Juliet Takes a Breath (23 page)

All of Maxine's stuff—clothes, records, and pictures—were gone. Whatever imprint she'd left on the house had been erased. I felt it the second I walked in, I know that sounds weird, but it was hyper real. Have you ever just known that someone was gone? Without a call or anything? That's what it felt like.

Harlowe put my bag by the staircase to the attic. She ushered me into the kitchen and proceeded to cook me a meal. That's when the words spilled out of her. Maxine moved all of her belongings out of Harlowe's house the day after the reading at Powell's. They were no longer partners. Harlowe wept without pause. It'd been a long time coming and with everything that happened, Maxine saw no reason not to make the split official. They'd put up a good front for me, even had themselves convinced that it was all going to be okay, that Maxine wasn't falling hard for Zaira, that Harlowe's white privilege wasn't an issue for Maxine, and that they were just as in love now as they were when they met on a dance floor so many years ago. Harlowe admitted to being intimate with Samara behind Maxine's back. None of it was pretty. Harlowe disrespected their honesty clause physically, and Maxine had done it emotionally.

Zaira and Maxine remained partners, but Harlowe wasn't sure if they were primaries now or not. She was ashamed of herself but also angry that she'd been judged. Neither Maxine nor Zaira waited after the reading to talk to Harlowe. They both left without a word. Harlowe didn't think she'd be welcomed at any of Zaira's open POC writing groups anymore. No one had bothered to talk to her about it. Neither one of them asked for her side of the story. Harlowe wasn't sure if she could forgive them for that.

I was curious about how Harlowe's interpretation of events would be different from mine. Zaira and Maxine knew that what Harlowe said about me was inappropriate and kinda fucked up. If they didn't want to talk to Harlowe, it had to be because they didn't want to waste the energy. That thought alone made me quiet. Damn. I wanted to talk to Maxine and Zaira. Harlowe stopped weeping and continued her story. At no point in her retelling did she ask me how I felt when it all went down. I didn't offer my perspective either. Before Miami, I would have blurted out all of my opinions out. But after being surrounded by a community of people who were committed to each other, to every political cry and hazy love daydream; I couldn't spill my guts to someone who wasn't asking for them.

Harlowe heated tortillas in a pan and burned them. The white rice she'd set to cook on the stove also met a fiery charcoal death. It was impossible for her to cook and tell emotional stories at the same time. The kitchen smelled of
pegao
and rotten eggs. I boiled cinnamon sticks and opened all of the windows to counter the foulness. Harlowe cried again. I encouraged her to sit down and keep talking. She needed to let it all out. I threw away the burnt stuff and started over. I made white rice, black beans and mushrooms. I heated the last two tortillas without burning them. Harlowe thanked me, hugged me. We ate together.

“I've lost my love,” she said. Harlowe wiped her eyes. “And I'm not good at apologies, sweet Juliet. I honestly didn't think I'd said anything wrong or mean about you. But I shouldn't have used you as an example. Zaira baited me and I countered. But even before all of that, my love thing with Maxine was in a rough spot. I'm good at ranting about the world. It's harder to be a participant in it. I've got some work to do if my spirit is ever going to clean. And I'd like to offer you a session of care.”

“A session of care?”

“Yes, I traded my friend Lupe a one-on-one writing workshop for an hour of acupuncture. I got the acupuncture for you.”

“I've never done acupuncture before. Does it hurt?”

“Nope. It's glorious.”

Her apology mixed itself up in personal heartbreak and feelings of guilt about everything from the reading to not being honest with herself about Maxine. It was a lot to take in and still not what I needed. I didn't know how to just dive in and say what I wanted to say without feeling pushy. Ava's harsh but mad real sentiments about Harlowe banged around in my head. Funny how Harlowe was worshipped among one group of gay people and dismissed by another. Or maybe it was gays vs. queers? I wasn't sure of the difference. How had I been so naive? How could anything as huge as feminism be universal?

I had one week left in Portland. Seven days. If I just kept my head down, my ass in the library, and focused solely on my internship, perhaps all of this would be fine and the complications would unravel themselves. Maybe I made things complicated when they didn't need to be. What did Harlowe owe me anyway? Nothing, right? Instead of unpacking my suitcase, I took a long, undisturbed nap.

 

 

 

Harlowe reminded me of her self-care trade: writing for acupuncture. A gift from her to me. I wanted to be thankful or something, but what did I need acupuncture for anyway? Was this some sort of hippie bribe? I asked myself these questions and then felt hella guilty for questioning Harlowe's motives. I hated feeling this way. It was much easier to be in groupie love with her, to keep her on that Pussy Lady pedestal. But I couldn't do that anymore either. I existed in this strange purgatory of love and doubt. Also, I woke up craving a thick and juicy cheeseburger. Was that the first sign of backsliding into the Dark Side? Did Portland even serve cheeseburgers made from real meat? If I agreed to have needles stuck in my body, maybe Harlowe would find me a burger.

I didn't mention the burger to Harlowe. I chickened out when I saw her eating tofu for breakfast. She told me that the acupuncturist was named Lupe and they'd been friends for years. I sat at the table and made myself a cup of coffee. Lupe was married to Harlowe's other friend, Ginger Raine, who was also a writer and preggos with their first child. That caught my attention. I'd never met pregnant, married lesbians before. Harlowe didn't even have to mention acupuncture again. I was excited and curious to meet her friends.

I asked Harlowe to stop somewhere so that I could bring her friends some flowers. Grandma Petalda always told us to bring something when you visit someone's house for the first time. It's an offering of respect and a gift to whatever spirits may live in the house. We picked up some tulips from her weed dealer's garden. Her dealer was a short, tattooed and super chubby woman named Planks. I tried to pay her for the flowers but she wouldn't take any cash. Instead, she slipped a joint into my back pocket and told me to come over anytime. Damn, I loved Portland folks. We hopped in Harlowe's truck and we were off.

Lupe appeared in the doorway holding a silver cane. She walked towards us, her black hair flowing down her back, majestically. She moved with a slow and steady limp. A tattoo of a hammer graced her right forearm. Her other forearm had a railroad spike tattooed down the middle. Lupe, the patron saint of badasses. I wondered if she was Latina or Native or both. I was almost mad at Harlowe for not bringing me to her sooner. Harlowe got out of the truck and rushed over to Lupe. Big hugs all around. I followed and Lupe wrapped me up in hugs too.

“Juliet,” she said, “I've been super excited to meet you. We should go straight to my office so I can poke you, get the energy flowing.”

Lupe's Chicana lilt killed me. I wanted her to talk forever just to hear it. I followed Lupe into her home where I met the very pregnant Ginger Raine. I offered her our bouquet of orange and yellow tulips. She knew right away they were from Planks garden because that's how tight all the Portland dykes are. Or at least that's the joke Ginger made; I liked her immediately.

Lupe led me down a narrow staircase into the basement. A green shag carpet lay under a long table. A faded piece of parchment hung from the back of the hall door. The human body, spliced in half and divided into sections stared at me. Bones, muscles, segments of spine: all of the parts of the body were listed and connected to lines and black dots. Straight lines connected points to explanations. A dot under the right buttock connected to a line ending at “Sciatica.” A dot in the middle of the back connected to “Lumbago.” Next to the English words stood Chinese characters. I studied the acupuncture poster. I'd never thought of my body as cross sections of flesh to be diagrammed and poked. I wondered if that was what Lupe saw when she looked at me.

Lupe told me that acupuncture could cure anything as long as I was open to it. We sat across from each other on the couch and talked about my mental and physical health. Asthma and heartache were my main issues. I didn't know how much I could let out because she was Harlowe's friend. Could I tell her that I also felt hella weird around Harlowe and that I vacillated between loving her and wanting to demand an apology? Oh, and guilt, because from the beginning Harlowe and I have been as honest with each other as we could be. I mean, when did this internship get so skewed anyway?

I felt like Lupe was someone I could trust. I told her about the breakup with Lainie and then I switched gears. I thought about Lil' Melvin and his letter.

“My little brother says he's pyrokinetic. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I know it's connected to fire. Do you know anything about whether or not a person can control fire with their bodies or their minds or is my little brother buggin?”

Lupe stood up with her cane and walked over to the massive bookshelf that ran along the back of the room.

“Fire is inside all of us,
camarada
. Your brother isn't bugging. He probably just feels the pull,” Lupe replied. Her hands ran along the volumes of books, “Fire is a virtue. It's connected to the heart and to joy. And the best thing about fire is its transformative qualities. If your brother feels connected to fire, then it could mean that he's ready for great change and he wants to be the one to do it.”

Lupe pulled a slim book from the shelf and tossed it at me. She said that if he wanted to study how to utilize and shift energy, he'd be studying for a lifetime, which would be beautiful and powerful. But if my little brother wanted to indulge his curiosities, this book was about the practice of Qigong and it was a graphic novel. She told me to keep it.

“Accept it as a gift and an apology,” Lupe said.

I flipped through the book, “Apology for what,” I asked.

“For not finding a way to get you here sooner or checking in on you,” Lupe replied. She pulled out a box of fresh needles. “Harlowe doesn't have the best track record with interns. I mean you're probably on that impossible hunt for unknown women. Ginger and I usually check in, but with the baby on the way, we got distracted. And we heard about the reading, so please keep the book.”

I sat there numb. Once again, the words didn't come. My mind raced. Harlowe had other interns? She said I was the only one. Maybe I was misunderstanding Lupe. With everything else going on in my head, I shrugged it off.

“And Harlowe told us that you're Puerto Rican from the Bronx, and I should have connected with a fellow Latina sooner,” Lupe said. “But for now, let's focus. If you're comfortable, it'd be easier to work on you with your T-shirt off. If not, I can work around it. Whatever makes you feel more relaxed.”

Lupe tapped the massage table and turned to her needles. I slipped off my shirt and lay down on the table. while I prepared for the acupuncture treatment. She stood over me and stuck slim, semi-frightening needles into different spots in my body.

“Deep breaths, Juliet,” Lupe said, as her hands pushed needles into my back to ease the pressure in my lungs.

The sensation the needles produced was strange and exhilarating. At first, I was freaked out by them standing on their own, poking into and out of my skin. But they didn't cause any pain; it was more like small bubbles of tension that eventually subsided. Lupe finished pressing the needles into my skin and told me she'd be back for me. I inhaled and exhaled and got caught in a daydream. Water rushed all around and above me. I was stuck to the sandy bottom of the ocean. My purple notebook hovered in the air, rippling in the light. It burned red and orange. Flames of Pentecost. Voices of everyone I loved and had met on this trip called to me. I couldn't understand them. The water flowed fast but I wasn't afraid.

Lupe returned and pulled the needles out of my back. She offered me a glass of water and told me to move only when I was ready. I laid on the table for another ten minutes too spent to stand. My whole body was relaxed. Damn, I still wanted a cheeseburger though. After a few more moments, I went upstairs. Ginger Raine was sprawled out on the sofa. She rubbed oils from two containers over her massive belly. Harlowe and Lupe sat at the dining room table. Maxine and Zaira sat across from them. Pages and pages of writing were stacked along the table, some typed, some handwritten.

“And that's why kegel exercises are so important,” Harlowe said, as she made marks on one of the pieces of paper.

I stood there stunned. How were Maxine, Zaira, and Harlowe all together at the table? Had I walked into the
Twilight Zone
? Wasn't everyone broken up and angry?

Zaira and Maxine got up and gave me lots of love. I looked from them to Harlowe and back.

“Wait, not to be rude but like how is everyone friends again and working together?” I asked.

They all laughed. I must have lost my mind. What was funny? Was this some sort of hippie Portland therapy session for lesbians?

“Just because Harlowe and I decided to no longer be primary partners doesn't mean that we've also dissolved a decades-old friendships,” Maxine said. “Besides, we've been planning this anthology for months and wanted to get it done before the cleansing.”

The anthology! I'd forgotten all about it. The short story I'd written was still tucked away in my notebook.

“So like it's all good? Just like that?” I looked at all of them, brow wrinkled.