Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
“I didn’t know you were going to be here, Sandra!” I ran into her arms, and she squeezed the living shit out of me.
“Wouldn’t miss this for the world, kiddo. It’s so good to see you.” She kissed me quickly on the cheek.
“It’s been too long. Once a year at Thanksgiving is not enough for a hug like this. I’ve missed you. We’re so close to each other that we should at least meet for brunch every now and then.”
Sadra blushed. “I see Mona quite a bit because we’re old and have no other friends,” she huffed and grinned at me happily. “But I’ll come out of my cave for you. You look good, kiddo.”
“Hi, Sandra.” Jackson reached around me for one of her extra special hugs. When Sandra hugged you – you knew you were loved.
“Hey, handsome, are you keeping this one in line?” Sandra laughed with a throaty laugh that made you smile whenever you heard it. It was so natural and free that it made me jealous.
“Did Moses actually hold back a river?” Mom kissed Sandra on the cheek. “No one can keep that little shit in line.”
“I’m like forty-one years old. I have a job and a husband.” Yes, I pouted and even stomped my foot. When it came to Mom and Sandra, I swear, I reverted to a teenager all over again.
“Still a little shit to me,” Sandra pinched my cheek. “I remember the first time that I met you so vividly that it could have just been last week. You wouldn’t stop moving or talking – so chatty and full of happiness. It was so needed at the time.”
“I don’t really remember meeting you. You’ve just always been Aunt Sandra. It’s like you’ve always been there, but Mom told me how you actually met. I can’t believe I didn’t know that. How did I never know that until today?”
She shrugged. “I started working with positive people in the early eighties when I was nineteen. No one knew what to do. Gay men were terrified, and the lesbians stepped up because no one else would at first. Those poor, sick men just lay there in their beds with people afraid to touch them. It wasn’t right, so I volunteered, and I wouldn’t trade those moments for anything except for them to have never happened. Your uncle was the fifteenth person I sat with at the end of their life.”
“That’s… a lot.” I was stunned. How had I never known this about her? What was wrong with me? Was I that self-involved? I knew the answer. I had only child syndrome.
Jackson put his arm around me. He understood me better than I did after all these years,yet here he stayed. He was a fucking saint. “It’s remarkable. I’ve read quite a few gay history books about that time because when I was a kid, the crisis was still happening. I mean, I was born in nineteen-eighty-one in New York City. My parents had quite a few friends who passed, but school didn’t really teach me what I wanted to know. I don’t know if I… I hope I would have been able to be strong for my friends, but the fear they felt back then… That palpable sense of death on the horizon.”
“Oh, honey,” Sandra patted Jackson’s cheek sweetly. “It was horrible in every way, but we hoped, and we fought because that was all that we had. We danced as hard as we could and lived even harder because who knew when it could all be taken away? Gay men are strong, Jackson. Strong enough to live and survive as hard as they could. We fucked, and we fought to survive. But those that didn’t… I wouldn’t wish that on my worst fucking enemy. Not even Reagan himself.”
“Did you know him before he… got sick?” I asked, feeling like a stranger to my own family.
“No, honey. We didn’t know each other, even if I did know who he was. I mean, it’s possible that we brushed up against each other or danced at the same gay bar. But I didn’t meet him until he needed someone to help him. But we became fast friends when he wasn’t cursing at me because I was making him do something he didn’t want to.” Mom came over and put her arm around her. “He hated me making him eat. He hated sponge baths, and more than anything, he hated taking those fucking meds. His body didn’t respond well to them. He was really sick when he began them.”
“Did he have a lot of friends?” I asked quietly. I felt guilty over knowing nothing about my family. I mean, he was my uncle, and all I really knew about him was that he died. I had so few memories of him. I had been too young.
“He was very popular,” Mom giggled. “He hosted drag at the Round Up every Friday and Saturday as his alter ego – Ivanna Mann. People loved him, but you learn who your real friends are when you get as sick as he was.”
Sandra looked at me seriously. “He had quite a few people who wanted to see him. But he rarely wanted company. There were a few, though, that he would always see, and when he did… Boy, did Charlie know how to turn it on. He was one of the wittiest and filthiest men I have ever met to this day. He could make you laugh so hard that it hurt.”
“He sure could.” Mom nodded.
“Uncle Charlie was a drag queen?” How did I not know this? I watched Rupaul with Mom on the phone weekly; she had never told me this information.
“Bitch, he wasn’t just a drag queen. Charlie was drag royalty at the time,” Mom snapped and grinned happily as if she could picture him. “Charlie himself was outgoing and fun, but Ivanna was a force of nature.”
“I had no idea.”
Mom looked at me and frowned. “I’m sorry that we… that I don’t talk about him very much, babe. It’s just that you were so young, and it was a long time ago. You remind me a lot of him in a ton of ways, you know.”
“I do?”
“Yeah…” She grinned. “You resembled him when you were young. But… You know you’re older now than he ever was, right? It… It still hurts to think about him sometimes, but it hurts more not to. I guess I’ve just kept him to myself because it was easier that way.”
“I never asked.” I could feel my entire body slump.
“That too,” she said kindly.
“But you are now,” Sandra reached out and took Mom’s hand in her own. “Would the two of you like to meet your Uncle Charlie? His quilt piece was made by all of us who knew him. Twenty-five of his closest friends helped create it. Your mother and I also added a part of it.”
“I think I need to,” I smiled, and we walked into theentrance together. I was instantly overwhelmed. “There’s… It’s absolutely huge.”
“There are quilts everywhere. How do we find it?” Jackson looked around in awe.
“I have the layout in my hands,” Sandra sighed. “So many names – so many people who were lost. Charlie’s square is on row twenty-two and number seven. This way.” She nodded and gripped Mom’s hand tighter.
We followed quietly behind them. The enormity of seeing this was humbling, and it made me so happy to be here – to be alive – not to have been a victim of a world that let so many people die. I knew what had happened back when I was a child, but to see it so vibrant and colorful was something else. It wasn’t just knowing – I could now feel it.
“I think I could spend hours here,” Jackson’s deep voice smoothed the rawness of my emotions as it always did. He was my anchor in a world I sometimes flitted to rapidly in. “All of the colors are so vibrant and alive. I guess that’s the point, huh? A celebration of life in the face of death.”
“A way to remember?”
“A way to never forget.”
“I… That sounds nice.” I bumped into him as we walked. “We’re too busy in our lives to stop and think about the past, aren’t we?”
“You sound so wise. What did you do with my husband?” Jackson laughed. The sound of happiness felt weird as we walked through the squares of people who had died.
“Smartass. I’m serious. We work and deal with our finances. We clean our houses and do laundry – and then in our free time, which feels like we rarely have, we may go see a play or a movie – watch TV.”
Jackson rolled his eyes dramatically. “Scroll on our phones. You lose time whenever you open TikTok,” he chuckled. “But I get what you’re saying.”
“I mean, you read a lot of history and nonfiction books. You’re reading what right now?” I asked in perpetual awe of my husband.
“A new book about Stonewall. I like learning things.”
“Shit… Do I ever stop and learn about the past?”
“You are today. Don’t kick yourself about it.”
“He was my uncle, and I would have had a hard timeremembering his name. I mean, it’s been years since we’ve ever mentioned him.”
“I think Mona thinks about him a lot. Sandra too. You just didn’t know him, babe. That’s ok, you know. My dad’s parents… My grandparents on his side… they died before I was born. I didn’t know them, and I can’t tell you the last time I thought about them because of that. It’s ok not to know. But now you do.”
I let his words wash over me. “It’s humbling. Each of these… All of the names… This was their life, wasn’t it?”
“A part of it. It’s powerful. Even more so now that I’m an adult. I understand mortality now – better than I did when I was a child. Forty- something isn’t twenty, no matter how much we like to pretend it is.”
“True that.”
“Row Twenty-two,” Mom turned and smiled at us.
We turned right and walked down all the bright fabrics that seemed to hover off the ground on both sides of the path. My emotions were complicated, and that was always hard for me. I didn’t deal well with any kind of sadness. But this made me… regretful, and I felt so small in the face of all these men who died. I regrettednot knowing my uncle, and small because I never tried to learn more about this time or him. I needed to… No, I wanted to change that. Maybe Jackson could lend me a book?
“Here it is,” Sandra stopped and pulled Mom into a one-armed hug. “God, it’s just as remembered it. It’s so much like him.”
We stepped up beside them, and I caught my breath. “These panels are so large that they… They’re about the size of a person.”
“They’re the size of a grave,” Sandra answered quietly. “Six feet by three feet.”
“That’s somber.” I shivered.
“That’s life, honey.” Sandra’s voice filled with compassion. She, too, understood me and my faults.
“His name is so beautiful. Whoever did that work loved him very much.” I whispered.
“Yes, I did,” Mom nodded. “Gold metallic thread. He loved Laméfabric. That was the one thing his taste was shit about.” Her giggle brightened up her face. “He had the gaudiest gold Lamécurtains in his apartment. They made me insane. Most of his gowns were the same kind of fabric. It was the one tacky thing he loved.”
“He was the best hostess of New York drag shows. He was so funny and changed the lyrics to all the popular songs of the time. He sang live, you know.” Sandra smirked. “God, he had a filthy mouth in drag.”
“He had a filthy mouth out of drag, too. Dad said one of his first words was fuck, which served Dad right because it was also his favorite word,” Mom giggled again. “God, even after all this time, it looks so new. How do they do that?”
“Well, it’s not being used on a bed or washed. And it’s beingcared for by a team of people who make sure they stay in the best shape possible. This is the remembrance of people's lives,” Sandra answered proudly.
“What is that on the square?” Jackson smiled as he stared at the block which belonged to Uncle Charlie. “Is it gems?”
“He always wore red heels. So, the center of the square below his name is a replication of the rhinestone heels he wore. That is Diana Ross in the corner with her microphone as she’s holding out her hand. His favorite song in the world was one of her songs. Reach Out and Touch, I think it was called. We all hummed it as he finally faded away.” Mom scrunched up her face as if she were denying a powerful emotion. “He used to change the lyrics to something very bawdy about balls.”
“He sounds amazing,” Jackson looked at me sadly. He always knew when I was having one of my moments of feeling overwhelmed.
“I’m sorry that I can barely remember him. How nice it would have been to have gotten older with him and had someone to tell all of my secrets to,” I sighed, and Mom walked the few steps between us and took my face in her hands.
“He might have taken you to your first gay bar. He may have given you advice – bad or good – who knows with Charlie,” she grinned. “But he loved you. He was the first person to hold you. Did you know that? Even before they put you in my arms – they put you in his. He was there through the entire thing, and I hoped he wouldn’t pass out. It was a little touch and go in the beginning, as I screamed bloody murder. You were a difficult birth.”
“Oh, God, I bet,” Sandra laughed. “I wish I had really known him when he wasn’t sick. I know that I missed out on what would have been a very good friend when I might have needed one the most.”
“He loved you,” Mom nodded to her. “He knew how lucky he was that you were there. He loved you, Sandra.”
“He gave me you, Mona.” Sandra wiped at her eyes, and I feltreality crush down on me. The things that I had missed out on because he had died too soon. A life unlived. A life devoid of potential and happiness as we grew older together. The dinner parties he could have come to as he regaled us with the stories of his past would never happen. I didn’t realize how much I had missed by not knowing him.
“I want to know more about him. This is… nice, but it’s just material, isn’t it? It’s not him. I want to know more about him. Tell me about Uncle Charlie,” I pleaded.
“Please?” Jackson added as he took my hand in his again and interlaced our fingers. “He sounds amazing.”
“Well, shall we go back to your place?” Mom asked. “Sandra? Want to come and help me?”
“Can we go to yours? I… You have photos and things, right? I’m sorry that I never took the time to think about him or you, Mom. How much loss you felt while I was too young to understand. You were so alone.” I saw my mother in a new light. A person who had always been there had I taken a little time to think about her. I wouldn’t take her for granted again. How fucking strong she was.
“I wasn’t alone, kid. I had you. I had Sandra and your grandparents. For all their faults, and trust me, they had quite a few – they loved Charlie with all of their hearts, just as they loved you. I wish they could have been here with us today.” She reached out and touched me again.
I looked up at the sky. The sun was shining brightly, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. “They’re here. They’re always here, and so is Uncle Charlie.” I hugged her tightly.
“What was Charlie’s favorite cocktail?” Jackson asked suddenly.
“Mimosas. He loved anything bubbly.” Mom laughed. “He loved the pop of a champagne bottle.”
“Let’s stop on the way. I think we need to share a drink with Charlie.”
“Jackson, he would love that.” Mom looked at him sweetly.
I didn’t know what my future held, but I was glad that I had Jackson to share my life with. I wish that Charlie could have met someone like him while he was alive. But fate had other plans for him. The government turned a blind eye to his plight until it was too late for so many gay men of Uncle Charlie’s generation. I owed them so much for all they had done for the life I now held so dear.
I wouldn’t forget.
“When we get home tonight, Jackson, can you give me a book to read about all of this.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” his grin lit up his incredibly handsome face, and he took me in his arms. We kissed in the middle of all these pieces of people’s lives, and just for a moment, I could feel them all watching and smiling back at me.
I had an uncle, Charlie, who sometimes went by his drag name, Ivanna Mann. In the eighties, he was the hostess with the mostess at a very popular New York gay bar, and he loved me.
I would hold that close to my heart while I finally got to know him.
I wouldn’t forget.