Handprints (a little long but maybe it's worth it)

Handprints




TRUE OR FALSE

Circle One:
T    F   If your uncle lit his hand on fire to scare your mother when they were children, you will end up a lesbian.

Last night is still floating through my mind like a dream, cloudy and unsure. Even now I wonder if I was asleep the whole time, and that your room, lit by a hazy yellow glow, is just another figment of my imagination. I run to the bathroom and check my neck. No, no evidence of what I’m sure happened. I do know that I slept until noon today, which means my memory is accurate. Otherwise I might have been up hours before.
Sleep is my only evidence. Waking in your bed, then waking again in my own, I can barely remember where I’ve been and when. And yet, it all seems so familiar, like an old family film. Watching mom take her first steps; silent films with a familial handprint.
My world is strangely unchanged as of the moment. It’s just another Saturday morning, a day of socks and eggs and laundry.
That first kiss we shared was incredible. Your lips were soft like Vaseline on glass.
My mother took her first steps on the patio of a suburban Los Angeles house. It looked like every other house on the block. Little Lego castles. Pastels and broken television sets. 1956. Disneyland was brand new and Grandma’s hair was still brown and in dark beautiful waves around her face. Grandpa was still happy, his hair combed back into blonde curls. He had exactly four wrinkles. All from smiling.




SHORT ANSWER:

Why is cruelty often justified by past suffering?


Your hair was mussed into waves and we started at each other for hours. Your room was white but covered in posters. You played Sufjan Stevens and Iron and Wine on repeat until we slid into oblivion. Your eyes glistened. I watched the ceiling. I watched your face.  I watched the way your eyelashes moved when we kissed.
Grandma and Grandpa are actually Dorothy and Arthur. They had to get new identities when they moved into old age. Dorothy met Arthur when he came home from the war and bet her father he could beat him at Pinochle. Dorothy’s dad was the best Pinochle player the West Coast had ever seen. He let Arthur win. Dorothy went out with Arthur even though he was much older. Soon they were married. Arthur wrote poetry and Dorothy told him it was very good. But she was lying. She was an English teacher. She knew better. Dorothy had a little gap between her front teeth. During their courtship, Arthur used to tell her it was endearing. Dorothy’s family had survived the depression. Now she saved moldy food and plastic containers from deli coleslaw, even though they were too thin to do much of anything with. She was always angry. She could never throw anything away and Arthur didn’t care about money, which made her angrier.
One time my mother walked down to the drugstore on the corner and bought Dorothy a ten-cent lipstick. It was beautiful. Mom thought Dorothy was beautiful too. Dorothy told Mom to return the lipstick and yelled at her for wasting money. But Dorothy wasn’t being cruel. Not really. No one is ever cruel as long as it can be justified. Dorothy grew up during the Great Depression and that is what Mom kept telling herself.
After we kissed for a long time, your parents called us in for dinner. Your father told us stories about traveling to France and your sister told me about Andy Warhol and the raccoon babies that live in the abandoned car in your backyard. The food was flavorful and homemade. The tortillas were blue and just fried. After dinner we ran back to your room and kissed some more, the sharp flavors of dinner mingling with our own scents.




MULTIPLE CHOICE SECTION

If you tell your mother that you have a girlfriend she will:

A. Cry because she doesn’t know what else to do
B. Remember a time when she experimented with girls
C. Forbid you to see your girlfriend without close parental
  supervision
D. Tell herself that it’s a phase and deny it ever happened
E. All of the above




When Mom was 20, she went on a date with a woman. Her name was Alice. She was fat like Mom, in a beautiful way. She had blue eyes and long hair that she dyed black once a month. It was 1975. Nobody had AIDS or HIV. Mom’s brother, my uncle, was already married to a woman with long brown hair. She taught her students philosophy and taught my uncle how to be an atheist.
Mom had never met dad and she didn’t know that men could love her without being very drunk. Alice wanted to take her to a little Chinese restaurant next to the Sizzler on West Manchester and Belford. They fed each other dumplings and little pieces of tofu. They licked their fingers clean.
Mom left Alice’s bedroom in the morning and joined Over-eaters Anonymous. She met dad there in 1985. He hugged her just a little too long at the end of the meetings. Dad had a silent mother, a bitter father, and a stoned brother who liked to pretend he was John Lennon when he played on Friday nights.
When Mom was very young, Dorothy and Arthur would leave her home alone with her brother. My uncle. He was seven years old. Mom was four. He told her that the mayonnaise was made of popped pimples. It was true.




FREE RESPONSE QUESTION

How did the stock market crash of the 1930s affect GLBT youth 70 years later?




The drive to your house took 45 minutes from the time mom pulled up to school in the green hatchback that she’s been driving for the last decade. This time she doesn’t climb out and make me drive. She directs me to the backseat and we’re on our way. You live in some icy mountain community. We call it Alaska. I thank her for driving me and she laughs saying “I must be the best mom in the world for doing this. Our family understands friendship.” She nods wisely but she has no idea that I’m wondering how I smell and wishing I had a breath mint for when we kiss.
After dinner that night you ate a mint and I could taste it for an hour. It was sweet and surprising and made our tongues cold.
Hours later we laid on your bed, my arm wrapped around you, and listened to the crickets outside. We tried to guess the temperature but couldn’t count the chirps. You told me you weren’t ready to tell your parents. I told you I wasn’t either. We fell asleep with secrets on our lips and crickets in our ears.
Dad proposed to Mom in the storage room of his computer store. Mom said no. They ate their lunches and kept dating. Dad asked again and Mom laughed at him. He asked again at Dorothy’s Passover Seder and Mom threatened to kill him. He asked again and she sighed and said yes, even though she didn’t even like him that much. She never mentioned Alice.
Arthur used to kiss the boy next door and never told his twin brother. The boy was gentle and quiet but it was 1917 and they lived in Minnesota so there was no word for the way their little hands touched each other.

MATCHING SECTION
Match up the people who loved each other.

A. Arthur
B. Himself
C. Mom
D. Dorothy
E. The Girlfriend
F. No one

1. Dad
2. Uncle
3. Me
4. Alice
5. The boy next door
6. Herself  

One day, Arthur’s twin brother David caught him and the boy next door kissing. David never told Arthur he knew. There was nothing to say. They grew up and went to war and came back and became lawyers in Los Angeles. They married women who hated each other.  So they talked on the phone every day at four o’clock for 60 years until David died.
Mom always makes sure she tells me how much she loves me. She tells me every day, as many as three or four times. When I walked up the path to your little wooden house, she rolled down the window and yelled it one more time. Just to make sure it stayed on the top of my mind.
Dorothy’s father had a lot of money that he didn’t like to share with his family. Instead of buying food, he bought Fords. He had a new car almost every month. Dorothy’s mom would cry when he brought home a new one. “This baby’s got power windshield wipers and a radio!” he exclaimed. Dorothy smiled and climbed in the backseat to play.




FILL IN THE BLANK

Dorothy used to try and catch Mom _____________-ing so she could punish her. It’s ok though because she grew up in the Great ____________. She wasn’t being _______. Not really. Mom later started hording ______ in bedroom so that Dorothy couldn’t take it away from her. That’s how she became _____.

I leaned against the headboard and you sat in my lap to read me your favorite book. I chuckled at the right parts and played with your hair.
But, Friday night came to an end as mom rolled up the bumpy mountain road that leads to your house. I grabbed all my things and was about to leave when I changed my mind and ran back to your room to kiss you once more. “See you Monday,” I said, pushing your hair behind one ear. I ran out, being careful not to step on your sister who had fallen asleep watching the burning embers die.
When I jumped in the car I was careful to hide how awake I felt. She said, “Your friend seems nice. If you ever want to have her sleep over that’s fine by me.” I tried not to laugh and settled for a smile and an “okay.”
I crawled into bed and, so that my parents couldn’t hear me, quietly bid you goodnight. For sleep is my only evidence. Waking in your bed, then waking again in my own; I can barely remember where I’ve been and when. And yet, it all seems so familiar, like an old family film. Watching mom take her first steps; silent films with a familial handprint.
My world is strangely unchanged as of the moment. It’s just another Saturday morning, a day of socks and eggs and laundry.