Translated from Spanish to Italian by Lucia Cupertino. English translation by Pina Piccolo. Cover art by graffiti artist active at American Canyon Ruins.
For Melissa Cardoza
My best friend is a lesbian. My mother hates any form of sexuality. As soon as she realizes that no one is watching, she turns off her granddaughters’ TV, before anyone kisses on the screen. She has a shrill laugh. She told my sister that those fights with Dad, which poisoned our childhood, ended the day they stopped having intercourse. She is known to say as she sighs (and I speak from experience): “There is nothing worse than sex between two people who love each other”.
My best friend is young, has curly hair, is fat and smiles a lot. My daughter calls her auntie. My mother first met her over the phone and subjected her to an interrogation. Later, we spent our holiday at my mother’s house and my daughter told her about her auntie’s girlfriend. My mother didn’t say a word right there and then. Her scathing criticism came by the way of the complete works of Sigmund Freud and her own very peculiar interpretation of it. “Homosexuality is a neurosis”; she announced at the breakfast table. “Oh, yes, is it so?” When I am around her, I always pretend to be an ignoramus.
We returned home after putting up a brave resistance against six more assaults. My best friend kept answering my phone, my daughter decided to go to her place for the New Year’s celebration. In the meantime, I had changed jobs. My daughter and her aunt sometimes did homework together, other times, they went roller skating in the park. My daughter didn’t like her aunt’s girlfriend at all, just as she doesn’t like my boyfriend nor her father’s girlfriend.
In early February, my mother launched her final offensive. “The presence of a lesbian in the house is harmful to your daughter’s sexual identity”, was her verdict. At first, I let her talk; after all, she was the one who paid the bills. However, little at a time, she managed to make me lose it and I ended up sending her to hell, with the same vehemence I deployed as a teenager.
She counterattacked. I responded. We screamed so loudly that the neighbor knocked to make sure everything was ok. “Of course”, I told her, “it’s just that mother is a bitch!”. And I slammed the door in her face.
At the dinner table, I started giving an account of the argument we just had, and got terribly upset when my best friend said she thought it was hilarious. Likewise, did my daughter: “Come on, mom”; she would always say, “Come on, mom”, with the sweetest little voice she had in store, with undertones that were a mix of reproach, consolation and ridicule.
Three days later, school authorities decided that on February 14, Valentine’s Day, in the name of love, girls and boys would get married, wearing traditional wedding apparel and following traditional rituals, which the students would do research on. Birds of a feather flock together, according to Japanese, Comanche, Mayan, Palestinian and German customs. They used colored paper, searched inside encyclopedias, went to the museum of folk cultures. But suddenly the older girls decided that they wouldn’t go around the school arm in arm with the boys, “How disgusting!” The boys replied: “For Christ sake! with those little girls?”. The principal called a general assembly:
“So what are we to do?”, she asked. The older girls suggested they marry one another. Same-sex marriage is not possible, replied the principal. My daughter raised her hand. “Yes it is! In countries like Holland, women can marry women and men can marry men.” The principal cleared her throat. “My aunt, who herself has a girlfriend told me so”. The whole assembly stared at her. The teachers and the principal were petrified, as were the children. My daughter returned to her seat.
On February 14, she married her bestie, who was a girl, according to the Cora ritual. Her second best friend was the shaman and her third best friend was the corn. The older girls married, as permitted by law for lesbians in the Danish, Dutch and Swedish municipalities. I filmed the party and sent the video to my mother. My daughter’s aunt was doubled up with laughter!
FRANCESCA GARGALLO CELENTANI
Writer, traveler, mother of Helena, member of various networks of friends, Francesca Gargallo was an independent feminist who, starting from an open dialogue approach tried to generate a better life for women in various parts of the world. She earned her degree in Philosophy from La Sapienza University and had a doctorate in Latin American Studies from the Unam of Mexico. Her main interest was the history of feminist ideas and she tried to understand the contributions every culture made in the construction of feminism, understood as political action “for women”. She observed and recorded the reactions this approach elicited in academic, political and everyday settings. In love with the plastic arts, she sought to express the pleasure and the strength of being a woman through the production of works of art. As a narrator, she infused her characters with the ability to suggest points of view of reality that are not misogynistic. As a traveler, she valued women being able to move freely and to engage in a world that belongs to them. Her novels include: Estar en el mundo; Marcha seca; La decisión del capitán, among others. Her book of short stories Verano con lluvia has been read by feminists from various countries and has received good reviews. Her research contributions include the books: Garífuna, Garínagu, Caribe (on the history of the Garifuna people); Ideas Feministas Latinoamericanos (a history of feminist ideas in Latin America); Saharawi, el pueblo del sol (reflection on the history of the Saharawi people exiled in Algeria for thirty years). She was born in Siracusa, Italy 1956 but lived in Mexico from 1979 to her death in 2022.
