Volume Four Prose
Long I Stood
Amy Wolf
Long I stood by the bay window in the living room, which looked out over the front yard with its three maple trees, waiting for my big brother to come home from school. My mother told this story often, well into my twenties. I was inseparable from him, she said, and I didn’t know what to do when he went to kindergarten. I was inconsolable. Standing at the window, crying, “Day-day,” which is what I made of David. There is more to the story; there must be, I think.
And then she invited a neighbor’s child or a friend’s child over to play with me, right? Or took me to the zoo to distract me? Or even sat down and colored or played with me herself? I wait in the quiet after my mother’s story for the end of it. The end never comes. Or, rather, the end is my mother smirking or laughing, saying, “That’s how attached she was to him.” I hear nothing about her trying to mitigate the pain. Just that I stayed at that window till I saw him get back off the bus. Four hours later. That can’t be. But it’s the story she tells.
For her the happy ending is when he got off the bus four hours later and I was glad to see him. This proves to her she is a good mother, because I love my brother. She detested and feared hers. Still, she thinks it funny that I didn’t expect him to disappear from my days like that all of a sudden. Did no one tell me? How is this funny? Why is she still laughing, all these years later, at my tears.
Childhood and then teenaged years are a series of goodbyes. David goes to kindergarten and then grade school. When I get to grade school, he is there for a few years, and then he moves on to junior high. In my hometown, the junior high and high school are broken into three two year chunks, in separate buildings. So I am never in the same school with him again, as he is three years older than me. He goes before me like a shadow and a curse. We are not close again. Either he is distancing himself from his little sister, or I am distancing myself from my geeky older brother.
He is the only kid on the block who doesn’t come out and play-stickball, kickball, kick the can, hide and seek, touch football. Later, the boys play street hockey. I am asked why my brother won’t play and have to say that I don’t know. But I do know. He thinks he’s better than them.
By this time he is on the couch with stacks of binary paper that get him into Princeton. He is learning computer programming; the school district hires him when he is still in high school to put the baseball stats and grades on computer. They had been in paper files. Other kids ask me to fix their grades, or try to imply that he’s fixed mine. The world seems to think he’s smarter than me.
I don’t have that illusion. He is good at math but hopeless at English and social studies. I helped him write a paper one time; he asked with genuine puzzlement on his face, “Where do you see that in the material? I would not have noticed that in a million years.” I don’t remember what the topic was, but it gave me an idea that I understood words and history and writing, and he understood numbers and machines.
My brother was not the type who let everyone know not to pick on his little sister. I have no memories at all of him stepping in to defend me. I had to do that myself, sometimes from him. He liked to play tricks, like helping me climb up on the wall between our house and the one next door, promising he would help me get back down. Then he left. I would be up there stranded for a very long time, until I got the courage to jump. Later in our lives, he asked me, “Why did you believe me after the first time; that’s not my fault; you shouldn’t have believed me.”
When I was in 10th grade, towards the end, the infamous Miss McHugh came to interview applicants for her AP American Studies class. She called out my name, an unusual one, and said, “Is David your older brother?” I said yes. She asked, “Are you as smart as he is?” I felt a stone in the pit of my stomach. The room was full of startled students waiting for my reply. Dread and nausea hit me suddenly. This was more accusation than question. I was in the habit by then of thinking my life and reputation wholly divorced from him; we were so different. I was smoking weed by this time, sometimes on the bus on the way to school; he was a goody two shoes. I sat up straight, looked the angular pant-suit wearing Miss McHugh in her eyes and said, “Yes. He’s better than me at math but I’m smarter at English and social studies.” I got into that class; mostly got As, and aced the AP exam two years later. Miss McHugh never did like me though. She may have seen too much of herself in me.
Miss McHugh was the first actual lesbian adult that I met in my life, to my knowledge. She was in her 40’s, dedicated to her job and very excited every day about history. She appeared to have a mad historical crush on Thomas Jefferson. She went and did history things on her vacations, like visit Monticello, and then came back and told us about it, very animatedly, gesturing widely, striding back and forth in the front of the room.
She sometimes referred to her college roommate who lived with her. I thought that odd. Miss McHugh, as I said, was in her 40’s. This was a fairly affluent suburb outside of Philadelphia in the mid 1970’s. Entirely made up of nuclear families in split level homes, or older stone homes that looked to me like mansions. I didn’t know anyone who lived in an apartment. Who lives with their college roommate? And how sad, that neither of them found a man to marry. On the other hand, they fit well into the mold of old New England spinsters we were learning about in English class. Miss McHugh must be one of them, I thought.
One day, the plumber’s son, Mark Ennis, stopped some of us in the hallway outside Miss McHugh’s class. “Guess what? My dad went to Miss McHugh’s house to fix the toilet and there’s ONLY ONE BEDROOM. Do you get it? Only one bed! I thought you should know.” He skipped off. I don’t think he used the L word. This was the first time in my life, 11th grade, that I heard anyone talk openly about a lesbian relationship. And it was a throwaway, gotcha comment by a teenage boy.
I often wondered over the years about Miss McHugh’s social life. Not her love life; I’m sure that was fine, if cloistered. Did they sneak off to South Street in downtown Phila and go to gay bars? Did they have a secret network of closeted professional friends, and take turns having dinner and book discussions at each other's houses? Did their circle involve gay male couples? Did they ever act as cover for each other at family functions, a gay man escorting a lesbian or vice versa? How did one keep saying “my college roommate” about someone who shares your bed for 20, 30, 40 years? At what point do you just fall over from the fatigue and effort of hiding and pretending? These are things I wondered.
No wonder she didn’t like me. Apart from me looking professionally bored, smartass, and not working nearly hard enough. I probably looked like the student most likely to actually see her, or see through her. I wasn’t. I was in deep denial myself. But I can imagine I posed a threat to her.
And then she invited a neighbor’s child or a friend’s child over to play with me, right? Or took me to the zoo to distract me? Or even sat down and colored or played with me herself? I wait in the quiet after my mother’s story for the end of it. The end never comes. Or, rather, the end is my mother smirking or laughing, saying, “That’s how attached she was to him.” I hear nothing about her trying to mitigate the pain. Just that I stayed at that window till I saw him get back off the bus. Four hours later. That can’t be. But it’s the story she tells.
For her the happy ending is when he got off the bus four hours later and I was glad to see him. This proves to her she is a good mother, because I love my brother. She detested and feared hers. Still, she thinks it funny that I didn’t expect him to disappear from my days like that all of a sudden. Did no one tell me? How is this funny? Why is she still laughing, all these years later, at my tears.
Childhood and then teenaged years are a series of goodbyes. David goes to kindergarten and then grade school. When I get to grade school, he is there for a few years, and then he moves on to junior high. In my hometown, the junior high and high school are broken into three two year chunks, in separate buildings. So I am never in the same school with him again, as he is three years older than me. He goes before me like a shadow and a curse. We are not close again. Either he is distancing himself from his little sister, or I am distancing myself from my geeky older brother.
He is the only kid on the block who doesn’t come out and play-stickball, kickball, kick the can, hide and seek, touch football. Later, the boys play street hockey. I am asked why my brother won’t play and have to say that I don’t know. But I do know. He thinks he’s better than them.
By this time he is on the couch with stacks of binary paper that get him into Princeton. He is learning computer programming; the school district hires him when he is still in high school to put the baseball stats and grades on computer. They had been in paper files. Other kids ask me to fix their grades, or try to imply that he’s fixed mine. The world seems to think he’s smarter than me.
I don’t have that illusion. He is good at math but hopeless at English and social studies. I helped him write a paper one time; he asked with genuine puzzlement on his face, “Where do you see that in the material? I would not have noticed that in a million years.” I don’t remember what the topic was, but it gave me an idea that I understood words and history and writing, and he understood numbers and machines.
My brother was not the type who let everyone know not to pick on his little sister. I have no memories at all of him stepping in to defend me. I had to do that myself, sometimes from him. He liked to play tricks, like helping me climb up on the wall between our house and the one next door, promising he would help me get back down. Then he left. I would be up there stranded for a very long time, until I got the courage to jump. Later in our lives, he asked me, “Why did you believe me after the first time; that’s not my fault; you shouldn’t have believed me.”
When I was in 10th grade, towards the end, the infamous Miss McHugh came to interview applicants for her AP American Studies class. She called out my name, an unusual one, and said, “Is David your older brother?” I said yes. She asked, “Are you as smart as he is?” I felt a stone in the pit of my stomach. The room was full of startled students waiting for my reply. Dread and nausea hit me suddenly. This was more accusation than question. I was in the habit by then of thinking my life and reputation wholly divorced from him; we were so different. I was smoking weed by this time, sometimes on the bus on the way to school; he was a goody two shoes. I sat up straight, looked the angular pant-suit wearing Miss McHugh in her eyes and said, “Yes. He’s better than me at math but I’m smarter at English and social studies.” I got into that class; mostly got As, and aced the AP exam two years later. Miss McHugh never did like me though. She may have seen too much of herself in me.
Miss McHugh was the first actual lesbian adult that I met in my life, to my knowledge. She was in her 40’s, dedicated to her job and very excited every day about history. She appeared to have a mad historical crush on Thomas Jefferson. She went and did history things on her vacations, like visit Monticello, and then came back and told us about it, very animatedly, gesturing widely, striding back and forth in the front of the room.
She sometimes referred to her college roommate who lived with her. I thought that odd. Miss McHugh, as I said, was in her 40’s. This was a fairly affluent suburb outside of Philadelphia in the mid 1970’s. Entirely made up of nuclear families in split level homes, or older stone homes that looked to me like mansions. I didn’t know anyone who lived in an apartment. Who lives with their college roommate? And how sad, that neither of them found a man to marry. On the other hand, they fit well into the mold of old New England spinsters we were learning about in English class. Miss McHugh must be one of them, I thought.
One day, the plumber’s son, Mark Ennis, stopped some of us in the hallway outside Miss McHugh’s class. “Guess what? My dad went to Miss McHugh’s house to fix the toilet and there’s ONLY ONE BEDROOM. Do you get it? Only one bed! I thought you should know.” He skipped off. I don’t think he used the L word. This was the first time in my life, 11th grade, that I heard anyone talk openly about a lesbian relationship. And it was a throwaway, gotcha comment by a teenage boy.
I often wondered over the years about Miss McHugh’s social life. Not her love life; I’m sure that was fine, if cloistered. Did they sneak off to South Street in downtown Phila and go to gay bars? Did they have a secret network of closeted professional friends, and take turns having dinner and book discussions at each other's houses? Did their circle involve gay male couples? Did they ever act as cover for each other at family functions, a gay man escorting a lesbian or vice versa? How did one keep saying “my college roommate” about someone who shares your bed for 20, 30, 40 years? At what point do you just fall over from the fatigue and effort of hiding and pretending? These are things I wondered.
No wonder she didn’t like me. Apart from me looking professionally bored, smartass, and not working nearly hard enough. I probably looked like the student most likely to actually see her, or see through her. I wasn’t. I was in deep denial myself. But I can imagine I posed a threat to her.
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Amy Wolf is a writer, psychic and medium living in Seattle, WA. She grew up outside of Philadelphia, studied English and French literature at Wesleyan University in CT and then
moved west, first to Seattle, then to the Bay Area and Santa Cruz. She returned to Seattle in 1990 and has been there ever since. She is an activist who engages with environmental and indigenous rights causes. Her healing practice encompasses many modalities of energy work, and she spends her free time in ceremony with community. Writing is both a passion and a comfort. She has been in Clive’s workshops since spring 2023, and found there much freedom and inspiration, as well as the opportunity to grow as a writer. She has a great love of trees. |
