Part 6 (1/2)
”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 G.o.ddam sonofab.i.t.c.h toughs who think it's smart to pick fights with Lesbians. They ask you who the h.e.l.l 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 d.a.m.n well fight like a man. And they jump you for laughs ... G.o.d.”
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. II 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 G.o.ddam 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 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 a.s.saulted 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. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, 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. 'Tm 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 handya 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 youjust 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.
”Well 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 G.o.d,” 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?”
”Theydarling, I don't know how to tell youplease, 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 realizeit 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.