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The first time you hear the word lesbian, you are seven and Porrim is fighting with your mother in English. You don’t understand half of what she is saying until she slips back into the tongue you comprehend, but that word still shines through, onetwothree times, between frantic bouts of shrieking. She takes the word, rolls it around, and spits it back surrounded by too-loud ‘no’s. She is thirteen and acts like your mother couldn’t accuse her of anything worse when she did nothing but hang out with the same girl for five weekends in a row.
You ask your mother, later, what it means, and she sits you on her lap and pets your dark hair. A woman who loves other women, she says in Persian. And it’s not a bad thing to be, sweetheart, but some people think it is because they are not so smart. That makes you giggle.
“آیا معنی خواهر من گنگ است؟”
Does that mean Porrim’s dumb?
“گاهی اوقات، فقط کمی.”
Sometimes, just a little.
That’s enough to wrench a smile out of you, and then mother tells you to go play and you do, sprinting down the street to meet with Laleh and play dolls. The air is cool with that mid-summer feel, when it’s evening time and still light out but just cold enough that when you roll on the grass it’s as warm as any blanket, fresh out of the dryer. She kisses your cheek when she thinks you’re not looking.
The second time you hear the word, it is shrieked at you across the school yard. You are nine and in fourth grade, still new to English, the words too sharp on your tongue as you try to maneuver around them. You look down at your skirt, grass stained from soccer practice, unsure how to respond. The boy who shouted it shouts it again, and again, little hailstorms on your head, the “bee” sound too long. More boys join in, and you don’t understand why you’re being shouted at until Laleh drops your hand from hers and runs crying in the opposite direction. When you tell your mother, later, she makes a very angry call to your school.
The third time is the next week, at an assembly where flashy, flamboyant men shout too brightly into everyone’s ears with rainbow flags. There are none of these mythical beings, the Lesbians of America, in attendance that day. You get the distinct impression that Gay Men, and only the men, are alright. The boys who shouted at you look embarrassed as you file out of the gym, mumbling ‘sorry’ at you. It doesn’t help.
The fourth time you encounter it, it is in a book you snuck out of the middle school library. You read the same passage over and over, one paragraph explaining what your mother had explained to you so long ago. How do I know, you think, how do I know if I turned out wrong?
Your friends make a game of pointing out Cute Boys during lunch, sixth grade smiles lined with braces and blushing when they admit who they like, but like, like-like. You don’t understand why they would seek out the boys, who smell bad and play dumb games and make fun of your new hips. All the company you could ever want was right in front of you. When you say so, they stop eating and look at you, and then retch the term at your face, like they were accusing you of some disgusting crime. You deny it, laughing with them as they imitate those people. Later that same year, you fake a crush on Jason in English, just so your friends will quiet down.
You hear that word a lot after that. Porrim claimed that label when you were in seventh grade, then abandoned it two months later. Her dramatic shift, however, gave you time to try the rituals on. In those two months, she stopped shaving, so you did too. She cut her hair short, so you went to the stylist’s after school with a handful of dollar bills and got yours similarly trimmed. You abandon your makeup for a week before picking it back up again, drawing in wings on your eyes with kohl sticks and smiling at your own half finished reflection.
It is mother, in the end, who confronts you at thirteen, just as you were puzzling out the right words in your mind. You tried writing different, short speeches for her- Porrim had made such a production of it, you thought it would be customary to do the same. Just when you thought you were only a couple days more of editing away, she takes you to ice cream and asks you, gently, if there’s anything you’d like to tell her. You cried into your ice cream, curling up in the white plastic chair and hugging your knees to your chest. She kneels next to you, ruining her dress on the dirty faux grass, and takes you into her arms, telling you it’s alright, she loves you all the same. You are hysterical for the rest of evening, locking yourself in your room and listening to Smashing Pumpkins at full volume. It doesn’t help.
Nothing ever does.