Mean Little Deaf Queer: A Memoir by Terry Galloway

Author:Terry Galloway [Galloway, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Personal Memoirs, Social Science, LGBT Studies, Gay Studies, People With Disabilities
ISBN: 9780807073315
Google: cnpqjwcBkEgC
Amazon: 1522632425
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2010-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

Shhhhhh!

When Tenley and I were still little, after Gail had moved to New York and we were left alone with our parents, those two would sometimes disappear together. Tenley and I would be downstairs watching cartoons and then somehow become slowly aware that our parents weren’t where they should be—not in the kitchen, not in the backyard, not on the couch reading. Like ferrets sniffing the air, sensing a coming storm, we’d scamper up the stairs to their bedroom. I’d give the knob of their locked door a hard shake to confirm our suspicions. Then we’d plop down on the carpet and call out in a singsong, “We know what you’re doing!” There was never any response that I could hear or Tenley remembers. We’d sprawl on our bellies and peek beneath the door to see what we could see, and seeing nothing, we’d stick our fingers under and wiggle them in greeting. We wanted in on that mystery. I have no idea, never asked our parents, if our games interrupted their enjoyment of each other. I do remember Mother flinging open the door once and barking, “You two!” But then laughing. She was in her long peach robe and when we barreled past her we saw our daddy sprawled out on the bed, dead to the world, a sheet pulled over his body, a pillow for extra protection over his vulnerable midsection. Tenley and I jumped all around the room, pretending to be grasshoppers, then followed our mother into the bathroom as she freshened her lipstick and combed her hair.

A lot of my friends aren’t comfortable thinking of their parents as having desires. When they talk about their mothers, the image that pops into my mind is my Granny Doris, hair back in a bun, always in the kitchen cooking up meals for the family or in her living room accompanying herself on the piano while singing hymns in her bright, clear soprano. She died in her sleep at age eighty-six just hours after she had awakened in the hospital to find her youngest daughter, Sue, at her bedside. “Sue,” she said, “go on home, honey. I’m having the most wonderful dream.” After her funeral, my sisters and I were sorting through a small Whitman’s Sampler box full of letters Granny had kept through the years. At the bottom of the box was a strip of four black-and-white pictures in a vertical row, pictures of my grandparents when they were still just Chuck and Doris. Maybe it was simply the contrast—she achingly precise in her light-haired, smiling beauty and he square jawed, with lips so thick their weight pulled his mouth into a scowl; maybe it was how tightly he held her or how deeply she leaned her body into his, but there was no denying it when Gail said, “You can feel the sex between them.”

Their daughter, my mother, had been the black sheep of her family, defying church rules that banned makeup and dancing and skirts above the ankles.

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