I hurried to History class, and got there just before class began. Isabel walked in a moment later, and sat down beside me. I smiled into my hand, not wanting her to know how happy that made me. We were working on Ancient Greece and Rome right now, and today we were focusing on how it would've been like to grow up in that time period. It was actually rather disturbing and sad- especially if you were a woman. When a baby was born, the father had the right to decided whether he or she would live or die. Girls were killed much more often than boys were. Girls “belonged” to their father until they were married, starting at age thirteen. Once they were married, they “belonged” to their husband, who was often much older than they were. It was not uncommon for a fifteen your old girl to marry a twenty-five year old man. Women never owned anything, not the house or the land. They were responsible for raising the children, running the household, doing the cooking and cleaning or managing the servants. They had to obey their husbands and hardly had a life of their own. They were not taught or schooled, this was saved for the boys. The boys had their hands full of course. In Rome, they was a desperate need for boys in the field and work place. Ploughing and other such jobs had to be done, so even boys only attended school for a few years. As we were reading about all this, I wondered at how drastically different everything was then compared to how it is now. Thought we were still working on equal rights, women were generally treated fairly and equally. We attended school (obviously), didn't “belong” to anyone, and it was, thankfully, illegal to murder your child. We shared ownership with our husbands, and we didn't have to marry, not at age fifteen, not at all. It made me really think about how far we'd really come, and of course, how far we still had to go. Though most had equal rights, not everyone was treated equally or fairly. There was still far too much discrimination going on in America. Gender, race, sexual orientation... the latter was one of the worst. Not only were there no equal rights for homosexuals, but they were openly discriminated against. It was awful.
*****
It wasn't really supposed to happen. It wasn't the plan. It wasn't how I thought it would be. It was better. It was way, way different. But it did happen. No, not sex. Falling in love. Her name is Isabel. Izzie. Iz. We sat together in History. It was basically the first time I met her. Or noticed her, really. I mean I'd seen her around before, but barely. She worked hard to keep under the radar, and she was good at it. Our college was actually pretty good about accepting homosexuals, but that wasn't why she went unnoticed. We were in our junior year, graduating was ever-present in our thoughts, daunting. A goal, a weight, a hope, a promise, call it what you will, but it was always there, all the time, a hoop we knew we had to jump through. If we didn't, we risked letting down our parents, our family, our teachers, missed not leaving here with our friends, was set back a year or two. Not just the disappointed, but the anger, the feeling you'd never get out. Something had happened to her her in high school that had kept her from graduating the first time she went through senior year, something that happened because she'd been noticed. She never really talked about it, I don't really think anyone even knew except me. She told me the first time we went out. Said she didn't want it cluttering up things, making things complicated, when we were more involved. I asked her if she thought we'd get more involved. She blushed, and I took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly, encouragingly. She didn't answer, and so I told her I hoped we would.
