Late to the Party ✔

21. Thank you for coming out today

Jeanie was a goner.

She was a wild child, according to the old prunes occupying the second and third rows in church on Sunday mornings, a troublemaker in need of a thorough thrashing. Little did they know she already received one every so often, if she'd forgotten to wash the dirt from her nail rims, or came home with a rip in her jeans, or simply said something her daddy disapproved of. Unfortunately, her daddy disapproved of many things. She'd tried to scrub her hands and wear a dress and say her prayers, and still, the iron eyes behind thick-framed glasses flashed coldly at her like she was a sticky piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

She was old enough to understand her daddy didn't love her as daddies were supposed to. So, why try? She might as well skip class if she was going to be punished for it anyway. Either way, he would blanket her back with purple clouds of bruises. At six, she vowed to never let anyone boss her around.

She didn't break her pledge until she met a girl with a diamond smile and eyes bright as the summer sky–formed of pure light and a tad of rascality, Mary wove their fingers together as if her skin wasn't battered and tainted, and Jeanie soaked up every word that fell from her lips, suddenly as obedient as a lamb.

She carried Mary in her heart like a talisman. During freezing nights locked up in a pitch-black dormitory, she buried her face into her pillow and imagined it a wave of blonde hair, so real she could almost detect a second pulse next to her own, and a honey voice whispering stories from Little House on the Prairie in her ear, warm breath fanning over her neck. Pressed into a random kid in the back of a stinking Diesel van, jolted around at every ditch and turn in the road to safety, Mary had cradled her in her arms, muttering sweet nothings. At the end of a back alley, ducked into her coat, Mary had been there to nudge her towards the twinkling disco lights and pumped up music of the bar inside. She'd conjured her up so many times that when she tried one day and felt her slip through the cracks, she almost couldn't believe it.

Now, Jean rambled about her apartment in the dead of night, from the fridge to the sideboard to the creaking staircase leading down to the bar—tracing the collection of memories she'd scattered throughout her world, embedding Mary as deeply into her San Francisco life as she could, which was not nearly deep enough. Pictures sweet and innocent, of two little girls grinning in the back of a truck, pictures bold and novel, of a kiss finally captured for the ages, a love so loud that she'd screamed it through the streets, pictures warm and steady, of Mary, the kids, Mandy and her singing Happy Birthday to an amused Connie, a new kind of family.

Her old family still fit, bounced back to her current family in no time, with deafening applause and suffocating hugs as she stepped into the darkened bar and was met with the entire regular crowd jumping out from their hiding places, framed by a strung-up Welcome home!! banner drawn by Nina in pink Sharpie. She was home, finally, back where she could grow and bloom, and yet — she wished she could show them what she'd found, this hurting piece of her locked up in a little red box, free at last.

That first night back, she danced and drank, laughed and chatted, and felt the small-town tension exit her body in droves. Funny, how quickly she'd gotten used to the disdain stalking her around Medford parking lots and supermarkets. If only Mary could experience what it was like to move about without the judgmental stares of neighbors, to break out of that stifling closet and live with dignity.

Maybe in a few years.

She kept repeating that to herself as she raised her vodka in a toast, tapped beer after beer after beer for faces familiar and new, as she turned off the lights and trudged up the stairs, the buzz of the chatter still echoing in her ears, drunk on the bliss of community, swaying on her feet.