Free Beggar of Love by Lee Lynch Page B

she’d been living with a husband who fooled with men and a daughter who loved girls.
    “What is wrong with you?” Emmy had many times demanded to know, as she’d demanded the same of her husband, but much less often and much more timorously, when the evidence of his runaway drinking compelled her to confront it. Jarvy never went to the opera or the theater with Emmy these days; Emmy went with her mother. Jefferson remembered so clearly how her parents had doted on each other until the last few years when Emmy stopped drinking. Their doctor found liver damage in both of them. Jarvy ignored it. Before that they’d had their own world of two, and Jefferson had felt in the way more than she hadn’t. How old were they? Maybe Jarvy was having his midlife crisis, what with his thinning hair and wide waistline and his rendezvous at the railroad station. Today, this last buffer between Emmy and her problems was vanishing.
    Jefferson accepted the hug stiffly, although one part of her wanted to cry out in terror, “Don’t leave me here alone!” But evidence of dependence on her part only upset Emmy and, of course, they weren’t going to coddle her more than they ever had.
    What was wrong with her? Part of her believed in her strength and talent, and was certain of success; the other half cowered, consumed by fear and self-doubt as she listened to Emmy chatter about how hard she’d find college because she was such a poor student and only wanted to play children’s games; how difficult she’d find being away from home after her failed attempt to live on her own with that hair person; how ill-equipped she was for life—hard, hard life—why hadn’t Jefferson listened to her warnings? She felt like the whipping boy for whatever Emmy was going through with Jarvy.
    While she’d still lived with them, Emmy’s words had battered her till she was heavy with fear. She’d watched every nuance of every move either made—how he drank, how she feared his drinking. She’d done a lot of cowering that last year of high school, hoping he wouldn’t pound down another drink, and scared, so scared that when he did, Emmy would protest and bring on the blowup, the final confrontation. Prayed, though she didn’t believe in prayer, that Emmy never found out about the men he saw. And cowered finally, in terror of her life, in the dark backseat of the car, knowing that neither she nor her mother could control their fates with Mr. Jefferson at the wheel of the box of steel, weaving his way between the dotted lines as if they were his only guides through life. Would her mother make it to Dutchess tonight?
    “If you need to, Amelia, you can come home to us. There are lots of good schools in the area.”
    “I’ll remember,” she assured Emmy, thinking, you have lost your ever-loving mind to suggest it, wanting to shout, Stop it! Stop feeding my fears with yours!
    If only… All her life she’d treasured the memory of the nurse at her pediatrician’s office holding her against her soft pillow of a bosom while the doctor gave little Amelia one shot or another. She had never felt anything so comforting. If only it was a mother like that nurse—not this woman, leaving her among strangers—she could take on anything.
    She treasured her talented body, but her parents were suspicious of women athletes—weren’t they all, or most, homosexual? Jefferson had the normal teenage disdain for the ignorance of parents and despised her father for his hypocrisy. Not only was it wrong in their eyes for her to be an athlete, her error was compounded by being gay. She couldn’t defend the one or ignore the other, and she endured their disapproval as if it were a blow, sometimes longing to obliterate the body that gave her joy yet caused her so much grief with its willful ways.
    She tried to stand tall against their disapproval, against Emmy’s dire predictions. Still screaming inside—I’m not afraid! Why would I want to return to you?—she stared