In swoops and curls of letters written long ago, I see a young woman writing to her lover.
She is smiling, her eyes closed. While she is resting on a walnut chair as she writes, in reality, her mind is elsewhere. Though the silken folds of a rose-colored gown draped over her shoulders, and though she may appear as if she is in her room, Lilith is with her.
She is imagining what May is doing now. Remembering their rebellious endeavor from the week, Lilith figures she is mending the tear in her cream blouse with the lace collar. It was pristine at the start of Wednesday, but it ended up muddy and torn. Wednesday was when she and May had escaped through the back door of Huxbury Girls’ School, abandoning their lessons to run through the pines that surrounded the campus. When they heard the all too familiar voice of their angry professor yelling “Lilith, May, I won’t hesitate to give you another detention!”, the pair sprinted farther into the woods.
In their mad dash for the abandoned cottage just outside campus grounds, May tripped on a tree root, falling to the ground before Lilith could catch her. In the process, she had torn the sleeve of her shirt, thankfully just missing the lace collar, and knocked a mother-of-pearl button out of its place.
It was May’s grandmother’s and the only memento that survived her. Tears forced their way out of her deep blue eyes, in spite of her efforts to stop them. She despised it when she cried; it made her feel so helplessly out of control. Lilith also hated it when May cried, for seeing someone she loved and cared for so dearly be so despairing tore her to shreds that could only be pieced together by May’s smile.
Eventually, once Lilith had taken May into her arms and ran her fingers through her black curls, May’s eyes finally dried.
They stood like this for quite some time, Lilith’s arms wrapped around May’s shoulders, fingers resting in her hair, and May leaned into Lilith’s neck, savoring the sweet smell of rose petals that clung to every blouse she owned.
It was the few weeks in August during which Summer was saying hurried goodbyes and Autumn had begun kicking the dirt off their shoes, hand raised to knock on the front door. The golden buttercups that once sprouted between emerald grasses had wilted now to make space for mushrooms to spring through the cold earth.
Fifteen minutes passed, and Lilith was sitting on the rickety couch that sat in front of the brick fireplace in the cottage’s living room. She smiled, amused at May’s vain efforts to coax a flame out of a couple of rocks that she found in the garden. Someone had presumably taken care of it once, but it had since been reduced to a dirty birdbath, a thin sprinkling of brown and yellow leaves and two dying rose bushes.
After a few hours of idly sitting on the couch, talking and laughing the day away, Lilith and May returned to the school, where they were given two detentions and their third joint demerit of the month, a school record.
That brings us to now, when Lilith was writing to May, wishing they could be together.
An abrupt click brought her back to her room, where a small stone bounced off of her window. She flicked her pocket watch open and, sure enough, it was 9:45 at night; May was punctual as ever. Pulling the makeshift rope she’d made out of extra sheets she’d gotten from the Roseman Hall maids out from under her bed, she wondered where May would take her this time. Every night, there would be a new adventure, a new secret meeting spot that May would think up and, at 9:45, she would go to Lilith’s dorm, and the two of them would sneak out.
Lilith touched the ground and looked up, just in time to catch May’s eyes twinkling from the thrill of their harmless rebellion.
It was not a secret that whatever this was, was strictly forbidden.
This had been their nightly activity for going on for six months; creeping out their windows, meeting at Lilith’s dorm, and walking through the pines to sit under the willow tree by the cottage to do the things their school wouldn’t allow.
But neither of them cared enough to stop this, nor did they want to. What did anyone else do to deserve to know? This was good. They were happy. Why risk ruining that? A few of their closest friends knew, they were of course worried for Lilith and May’s safety, but to the rest of the world, they were platonic best friends. Just two girls, who sometimes went farther than traditional friendship may allow. Who just wanted to be happy.
Though curly letters seem romantic, and people often extend this to romantic relationships of the time, they’re just normal people; simply because they wore fancy dresses and spoke in words many people today wouldn’t understand doesn’t mean they didn’t struggle.
Queerness existed then, as it does now; secret trysts existed then, as they do now; awkward, innocent, experimental relationships existed then, as they do now. I find comfort in knowing that the same struggles I go through now, two young women named Lilith and May could’ve gone through centuries ago.
