Part 8 of 11

Chapter 12
If my first - and last - date on Saturday was exciting, Sunday at the zoo was something else. Scary, exciting, thrilling, all mixed up. I now knew that Vito was no longer wanted as a murderer, although they would probably want me to do time for burglary and general mopary and dopary. I could still use that as an excuse to stay in my disguise as Eliza.

Problem was, it wasn't a disguise any more. I was really Eliza, the girl who was learning to be an honest and respectable woman. There's something real nice about being respectable.

We decided that we needed to be full-on girls and wear skirts to prove it. The weather was starting to warm up, so we didn't have to dress like Eskimos and I even got to show a little leg. I figured I had to be modest in my attire or my parents might get one shock too many. No cleavage for me, I still wore my rice farm. I was starting to wonder how well that would work when the weather warmed up and I started to sweat.

My ears were long healed so I could wear fancy earrings and I chose some dangly things that made sure people knew I had them on. I borrowed a pair of Wendy's calf length boots for the day. Trading clothes with your roommates is a good deal when you want to put on the glam.

It was really nice to be out in the warmer weather so we didn't have to wear heavy arctic coats. The bus dropped us off and we went in the gates. I patted the animal statues guarding the gates, but it wasn't really warm enough to sit on them wearing a skirt. I loved to sit on them when I was a kid, but I was a dignified woman nowadays.

It was a little frustrating because Patty and I couldn't hold hands or anything like that. In 1977 lesbians were not welcome much outside of lesbian bars, and the cops liked to raid them any time they figured they hadn't busted enough heads in a while. Things have changed for the better these days.

As we approached the seals I pointed out an older couple sitting on a bench. So OK, they looked older to me back then.

"See the couple on the bench? That's my Momma and Pops. Tell me I can do this, will you?"

"You can do this, Liza. You're my girl and a strong woman. Let's meet them together and show them the woman you've become."

I couldn't help it. I went over, steepled my hands in front of my nose and barked like a seal. Patty started laughing and my parents looked for all the world like they were stoned. Getting stoned was a big thing back then, not that my parents would know about it. Alcohol was the family's choice of escape from reality.

"Vito?" asks my Momma.

"Pretty good disguise for a guy on the run, isn't it, Momma?"

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

"Is that really you?"

"All but some bags of rice in certain locations. I bet you can figure out where."

"I guess I can. Where have you been all this time?"

"Hiding, and I'm not going to let anyone know where. They may not think I killed anyone any more but they still want me for burglary and I don't want to let them find me. I'm afraid your son Vito is going to disappear forever, but you might be interested in adopting a new daughter named Eliza. I think Auntie Aggie gave you her things?

"She did, she said they were for some friend."

I think you could call me a very close friend with Vito. I know the guy well."

"But you don't look like Vito or even sound like Vito. How…"

"Momma, I have a scar on my right thigh where I cut it with Pop's X-acto knife when I was nine. Want me to lift my skirt and show it to you? It's really me, Momma, Pops. I worked hard and had a lot of help to learn to be a lady. I think I've learned to be a much nicer person while I was hiding. I'm not hiding any more, Pops, this is me from now on. I need to introduce you to Patty, your new daughter-in-law.

I really shouldn't do things like that to old people. Two shocks like that in a row could have unfortunate results. I was glad they were sitting down.

Eventually we left the zoo and they took us out to dinner. We told them about me falling through the ceiling, hiding as a girl, then the beauty parlour and my first time getting waxed. Momma appreciated that story a lot more than Pops.

I had to apologize that we couldn't invite them to the wedding, but we were going to have to go way out of town so our names wouldn't appear in the paper and let the cops see mine.

Pops said "Nonsense!" and told us they would drive us to wherever we were going and be the witnesses. Momma was disappointed because it couldn't be a big wedding like she hoped I would have, but she understands that our family sometimes has to do things a different way.

I was glad to finally see them again and and happy they didn't kill me or disown me for being a girl. They weren't happy, but hiding from the cops is something that happens in our family. They knew it was often necessary, but I really took it farther than anyone else ever did.

While Momma and Patty were off powdering their nose, (I was not ready to go into the lady's room with Momma!) I turn to Pops and ask "I hope you weren't thinking of having a man-to-man talk with me while the ladies are gone?"

I should know better, really I should. I have to work on my timing before I say things like that. Pops was just taking a swig of his dark beer and next thing I know I'm going to have to find money for the dry cleaners when I take my pastel blouse to them.

There were enough people in the dining room that several stopped to watch the action as I tried to get the stains off my blouse with water and a napkin. It's embarrassing to be washing your breasts in public.

When Pops could speak clearly again and people weren't watching us, he says "You may look different but you're the same old smartass."

"I have talent, Pops."

"Vito, Liza, are you really happy with this?"

"Pops, at first I was so damn scared with the cops after me for murder I would have done anything to get away. I was really pitiful. I don't know why any of those girls didn't call the cops the second they saw me, I really don't. Even before Jenny puked on me I wasn't fit for company, if you know what I mean."

"That's the craziest story I ever heard."

"But it's true, and I didn't say half of what happened with Momma listening. Pops, I wasn't a virgin any more by the time they fed me lunch."

"And you still…"

"I didn't think calling you up to bring me some of my clothes was the best idea in the world."

"You got that right!"

"So what else could I wear in a place with three women?"

"I guess that makes some sort of weird sense, but I don't understand why…"

"Why I keep doing it? The cops still want me, but that's not why, not any more. Pops. This feels right. I like being Eliza. I like having girlfriends that treat me as one of them. I like working at the salon and I even like waitressing. Not that I'm going to do that for the rest of my life, but this is who I think I am now. Jenny and Wendy have even got me thinking about going to school in the fall so I can get some kind of work that pays better."

"Now I know my son's been kidnapped by aliens. Vito would never want to go to school."

"But Eliza is seeing things Vito couldn't see."

"Pardon me if I can't believe the things I'm seeing right now!"

"I getcha, Pops," I say, reverting to my old speech patterns for a moment. "Now that I can prove I'm Eliza, I'm going to start looking for honest work, the kind of work where I don't worry about hearing sirens. Sorry if that shocks the family, but that's the way it's going to be from now on."

"I've been starting to think that way myself. I'm getting too old to be working at night after pulling a full shift at the plant."

"Watch out, Pops, or we could both end up respectable!"

"Heaven forbid! Look, Liza, if the cops aren't looking so hard for you any more I don't see how you and Patty couldn't come over for a visit every once in a while. Maybe your mother could meet Patty in that salon and they could get to like each other."

"It could work. Are you going to be able to have me as your daughter, though."

"I'm trying. I can still see bits of the little shit I had for a son but I have to say that you make a pretty good girl. There's something about how you handle yourself that tells me you're happy. You're trying to control your life, not just let things happen to you."

"I think you're right, Pops. Patty and the girls have shown me there is a better way to be living. They all do things their way and they think ahead and plan what they want to do. They wouldn't let me mess up while they were teaching me. I can't tell you how many times I heard Language Liza! every time I started swearing like Vito."

"I'll let you in on a secret: your mother does the same thing to me! It really bothered her that you had such a foul mouth, but she couldn't get you to stop. I didn't even want to try."

"I guess it made me feel like a big man to be shooting off my mouth like that."

"You sure don't look like a big man any more!"

"These days I wonder why I ever wanted to."

I think Pops was getting embarrassed to be talking like this.

"How you fixed for money? Laying low still costs something."

"I'll admit that with me working under-the-counter we could always use a little more cash."

"I thought so. The family got together when they heard you were still around somewhere to give you a little something to help."

He hands me an envelope and tells me to use it wisely. I am too much of a lady to open it at the table in a restaurant, so I just put it in my purse.

"Tell the family I thank them. You can say that I'm getting married and the wife and I will consider it a wedding present. It's even true but misleading. You can tell them we've decided to be hippies and move to California or something like that. It'll give them something to talk about."

Momma and Patty got back then and I decide I need to powder my nose. While I'm doing my business I sneak a look and see $500 in that envelope. I'm one lucky girl.
 

When we got home I finally opened that envelope from the end of the rainbow. I was now Eliza Mae Hawkins, born twenty one years ago on a military base in Germany. My father didn't make it back from the Korean war, so my mother moved back to Kentucky with me and drank herself to death a year later. I was raised by grandparents on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania. I even graduated high school with honors a year early.

The original Eliza Mae took off for California to be a hippie and no one had seen or heard of her since. No deposits were made in her social security account, she paid no taxes and had let her driver's license expire. Her grandparents are now in a nursing home with advanced dementia. It was the perfect identity: everything real and from the government and no way to check back with anyone to see if I was really who I claimed to be.

Notarized birth certificate, school records, some military stuff, but no dental records or fingerprints to trip me up. I felt a bit sorry for Eliza Mae, so I tossed a prayer to the Big Guy Upstairs thanking him for letting me be her. I hope He was nice to her when she reached the Pearly Gates.

I applied for a library card using my new birth certificate, waited a week and took the envelope the card came in to prove my local address when I applied to get my driver's license. Charlie was nice enough to come with me so I could take the test and since Vito was already on the road, taking the test was a breeze. I soon had my photo ID proving I was Eliza Mae Hawkins.

As far as anyone could tell, I was the real deal.
 

Chapter 13
I actually surprised myself telling Pops that I was thinking of going back to school. Well, I had been, a little, but actually saying it out loud? Maybe I'm getting too respectable.

But I find I like being respectable as much as I like being Liza. As much as I like being a woman. Scary stuff! Please don't anyone tell me I'm growing up! Anyway, I got off work for Charlie and took the bus up Main Street in the opposite direction from home. I went all the way out to Williamsville and finally found the admissions office of Erie Community College.

This was a whole new world to me, the kid who grew up in the wrong side of the City of Buffalo. There were all these people who looked as respectable I was trying to look, all walking around. I told them in the office I was interested in becoming a student and they asked what I wanted to study.

Well, that was a poser. I really hadn't gotten that far, I just knew that if Patty and I were ever to make more money I would have to get an education. Patty loved being a beautician, and she had to work hard to get her license to do it; could I do any less for us?

I guess the lady was used to people like me who hadn't a clue, so she goes over all the things I could study. You won't be surprised that back in 1977 the choices for a woman were pretty limited. Sure, there were feminists agitating and women were getting real unhappy about how they were treated, but that wasn't the world I grew up in.

Let me tell you, by the time I finished my certificate I understood what women have to put up with better than any man I ever knew. Firsthand experience is one mighty fine teacher. I almost wished I could go back to being Vito so I could have the power to start doing something about it. Now that's a real crazy idea, isn't it? Pretty much encapsulates male privilege in one sentence.

Looking through the limited choices, one stood out: Court Reporter. I'd been in quite a few courts over the years, watching family and friends either get off or get jugged. If they weren't people I knew, watching the antics of the lawyers would have been fun. You don't know just how relieved I was that Liza would not have to worry about such things.

I knew court reporters made good money, and all they did was sit there and push levers on those funny little machines. I figured if I was agile enough to pick a lock I could learn how to use one of those machines.

So the lady gives me a bunch of literature about the program, and then I ask the big question: how do I pay for it all? So I get a bunch more papers about scholarships and loans. The lady is impressed with my academic record and says that I should have no trouble getting into the program, but why has it been so long since I left school?

Good thing Patty and I practiced my story, and I really was happy that Jenny the legal secretary threw in her two cents. We just kind of fleshed out how the real Liza tried to be a hippie but gave it up because starving on the streets wasn't as romantic as it looked on a farm in Pennsylvania. Not a bad story, I almost believed it myself as I was telling it.

I left the office with a load of papers and a lot on my mind. Was I really going to go to college because I wanted to? I was so distracted that I almost walked into a crowd of women in the Union who were doing something or other. I really hadn't noticed what, but next thing I knew one of them was handing me a booklet and asking if I had had a mammogram yet.

Mammogram? Good thing I had been doing those 'enhance your vocabulary' quizzes in the paper each night, because I actually knew what a mammogram was. When I said I hadn't I got more papers and information about breast cancer and gynecological exams and who knows what else. Stuff that would have really freaked Vito out, I'm sure. Eliza was just curious, since this was stuff a woman should know, even if she wasn't going to let some doctor put her up in the stirrups.

Now wouldn't that be a kick?