Chapter 4
HOPE
Hey, nerd
Exhibit was pretty great.
Thxs for the rec.
Amy stood up as soon as she read the three messages, all at once. She had been lying on her bed for the past thirty minutes after facetiming with Molly who had left the day before. She looked at Hope’s messages on her phone screen. All of them arrived like a burst, as if the other person was just casually texting. She remembered when Hope and her would text every day. Her palms would sweat most of the time and she would type and delete the messages several times before hitting send. It never took too much time for Hope to reply. She always responded right away, with short messages, no place for doubt. She had said several times she liked her, that she wanted to see her. She never made her doubt. Amy was thankful for that, even though she never told her so. But as time went by and Hope never came to visit, Amy thought she was beginning to lose interest. She never built up the courage to ask why. Why she had changed the way she talked, the things she told her. Maybe she had met someone else. Amy never found out. As Hope’s aloofness became clearer and the ocean between them turned more palpable, colder, the physical barrier that it really was, she started to realize the truth of their relationship. They had made out at a party, drunk and she had messed it up. And after that, Hope had just been polite and nice. She probably was confused. Finishing high school was troubling for some people, herself included. As Hope had put it, she wasn’t sure if she could go to NYC, figure things out on her own. She had confessed to Amy she acted all tough and as if she didn’t care, but the truth was that she was tremendously scared of becoming an adult on the other side of the country all alone. She even suggested she might not go to school at all and stay with her mother in California but also admitted that living in New York had been a dream of hers since she was a kid. Amy felt that Hope was insecure in her own mind, even though that in the little time they had talked consistently, she discovered that Hope was insanely witty, that she mastered sarcasm and that she was kind and gentle within her honesty.
Hope hadn’t told Amy much about her family. Amy just knew that her brothers had moved outside of California and had their own families. She also knew that they had taken their father's side during their divorce. Hope stayed with her mother when his father also moved out of town. Amy noticed immediately that Hope had a really strong connection with her mom. She never asked what had happened and Hope never went into the specifics of any of these. She just mentioned her mother from time to time. Growing up as an only child in a relatively stable family, his father had had a few ups and downs with depression when he was fired from his job, but other than that, Amy’s family had no major difficulties. She had never been good at figuring out how to ask about family dramas or things related to that. Even Molly’s dad had abandoned her and her mother before she finished kindergarten and Amy never asked her friend about it. All the stuff she knew was because Molly had opened up to her. She was a good listener. She listened and tried to use common sense to make others feel better, but it was not her strong suit to advise on personal relationships. She could barely handle her own. She had always been able to wear someone else’s shoes and found that empathy was actually a gift to have healthy relationships. But the awkwardness and her own lack of experience sometimes limited her confidence in giving advice.
AMY
Glad you checked it out!
Miss Annabelle already?
It only took like five minutes for Hope to answer.
HOPE
Yes.
Don’t tell her I said that.
How’s life without the wife?
AMY
It’s weird to see her so little.
I guess I’ll stop thinking that much about it once school begins.
HOPE
Yup, well, we still have almost three weeks to go.
Let me know if you wanna hang out some other time.
The exhibit was fun but I feel like I missed out a lot of important details going without you.
Amy read that last message and instantly imagined how nice it would be to go with Hope to some nerdy museum exhibit and talk to her about things. She was too aware that she sounded like a loser when she did that, but Hope seemed to be patient with her and enjoyed the way she talked, even though her voice became an unbearable shriek when she talked too much in very little time.
AMY
That’d be great!
I’m going to Madison on Friday but we can meet up after.
The instant thought of Daisy came to Amy’s mind as she put the phone down and wondered if she’d ever feel in Daisy’s arms the thrill she felt when Hope had kissed her. The excitement of doing what was not expected to be done. Don’t get her wrong – Daisy was perfect for her. She was always in a good mood, always bright, always challenging. Amy sometimes felt like they were perfect for each other. They had tons of things in common and loved being nerds in their own little cute way. They both supported Hillary in 2016, both had been subscribed to Emma Watson’s One Shared Shelf, both had done model UN and, more importantly, both of them had gone to Botswana to make tampons and save women’s lives. But sometimes, she just pondered, if the comfort she felt while being with Daisy was her own way of settling down for the safe option instead of taking the risk of knowing what would’ve happened had Hope pushed a little bit harder. Daisy had become increasingly important in her life and sometimes she thought that had Daisy not come into the picture, she wouldn’t have lasted that long in Africa. She was like a less-demanding queer version of Molly that included touching, kissing and all that stuff. “Would being with Hope feel different?” she asked herself. She felt like she had missed the opportunity. Playing safe was also a good option to Amy’s eyes. You can never have too much comfort.
HOPE
Cool, let me know.
Enjoy Madison.
See ya, nerd.
***
Hope put the phone down and lied down on her bed. The smell of roasted veggies was drifting into her room as Gina and Mick were preparing dinner for the family. They had come back from out of town on Sunday, right after Molly had picked up Annabelle from Hope’s and both of them had left for New Haven. Since then, Hope had barely left her attic. She only left her room to greet Florence when the family arrived. On Monday, she went down to make herself breakfast once everyone else had already left. She climbed back up to her bedroom, opened the skylight and inhaled the fresh New York air. The skin on her shoulders tickled at the strength of the beaming. She had sunburnt herself a bit there and on her cheeks, after spending most of Sunday afternoon in Coney Island with Annabelle, lying on the sand. She had thought of Amy all day, wondering what her and Molly were up and why the four of them hadn’t planned to do something together. Her chest throbbed at the idea of her going to Madison to spend time with Daisy, but she was her girlfriend after all, and Hope was barely a friend. She hadn’t stopped thinking about Saturday night and how she had touched Amy’s bare skin with her own lips. How Amy trembled after the nudge and how Hope was almost certainly sure that she could hear the rush of her own blood speeding up. Amidst all the smoke and the confusion, Amy’s hair smelled like coconut and cigarette and their contact was like a breath of winter breeze in that stinky nightclub.
The next couple of days went by as if not much was supposed to happen. Hope was disappointed that New York didn’t feel as grandiose as she thought but she blamed it on the lack of company. She found pleasure on the little things of her new routine. Picking up Florence from kindergarten, walking with her across Morningside Park at the south and playing with her I Spy with an Eye on their way back home. She’d start cooking dinner before Gina got home from the gym which she had signed up again after Hope promised to help her so that she could have a little more time to herself. When Gina got back from work, they’d chat over the kitchen counter while Florence watched TV or played with her toys. After that, Hope would climb up to her room until dinner was ready, read some of the books she had brought from home, write the short poems that she had recently started putting together or call her mother. Dinner would go by smoothly, with small conversation about the day. Mick would monopolize the talking, saying how some of his work colleagues were ruthless and how some of them weren’t. She’d help do the dishes or go put Florence to sleep, after telling her love stories or fairy tales that involved dragons, warrior princesses and absurd stupid knights that often entangled the princesse’s plans. Florence would listen to her with amazed eyes and would often laugh at Hope’s silly jokes and dumb efforts to be funny for a three-year-old.
Her little everyday drill got her mind away from the fact that she was feeling a bit lonely and when the weekend arrived, the thought of Amy being with her girlfriend only bothered her in-between her plans of jogging around Central Park, reading her newly acquired pile of books and her occasionals strolls in the West Village. She had ended up having coffee and listening to poetry slams at the Bowery Poetry Club where spoken word poetry got her attention. She wished she was compelling enough to do that, but her poetry was bad and her onstage presence would not be everlasting. Instead, she sat there, listened to people and took the subway back home before Florence left school. George and Alan had texted her to meet up, but she made an excuse to postpone it for the following week. She didn’t want to meet with them. Her life was not riveting enough to bring anything interesting to their startling conversations about the bright future that was awaiting them and how their current plans were preparing them for that unshakeable fate.
AMY
You played tennis right?
It was Sunday again and a week had gone by since Annabelle’s departure. Hope’s phone screen lit up as she was beginning to fall asleep. She read Amy’s text and unblocked it.
HOPE
You stalker
Lol
Yeah, why
AMY
The New York Historical Society has a great Billie Jean King archive.
Thought you might be interested.
HOPE
Wow, didn’t know.
Should be fun to visit.
Are you planning on going?
AMY
I’m bad at all sports but I’m also gay so BJK is like a god to me.
So yeah, I am planning on going tomorrow.
HOPE
Cool.
Let me know if it’s good.
AMY
Maybe we could go together, no?
Would that be too weird?
HOPE
Nah, I don’t think so.
They arranged to meet the following day on the steps of New York’s Historical Society. Amy arrived five minutes late. She was still trying to figure out the New York subway, so she got off one station before needed and had to walk a few blocks down Central Park West to reach the building. The giant building stood overwhelming and impersonal in the middle of the street, with cold walls and window pains that seemed endless. When Amy got nearer, she noticed Hope from behind, wearing her unmistakable fringe jacket and high waisted baggy jeans, standing on the steps, taller than she remembered.
“Hi” she said timidly, with her trademark side smile.
“Hey, nerd” Hope waved at her after turning towards her, her cheeks glowing pink and her lips lit up.
“I recognized your jacket,” Amy admitted.
Hope looked at her own outfit while half-lifting her arms.
“Oh, this? Yeah, it’s like I had it tattooed on me, isn’t it?” Amy grinned at Hope’s comment. “It was my mom’s.”
“Yeah, I always wondered what it was about. Has a lot of personality.”
“Like you, no?” Hope lifted one eyebrow, amused. “Anyway, let’s do this.”
They walked up to the entrance and came into the building, marvelled at the tall ceilings and the entrance hall lit up with the August afternoon sun. They walked up the first floor and followed the instructions to reach the wing with the Billie Jean King archive.
“How is it that you knew that I played tennis?” Hope asked.
“Summer 2012. The public courts near Belvedere” Amy remembered out loud. “You beat my cousin, three years older than us, and he bashed his racket because a girl had outdone him. I hated my cousin back then. I still don’t like him that much but at the time he was just a bully.”
Amy remembered the scene quite vividly. His cousin striking the racket against the hard blue court, little bits of graphite flying all over from his crushed Prince.
“You freak.” Hope laughed. “I don’t even remember that. Your cousin went to Crockett right?”
“Yeah, he’s a jerk.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Anyways, I went to school the next Monday and there you were, like nothing had happened.”
“Well, nothing had really happened…”
Hope laughed at Amy’s astonishment. She was smiling as well.
“It was amazing!” Amy roared. “But you were a bitch to me so it kind of lost its meaning right away.”
Hope’s laugh lowered a bit.
“Yeah, I was mean to you.” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I know it won’t erase all the shitty nasty things I said to you during elementary and high school but I am sorry.”
They turned left in one of the hallways, still trying to find their way to the salon where the exhibit was being displayed. The floors looked impeccable and people walked past them, with their eyes fixated on their little brochures and the name’s of each room, looking for their right one.
“I never understood… why.” Amy said, searching with her inquisitive but naive tone for an answer.
“Well, it’s a classic case of picking at the person you like, don’t you think?”
Hope’s words had no second intentions to them, they contained just pure honesty.
“I liked you,” she repeated. “Like, I didn’t know it back then, but I guess my gaydar developed early and I sort of sensed we might have been alike.”
“So your precocious gaydar is to blame?” Amy asked. “I don’t buy it. When put to good use, it’s supposed to work as a bond enabler, not as a division.”
Hope smiled at the weird comment. It sounded just like Amy.
“Well, picture a thirteen-year-old finally understanding that the reason why she liked Natalie Portman in Star Wars was because she wanted to do her, not be her.” Hope explained.
It was true. For a thirteen year old like Hope, with two older brothers, coming from a catholic family and all, it was complicated to understand that she actually liked girls. Like, a lot.
“I had a weird rage within me and I sort of paid it with you who, somehow, ended up being the classmate that probably felt the most like me and actually wasn’t afraid to admit her own truth.”
Amy felt her cheeks turning red at the comment. This didn’t go unnoticed to Hope’s eyes. She realized Amy was half embarrassed, half flattered.
“If you put it like that, you make it sound like it was a big deal when I came out.”
“It was” the other one admitted. “You were always a force to be reckoned with. You just didn’t know that.”
Amy was the one who made the right call to turn left in the correct aisle and they found themselves in the room they had been looking for for the past twenty minutes. Turns out, and neither of them knew, that the museum had a whole collection of Women’s history and Billie Jean’s was in the middle of it. They sauntered through the room, looking at the objects. Hope pointed out at the wooden rackets. She mentioned which Grand Slams Billie Jean King had won and described her killer right hand hit, her swift and accurate one-handed backhand and the speed of her legs at the net. Amy had no idea about tennis, but she felt as if she had played it her whole life just by listening to Hope’s convincing explanation of how it’s supposed to be done. Hope didn’t shy away from mocking the way tennis players often hit the ball and bothered to explain timely the differences between a backhand with one or two arms. Amy just watched her and chuckled at the surreal image of watching the coolest hottest girl from high school attempt to make her laugh. Hope had such a particular way of being funny, it was like she wasn’t even trying to do so, but inexplicably her reluctance to exercise comedy just seemed exhilarating in an unconscious way.
They moved on to the next exhibit and they soon had finished an entire wing of the museum. The afternoon went by insanely fast between strolls in different areas and getting surprised at what they might encounter in the next. Hope had never seen history that way, as an alive expression of the past, and Amy’s company made it all the more enjoyable. Her ability to still startle even though she probably already knew most of the things they were discovering was a magnet to everyone around her. Hope fell bewitched with her presence and they way she made the least interesting thing look like something astonishing. When Hope glanced at her phone, she realized it was about time for her to make her way back uptown to pick up Florence from school. Amy, surprised at the fact that Hope’s niece went to school near Morningside Park, offered to go with her to pick her up, since it was on her way to Carnan Hall. They both went into the subway together, talking about the beginning of the semester in just two weeks. Both of them were nervous and too aware of the fact that they’d be among the older students in their classes.
“What will you do once semester starts?” Hope asked. “Are you joining a protest group or something?”
Her question was half joke, half serious. They had been talking about whether they wanted to have an active social life in school or not. Hope wasn’t sure and Amy had gone on and on about how Columbia had multiple social clubs that she was interested in.
“Well, there’s this group called LUCHA which means…”
“Fight.” Hope finished for her. “My mom’s Puerto Rican, I know Spanish.”
“Wah, I didn’t know.” Amy was surprised. “But yeah, I heard great things about it. And a lot of their members have gone on to work with AOC or like Tammy Baldwin. Imagine how great it would be if I could do that.”
“Well, if part of the application requirements is to be a preachy pain in the ass Jane Fonda apprentice, you are good.”
Amy laughed nervously at the comment, not knowing if it was a bitter observation or a sarcastic comment. Knowing Hope, she inclined for the latter. Their ride on the subway was about to come to an end and they’d soon arrive at Florence’s school.
“But I am slightly concerned that they won’t let me in”
“Why?”
“They take their oral skills very seriously,” Amy explained. “A big part of their success relies on their public speeches and the socratic approach to debate. I am not compelling enough or like… have stage presence. It’s like I’m aiming for an Obama and I am a Melania, if you know what I mean. I mean, I am like… very bad at talking in public.”
“Well, I find you extremely captivating… I mean, when you talk about… things that interest you” Hope blushed at the sudden confusion and how her feelings had betrayed her. She had been acting cool and easy all afternoon to fuck it up at the end. “What I am trying to say is that you should channel that energy, you know. I wish I could help but I sort of feel the same way. I like spoken poetry and I can’t bring myself to even read my own poetry out loud.”
They had just got off the subway and were walking past 113th street and the Morningside playground.
“Then I have an idea” Amy said, as if a lightbulb had just lit up right above her head like it was an eureka moment. “Why don’t you practice with me… your poetry and I practice with you. I’ve been doing oratory exercises all summer but I feel like I could use an audience, you know?”
Hope thought about for a split second. The idea of reciting her poems to Amy was her own personal nightmare, but at the same time she didn’t want to forfeit the possibility of having an excuse to meet with her at least on a weekly basis. Her lack of response made Amy frown, as if she was trying to grasp why her answer was stalling.
“Sure, nerd, why not.” Hope agreed. “Today for you, tomorrow for me.”
Hope and Amy stood at the kindergarten door, as the kids were running towards their parents. Little Florence appeared in the middle of the last group, with her blond curly hair standing out from most of her schoolmates. As soon as she saw Hope, she ran towards her with the biggest smile on her face. She jumped to her arms and Hope lifted her up in the air and kissed her.
“Look Flo” Hope told her. “This is my friend Amy.”