Authors: Felicia Donovan
“Giselle, the people are here!”
Giselle stopped in front of my mirror and slipped on a pair of dangling silver earrings.
“I know. We will go down in a few minutes.”
“But shouldn’t we be down now to greet everyone?”
“Jean can greet them. You and I have to make an entrance. But first, we will pick out a special dress for you.” Giselle rummaged through my closet until she found a sleeveless pink voile dress with a ruffled skirt. “This will look very pretty,” she said handing it to me.
“
Rapidement
, quickly, put it on.”
I liked how the dress fit my blossoming body. I brushed my hair and went over to Giselle’s room, but stopped in her doorway when I saw her. Giselle was wearing a sleeveless, v-neck linen dress with big, bright red geraniums against a white background. Her hair was partially pulled away from her face and secured in the back with a clip with a red flower on it. Her fingers, toenails and lips were all painted bright red. She turned my way and I was aware of the strangest feeling in my chest as if Maman was standing there.
“You look beautiful,
Cherie
,” she said coming towards me. “Do you like that dress?” I kept staring at her. “Etoile?” she said leaning her head closer. “Is there something wrong?”
“I have never seen you wear polish before,” was all I could think to say.
Giselle closed the tube of lipstick and placed it back in a small case on top of her dresser.
“I do not usually, but sometimes I like to. Would you like a dab of lipstick?”
“No thank you.”
Giselle put her hand out to me and brought me over to the long mirror in front of her bed. I stood in front of her. We looked at each other for several seconds, her hands resting on my shoulders.
“You could be mine,” she said quietly.
***
As we descended the stairs, I was aware of heads turning our way and conversations coming to a halt. My feet grew heavy, but Giselle took my hand and led me down.
“Everyone,” she announced as we reached the bottom step, “I would like you to meet Etoile.”
Jean came over wearing tan bell bottom chinos and a blue chambray shirt and kissed Giselle on the cheek.
“You look beautiful,” she whispered.
Eppy broke from the crowd and came over. “Don’t you both look stunning,” she said as she kissed Giselle on the cheek. Giselle cupped her hand and whispered something into Eppy’s ear.
“Sure, I’d love to,” Eppy said. Turning to me, she asked, “How are you, Sweetie?”
“It’s amazing,” another woman said, “She looks just like you, Giselle.”
Giselle put her arm around me and beamed. Many of the women shook my hand as Giselle introduced me to them. The women were of all different ages. Some were dressed up and some were dressed very casually.
“I’ll be damned,” a very large woman carrying a bottle of beer said as she approached. “How the hell did you pull this off, Giselle?” she asked gesturing towards me with the bottle. She was nearly as tall as Jean with very short, nearly buzzed dark hair, and green eyes. She wore a purple t-shirt that was stretched across her wide frame that read, “Join the Lavender Parade” in big letters across the front.
“Etoile,” Giselle said, “this is Susan Weatherby. Susan teaches with Jean.”
The woman switched the beer to her other hand and extended it to me. I shook it and then a young, thin, blonde woman with a string of beads tied around her long, straight hair came over. She was wearing elephant bellbottom jeans with a macrame belt and a roach clip dangling from it. She stood next to Susan Weatherby, who wrapped her arm around her. Susan drew her in and said, “This is Star Mathers. She and I met a couple of weeks ago at a rally in Boston.”
Star nodded up and down many times and said, “What a groovy pad you have.”
Giselle winced. “Thank you. This is my cousin, Etoile. You and she share the same name.”
“Huh?” the blonde girl said.
“Etoile. It means ‘star’ in French.”
“Far out,” she said looking at me.
Giselle shook her head. “If you will excuse me, I need to get some things from the kitchen. Come along, Etoile. You can help.”
“Is that her, Giselle?” I asked as soon as we were inside the kitchen. “Is that Susan the woman you do not like?”
Giselle handed me a tray of appetizers and said, “Sshh. Please, Etoile. Take this tray out and offer them to people.”
Before I took them out, I tried one. It was delicious.
“What is this, Giselle?
“Quiche Lorraine.”
I popped it in my mouth and let the flavors melt. “And that?” I said pointing to another.
“Chicken croquettes. Now go on and let everyone else try them before you eat them all up yourself.”
Giselle grabbed several bowls and filled them with Cheeze Its and Bugles and set them around. I wove through the crowd and offered the tray to everyone. The women were all very nice and asked me about school and what I liked to do.
“I like to read and swim with Jean.”
Jean, who had been leaning against the fireplace sipping a glass of wine, came over and patted me on the shoulder, but many times that night, I saw her eyes search the crowd until she found Giselle, at which point she would break into a smile.
Giselle went out and came back in with Jean’s new Kodak Polaroid camera and gestured to Eppy. Eppy carefully positioned Jean, Giselle and I by the fireplace and took several pictures of us. We all watched as the image slowly appeared on the small square of paper, Jean and Giselle with one arm around each other, their other arms on either of my shoulders.
“Looks like your average American family,” Susan Weatherby said in a loud voice causing everyone to break out in laughter.
Giselle circled around offering drinks and making conversation. Occasionally, she and Jean would end up side by side. At one point, Jean bent forward and whispered something into Giselle’s ear that made her blush.
“It’s an outrage,” I heard a loud voice say and everyone turned to Susan Weatherby, who was standing, beer in hand, addressing a group that had gathered around her. “Two hundred thousand sisters and brothers march through the streets of San Francisco and this chick Anita Bryant gets more air time than all of them combined.”
Many of the women shook their heads.
“Robert Hillsborough is stabbed just steps from his own home and the four kids declare they’ve killed him in Bryant’s name, yet the media is more interested in covering her singing career. This is 1977, for God’s sakes. We’re supposed to have made progress.”
Susan Weatherby stabbed at the air with her beer bottle as Star came and rested her hand on her back. “They can’t catch the Son of Sam, they can’t get a handle on this supposed energy crisis, but two hundred thousand voices are silenced in an instant by the media. And meanwhile, on the home front, our very own myopic Dr. Batchelder continues his lectures to the hundreds of eager and impressionable young minds about the sinking moral decline of society in general, and the campus in particular. I have it on good word from a student that he went so far as to drop the line, ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ in the same sentence as ‘moral ineptitude and other perversions of the sordid type.’”
Many of the women shook their heads.
“I do hope you’ve all remembered to keep the orange juice boycott going.”
I glanced at Giselle who just that morning, had served me a large glass of orange juice with my breakfast.
“It’s the only power we have,” Susan continued, “to hit them in their pocketbooks and make corporate America understand we are a force to be reckoned with.”
Giselle broke away from Jean and brought a tray over to the group gathered around Susan Weatherby.
“Would anyone care for hors d’oeuvres?” she asked.
“And unfortunately for us, Betty Friedan continues to warn of the Lavender Menace,” Susan went on. “This chick should be afraid alright. When she cuts us off from the National Organization of Women and tries to segregate our rights from women’s rights, she’s waging battle. Our only recourse is to continue to infiltrate the bastions of conservatism to make our voices heard.”
“It sounds as if you are going to war with all this infiltrating,” Giselle said as she offered the tray around.
Susan Weatherby was clearly annoyed at having been interrupted mid-stream. She glanced up and down at Giselle for a moment.
“This IS war, Giselle.”
“Have you not heard the new slogan, “Make love not war?” Giselle asked and some of the women snickered.
“Perhaps it’s not as apparent to you, the well-kept wife, that we are indeed at war,” Susan retorted.
I saw the flash in Giselle’s eyes as her comment sunk in. Some of the women awkwardly cleared their throats. Jean immediately withdrew from the group she was with and went quickly to Giselle’s side.
“I think what Giselle is trying to say, Susan, is that…”
“That she’s clueless?”
Giselle’s shoulders stiffened and she searched the crowd for me. She saw me standing there, watching the exchange, and clenched her jaw tightly.
“Not true, Susan, and not appropriate,” Jean said nodding towards me. “It’s a difference of opinion. Surely you can tolerate a difference of opinion without making it personal?”
“It is personal,” Susan said. “That’s the whole point. It is personal to each and every one of us who has to live segregated from society because of the lifestyle choices we’ve made.”
Giselle broke away from Jean and came towards me. “Come along,
Cherie
, it is time for you to go to bed. Say goodnight to everyone.”
The women all said goodnight and several patted me on the back as I moved through the crowd. Eppy gave me a small hug and whispered in my ear, “You are a very lucky girl.” I nodded and went up the stairs.
“Come on, I will tuck you in,” Giselle said as she had every night. I could not imagine going to bed now without her saying good night to me.
Giselle shook her head and tucked the sheet up around me.
“Do not mind them,” she said.
“She said unkind things to you, Giselle.”
“She does not mean it that way. Besides, Jean says she is very jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Of us. Of Jean and I because we will be together forever and she has never had that in her life.”
“But that woman, that Star girl…”
“She brings a different person each time.”
“Oh.”
“It is alright. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. The world would be very dull if everyone saw things the same way,
non
?”
Her words reminded me of something.
“Giselle?”
“
Oui
?”
“Jean took me to the attic today to get the books and I saw your paintings. They are very good.”
Giselle squeezed my knee.
“
Merci, Cherie
, but I am afraid they are not that good.”
“You should sell them. Jean thinks so and I think so.”
“I do not think it would be fair to ask someone to spend their money on those.”
“But they really are good, Giselle. I especially liked the one of Madame Duvais’ shop.”
She gave a little laugh.
“You like that one?”
“Very much, yes.”
“Then would you like to have it?”
“Oh yes!”
“I will ask Jean to bring it down and you can hang it in here if you like.”
“There was another one of Cote Nouveau. It had an old boat in it.”
“
La Camelia
.”
“Yes.”
“That was my father’s boat before he stopped fishing and became a businessman.”
“But I thought you left Cote Nouveau when you were just a young girl?”
“I did.”
“Then how did you paint the picture when you were grown up? Did you go back?”
Giselle smiled. “
Non, Cherie
. I painted it from here,” she said tapping her head. She leaned forward and laid her chin on my knee. “We carry memories with us all of our lives, Etoile. Some are good and some are bad. I have tried to remember the good memories like going into Madame Duvais’ shop with all of the different kinds of cheese and the candy counters. She always gave me extra candy. She was a very kind woman.”
I could not imagine Maman ever thinking of Madame Duvais as being kind.
“Do you ever want to go back?”
“To Cote Nouveau?” she asked sitting straight up. “I do not plan on ever going back to Cote Nouveau,” she said rather abruptly.
“But why not?” I asked.
“I…I just do not. I must get back to the party now,” she said as she kissed me on both cheeks. “Good night
, Cherie.
”
***
In my dream that night, I was walking along the seashore of Cote Nouveau when I stumbled upon
La Camelia
, Giselle’s father’s boat, lying lazily on its side. There was no one else in sight as I walked all around the half-buried vessel. Tracing my hand along the wooden planks, I let my fingers slip through the holes on its side to explore its inner parts. I could see a little light shining through the other side and I cautiously avoided the ragged edges of the splintered wood as I reached in. Something suddenly grabbed my hand and yanked it back.