Chapter Text
Since very young I knew I was different. Unlike the other girls of my age I didn’t want to play with dolls, I wanted to play soccer with the boys of my neighborhood on the street in front of my house. Of course they would never let me play, because I’m a girl. And though I was the fastest of all, a magician like Marta and Messi, I was always excluded from the games. I had to content myself with plastic kitchen sets, baby rag dolls, Barbie - the housewife. I know, it sucks.
But as every bad thing has its silver lining, if I was banned from soccer matches in front of my house, I was more than welcomed at the house across the street. Valentina and I are best friends since I can remember. Or since the day she told me that I shouldn't feel upset if the boys didn't let me play with them, because in her eyes, it was a blessing.
“Juls, you’re mine, and mine only!”
That’s when I didn’t want to ‘be shared’ with anyone else. I was hers, exclusively hers.
We were both seven when she claimed me, and I fell in love. Even though I didn’t know what that supposed to mean exactly, or the consequences of it, I fell in love.
It was in an ordinary winter afternoon, after a marathon of movies, some innocent cuddling and a session of kisses on the cheeks, that I realized my life would never be the same without her. With her head rested on my chest in the darkness of her room, breathing evenly while in the sweetest of dreams, I simply knew that I wanted to be her pillow for the rest of our lives. I wanted to protect her. To cherish her. To love her.
Right before dinner time, I crossed the street back to my house to find my family already at the table. Mom and dad always insisted that all of our meals should be together. Just one of the thousands traditions of the Valdes family. Traditions, a word that gives me chills. I hate it, in every possible way. I sorta am the black sheep of the family, starting by the fact that I was born a girl. I have two older siblings, both men. Alejandro, who’s ten years older than me, and Alonso, only two years apart.
Destiny not only made the Valdes boys dynasty to be interrupted when it gave me two X chromosomes, but also, my grandpa had the brilliant idea of not naming me accordingly to the 'A tradition'. The elder man of our family, has the power to name the newborns. And as so easily noticeable, Juliana doesn’t start with the letter A, unlike my two brothers’ names. Dad didn’t like it, at all. But mom found a way of convincing him to accept grandpa’s decision. Why is that even a matter of discussion? I’ve got no freaking idea.
It’s not until mom calls me for the third time, as she said, that I realized they’re all staring at me. My mind was far way, not too far, just seven meters across the street. They were talking about marriage. Another ridiculous Valdes tradition. It’s my oldest brother’s turn, he’d propose to Eva – Valentina’s older sister. They were just about to complete the first year of college, and the Carvajals in accord to my parents were already planning their lives after that.
Leon Carvajal and Macario Valdes have also been friends since ever, growing up together here in Cave City, frequenting same school and college. Their parents were friends too, and like a big community of hippies, everything is shared: birthdays, barbecues, vacations, and - especially - holidays. And that’s why they say that the Carvajal Valdes are like one big family.
The thing is, when we insist on repeating something too much, often that idea becomes reality. Call it law of attraction or pure insanity, but my father and Val’s father accorded to marry their elder children, and somehow my mother and aunt Lucia went along with this madness.
When mom told me to help her wash the dishes after dinner and I tried to refuse it because I wanted to watch the basketball game just like my brothers, my father sent me that reproachful look as if telling me to shut up and keep the tradition. Yeah, another one! The women in our family have to serve the men, end of story. It was like that with my aunts, it was like that with my mom when she married Macario, and it will be like that with me. Traditions.
“You can have ice cream when we’re done!”
Mom always did her best to cheer me up, it’s more than clear to her that this subservient life doesn’t suit me. Never did. I don’t fit.
We washed the dishes in silence, because I was focus on my own tradition of always checking out the small kitchen window above the sink. The view is the Carvajals front yard, but my interest is up toward Val’s room. Often, I catch myself wondering what she’s doing, and by that time, she’s probably just finishing to brush her long brown-ish hair. I adore the way her hair falls over her shoulder, and how the freckles on her face combine perfectly with it.
“Eva and Alejandro will have beautiful babies, don’t you think?”
Mom tries to break the silence. I simply don’t get the fact why she was asking me that. I was seven by then; my brain only had space for school, video-games that I could only play when my father wasn’t home, and Valentina.
“Why are they even getting married?”
My question sounded perfectly obvious to me, but taking into account the horrified way she looked at me, I was saying some kind of absurd. The answer she gave me, I’ll never forget.
“Because they’re best friends, and we should marry the person who we can trust”.
Best friends, and trust. Two things Valentina and I have in this short ‘requirement’ for a happily ever after.
“I will marry Valentina!”
I stated so happily and so genuinely that mom looked at me for a few seconds before releasing a loud laughter. She knelt down, cupped my cheeks, and kissed my forehead.
“You cannot marry Valenina, Juli. You two can be best friends forever, but in a friendly way only”. What a friendly way only meant, I would only understand a couple years later. “She might marry your brother Alonso, though. But that’s a talk for a few years ahead. Now go shower and get ready for bed”.
The idea of Valentina and Alonso getting married felt so odd, and so … nasty! Of course they were friends, Alonso would join us to play in the pool once in a while, but they’re not best friends. She’s my best friends, and I’m hers. She claimed me, remember? You cannot simply ‘return’ a person you claimed like a Christmas gift you didn’t like.
Something about that talk with mom changed me. The thought of me marrying Valentina persisted through the years.
I wanted to marry her when we were nine and she lost her front teeth and her mouth looked like a frog’s mouth. A cute frog’s mouth.
I wanted to marry her at my tenth bday, when she dressed as Minnie Mouse for my costume party.
I wanted to marry her when we both were eleven and my period came before hers – and she got mad at me for that.
I wanted to marry her when we were twelve and we finally kissed after she taught me how to dance música Latina.
I wanted to marry Valentina when were thirteen and she let me touch her bare boobs and I let her touch mine.
I wanted to marry her at my fifteenth birthday, when she gave herself to me as a gift and we discovered what a clit is and its function.
I wanted to marry her when we were sixteen and my father and Leon started talking about Valentina and Alonso together - they should've known better that I’m the only one that can make her happy. But they don’t know, no one does.
I want to marry her now, that we’re about to turn eighteen and just about to graduate high school. Now, that I know that having a lesbian in the family is not part of the tradition. Now, that our parents started planning our futures without our opinions or consent. Now, that Alonso is twenty, available to date, and my father is freaking out to find him a woman to marry and start a family to keep the tradition, the fucking tradition.
It’s so hard to hide what I feel for her.
We’re always together, I don’t know how no one ever noticed the way I look at her and the smiles she directs at me. But she’s great at hiding, always been. Her favorite childhood game, besides us playing mom and mommy with her dolls, was hide and seek. She hides like no one, literally. And I’m always seeking. I seek her lips when we are alone, but she tenses just for the thought of being caught. I seek a life for us without worries and fear, but she always laughs when I tell her we should flee from this place and from our families traditions. I don’t know if it’s fear what she feels, or if she thinks I’m not being utterly serious about running away from here, but we never get to talk about it more seriously. Valentina always find a way to change the subject whenever I mention the word run. She’s not a runner, she’s a hider.
“We are not lesbians Juls, we are just in love. And that’s enough!”
That’s her way of telling me that we should stay in the closet, cause it’s comfortable and safe.
I never thought about the idea of being gay. All I am sure of is that I love Valentina more than anyone else, and sometimes, more than myself included.
Valentina obviously made new friends as we grew, she’s popular. Beautiful, cheerleader, comes from a traditional and wealthy family. She’s always surrounded by a bunch of girls, talking about polish nails, makeup, hair style, fashion, and boys. Yuck! Why should I care if a dude has its mustache finally growing up, or getting a thicker voice or more muscles, if none of it will change the fact that I’m in love with my best friend? So, it’s more than obvious that I don’t hang out with them, right? Right!
I don’t fit anywhere. Or in any group. Well, I have Sergio. He became my friend because one day I was on my way to the library to return a book and I accidentally saw him kissing a basketball player. Yeah, it was shocking! And as being gay in Cave City is not an option, he begged me on his knees to keep my mouth shut. I swore I’d never say anything, and then, he interpreted it as an invitation to follow me everywhere around the school. As rumors spread easily, some of the mean kids started a gossip that Sergio and I were dating. We let them. It helped Sergio and helped me to keep away any suspicions about my love for Valentina.
The funny part of all this story is that it isn’t too hard to figure out Sergio’s homosexuality, especially because of the way he wiggles his hips and butt while walking, the way his wrists are always loose, and his thin talking. I wonder if people can tell that I like girls by my way of being… wait! Girls not, I like Valentina. I am Valentinasexual.
Anyway. Sergio graduated last year and moved to the capital - Monterey - for his college years. We stay in touch now and then. The emails and texts I receive from him are mostly pictures of his new life, and by what I can tell, he is much happier there – which makes me totally glad for him and a bit envious, I confess. I wish I could have that much of freedom and the autonomy to choose what I want. Or who I want.
Now that he’s gone, I’m alone again. That is, when Valentina is with her other fancy friends. She told me I should try to be more sociable, and though I tried it for her, not even the herd of nerds wanted me near them.
Not to brag myself or anything, but I have a pretty smart brain. I never had any problem in school, not about my grades at least. Mrs. Navarro, my chemistry teacher and adviser, once told me I can be anything I want, simple like that. Not too simple. I’ve always flirted with the idea of studying medicine, but my mother told me to pick any another profession as she knows my father wouldn’t agree with my plans. After all, a doctor, a woman doctor, would never have time to comply with her housewife obligations, would she? So I don’t know what I’ll apply for, and it makes me very anxious, especially by the fact that school will be over in six months and scholarship application forms have very short deadlines. It’s me against time, against my insecurities, against my family traditions, and somehow, against Valentina as well.
Only if she would listen to me, we could restart a new life away from here and I could be a doctor and she a model as she dreams to be. It would be us against the world! Only if I didn’t break the family tradition to come to this world as a girl, I could marry her without trouble. Only if…
I know it’s only a matter of time until Leon and Lucia start receiving candidates at their house disputing their youngest daughter’s hand. If not with my brother, they’ll surely find another man for her. Alonso is only ahead of the others cause he’s a Valdes, because right now, he’s a good-for-nothing. My brother is in clear disadvantage when it comes to financial stability and a bright future. Differently of me, Alonso and cleverness are never in the same sentence. It’s not like he’s dumb, he is just lazy and always makes really poor decisions in life.
Alonso is that kind of guy that is always in parties, and rarely inside a classroom. He’s also in the basketball team, but he hardly ever plays. Once in a blue moon, he shows up for practice. As punishment for indiscipline, the coach makes him stay in the bench for Lucho – another complete idiot that can’t even pass the ball at a five inches’ distance. And though he thinks he’s some kind of Michael Jordan or LeBron James, Lucho’s nickname in school is soap-man, because his slippery hands can never hold the ball firmly. That’s the ‘player’ Alonso eats bench for! Do I need to say anything else?
Alonso and I will graduate together, cause he repeated two years of high school. Why? Low attendance. If my father punished him? Only two months without video-games. If it was me in his shoes instead and doing that? Surely I’d never see the sunlight ever again. That’s just one between the thousands privileges of having a penis in this family.
No matter how many candidates may appear to impress Leon. I know none of them, much less my brother, are capable of making Valentina happy as I am. No matter the profession, the status, the beauty they might have. I am the one and only for her. I know I am bit weird, too introspective sometimes, my boobs are too small in comparison to my butt – which forms a strange figure, and mainly, I don’t have a penis. But what’s a member in between the legs compared to a brain like mine? Compared to my heart? I can give Valentina the world, even if that means I’ll have to work my entire life or rob a bank. I don’t care. I’d do anything for her. For us.
I'm completely aware that all I have to offer isn’t enough to our parents, but if it is enough for her, then I can be happy.
Every day feels like a countdown, a torturous countdown until the day I’ll lose her. As much I don’t want to be pessimist or to declare myself as defeated, there’s always a heavy cloud above my head reminding me that I’ll eventually lose her. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it.
Valentina looks at me and smiles, I just then realize she has been staring. After school, we came straight to her house and locked ourselves in her room with the excuse that we have an anatomy project to develop. Bullshit. Val has been reading that stupid gossip magazine whilst I try to come up with an escape plan for us.
“Are you ok mi amor? You seem distant today” Valentina has this annoyingly accurate capacity to read my emotions, even when she’s not trying to.
She started calling me as su amor since we made love for the first time. It’s a petname only used in our privacies, which makes me even softer and dumber for her when I hear it.
“I wish we could stay in this room forever”. I reply.
Defiantly, she arches her left eyebrow.
“You wouldn’t be able to live without a library for too long. I’m sure you’d get bored!” See? That’s what I meant about her deviating the course of the talk, over and over. She’s too slippery, just like… like Lucho’s problem with the basket ball. It feels like she’s always slippering through my hands, and it feels awful not to be able to hold her a little longer. Now I know how idiot Lucho feels.
“I wouldn’t be able to live without you, Val”. I can’t help but pour my feelings. By the way her eyes watered, I know she feels the same. I move closer to her in bed, then I peck her lips. “I want to marry you”. Valentina looks down at her hands holding the magazine, she breathes deeply before matching my eyes again. She’s clearly upset. That sad expression on her face makes me feel hopeless and pathetic.
“I know you do, Juls. I’d like to marry you too. We already talked about that and we both know that we can’t”. Hearing her say it breaks me every time. It’s like sticking a blade into my chest and stabbing my heart a thousand times.
“Let’s run away, Val. I’ll take care of you, I promise” I beg her, almost crying. I would cross the world with her, on foot in necessary.
“We don’t have money for that Juls! I know you have good intentions, but we would live where? On the streets begging for a few coins and food?” Her desperate tone makes me shed some tears. I can’t hold it.
She’s right, I only have five thousand dollars in my bank account. Though I started saving from my summer jobs, I also know it’s not enough, not even for a start. And it's more than obvious that neither my father or hers would help us with a dime if they knew we kiss each other in the mouth and do a few other things with our tongues and fingers.
“I’ll find a way for us to be together!” I promise, looking at the blue eyes I love so much. That way she can be sure that I am being deadly serious about it.
Valentina swipes her tongue over her teeth and bites her bottom lip, as she always does when nervous. Her long fingers slowly and tenderly brush my hair.
“We are together now, Juls. Let’s not waste time with the impossible!”
The impossible. Sometimes I hate how Valentina gives up so easily. It’s like I am always the one looking for an alternate ending for both of us, when all she does is leave it up to fate. But then I remind myself that she’s a hider, and I am the seeker. She makes me furious, and insanely turned on.
“I love you Juliana, don’t ever doubt that” She states. It’s times like these when I really think she can read my mind, or my soul.
“And I love you twice as much!”
Enough talking. We kiss each other as if it were the last time. Every time feels like the last time, so we avail each second we have. Her lips sucking mine, her tongue wet and warm inside my mouth, my hands traveling through all her curves and edges, our hearts beating fast in harmony. I really wish we could stay in this room forever.
A few knocks on the door makes us jump apart as quick as possible. We dry our red swollen lips and do our best to calm our erratic breathing. It’s Chivis, the Carvajals housemaid, warning that lunch will be served in ten minutes. That's also a warning that I should probably get going.
Valentina closes the door and sits miles from me, that way we won’t fall in temptation to resume our making out session. She bites her smiley lips and shakes her head, as if telling me we are not allowed to talk about almost being caught by Chivis – again.
“I’ll go. Mom must be waiting for me to help her to set the table for lunch”. I stand up and collect my backpack and some of the books I borrowed from library today. Val looks at my full hands and chuckles.
“You’re such a nerd, Juls. My sexy nerd!” She stands up and walks closer to me. With her lips inches away from mine, she smiles. Provoking. “Mrs. Navarro is right; you can be whatever you want. So don’t trade a brilliant future for a war that cannot be won”. Valentina’s tone is serious now, and I know exactly what she means.
“All I want is a future with you, and I’d fight any war to have that”. It’s true, I’d kill and die for her, and she knows it. I lean in and kiss her lips one last time before I return to the real world. She kisses me back, with urgency, fear, need, and love. I’m sure no one else in the planet could make me feel this way, not a woman, not a man. If that means I am a lesbian, so it be.
I pull back and clean the extra saliva of her lips. A final kiss on her cheek is worth a thousand words. We learned how to talk by gestures, and that’s my way of saying that I’ll miss her every second until we are able to be alone again. Which is, we never know when.
“I love you!” I whisper before opening her bedroom door and walking out.
I greet Leon and Lucia on the way as Valentina accompanies me to the door. “I love you twice as much!” She says as she leans her body against the doorframe watching me cross the street. It feels like a piece of me is always left behind, and unfortunately I can’t do anything to reclaim it. My heart is hers.
As expected, mom is waiting for me to help set the table. I kiss her forehead before I quickly run to my room to change my uniforms for casual clothes and wash my hands. When I get back downstairs, my father and Alonso are already in the kitchen. Talking about basketball, of course. The day I see any of them lifting a finger to help my mother, it will rain fire instead of water. I quickly put the plates and organize the cutlery on the table. I also get the glasses and a jar of natural orange juice, my father’s favorite. My mother spoiled this man too much – these men, in the plural.
We pray, eat, and later mom does the rest of the housework yet to be done. My father goes back to work, Alonso goes to his room to take a nap, and I wash the dishes. That’s the routine. When I am almost done drying the dishes and placing it back into the cabinet, my mother reappears in the kitchen caring a pile of ironed clothes of the king and the prince of the house. Here is another detail, I do my own laundry. That way my mother has one less thing to do, and also, because my father believes it is a good way of training me for when I become some dude’s wife. Haha, funny!
“Have you completed any of your college applications yet?” Lupe asks me as she uses the kitchen table to separate my father’s clothes from my brother’s. I quickly dry my hands to help her.
“Not yet, still thinking” It’s true. I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to apply for.
Even though I always dreamed of the day I’d move away from Cave City, now I am not sure if it’s the smartest choice. It would be if Valentina and I moved to the capital, together. It would buy us some time, and maybe with the title of a doctor, I could at least try to convince Leon that I am the best pick for his daughter.
But with things being as they are, I’m almost sure that Valentina will end up giving up her dream of being a model to comply with her father’s wishes. Like him, she’ll probably study something related to business at Cave City’s Community College to later assume the administration of all Carvajals assets. They are in the furniture business. Leon is a woodworker and learned it from his father, who likewise learned it from his father. As Leon had two girls, and carpentry is considered a ‘man job’, he’ll probably just pass the family wealth to Eva and Valentina to administrate and make it prosper.
“You should hurry, don’t want to miss the deadlines!” Lupe pinches my cheek, as she affectionately does all the time.
My mother is the only person who really cares ‘bout me, besides Valentina of course. My relation with my father doesn’t go beyond the point of a few exchanged words. Sometimes, I even have the feeling that he suspects that I’m an evil ‘tradition breaker’.
Alonso and I have been much closer before, when we were ten and seven years old respectively. Since the day my mother mentioned the possibility of my brother marrying Valentina, I simply couldn’t act normally around him anymore. I know that the immense gap between us is mostly my fault. I started pushing him away from me, and consequently, from Val. So him and I don’t talk much either, only the necessary.
My relation with my older brother, Alejandro, has always been much easier. Besides the fact he’s ten years ahead of me, the age has never been a problem between us. Often, he would let me sneak into his room to play Mario Kart and Mortal Combat with him until late hours - without our father knowing it, goes without saying. Has ever a boy’s game helped a little girl to become a good housewife? If you said no, you think exactly like my father. Anyway, Alejandro married Eva at the age of twenty-three. They moved to Germany because of his job, Mechanical Engineer at a very famous car company.
The Valdes men really like cars. It’s not a tradition, but an obsession, I’d say. My father has five Car Resale and Renting stores. But dont worry, here is another stupid family tradition for you: at the age of fifteen, every Valdes receives the first car of his life as gift. Every Valdes but me! Macario came up with the excuse that I was too immature to drive at fifteen, so he promised to gift me a car when I completed high school. Still waiting… let’s see!
On the flip side, Alejandro has always been smarter than Alonso, for life choices I mean. Like me, my older brother always wanted to get out of Cave City, so he took the first opportunity that presented to him. Evangelina majored literature, and as a good housewife must be, she followed her husband and became an English teacher at a local school. They had two little girls - Ana who is now five, and Alexia, two years old. Names starting with the letter A. Ridiculous, I know! My father was responsible for their name choices since grandpa passed away five years ago and Macario became the oldest man of the Valdes family. I heard that they’ve been trying a third baby, because my father wants a grandson. Un varón, he screams at the phone to my brother every time they talk.
I ignore all this mess to look up toward Val's window. The curtains of her bedroom are closed. Always hiding from me! I smile at the silly thought, which also makes me a bit sad.
“Juli, you have your head in the clouds?” Mom asks from behind, I turn around to see her giggling. She's so beautiful, and so young. Lupe married Macario when she was only seventeen, because he got her pregnant even before she could think about doing anything else other than becoming a housewife. I wish I could take my mother to see the world, show her that there’s more out there beyond the borders of this shitty town.
“I’m listening mama”. I tell her after a while and she shakes her head. Obviously I didn’t hear what she said.
“Don’t stress too much Juli! Just follow your heart and you’ll find the answer” she repeats what she had previously said, now pressing a hand over my chest. I know she is talking about college choices but the only thing I can think about is Valentina and I, because my heart is screaming that I should kidnap her and flee from here, once for all.