12. The number of stepbrothers and -sisters I have had, combined. Don’t count my half-sister Juli; we have the same biological father. Step is Latin for “not my family.” You didn’t know I took Latin? Well, maybe I didn’t. Take four from Margaret, five from Jan, two from Theresa, and the current four from Tricia. Fifteen. What about Stan and Tony? No, they don’t count, I don’t care what my father says. They are my half-sister’s half-brothers on her mother’s side. Juli and I have the same father, different mothers, so her half-brothers are not my blood. Their mother divorced my father before I was born, so they aren’t step-anything. No, there won’t be a quiz at the end. You can relax.
13. How many times I’ve been divorced. Just twice: Samson and Mike. When your father’s been married seven times, you know that two trips around the carousel are all the rides you are allotted. I prefer to make my own embarrassing mistakes, not repeat his. No, three times is not a charm. Wedding rings have a habit of making husbands lose interest in me. I would never subject a good relationship to the court system—there is no part of me that wants to walk down that aisle again. Nope, no way. Except those wedding dresses are really pretty …
Did you like my little puzzle? What do you mean, I was supposed to sort them by “across” and “down?” Someone should have told me sooner. My family has never been good at fitting into boxes or following the rules. I’m glad I was able to have it make sense at all.
notes from the fourth wall
this is how it feels to write about lesbian parents
It feels like strong female hands pushing you forward, while their hope presses down on your face and shoulders. It is your face they want to put on a poster, your voice they expect to proclaim to the world how normal and beautiful it is to be raised by lesbians. You can’t breathe—the air is thickened with the expectation and hope of a generation of lesbian parents. You look back into their shining, happy eyes, these women who have been your extended family, who came to New Year’s Eve parties every year and tied your shoelaces for you when you were small. You know you can’t write the story they expect, these nice normal lesbians, because you don’t actually know what it feels like to be raised by nice normal lesbians. You only know what it was like to be raised with a mentally ill lesbian stepmother and a mother trying her hardest to keep the family together. Their sexuality was far less significant.
You also know that if you write the truth, the anti-gay movement will put your face on their posters instead. It seems like there is no way to just write your story without becoming someone’s poster child. You are not just your own voice, your own history—rather, you carry the expectations of both extremes.
The truth is that you don’t know many lesbian parents. Your parents didn’t have many friends with children. There was Marty, whose son Jim was a year older than your brother. There was Marilyn, who had a baby when you were eleven, but her child wasn’t even close to being your peer. That was the circle you had growing up.
Once, in college, you met a girl your exact age who said, “It took me a long time to realize my mother wasn’t a bad parent because she was gay, she was a bad parent because she was an alcoholic.” Back when you were eighteen, this casual conversation in a parking lot gave voice to everything you had always felt but had not known how to say, except, of course, that neither of your lesbian parents were alcoholics. It was always murkier for you.
the early years
girl
Picture a scrawny little girl, with shoulder blades that stick out like chicken wings, an outie belly button, and detached earlobes. She has big brown eyes and messy brown hair. When Stepmother combs Girl’s hair with a fine-toothed men’s comb, it bites into her scalp and makes her cry, so she avoids combing her hair as much as possible. Her knees are stained brownish-green from playing outside, and her bathtub is filled with waterlogged Barbies—her favorite toys.
Every night her family eats at the kitchen table—Girl in the seat up against the north wall, because she is the only one little enough to fit there; Brother to her right, pushed up against the western wall for the same reason; Mother across from Girl and closest to the fridge; and Stepmother, Mother’s “wusband” (woman-husband), at the head of the table next to the stove. The table is wood-grained Formica, the floor is green asbestos tile that wouldn’t take a shine, and the overhead light is a circular fluorescent tube light that makes a tttttts like an electronic insect when the switch is flipped on. Girl’s father lives far off in Alaska, the divorce so long ago that Girl can’t remember when he and Mother were married.
Girl learned early on that she could tune out the world if she had a good book, but her room is always a mess and she always loses the ones from the library, or forgets how many she had to return, and the librarian sometimes makes her leave the library until she pays off her late fees, so she reads the books she already owns over and over. She tries to read at dinner to avoid talking to her family, but Stepmother says, “Put the book away. I’m afraid you
