Beggar of Love

Beggar of Love.

by Lee Lynch.

Jefferson is the lover every woman wants to be-or to have.

Magnetical y attractive, athletic, alcoholic, Jefferson is an anchorless innocent wandering through a world of women who can resist her no more than she can resist them. Never lacking a lover, Jefferson knows little of love; brought up on the right side of the tracks, she"s drawn to the wild side. Every lesbian has known Jefferson-or is Jefferson.

Not since The Well of Loneliness has there been a lesbian novel of this scope. But much has changed since then....

Acknowledgements.

Thank you:.

Len Barot for caring about my work.

Shel ey Thrasher for your careful editing, suggestions, and cheers.

Stacia Seaman for her caring work.

Connie Ward for your personal and professional support.

Lee Coats for sharing your stories.

Jennifer Fulton for tel ing me I"m a literary writer.

Jackie Brown for your friendship and enthusiasm.

Jean Sirius for your encouragement in writing down the hard parts and for Ginger"s flip-flops.

Marilyn Silver for your help with 21st-century New York City.

Joy Parks for your support.

Dedication.

This book is dedicated to Nel Ward and Sue Hardesty.

Thank you for your friendship, love, and shelter.

And to Elaine Mul igan for giving me back my stories.

Chapter One.

Ginger wasn"t coming back this time, Jefferson felt it. She didn"t blame Ginger, but for the final break to come over a mistake, a misunderstanding -the pain of it pummeled her. She"d only gone to Shirley"s room to finish apologizing and to get to know her without s.e.x hanging them up. Then they walked around the corner to the coffee shop as Jefferson had original y planned, as she told Ginger she would. She was bursting with herself when she got home.

"I"m home, Ginge! I real y had a good time seeing Shirley," she"d planned to tel Ginger. "Talked and laughed with her without once feeling like I had to seduce her." It was so good to be free of the compulsion to get physical with a woman. She"d final y unloaded some of her guilt. For so long she carried it around in an imaginary old cloth sack she dragged by its drawstring closure everywhere she went.

She"d bounded up the stairs instead of waiting for the slow elevator, unlocked the door to the apartment, and went in, panting, smiling, ready to shout, "I"m free!" First she"d stopped drinking; now she knew she was serious about being faithful. They"d celebrate with a bottle of sparkling cranberry juice.

"Ginger?" she"d cal ed into the hol ow-sounding apartment, startled when the refrigerator made the clunking sound that signaled a defrost cycle.

She could hear Ginger"s heavy Bronx accent as she read the note Ginger had left. "I ran into Elisa from Hunter," it said, "at the recital. She saw you at the Hotel August in the elevator with another woman. You promised I wouldn"t have to endure this again. I should have known better. This time I"m real y done."

Since then she"d heard nothing. Ginger"s Aunt Til y had barred her from Ginger"s dance school. None of their friends had heard from Ginger.

Jefferson couldn"t sleep; the line between consciousness and unconsciousness became more and more thin. So here she was, on a personal stakeout, spending winter break watching Ginger"s dance school for signs of her. In years past, waiting to meet Ginger, she"d gotten friendly with the waitresses in the restaurant where she now sat hunkered in her worn brown leather bomber jacket by the window, and they kept the coffee coming as she watched across the snow for a chance to explain that, this time, she hadn"t strayed. If she"d lost Ginger again, what had been the sense of getting sober and staying away from other women? She ran both hands through her hair, combing it back. Oh, sure, at the program they"d tel her she"d done it for herself, but who was she without Ginger?

She"d always loved the city in the snow. It tamped down the noise, the traffic, the hustle. The snow was deep enough that each infrequent vehicle drove in the tracks of the last one. Everything wore a clean icy tarp about two inches thick. Buses were spa.r.s.e and no pa.s.sengers waited at the stop down the block. New York was as much at peace as she"d experienced it since the last blackout.

The next blow came like a roaring avalanche. A car pul ed up outside the Dance Loft and Ginger, bundled in the pouffy coat with the fake fur col ar Jefferson had given her last year, hurried to it, wheeling her huge green suitcase. Their gay friend Mitchel Para got out and opened the trunk. She"d never thought to cal him.

He hugged Ginger, long and tight, then loaded the suitcase while Ginger went back to the doorway for-oh, no, she thought. Al her luggage? What was going on? Mitchel was fol owing Ginger now, shadowing her, not six inches away, his arms outlining her, as if to protect her or to shepherd her to the building. Ginger"s face looked like it belonged on an injured athlete, the pain was so obvious. Was she sick? No, you didn"t haul four suitcases to a hospital. Had one of her brothers fal en at a building site? No, that didn"t make sense either. Four suitcases? Had she packed every one of her prized col ection of flip-flops?

Mitchel opened the door for Ginger and then got in the driver"s seat. Jefferson should have been lunging out of the restaurant to catch Ginger, but she sat there and watched Mitchel lay his arm across Ginger"s shoulders, draw her to him and kiss her. Jefferson stood, but within seconds, al she could see of them was the roof of the car, darting into a side street.

Breathless with shock, she stepped outside and looked for a taxi. But Ginger could be going anywhere: Mitchel "s place, out of the city, out of the state, out of the country. She imagined herself foolishly shouting, "Fol ow that car!" and lowered her arm. She slumped against the bare little tree beside her, a ginkgo she"d watched city workers plant two years ago. She clearly wasn"t wanted on Ginger"s voyage. Ginger had every right not to wait around for an explanation after so many of Jefferson"s lies.

She charged across the street and through the gate of Ginger"s Washington Heights Dance Loft. It was the only building in the area with chain-link fencing around it; with its red stone wal s, it resembled a little armory. Despite the weight she"d been putting on for the last ten years, again she sprang up the flight of wooden steps two at a time to the second floor. Ginger"s two instructors were holding cla.s.ses. Aunt Til y was at the reception desk. Jefferson placed her hands flat on the desk and waited in silence until the old woman looked up. Stil formidable, she had to be in her eighties by now. She"d retired as a school secretary and come to work part-time when Ginger"s enrol ment bal ooned.

"You need to leave," she told Jefferson. "Ginger doesn"t want to see you."

Jefferson was streaming sweat and unzipped her leather jacket. "Where did she go?"

"I"m not at liberty to say." Aunt Til y averted her eyes.

Aisha was a student who had started taking lessons at the Neighborhood House, where Ginger first taught. A hefty, clumsy, but determined adolescent back in modern dance cla.s.ses, Aisha now emerged from the cla.s.sroom where she taught modern dance herself. Jefferson always thought of Aisha as an elongated b.u.t.terfly who had emerged from her coc.o.o.n of baby fat. Several preschoolers in bal et slippers trailed her. Jefferson hugged her, then fol owed her into the girls" changing room.

"Do you know where Ginger went?" she asked.

Aisha had an apologetic expression as she shook her head. "Ginger cal ed me and Ronna"-the other ful -time teacher-"into the office and introduced us to Mil y Fal s."

"Ginger"s old teacher from col ege?"

"That"s her. Mil y"s on sabbatical. She"s taking over Ginger"s cla.s.ses for a while."

"While Ginger-"

"I don"t know, Jef. She didn"t tel you neither?"

"I wouldn"t be asking if she had," regretting immediately that she sounded irritated at sensitive Aisha.

"Don"t get al odd about it. Al "s I know is I saw your bud Mitchel hanging around night and day, like some old manly husband to her. I always thought he was as gay as us. I got to tel you, Jef, I have never seen Miss G. so stone-cold al -business. It"s been like her heart seized up on her and her face froze this last week. Especial y those eyes. I have seen warmer eyes on a d.a.m.n statue."

It should have come to her the minute she saw Ginger with Mitchel and the suitcases, but it didn"t hit her until Aisha, with her puzzled words, spoke the eulogy for their decades of love. The giant oak of herself fel to the ground, uprooted by the ice storm that had hovered over every lover since the beginning of time.

Was this what Ginger felt every night Jefferson didn"t come home or returned reeking of the scent of calumny? Ginger was beautiful, but what she"d taken for quietness in Ginger had become a savage coldness in recent years. Had Ginger felt this way while staring through their apartment windows at the iron balcony railing, fenced into a relationship ful of spikes and bars? Was there a way to survive this devastation?

The city under its dirty crust of snow looked shredded and ravaged. Jefferson, spent in every cel of her body, walked the nearly sixty blocks home, every street bringing back a pulverizing memory of Ginger, every side street the one into which Ginger had disappeared. She felt as if she was crawling al the way.

Chapter Two.

At four, she was too big for the church. Emmy, her mother, had dressed her in a navy blue Easter coat with a white lace col ar, white gloves, lace- topped white anklets, shiny black shoes with straps, and a flowered dress that stopped, like the coat, short of her skinned knees. She felt like she had been shrunk in the wash and stuffed into dol clothes. She hated dol clothes. She hated dol s. She hated church and the drone of the organ that fil ed the stuffy air with its sad wheezing.

If only she could stretch tal . Instead, she did a silent inside stretch, but it only made her smile to pretend she would pop the b.u.t.tons on her dress and inflate right to the ceiling of this big building. Her tight fists would smash through the stained-gla.s.s windows, and on the way up her shoulders, wide as Popeye"s, would nudge the scary cross off the wal so she wouldn"t have to look at that poor man and his bleeding hands.

She, Amelia Jefferson, would be like Alice in Wonderland-so tal she"d fil the rabbit hole and crash through the peaked roof and never have to be a little Episcopalian princess again.

"Amelia, stand stil ," hissed Emmy, who had complained of a splitting headache on the way to church. Amelia knew she would have a headache today because she"d heard Emmy throwing up in the master bath on the other side of the wal during the night. She was never going to drink; first the grown-ups got sil y and then they got sick. It was the only time they hugged her and cuddled her, though.

"Sing," Emmy said.

She sang loud. She sang like she was yel ing the hymn at the boys up the street when they played cowboys and Indians. She yel ed out al her squirmishness. She yel ed so she wouldn"t stretch so big she"d destroy the church. She sounded like those great big opera singers Emmy and Jarvy listened to on records.

"Quietly," commanded her father, Jarvy, on the other side of her. His hand shook as it held hers, and his breath had that awful smel of peppermint toothpaste and whiskey.

"Sweetly," said Emmy.

Amelia didn"t know how. She wanted to explain why she couldn"t sing quietly, but she wasn"t al owed to talk. If she did tel them why, they"d look at her the way they did when she was being wrong, and she was always being wrong. The light in the church, already dim, grew dimmer. So she marched then, which sometimes helped keep the dark away, whispered the words she guessed she was supposed to sing, and lifted her knees up, down, up and down, to keep time. Everything kept getting darker. She rested the rifle on her shoulder, its b.u.t.t in the palm of her hand. Jack and Glen up the street were the Indians and she was going to shoot them. The boys were good at grunting, spinning, and gasping out a last breath.

Once they were dead she"d lead the little girls across the street out of danger, hitch a horse to the covered wagon, and make her tongue go "Cluck- cluck, cluck-cluck" as she and the other girls traveled out West to build a cabin where the sun was.

"Amelia!" came Emmy"s whisper. She"d been clucking aloud and not paying attention. It was time to sit. She was sleepy, but she wasn"t al owed to nap in church. She would think about something. She would think about the girls across the street, Cynthia and Fern. Was it okay to smile? She guessed not. Last week Cynthia was home from first grade. Fern was with their grandma because she had a cold and couldn"t go to kindergarten. Cynthia was a big girl and mostly didn"t like to play with Amelia. But that day, with her sister away, she did.

Why did they get in trouble? Cynthia was playing on her bed. She had Tinkertoys. Amelia got on the bed to play too. They made a train and then got under the covers to make a tunnel. The sheets were snow. Their legs were mountains. It was nice under there and she felt awful good, tingly shivery al over. She wanted to snuggle with Cynthia and take a nap. Maybe Cynthia would kiss her on the top of her head like Emmy did before she went to a party.

Both mothers came into the girls" bedroom and yel ed at them. Why weren"t they al owed to be under the covers together?

She sat so stil she would never be able to move again. Why did she have to do things she didn"t like doing? Why couldn"t she do what she liked to do? That darkness came around her, like night. She tried not to cry, but she felt awful. She wished she had a magic potion like the one in the story her grandmother read to her. It would make her think good thoughts.

Maybe Jack and Glen would be home after Easter dinner. In back of their house was a hil down to the brook. This time, if none of the bigger boys were playing, she"d win at King of the Hil . Last time she got rol ed down the hil and she"d ended up with a nose ful of dirt. She didn"t go crying to Emmy like the little kids. She blew her nose on some big leaves and scrubbed the dirt off with water from the brook. She stil got in trouble for the gra.s.s stains, but the big kids got in more trouble for tearing up the gra.s.s.

Thinking about playing King of the Hil made her feel strong. Late afternoons, sometimes the sun looked like pancake syrup dripping through the trees. She would twirl Jack around and around and then let go at the top of the hil so he"d fal and rol to the bottom. Glen was six; she might have to wrestle him down and then give him a push. She was stronger than those two. She was stronger than the other girls. She"d dance on the hil top, the big winner, then climb the fence and run into the woods before they ganged up on her. That fence! This was the first year she could climb it. It was al up-and- down wood boards, but she knew how to shimmy up the posts now, grab hold of the acorn-looking things on top, and pul herself over.

They could never catch her when she ran, not even the big boys. She was faster and she was smarter. When they"d be about to grab her she"d jump behind a tree and run back the way she came. It was like when Emmy and Jarvy took her to the footbal game after the tailgate party and one of the big boys on the field ran in and out of the other boys who were trying to knock him down. She could be a footbal player when she grew up.

When she grew up and got married-she supposed she"d marry Jack or Glen-their children would cal them Mommy and Daddy like Jack and Glen did with their parents. Emmy said Amelia couldn"t cal her and Jarvy "Mommy and Daddy" because it made her feel too old. Emmy cal ed Jarvy Jarvis when she was mad at him. Sometimes Emmy cal ed him Daddy, she heard her. Whose Daddy was Jarvy, Emmy"s or hers?

That man up front was talking about the baby Jesus. Did ladies ever get to talk up front? Did the baby Jesus have to go to church with his mother and father like her? Did he feel like he didn"t belong too? If she was G.o.d she"d want these people outside in the woods or a park, not in some fancy building a bunch of sweaty guys had hammered together. Instead of sitting and being bored, they could plant trees, or play handbal or something fun, right out there in daylight where G.o.d could see them. She bet baby Jesus would like that better than this.

Emmy told her to wake up and fol ow Jarvy out to the street. She could see their dark, shiny new Oldsmobile parked a little way up the street. "A "63!"

Jarvy told everybody, even if you weren"t supposed to brag. Maybe they"d go to the city today. She loved staying at Grandma and Grandpa Thorpe"s apartment in the city. That"s where they lived when she was just born, before they bought the house here on the hil side over the Hudson River in Dutchess.

Sometimes they went back down to the city for days at a time. There was so much to see out the city window, especial y after they put her to bed and the babysitter left her alone in the bedroom. In Dutchess, she couldn"t see anything but the patio and the hedges.

The minister was saying something to her. He could get her in trouble with G.o.d, so she said "Yes," and looked down at her feet. They were always wanting her to say yes. They loved to say she was bashful when she didn"t have anything to say to the grown-ups.

"She is such a self-possessed little girl," the minister told Emmy. Jarvy was lighting a cigarette with his gold lighter. "Like a little adult going about her business with utter self-confidence, unconcerned with the opinions of you or me."

"Thank you," her mother said and added, "I think."

Jarvy, above her, said, "She"s a strange little one al right."

Emmy nodded to her and Amelia took off running-smack into the car! Then she hopped on one leg to the sidewalk and pretended a hopscotch game was chalked there. She could go fast. She bet she could hop to the corner and back to the car without stopping before they finished talking to the minister, plus twirl around on one leg at the corner. She"d see if her cousins Ruth and Raymond could beat her at this.

Aunt Jil ian lived in another old house, but hers was right on Main Street and had a gold thing on the front that Emmy said made the house part of history. Aunt Jil ian had a lot of big framed pictures on the wal s and this huge mirror that showed the big old houses across Main Street, like Aunt Jil ian wanted the houses to be able to see how pretty they were. When she was little, Amelia would lie on the floor and rotate her body, looking at the picture- window homes, the mirrored trees, a hunting picture, the family portrait, the other scenery pictures, and the one of her grandfather. Since it was Easter, Grandmother and Grandfather were at Aunt Jil ian"s too, even though they had moved part-time to the apartment in the city where they were close to his office and the things her grandmother liked to do, like the bal et and Bonwit Tel ers.

You could see the house from the sidewalk, old-fashioned, like a little castle. Sometimes people going by would stop and snap pictures. When Amelia could get away, she would go out on the deep covered front porch and watch them watching the house, or she would lie on the cedar porch swing, out of sight of the viewers, so the creaking swing would look like it had a ghost moving it.

Mostly, she had to stay in the parlor with the family at Aunt Jil ian"s. Now that she was four she had to dress like a young lady and sit on the couch, not talk to her cousins Raymond and Ruth. Everyone would be dressed up. Cousin Ruth, who was sixteen, wore nail polish and lipstick and drank long- stemmed gla.s.ses of wine. Why would she do al that before she was grown up and had to? Her father and Uncle Stephen drank highbal s and talked about what they"d read in the papers, and Aunt Jil ian and Emmy talked about the food they bought and clothing styles.

Eighteen-year-old Cousin Raymond was, her mother said, portly, and he tried to join in the conversation with the older men, smoking and with a drink in his hand too. His father said he would learn to drink responsibly by doing it at home. Amelia was never going to drink and get loud. Cousin Ruth would ask what grade Amelia was in and tel her what she could look forward to as a big girl at Dutchess Academy. Then it was usual y time to eat roast beef, scal oped potatoes, and green beans in sauce, which was a lot better than listening to Cousin Ruth"s dumb stories about trying to get a boyfriend.

She"d wonder if someday she was real y going to have a little Amelia or a Ruth and Raymond of her own, with some man like Uncle Stephen. She gagged on her green beans. The sauce tasted like sour milk. She wasn"t going to spend her life sitting in parlors with boring people. But what else was there? Did kids one day give in and turn into parents? She wouldn"t, that was for sure. And she wouldn"t cook scal oped potatoes or shop at Bonwit Tel ers or go to the philharmonic. She would run. She would play games. Suddenly she knew what she wanted to be: a New York Yankee! When it wasn"t summer she"d teach the little kids to play games like she did now, teach them to play basebal like Mickey Mantle.

After dinner she couldn"t climb the trees in the yard because she was stil in the Sunday dress Emmy bought last week. She couldn"t race anybody because her cousins were too fancy-pants. While the grown-up laughter and the record player inside got louder and louder, she lay on the porch swing playing ghost and thought about what she would do, who she would be like, if she would live in the city or upstate in Dutchess. She had no idea.

She bounced her pink Spaldeen down the wood porch steps and back up, down and back up again and again. She chal enged herself to do it perfectly: one bounce per step, no skipped steps, hit the middle of each step. When she got al that right she had to bounce higher and use the same rules. Then harder, higher-the bal went into a p.r.i.c.kly bush. It didn"t have any leaves, so she could see it.

The front door opened. She was trying to get out of the bush. Her dress was stil caught on so many stickers. Emmy"s face looked like she was watching horror movies on TV. She didn"t say anything to Amelia. She only turned around and slammed back into the house.

Amelia felt like the nightmare she always had of free-fal ing through a hole to China, screaming "Emmy! Jarvy!" and they had no arms to catch her. But she wasn"t fal ing. She was stuck.