Goodbye Earl(20)
2004
6
Rosemarie’s mom had made taco filling with fake meat and homemade salsa with cilantro and hothouse tomatoes from their greenhouse. She roasted corn in the green Spring Blossom Pyrex and grated cheddar cheese into a matching bowl before she and Rosemarie’s dad left for a gig in Adora Springs, thirty minutes away and two towns over. Caroline had come home with Rosemarie to snack after school but didn’t stay long, because she had a diner shift. Ada was at a prom committee meeting. That left Rosemarie and Kasey, too full to move, in a patch of sunlight on the trampoline.
“We have to go hunting for a prom dress for you. Tomorrow! Everything good is probably gone already! Why are you the one slowpoking when you actually have a date?” Rosemarie asked.
Ada and Kasey were going with the Castelows, Caro didn’t have a date yet, and what Rosemarie really wanted was to ask Sparrow Kim to prom because Sparrow Kim was her crush. Sparrow had been her crush for months. Sparrow was half-Korean and half-black with skin that held the sun. Her parents owned the one Korean restaurant in town: KG. Korean Gold.
Rosemarie and Sparrow were friends and maybe the tiniest bit more if Rosemarie counted the one time their humanities class went to the movies and she and Sparrow sat next to each other and Sparrow held her hand during the scariest part and then they kept holding hands even when the scary part was over. They held hands walking out of the theater together and only let go when they went into separate stalls in the bathroom. They locked fingers again on their way to the rumbling buses in the parking lot. Sparrow’s hair was thick, crow black, braided down her back when she played field hockey. She was captain. She clipped her pens to her shirt collar and, for reasons unknown, was usually almost late for their English class, barely sneaking in before Mrs. Perkins closed the door. Sparrow sat right in front of Rosemarie—Kim, Kingston—and smelled like Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon mist. Rosemarie hated the smell of cucumbers and melons coming from anywhere else, but when they came from Sparrow, they were her favorite.
Rosemarie hadn’t crushed this hard on a girl in real life before. Celebrities, yes. Especially Old Hollywood. There was a photo of Dorothy Dandridge above the light switch in her bedroom, a postcard of Elizabeth Taylor—in her slip from Butterfield 8—in her bathroom. Thinking about them was fantasyland and so was imagining being able to ask a girl to prom in Goldie. Sure, she was raised by hippie parents who loved every bit of her unconditionally, but Goldie was in the South, and she, along with most people in town, had been raised in the church.
Her romantic feelings for girls crept to the first boiling point the summer between middle and high school when she decided to let Ada, Caro, and Kasey know she thought Lisa Bonet was hotter than any boys in town. Ada had laughed and brushed her off, but Caro and Kasey knew what she meant. When Ada realized it too, she’d said, Just so you know, I will never care who you want to touch your itsy-bitsy, Roses. As long as it’s what you want. It’s your business, not mine. Then Ada went on a rant about how maybe she was kind of lesbian too because she totally would’ve kissed Marilyn Monroe if they’d been alive at the same time.
Later that afternoon, when it was just Rosemarie, Caro, and Kasey, they’d asked her if she ever had a crush on either of them, since she wasn’t shy when it came to talking about liking girls anymore, and Rosemarie did lie a little when she told them she never thought about it, because they were like sisters.
She’d thought about it, but it hadn’t gotten very far. She’d only been testing out the feelings, like a new pair of shoes. They were her sisters, so she didn’t want to hurt their feelings by telling them if she had to date one of them, it’d be Kasey because with her dark hair and eyes, Kasey looked the closest to the girls Rosemarie crushed on.
Rosemarie didn’t have a role model for how she was feeling, and she didn’t know how long her feelings would last. Maybe they were temporary? Maybe they’d be forever? She hadn’t suddenly stopped liking boys or anything. It was both. Why couldn’t she like them both? It made way more sense than it didn’t.
One neighborhood over, there was an older lesbian woman who was friends with her mom. She and her daughter visited about once a month to buy eggs from their chickens, and occasionally, the woman’s girlfriend would tag along. They were both kind and affectionate and called her Little Rosemarie no matter how big she got. Sometimes the woman’s girlfriend wore a rainbow pin on her jean jacket.
And everyone knew Gary Green was gay. He was friends with her parents and taught ceramics at South Goldie High. The kids called him Gay Gary Green so much he wore it like a badge of honor. He disappeared to Mexico for winter breaks and summers and sent the Kingstons pears and chocolates for Christmas. Rosemarie knew of quite a few gay people in Goldie, but it wasn’t like there were any aggressively openly gay couples in town she could look to.
“Ugh, I don’t know. The dresses are so expensive. I do have money saved up, but I don’t want to spend it on something I’ll only wear once,” Kasey said.
“I saw a powder-blue dress on the rack at Lily’s that would look so good on you it makes me want to die. We’re getting it tomorrow. It’s not that much! I’ll buy it with my own money—I don’t even care! I was going to let you do this yourself, but you’ve left me no choice, Fritz,” Rosemarie said. She sat up so Kasey could see her roll her eyes properly. Rosemarie was going to wear the dress her mom got married in, which was the only thing that made it a wedding dress—it was a pretty, petallike purple dress with ruffly straps and a dip in the back.