Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 46.2: 1995, Georgina

Chapter 46.2: 1995, Georgina

 

Another day. There was a slight rain, the cars lashing up puddles as they flew past. Going on with their lives. But, it was not all lost because before me there was Cha Cha sitting on my couch again. It was Sunday, a day where she didn't have to work.

I thought her work was strange, because I had never heard of somebody being openly transgender and working in that way before. The first time she told me about her dance school my jaw scraped on the floor and she laughed at me in her gesh gesh manner. On top of that, the co-owner of her dance school was also transgender, but a trans man. 

"Yeah, that's Tango," she had said, pausing in her knitting. "I told you about him before. He was my dance partner in the 70's. Drag king and drag queen, dancing at the club. Strange pairing, but we enjoyed it. Still do."

How the times had changed. I couldn't believe it. But she'd told me not everything was a bed of roses. "There are still times where parents don't like their children being taught by me. Tango doesn't tell anybody he was ever anything other than a man, because he doesn't believe in that. I don't usually tell people about me either, but with me sometimes people guess and when they do I say something because I'm not ashamed. Sometimes when they guess they're very mean about it and they pull their kids from my classes because they don't want them to be taught by 'someone like' me, but that's okay. We've got a waiting list into next year of people who do want their kids taught by us, so Tango says 'pay no mind' so I don't. It does hurt, but there's all these smiling kids. Then there's our adult students who know and they don't care. It almost erases the bad times."

It made me so happy to know how accepted she was, even though there were still people like I had known out there. But it seemed like there were less of them now. Something in me had stirred, a changing thing. A different tide. A lightness, maybe. Like something had been lifted off my shoulders. Was it fear diminishing? I wasn't sure. It was something I had never felt before. If she could do that, then what could I do? But I patted down this thought, however, putting it back in the place that it had come from, the uncomfortable feeling too great.

She had gone on, talking to me about it. I'd come back into the conversation from my thoughts when she was talking about maybe some day she could take me to the studio because that would be such a great honor. She was speaking delicately, and I knew she was being hopeful but her tone told me it might have been just a dream to her at that point. I had wanted so much to tell her I would go, but doing so was also just a dream to me. I was still being pulled back, a rushing feeling of unease setting me into a panic for even thinking about it. I'd felt so guilty.

The sweet smell of the carnations she had brought this time drifted over to my nose, and I breathed in their sugary scent as I sighed in the memory. 

"Its a gloomy day with that rain," she said. This made me snap to attention. Had she been speaking this whole time? Oh no, if she had...

"Hmm?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Its a gloomy Sunday," she repeated, looking up at me with a warm smile. "Like that Billie Holiday song."

"Oh," I said, staring at her. She seemed thoughtful. Her knitting needles had stopped, the scarf she had been knitting for me looking so long. It made my heart pinch, seeing it so long. My heart remembered my promise to her, about the park. 

"That song. Did you know? But of course you wouldn't."

"Hm? What about it?"

"Oh," she said, but her eyes took on a far away look though she was still gazing at me, "I shouldn't talk about things like that."