They were happy enough riding in circles in the sand ring, brushing and washing their horses, and talking about boys and horse shows and the obvious crush Liz’s mother had on the stable manager. They were both in love with the old sixties band called the Monkees, who were on a twenty-year revival tour. When the Monkees came to Rochester, Liz’s mother helped Girl form a lie to her parents so she could go, too. Liz snuck a camera down her pants and although the men standing next to them offered them beer, they both declined. That summer, they both started getting noticed by boys more often. Liz’s mother had smiled and told Girl, “You think I’m happy for her that boys like her, but I’m happy because she’s going to be someone else’s responsibility soon.”
That fall Gilli got sick with an upper respiratory infection. The vet had to come every day and give him fifty-dollar shots. Girl’s savings were dwindling, and her two-dollar-an-hour babysitting job wasn’t keeping up. Winter was coming, and she didn’t know how she was going to get to the stable when there was too much snow to ride her bike. Liz’s mother, who had once been so involved, even driving Girl to the doctor when she was hit by a car on the way to the stable once, had suddenly and inexplicably become unreliable, sometimes driving, sometimes refusing. Her substitute teaching job ended and she couldn’t find another one, and she went to work at K-Mart full-time. She put Liz on a PINS (People In Need of Supervision) petition requiring Liz to go to probation. Girl couldn’t figure this out at all, because Liz was smart and nice and not violent that she had ever seen. Liz’s mother seemed to just wear out of parenting, and sent Liz to live in a group home. Girl only saw her every few weeks.
Girl felt the pressure of bills and impending snow and it was too heavy to bear alone. Mother and Stepmother had no suggestions. Responsibility pressed down on Girl and she just wanted to sleep all the time. Girl gave the horse back to the waitress. She didn’t tell anyone what it cost her—the black sadness that hung on her body like fog was invisible to everyone else.
“Well, at least you had a horse for a summer,” Stepmother said, as if that was any consolation. Girl never heard what happened to Gilli, but she doubted that he ever got well.
notes from the fourth wall
this is what you hear when you have lesbian parents
You hear your parents tell you over and over again how you must not tell anyone. You hear how your stepmother lost her job at the YWCA because she was gay. You hear about Stonewall and Harvey Milk and all the unnamed men and women beaten and sometimes killed by gay bashers. You are told how if your parents lose their jobs, you will lose the house and you don’t want to be homeless. You don’t, however, hear the word lesbian. Gay is the word your mother prefers, as it sounds more neutral, less sexualized. Lesbian is a word she will claim much later.
You hear a rock hit your living room window one day, and the whole family goes outside to look at the golf-ball-sized hole in the glass. Your stepmother cries, “They threw a rock through our window because we are gay!” But you didn’t hear any name-calling, and you didn’t see any note, nor did you see anyone running away. You live on a busy street and think it was just as likely that a truck kicked up a rock as that someone threw it intentionally. This assumption of harassment doesn’t sit quite right with you, but you are quick to use this story as an example of how you were persecuted, even though you were never really sure if it was true. It was only one way to look at the hole in the window.
In eighth grade you no longer had to keep the secret—somehow the students at school found out, and the story was everywhere. Unfortunately, your name starts with “L” so “lesbian” pairs up with it quite nicely. You are called Lara the Lesbian for the rest of the year. “Lez,” “Lesbo,” and (inexplicably) “Fag” are yelled at you in the halls between classes. Even a few people you thought were your friends write, “To Lara the Les” in your yearbook. You get into a fight with one of your closest friends, and she gets the last shot in, looking at you with hard eyes and saying, “Maybe you really are a lesbian like your mother.” Years later, you will forget the reason you were so mad at each other, but her parting words still echo clearly in the cavity of your chest.
You are asked, “But don’t you have a father?” over and over. Back in the seventies and eighties, artificial insemination was not an option for gays and lesbians. The first test-tube baby was not born until 1978, so it was a legitimate question. But your father happened to move across the continent and not all of the kids at school believed that he even existed.
“But who is your real mother?” This question infuriates your mother. She and your stepmother want to be viewed as equal parents. But they can’t erase your father, and you don’t want
