Coming Out In My Mother's Shadow
By Mary
Before I tell you this tale, you have to understand one thing. I lived my whole life in the shadow of my mother's legend. It was a legend she had created and promoted, but as her daughter, I had no choice but to believe it. After all, I had heard the stories time and again. I had learned more about my mother's escapades than any child truly wants to learn. She had lived countless lifetimes in her 57 years, and somehow I knew that no matter what I did, no matter what I said, nothing could shock or surprise her. Even if I did manage by chance to catch her off guard, she'd never let me see it. She'd had plenty of practice being blasé, for I lived and breathed solely to test the limits of her nonchalance. But during Easter weekend 1993, I came home with news that I thought would explode her casual façade once and for all.
Sure, my mother was liberal, at least for a Catholic. She had to be, as her litany of ancient sins was monumental. I knew all about the mobster's sons in Galveston, Texas, the married senator and the cage dancing in the '60s. I knew enough to have ammunition should she finally decide to hit the roof, but I think inside I knew I wouldn't need it.
This holiday had been a gentle one. Our afternoon had been filled with the pedestrian: the small family gathering, the meal that was always too much, the leisurely cleaning up afterward. Now came the twilight, the time when my mother and I would find time to be alone and to open ourselves to one another. Our conversations ranged wide, they went everywhere and nowhere. I couldn't tell you exactly where our talk began that evening, but I certainly recall how it ended.
After hours of meandering, I came at last to what I thought was my own personal bombshell. We were seated in the rundown living room of the tiny farmhouse where my parents lived when finally I managed it, "Mama, I want you to know something about me, something that has taken me a long time to figure out. I'm bisexual."
There. It was said. In that millisecond of silence that followed, I wondered if it would have been easier to tell her I was lesbian. That would have had a greater ring of finality to it, even if it weren't true.
I didn't have much time to ponder this, though, because my mother, without missing a beat, chimed in with her soft, Texas drawl, "Oh, honey, that's all right. So am I!"
Suddenly, the pressure inside my head was unbearable. My eyes felt as though they wanted to leap from their sockets to the worn carpet below. My mouth went dry, and I wheezed, "What?"
A one-word query to my mother always invited lengthy explanation. It seems that in her 20s she had two female lovers, one was her best friend and the other was a nurse in one of the many state hospitals where my mother had been a patient. Mama had been quite the beauty in her day. That beauty combined with her natural manic-depressive charisma was an irresistible combination. These two women, whose names I can no longer remember, fell victim to my mother's inevitable charm. They both professed their undying love to her, and Mama, notoriously unable to reject a suitor, granted them their wishes. Apparently, these women had not been able to hold her affections for long, for she went on to marry a long string of men. She confessed the reason for this with her classically painful earnestness, "I just had to go back to men, honey, because I couldn't stand sex with a woman!"
There was no way I could counter this one. My only hope for redemption was that I possessed a battery of information about human sexuality gathered in preparation for this discussion, coming to it as I did ready to answer any question she might fire at me to challenge the validity of my newly discovered identity.
"Mama, you aren't bisexual!" I asserted, "You were just experimenting. It happens to lots of straight women. You tried it, and you didn't like it, and you went back to what you did best!" I gazed at her with all seriousness, trying to set her on the path of right thinking.
A hand fluttered over her heart as she exclaimed in apparent relief, "Oh, thank God! All these years I've been thinking I was queer!"
There was nothing to do but put my face in my hands and stifle the laughter that was threatening to shatter what I had vainly hoped would be a tender moment. Mother was plainly confused by my amusement. I just beamed up at her, grabbed her and gave her a tremendous hug, "Oh, Mama, I love you so much."
What else could I have possibly said?