Coming out from compulsory heterosexual strait jackets is a star quilt of many colors, slowly sewn. A pale blue inner circle of diamonds is her small convertible driving away with my heart in the backseat when I was four. I don't remember her name. I can't ask my mother, as we carry angry silence between us. From hidden photos I found sorting through boxes in the basement as a young girl, I know my first love was a pilot during World War II - a crop duster like my mother, flying over the fields of California with loads of poison. I didn't think to steal and keep the picture of them leaning against a tiny plane in khaki slacks, their arms slung casually over each other, squinting into the light with sunny grins. My father took off after I was born during a fight about money, leaving my mother with none. The sleek pilot courted my mother until the devastating day when she drove away. I knew even then I wasn't allowed to ask why. I'm still coming apart with love of her memory.
A river-green flourish of diamonds, the color of JonnieLee's eyes, surrounds the blue. She took me down to her basement, where we climbed in under the floor by way of an access door to the crawl space. In the delicious darkness she whispered that I needed to rub cream on her breasts so they wouldn't be dry. Oh, did I need to. I was gawky, just ten. She was my goddess, empress and fire. I wasn't good enough to be her friend. She mocked my adoration as we roamed the streets kicking the can or calling out, "Mother may I?" Her Navajo mother was my mother's best friend. I wanted to be JonnieLee, to crawl into her confident, mocking skin and taste her arrogance from the inside.
Spangled with glints of gold are the pieces of Lynne, whose red Irish hair was thick and curly. We played boyfriend (Lynne) and girlfriend (me) on our porches, with old nylon stockings knitted together as my mink stole. Her imaginary red convertible had a real steering wheel we'd found in one of many vacant lots of debris. She loved to drive, cruising very fast, her arm shielding me from the wind.
We practiced kissing for hours, supposedly so we'd be ready for the boys, none of whom ever kissed that well. When she slept over, my mother gave us her bed, because mine was a small and narrow iron cot. Lynne let me touch the beautiful wild thatch of hair beginning below her belly, hair as glorious as that on her head, especially fascinating to me because I didn't have any yet. She guided my fingers to please her, but I was too frightened of the catholic curse of sin to let her touch me.
Years later I heard she wasn't married and had a red sports car, but I didn't pursue her. The simplicity of our explorations couldn't hold the complications of my activism and her comfort. I continue to smile when I see women with that red gold hair, imagine kissing them on a porch, pretending to go very fast.
---Chrystos is a Menominee poet, author of Not Vanishing, Dream On, In Her I Am, and Fire Power. She is the recipient of many awards, most recently an Audre Lorde grant to complete her novel, Mon Oncle, Mon Amour. She has been a proud lesbian since 1964.