I would like to say that I remember everything, that I had picked over the details of that day the way my mother inspects her produce in the grocery store: stopping to push ever so gently on the firm fruits, to breathe in their scent and run her fingertips over their glossy ripeness, not hurrying over her selections but choosing with the utmost care only the very best pieces to bring home. What a luxury to run over my memories in the same way, to pick and choose amongst the sights and smells and sounds of that summer afternoon: the song playing from the booth run by the local radio station, the scent of hot dogs and gyros, the fit and fabric of the clothes we were wearing. It wouldn't be true, though. There is much I have forgotten.
I know that it was hot, but not in any real sense. Only because it was summer, and hot, in the middle of a southern California summer, is always a safe bet. My sister says that Sara was with us that day, but I don't remember that, either.
"What, you just erased her from the memory completely?" she said when I asked her about it a couple of weeks ago.
And I guess I did. I remember bits and pieces, like scenes in a movie, freeze-frames. And feelings. I haven't forgotten those.
I am anxious in the car ride there. I don't know what to expect and I am nervous that I won't know how to act, or what to say. Everything seemed so delicate that summer--like an eggshell, smooth and perfectly formed on the outside. I felt I was always waiting for it to break, for the messy yellow yolk to ooze uncontrollably from the cracks. As much as I feared it, in a way it seemed as if it would be such a relief. To stop waiting for the moment I would drop it, to have the yolk spill out so I could just wipe it up and move on with things already.
I'm not quite sure what to think when we get there. Somehow, it feels like every other parade I have ever been to in my life: there's music, there's food and there are people. I'm struck by the very normalcy of it all, this thing I had anticipated and yet feared, of the way it reminds me, rather ironically, of a Disneyland parade and long childhood days spent watching fairytale characters wave exuberantly from mechanically engineered floats. As if someone had replaced the hordes of perfect American families and tourists pointing rapid flash cameras at everything that moved with an only slightly altered version of the happiest place on earth: couples hold hands, old friends find each other, yell greetings across the crowd, embrace, singles flirt, music blares and people dance in the street.
We weave in and out of crowds and I catch glimpses, broken fragments of conversations, people, booths. I want to stare at everything, to take it all in, to feel like a part of it all. And yet I allow myself only a glance here, a glance there, afraid to stare too long at any one thing; afraid to look as though I am anything other than completely comfortable in this place where I understand nothing. It seems I am slipping away, outside of myself, looking back to watch the way I move and hear the words I speak. That I am at once the actress and the audience member: Look accepting, me, the audience member, instructs. What does that look like?, me, the actress, wonders.
I have waited so long to be a part of this.
She was in the kitchen, making breakfast--eggs, or french toast, maybe? When I was a little girl she taught me how to make it: she never measured and I was in awe of the way she knew exactly how much of everything to add without any cups or spoons to reassure her. We had a special bowl we always used--white, with tiny raised letters that spelled out something in French on the bottom. She let me crack the eggs, beat them with a fork until the bubbles formed, rose up and made the yellowish surface look light and frothy. Now add the milk, she said, just pour until I say stop. I loved the way the vanilla made brown streaks in the whiteness and the smell that wafted up every time she opened the bottle. Taste it yourself, if you don't believe me, she said. It only smells like it would taste good. I shook the cinnamon in, adding a few shakes extra after she said to stop, laughing, hoping she would notice, delighted that she did. We dipped the bread together, the pieces soaking our batter up, dripping a sticky mess on the counter as we lay them in the pan.
Can we put the sugar on yet? I would ask, sticking my hands into the mounds of powdery white snow.
Just wait, silly! They're still cooking, she would laugh as I licked it off my fingers.
I was hyper: bouncing everywhere, my nerves on overdrive. I ran around the living room, flopped down on our couch, inhaled the musty smell of its old fabric, blue and nubby against my face. Sighed. Peered over the back of the couch at her. Got up again. How strange to feel like this around my own sister. I'd always told her everything. In all of my 12 years, full and expansive as they seemed that morning, I'd shared every instant, every thought, every question. The year that this one had been inside me, waiting to reveal itself to her, had eaten a hole inside of me. Now, as always, my stomach was rooted in my feet and I fought back nausea as I pleaded silently for her to make everything OK again.
I don't remember what I said, something biting and sarcastic, with the pain of being excluded for so long, I know. Do you need to ask me something? she said.
No, why? Do you need to tell me something? And suddenly there it was. In a second I knew there was no going back, and for a brief moment the fear of that realization caught me so off-guard I thought I would stop breathing. But of course I didn't, and the relief of having crossed that threshold was so overwhelming that I don't even remember what she said, but I knew I could feel the tension easing out of me, the lies and the secrets and the questions draining away.
I would have thought that the moment she came out to me would have been so profound: I would have thought that I would remember the words she used and the look on her face and what, after that long year of waiting, I would have said when I finally found my voice. But what I remember is lying on the couch, my head on her chest and feeling, finally, like I could really feel her underneath me again. I remember we were laughing and that it felt so good to laugh with her, not the nervous laughter of a little girl who is holding the weight of her whole world on her shoulders, but the real laugher of me and my big sister.
There were so many questions. How do you know? What does it feel like? Why? But I didn't ask her then: I stuck with the safe ones, the ones that would tell her that it really didn't matter to me. That I loved her anyway, more than anything, no matter what the rest of the world thought. But I remember lying on the carpet, listening intently as she told me the story of how her first girlfriend had sung for her at her at an a cappella concert at college. Do you want to hear the song? I've never listened to anything so solemnly as I did to the words of that Van Morrison song. Crazy Love. We lay there, together, on the floor, just listening.
The parade, I know, was filled with drag queens and rainbow flags. Those details are important in some sense, but not really. They've faded away, with all the rest of those memories, until they are only little facts I have filed away somewhere, there but lacking any sense of concreteness. I remember that there was a group of women on motorcycles: it's nothing but an image--black leather, jeans, bare skin and a sign like the one a high school marching band would carry. Dykes on Bikes. I didn't know if I was supposed to laugh.
We were walking somewhere. Were we leaving? I can't be certain. There were people with signs; protesters, waving bibles and shouting obscenities. I don't remember what it looked like but I remember the wave of sickness that threatened to drown me and the conviction that if I could just get down inside myself deep enough, I would be safe.
"It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve you fucking faggots!"
The egg, I thought, was finally breaking. A delicate shell, cracked and then obliterated as a giant fist reached down to smash it. I think I reached for her hand then. Mine would have been cold and clammy in hers, so much bigger--but I couldn't be certain it would hold the steadiness I sought.
"How dare you bring her here! You are evil and you will burn in hell for your sins! God hates you!"
The yolk rushed out, splattered everywhere. Bits of shell, tiny and white, drowning in the yellowish slime. I looked up into their faces and I saw the twisted ugliness of their mouths, contorting around the words they were flinging out, like knives, to stab us. It seemed they were shaking with the strength of their furry, ugly quivers as the sweat rolled off their temples in sticky beads. Putrid. I was afraid that they might eat her.
I remember the desperation of wanting to protect her: it seemed there was hatred hurling toward us from every direction. Would she know I loved her, even if I couldn't stop their insults? That I didn't believe she would burn in hell for who she was? I was wishing we could just lift up, like kites in the warm summer breeze, and float away. A deep breath, in, and I was imagining us floating in and out of the clouds, watching the people below, like ants, so small and innocent a thousand miles beneath.
"God hates you!"
When I close my eyes and try to remember, I can't focus on just the one image. It is overlaid with so many others. I feel the hatred and the fear and the tightness of my stomach all too well. But it starts to blur and the image fades to be replaced by another one: Jen, perpetually sixteen; long, spiral curls that reach down to her back; in her high-school soccer uniform. Jen, helping me get dressed for school; eating cookie dough straight out of the bowl with me; sneaking in to my room to console me when I was punished for talking-back to Mom; explaining her algebra homework to me.
"Creatures of Satan!"
Me and my big sister, making french toast on a Sunday morning. The anticipation as the slices sizzle in the skillet, and me, licking sugar off my fingers before they are even done.
