Free Bitch Is the New Black by Helena Andrews Page A

something familiar like more yelling, more insults, more “fuck this.” Nothing. The dangerous kind of quiet.
    They were rolling around the living room in their panties when I ran in, punching each other in the back and scratching ateach other’s arms, I think. All I could see was a revolving brown ball of lesbian. Two women trying desperately to shove the truth into the other through any means necessary. How or why they were half naked I don’t know. The whole scene would have seemed smutty to an equally naked eye if it weren’t so ridiculous. Two grown women, on the wrong side of thirty-five and 205 pounds, wrestling like professional amateurs. I didn’t know what to do besides watch.
    Vernell stood up and started beating my mother from above, pushing her fists into her shoulders and the top of her head. Frances, who’d I’d never seen so weak, was shielding her head and surrendering simultaneously.
    â€œGo ahead, beat me. Beat me,” she was whimpering in a voice I’d never heard and never wanted to hear again. Vernell obliged, and Frances sank even lower to the floor. She had no neck, no shoulders, no head, and no arms. The woman who was once so much bigger than me didn’t just become smaller in my eyes; she practically disappeared, leaving a puppy or some other defenseless thing in her place.
    â€œDon’t you. Hit. My mother,” I managed to force out with a voice half high-pitched and half baritone. I didn’t plan to say that. I had planned on just screaming or something, maybe throwing a glass against the wall to get them both to stop and realize how very foolish they looked. But I never planned to defend. I also never called Frances “mother” unless my friends were around. Formality seemed necessary.
    I repeated it. Louder this time.
    â€œDON’T YOU DARE HIT MY MOTHER!” I stepped into the ring they’d built—scattered couch cushions and broken picture frames were the ropes—and karate-chopped the air between them. Hopefully cutting off any loose ends. I hadn’t meant for it to come out that ballsy. She was still my sort-of stepmother. ButI was serious, and I’d surprised all three of us. Vernell, already standing, backed herself into the wall behind us and put her hands to her face, either to check to see if she was bleeding or to see if she was, in fact, all there. If this was really happening.
    Pulling my mother from the floor, I put one arm over her shoulder and used the other hand to grip her powerless bicep. Not sure if I was doing it right, I led her naked, limp body to the bathroom, crossing the kitchen and my dry-erase board on the way. Vernell followed us, spitting on my mother’s back before I slammed the door in her face. So far being a teenager sucked.
    I sat Frances on the toilet like you’d do a child in training and thought of her tin can.
    When I was a little kid, I discovered my mother’s secrets under her bed, sealed away in a large canister-type thing decorated with nude pictures of women wearing 1970s Afros. In it were love letters she’d written to white girls and journals I think she was writing to me. She talked about “having good romps” with a lady in Argentina and dreams she’d had of a child named “Hellenea.”
    I found letters from my father in there. They were the only things I had of his, and I imagined the sound of his voice reading them aloud, like in the movies. In my head it was throaty and scratchy—a real man’s. In one he said he loved and missed her. In another he said he hoped she hadn’t been “taking too many showers with white girls.” After that, I knew she was more than just wonderfully different. She was “gay.” An invisible man delivered one of the most important headlines of my life.
    Well, not entirely invisible. There was a picture of him in there too. He wore a black ’fro, flip-flops, and a sailor’s