“What’ll you have?” The waitress stared at me with eyes like shiny brown buttons, pad poised. She didn’t look at my cousin Teal; incredible since Teal was wearing a black chest binder with a short pleather jacket and four huge, sparkly bracelets. Then there was Teal’s nose stud and their hair, part crew cut and part maroon mop-top.
“A chocolate shake please,” I said. “Two straws.” I tugged at my flowered sundress to straighten the T-shirt my mom forced me to wear underneath. Teal had loaned me the two thick, spiky bracelets on my wrists.
“We don’t do straws no more,” the waitress said, boring her button eyes into my face without glancing at Teal. “For the environment. The turtles?”
An old man in a VFW ball cap watched us from his seat at the counter. He had a long, skinny neck. He’d jut his chin out and bring his coffee cup up for a slurp without looking at it. Every time he swallowed, his mouth coughed out “aahhhh,” like he was sinking into a bubble bath. Then his chin went back into his neck. Teal raised their shoulders, jutted their chin out, and did a pretty good imitation using their water glass. We both started laughing.
“You kids think saving the turtles is funny?” the waitress said, still looking only at me.
“Very funny, actually,” Teal said.
“You don’t care about turtles, Donna. You just don’t wanna spend money on straws,” the man said.
“Kimmy had a pet turtle once,” Donna said. “When she got tired of it, Dale wanted to flush it down the toilet, but I took it to the woods behind the middle school and set it free, so.”
“An extra glass,” I called as Donna walked to the kitchen. “Please.” I kicked Teal under the table for being rude. I knew it was because she’d ignored Teal, who put a lot into their appearance.
“Gotta pee,” Teal said, standing up and throwing arms wide. Teal’s tenor voice imitated Gene Kelly’s “Gotta Dance,” singing “Gotta pee! Gottapeegottapee.” I joined them for the last “GOT—ta—PEE!” When Teal stood you could see their black skirt with the chain-and-padlock belt and work boots.
Donna bustled back. She had a rolling gait, like our grandma before she had her hip done. “Stop singing,” she said, gesturing towards the cook in the back. “Dale won’t stand for it.”
“Where do you think you’re gonna do your business, Mister Missy?” the hat man asked. “Not where I do my business.”
“I see it hasn’t escaped your notice that I’m queer,” Teal said. “And I, for one, am delighted that’s out of the way, because I really need to pee.”
“If you’re a boy, you can’t use the Girls’,” Donna said. “There’s a law somewhere, so.”
I stroked my loaner bracelets from Teal, who’d said they were Wonder Woman cuffs for strength and also immunity from projectiles. Teal used bracelets a lot at school.
“What kind of projectiles?” I’d asked.
“Words, mostly,” Teal had said.
“This is my cousin,” I told Donna. “Visiting our town. Deserving a nice welcome. How about the Ladies Room. I’ll guard the door so no one else goes in. There’s only one toilet, anyway.”
Donna looked at the kitchen. The cook was making a racket with pans. Then she looked at the man with the hat.
“It’s your restaurant, Donna,” he said. “I’m a regular paying customer, is all. I can get my coffee other places. It don’t have to be here.”
“You’re a creature of habit, Ned. You’ll be back.” She sighed. “I’m thinking two things. One, I’m a Christian woman. Second, when you gotta go, you gotta go. You kids can do like the girl said. But you, the queer one, make it snappy.”
“I’m Teal,” Teal said. “It’s nice to meet you. And you are?”
“I swear,” Donna said, “If my Kimmy’d ever brought one of youse home, I don’t know what Dale would’ve done.”
The hat man plunked his empty cup and some change on the counter, picked up the wooden cane next to his stool, and limped out the door.
“Bye, Ned,” Teal called. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“Shush now,” Donna said. “Show respect to a veteran.”
I stood by the bathroom after Teal went in, with Donna near our table, arms folded under her bosom. “How old is Kimmy?” I asked.
“Um. A little older’n you two.”
“Is she in school?”
“Not, I mean, no,” Donna said. “She always wanted to study cosmetology.”
“Teal wants to study cosmetology,” I said.
Teal returned to the table, shedding the pleather jacket. “Warm in here, hunh?” they said. I didn’t think so.
Donna served our milkshake with two glasses. As she placed them on the table, she glanced at Teal’s bare, muscled arms. Fat pink welts and thinner red ones, a dozen on each outer arm, ran vertically between shoulders and elbows in random lengths. Rose-colored hash marks decorated the inner spaces above Teal’s four Wonder Woman bracelets. The effect was almost beautiful, like abstract tattoos without ink, until you remembered that no artist had designed them. That Teal had carved their own skin. That their purpose wasn’t beauty.
Donna stopped. She brushed her fingertips over Teal’s right arm.
“Oh, honey,” she said.
“What?” Teal said, pulling away. I crossed my wrists, bracelet touching bracelet in case of projectiles.
Donna’s voice was soft, her brown buttons trained on Teal. “Kimmy did this to herself, too. I’ll tell you the same what I told her. You’re one of God’s creatures. You’re worthy of His love. Kimmy never believed.” She bent over and hugged Teal. “Jesus’s love can save you. Blood of the lamb.”
“Stop. You’re suffocating me,” Teal groaned over the pressing hills of freckled flesh.
“Oh, honey,” Donna whispered, hugging Teal even tighter. “Let yourself be saved.”
prose has been accepted for publication in The Forge Literary Magazine, Quartz Literary, Lumiere Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Hypertext Review (forthcoming, Fall/Winter 2023), among other places, and her guest essays on writing have appeared in Brevity’s Nonfiction blog. Her story “Blank Slate” was awarded first place in Fiction Factory’s 2021 annual flash fiction contest, and she was a finalist for a fellowship from Forge Literary for writers over 50 in 2018.
Before she began writing creatively in 2016, Terzino was a lawyer for more than 30 years. She is currently developing a collection of short and flash fiction stories for publication that focus on themes of secrets and loss. A longtime observer of people’s eccentricities, she has resided nearly all her life in the Midwest. She presently lives, writes, and sings in a community chorus in Saugatuck, Michigan.
