Of course they still saw each other a few times a year. Girl’s children had a right to know their grandparents. Girl dropped the children off while she attended Liz’s wedding, two hours away from her parents’ house in Rochester. When she returned, the children were happily playing with Stepmother, and Mother was sitting in her recliner with a bandage on her hand.
“I was walking outside and I fell,” Mother said. “Stepmother put a bandage on my hand, but it’s coming off, and it won’t stop bleeding. Can you fix it?”
Girl unwrapped the gauze on her mother’s hand and uncovered a gash several inches long. The tissue underneath was bulging out of the wound, fat and muscle and red jello-y looking flesh.
“Mom, you need to go to the hospital. You need stitches.”
“Well, I thought I might, but Stepmother and the boys were having so much fun and they don’t get to see each other very often. I didn’t want to be a bother.”
Girl took Mother to urgent care, and made sure they X-rayed her injured knee and checked out her swollen, bruised cheekbone. She held Mother’s hand as the surgeon trimmed away bits of viscera and stitched her hand closed, and this mothering of Mother made Girl want to cry. It was the most alone-time she had gotten with Mother since she and Stepmother got back together.
“Mother, you are going to die if you don’t start advocating for yourself,” Girl told her in the examination room. “Stepmother isn’t capable of taking care of you. You have to speak up for yourself when you get hurt. You need to use your cane when you walk. You need to stop worrying about bothering other people.”
“That’s exactly what I would tell my mother,” the nurse interjected. “Your daughter is absolutely right. You need to take care of yourself. No one else is going to, and next time you could get hurt even worse.”
When they got back from the hospital, the children were already asleep. Girl and her parents sat talking in the living room. Girl tried to keep the conversation around her children, as it was the safest topic she could think of.
“It’s really amazing to watch them grow up,” Girl said. “I know they are smarter than I am.” She and Mother often discussed the wonder they felt at watching these children develop.
“I always felt that way about you and Brother,” Mother said.
“Well, I’m smarter than all of you,” Stepmother said. Girl didn’t bother to reply—she just excused herself and went to bed.
A month later, Mother fell again.
“Have you seen your mother lately?” a friend asked. “I saw her recently, and the whole side of her face has fallen. I could tell she’d had a stroke.”
“I just talked to your parents,” a relative said. “Did you know your mother fell again this week?”
Girl called her mother. “How are you, Mom?” she asked.
“Oh, we’re having so much fun going out with friends. We’ve gotten to know a whole bunch of new people—I feel like we are real A-listers down here. We’re just so busy, having so much fun.”
“I heard you fell.”
“Yes, but I’m taking tai chi now. It’s really helping my balance. Sometimes Stepmother even comes, too. And I’ve lost weight. I just refuse to buy treats anymore, and it’s working, as long as I don’t let Stepmother do the shopping. Here, she wants to say hi, too.”
“I’m so proud of you, Girl. You are a wonderful mother and a wonderful writer, and I’m so proud you finally got your master’s. I love you. Kiss-kiss,” Stepmother said. She said all the right words, but they only bounced off Girl’s shell.
As soon as Girl heard Stepmother’s voice, she knew she wouldn’t be going down to visit Mother anytime soon. She knew Stepmother had saved her many times. She knew Stepmother loved her. When she closed her eyes, she could picture Stepmother and Mother dancing in the kitchen, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes—there was no question that Stepmother was Mother’s one true love. But the very sound of Stepmother’s voice made Girl grind her teeth. Mother had chosen a life that made her happy, it was not Girl’s place to protect her or convince her that she deserved more. Mother was right, it was time for Girl to let go of her issues with her family of origin and focus on her present family. Girl was an adult, and no longer at the mercy of Stepmother, and just because they raised Girl did not obligate her to a lifetime of Thanksgiving dinners or intimate conversations. She no longer yearned for what she never had.
Girl hung up the phone and went upstairs to check on her own children. Her oldest was asleep, turned toward the wall with one arm flung sideways, his head on a ladybug-shaped pillow. Her youngest was balled up on his side, only half his face showing under the covers. She kissed their sleeping heads, the eldest oblivious—he was always a deep sleeper—but the youngest stirred a moment, his eyes flickering half open. “Shhh, it’s okay,” she whispered, shushing him back to sleep. She was no longer Girl, but Mama.
notes from the fourth wall
being raised by lesbians
The story everyone wants to hear isn’t the story I want to tell. Everyone wants to know what it was like to be raised by lesbians, how we functioned, what made it different. I want to talk about other things, the things that formed me and shaped me and scarred me. Not my mother’s sexuality. I want to say that isn’t what scarred me or made me different or made me who I am today. I want to say that it didn’t matter. But all of that is a lie. Of course it mattered more than almost any other aspect of my childhood.
Perhaps I don’t want to write about it because I feel an obligation to represent lesbian parents well, and to show that
