TWO SIBS, TWO MOTHERS

The house was not particularly remarkable to the sibs who grew up there.  At least at the time.  It was their norm.  Probably it was not remarkable that the effect of growing up together in that house had affected them in such different ways.  Some would attribute that to gender difference and some might say it was birth order.  Some theoretical thing.

There had been five of them, but not because of a third sib.  The added person was their grandmother, their father's mother.  She would not have have agreed to live with them except that she was in a wheelchair.  Their father built a little "grandmother house" adapted for a person in that situation.  The bedrooms in the big house were on the second floor, inaccessible to her which the sibs thought was a good thing because it kept her out of their space.  Her addition had a nice bathroom but no kitchen.  She had no intention of cooking.  She was a snob.  Mom took out a tray or Grannie phoned for high end take-out.  That meant she telephoned a chef and put in an order.  Sometimes Mac took her in the wheelchair to a fancy restaurant.

Grannie and her husband and their own child, who became the sibs' father, had lived in splendour in San Francisco until one too many earthquakes sent their big house whirling down the bluff where it had been perched for the view.  The husband died in the wreckage.  She only lost her legs but not her attitude.  Her attitude was that this son's house was beneath her.  Living grand was no longer possible because of insufficient insurance, a weak lawsuit and big medical bills. 

The boy, called "Mac" because their surname was Scots which the old woman approved of as being superior, hung around his grandmother far more than did Tam, his sister.  Tam was like her mother, who was grounded, practical, and -- like the house -- beneath contempt so far as her grandmother had an opinion.  But it didn't matter.  Grannie, a term she despised, lived in the past.  Until she died.  The past had died long before.

Now even their parents were gone and it was time to understand what to do with the house -- actually houses.  Tam:  "I know where to hire a mega dumpster.  They bring it in front of the house, you throw everything in, and they take it all away to some mysterious place."

"Some of this stuff is valuable.  Maybe."  It looked dubious.  Worn out recliners, scarred tables, no real art.  They went out to Grannie's little house.  Much better but somehow out-of-fashion.  

"I hardly know this place," said Tam.  "I never came out here.  Granny didn't like me.  I was too much like our mother and she despised our mother, called her "common."

Mac sank into the old empty wheelchair, a fine one at the time of purchase.  It felt natural to him, since he'd done it many times even when Granny was alive.  She'd get him to transfer her into a wing chair near the little faux fireplace -- only an imitation because a real one would have demanded the physical ability to tend it.  In the old days before the accident there would have been a housekeeper.  "Granny loved me.  She thought I was a genius waiting to flower.  She used to lecture me about what it took to be great and pry about what my teachers said."

Tam looked away.  "Here's a box of old vinyl.  Might have value now that 78s are back "in".  All opera."

Mac laughed.  "But she didn't really know much about opera, not really.  Just names and titles, plus memories of San Francisco days when one went to the opera wearing gowns and jewels."

"Our generation didn't do opera.  I've never owned any jewels."  

"You have a lot of beads.  I've always coveted your string of big ambers -- so ethnic and earthy."

"Stay in your own gender role!"  He'd found a box of hats and tried on one with a veil.  "This is the mystery we have to solve: gender.  I don't much like being some kinds of male."

"Nor do I like binaries.  I always wondered how you survived the battle of the cultures between mom and grannie.  Mom thought being female was devotion, obeying your man, loving children.  But Granny thought female was the great drama of presentation -- kind of campy actually.  She never knew much about the machinery of creation, how to get there, how to be real.  She was always just dressing up and charming people, hopefully male."

Mac laughed.  Mac laughed all the time.  It wasn't bitter -- he just thought so many things were basically ridiculous.  "I'm a better combination of the two women than you are, and I'm not even cisfemale!"

"What???"

"I suppose when you put their qualities together, you get a contemporary gay man."

"What's a 'cisfemale'?"

"Someone born with all the parts that would cause the midwife to cry out, 'It's a girl!'  You know: a cunt, a slit, a gash, a slash -- no penis."

Tam looked at him with slitted eyes.  "What do you know about it?  You haven't seen me naked since we were bathed together as toddlers.  You have sex with men.  What do you know about 'cis'?

"It's not in the flesh -- it's the spirit.  You don't look between the legs, you look at the eyes."

Now they were a little embarrassed.  They hadn't been together much as adults and even as adolescents they moved in different circles -- obviously.  Continuing the search of the little house, they opened drawers and sampled atomizers so that aromas drifted through light and shadow.

Tam said, "There's not much of anything here I would want."

"I loved Grannie so much.  I tried so hard to please her.  But I don't think she ever realized I was gay.  She just wanted me to be important and famous."

"Not for YOU.  It was to let her impress others with her importance as your grandmother.  It was our mother who loved us dearly as unique beings.  No need for social confirmation."

"Did Mom know I was gay?  We never mentioned it."

"Of course she did.  She thought you handled it well, didn't need her help."

He sighed.  "If only the two women could have come to some unity, some understanding. . . "

"Oh, come off it.  We functioned perfectly well in two houses, two styles.  Even if I'd been your brother . . . "

"What?  Such a thought!  A brother!"

"Damned sentimentalist.  Who wants some phony happy family?  Everyone needs some grit in their gizzard to digest what is tough about life." 

"What a metaphor!"  He sighed again as he tied around his neck the most gloriously colored silk scarf he'd ever found.  This time it was Tam who laughed.  "Our father -- her son -- gave her that scarf."

In the dressing table mirror he modeled the scarf.  "At least we know one thing."

"What's that?"

"They were fertile or we wouldn't be here."  Together they laughed.