Chapter 2

As you can see, my mother was not an ordinary mother. She had an edge to her that other mothers didn't have. She smoked and drank, and she wore toreador pants and stiletto heels right out of the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog, and her low cut blouses were like magnets for men's eyes. In fact, I learned to recognize gay men early in my childhood because I could tell right away when they were immune to the charms of my mother's cleavage. If a man didn't look, I knew he was somehow different, because most men couldn't help but look at my mother's chest.

She called herself Della, short for Delilah, of course, and she was what was known back then as a "spitfire". She wasn't going to play second fiddle to any man, and my father found that out early. I remember seeing them argue when I was barely five years old, and Della was throwing crockery around the house with abandon. She barely missed my father's head with a dish, which hit the wall and broke into a thousand pieces when he ducked just in time. He ran out the back door just before a teacup came flying in his direction, and I never saw him again.

When I got older and asked why my father had left, Della just said, "He was a jealous fool. He didn't like the way men looked at me. Men like him try to hold on to their women like they're a trophy on a wall. That wasn't for me."

So, I grew up without a father. That didn't mean there weren't men around, though. Della attracted men almost without thinking. She moved like a dancer, and when she walked down Main Street in her high heels, swinging her hips in those skintight toreador pants, men would come out of the barber shop to watch her. I saw more than one traffic accident happen when she was out walking, caused by a man who took his eyes off the road for too long.

Men would do anything for her, and she knew that very well. She got discounts at the food market, the car dealer, she had men helping around the house with odd jobs, she had men who volunteered to do all sorts of things for us. She could give them a smile or a look at her cleavage and they'd get all starry-eyed and helpful. "It's a cheap thrill for them," she'd say. "No harm in it. Men need that to keep going."

You'd think that women would hate her, right? After all, there wasn't a woman in town, even the ones who were twenty years younger than her, who could have that effect on men. You'd imagine they'd be consumed with jealousy.

They weren't though. Della had a way of drawing women in, of making them feel they were her equals, all just members of the same club -- the club of seductive women. She'd talk to them about hair and clothes and makeup, and she'd act as if they were just as beautiful and sexy as her, as if they were all members of a super race of women who were here to make men serve them for life. She'd give them advice on how to tease their husbands, how to be more alluring, how to get the men to lust after them more.

"Oh, honey, you have the cutest boobs," she'd say. "You just need to show them off more." She'd get out one of her catalogs, and say, "Look at this outfit, the capri pants and the tight sweater. Can't you see yourself in this? You'd look like a movie star. I guarantee if you wear this outfit that hubby of yours will buy you a new car. Why don't you try it?" The woman would order the outfit, and several weeks later she'd come driving by in her snazzy new car and thank Della for the advice.

The funny thing, dear reader, is that for all her sexiness, Della had more women friends than men. The men were there for a good time, to amuse her, but the women were part of her sodality, her sorority, her sisterhood.

She had learned how to sew costumes in her days on the burlesque circuit, and when I was eight she opened a little dress shop in our town where she did alterations in a room in the back, and that was her sanctuary. She had a little kitchen back there, and she always had a pot of tea and a cake or some chocolates, for when her girlfriends would drop by. I grew up around the sound and smell of women. I heard their stories about their stupid, cloddish husbands, their shrewish mothers-in-law, and their hopes and dreams for a better life for their daughters, and yes, I heard the bawdy stories they told when they were out of earshot of men.

They didn't think of me as a boy, I know. I had a girlish face and slender body, and I was a "nice" boy who didn't make trouble for them. They had a little game they played with me, and perhaps that's why I got so confused later on about what gender I was. My name was James, but they called me "Janno". They would tell me how cute I'd look in a dress, and more than once they made me try on some cute girl's dress and then rave about how pretty I looked. Della joined right in.

I was like one of the girls to them. They even walked around in front of me in their panties and bras, as if I were one of their daughters. I used to laugh and think that I probably saw more of their bodies than their husbands did.

And I knew more of their inner lives too, because of another of Della's talents.

She was a psychic.

She had the gift, there was no fakery involved, and the women in town came to her because of it.

"I have Gypsy blood in me," she said. "Somewhere back in my ancestry. I've always been this way." She told me she used to give readings to the girls on the burlesque circuit, telling them when they were going to get married, how many children they were going to have, if that rich lawyer who kept sending them flowers was going to be the one they'd end up with. "I was right more than I was wrong," she said. "Actually, I was right more than they knew, because I didn't tell them the bad news, only the good. So, they never knew when I was right about something turning out bad, because I hadn't told them."

She had modified that policy as she got older, though, because she said women could handle bad news better than men. And she was doing them a service by telling them that their husbands were cheating, or that their marriage was never going to improve, or that their horrid mother-in-law was going to move to Florida next year and stop being a thorn in their sides. She still didn't tell certain things. She never told a client that she was going to die, for instance, or that someone close to her was going to die. She just told them to enjoy life to the fullest, go out and get drunk and screw around because life was short. It was her code for telling them that Death was going to make an appearance in their life before long.