Swales

I met Erica Hagen in sixth grade. There really wasn’t anything spectacular about it, we simply got seated next to each other in home room. We started talking one day and just hit it off. It was like we were meant to be friends. Thinking back now, I can’t really remember if we had anything in common even. Erica was a very studious girl and hopelessly awkward, whereas I was more of a tomboy, always looking for the next adventure, and considered school an inconvenience. Erica said that she wanted to be an astronaut, or maybe an astronomer. I thought it was brave of her to want to be an astronaut because the Challenger disaster was less than a year old at the time. Erica was like me in that she seemed to be outside of the realm of our peers and was often bullied and made fun of, as was I. But I guess that really helped to cement our relationship. In those early days it was all sleepovers, riding bikes, singing, and dancing to the music on the radio. 

A little about me, though. My name is Harmony. Harmony Nowak. Born in Wichita and raised in Harle, Kansas. My mom was a seamstress, but before my siblings and I came along, she was a singer at a nightclub in Kansas City. Which is where she met my dad, who is an electrician. And not a particularly good one, but we won’t talk about that. I think singing was always my mom’s passion, but when my brother was born, she decided to put all that aside to take the path of “responsible parenthood.” Some of my earliest memories are of mom singing songs as she breezed through our house cleaning up behind “Hurricane Nowak” as my dad collectively called us kids. Sometimes it was Rodgers and Hammerstein and other times the Rolling Stones, but no matter what, our home was always full of music. I sometimes felt sorry for my mom, having given up her true calling to raise us, but she was a good mother and never treated us as an inconvenience.

My mom’s passion for music was how my siblings and I got our names. As I’ve said, I’m Harmony. My older sister is Melody, and our older brother is named Lyric. Lyric took to calling me Harm when I was still very young, and eventually the mantle was taken up by the whole family. I didn’t mind it though. I thought it made me sound cool. Can you imagine growing up in rural Kansas, though, with a name like Lyric? When he turned eighteen, he practically sprouted wings and flew away at light speed.

Melody was always the sensible one, and sometimes seemed to be a second mother to me. She ended up going off to KU in Lawrence to study law on a basketball scholarship. Mel was indeed sensible, but she would also habitually hen peck both me and my brother. She was a hopeless goody two shoes, often running to our parents about some trouble Lyr and I had gotten ourselves into. Mel was always an all-American girl, so to speak. She loved going to church, wearing make-up, and having her hair exactly right in hopes that the boys would notice her.

I loved Mel, but I’ve always felt closer to Lyric. I always wanted to be involved in whatever he was doing. When he and his friends would stand around in our driveway, the hood up on one of their cars, studying the engine, I would be right there with them. I can remember times when they would see me coming and say, “Come on man, do we have to take her along too?”

One time Lyric and two of his friends were having a heated discussion about Melody’s best friend, who was staying at our house that weekend. While they were each explaining in detail what they would like to do with this girl I suddenly exclaimed, “She’s hot as hell!”

This elicited a roar of laughter from Lyric’s friends and a grin from me. After several congratulatory slaps on the back it was decided that perhaps I wasn’t so bad to have hanging around after all. It became a game of sorts for all of them to ask me what I thought of this girl, or that celebrity, and it never ceased to amuse them when I would respond “She’s bodacious!” or “Eh, she’s a Two-Bagger.” This was all fine and good, until one day when I was riding in the car with my dad. We stopped at a light and in a parking lot ahead of us I noticed a group of girls standing next to an old pickup truck. One of them was wearing cowboy boots with cut-off shorts and a midriff-revealing top. I turned to my dad and shouted excitedly, “Look dad!” 

He turned to see what I was gesturing towards and I exclaimed, “I’d like to play ‘Ride 'em Cowboy’ with her!”

I knew in less than a moment that I had made some grave error in judgement. I had never, nor have I ever since, seen my dad’s face turn such an angry red. That evening I found myself nursing a sore back side that had been subjected to several lashes from a belt. But as I lay in the dark of my bedroom, I found that I kept thinking about the girl in the parking lot. How pretty she had been. Why was I thinking about her? Did I want to be like her? No, that wasn’t it. I spent a long time contemplating this, late into the night, but by the next day my thoughts had moved on to other things.

Lyric joined the Army and moved away that same year. I was eight years old, and I remember I cried until there was nothing left in me to come out that first night. After that I got angry. I stayed inside for days and wouldn’t leave my room. My mom brought me meals and said nothing; she would just squeeze my shoulder with a lingering touch and then quietly leave me to grieve again. I felt so betrayed. Lyric didn’t tell anyone he was leaving until his recruiter showed up to take him for his physical and then a month later, he was walking out the door for basic training. To be honest, even after all these years, I think there’s still a small part of me that hasn’t forgiven him.

I digress, though. Erica Hagen was a transplant to our little town from Minnesota. Her dad was a big shot in the energy business and had taken a job in Wichita. Her mom actually knew my mom before Erica and I even knew each other that well. Erica’s family began attending the Methodist church with Melody when they moved to town, and my mom struck up a conversation with Erica’s while waiting on Mel to finish choir practice one evening. So, as I said, it seemed like Erica and I were destined to be the best of friends. 

Sometime around eighth grade something began to change in me. It was a small change, and at the time I didn’t even notice it happening but looking back now I understand. When Erica would talk about boys it would annoy me. I tried to see what she saw, but nothing about them appealed to me. The thought of being anything other than friends with a boy hit me the same way as the thought of eating brussels sprouts; some people enjoyed it, but it made me nauseous. In 1989 we began high school and we got to make all the classic freshman mistakes together, from being convinced that there was a pool under the gymnasium, to thinking you needed tickets for the pep rallies. One time we met between classes at the juncture of two hallways. We were both lost, and neither knew where the other was supposed to be going. We stood there in a fit of giggles, overcome by the absurdity of our situation. That’s the day we met Jennifer.

As we stood helplessly in the middle of the hallways, a girl with the blackest hair I’ve ever seen approached us. It was long and sleek, and shaved on the sides. She was wearing tight black jeans, a Slayer T-shirt, knee high brown moccasins, and a choker around her neck made of beads carved from bone. Her skin was a ruddy shade of sepia, and her eyes were almond shaped and almost as black as her hair; they seemed to rest upon her high cheek bones. As she walked up, she practically shouted, “Hey fresh meat! What are you guys doing?”

 Erica and I looked at each other, and then at the stranger standing before us with her hands on her hips. 

“Um we’re lost.” I managed to reply.

Erica said nothing, sizing up this new person.

“Oh, you're in luck. I know where you guys are supposed to be. Come on.” and with this she turned and started down one of the halls. 

Erica looked at me as if to say, “Should we?”

I shrugged and hurried to catch up to the strange girl. 

“Hey, uh, we’re both going to different classes.”

The raven-haired girl looked back and replied, “I know, just trust me. By the way I’m Jennifer. Jennifer Rising Smoke. But you can call me Jenn.”

She led us out to the football stadium, where there was a little alcove beneath the stands. On that day we found the place that would serve as our getaway anytime we needed a moment of quiet during school. 

Jennifer became a loyal friend after that, but boy, she was fucking crazy. Jennifer was three-fourths Osage Indian. Her dad had been an oilman working on wells in Texas and coming home occasionally for holidays. When Jenn was eleven, he had been killed in an accident, and by the time she turned twelve her mother had found a new husband. Jenn’s stepdad was a tall, hulking drunk with a very wide mean streak. It seemed his only passion in life, besides drinking, was terrorizing Jenn and her mom. When she was a freshman in high school, her mom died from questionable causes, but no one could prove that Jenn’s stepdad had anything to do with it.

To say Jenn was hot tempered was an understatement. She was constantly in the office for fighting, and when people would heckle her or call her things like “Pocahontas” or “Superchief,” she was quick to swing at them. Once a boy made the mistake of telling her she wasn’t Osage and was actually Mexican, along with calling her a racial slur. From what I heard he was turning purple when they pulled her off of him, and Jenn later told me that she would have choked him to death if someone hadn’t stopped her. So yeah, crazy.

And this was our lives for a couple of years. Just three girls trying to navigate the stormy sea of high school. As time passed Erica and I remained close, even as we changed as individuals. I started to realize that jeans and tank tops seemed to make me happier than girlier outfits, and during the Christmas break of my sophomore year, I had my mom take me to the only beauty shop in our town and, to both my mom’s and the stylist’s surprise, requested that my long wavy hair be cut into a parted, high fade.

The stylist was a sweet old lady who said, “Honey you’re going to look like a boy.”

I smiled and said, “It’s okay, I promise this is what I want.”

“You’re going to be awfully cold.”

“I’ll manage,” I said with a laugh.

After reassuring her several more times that it would be okay, she began to cut off lock after lock of hair. I could feel the weight of it disappear with every snip, and it felt like the weight of my old identity was falling away as well. It was like a rebirth. When she was done, I turned my head this way and that, regarding myself in the mirror. I couldn’t help but grin. I felt free, normal even. No longer did I feel as though I was wearing a costume for everyone else’s approval. And even though I knew that this would make the name calling ten times worse, I still felt happy.

I went home that day and stood before the mirror for what seemed like hours. The person I saw was truly me. I felt comfortable in my own skin, possibly for the first time ever. It just felt right.

To this day I’m still not sure when it happened, but I started to feel differently towards Erica. Not bad different; a deepening of my feelings, maybe? When I was around her, I would always catch myself eyeing her. Neither of us were awkward tweens anymore. She always wore her honey blonde hair long and straight, or sometimes she would let Jenn braid it into pigtails. The first time she wore it that way I felt a flutter in my chest, and I wanted to hug her and tell her how beautiful she was. Sometimes I would imagine us holding hands or sitting with my arm around her. One day while we were eating lunch, I watched her as she ate an apple, her lips delicately touching the flesh of the fruit. I wonder what it would be like to be that apple, to kiss those lips, I thought.

The shock of what I had just considered struck me, almost like a fist. I looked away from her hastily and even pressed a hand to my mouth.

“Are you okay?” Erica asked, looking at me with concern.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I mumbled from behind my hands, “Toothache.”

I began to notice how her fragrance would linger in my room after she would stay over; how the pillow would smell like her shampoo when she would leave, and I longed to touch that beautiful golden hair. The thought that had been hiding deep inside me for so long finally surfaced. I think I’m falling in love with my best friend.

It was an awakening, and I felt as though two great forces were pulling me in opposite directions. All my life I had only known boy meets girl and they fall in love. Could two girls fall in love? I had never really considered the possibility. What would Erica think? What would she say if I told her how I felt? I imagined a million conversations with her in which she told me she felt the same way. The ache I felt when she was near was almost too much to bear. It seemed once I acknowledged my feelings it opened the flood gates of emotion in me and I couldn’t contain it anymore. Then, in the spring of our junior year, something happened that set a course for both of us that would forever change our lives.