Ethiopian

“I’ve never had Ethiopian before,” Autumn climbed out of the back seat of our Outback. We had sat together in the back, holding hands all the way, while my mom asked questions.

“Eet-hio-pian,” I corrected her before my mom could. “It’s good. You’re okay with spicy, right?”

“It’s not my favorite. I’m not a frat boy with something to prove.”

Autumn and I held hands all the way to the door and I watched my reflection in the window. Who is that pretty girl? And who is that pretty girl with that pretty girl?

My mother opened the door to Nile, “Ethiopian is a little different. Everything is mildly spicy, but you feel the spice in your sinuses more than your mouth.” She checked in with the matre di and turned to me, “Oh, Aisling, I brought Kleenex this time.”

“MoooOOm.”

“You’ll want them too, Autumn,” she continued to embarrass both of us, “it will loosen everything up in there.”

Autumn stuck her hand in mine, and gave my heart a little thrill. I was holding hands with someone in front of my mother. Where she could see it and everything. Mom ruined the moment by not even saying anything, as we sat and kept our hands on the table.

A waitress came around, handed us steaming wash cloths and asked about drinks.

“How do you feel about cloves?” Mom asked Autumn.

She shrank for a moment and then grew the stones I loved her for, “I love them, but their expensive. And too many will tear up your throat.”

Mom looked perplexed and ordered three teas for the table. Then it dawned on her, “You smoke Autumn?”

“Occasionally,” she under-exaggerated.

“Don’t expect me to buy you any, don’t smoke in my house, and if you offer one to Aisling I’ll break your legs.” Mom said, without looking up from her menu. “We always get doro wott, Aisling. I’ll order that. Would you like to get the beef or the lamb?”

Autumn looked at me with a ‘what?’ expression. I didn’t know whose side to be on, and chose my girlfriend. She’s not really your girlfriend. I mean you fool around with her. And you like her best. But you still want to fuck all the other—girls. Just the other girls. That thought made my nipples hard. A mental image of my face, peering up at Regular Dave as I swallowed his dick, leaped into my head and was quickly stamped down.

I decided to rescue Autumn from my mothers enigma in any case. “We eat family style. Mom and I like to each choose a different meat dish.” Autumn gave a single slow nod. “Have you ever had lamb?”

“My mom makes it in stew sometimes.”

“Good, you get the lamb and I’ll get the beef. Just choose whatever looks good to you.” I picked up my menu and searched. I couldn’t remember the name of the thing that I wanted.

“So there’s different plates, and we all share?” Autumn asked.

I adopted my mothers demeanor, perused my menu and said in an offhand voice, “Something like that.” I glanced up fast to see the private smile on my mom’s face.

Autumn reached out and tapped my hand idly with her finger, “You’re not telling me something.”

“Yup.” It was hard to keep the smile out of my voice.

“What are you not telling me?” She tried again.

“Well if I wasn’t telling you something, it would spoil the point to tell you wouldn’t it?”

“Secrets already, Aisling,” Autumn crossed her hands and mock pouted, “I want a divorce.”

“Fine, but I get Bruce.”

“Over my dead body.”

“A fight to the death then? Fine, but I do my killing after dinner.”

Autumn conceded defeat and picked up her menu. “Why are they all stews.”

“It’s a very thick stew, like chili,” mom told her.

“Okay, I want tibs wott.”

“How adventurous are you?” I asked Autumn.

“Well I’m in an Ethiopian restaurant, with my lesbian girlfriend, and I’ve done other…” She looked under her eyebrows at me, “… adventurous things.”

“Great!” The waitress came, “I’ll have the Kitfo” I started us off. The waitress put down our drinks while she dug out a notepad. She didn’t look much like a waitress. Didn’t stand hip cocked, didn’t have the attitude you find in a white waitress. She stood a little stiff, and her… well her attitude wasn’t servile, but it was different.

“Guh!” Autumn said. “I thought you were talking about Djarums. What is in this tea?”

“It’s cloves,” the waitress told her. “It’s very good. Not too sweet.”

Autumn tried it again, and made a face like she could tolerate it for the meal, “It makes my mouth tingle.”

The waitress had no patience for her lack of acumen, and turned to my mom, “What else?”

“Tibs wott, and the kitfo,” mom told her.

“You know the kitfo is—”

“Delicious,” mom interrupted.

The waitress gave her a look that said clearly, ‘well you better like it, because I’m not taking it back.’ She finished in her notebook and left without saying anything.

My mom sat back and sipped her tea, “This place is the best in Denver. We have one of the largest Ethiopian populations here, and every one I’ve talked to says this is their favorite place.”

Autumn looked around, and then leaned into the table, “I think we’re the only white people in here.”

“Refreshing, isn’t it.” Mom didn’t ask. “Imagine how it feels to be an Ethiopian immigrant eating in a Taco Bell.”

Autumn waggled her head. I could see that the girl who had told me, blithely, that she’d taken it in both holes, was out of her depth. I admit I was enjoying it a little bit.

“It’s good to try new things,” I told her.

“Ooooooh,” Autumn gave me a look that my mom would have slapped her over, if she could see. “I’m going to remember you said that.”

My mother was engrossed in watching the tables around us, and didn’t see me lick my top lip, or she would have slapped me harder. Then she came back to the conversation, and broke into our subtle flirtation, “So, Autumn, what do you tell a stranger about yourself?”

Put on the spot, Autumn shrugged.

Mom pushed again, “What do you think is the most important thing about yourself, what makes you Autumn.”

“Well I do tech.”

“Aisling hasn’t told me much about it. Do you act in the play too?”

“Oh, no!” Autumn was off, telling her about the shows she’d worked, and what she did.

Then my mom diverted her, “How did you get into it?”

Autumn’s parents were both local actors, her mother had played some big roles, Kate, and Medea. Her father was usually cast in a supporting role, but had played Michal in The Pillowman. Autumn wasn’t interested in dressing up like anyone else, and so she had been given load and unload jobs when she was 12. From there she was a dresser for her father, and then a helper at the props table for a show. When she was 13 she was a painter and stage manager for a children’s production of The Music Man. She made a gagging motion every time she said the name of the play.

She had worked the Paramount, and the Bellvue, but never the Buell, and she was interested in pursuing it in college as a minor, but wanted to go into engineering.

“You're a STEM girl?” My mother asked her. “Are there any other girls in your classes?”

“I was the only one in my drafting class. There were two others in Electronics. And I was the only girl in Shop one and two.”

“Does that feel lonely?”

Autumn shrugged again, too teenage to admit weakness, “I guess. Sometimes I feel like no one thinks I can do things.”

“What about the teachers, do they encourage you?”

“Gomez does. Standish did his best to fail me, despite the fact that my work was the best in shop.” At this time the injera arrived, and Autumn looked at the basket of little roles, tore off a piece an nibbled on it. “The bread is hot. Aisling, why is the bread hot?”

Then the food arrived and Autumn’s brain shorted out. The waitress who brought it pointed to each dish, “Kitfo, doro wott, tibs wott, lentils, beans, salad.” And then left.

I tore off a piece of injera and my mom looked askance at me. “I’m a lefty mom, and I don’t wipe my butthole with my bare hand.”

She looked pained, and turned to Autumn, “Don’t touch any food with your left hand, dear.” Then she tore off a piece of injera used it to scoop up some of the kitfo and popped it in her mouth.

“I’m kinda glad you hid this from me,” Autumn told me. “Is that raw meat?”

“It’s kitfo.”

“I’m going to pay you back for this.” She picked up some of the raw chopped beef with her flat bread, “Oh god. This is the fourth best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

Mom chose the moment to stop the conversation dead, “See that my daughter never makes the list.”

“Mom!”

She smiled like she’d won the game, and dinner continued.

“Missus McKinnon—?”

“Aileen, dear.”

“Aileen, can I please have a cigarette before you take me home?”

We were standing outside Nile, and Autumn was dancing back and forth like she had to pee. The three of us had gone through two orders of injera, seven clove teas (it had grown on Autumn) and a hundred kleenex apiece.

“I suppose if you must.”

Autumn threw me a gratefull glance, despite the fact that I hadn’t done anything, and whipped out her pack. As she was lighting up I asked her, “So what do you think of Ethiopian?”

“Eh, it’s alright.”

“Shut up, you loved it.”

“Okay, it’s great. I wish I could take my parents here.”

“Are they not very adventurous?” My mother asked her, standing out of the smoke.

“My grandma cooks like a beast. She’s southern. She cooks for the stage whenever there’s a show on, and there’s always a show on.”

“We’ll have to have dinner with your parents then. Don’t give anything away,” my mom broke her composure to give Autumn a devious grin. “Aisling and I enjoy surprising people.”

“Yeah,” Autumn punched me in the arm. “Thanks for that.”

Autumn and I rode in the back seat together on the way to her house. She scooted into the middle so that she could lay her head on my shoulder as we drove. The sexiness was still there, a little dangerous remembering what we’d done with my mom in the car. She started tracing little designs on my leg as we went, in between giving my mother directions.

At her house she grabbed her pack, kissed me on the lips, and politely declined my mother’s offer to meet her parents. “We can do that next time,” mom told her. “Come sit up here with me Aisling. I’m not your chaufuer.”

Autumn was barely inside when I got a text: “You’re going to be on that list”

“I’m going to TOP that list,” I fired back.

Mom glanced over as she drove, “Are you flirting?”

I turned me phone away from her, as non-chalantly as I could, “No.”

“You can. I like her. I don’t like that she smokes, and I’m serious about breaking her legs, but she seems like a very well put together young lady.” Mom turned onto Mississippi, “Does she see anyone?” She meant therapy.

I shrugged.

“I know it’s not cool to ask, but perhaps you should.”

“That’s really lame, mom.”

“I’m a parent, I’m supposed to be lame.”

“Don’t make me lame then.”

“Do you know when young boys first see a therapist?” She asked. “On average?”

“No.”

We stopped at a light, and my mother shifted into first. She refuses to drive an automatic. “Ten years old. Do you know what that is for a girl?”

I rolled my eyes, despite being interested in the answer.

“Just after her first suicide attempt.” The light turned and mom ducked us into our appartment complex.

“Autumn isn’t like that mom.”

“You didn’t notice the scars on her wrist?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, except, “I might bring it up with her.”

We went inside, I hid in my room and continued to text, “I’m better than kitfo you know”

“Prove it”

“We don’t have a baccunal tomorrow?”

“?”

“Like a decadant roman orgy”

“Bra, you’re gonna be covered in glue”

My head swam as I wrote, “You guys don’t want to cover me in other stuff?” I remembered the girls in every porn, come on their face. It was totally just a joke, that I was totally joking about. How far does this mind-fuck go?

“Only if you loose Shithead”

I got on my computer and looked up the rules to Shithead. It didn’t seem difficult. “Only five can play.”

“We play with two decks. It’s really a shame we only have three guys”

Yeah that was— “I’m fine with our odds the way they are now” But it was time to have a talk with my mother.

Downstairs she was curled up with Gaiman on the couch. I came in and sat in my chair, “Mom?” She set the book aside, and then curled to face me. “You know I like girls, right?”

“That seemed pretty obvious to me. Did you let her do your makeup?”

I didn’t answer, just twisted my fingers, “What if… what if I didn’t like girls anymore.”

She paused for a moment before saying, “Buyer’s remorse?”

“It’s not a joke mom. Autumn is great. Like, really great.” Mom crossed her fingers on her knee, and let me go on. “It’s just that… just that… I think I’m really confused about things.”

“I’ll help if I can.”

“What if—what if the accident did something really bad?”

“Worse than scrambling your gender around?”

“What if it did something to my head?”

“Well what if it did? Could we do anything about it?”

“Can you, like, use psychology to fix me?”

Her face said, “Fix you how?” But her mouth didn’t. Instead she said, “You know Aisling, there are psychological differences between the way men and women think. It’s not just cultural. For instance when a man has something to talk about, he feels more comfortable focusing on two things at once. Playing a video game, or working on a car, or hunting a mastadon.” She put her chin in her hand and looked very much like a psychologist, “Women on the other hand feel comfortable just sitting and talking. Sometimes a client will complain that her husband never listens to her, and I explain that when she wants to talk to him, talking while he does something with his hands is just how he talks. It doesn’t mean he isn’t paying attention.”

I flopped on the chair, “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Aisling, what are we doing right now?”

“Talking.”

“Any thing else?”

Oh fuck!