You’ve got to check him out. When Ms. Raimondo said to write to someone, he was the first person I thought of.”
“Oh, uh, yeah.” What?
“You’re funny. Hey, I wanted to tell you in English class that I really love your new hair. It’s awesome.”
“Thanks.” Finally, a word. “I’m writing to—”
“Sshhh,” Mr. Greggs widened his eyes at us.
“Anyway,” Aggie whispered, “you can borrow a Brautigan book, if you like. I’ve really got to stay focused this year. Second chance.”
Second chance?
Wednesday, October 20
Dear James,
We had hamburgers with homemade french fries for supper. Not every letter needs to be about something.
Okay, fine. Maybe there is always something that can be talked about. Something of substance, I mean. What would you have said about my hair, James? Would you have pointed and laughed? What clever joke would you make of it? Would you call me cranberry bog or menstruation face?
The thing is, I guess I was distracted by you on Monday, and then Tuesday I couldn’t stop thinking about my conversation with Aggie, but something else happened on Monday. After school.
Dara missed the bus in the morning, so I didn’t see her until math—the only class we have together this year. When I walked in, she was already there, and she gasped. Really. Like out-loud-lungs-filling-with-everyone’s-dead-skin-cells type of gasp.
“Eleanor! Oh my god! What happened?”
I threw my fingers on my head and felt around. “Oh, this? Yeah, I guess I made a mistake?”
“I almost didn’t recognize you. You look like . . .” James, if you were in the room, I bet you would have laughed. Maybe you would have even egged her on. “You look like a lesbian.” She whispered it like “lesbian” was a curse word.
“W-what does a lesbian look like?” I still can’t believe I said that. I mean, Flor is a lesbian and she just looks like—I don’t know—a person. Actually, she’s the first lesbian I’ve ever met. Or know that I’ve met, I guess. She has short hair, but do all lesbians have the same haircut? I’ll have to ask Flor.
Flor gives off a soothing aroma of peppermint and coffee. When she isn’t drinking coffee—which happens all throughout the day, even at dinner—she is popping little peppermints into her mouth. Usually they are the kind you get from that giant bowl at the diner after you pay your bill. Flor always takes giant handfuls, stuffs them in her pockets and delivers them to a bowl in her house. Gret and I call them urine mints, and do not dare eat them, even when they are the kind with delicious bits of hard jelly in the center.
“They’re always kind of damp,” Greta once told me. “And you know why?”
I just shrugged.
“Because people go to the bathroom, hands damp from wiping not washing, and then they grab a handful of these. Pop ’em in their mouth. Gross,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “Never eat them. No matter what, okay?”
When I first met Flor, I wasn’t sure if I liked her. She is eccentric (I can’t remember how I learned this word) in ways I have never experienced before. First, she’s obsessed with the mail. Since she’s no longer working—Shirley mentioned something about disability—she makes sure to be home every day the mail comes. Sunday is her day off. It is also a wasted day—her words: “A day without mail is a day unworthy of breakfast, showering, or conversation.”
“I can’t even housesit because I worry I would just open up mail that isn’t mine, just to see what’s inside. It’s like a daily birthday present,” she once said.
“But isn’t it just bills and junk?” I asked her.
“Yeah, but someone still took the time to lick that envelope, tear off a stamp, and slip it through a blue mailbox. Time and appreciation, Eleanor.”
Flor used to keep even her junk mail until Shirley went over to her house and saw the piles and piles of magazines and envelopes, half-torn open.
“You can’t just keep everything,” Shirley said between cigarette inhales. “You’ve got to let go.”
Maybe this is why they’re such good friends; they aren’t afraid to tiptoe around each other. They just tell it like it is.
“I’m a lesbian, Eleanor,” Flor said a few months after our first meeting, “So I’ve learned to get used to making room for myself in spaces that try to exclude me.”
This was the moment I knew I really liked Flor. I liked knowing someone who understands how to exist even when others don’t want her to because of stupid reasons like just wanting to kiss girls or whatever.
What happens when we say something out loud? Does it become more real? Is it any less real when we keep it to ourselves?
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Then math class started, and it was super awkward between Dara and I, and we didn’t see each other again until our bus ride home. We always sit next to each other and we still did, but most of the ride was in complete silence.
“Hey, listen,” I started, “it’s . . . I don’t know . . . I left your house and I just wanted to scream. Didn’t you? I mean, we didn’t really know him, but he was our classmate for so many years. And then I thought about Shirley and almost losing her in the same . . . anyway, so I just cut my hair. That’s it. It’ll grow back. Who cares?”
“No, yeah, I know, Eleanor. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . say what I said. I think I have a gay uncle so . . .”
“So . . . what?”
“So, a gay person is probably related to me. So, it’s not mean.”
“I don’t understand. And anyway, so what if I was a . . . a lesbian?”
James, I can tell you this because you’re not my bully anymore, you’re just a piece of paper. Before I became an atheist—my parents know, though they wish I’d reconsider—I had my Bat Mitzvah. That was kind of the end of my Jewishness. I was newly thirteen, begrudgingly (vocab word!) finished Hebrew school and completed the whole experience. I lead the minyan, read from the Torah, all of it. Anyway, at the party part, my friend Kelly kept asking me to dance. When Good Vibrations came on by Marky Mark, she grabbed me, and we just swung our limbs around like animals. It was incredible. I mean, everyone was dancing. When it was over, she yelled into my ear that she wanted to give me my present. I told her she didn’t have to get me anything, but that I could just open it later. But she kept insisting. So, we left the room—my Bat Mitzvah was in this giant hall where, like, weddings probably happened. We went down the stairs and into this smaller room. I just looked at her because she didn’t seem to be holding a gift, and then she kissed me.
You probably think it’s lame or gross to imagine two girls kissing. I could tell you that I was shocked. I could tell you that I immediately pushed her away and wiped my lips, but the thing is,
