Juliet Takes a Breath Read online

  With or without hugs, I was off into the world, off to see this Portland, this Harlowe. I slept on the shoulder of Mary: a deep, warm, sleep. No dreams and no wheezing lungs.

  Part Two:

  You have now arrived in Portland, Oregon

  3. The Pussy Lady

  Harlowe. Harlowe. Harlowe. The excitement of finally meeting her had built up so deep inside of me. I sat in the PDX baggage claim, waiting for her, itching to see her face. I stared at my Swatch watch and counted seconds. I walked around the conveyor belt. Scenarios of what Harlowe would be like flashed through my mind.

  In one version, Harlowe would arrive with a pack of Amazonian dykes, covered in war paint and body glitter, chanting lines from Raging Flower. She’d march towards me and lift me to the heavens, presenting me to the goddesses. In another, I imagined Harlowe seeing me from across the crowded airport and leaving me there. I’d beg the airline to let me fly home, back to where I really belonged. With each scenario, I attempted to assuage the building anxiety in my chest that Harlowe might have forgotten to pick me up. It was already 30 minutes past our designated meeting time. Each minute that passed made me doubt my decision to come here. Why did I decide to travel across the country over a few emails and love for a book?

  What did I really know about Harlowe Brisbane? She was the woman DYKE Magazine referred to as “The Pussy Lady” and she was the woman who invited me into her home and shouldn’t I have asked a million other questions before coming? What if she was one of those people that was capable of inducing a riot or commanding the attention of a flock of feminists at a rally but couldn’t handle the normal shit, like picking up their dry-cleaning or a scared Puerto Rican baby-dyke from the airport?

  Thirty minutes. In 30 minutes, I’d lost myself to anxiety and daydreams and nearly sprung out of my flesh when Harlowe appeared five inches from my face and asked, “Hey are you, Juliet?”

  My mouth opened but the words I was going to say evaporated. Every clever, and adorable, awkward thing I’d prepared vanished.

  “Harlowe?” I asked, mouth dry, heartbeats eclipsing all other brain functions.

  She nodded fast, smiling big. Harlowe wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her chest. The scent of patchouli and tobacco enveloped my nostrils.

  “Oh Juliet, you’re here,” Harlowe said, still holding me. She kissed my cheek, and hugged me tight enough to lift me off the ground. “Sweet girl, your aura smells so fresh,” she said, pausing to take a look at me.

  Harlowe kept her palms on my shoulders. We admired each other for a moment. Her hair was cut short and was bright, flashing red. Her eyes were solid blue. Taking her all in quelled my anxiety and gave me a moment to take a deep fucking breath.

  “I’ve told the whole world about you,” she said, “And thank goddess for your sweet smelling aura because otherwise this entire experience might be way more difficult, you know?”

  Never in my life had I been excited about having an aura that smelled good. Who knew they even had a smell?

  She led us out of the airport. We walked into the parking lot under an inky black sky littered with stars. The way she held my arm reminded me of the way my mom had walked me to my dorm room on college move-in day. She led me with a gentle directness, with the purpose of taking me to something new. This moment with Harlowe felt like that; I ached for my mom.

  Harlowe’s pick up truck was Pepto Bismol pink and covered with hand-painted daisies. I stared at it feeling the magnitude of the distance between the Bronx and me. Vehicles like this didn’t exist in my neighborhood. I kept thinking of things to say to Harlowe; thinking not speaking. Absorbing the moment was more important: this sky, this car, all the things that felt so different. I wanted to always remember what it felt like to be next to her.

  “Did you know that there’s no moon tonight,” Harlowe asked. She started up the truck. Inside there were stacks of envelopes addressed to Harlowe, bits of letters, crumpled up pieces of paper.

  “I was wondering where it went,” I said, peering up at the sky from the passenger side. I didn’t see any moon in the Bronx either. I wondered if my family could see the same sky.

  “Yes, no moon, which means that you’ve brought in a new lunar phase,” Harlowe said, navigating the twisted lanes of airport road. She drove stick shift while smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. “Like, at this very moment, the sun is shining so bright that it keeps us from seeing the moon. You must be the sun, Juliet.”

  Harlowe slapped my knee in excitement, and I started to cry. How was I the sun when I couldn’t even be the daughter? An empty highway stretched out before us. I gripped the yellow inhaler in the pocket of my faded blue jeans. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Oh my god, I didn’t mean to hit you, lunar cycles excite me and then I get all handsy…” Harlowe searched for the right words.

  “No,” I gasped. “You’re fine. I’ve never done anything like this and I’ve never been this far away from home.” I admitted all of this between wheezing breaths. Harlowe reached across me and rolled down the window. “I literally just came out to my family before I left for the airport and, like, my mom didn’t say goodbye and now you’re telling me that I’m the sun.”

  “Breathe, girl,” she said, her palm once again on my shoulder, “New moon means you get a fresh chance.” Harlowe touched my cheek, still puffing on her cigarette.

  We drove under the moonless sky. The quiet between us was soft, no pressure. I let out some of the bits about my mom. Shared words with Harlowe about how maybe I was an emotional runaway and how one of my secret hopes for this trip was to find my real bravery, to feel it when I walk and not just when I send emails to strangers.

  “Can we listen to the mix tape I made for my girlfriend?” I asked, digging into my book bag, “Because of what you said about creating a female-centric world in Raging Flower, I only put chicas on it.” I wiped my cheeks and showed Harlowe the mix tape.

  “Play it. Thank goddess, the only singing man I can deal with is Bruce Springsteen and that’s because my dad grew up in Jersey,” she said. Harlowe pushed the CD into the opening and Queen Latifah’s melodic voice swept in on rumbly speakers. Just another day, living in the hood, just another day around the way.

  With the windows rolled down, everything floated away into guitar riffs, beat drops, and her asking me the names of newer female musicians. All the weird self-doubt and wheezy feelings in my lungs smoothed over and I felt calm.

  We pulled up to Harlowe’s house well past the witching hour. The cypress tree in front of her home glowed in the dim light of the street lamp. “America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people” was written in chalk on her front steps. Her yard swirled with hydrangeas, rose bushes, overgrown sunflowers and grass gone wild.

  Harlowe lifted my bags off my shoulder, led me through the garden and up her chalk-covered steps. She paused in front of her door and put her hand on the frame.

  “Blessed house, thank you for shelter,” she said, as she tapped the doorframe three times, and stepped inside the house. Her actions made me wonder if she had spirits in the house. I tapped the doorframe three times, too, just in case.

  It floored me that the doors weren’t even locked. Anyone could have run up into this white lady’s house and stolen everything. There weren’t bars on the windows. Harlowe didn’t even have a big scary dog, like a pitbull or a Rottweiler. I’d never gone to someone’s home and not seen them unlock it. My dad locked the door to the house when we were sitting in front of it getting some fresh air “just in case.”

  It was late and I was tired; I couldn’t even process the extent of her hippieness.

  We walked up a set of narrow steps and into her attic. Wooden beams stretched along the sloped ceiling of the attic. She plopped my bags down on the floor next to a queen-sized mattress with a lamp and a small bookshelf at its side. Harlowe walked towards it.

  “This is your spot, sweet human,” she said. Harlowe turned to me, yaw
ning. “It’s so late that it’s too early for anything else but sleep, right? We’ll talk about all the things in a few hours. Welcome, Juliet.” Harlowe hugged me again and left me there in the attic.

  I sat on the mattress and looked around. I’d made it to Portland and was inside of Harlowe Brisbane’s home. Holy shit.

  4. Clues

  Soft gray light fell in from the windows. The attic stairs creaked under Harlowe’s footsteps. She stopped at my bed. I heard the click of her lighter and an intake of breath.

  It felt like I’d just gone to sleep. Still under blankets, I checked the time. 11:15 a.m. Well at least it wasn’t the butt crack of dawn. I lowered the blanket and waved hello with one finger. Harlowe passed me the bowl. I hit it, eyes still half-closed.

  “I always work best with a fresh brain. Don’t you?” Harlowe asked. She stretched forward. Her long arms pushed towards her toes.

  I nodded, coughed a bit from the smoke, and said, “Yes, the freshest. Good morning and thank you for sharing.”

  “Thank you for being here,” she said, “Juliet, I’ve been listening to your mix tape all morning and it got me thinking about your internship. And I finally know what you’re going to help me with.” She looked at me with wide eyes and this grin, this “let’s make a batch of vegan cookies and be best friends forever” grin. I laughed, but felt a twinge in my chest. We’d planned this almost three months in advance and she’d only figured out what I was going to do this morning? I asked her to tell me what about my feminist power lesbian mix tape sparked her creative mind.

  She said, “Your mix tape is all songs by women. All women come from faeries, goddesses, warriors and witches, Juliet. But we don’t know anything about the women that birthed those women. We don’t know who our ancestral mothers are. I want you to help me find them. We have to tell their stories before they disappear forever amidst all the violent and whitewashed history of men. My next book is all about reclaiming our mystical and political lineage. And you, Juliet, you’re going to be the faerie hunter, minus the guns or actual hunting.”

  A faerie hunter. I took another hit off Harlowe’s bowl. “You really think all women come from faeries?” I asked, setting it next to her. I feared getting too blazed and falling into the faerie world forever. I wasn’t even sure if I was fully awake yet. This witches and faeries shit was almost too much for 11:00 a.m.

  “Of course I believe that, Juliet, I mean, where else would we come from,” Harlowe responded, candid and full of excitement, “Certainly not from the rib of some fraidy-cat snitch named Adam.”

  I pulled out my purple composition notebook. I wanted to be prepared. This was my internship and her second book. If I had to hunt for magical lady creatures, I was going to be baked and ready.

  “How does one go on a faerie hunt?” I asked.

  “Well first, you need clues and I’ve got a box full of them,” she said.

  I wondered what in the world of half-baked hippie white lady she was talking about. Clues. Did she really have clues for this? Was I just a little too high all of a sudden?

  Harlowe stood up and walked towards the corner of the room. The dust of incense sticks covered the floor in a light film. Harlowe dragged a box from against the far wall and left it at my feet. She went about the room, lighting candles and incense. Her cardboard box was dented and stuffed with scraps of paper. They’d been ripped out of lined notebooks, pulled from magazines; names were written on all of them. Mixed in with the fragments of paper were pictures of women. This box looked like the inside of Harlowe’s pick-up truck.

  “These are clues to the lives of our unknown and underappreciated women. This box of wonderful shit: It’s the beginning of a masterpiece,” Harlowe promised, tapping my knee, “I am in no rush. Discoveries are not lightning quick.”

  I sifted through some of the names and pictures, in awe of the sheer number of them. Who were these women? I didn’t recognize any of their faces. How could I be 19 and not know any of them? I’d always done all of my homework, read all of the books assigned in school and yet, here was a world full of possibly iconic ladies I knew nothing about.

  “Where did all the names come from?” I asked.

  “Anytime I read something about a fierce woman I’d never heard of or came across a bold woman I wanted to know more about, I either wrote down her name or ripped out whatever pages mentioned her,” Harlowe answered, “I stuffed all my findings into this box. I knew one day it would come together. I didn’t know how but I knew it would. And here you are.”

  Harlowe stood up. She slid into a warrior pose, hands clasped together over her head, one leg bent, the other extended behind her. “Come to me with questions at any time but right now let this sink into your skin and your intrepid spirit. Get a feel for how you want to start and go with it. I trust you,” Harlowe explained as she exhaled to the heavens.

  Before I could think of anything to say, she left. I looked at the box and reached for my inhaler. Panic always started in my lungs first and then spread to nervous fingers, knuckles that had to be cracked, and a heartbeat that wouldn’t rest. During these moments of panic at home, I’d find Mom’s lap and rest my head in it. She’d run her fingers through my hair and calm down all the internal noise. It was noise that told me I wasn’t good enough or I wouldn’t have enough time to finish whatever I was working on. Here in Harlowe’s attic, the noise was still the same but I was on my own.

  The box full of unorganized notes and the unstructured independent research time were a surprise. The logical part of my brain knew it’d be okay but that wasn’t the part in charge. I was all Virgo and no clarity. I needed some control over my environment or a good head rub. Maybe a file cabinet with items listed in alphabetical order.

  I was laid back on the outside but a nervous, asthmatic, panic-baby on the inside. This wasn’t how I’d imagined our working relationship. I thought that I’d be at her side and we’d fight patriarchal crime together, like some type of intergenerational, interracial Cagney and Lacey. But this busted-up cardboard box full of women-centric raffle tickets and some heartfelt words about having faith in me doing this on my own? That was my internship? How were we going to be the greatest writing and research team the world had ever known?

  Why hadn’t she prepared something solid for me to do? Wasn’t this important to her? My mind raced with questions. Perhaps I could work around this. Witches and warriors and faeries were fun things, right? It’s not like I was hanging out with bourgie young Democrats all summer. I didn’t know how Lainie was able to make that commitment. It seemed like a slow boring death to me. This thing with Harlowe could be great. Maybe. I took a pull off my inhaler and still couldn’t relax. My lungs widened and the wheeze lifted, but my hands twitched. I opened one of the windows and I crawled out of the attic onto a small ledge. The warm gray Portland sunlight washed over my skin.

  I dialed Titi Wepa. Her ringback tone was that Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam song “Can You Feel the Beat.”

  “Juliet,” Titi Wepa answered, coughing and shouting into the phone, “How the fuck are you?” Freestyle music blasted in the background over honks and sirens. Titi Wepa was always driving. The world needed her to be in constant motion, for there was always someone in distress, someone that needed a little “Wepa.”

  “I’m good, Titi. Just chillin’ in Harlowe’s attic,” I answered making no attempts to hide my melancholy.

  “That woman has you in her attic? Has it been checked for rats?” Titi Wepa asked with her “Seven on Your Side” wannabe news anchor eye. “I mean, because you know if anything happens to you up there, I swear to God, my lawyer will be calling that lady up so quick her fucking head will spin. You know me, J. I don’t play.” The sounds of traffic in the Bronx filtered through her end of the phone and into my ears.

  “No, Titi, her attic is mad cool. It’s filled with candles, and books and really dope ass shit. Mad comfortable,” I assured her, smiling a little. “That’s not what’s bothering me.”
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br />   “Talk to me, J. What’s going on?” Titi Wepa lowered her music and told some other driver to “stuff it out his ass.”

  “Harlowe told me what exactly she needs me to do and it’s impossible,” I said, “This morning, she pulled out this box with all these little papers about women and I gotta document who they are and that’s like my whole internship. And yo, I mean these are scraps and random pictures of women that no one’s ever heard of and I’m magically supposed to find them,” I whined into the phone.

  Titi Wepa coughed again hard. It turned into a coughing fit. She’d been coughing like that after she spent a few months as a first-responder at Ground Zero. I didn’t say anything. She hated the attention her cough generated.

  Titi Wepa caught her breath and said, “So this lady, Harlowe, breaks down what you gotta do and now you don’t wanna do it?” Wepa asked with a mix of attitude and incredulity.

  “Titi, Harlowe’s asking me to work with scraps and faeries and weird shit… C’mon,” I pleaded, trying to put her back on my side where she belonged.

  “No, no, you said your piece,” Titi Wepa said, stopping me, “J, you’re the one who flew all the way over to wherever the fuck you are without having discussed this with her beforehand.”

  “Portland. I’m in Portland, Oregon,” I muttered. Thick grey clouds rolled across the sky.

  “Whatever. Listen, you’re the one who tracked her down and asked her for this opportunity and I know you get anxious and wheezy, you’ve been like that since you were a kid but you can’t let that stop you. Juliet, it’s just a puzzle and there are a million ways to solve it. So find your own and get it together. Call me if you need another kick in the cajones. I love you, Juliet,” said Titi Wepa. Our conversations always ended with Titi Wepa telling me she loved me in her tough, Bronx accent.