The first girl I loved was nine, but so was I. On summer break, we were both exiled to our grandmothers' homes in the Highlands neighbourhood of Edmonton, where the mature trees along the street cast cool shadows to protect us from the sun and the sidewalks were so old the cracks looked like tiny mountain ranges.
Back then, we were sent out after breakfast and told to come back when the sun got too hot at noon for lunch and later when our bellies rumbled for dinner. Being new to the neighbourhood, we never ventured much further than the little corner store for Archie Comics and Fanta soda on one end of the block, and the school playground on the other. Sometimes, she and I would spend our afternoons sitting in the old apple tree in her grandmother’s backyard, telling tall tales of our lives back at home. Or we’d race around my grandmother’s backyard, tying each other to the cold metal laundry pole with our pink plastic skipping ropes in a never-ending game of Cowgirls and Indians (because 1980’s feminism was new in our blood, but our parents’ and grandparents’ racism was old). While we laughed and screamed and played, my grandmother would talk over the fence to her grandmother about their gardens and begonias, gossiping about the neighbours and telling stories about dead husbands. If we got hungry, we would forage for food in the thick raspberry bushes along the back fence, sweet and sour at the same time, and our faces would pucker when we ate too many.
The first time Mary-Anne kissed me, it tasted like raspberries and vanilla from our ice cream after lunch. She said she needed to practice for when we went home and back to school. For the boys, she said.
At the end of the summer, she was sent back to her family in Ontario, and I returned across town to my mother’s small apartment behind the Misericordia Hospital to endure another year of school. We both cried the last time I saw her, as we promised to be best friends forever. At first, we wrote heartfelt letters filled with stories of our lives at home. She hated her step-mom. I hated my teacher. We made promises to be reunited the next summer and the next until we were older and got two beautiful houses somewhere near each other where our children could grow up together. But that next summer came, and other plans were made by our parents, completely out of our control. She was sent to a church camp where she hoped she would meet a nice boy. I was forced to stay home because I was old enough now to stay on my own, and Grandma was getting too frail to take care of me anyhow.
I told her in my letter that I would always love her until the day I died.
I never got a response.
The second girl I loved was in junior high school. We would lay together in bed and whisper about boys and who liked who and whether it was time to get a real bra or stay in the ugly peach-coloured trainers our mothers bought us that were itchy and made us feel like we couldn’t breath when we ran in gym class. There was giggling talk of love and sex, and oh my God, a boy was going to put their thing where? Jessica was smart, and I was quick, and we would play back and forth word games, volleying syllables around until we created poetry, laughing when we accidentally said something naughty.
We would go to the school dances with our other girlfriends and gyrate in a big circle to “Red Red Wine” while the strobe lights reflected off the waxy gym floors. The boys would stand around the edge of the gym, watching us and their shoes. Sometimes, they would yell "dyke" at us, as if that would somehow sway us to come and let them put their sweaty palms on us and mouth-breathe in our face for three minutes. We'd stick our tongues out and grab the two closest girls to protect ourselves from the toxic and just keep on dancing.
But one day, I got off the bus to find Jessica waiting on the concrete curb, excitedly bouncing on the balls of her feet. A boy called and asked her out. They were going to go to the zoo, and he said he would buy her ice cream. I scoffed and asked what the hell kind of a date was that, and she accused me of being jealous that she had a date with a boy, stomped her foot on the pavement, and stormed away. I was jealous, but not how she thought. She sat with him at lunch that day. Then after school, he walked her to her mother's car. In the following days, there was another lunch, and another lunch, and then a date, and then another date. There were ignored phone calls and rejected notes, as I begged her for forgiveness. But none was granted. It was all about the boy now.
The third girl I loved was fleeting and brief. We met in a bar two days after Halloween and four days after I kicked my boyfriend out of our apartment for stealing from me. She was wearing fluffy black cat ears, and when my friend told her I was celebrating my independence, she kissed me and placed the ears on my head and told me cats are always independent and pulled me to the dance floor to two-step, even though I had no clue what I was doing. She told me she liked my tight black jeans and I said I liked her pink plaid shirt and when she felt me up in the handicapped stall in the bathroom with her cinnamon lips pressed against mine, it was as if everything in my life led me to this exact moment where everything finally felt right in the world. But when she offered her bed for the night, I declined and staggered back home with my friend, giddy and dazed. It’s funny how one can have such a profound effect on a person’s life, and yet you can’t remember their name.
The last girl I loved spread open the spine of my novel and asked me shyly to sign the page with her favourite line. Later, she waited outside of the bookstore to talk, and we walked to the closest cafe. On the way, Nichelle told me about her furniture design business and her cat and her record collection. I told her about my garden and my painting and how I just learned to make pasta. We found seats, and she explained to me how wingback chairs traced back to 17th century English manor houses, and I remarked that for chairs that old, these were surprisingly comfy and when she laughed, my heart beat faster in my ears. Just before midnight, she yawned and said she wished we could talk more but it was obvious the cafe staff wanted to close and leave, so I gave her my number, and she gave me hers, then she called a cab and disappeared, only to reappear several hours later in my texts.
I took her to dinner. She took me to a display of mid-century modern furniture. I bought a table from her and she talked about her ex-wife. We grabbed a coffee, and I told her she knew all my exes of both sexes if she read my book. She asked if I'd loved them, and I told her I did, at the time. But now they had dissolved in my head into nothing but fodder for stories and vague emotional recollections. Maybe I hadn't been in love with her at that precise moment when we were standing together on the curb, waiting for her ride, but I leaned in and kissed her anyway, smooth lips against my chapped skin and the scent of raspberries filled my mind.
That was ten years ago, but still, it feels like yesterday, and this morning, as she sits at the table she made, the sun streaming through the bay window, bathing her skin in the warm morning light, she smiles over her coffee cup at me, and I feel at peace.
(c) Elvira Berezowsky, 2020
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