Annie on My Mind

by Nancy Garden

“But you’re …” I stopped, realizing I was about to say beautiful—surprised at thinking it, and confused again.

I don’t remember what we said; but I do remember feeling that something important had happened, and that words didn’t matter much.

It was rumored that before graduation every year she gave each senior a poem that she thought would be personally appropriate for his or her future.

i would kill to know mine

I remembered then that someone had once said they thought that Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer lived together.

gasp

I think one reason why we didn’t move away from each other was because if we had, that would have been an acknowledgment that we were touching in the first place.

“Ugh! Young girls, they should laugh. Life’s bad enough when you’re grown, you might as well laugh when you’re young.

Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can’t understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins? I think it was Sunday when that feeling began.

Without thinking, I put my arm across her shoulders to warm her, and then before either of us knew what was happening, our arms were around each other and Annie’s soft and gentle mouth was kissing mine.

and why, when I imagined living with someone someday, permanently I mean, that person was always female.

“Buon Natale,” she whispered, “amore mio.” “Merry Christmas, my love,” I answered.

originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That’s why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male.

the more Annie and I learned about each other, the more I felt she was the other half of me.

Even when I had to get up in front of English class and give an oral report, I always felt as if I were going to my execution.

I went downstairs to Dad’s encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn’t tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in that whole long article, the word “love” wasn’t used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn’t know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love.

“Oh, my God,” I said then. “They’re gay! Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer. They’re—they’re like us …”

omg i knew it

“It’s funny,” Annie said. “I never met them, but from everything you told me, I—well, I wondered.”

no exactly; the living together and neither being married, i know what you are

Liza, I don’t want to hide the—the best part of my life, of myself.”

“Well,” said Ms. Baxter, “of course I felt I had to conduct a search, because of my long-standing suspicions about the two older women.

girl who asked

that Ms. Baxter has been in the employ of this school for ten years, and that her record is impeccable.” “Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Widmer have both been at the school for fifteen years, am I right?” asked the red-haired woman.

get her!!!

“Don’t let ignorance win,” said Ms. Stevenson. “Let love.”