NEW-FASHIONED

My mother developed some unusual habits while I was away at college. Most glaringly: after decades of teaching the rules of phonics to elementary school students, she started making up her own. 

Take, for example, a name that somehow filtered into her consciousness, the fashion designer Liz Claiborne. Should be simple: short i Liz, followed by a long A for Clai; the silent e at the end turns the o vowel long, CLAY-bōrn. But that’s not where Ma went rogue. She placed the sounds far in the back of her throat—like she was trying to speak while swallowing a spoonful of tapioca—and it emerged as, pretty much, GLI glay-BUHHHH.

My mother would say “GLI glay-BUHHHH,” and I’d say, “Yes, Liz CLAY-bōrn.” But GLI glay-BUHHHH persisted.

There was only so much I could do. 

Ma had been raised, back in the 1930s, to believe that a) children should never, under any circumstances, correct their parents, and b) children—or maybe it was just girls—should never exhibit certainty. As in this instruction she gave me during elementary school: “If someone asks you what two plus two is, even if you’re absolutely certain the answer is four, you should say, ‘I think it’s four.’” 

But in this case, Ma’s 2+2 worked out to 37. How could I steer her back to reality?

Eventually, I cracked the code: Claiborne was a designer. Although her claim to fame was being one of the first American-born fashion designers, in my mother’s world, all designers were French. 

I said, “She’s American, Ma. Liz CLAY-born.”

“GLI glay-BUHHHH”

“It’s English. Sound it out.” 

“Liz CLAY-bōrn. Oh!” 

Why had Ma’s trusty phonics deserted her? I think she was trying to find a way into this unfamiliar world I had, in her mind, entered—a world in which Seven Sisters and private school graduates (even those of us who’d been on scholarship) surely dressed in clothes crafted by chic foreigners. 

That was never me, but I had become foreign in other ways. With a grand total of two girlfriends under my belt, I fully embraced my foremother Sappho. Quietly, and out of my parents’ sight, I had become a baby dyke. The silent e turns the vowel long: dīk.

Less than a month after I returned from college, I told my father I was a lesbian and he said, “You’re our daughter and we love you, just don’t tell your mother.” So while I was living with them, I shut up (short u in both words).

As soon as I moved to my own place in Manhattan, I joined a gay theatre company working out of a two-room space on West 22nd Street, so small that patrons wishing to use the single-stall bathroom had to walk across the stage, ideally not mid-performance. But I got to direct real actors in staged readings about lesbians—most of them not Great Literature, but back then, queer artists and theatre-goers alike were happy to have any representation at all. 

The company ran a contest for new plays every year and week after week a bunch of us—I was one of only two women—met to slog through the entries. The winners received two performances of a staged reading, directed by whichever of us selected the script. 

I don’t remember the first play I chose, but it had lesbian characters talking about lesbian things and the listing in the Village Voice newspaper bore my name as the director. Since Dad had requested that I not lesbian in front of my mother, I hadn’t told my parents about it. But after the first performance, I called home while Ma was at work.

“Dad, I directed a reading of a play. We had our first performance last night and it went, just, so well, such a rush to hear people in New York City applauding something I directed. I would really love it if you two could come see it. The last performance is tonight.”

“That’s great, honey!” He meant it, too. “What’s it about?”

“Well, that’s the thing—it’s a lesbian play. I know you said not to tell Ma, but I’m just so proud of this, I’d really love for you both to see it.”

He took down the information and said he’d talk to my mother when she got home from school. 

Late that afternoon, I retrieved one message from the brand-new answering machine in my apartment: “I told your mother about your play and she’s very excited. She and Felicia are going to drive in together tonight to see it. Love you!” [click]

I knew immediately how the conversation had gone:

DAD: Elaine called. She directed a play. The last performance is tonight and she wanted us to go, but it’s in the city and it’s late and you’ve got school tomorrow, so I told her I didn’t think we could make it.

MA [grabbing the phone]: Felicia, Elaine’s directing a play tonight. Charlie doesn’t want to go. Will you drive me into the city?

I guess Dad figured if he stayed home, she’d have no choice but to follow suit—Ma would never get behind the wheel in New York—and then he wouldn’t have to explain all the lesbian stuff. But he hadn’t counted on her best friend Felicia, who cared about me almost as much as my mother did, and occasionally more. 

Did he warn Ma what she was walking into? Not on your life. Technically the show didn’t break his “don’t tell your mother” command: I wouldn’t need to say a word. The actors, the audience, the theatre would have “gay” written all over them (the y creates a long A)—in the case of the photocopied program, literally. How would she react? A thousand worst-case scenarios bounced around my brain.

At least she’d have Felicia with her. Felicia had always been a steadying force in my mother’s life, helping Ma negotiate the trials of my adolescence, a world away from the challenges Ma had faced as a teen in the 1930s and ’40s. Then again, Felicia’s calming powers had never been tested under this much stress. And she didn’t know what she was walking into, either. 

Too nervous to watch the show that night, I paced in the curtained-off area up front, a combination box office and lobby. Every so often, a sound would emerge from my mouth, a barely audible “My mother is in there.” And indeed she was, sardined between her best friend and a bunch of artsy homosexuals. She never even took off her raincoat.

Finally—applause. 

Eventually, Ma and her escort emerged. Felicia hugged me and said how much she’d enjoyed the play, particularly the actors’ comic timing. “You did a great job!” 

My mother stood beside her, silent and ashen, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. I’d done the same thing as a toddler listening to conversations I didn’t understand.

“And you? How did you like the reading, Ma?”

“It was…” Silence. Then, a monotone. “You did a good job. We’ve got to go now.” She pushed open the outer door and paused while Felicia and I said our good-byes. 

For a while, I held my breath whenever Ma called. Would she talk about the play? About me? But, no. It was like it never happened.