either could speak. Laura finally raised herself on one elbow so she
could see Beebo better.
“What’s the matter with me?” she said softly. “I should be taking care
of you. Crying isn’t going to do you any good.” She started to get up
but Beebo caught her, and Laura was heartened to feel the strength in
her arms.
“Stay with me, baby,” she said, almost fiercely.
“Let me clean you up, Beebo. Let me make you comfortable. Please,
sweetheart.”
“Laura, I don’t need anything but you. Just let me feel you lying beside
me and I’ll get over it somehow. I won’t lose my mind. If you’ll just
stay with me. Please.”
There were tears in her voice and rather than make her more miserable,
Laura obeyed. She put her arms around Beebo and cuddled against her in a
way she had almost forgotten.
“Beebo, can you talk about it, darling? Can you tell me what happened?”
“Not now. Not yet.”
“I think you ought to see a doctor. You’ve got some awful-looking
bruises.”
“You’re my doctor.”
“Beebo, I’m scared. I don’t even know what happened to you. I want to
call a doctor,” she said urgently.
“I don’t _need_ a doctor,” Beebo declared.
“Please tell me what happened,” Laura pleaded. She lay at the edge of
the bed, her face away from the floor and the grisly spectacle of the
little dog she had never liked very well and now felt such a horrified
pity for.
“It’s an old story,” Beebo said, her voice tired and bitter, but
curiously resigned. “I don’t know why it didn’t happen to me years
sooner. Nearly every butch I know gets it one way or another. Sooner or
later they catch up with you.”
“Who catches up with you?”
“The goddam sonofabitch toughs who think it’s smart to pick fights with
Lesbians. They ask you who the hell do you think you are, going around
in pants all the time. They say if you’re going to wear pants and act
like a man you can damn well fight like a man. And they jump you for
laughs.... God.”
Her hand went up to her face which was contorted with remembered pain
and fury. After a silence of several minutes while she composed herself
a little she resumed briefly, “So they jumped me. They followed me home,
hollering all the way. I hollered back. I—I was pretty tight and it was
pretty noisy. I should have been more careful. I shouldn’t have brought
them here, but I knew you wouldn’t be home so soon.... I didn’t work
today, baby.” She said it guiltily, and Laura knew it meant she had
spent the day at Julian’s or the Cellar or one of the other homosexual
bars. But she didn’t condemn her or shout, “You’ll lose your job!” as
she would have another time. She only listened in silence.
“So anyway,” Beebo said, after an awkward pause, “I came home early.
About four-thirty, I guess. They just followed me in. Oh, I got in the
apartment all right and slammed the door and locked it. But one of them
came up the fire escape and he let the others in. Gave me this.” She
pointed to the cut under her eye, and Laura kissed it. “I thought I’d
gotten rid of them, baby, but those bastards followed me right up here
and tried to prove what men they are.” She spat the words out as if they
had a bad taste and then she stopped, looking at Laura to see how she
was taking it. And Laura, lying next to her and holding her tight, was
overwhelmed with helpless anger and pity and even a sort of love for
Beebo.
Beebo felt Laura clinging to her and the flow of sympathy warmed and
encouraged her. Finally she said, softly, as if the whole thing had been
her fault and she was ashamed of it, “I’m not a virgin any more, Laura.
Don’t ever let a man touch you.” She said it vehemently, her fingers
digging into the submissive girl at her side and her hurt face turned to
Laura’s. Laura let out a little sob and pulled closer to her.
“Beebo, darling,” she said in a broken voice, “I can’t stand to think of
it. I can’t stand to think of how it must have hurt. I know I’m a
coward, I can’t help it.” And then, in her anxiety to heal the bitter
misery of it, she blurted, “I love you, Beebo.”
Beebo pulled her very close and lifted her face and kissed it
delicately, almost reverently, for a very long time. At last she
whispered, her lips against Laura’s lips, “I adore you, Laura. You’re my
life. Stay with me, stay with me, don’t ever leave me. I can stand this,
I can stand anything, if you’re with me. Swear you’ll stay with me,
darling.”
Laura’s voice stuck in her throat. She couldn’t refuse. And yet she knew
full well she would be swearing to a lie. It made her hide her face in
painful indecision for a moment.
“Swear,” Beebo demanded imperiously. “Swear, Laura!”
“I swear,” Laura sobbed. She felt Beebo relax then with a sigh, running
her hands through Laura’s hair.
Beebo gave a faint little laugh. “I never thought anything so rotten
ugly could have a good side,” she murmured. “But if it’s brought us back
together, I’m glad it happened. It was worth it.”
Laura was shocked. Beebo sounded a little unbalanced. “You can’t be
grateful for anything that horrible, Beebo,” she protested. “You
_can’t_, not if you’re in your right mind.”
“You can if you’re as much in love as I am!” Beebo said, looking at her.
Laura was shamed into silence.
After a little while, Laura raised herself on an elbow. “Beebo, I’m
going to call a doctor.”
“You’re going to do no such goddam silly thing.”
Laura lost her patience. “Now you listen to me, you stubborn idiot!” she
exclaimed. “You’ve been badly hurt. It’s just madness not to have
medical help, Beebo. You know that as well as I do. Don’t argue with
me!” She cut Beebo off as she was about to protest. “Besides,” Laura
went on, “you might want to prosecute them. How could you prove anything
without medical evidence?”
“_Prosecute?_” Beebo stared at her and then she gave a short, sharp
laugh. “Are you kidding? Who’s going to mourn for the lost virtue of a
Lesbian? What lawyer is going to make a case for a poor queer gone
wrong? Everybody will think I got what I deserved.”
Laura stared at her, disbelieving. “Beebo,” she said finally, as if she
were explaining a simple fact to a slow beginner, “you don’t go into
court and say, ‘I am a Lesbian.’ You don’t go to a lawyer and say it.
You don’t say it to _anybody_, you nut! You say, ‘I’m a poor innocent
girl and I was criminally assaulted and hurt and raped and I have
medical proof of it and I can identify the man who did it!’”
Beebo turned on her side and laughed, and her laughter made Laura want
to weep. “Not man, Bo-peep,” she said when she got her breath. “_Men._
Bastards, every last one. There were four of them.”
Laura moaned, an involuntary sound of revulsion.
“No thanks, baby,” Beebo said, her voice suddenly tired. “I’ve got
enough trouble in the world without advertising that I’m gay. I always
knew this would happen and I always knew what I’d do about it ... just
exactly nothing. Because there’s nothing I _can_ do. It’s part of the
crazy life I live. A sort of occupational hazard, you might say.”
Laura pleaded with her. “I just want to be sure they didn’t do you some
awful harm you don’t know about, darling!” she said. “I’m no doctor, I
can’t give you anything but bandaids and sponge baths and love.”
“That’s all in the world I want, baby,” Beebo smiled. “I’ll get well in
no time.”
But Laura was too genuinely frightened to let it go at that. “What if
they come back?” she asked. “Then they’d get us both.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Beebo said and her face became hard. “Because I’d
kill any man who laid a hand on you. Any man. I don’t care how. I
wouldn’t ask any questions. I’d do it with whatever was handy—a knife or
my own hands.” Laura started, staring at her. “No man will ever touch
you, Laura, and live. I swear.”
Laura went pale, wondering how Beebo would react to a marriage between
herself and Jack; wondering how much violence she was capable of. “All
right, Beebo,” she said. “Will you—just tell me one thing? Why won’t you
see a doctor?”
Beebo turned away from her then, petulant as a child. “I haven’t seen a
doctor in twenty years, Bo-peep,” she said.
“Why?”
Beebo sighed. “Because they might find out I’m a woman,” she said
quietly.
Laura covered her face with her hands and cried in silence. It was
futile. Beebo _was_ a woman, no matter how many pairs of pants hung in
her closet, no matter how she swaggered or swore. And while she could
fool some people into thinking she was a boy, there were a lot more she
couldn’t fool, and to them she looked foolish and rather pathetic. But
Beebo was too sick to argue with. Laura was afraid of the way she
talked, of the harsh way she laughed.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning,” she said.
“We won’t talk about it at all,” Beebo said, facing the wall, her back
to Laura. “Where were you tonight, Laura?”
Laura swallowed convulsively before she could answer. “I was at the
movies,” she said.
She waited for Beebo to question her further, but there was no
questioning.
“I guess I’d better wash,” Beebo said. She rolled over and looked at
Laura. “Do you really love me, baby?” she asked, and her eyes were deep
and clouded.
“Yes,” said Laura with a sad little smile, afraid to say anything else.
Beebo gazed at her for a while, returning the smile. “Thank God,” she
whispered, her hand caressing Laura’s shoulder. And then she said,
“Where’s Nix?” She started to get out of bed but Laura stopped her.
“They hurt him, Beebo,” she stammered.
“Hurt him? How?”
“They—darling, I don’t know how to tell you—please, Beebo!” she cried in
sudden fear as Beebo pushed past her. She stopped at the edge of the
bed, staring with huge eyes at her little pet.
“I didn’t realize—it was so bad,” Beebo blurted inanely.
“He’s dead,” Laura whispered.
“Oh. Oh, that was too much. Too much....” Beebo stared at him, her face
almost stupid with sorrow. She didn’t scream as Laura had, or turn away
sick. She just gaped at him for a while with Laura clinging to her and
murmuring, “It’s all right, darling, it’s all right,” because she didn’t
know what else to say.
Beebo got off the bed and went to him, kneeling beside the ruined little
body, and picked him up in her arms.
Beebo looked at Laura with the blood running all over her and there was
grief on her face. “He was just a dog,” she moaned. “Such a little dog.
There was nothing queer about _him_!... And he could talk, too.” She
almost shouted it and Laura waited, trembling, for her to move.
“He was so sweet, Laura,” she said with tears coursing down her face.
“You never liked him much, but he was such a good dog.”
“I loved him, Beebo, he was a part of your life,” Laura protested
anxiously.
But Beebo ignored it. It was half a lie, spoken in affection, but still
a lie. “I could always talk to him and it seemed as if he understood,”
Beebo said. “I know you thought I was crazy. But there were times when I
had to talk to somebody and there wasn’t anybody. Only Nix. I had him
for seven years ... since he was six weeks old.” And she clutched him to
her and wept and Laura looked at her, all bloodied and heartbroken, and
thought, _She feels worse about the dog than about herself_.
“Now that he’s gone ... at least we’ll have one less thing to fight
about.” Beebo looked very pale and odd. “Won’t we, baby?” she said.
“I—I guess so,” Laura said. _She’s cracked!_ she thought. She went into
the living room then, leaving Beebo alone for a few minutes, and called
Jack. He was alone.
“Jack, I don’t know how to tell you. I—they raped Beebo.” Her voice was
low and shaky.
Jack wasn’t sure whether she was kidding or not. He wasn’t even sure he
heard her right. “Lucky bitch,” he said. “I wish they’d rape me instead.
I’m never in the right place at the right time.”
“I’m serious, Jack.”
And when he heard the catch in her throat he believed her. “_Who_ raped
her, sweetheart?” he said, and the levity was dead gone from him.
“She doesn’t know. Some hoods. God knows who they were.”
“Did you call a doctor?”
“She won’t let me!” Laura’s voice rose with indignation. “Of all the
nonsense I ever heard in my life! She’s afraid the doctor will find out
she’s a female. I think we’re all going crazy—” But she felt Beebo’s
hand then taking the phone from her, and she surrendered it without
arguing and went to the couch and collapsed.
“Jack?” Beebo said. “I’m all right. It looks worse than it really is.
I’ll live.” The front of her was sticky with Nix’s blood.
“You talk like it happens all the time,” Jack said with scolding
sympathy. “Like getting you teeth drilled, or something.”
Beebo smiled wryly. “How is it you always know just what to say to a
girl, Jackson? Make her feel real swell?”
“How is it that you’re such a goddam prude you won’t let a doctor
examine you? The doctor doesn’t give a damn what sex you are.”
“They killed Nix.” She threw it at him unexpectedly, silencing him about
the doctor. And she described him with such detail that Laura didn’t
want to listen. She got up and went into the bedroom to escape the
conversation.
Beebo joined Laura on the bed ten minutes later, wearing her men’s
cotton pajamas. Laura was too tired and weak to move. Beebo undressed
her where she lay on the bed and dragged her under the covers naked.
“I don’t know what to do with Nix,” she said. “I’ll have to figure
something out in the morning.”
They lay in each other’s arms, absorbed in their own thoughts. Laura’s
mind was a potpourri of vivid impressions. She would never forget the
bloody little dog, nor the fragrant skin of the Indian dancer, nor
Beebo’s misery, nor those sinfully sweet kisses she stole from Tris....
“Jack’s coming over tomorrow,” Beebo said in her ear.
“Good.”
“Why ‘good’?”
“He’ll help us. He’ll make you see a doctor and he’ll do something about
Nix. I don’t know, I just feel better with him around.”
“If I didn’t know for goddam sure how gay you are, baby, I’d hate that
guy.”
Laura had to laugh. “Beebo, if you get jealous of Jack I’ll send you to
a head shrinker.”
“Okay, okay, I know it’s nuts. But you talk about him all the time.”
“I’m very fond of Jack. You know that. He brought us together, darling.”
And she said it so gently that Beebo clasped her tighter and was
reassured.
Laura slept, finally. But Beebo could not. She spent the night with her
arms around Laura, taking her only comfort in Laura’s nearness and the
sudden apparent return of her affection.
* * * * *
Jack came at eight-thirty. It was a Saturday morning and he had the day
to spend. With his usual detachment he wrapped Nix up while Beebo was
dressing. He carted him down the stairs in a garbage pail and left him
for the morning pickup in a trash bin, well hidden in a shroud of
papers. When Beebo came into the kitchen a few minutes later he just
said, “He’s gone. Don’t ask me about it, Beebo. It’s all over.” He found
it almost as hard to talk about as she did.
“Damn you, Jack,” Beebo said feebly. But she was glad he had done it for
her. She felt lousy. All the excitement and anger that had sustained her
the night before were gone, leaving a lassitude and nausea that swept
over her in waves. Laura made her go back to bed and fed her breakfast
from a tray.
“Don’t leave me, baby,” Beebo begged and Laura promised to stay near by.
But as soon as Beebo had swallowed a little food and kept it down, she
fell asleep, and Jack pulled Laura to her feet and dragged her,
whispering protests, into the kitchen.
“How can I talk to you in there?” he demanded and fixed them both some
coffee.
Laura drank in silence, listening to his rambling talk with one ear,
gratefully. She thought of Tris and wondered whether to confess to Jack
about the dancer or keep it a secret. She knew he wouldn’t like it.
“Beebo acted kind of crazy last night,” Laura said. “I think she felt
worse about Nix than about herself.”
“No doubt she did. But pretty soon she’ll feel her own aches and pains.
Maybe I can find her another hound somewhere. I just hope to God she
doesn’t use this thing to make a prisoner of you, Mother.”
“A prisoner?”
“She was getting pretty desperate about you, you know. I think that has
a lot to do with all the drinking.”
Laura realized then that he didn’t put a shot of booze in his coffee.
“You’re still on the wagon!” she said.
He swirled his coffee reflectively. “I remember,” he said, “when Terry
was giving me the works a few months back. I nearly drank myself to
extinction. Beebo’s not above trying it herself.”
“Oh, God, that was awful!” Laura said, remembering Terry.
Terry had been enough to drive a strong man mad. If he had been nasty
about it Jack could have stood it better. He could have preserved his
self-respect and he might have had the strength to kick Terry out sooner
than he did. But Terry was nice. He was delightful and cooperative. He
was unfaithful, he was taking every cent Jack made as Jack made it, and
he was hardly ever home.
But Jack was in love with him; angrily in love with the wrong person,
sticking to a doomed attachment as if every new shock and every
unexpected pain only strengthened his need for the boy.
Jack knew it was hopeless. He knew it was draining his strength and
making a coward of him. In his mind the whole sad farce of the thing was
perfectly clear. But he acted on his emotions in spite of himself, and
as long as Terry loved him he couldn’t let him go.
Curiously enough, Terry did love him. Jack was home base to him; Jack
was security. Jack paid the bills and bolstered him when he was low, and
no matter how rough and rotten the rest of the world might get, good old
Jack was always there, always the same.
But the end had to come. There was never enough money, there was never
enough understanding, there was never enough of the right kind of love.
It took just one sharp explosion of acid resentment one night, when Jack
caught Terry cheating after two years of bitter suspicions, to blow them
apart. It was almost too painful to think about afterwards.
It was over now, of course. Terry was gone. But the ache for him and the
loneliness, even the desire to be tormented remained.
“You never heard from Terry, did you?” Laura asked.
“No. He took his things and left and I haven’t heard from him since.
Makes me think he must have left New York.”
“Do you still want him?” She asked it not to hurt him but because she
knew he had to say it now and then or die of it.
“Of course I want him,” he said briefly. “Drink your coffee. Your
patient is howling for attention.”
5
_Three weeks_, Laura wrote in her diary, sitting in the living room
while Beebo slept. _Three weeks of this, and if it goes on much longer
I’ll end up hating her. I felt so sorry for her at first. It was such a
cruel thing and it hurt her terribly. But she’s well now—I know she is.
She’s lying around getting fat and drinking like a fish and not working.
If she doesn’t get back to work soon I’ll lose my mind. And she’ll lose
her job for sure. They’ve been calling all week._
Laura hadn’t minded being a nurse at first. She tended Beebo gently and
made her rest and, being unsure herself and hounded by her patient to
forget it, she never did call a doctor. But Beebo seemed to come out of
it fast. Physically the scars healed quickly. At the end of a week she
was up and around. She hadn’t had a drink since the day it happened, and
she talked about going back to work the next Monday.
But then Laura came home late one evening and she found Beebo drunk.
“Where the hell have you been?” Beebo shouted at her when Laura came in
and found her in the kitchen. “I’m sick and miserable, I’ve just been
through hell, and you can’t even come home from work to make my dinner
for me.”
Confronted with such a bombardment of nonsense, Laura wouldn’t even
answer her. She undressed and took a shower, but Beebo followed her into
the bathroom and went right on yelling. Laura had pulled the shower
curtain but Beebo opened it and watched her bathe.
“Laura,” she said, “where were you?” No answer. “Tell me. _Tell_ me,
damn it!” It was an order.
“Ask me like a civilized human being, then,” Laura said, turning around
to rinse her soapy back.
“I’ll ask you any way I goddam please. I have a right to know.”
Laura turned the water off and eyed her coldly. “I had dinner with
Jack,” she said. “He dropped in after work.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Call him.” She stepped out of her bath, cool and dripping and haughty
as a princess, and Beebo burned for her.
“I don’t believe a word he says. He always lies for you. No matter what
I ask him he’s always got an answer. I used to like the guy, but Jesus,
it’s gotten so I can’t trust him any more. He’s always on your side.”
Laura wrapped herself in a towel and began to rub herself, but Beebo
suddenly put her whiskey down and clasped her in a bear hug.
“Laura, darling, I felt so rotten today. And I looked forward so much to
having you home. It’s so quiet and lonesome around here all day without
Nix. I nearly go mad. Baby, I know I’ve taken up a lot of your time, but
I couldn’t help it. I didn’t _ask_ those bastards to rape me.”
Laura relaxed slightly in the embrace, since she couldn’t squirm out of
it. “You felt better today, not worse, Beebo. You told me so this
morning.”
“That was this morning. I got worse this afternoon,” she said
petulantly.
“You got worse at exactly five-thirty when I was fifteen minutes late.”
“Where _were_ you?”
“With Jack. Beebo, you’ve been drinking. You promised me you wouldn’t.”
“If you’d been home I wouldn’t have to!” Beebo released her abruptly,
picked up the whiskey glass with a swoop of her hand, and defiantly
finished what was in it.
Laura cinched the towel around herself and approached Beebo. “Do you
know what you’re saying, you nut?” she said. “You big fool? Beebo,
answer me!” But Beebo turned her back and watched Laura with glittering
eyes in the mirror on the medicine chest.
“You’re saying that you can’t stay sober without me, Beebo. Do you
realize that?”
“I can’t stay sober if you don’t love me, Laura.”
“Oh, damn you, Beebo!” Laura almost wept with frustration. “You’re only
saying that to make me feel guilty. To put the blame on _me_ instead of
on yourself where it belongs! I didn’t give you your first drink, God
knows. I don’t ply you with liquor. You’ve fixed it with your conscience
so no matter when you get drunk it’s my fault. No matter how much you
drink, you’re only drinking because Laura is such a bitch. Well, I won’t
buy it! It’s a damn plot to make a prisoner of me!”
“A prisoner! Now where did little Bo-peep get that fancy idea?” Beebo’s
eyes were narrow and sharp in spite of the whiskey. Her anger brought
clarity with it. “That sounds like the kind of propaganda Jack would
spout.”
“No—” Laura began, but Beebo silenced her with a menacing wave of her
hand. Laura found herself trapped against the bathroom door.
Beebo put a hand up on the door on either side of Laura and looked down
at her. “Now, suppose you just tell me what Jack said,” she said.
“What makes you think Jack said it? I can think for myself and you know
it. And I _am_ a prisoner here!”
“You can’t think for yourself when Jack’s around. That bastard is the
Pied Piper of Greenwich Village. He opens his yap and all the little
fairies listen pop-eyed to whatever he has to say. Including you.”
Laura looked at her and found herself caught by Beebo’s spell again.
Beebo was born to lose her temper. She looked wonderful when she did. It
exasperated Laura to feel a bare animal desire for her at times like
this.
“Jack said it. Come on. Jack said it, didn’t he?” Beebo insisted.
“All right!” Laura almost screamed. “Jack said it!”
She looked up at Beebo with embarrassed desire and to make her shame
complete, Beebo saw it. And she knew she was in command again, even if
only for an hour or so. Beebo was learning to live for those hours. The
rest of the time nothing much mattered.
Beebo shifted support of her leaning body from her arms to Laura, lifted
up Laura’s angry helpless face and kissed it. “Why aren’t you like this
all the time?” she asked. And Laura startled her when she echoed, “Why
aren’t _you_ like this all the time?”
“Like what, baby? Drunk?”
“No ...,” Laura hesitated. She didn’t quite understand what she meant
herself.
“Mad?” Beebo asked.
“I don’t know.”
Beebo laughed. “If it’ll help I’ll get mad and stay mad, Bo-peep. I’ll
get drunk and stay drunk. Would you like that?” She interspersed her
words with kisses.
“No. I just—I hate it when you act like a spoiled brat, Beebo.”
“I never act like a spoiled brat.” Her voice was little more than a
whisper now.
They sank to the floor where they were and made love then.