The Girls in 3B by Valerie Taylor

Author:Valerie Taylor [Taylor, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558617629
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY

16“GOOD LOOKING?” BETTY PELECEK SAID. SHE looked at Barby over the rim of her coke glass, her lips twisted scornfully. “I guess she’s all right—if you like that kind. I like normal people myself.”

Through Barby’s mind there flashed the names of half a dozen hidden disabilities—TB, cancer, leukemia, all the names that flashed at you from billboards and magazine pages. She said weakly, “Normal?”

“Sure, she’s a Lesbian.” Barby’s expression was all the answer she needed. “Don’t you know what a Lesbian is? It’s a woman who likes other women.”

“Well, I like other women. Don’t you?”

“To go to bed with, stupid. Instead of men.”

“But I don’t see how—” She ran through her considerable knowledge of the relationship between men and women. “I mean, what do they do?”

Betty shrugged. Either she didn’t know, or, more likely, she considered it an unfit subject to discuss at a drugstore counter. “They find ways,” she said darkly. “They’re not like other people.” She gathered up her handbag, gloves and packages, preparatory to getting down from the high stool. “We better get back. She’ll give us both hell if we’re late. Unless,” she said maliciously, “you’re teacher’s pet or something.”

Barby frowned. Betty sounded so positive; surely you couldn’t make up a thing like that, and yet she didn’t see how it could be possible. Fragments of talk, ignored at the time; allusions in books; clinical-sounding magazine articles—this might explain a great deal she had ignored or dimly wondered about. “Anyway,” she said, “I don’t think Miss Gordon could be one. She looks like anybody else.”

“You can’t always tell. Sometimes they dress in men’s clothes. But other times you can’t tell them from ordinary people.”

“Well, but—what people do is their own business.” She fell silent, knowing that Betty didn’t agree. When someone in the department got married it was Betty who made a note of the date, to compare it later with the arrival of the first baby; she seemed to know what every girl in Blouses and Sportswear did over the weekend and which ones were sleeping around, with married employees were two-timing their husbands and which of the floor managers and department heads got fresh with the girls. Her gimlet gaze frightened Barby, conscious as she was of all she had to hide. She tried to avoid Betty, and when there was no way to avoid a coke break or lunch hour with her, she breathed easier when it was time to get back to work.

She looked at Miss Gordon with new curiosity when they reached the store, half expecting to discover some disfigurement she hadn’t noticed before. But Miss Gordon looked quite ordinary: neat, attractive, with a pleasant smile. In her dealings with the other supervisors and the salespeople she was both relaxed and capable, as if she knew her value to the company and, at the same time, recognized an obligation to do her best. Her girls didn’t loaf when she was around, didn’t sneak off to the washroom for a smoke or spend their time visiting, but Barby had never heard her reprimand anyone.

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