Page 52 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
“Well, we know what year it is, but I’m asking what year of school you’re in,” Blue interrupts with a short laugh, nodding encouragingly.
Shit, shit, shit.Neese tries to echo the easy laughter bubbling up around her, noting the renewed dampness of her palms, the warmth in Blue’s eyes, and the curiosity in Cyrus’s as they patiently wait for her to continue.Pull. It. Together!
“Oh, second year. And I saw the poster for this group in thelibrary. I wondered if it was real, at first, but then I saw—” She looks over at the woman she’d seen hanging another flyer in the Meridian cafeteria, whose close-cropped hair and baggy clothing speak volumes. “Um—”
“Val, hi,” the woman interjects, with a wide, knowing grin. “Lesbian supreme.”
Amid the new outburst of laughter, Neese smiles back. “Exactly. So then I thought, this must be for real. I have to check it out.”
“Because…?” Blue leads, with an encouraging nod. “You’re safe here.”
“Right.” Neese chuckles, accidentally catching the eye of Audrey, who appears intrigued, and far from disgusted or confused. “I like girls.” It feels surreal to say out loud, in front of other people, but Neese supposes that’s the entire point. “Always have, I think. No, I know…so, yeah.”
To Neese’s amused chagrin, Blue leads the others in wild applause when she’s finished speaking, even leaning across the circle to gently nudge Neese’s shoulder. “Right on, welcome, sis.” Neese nods, too overcome to speak, unsure whether she wants to burst into laughter or tears. Blue holds her eye for another moment, nods, then turns to Audrey and her friend with a quirk of her eyebrow.
“So. Sure you’re both in the right place?”
Thrillingly, Audrey’s face suffuses with color, and then she nods, sinking a bit in her seat. Her friend hums in agreement.
Cyrus urges, “Well, we’re listening! Whoever wants to start.”
Audrey glances at her friend, who stares blankly back at her, then rolls her eyes. “Hi, I’m Audrey. And I think I know you,” she says to Neese, whose mouth goes dry at the unexpected direct address. “Right?”
“We may be in the same Language and Composition class,” Neese responds, as if she hadn’t spent the past semester making careful study of the slender angles of Audrey’s jaw from her vantage point two rows behind and five seats across from her, the particular way Audrey taps the tip of her ballpoint pen against her downturned lips when she’s lost in thought, the varying densities and arrangements of the braids Audrey adorns herself with from week to week: one French braid straight down the middle, two on either side, separated into neat individual boxes so that their length swings about with each hearty gesticulation. “Tuesday and Thursday mornings?”
“That’s it,” Audrey declares, satisfied. “Also a sophomore,” she says to the rest of the room. “And I’m here because…I didn’t expect to ever find a gathering like this here. I love Howard, but I never hear people talk about this stuff. It’s kind of like gay people don’t exist, or something.”
Amid murmurs of agreement, Blue nods. “That’s exactly the problem that Lambda is addressing. If they want us to take pride in ourselves, we should take pride in every part of ourselves. We’re Black, but that’s not all we are.”
Neese listens with mounting awe as everyone completes their introductions. It takes the entire two hours allotted to this first meeting, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t time well spent. There’s William, a petite third-year classics major who speaks in a near whisper about the time he was caught kissing a boy and got kicked out of his Catholic middle school; Aja, a senior, preparing for a degree in law and in a secret long-distance relationship with her childhood best friend; Cleo, a junior and double communications and journalism major who speaks vaguely about her overbearing father before retreating into herself, seemingly unable to divulge anything further. Rashad, Jordan, Diamond, Cheryl,CeCe—Neese can’t help but marvel at each of their stories, however truncated within this space; the intimacy of this mutual trust elevates them from strangers to something closer to comrades, a new bond forged by virtue of a difference they can barely speak aloud outside of room 501B.
Or maybe Neese should only speak for herself. Is it cowardice or caution?
If Blue and Cyrus can start this club without the earth spinning off its axis, it follows that there are other places that not only allow for men to love men and women to love women, but celebrate it too.
Most days, the quiet of the Founders Library feels oppressive; fortunately, today the occasional whisper and faint susurrus of turning pages is a balm to Neese’s jangled nerves. College, apparently, is just a never-ending, ever-shifting tangled web of books to read, papers to write, assessments to cram for. Staying afloat is all Neese can reasonably demand of herself these days, and it’s nice to come across a random schoolmate beset by low-grade panic and exhaustion. Some kind of silent solidarity. Wrist aching, Neese stretches backward in her wooden chair and scans the aisles behind her, desperate for some kind of distraction, mind hazy with sociology facts and statistics…and spies a glimpse of a willowy silhouette and familiar violet backpack that slows time to a crawl even as her pulse pounds a frenzied staccato.
Flustered, Neese straightens, her elbow ramming loudly into the side of the desk, dislodging a pen that smacks, rolls across the floor.
“Neese?”
“Oh,” Neese breathes, whipping upward from retrieving the wayward pen with a smile of feigned surprise. Audrey approaches with two books in hand, noting the wild sprawl of Neese’s study session, then the empty seat across from her. “Hey, Audrey.”
“Are you…well, I was going to say busy, but that’s clearly a stupid question,” Audrey quips. “Umm, do you mind if I—”
“Do you want to join me?” Neese blurts at the same time, their words overlapping, and there’s a brief pause before Audrey smiles, shifting her books to one arm in order to pull the other chair out from the table. Neese can’t help but admire the graceful curve of her fingers draped over the chair’s edge, the neat folds and slim fit of her black overalls and plaid-patterned shirt underneath, the sleeves rolled up to her knobby elbows, revealing a row of chunky, colorful beaded bracelets adorning her left arm, a pair of slim silver bangles on her right.
“What are you working on?” Audrey asks once she’s settled. “And what are you majoring in? Sorry if you already told me.”
“Sociology.” They’ve only exchanged friendly nods and the occasional hello in passing since the Lambda meeting, unless Neese has been sleepwalking through additional encounters. “I have these weekly writing assignments for one of my required classes that I keep falling behind on, so…catching up.”
“Ouch. I hear you.”
“And you? What’s your major?”
Audrey sighs. “To be honest, I’m still kind of floating between engineering and anthropology…”
“That’s quite a gap,” Neese remarks, not knowing much about either.
