JAY
“Mars, you know I agree with you about every theory you have regarding Dan Da Dan.” Jay was now well versed in all of her child’s anime shows.
“I know what you’re trying to do and I like the energy, but as your Mama, you need to go to bed.
School is tomorrow, and you have driven us all to drawing straws for who has to go in and wake you up,” Jay said from the doorway of the den, where Cole and Mars sat watching the show on the sofa.
Michaela was wrapping up bed time with the twins, who were pretty easy going, thank god, except for Syl who every now and then would inevitably negotiate one more bed time story, which Michaela always obliged.
Jay did too, but she didn’t tell Michaela that.
Mars, abandoning all of her negotiation tactics, gave Jay a huge smile that no one in the family could say no to. Almost no one.
“I mean it, mija, ahora.” At this, Mars leaned over to give her brother a hug and then got up to leave the room. She knew when Jay pulled out the Spanish, something she had decided to learn for herself and teach their kids, she was not playing around.
“I tried to tell her that you were going to be miffed,” Cole said, shrugging from where he still sat.
“Yeah well, you can only do so much with her, I swear that girl could get away with highway robbery with that smile.” And it was true more and more each day.
Gone was the spunky two-year-old they’d adopted, and what was emerging was a more and more gracious young woman.
Jay assumed she got all her poise and grace from Michaela, certainly not her.
Jay smiled over at Cole. “How’d she get you to put on her show instead of yours? ”
Cole scoffed with a smile on his face. “She asked me to help her twist up her hair. So not only did we watch her show, I ended up doing her hair for her.”
Jay was struck by the endearment for his sister she could hear in Cole’s laughter and see in his face.
At seventeen, Cole was almost a young adult who was thinking about university.
Almost the same age she was when she met Michaela.
Long gone was the watery-eyed six-year-old who just wanted a permanent home.
His once dirty-blonde hair was brown now, and he’d grown into his big blue eyes, becoming a handsome young man.
Jay and Michaela were lucky to have him, as he also helped them wrangle the three other kids.
Jay was happy that he’d finally get away to school and be able to truly have his own space to figure himself out, just like they had.
Out of all her kids, Cole was also the only boy so far, something that had been unintentional.
For them a kid was a kid, but she sometimes wondered if that’s why he never exhibited the behaviors she was so worried about, with the manosphere and toxic masculine podcasts growing ever louder.
But no, he had just twisted his sister’s hair.
Rat tail comb and twisting butter still on the sofa next to him because of course Mars didn’t take them with her.
“Alright well, I’m going to go to bed. Lord knows Mom and I go to sleep way before you these days,” she said, smiling, and Cole unironically blew her a kiss.
“Goodnight, Mama,” he said, and her heart clenched at the idea of him eventually being out in the world, not telling her goodnight every night.
She loved Cole; she loved her kids. She loved that despite the distance, they still had a relationship with her parents, who had since moved and opened a cozy bed and breakfast for tourists in Tulum. They were thrilled that Jay, Michaela and the kids were closer.
There was a time when she and Michaela had thought they couldn’t have what they now had: a legal partnership with protections and a family.
Cole had been their first gift, and soon after Mars had come into the picture.
Even at two she had been so bright and fiercely focused on being able to live on her terms and be happy.
There had been issues with her birth parents and therefore her name, and she and Michaela were in a position to rename her.
She was two, but they had worked with her.
They arrived at Mars, a name they’d derived from Marsha P.
Johnson, a woman with the same infectious smile and fierce spirit.
When they’d had Syl and Lou, they named Syl, Sylvia Gwendolyn, after both Sylvia Rivera and Gwendolyn Ann Smith.
Lou was named Lou Leslie, after both Lou Sullivan and Leslie Feinberg.
Without them, they wouldn’t have each other, let alone their children, and it felt important to honor that.
She padded her way up the stairs and down the hall to her and Michaela’s room.
The house was alive with settling noises, something the kids had to get used to considering they’d lived in a pretty modern townhouse in London.
Jay knew Michaela and the kids probably liked it more, but she liked this house.
They had more space, and it had old bones like many of the houses in New England.
Sure it was a little grumpy at night, but she couldn’t wait to continue making memories here.
Once the school got off the ground, Jay thought she would think about what was next for her too.
The app, All of Us, was run day to day by Davis and Iris.
Sasha, the “Head Madame,” was instrumental to the content and direction.
But Jay had the itch to build something, especially now.
She made a mental note to begin drafting ideas and then knock them around with Davis on their next chat.
She couldn’t remember where he and Alex were off to at the moment, and hoped the time zones were agreeable.
Jay was excited, more than she ever thought she’d be to be back in Vermont. But she was. She was excited to continue building her life here with Michaela and their family.
She was also excited to be able to be physically part of Diana’s life again.
Seeing Diana with Maggie was like finally getting to see a full person.
When Diana had joined them in school, it was clear that a piece of her was missing, a piece neither Jay nor Michaela could fill.
No matter how much love had blossomed between them, no matter how much love there still was between her and Diana, it hadn’t been enough.
With Maggie by her side, she was complete, and that meant they were complete.
Jay couldn’t wait to learn more about Lily, Diana’s daughter, who was dating both Maggie’s daughter Maya and another young woman named Hanna.
She was grateful to be surrounded by so much love, to have community again.
It wasn’t that they hadn’t found people in London, but it felt like the difference between friends and family.
She was thoroughly convinced it wouldn’t take long for the rest of the Collective to at least join Sasha in New York, now that she and Michaela were back.
There was a shift in the air, one they had seen before, and they knew they’d need each other.
She was suddenly struck with a brief flash of the first Pride they’d all spent together when she’d first really understood this fact.
Finally making her way into the bedroom, she saw that Michaela had already lit the fireplace, one of the many reasons Jay wanted this house.
She busied herself brushing her teeth and taking a quick shower while waiting for Michaela to return.
Michaela appeared just as she was sliding into bed with the leather-bound notebook she did all her brainstorming in.
“Uh oh, are we getting ready to start a new project? Should I do away with my plans for tonight and let you, as Emory would say, crack on?” Emory was their amazingly wonderful next-door neighbor, who was also a writer, and always encouraged Michaela’s career.
A “bi woman with a plan”, as she liked to tell it.
“No, not tonight this can wait, come here,” Jay said as she set the book on her night stand and then opened her arms.
“Hmmm I need a shower,” Michaela said, falling into Jay’s arms.
Jay held her wife to her chest and ran her hand up the side of her face till she found her ears.
“You know, I haven’t seen you wear these in a long time, why today?
” Jay said, running a thumb over the faux diamond stud in Michaela’s ear.
She’d long since bought her wife lab grown.
But she always felt a sense of giddiness and pride when Michaela wore the first earrings Jay had ever bought her, the first earrings Michaela had worn after Jay had pierced her ears.
“I had a dream last night, you remember our first Pride together?”
“Of course it was a very special Pride, a very special birthday.”
Michaela chuckled, “I was just thinking about the get-together with the ladies today and all we’ve accomplished so far and all we are setting out to accomplish, and it just made me think of this realization I had then, about how our community’s love, the space we hold for ourselves and each other, is a protest, an important one.
One that is still needed. One that I want to help support. ”
Jay smiled and nodded, continuing to hold her wife’s head in her arms. “You are, baby, and there is still so much we can do here.”
“I know. I want this year to go well and to think about how to expand. It just feels like—do you remember back then? How loud the oppression was, how loud the hate was?”
“And how we had to scream and laugh and cheer louder?”
“Yeah, that. The volume feels like it's all the way up and we are scrambling to meet it, but we will.”
“We always do,” Jay said. “And we aren’t alone. We have the Collective,” she added and squeezed Michaela tighter as she scoffed and let out a laugh at the same time. “And we have Diana, Maggie, Julia and the kids, and more allies than before.”
Michaela moved to look at her wife, and this time Jay loosened her arms so she could look her in the eyes.
“Yes. This time we have more. Our community grows too, I have to remember that,” Michaela said softly.
Jay thought about how both of their minds had been blown by the number of people at Pride so long ago.
In 1996, three-hundred-thousand people had participated in San Francisco’s Pride.
In 1997, when they had attended, over five-hundred-thousand people had participated, responding to the outcry over numerous civil rights violations, the lack of marriage equality and DOMA, the changing tides of visibility and need for more inclusion of the various faces of the queer community.
The number had grown to over a million since then.
Michaela said, “ You’re right, we have the Collective and Julia, Maggie, and Diana here with us.”
“And we have each other. You know, Mickey baby, it’s me and you against the world.”
Michaela gave her that smile she lived for every day.
“Of course Juanita, love, it's us against the world.”