full of clever insights and perceptive conversation. And voilà: this, one of the earliest of my grandmother’s many stabs at matchmaking, became also the most easily realized.
Beaky, it turned out, had a younger brother, Norm, whom Huffy looked up when she traveled to New York on one of her scouting trips for the studio; finding Norm bright and congenial, she convinced him to move to Los Angeles after he finished high school, and she absorbed him, too, into the family, moving him into a spare bedroom for a while until she got him enrolled at UCLA and on his feet. Norm and my father became great friends; after my father moved to Greenvalley Road, he convinced Norm and Linda, his new wife, to move across the street; as before with Aunt Baby, my grandmother’s conjuring yet again expanded and tightened the family weave. And the girls and their parents would have been fully absorbed into our extended family except for one thing: for reasons we never understood, my aunt developed a seething dislike of Norm, Linda, and—especially—the girls. Even on this day of all days, all she had to do for her face to turn black with disapproval was take one look at Barrie and Wendy as they stepped tentatively into the living room to pay a sympathy call.
As the oldest of the five of us kids, I felt very protective of the girls, but there was no way I could shield them from my aunt’s dark look other than trying, and failing, to stand where I could block her view of them and theirs of her.
The girls seemed uncertain whether they should approach Hank or not. They went for not and received an embrace from Trudy, their aunt, instead.
Hank had moved into an armchair. She was no longer rocking back and forth, but then she didn’t have anyone to rock with her. She was still a magnet for everyone’s attention—she had no need for a black turtleneck, or a black anything else. The grief was just pouring off her, like rain. Was grief always like this? My aunt was undergoing a very private experience in a very public setting. Everyone was keeping an eye on her, wondering when she would again erupt. The room was taut with anticipation.
In the armchair she was sitting upright, talking to our family doctor. Her eyes had vanished behind her largest pair of sunglasses. My uncle was standing behind her with one steadying hand resting on her shoulder.
Dr. Derwin said, “I have never had a patient, or known a woman, quite like Senior. It’s hard to think of your family without her …”
From behind my aunt’s sunglasses tears began to shower across her cheeks as a sound formed itself deep in her chest. A moan came up out of her, and another, and soon she was howling again and trembling so violently that she slipped out of the chair. My uncle and the doctor drew in to catch her before she hit the floor.
Barrie came over to me and whispered, “I think we should go now.”
“Maybe you should,” I whispered back.
I walked them out. When I returned, my aunt was back in the chair, but she was still shaking.
In the kitchen my mother was on the phone speaking to Dr. Coleman, our pediatrician. “I don’t think it’s healthy for the children to witness such extreme grief,” she was saying into her hand, which was cupped around the mouthpiece.
Later that night, on Dr. Coleman’s advice, she would dispatch me for several days to the deep Valley, to my cousins. My brothers would be sent elsewhere, to similarly far-removed relatives.
“If you want me out of the house, why can’t I just stay at Barrie and Wendy’s?” I asked when she told me where I was to go.
“It’s not far enough away,” my mother said firmly.
I would never forgive my parents for that, for cutting me off from my own private source of oxygen, which was knowing. Knowing and noting.
My father had not yet come inside. I saw him through the large windows, standing at the edge of the lawn, looking out over the canyon, where daylight was slowly leaking from the sky.
I found Sylvia in the guest room. She was sitting patiently on the sofa, as if she had been waiting for me all this time. I sat down next to her, and she gathered me up in her arms. In her arms I could breathe.
“Are you going to die soon, Grandma?” I asked.
She gave me one of those knowing smiles of hers. “Not soon, my darling,” she said. “No, I’m not.”
“You promise?”
“Yes,” she said, “I promise.”
“Hey, you wanna see what Suzie has in her backpack today?”
The backpack is sent flying and soon disgorges, and bruises, the cherished Académie sketch pad. Pencils bounce and scatter. Jane (as in Austen, yes) skitters across the asphalt.
“Suzie’s reading a girl’s book,” observes Alfred, the ringleader. “What a faggot.”
“Suzie is a girl,” says Jared, his sidekick. “Are you a girl, Suzie?”
“Can you guys just leave me alone,” I say firmly. My version of firmly. But my voice—I can’t help it—goes up at the end of the sentence.
“Can us guys just leave you alone?” Alfred echoes. “Sure we can, sweetie. But there’s something we need to check out first.”
Lunch hour at Wonderland Avenue Elementary School, fall semester, fourth grade. Jared wraps his ample arms around me and drags me behind the ball shed—a dreaded, even more unsupervised corner of the school yard. Before I know it I’m flat on the ground, looking up at the giant eucalyptus trees that tower over parts of the canyon and perfume it with their spicy, pungent scent. I will loathe that scent for years—forever.
Jared is a large, heavyset specimen with oily skin. His bottom smashes onto my face; he plants his feet on my hands. Alfred sits on my legs.
“If Suzie is a girl, why is she wearing boys’ clothes?” Alfred muses. “Hey, Suze, why are you wearing those boys’ clothes?”
Before I can answer, think how to answer, he adds, “Why don’t we see what she’s got down there?”
I try to kick them off me, but they settle in like two boulders.
“I’m not touching her down there. No way.”
“You could do it with your foot,” says Alfred. “Your shoe.”
“You can’t be sure what you’re feeling with your shoe,” says Jared.
“We could use a stick,” says Alfred.
“Same problem,” says Jared.
They ponder for a moment while I try to breathe.
“I’ll just do it. I’ll hold my breath or something,” says Alfred. “Here. Take her feet.”
The two of them change places. If I’d had a chance to eat any lunch, it would have come up out of me. Instead a foul taste fills my mouth, and it goes dry.
Alfred reaches for my belt buckle and yanks it open. His eyes glitter (why do they glitter?) as his hand shoots in … and down. And grips. Hard. The pain is sudden and deep, as if there were a live wire running between my groin and my stomach.
Only later does it occur to me to think, If I am the faggot, why is Alfred going beyond grip to exploration?
“She’s got one all right,” Alfred informs Jared. “A small one.”
He makes a show of wiping his hand off on his jeans.
“Maybe she’s a hermaphrodite,” Jared says.
“What’s that?”