Oceanna nodded. “I guess. Most transgenders won’t admit that, though. Like, also in the men’s room without one. Why should it matter?”
“Why are you—neither?” Hannah asked.
Oceanna shrugged. “For the last few years, I’ve gotten tired of all the pretending, the effort to match a stereotype—and the issue in me doesn’t feel as strong as it used to.”
People looked like they were absorbing this.
“And,” Oceanna continued, “I think I feel empowered by Mason, here.”
Mason smiled and showed more pictures on his phone. People crowded around to look. “These, here, are the Trans March. Here’s Turk and Taylor streets—which was an incident back in the ‘60s, but it became something that helped gain trans-people rights, so they march to it. From Dolores Park to there.”
“And these pictures, here, are of the game,” Mason showed them.
“What game?” Kelly asked.
“The Giants game,” Oceanna said.
“You went to see the Giants?” Jerry asked Mason. Turning to Oceanna he said, “But you’re a queen!”
Half of them gasped.
Oceanna put on a distinct smirk, and looked at him without saying a word.
Mason continued. “Yeah, we did. It was her, me, Hila—a crossdresser we met in the Trans March—and Simi.”
Mason flipped through his phone to show them pix.
“Oh my God,” Jed said, standing still.
“Simi?” Jerry asked.
“A transsexual friend of Osh’s who came here from Maryland. She was here last Thursday evening. She just got out of the Army. Was a helicopter pilot—”
“They let transsexuals fly Army helicopters?” Kelly asked.
“I don’t think so?” Mason looked at Oceanna and back to the table of people with whom he was sitting. “But she switched after she got out. Messy business, because she was a P.O.W. over in Afghanistan. But she’s okay, in spite of that.”
“And Hila is from Afghanistan, too,” Derie said. “See, Mason: I listen. Sometimes.”
“And here,” Mason skipped way ahead on his phone, is when we went with Simi to meet her parents.” Mason leaned into his friends in mock conspiracy and spoke quietly. “They didn’t know anything about it.”
Alarm went through the tables.
“Johnny comes back from the war and he’s a girl!” Jerry said.
“It’s true,” Jed said. “I met her before.”
Oceanna corrected. “Actually, her parents were happy to see her, and they said they had known all along that Simi had this in her. They just didn’t know what to do about it.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Hannah said, looking at her two children.
“And here are some pix of the parade,” Mason said, flipping his phone back to them.”
“I just see bikes,” Jerry said.
“Because that’s all we saw, too.” Mason said. “We were four Harleys in the group of some three to four hundred, and all we saw was ourselves lined up—and then when we got rolling, all we saw were the bikes in front of us and a million people lining the street cheering for us.” He turned to Derie. “That’s something to experience.”
“I’m considering it,” Derie said. “You could carry Jason on the back of your hog.”
“You lesbian, Derie?” Jerry asked.
“You’d really like to?” Mason asked Derie, ignoring Jerry.
“If I can borrow a little scooter when we get there,” Derie said. “Does it have to be a Harley— Ah! How could the three of us ride there all on your bike? Maybe need to find a sitter for Jason.”
“No problem. There were all kinds of anything on two or three wheels there.” Mason laughed. “Even this one thing that looked like it used to be a meter-maid bike? Or something Peter Sellers would drive out of a Pink Panther movie.”
Oceanna laughed. “There you go: It must be a gay movie, if it’s pink. But I’ll tell you, if you want to go sometime, Derie, I’ll go, too, if you like.”
“That’d be great,” Derie said.
Mason thumbed his phone and moved back to his table to sit by his wife.
“Oh my God,” Oceanna said. “We’ll turn the whole Pride thing into a family event.”
CHAPTER
20
Two carloads of people in the parking lot watched as Oceanna and Mason’s family emerged from the restaurant. Jed and Frank stood by one of them.
* * *
Oceanna rode her blue hog back to her mother’s house. This time, she used a remote in her motorcycle jacket pocket to open the garage door. It rose, she entered, and she closed it behind her.
She opened the door that lead into the kitchen, from the garage, and looked around, listened.
It seemed quiet, as it should. Her mother’s furnishings seemed undisturbed.
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her, listening some more.
There was the sound of a clock on the living room wall, just loud enough to be heard from there. She heard the refrigerator humming, but nothing else.
She looked more closely, as was her habit, and everything seemed the same as it was five days earlier when she left for San Francisco.
Her phone rang in her pocket again. She startled: “Jesus!”
She pulled the phone out of her pants pocket. “Hila,” Oceanna said with a smile into the phone. “Yes, we’re here, all safe, if not so sound.” Oceanna walked over in front of the stairs to peer up them. “I just got home, and I’m looking the place over. Kingman isn’t San Francisco, but even if I were in L.A., I’d still check it out.”
Pause
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Oceanna said on the phone, her voice bouncing off walls that were too still. “Maybe nine or ten hours in total. Yes, actually, it’s getting hot outside.”
Pause.
“Listen: Thank you for your hospitality, out there. You were very nice to us.” Pause. “Yes, you’re welcome here any time. Just show up. I’m not going anywhere, for the foreseeable future. Mom’s in a nursing home. In fact, I’d be pleased if you were here.” Oceanna began creeping up the stairs, looking through the bannister to the floor above. “This place gives me the creeps.”
Pause.
“Okay, love. You, too.”
Oceanna hung up her phone and put it back in her pocket.
The house returned to mortuary stillness.
Oceanna crept up the rest of the stairs and peeked into each bedroom, closets, the bathroom, the master bathroom, finding nothing.
She sat alone on the edge of the bed and collapsed back onto it.
* * *
While Jason played in a corner of the school cafeteria, Derie worked with four other people on the 4th of July arrangements, including with Madam Mayor, Cori Sable.
“So we’ve gotten a lot done here lately,” Mayor Cori said. “We got the band set—I still don’t believe we got Journey—”
“I know!” Irena was ecstatic.
“Haven’t been able to control her for the last month,” her husband, Gary, said.
The committee agreed. Journey was a real coup.
“And they’re coming here!” Irena said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Evans said. “That happens when they arrive.”
“She’s just excited is all,” his wife, Kim, said to him.
“To put it mildly,” Gary said. “I have to live with her—”
Irena could barely hold still.
“Fee at the gate?” Derie asked.
“Yes,” Mayor Cori said. “Ten dollars a head at these two intersections.” She showed them on the map of the neighborhood. “We feed people in through there, park them in the Fair Grounds lots there and there—no fee for parking. This ain’t the Big City. And let them roam.”
People around the table seemed pleased.
“This ‘a be the biggest 4th of July festival we’ve ever had,” Mayor Cori said. “The concert is over here in the park— Got sparkling lights in the trees?”
; “Yup,” Evans, a large man at the far end of the table, said in his big ole Tennessee accent. “Thousands. Make the place look like Disneyland.”
“The carnival is going on over here in the fairgrounds,” Mayor Cori continued, “and fireworks at nine o’clock—enough to make Francis Scott Key stand up and pray.”
“I am so amazed?” Derie asked it like a question.
“Working like slaves,” Kim said.
“Mason’s trip didn’t help get this done,” Evans said.
“He’s not organizing this as much as I am,” Derie said. “I’ve been on the phone constantly. Him being gone didn’t matter for this.”
Little Jason, oblivious to the meeting, screamed and slammed a truck into a wall.
“So Journey is still locked in, then?” Derie asked.
Irena smiled broadly. “I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah,” Gary said. “Still locked in. They’re still coming.” He looked at his wife, Irena. “I can’t believe it, either.”
“He wouldn’t let me talk with them on the phone,” Irena said.
“Because we need to be professional, not act like school children,” Gary said.
“I am!” Irena said.
“The lighting’s already set up,” Derie said. “House lights, ‘lime’ lights. Sound board two hundred feet out in the audience. We have two spot lights, already in position—”
“Nobody ‘ll steal them?” Gary asked. He used to be a police officer, so it was natural for him to wonder.
“This is Kingman, Gary,” Evans said. “We hang thieves around here.”
“Timothy McVeigh was from here, was he?” Gary said, in reference to the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. “For a while?”
“And we hung him,” Evans said.
“Well, the needle,” Kim corrected her husband.
Derie continued. “We have tarps over the equipment to protect them from morning dew. No problem.”
Irena chimed in. “Seating is ‘standing-room,’ where ever people can get to, and it’s okay for people to bring their own wine or cheese or fried chicken or potato salad.”
“And food vendors,” Derie said. “I’ve got most of that set up. People love to buy food on site. We have two booths up.”
Gary thought. “The band, lighting, seating sound— Microphones?”
Derie answered. “There are five of them in the band, and we have six mikes set up, just in case. They’re gathered under one tarp, right now, but quick to set up. And we have speakers set up that’ll make folks from the next three counties deaf, if we turn ‘em up.”
“Ah,” Evans asked. “What about drums? They probably bring their own guitars—” He pronounced it GIT-tars. “But they gotta have drums.”
“I called,” Gary said. “They bring their own.”
“They know we’re amateurs, don’t they?” Derie asked.
“Yeah,” Gary said. “I talked with Neal, myself—”
“Jesus, you talked with Neal?” Derie asked.
“Neal?” Evans asked.
“Guitar,” Kim said.
“—and he knows we’re new at this,” Gary said. “We’re a small venue for them, but he said they liked to do that sometimes to get closer to people.”
“Oh, that is so beautiful,” Kim said.
Mayor Cori reached over to pat Kim’s hand in a friendly way. “I know.” She covered her face in her hands for a second. “I am so amazed.”
* * *
Oceanna’s mother’s “home” was, currently, an assisted living facility, that also had a “memory unit” and a skilled nursing facility attached, as may be needed by some patients. It was a nice place, on the face of it: nice building, nice gardens, nice view.
Oceanna noticed she was being followed as she drove there. She parked and walked in through the heavy double doors at the front, past the reception counter. “Good morning, Sarah,” she said to the nurse on hand.
Sarah was on the phone. “Okay, Jed,” she said, loudly enough for Oceanna to hear. She waited a second before hanging up the phone. “Good morning, Osh,” she said with a weak smile.
Oceanna looked up a couple of hallways and then entered the day room. No mother. She walked over to the back door and pushed the large button for the electric doors—wide enough for wheel chair access. The doors swung open, and Oceanna walked out onto the patio.
Oceanna’s mom was there, in her private wheel chair, sitting among a small group of others in the shade of a near-by tree. None of them were talking.
“Mom!” Oceanna said to her.
No answer.
“Mom?” Oceanna asked.
No answer.
Oceanna bent over her mother to look more closely. Her hair was combed, but in a little disarray. Her eyes were unfocused. She was breathing regularly. Her bottom lip sagged, and a little saliva was leaking down the side of her chin. Her mother was not having a good day. That was common, any more. Rare was the day when her mother was lucid.
There were some napkins tucked under her mom’s right leg, inside the wheelchair. Oceanna took one and wiped her mom’s chin and mouth.
“Mom, this is Osh. I’m back from San Francisco. It was a great trip. I’m back from San Francisco. It was a great trip.” Oceanna repeated sentences to her mom, hoping her mother may understand on some level. “I’ll tell you all about it over the next few days.”
The look on her mom’s face very subtly changed from a blank, non-expression to one that almost seemed one of worry.
Oceanna tried to soften it. “I’m back from San Francisco. It was very nice, Mom. Good people, and a good friend reunited with her parents, who missed her a lot. And they were glad she’s home again. It’s nice when families love each other. I love you, Mom. I love you, Mom.”
Her mother said nothing, didn’t move.
“Let me go talk with the nurses, Mom. I’ll be back. I’m gonna go talk with the nurses. I’ll be right back.”
Oceanna walked to a nurse’s station and asked about her mom.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “But we haven’t been able to locate your medical power of attorney, lately.”
“You’ve had it for a year,” Oceanna sad. “You should have it in her file.”
“I know,” said Sarah, “but it’s not there now. Could you bring in another copy, please?”
“She’s my mother, and you know that.”
Sarah looked a little guilty but was unmoved.
“Where’s the administrator,” Oceanna said. She walked toward the administration offices.
“Madelaine isn’t there at the moment,” Sarah said, running after Oceanna.
“Where is she?” Oceanna said.
“She’s out.”
“Then who’s second in command?” Oceanna said. “I’ll talk with her.”
“I’m afraid it’s me,” Sarah said.
“I don’t think so, Sarah,” Oceanna said. “I think you’re lying to me.”
“Don’t cause trouble, Osh, or I’ll have to call the police.”
Osh walked into a diner. People stared at her. She looked left at the people and the walls. She looked right. She looked toward the kitchen. The people were, by her standards, rustic: country, boots, tennis shoes, jeans, some cowboy hats, some plaid shirts. One T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in a sleeve—thank God he didn’t have a cigarette behind his hear.
The cook stopped cooking to stare at Oceanna, who was standing in the doorway. He spit into a trashcan.
Oceanna made a concerted effort to keep a dispassionate face and looked around more.
No crossdressers. No transgenders. Not even any gays, that Oceanna could see, though they had to be there, some.
“Seat yourself,” a server said as she walked by, arms full of plates, on her way to a table.
Oceanna stood on a street corner by a grocery store and looked around.
It must have been a hundred degrees outside—baking hot.
She held a hand up to her eyes to shade them
and looked up one street and down another.
No bicycles. Nobody walking on the sidewalk. Nothing friendly from anywhere. A few people getting out of or into cars, a few cars driving slowly on the streets. A street light that changed only when it had to, and when it did, its colors didn’t vary off the norm.
Later in the afternoon, Oceanna sat in her doctor’s examination room, in a chair beside the exam table.
The doctor walked in.
“Thank you for taking me, Sam. I just wanted to be near someone nice.”
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked her.
Oceanna looked defeated. “And I was having such a good week.”
* * *
“You can’t make me do this, Wajia,” Asfand said. “I am a man! The head of the family!”
The street was busy, crowded with people talking, maneuvering, trying to get somewhere.
“Yes, you are the boss,” Wajia said. “Now get on the bus!”
* * *
Mason ran a fork lift at their feed store, arranging bales of different kinds of hay out back. He was sweating like a sieve, but he had a cup holder rigged on his fork lift. He took a drink of cold lemon aide and ran his forks into another pallet, lifted it high overhead.
“Global warming is such a pain!” he said to himself.
* * *
Oceanna went to the a gay bar in town—
—Oh! No, she didn’t.
Because there weren’t any.
Or none she was yet aware of.
One in ten people were gay, everywhere? There were nine on the U.S. Supreme Court, so there might almost be one there, too. Where the hell were the gay bars?
She consulted her smart phone.
Las Vegas—a hundred and three miles away.
* * *
Simi met Harry when she opened the door of their apartment and wrapped her in a loving embrace, kissing her warmly on the lips—
* * *
Kathleen looked out the window of their home toward Oakland across the bay. The bay was lovely, but no one was there. “She hasn’t called me all day! Where is she?”
Fulton shook his head in disbelief at his worrying wife. “She called twice yesterday, so it averages out? Twenty bucks says she calls tomorrow before breakfast.”
Kathleen wasn’t pacified.
Fulton picked up his T.V. remote and fiddled with it. “Maybe she went grocery shopping. Sometimes you gotta go grocery shopping—”