. Barbra Streisand. Dick Gephardt. Michael Landon. I’d slip these under her bedroom door.

Finally, at a stalemate, I agreed to meet with her priest. He asked me how I could do this to the woman who’d raised me, as if my sexuality was a personal attack on her. He asked if I’d considered becoming a nun instead. Not once was I asked if I was afraid, or lonely, or worried about my future.

On the way home from the church, I asked my mother if she still loved me.

“I’m trying,” she said.

It took my first long-term girlfriend (whose own mother, when she came out to her, shrugged and said, Tell me something I don’t know) to make me understand why my mother was the complete opposite. “You’re dead to her,” my girlfriend had told me. “Everything she’s dreamed of for you, everything she figured you’d be and have, it’s not going to happen. She’s been seeing you in suburbia with a cookie cutter husband and your two point four kids and a dog, and now you’ve gone and ruined that by being with me.”

So I gave my mother time to grieve. I never flaunted my girlfriends in front of her, or brought one home to a holiday meal, or signed her name on a Christmas card. Not because I was ashamed but simply because I loved my mother, and I knew that was what she needed from me. When my mother got sick and went into the hospital, I took care of her. I like to think that, before the morphine took over her mind-before she died-she realized that my being a lesbian mattered far less than the fact that I was a good daughter.

I’m telling you this as a means of explaining that I have been through the coming-out ringer, and wish to repeat it about as much as a person wants a second root canal. But when Zoe begs me to come with her when she tells Dara about us, I know I will. Because it’s the first proof I have that-maybe-Zoe isn’t just trying this new gay persona on for size, and planning to return it and go back to her old, straight self.

“Are you nervous?” I ask, as we stand side by side in front of Zoe’s mother’s front door.

“No. Well, yeah. A little.” She looks at me. “It feels big. It’s big, right?”

“Your mother is one of the most open-minded people I’ve ever met.”

“But she considers herself an expert on me,” Zoe says. “It was just the two of us, when I was growing up.”

“Well, I grew up with a single mom, too.”

“This is different, Vanessa. On my birthday, my mother still calls me at 10:03 A.M. and screams and pants into the phone to relive the birth experience.”

I blink at her. “That’s just plain strange.”

Zoe smiles. “I know. She’s one in a million. It’s a blessing and a curse all at once.” With a deep breath, she rings the doorbell.

Dara opens it with a mangled coat hanger in her hands. “Zoe!” she says, delighted to see her daughter. “I didn’t know you were coming out here!”

Zoe’s laugh is strangled. “You have no idea…”

Dara wraps her arms around me for a quick hug, too. “How are you, Vanessa?”

“Great,” I say. “I’ve never been better.”

In the background there is a man’s voice, deep and soothing. Sense the water. Sense it rising beneath you…

“Oh,” Dara says. “Let me go shut that off. Come in, you two.” She hustles toward the stereo and turns off the CD player, taking the disc out of the machine and slipping it into its plastic sleeve. “It’s my homework for my dowsing class. That’s what the coat hanger’s for.”

“You’re looking for water?”

“Yes,” Dara says. “When I find it, the rods will move by themselves and cross in my hands.”

“Let me save you some trouble,” Zoe replies. “I’m pretty sure the water comes out of the faucets.”

“O ye of little faith. For your information, my practical girl, dowsing is a very lucrative skill. Say you’re going to invest in a piece of land. Don’t you want to know what’s under the surface?”

“I’d probably hire an artesian well company,” I say, “but that’s just me.”

“Maybe so, Vanessa, but who’s going to tell the well company where to dig, eh?” She smiles at me. “You two hungry? I’ve got a nice coffeecake in the fridge. One of my clients is trying to visualize becoming a pastry chef…”

“You know, Ma, actually, I came to tell you something really important,” Zoe says. “Something really good, I think.”

Dara’s eyes widen. “I had a dream about this, just last night. Let me guess-you’re going back to school!”

“What? No!” Zoe says. “What are you talking about? I have a master’s degree!”

“But you could have majored in classical voice. Vanessa, have you ever heard her sing…”

“Um, yes-”

“Mom,” Zoe interrupts. “I’m not going back to school for classical voice. I’m perfectly happy as a music therapist-”

Dara looks up at her. “For jazz piano, then?”

“For God’s sake, I’m not going back to school. I came here to tell you I’m a lesbian!”

The word cleaves the room in half.

“But,” Dara says after a moment. “But you were married.”

“I know. I was with Max. But now… now I’m with Vanessa.”

When Dara turns to me, her eyes seem wounded-as if I’ve betrayed her by pretending to be Zoe’s good friend when, in truth, that’s what I have been. “I know this is unexpected,” I say.

“This isn’t you, Zoe. I know you. I know who you are…”

“So do I. And if you think this means I’m going to start riding a Harley and wearing leather, you don’t know me at all. Believe me, I was surprised, too. This isn’t what I thought was going to happen to me.”

Dara starts to cry. She cups Zoe’s cheeks in her hands. “You could get married again.”

“I could, but I don’t want to, Ma.”

“What about grandchildren?”

“I couldn’t seem to make that happen even with a man,” Zoe points out. She reaches for her mother’s hand. “I found someone I want to be with. I’m happy. Can’t you be happy for me?”

Dara sits very still for a moment, looking down at their intertwined fingers. Then she pulls away. “I need a minute,” she says, and she picks up her dowsing rods and walks into the kitchen.

When she leaves, Zoe looks up at me, teary. “So much for her open-mindedness.”

I put my arm around her. “Give her a break. You’re still getting used to these feelings, and it’s been weeks. You can’t expect her to get over the shock in five seconds.”

“Do you think she’s okay?”

See, this is why I love Zoe. In the middle of her own freak-out moment, she’s worried about her mother. “I’ll go check,” I say, and I head into the kitchen.

Dara is leaning against the kitchen counter, the dowsing rods beside her on the granite. “Was it something I did?” she asks. “I should have gotten married again, maybe. Just so there was a man in the house-”

“I don’t think it makes a difference. You have been a wonderful mother. Which is why Zoe is so afraid you’ll want to disown her.”

“Disown her? Don’t be ridiculous. She said she was a lesbian, not a Republican.” Dara draws in her breath. “It’s just… I have to get used to it.”

“You should tell her that. She’ll understand.”