Sapphic Voices Young Adult

Sing Out Loud

The dim lights in the cafeteria instigated the subtle tremor of Ms. Grenier's flashback. Although the music was slightly different, the setting was much the same as it had been at the few dances she had attended during her own high school days. Girls in slinky evening dresses leaned with varying degrees of confidence like vines against supporting oak tree boyfriends. Ms. Grenier looked away.

It was the last dance of the year, April and so balmy the doors to the cafeteria were propped open with one of the industrial-size rubber trash cans, empty at this hour of the night. Emma remembered the prickle of excitement that stirred her skin in her new peach-colored silk at the sight of the fervent red of Eva’s dress, low-cut to complement the delicate gold chain hung with a heart that fell between her breasts.

Ms. Grenier could remember standing uncomfortably against the wall, as she was doing now; she had settled to the left of the door that divided the room down the center. It was just another clue that nothing ever really changed, apart from the songs: there was even, she knew, some illicit bottle of alcohol smuggled in under some jacket, in some handbag, the giddy bite of freedom swigged in the restroom or out in the parking lot beneath the fuzzy moon. Ms. Grenier looked around herself in amazement; she had never thought she would be one of those teachers.

She gazed at the students.

A slow song had started. Eva reached for Emma’s hands, her eyes a glint in the darkness. She pulled Emma close, pressing her abdomen against Emma’s, resting her head on the top of Emma’s hair. Emma closed her eyes and felt she might die from that revelation of knowing Eva’s skin. Arms around each other’s waists, they swayed to the singer’s husky voice. Their hair together, light and dark, was the sun and the moon.

The music today was not anywhere as good as it had been when she was growing up; the singer’s voice, pounding urgently, was disturbingly androgynous. Ms. Grenier tensed to hear it, like something breaking or nails on a chalkboard. The song ended abruptly, the last twisted chords falling into the humid air.

The song felt like it would never end. Emma savored Eva’s warmth. A strand of Eva’s honey hair dropped between them, and Emma could feel grateful tears welling beneath her eyelids, thankful for what seemed like the most exquisite moment of her whole life. Eva whispered in her ear, “Don’t dream…”

A sudden burst of voices rose into the void the music had vacated. A couple of students: two boys, nearly men now and gun shy, were yelling at each other. The flash of alcohol across their reddening faces was evidence of what emboldened them. The assistant principal sprang forward, pushing between them.

Just so had Mrs. Sweeny pulled Eva’s arms from Emma with her chilling annunciation, voice frigid with shock and disapproval:

“Pardon me, girls.”

“Hello, Ms. Grenier.”

The face of a young girl rose before her, a smiling face reticent of complete happiness. Kate, a student in her AP Biology class, stood before her in a plain black dress. Her hair was golden.

Eva’s hair had been golden as it flashed, in the light from the headlights of a passing car, her head swinging so sharply that her hair flung itself out in a radius around her head like a stream of champagne.

Maybe the song had lasted all night long after all.

“How are you, Kate? Enjoying yourself?”

“Oh yes, Ms. Grenier.” It was obvious in the smile, in the lights in her eyes, in the way she wore her hair.

Their pocket of truth exploded. Eva and Emma were taken, sharply in the censorious hand of Mrs. Sweeny, to the harsh lights of the hallway, jarring after the diffuse intimacy of the cafeteria. There, the French teacher impressed firmly unto them the ultimatum: Sapphism was an immature phase not tolerated in any of its equally depraved forms at Monteburo High School. Emma laid her hand on Eva’s arm; the taller girl was on the brink of furious tears. Mrs. Sweeny’s steely gaze, darting down to the place where their arms connected, severed this last connection. Eva trembled for words. Finding none, she wrenched her hand from where it was pinioned by Mrs. Sweeny’s talon-like grip and flew away.

“Are you here with anyone tonight?”

Emma felt like she was moving in slow motion for a minute, but then she was sprinting after Eva, away from Mrs. Sweeny, out the glass doors which had welcomed her anticipation at the beginning of the evening and onto the sidewalk. Limp and broken, Eva stood at the curb, the hand at her collarbone shadowing the heart and the chain that linked the girls together as though it were an unbearable burden. Emma could feel the blood beating in the palms of her hands, pulsing through her veins.

“Eva!”

The pain of rejection was in Eva’s face when she turned to look at Emma, and it burned in Emma’s throat as it went down. Eva’s smile was small and bitter. Her hand dropped and she walked away, the shadows ahead from the orange street lamp barely clearing the roof of the school.

“Yes, of course.”

Ms. Grenier was glad. She could see Kate with some nice boy, shyly laughing by the refreshments.

The parking lot was cold through the thin soles of Emma’s shoes as she followed Eva.

“Eva!”

The figure in front of her stopped and turned until Emma could see the astringent tears that ran down her face. Her mouth appeared to move as though formulating a reply.

“No.”

Distantly, she could see Eva walking away, each step a degree furthering the silence: all the ways it didn’t work, the scorn, the censure, the abandonment. Each step reverberated through her veins. She turned her face away from the light.

A girl in a purple shirt came up behind Kate and, handing her a drink, slipped an arm around her waist. The couple looked at Ms. Grenier, partly in love, partly seeking approbation.

The next morning, Eva was gone; vanished, Emma knew, with one of the boys by the cars at the edge of the parking lot who drank blood-red liquor from unmarked bottles and who would touch Eva with rough hands. Emma could feel warmth leeching away from the place where Eva had been.

She smiled.

She had found the gold chain broken in the bushes by the parking lot.

“Thank you,” whispered the girl in the purple shirt, so quietly Ms. Grenier wasn’t sure she had heard it at all. She watched them go.


Myriad obscure references:

-Poison by Groove Coverage
-Virginia Woolf by Indigo Girls
-Beloved Wife by Natalie Merchant
-Gun Shy by Natalie Merchant
-Better by Regina Spektor
-Disturbia by Rihanna
-For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her by Simon and Garfunkel
-Don’t Dream It’s Over by Sixpence None the Richer
-There She Goes by Sixpence None the Richer
-Caramel by Suzanne Vega
-Left of Center by Suzanne Vega
-If Love Songs by Sylvie Lewis
-Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

If you have enjoyed A. B. Reel's "Sing Out Loud", then please be certain to e-mail her at  rainbowsinthedark[at]juno.com  and thank her for posting this Story.

Click here for a list of all of A. B. Reel's  Stories and Poetry at  Sapphic Voices Authoresses.

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