Lorde found Eudora the most fascinating woman she’d ever met. They laughed over the elusive clues for lesbianism and felt very comfortable with each other. Lorde immediately knew she was gay, which was an unexpected surprise and a pleasant one. Eudora was gray-haired, forty-eight, from Texas, and elegant, with a direct manner. The most important person Lorde met in Cuernavaca was Eudora, one of her neighbors who called down to her when she was sunbathing one day. They were older and more experienced than her, and Lorde never thought to wonder if they were gay-after all, “a large part of their existence was devoted to concealing that fact” (160), and Lorde hadn’t yet comprehended that gay women could be “progressive, comfortable, matronly, and over forty, with swimming pools, dyed hair, and young second husbands” (160). The atmosphere there was one of alertness and suspicion of newcomers, but the women embraced Lorde as one of their own. Some worked in shops, some were nurses or teachers, many were divorced, and all seemed to want to escape McCarthyism. There was a whole community of single women of moderate means from California and New York living in the neighborhood. She felt happy, like she was where she was supposed to be. She took a little house with a view of the mountains, and the hour-long trip over them in the morning to class seemed a small price to pay.
She could commute to the District for classes, which she’d signed up for at the University City. Lorde fell in love with the neighborhood of Cuernavaca where they lived, and it took little urging to get her to move down to that area. Tammy was twelve and loved having Lorde around.
She was white, progressive, and smart, and was in her early forties. Freida was a friend of Rhea’s and she lived in Mexico City post-divorce. She looked up Freida Mathews and her young daughter Tammy. She had conversations in part-English, part-Spanish with locals, but longed for a friend with whom she could speak English. She went to the Alameda, a park, and read in the evening. Everyone was kind to her and she was amazed at how good she felt seeing all of the brown faces around her. She walked miles in the city, growing more and more comfortable and curious with each passing day. Lorde wrote that Mexico City was “a sea of strange sounds and smells and experiences that I swam into with daily delight” (154).
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