Vigil

The first time I went to a gay bar I was seven years old. My mother frantically wrapped me in a red plaid Pendleton blanket and firmly pushed down all the locks. I laid with my head propped on the armrest on the door in the tangerine sodium light, listening to the waves of passing cars until she returned, my Uncle Calvin tucked into the shelter of her embrace.

I don't remember his injuries; my mind has created scrapes and bruises on his freckled cheekbones and smooth forehead because at some point the story of that night became family history. I seem to recall a ripped shirt, icepacks on his kidneys and ribs, but I don't know if these are things I saw or things I heard in whispers later on. What I do remember is this: my mother's best friend - so dear I called him my uncle - begged her to marry him, begged to father my sisters and I, swore he'd be true and faithful because he had no choice. He was very young, maybe twenty two. He was gay. He'd been beaten, and was afraid. And my mother and my sisters and I were the only family he felt he had.

I loved him with a fierceness that is unique to children. Every moment I was with him, I loved him more than anyone else in the world. Now, here, half a lifetime later, I have so little left of him - his freckles, yes, and his quick smile but not the color of his eyes or the timbre of his voice. What I have left of him is the sure knowledge that I loved him, and was desperately upset with my mom when she turned down his proposal. I wanted to hold him and keep him and love him forever.

I got about three years.

I don't remember the last time I saw my Uncle Calvin, but I do remember the time before that, or maybe a couple times removed. He had met someone and fallen in love, and although he was stationed hours away from where we were, he and Rolf made the trip so Calvin could introduce him to my mother. Calvin was ebullient and talkative, Rolf quiet and observant behind his glasses. Rolf was thin and wore a turtleneck, even though the day was not particularly cool. They and my mother shared a bottle of the sweet white wine she was so fond of then and in passing Calvin mentioned that Rolf was having a hard time recovering from a winter's illness - bronchitis or the flu, something. The record player went on, and Calvin teased my mother about her country music. I think we must have had dinner a time or two after that - there were avocados - but that day is the last day I remember the feeling of loving him so well settling in my body like impending sleep. I was ten years old.

If you are my age or a little older, if you grew up with an Auntie Jeannie and an Auntie Ingrid who made their own pickles and didn't want kids, if you took a trip to see the quilt - you know the quilt, they could wrap the Washington Monument in it like it was a red plaid blanket - then you've been holding vigil for a long time. This afternoon I knelt, leaned my head against another and wrapped my hands around his while we struggled to light a candle while the wind whipped. All of our candles snuffed out, even after we pressed shoulder to shoulder in an effort to shield their tiny flames, but we knew that the light was there. I have to believe that it is. I am still holding vigil.