Originally mailed on March 30, 1996

Louella has found a new house, and has an accepted offer on it contingent on selling her old house. The market is good for sellers right now, so keep your fingers crossed. She doesn't want to lose this new house; it only has two bedrooms, but the previous owners raised a whole passel of kids in it and in the process finished the attic and part of the basement, and added a small utility room off the kitchen with laundry hookups and a half bath, so it has a lot of living space for its size. She's going to let the boys use the attic for a playroom, since the only way into it is up a very steep and narrow staircase at the back of one the bedroom closets. She figures when they get older one of them can move upstairs, but for now they are going to share a bedroom. The boys are excited because she had told them they could have bunkbeds if they had to share a room, but of course they've already started fighting about who gets the top bunk, and Louella says if they can't find a peaceful way to reach an agreement they can just have twin beds and that's that.

Splash took my good advice and went to a different advisor, and got some help deciding about her future. I'll give you a chance to guess: what's the answer for a college senior so terrified about entering the work force that she's having nighttime panic attacks? Yup, it's grad school. She's applying to start in January in a program in -- here's a new one to me -- rehab engineering. It's apparently a fairly new field, very hands-on applied engineering, creating adaptive devices for people with disabilities. She might end up working on mass-produced products, or doing one-on-one consulting with individuals about their specific needs, and fabricating tools to help them. Let me try to think of an example... OK, suppose a person with cerebral palsy were having trouble inserting diskettes into her computer because of tremors in her hands; she might talk to a rehab engineer who would make her a stand to support the diskettes and hold them steady as they're inserted into the drive. Splash is much relieved to have discovered an engineering field that will let her do work she likes to enhance people's abilities, instead of ending up in, say, the auto industry, which she refers to as "that atmosphere-destroying, public-transit-busting tool of the devil."

This new plan means Splash will (assuming she's accepted into the program) be leaving town next winter. I must say I'll be sorry to see her go, but not as sorry as I would have been a month ago. In fact, there's a piece of me that sees it as a life-uncomplicating relief. Why a relief? Because I've met someone.

Early this month sometime (all right, it was March 3, I made a note of it in my calendar), I stopped by Grandma's as I was out doing errands, just to say hi and to see if she needed anything, and I noticed that Flopsy was not in the yard and did not come to greet me at the door, which is quite unusual because Flopsy adores me, if I do say so myself. So I asked Grandma, "Where's Flopsy?"

Grandma said, "Oh, Nona took her for a quick trot down to the park."

I asked, "Who's Nona?"

Grandma said, "She's a fine upstanding Christian lady who is also involved in planning the Christian Women's Conference we're having this summer. She and I are on a committee together."

I said, "Oh, does she go to your church," picturing of course another one of Grandma's white-haired pink-cheeked bake sale cronies.

"No," Grandma said. "She's from one of the other churches that's involved in the conference. She and I just met at the last planning meeting, but we're in charge of setting up a panel on sexuality and she's over here to work on it. We got bogged down in trying to decide whether we could in good conscience pack the panel with enlightened folks or whether we had to give equal space to the nutcases -- I mean, well-intentioned but confused souls -- who think gay men and lesbians are called to a life of celibacy, or that homosexuality is a compulsive behavior that can be overcome by prayer. We want all Christian women to feel welcome but we don't want to have to subject ourselves to offensive mis-use of Scripture, and we have a secret agenda to educate conference attenders. We nearly called the conference the Feminist Christian Women's Conference but decided to leave feminism out of the title so we could hook the women who might not be comfortable with that label. It's a trap, but a loving one. Well, we couldn't decide what the best thing to do about the panel was, so we decided to take a break, and I'm fixing lunch while Nona walks Flopsy. Isn't it funny how people who don't have dogs of their own think it's such a treat to take one for a walk? I say, try doing it 365 days a year and see how much of a treat it is then. I do take advantage of such people, though -- like the kids in the neighborhood who think walking a Dobermann/Rotty mix makes them look tough and cool. I swear, when school's out Flopsy gets walked two or three times a day sometimes. Of course, the kids don't think 'Flopsy' is the right name for such a tough-looking dog; they call her 'Flopzilla' and she answers to it just fine."

I said, "Hm. So what makes this Nona interested in doing the sexuality panel? Obviously she's not one of the misguided souls; does she have a gay kid or something?"

Grandma said, "No, Nona's daughter is straight and her granddaughter is too young to have declared a preference. Nona is a lesbian. Do you want to stay for lunch? We're having Leftover Smorgasbord: your choice of fried chicken, spaghetti, or pot roast."

I said, "Well, I have some more errands to run and thought I'd grab a burger while I was out," and through the kitchen door came Flopsy and Nona. I took one look at Nona and finished, "but I'd love to stay."

Grandma, who doesn't miss much, said, "Uh-huh, I know how you love my pot roast. Nona, this is my granddaughter Harriet."

Nona is a great big woman with salt-and-pepper hair done up in short fat braids all over her head, and she's a real dark brown with kind of a reddish undertone, though I didn't notice the reddish undertone until I got right up next to her and her skin color made the yellowy tinge to my beige stand right out in contrast. When I first saw her at Grandma's she was wearing a bright orange dress with yellow-and-red striped trim, and an enormous labrys on a chain with an enormous crucifix-absolutely striking, especially to someone who never wears a color brighter than gray. She smiled at me and these deep deep dimples appeared in her cheeks, and I was just swept away. So of course I put my foot right in my mouth. I said, "Nona, it's so nice to meet you. You hardly look old enough to be a grandmother."

She stopped smiling. "Well, I've got a grandbaby, so that makes me old enough to be a grandmother, which means this is what a grandmother looks like."

I said, "Ya got me there. That's the same thing I always say when I hear 'So-and-so doesn't look like a lesbian.' I think, 'This person is an idiot,' and say, 'Well, So-and-so is a lesbian, so behold what a lesbian looks like.'"

She said, "Yeah. And I'm thinking of Gloria Steinem saying, 'This is what forty looks like'"

I said, "Yeah, but I was always pretty ambivalent about Gloria. I mean, would she have been so triumphant about it if she hadn't been skinny, blonde, and wrinkle-free?"

Nona said, "And white."

I said, "Exactly. I mean, on the one hand, her message was that forty is not over the hill, it's a woman in her prime. But on the other hand, she was saying, 'It's OK to be forty because you can still conform to the Universal Patriarchal Beauty Standards.'"

Nona said, "I should get on a magazine cover, saying, 'Hey, Gloria, this is also what forty looks like: fat, black, and going gray fast."

I said, "And every bit as beautiful," and she rewarded me by dimpling again.

That was when we started to hit it off. Grandma said later that it was quite sickening to have heavy flirtation and innuendo going on in her kitchen, with her granddaughter involved, no less. For instance, Grandma asked her what piece of chicken Nona would like, and Nona said, looking right into my eyes, "I'll have a breast, Miriam. I'm in the mood for some white meat."

I thought, "No way does she mean by that what I think she means. First, it's tacky and second, it makes reference to race. That can't be OK. Can it? I'd better just play it cool." But the next thing I know, I'm telling Grandma to please hand me a thigh.

Grandma said, "Are you sure? You've never eaten dark meat before."

I said, "Well, I think it's about time. I imagine it will be quite tasty," giving Nona the same look she'd given me.

I'll spare you any more disgusting details of our flirtation, except to say that many references were made to pasta with white sauce and drinking coffee black. I would never have played such games with color if Nona hadn't started it -- she was just being outrageous and silly, but even following her lead I was afraid I was edging close to saying something racist. You know, like when you get caught up in fun teasing and are the doofus who takes it too far? But I guess I did OK because by the time I left Grandma's I had a date to cook dinner for Nona later the same day.

Fortunately, I squelched any impulse to serve Ethiopian food or barbecue spare ribs, and made a simple steak in mushroom sauce with salad and potato, and it was fine. Though I couldn't resist serving Black Forest Cake for dessert.

Over dessert, Nona showed me pictures of her daughter and granddaughter. Her granddaughter is only a few weeks old, and her daughter is 24. Nona said, "So you can probably do the math."

I said, "Yup. What was it like having a baby at 16?"

She said, "What do you think? Hard as hell. We lived with my mother until she died of breast cancer, right about my age. My mother had me at 17 and was single all along. I must say I'm just as happy my girl managed to wait until she was older and married. We had a terrible scare when she was 15 and missed her period. Spent a couple of weeks praying hard over whether either of us could stand it if she had an abortion -- I'm for reproductive rights but when it's in the family you can't pretend it's not something to grieve over -- but it was a false alarm. Scared her off sex for a few years, so it was a blessing ultimately."

I said, "When did you come out?"

She said, "I had an affair with a woman not long after my mother died, so I knew then, but I was just homophobic enough to think I shouldn't be doing things like that with a child in the house, so I stayed in the closet til my girl was 18."

I said, "That must have been hard."

She said, "Yeah, but I've made up for it in the six years since! My daughter is just fine with it and says she would have been at any age. It just took me a long time to work out a peace with my religion, and I'm still trying to negotiate a peace with my church. That's one reason I wanted to get involved in this conference, to meet open-minded Christian women from other churches and to open the minds of my own church sisters. I have support in my church, but there're also folks who cling to the worst Old Testament scripture, and other folks who disapprove of homosexuality because they think it further weakens the black family or undermines the authority of the black man or contributes to the genocide of the race by reducing the birth rate. I say, 'I've done my part for the birth rate, so let me enjoy myself now,' but some of those folks rival the Catholics in their interpretation of 'Be fruitful and multiply.'"

I said, "I admire the way my Grandma hangs in with her church and challenges them all the time, but I choose to avoid this whole conundrum by not having any religion."

Nona said, "Well, you're sure giving something up there, if you ask me, but I never proselytize on a first date. You got a lover?"

I said, "I have a kind of on-again/off-again girlfriend. She's very young and committed to non-monogamy so sometimes I see a lot of her and sometimes she's infatuated with someone new and she maybe calls me once a week. She tends to fall in and out of love with me depending on the phase of the moon, and she'll be leaving for graduate school in January. I love her but for a number of reasons I've tried not to get too attached, you know?"

Nona said, "I know. I guess, though, that the point of my question was really: is there any reason I can't take you to bed right now?"

I said, "I keep forgetting to make the bed, the cats sleep in it all day, and it's shedding season."

Nona said, "I'm not allergic."

Tomorrow we celebrate four weeks and I've been head over heels just about every minute of it. I've been winning Nona over a bit more slowly. Apparently she's quicker to give her body than her heart. We're in that excruciatingly suspenseful phase right now where no one has said the three magic words but I think we're both thinking them.

There have been some hints. The other day I was talking to Nona about some of my worries about race. I'm afraid it's bad for Nona to be involved with a white woman, even a well-intentioned, trying-to-be-anti-racist white woman like me. I'm afraid I have ways of hurting her I don't even know about, like growing up white in a racist society planted little land mines all over me that I can't know about until they blow up -- and Nona's the one who'll get hurt. I talked to Nona about it, and she said, "I get so exasperated with you, Harriet, You worry about things it's none of your business to worry about, like whether I'll get hurt. Do you think I can't take care of myself? Do you think I never met a white person before? Do you think I never loved a white person before? I'm asking you to chill out."

My heart just jumped. Did her saying that mean she loves me? Or does it just mean she's loved some other white person in the past? Doesn't the way she phrased it imply she does love me, like if you said, "It's not like I've never driven a stick shift before," the implication would be that you were about to drive one again? Or does "love" in that context just mean "slept with"? I am mad with love for this woman and dying to tell her so but I am just plain too chicken. I'm waiting for her to say it first. I think she'd say it if she felt it; she's not exactly the shy type.

I did not chill out. She may have loved a white woman before but I've never loved a black woman -- not as lovers, you know -- and I don't want to mess up. And not just for her sake. I don't want to have to face the sudden revelation of my hideous racism. Grandma says, "Harriet, there's very little you can't get through with common courtesy and keeping your mouth shut when you're unsure of yourself. As the Queen told Alice, 'Curtsy when you can't think of anything to say.' You'll be fine if you just think before you speak or act."

There's more to it, though. I even worry that the way I love her is racist, that somehow I'm attracted because I think she's colorful and exotic, or because she's a type of woman I've always admired, fat black powerful women comfortable in their bodies, comfortable taking up space. For instance, the other night we went to see Waiting to Exhale at the second-run theater -- Nona had seen it before but wanted to take me. And Nona was talking back to the screen, sharing wisecracks with other black women in the audience -- women she didn't even know. I thought, "Nobody ever told them to keep their mouths shut." I admire Nona's boldness but I want it to be Nona herself I admire and love, not Nona as a stereotype.

Nona says, "Harriet, I am asking you again to chill out." She's not the least bit frightened of me, but I can't shake the feeling that maybe she should be.

But here I am taking the best news I've had in months and turning it into a source of consternation and worry. Oh, well -- even if I tried I couldn't do an adequate job of describing the bliss of the past four weeks. I only wish for you that you should have a month like this someday, too.

Love,

© Copyright 1994-1999 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.

Harriet issues index | LouellaMail home page