The other day one of the waitresses asked me how many lesbians I'd worked for over the years. I told her about the two restaurants where I'd run into women of this nature. But then a memory came back that I haven't thought about for ages! I had just gotten my car, or I was using my mother's I can't remember which right now. For some reason there didn't seem to be that many odd jobs in my home town that year. So I was making a half hour drive to a nearby community and hitting about every home there. I'd done some work for a lady called Peri in her 60s. The very next place I worked the woman had to tell me all about her. She had been living with another woman for 40 years and she had died. There'd been a row about burying her in her family plot, as she was not a direct family member. But a citizens' committee visited the manager of the cemetery and told him the plots were hers and who she wanted to bury there was up to her, and he finally conceeded. Six months later a fourteen year old niece arrived and began to attend school. She went out once and a while with a boy but the relationships didn't last. Rumors were going around the community that she was a very friendly niece. One afternoon I was working and the woman I was working for came running out of the house. "Peri just called me!" she cried. "She says there's a man digging up her lawn! She tried to stop him and he told her to get back in the house and if she came out again, he'd kill her! He was going to do what he wanted to do and she was going to shut up!" I hopped in my car and drove up to Peri's house. It was only three or four houses up the road. I blocked the man's pick up truck, which was on the lawn, and saw that he was cutting sod out of the lawn. I walked up to him and he snapped "What do you want?" and I nailed him!
I punched him for about five minutes, then he began to scream, "Enough! Enough! My God! What do you want?"
"Put it all back!" I snapped. "Make sure it fits nice and tight and water it. Then leave. Don't ever come back here again! Next time I'll kill you. You don't threaten women!"
"You know what they are!" the man screamed, "You know what they do! Why in the hell do you care?"
"That doesn't give you a right to rob them!" I snapped. "Now, get to work! I gotta go back to what I was doing. When I get done I'll come to check on this and make sure you did it right! Don't make me come looking for you!"
"I get the picture!" the man moaned. "For God's sake, it was ony a little grass! I just wanted to patch my lawn!"
Peri and her niece were standing on the porch. The niece was looking at me rather shyly. She had her hands behind her back and was making an effort to push out her chest. I nodded to Peri and went back to what I was doing. When I finished the job I was working on I came back to check her lawn. It had been well repaired. Again the niece was on the porch looking at me shyly. A few days later Peri called. "Gerald, I'm going to be away all day Wednesday. I've got quite a bit of work for you. Can you give me the whole day?" "Certainly," I told her "I have nothing else booked."
"Good!" Peri cooed. "My niece will fix you lunch. She'll show you what needs to be done."
That Wednesday I got to Peri's house about 9 o'clock. The niece greeted me at the door in a dressing robe. "What needs to be done?" I asked. The niece led me into the bedroom and showed me what needed to be done. We came out for lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom! Then she announced Peri would be home in an hour and I'd better go. That was a very interesting day's work. The niece offered me a fifty dollar bill. I shook my head and took a ten and told her to buy something nice for herself. That was the last I saw of her that summer.
The years went quickly by. About nineteen years later we were living in Bangor, Maine and I went to a local store one afternoon to get some stuff to fix some curtains in our apartment. I was going through the rods when I saw a young woman with an older woman that looked incredibly like Peri's niece. I couldn't help but stare! The girl got nervous and remarked "Mother, that man is staring at us!" Her mother turned and a broad smile came on her face.
"Oh, my goodness!" she remarked. "It's quite all right, Peri. He's got every right to stare. Come on! Let's get this stuff to the apartment. We want to have it ready when you come back from your honeymoon."
The woman stared at me again and nodded, and I returned the nod. I don't know if the older woman was Peri's niece and the younger one was her daughter, but the resemblance was remarkable, and I'll always wonder. I hadn't heard anything about her getting pregnant! But you just wonder sometimes why was it perfectly all right for me to stare?

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