“Sorry,” I said.
Oma studied me for a second. “You don’t have to be. You’ve got your own problems. It’s not like it’s exactly easy now. We’re just a couple of tired old queers.”
I shook my head.
Grandma chuckled. “We are. Spend enough of your life fighting and you’ll be tired too.”
“I wish you didn’t have to fight.”
Oma shrugged. “It is what it is.”
I’d never talked to Oma and Grandma like this. Not ever.
I didn’t want them to stop.
“Um.”
I picked up my matcha and took a sip. And another.
And then I said, “Maybe we can go to Pride together next summer.”
Grandma sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“We’ve done our marching. You were so little you probably don’t remember, but we used to be up here every month marching for one thing or another. For years. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. DOMA. Prop 8.” Oma shrugged. “After a while you run out of steam.” I didn’t even know Grandma and Oma had gone to protests before.
I wanted to know every protest they’d ever been to. What their signs said. What they chanted.
But before I could ask, Grandma opened up her iPad and started playing again. And after a second, Oma did too. Conversation over.
I didn’t get my grandmothers.
I used to think there was a wall between me and Mom’s side of the family: a sort of force field that time and distance had created between us.
There was no wall between me and Grandma and Oma. Just a door. But no matter how many times I opened that door, they always closed it again.
I wanted to know them.
I wanted to know how being queer had shaped their lives.
I wanted them to give me advice, and teach me our history, and yes, go to marches.
But instead I finished off my matcha and found my spot in my book.
And the door between us creaked shut again.
A PLASMA CONDUIT
Thursday morning I called Sohrab.
“Hi, Darioush,” he said. “I can’t talk long.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“It’s okay, just busy.”
“Oh.”
