Sappho's Bar and Grill by Bonnie J. Morris

Author:Bonnie J. Morris [Bonnie J. Morris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612940984
Publisher: Bywater Books
Published: 2017-06-07T04:00:00+00:00

“You made it. Come and eat. Welcome!” It was Isabel’s voice, Isabel gently removing the ring from her hand, and Hannah sputtered out dust and inhaled, gasping. “Here.” Isabel held a glass of lemonade to her lips. The shadowy figures around Hannah turned into Yvette, Moira, Dog, Letty, and Trale, and the scent of potato salad rose from a picnic table. They were in the parking lot outside of Sappho’s Bar and Grill, with the first town fireworks breaking loudly overhead and hoots of excitement from the tank top-wearing tomboys gathered for holiday barbecue.

“But what—Tubman, in her wagon—that bus to Michigan. Wait, are we safe here?” Hannah mumbled, stupefied, and her friends gazed quizzically back at her, until Moira relaxed into an expression of understanding. “Yeah, you went to that revival thing! Still in that outfit, too, huh? I’d be shell-shocked myself. Relax; let’s get you changed. But look who followed you here. Here where it’s safe.”

Standing behind the long barbecue table was the young, buff Asian woman Hannah recognized from the mystery bus she’d just been riding, from the “ex-gay” group at the conference. They blinked at one another. “Hello,” said the guest. “I’m gay. I mean, I’m Grace.” Isabel walked over and dropped her ring into Grace’s lemonade glass, and then just once, swiftly, ran a finger around the rim, which released a humming, singing noise. It released the music notes of an old anthem. Much older than the one by Katharine Lee Bates.

Shivering, despite the very warm evening, Hannah peeled off her borrowed church clothes and reassembled herself, adding layer by familiar layer until she was in her favorite and free-wheeling clothes: surfing jams, Lesbian Equality T-shirt. She looked down at the faux-Polynesian pattern on her surf shorts and reflected that the design, the concept, the association of surfing as freedom had all been seized for Americans from Queen Liliokalani’s time. That the woman-loving equality in her shirt slogan had been lived out more than a hundred years earlier by the educated lesbian who penned “America, The Beautiful,” and that Independence Day had done nothing to free the slaves or advance women’s rights in the new Constitution, just as Abigail Adams had predicted. Thomas Jefferson had gladly written of freedom as that which man could not live without, fathering a nation while simultaneously fathering children through a young slave woman he owned. Freedom: It had trickled down incrementally to the women of America through time—women who had not dared to know each other, who had been told that God forbade their speaking out.

But now the path to freedom was a path for gay rights, too. The binding power of religion was loosening in her own era, despite the angry rally she had infiltrated today. Hannah looked at Grace, beaming over the barbecue, newly released from the folly of trying to be ex-gay. Grace was wearing Isabel’s ring, which had turned into a freedom ring with rainbow gems sparkling from her brown hand. And Grace nodded toward her and said, “You don’t have to go too far to find new family.

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