Orpheus Girl

by Brynne Rebele-Henry

  When I first heard about the girls and the boys, I was scared but unsurprised. I had always known that one day one of us would be caught, and that one day, as long as I lived here, I too would be found, like in the dream when my wings come bursting out of my back. I knew I would change in their eyes and morph into something beyond anyone’s ability to love. That I would be changed into something Grammy could never find beautiful.

  I walk to my last class of the day, try to ignore everyone staring at me and the steady panic that’s rising in my throat and leaving a burning taste on my tongue. Sarah’s nowhere to be found. I convince myself that she just changed her mind about coming to school today. But something feels wrong. I have a feeling that something has happened to her. I think about last night, how when we were crouched in the dark of her bedroom looking out the window, waiting for John to come home and to tell her parents the secret that was no longer one, she had turned to me—and though she didn’t say anything, she didn’t have to. In her room with only the moon for light, it was dim enough that all I could see were her eyes, but her eyes were all I needed to see to know that in that moment, she was on the brink of falling in love with me. To know that she was young and beautiful and lost and close to being mine. And I knew that I had passed the verge of having fallen and had already plummeted, that I was already hers, that I would do anything for her.

  After school Grammy comes to pick me up, which is something she almost never does. I can’t tell what she knows, if she knows, though when she looks at me, disappointment is etched into her face. Her hands shake as she opens the Volvo’s door. She clenches the steering wheel as she drives. I take a deep breath, waiting for the ax to fall.

  “Grammy, is something wrong?”

  “Paul wants me to marry him.”

  Relief that she doesn’t know yet makes it easier for me to breathe again. I suck in my breath, try to imagine what life would be like with another person intruding on our solitude, but right now that’s the least of my worries.

  “That’s amazing. What did you say?”

  “I said I don’t know.” But she smiles more brightly than I’ve ever seen her smile before. Grammy finally looks over at me. “After service, want to skip the banquet and you and me can go get some pie, maybe see a movie?”

  “Sure, I’d like that.” I try to wipe the worry off my face. To smile sincerely.

  Grammy grins, sings along with the muted gospel music leaking out of the radio. When she gets to the part where the chorus starts up, I try to join her. “When God calls me by his side, on angel’s wings I’ll arrive,” but my voice cracks and my eyes start to sting from suppressed tears. I turn to the window and watch the familiar landscape blur, and try to keep the sadness from flooding over me. But she doesn’t notice, just keeps singing until the radio cuts into a soft, low buzz of static—and still smiling, she switches it off and lets a heavy silence fill the car.

  While Grammy’s napping, I go upstairs to Mom’s room and let myself in quietly.

  I never go to her room when Grammy’s home, but today I know it’s the only thing that can begin to calm me down. I lie down on the bed she once slept in and stare at the water stain on the corner of the ceiling. The stain keeps spreading. One day it will engulf the ceiling completely. When it does, we won’t be able to keep Mom’s room exactly the way she left it anymore, and we will have to decide whether to mend the ceiling for the room that neither of us uses or to cover the furniture in plastic so the mold doesn’t get to it.

  Either way, I’ll lose her.

  Before church I change into a pale pink dress and tie my hair into a braid with a long sky-blue satin ribbon. I wash the makeup off my face, dab the perfume and scented lotion that Grammy buys me onto my skin. I know it’s too late for this disguise, that I’ve already been found out, but I can’t help trying. I’ve been invisible for so long that I don’t know how to be seen after having spent so much of my life trying to pass unnoticed. For so many years, I’ve spent every day trying to decide what to wear to hide who I am, spent so much time buying makeup and shoes and hair dye, thinking that it could mask my gayness—thinking that if I assimilated enough and dyed enough blonde chunks into my bangs then I could stay unseen, that it would keep me safe, camouflage me. But I never let myself truly believe the life I’d started was nothing more than a prelude to its loss.

  In the car I try to push my growing panic back down, to slow my breath. It’s only when I look at my lap that I realize I’m gripping my Bible so tightly that my hands have turned red from the pressure. When I get out of the car, my legs are shaking but I manage to still them enough to walk. Once inside the church, I collapse into the first chair I see. Sarah’s father is watching me with a strained expression. Sarah’s mom won’t look at me, stares straight ahead at the pews. I know they know. I have the sudden urge to start running but realize it would only make things worse.

  Grammy waves at them, sits down next to me. My heart is thudding so hard and fast in my chest that I think I’m going to get sick.

  “Grammy? I don’t feel good. We should go.”

  She ignores me, stands up and goes over to hug Sarah’s mom. And Sarah’s mom, when she sees Grammy coming her way, looks at me, and when she looks at me, I know that it’s all over. There’s no escaping what’s going to happen. I know that Sarah and I will disappear. The ax has fallen. I close my eyes, squeeze them shut so tightly it hurts, and I don’t open them again until Grammy comes back to sit next to me. She’s pale and her lips are set into a thin line. Her voice, when she turns to me, is shaking. “I don’t feel well either. Let’s go.”

  I know that I should say something, that I should lie, but what can I say? After all these years of waiting to be found out, even before I knew I was gay, before I knew what my secret was, what it meant, I’ve known that one day Grammy would look at me like this, with a combination of disgust and terrible sadness spreading across her face, making her features broken. And so I say nothing, hope that if I don’t say anything, then what I know is coming won’t happen.

  “Okay. Just let me run to the bathroom.” I understand now that I won’t be seeing Sarah anytime soon. I want to try to find her before what happened to those girls happens to me.

  “You can wait until we get home,” Grammy says.

  I walk quietly behind her, feel everyone’s eyes burning into my back as I leave.

  Outside the church, Lacey is waiting. I haven’t seen her since she stood at the edge of her yard and watched us go. She comes running up to me, breathless.

  “Sarah got sent away. To anti-homo camp. To get fixed.”

  Grammy grabs my arm and squeezes hard enough to leave fingerprints. “We need to go now, Raya.”

  I wrench my arm out of Grammy’s grasp. “What do you mean?” I ask Lacey.

  She balances on one leg, snaps her gum. “I’m really sorry, Raya.” Then she sees Madison and runs to her.

  I’m alone. Sarah’s gone. I wonder what those girls felt the night they were found with their arms around each other. For a second were they relieved, just a little bit, that they didn’t have to live with their secret anymore?

  Grammy and I drive back to the house in silence. We’re nearing the daisy field when Grammy pulls over onto the side of the road. She puts her blue-gray head down on the steering wheel. I try to put my hand on her shoulder but she slaps it away, chokes out, “Don’t touch me.” The way she says it, it’s more of a cry of disgust than a demand. And that hurts me more than anything else she could have said.

  Once we’re home, she doesn’t speak to me, and I know that no matter what happens, it’s over. The relationship that neither of us ever really wanted to have in the first place is gone. I sit at the kitchen table and stay there, even after she goes upstairs and I hear her door close. I sit there a long time, just watching the light above the stove flicker like the fireflies Sarah and I used to catch on balmy summer nights. We�
��d sit on her porch, our knees touching, cupping our hands together, heads brushing against each other. We could spend hours watching them glow in the warm dark while the cicadas shrilled around us. It’s then that I start to cry, not for myself, but for the two girls who are gone.

  I first knew that I would love her when we were twelve. She woke me up at three in the morning just so she could show me the North Star outside of her window. Without saying anything, she took my hand and didn’t let go until the sun was rising and the star was gone. We never talked about it again.

  At some point I must have fallen asleep because Grammy is standing next to me, telling me to get up. And while her voice isn’t kind, it isn’t not, so at first I think it was all a dream, but then I see that she’s packed all of my things into four paper bags. The morning light is harsh, and I can feel the beginnings of a headache.

  “Grammy?”

  “We need to leave.”

  “Why?”

  She sighs. “I’m sorry, Raya, but I just can’t raise a queer. It’s not natural. You were”—her voice catches—“you were supposed to be my second chance. Lord knows I deserved one. I need to do it right this time. And you’re just not right. You’re sick. It’s a sickness, really. I don’t know how I let it go on so long. I just didn’t want to believe it, all the stories about you. I just can’t let you live like this. So I’m taking you to get better. It’s a good place; Preacher Sam recommended it. It’s run through his pastor friend’s church. The pastor’s son is in charge. He sent Sarah there too. We need to get going.”

  But I’ve stopped listening. Sarah.

  I brush my teeth with my finger and try to pull back my hair into a high bun, but the elastic snaps. I give up trying to look presentable, let my hair fall in a bird’s nest around my face. I sneak upstairs and grab the backpack with my emergency supplies, then I shove it into a paper bag along with the rest when she isn’t looking.

  Alone, looking into the trunk of the car, I realize that my whole life can fit in four paper bags, which don’t even take up the entire trunk. I can feel something sharp wedging its way into my throat. I think about running as fast as I can, about not saving Sarah but just saving myself. I could get a job working nights at a fast-food place, live in a run-down motel room until I could look for her and could try to save her, though it would probably be too late.

  Grammy emerges from the house with two mugs of coffee, and I climb into the front seat and just give in to the uncertainty of everything. The Volvo, by some terrible miracle, starts on the first try, something that has not happened for as long as I can remember, and I look back at the house of my girlhood, and even after we’re far away, I still look back. From now on, a girl isn’t something I’ll have the luxury of being, and as I watch Pieria disappear from my line of sight, I feel the beginning of an abrupt ending to what was left of my childhood, and I start to cry again.

  We drive for hours. We stop only to get gas and a bottle of soda pop, the orange-flavored kind. The woman behind the register at the station is wearing dream catcher earrings and a long, pale green prairie dress. She smiles at me sympathetically when she sees Grammy’s expression, and for a minute I entertain another fantasy of begging this elderly woman to save me, even though I know she can’t. I leave the Fanta on the back seat, and by the time I drink it, the carbonation has gone flat.

  The landscape changes from the flat green of Pieria to barren fields. This part of Texas is populated with washed-out trees, their leaves barely hanging on to the branches. Though it’s early fall, the air is cold. I shiver, try not to think about what’s going to happen to me, just replay my last night with Sarah in my mind. Remember how she was in my arms, it felt like we were becoming something other than girls who had spent their whole lives running from themselves.

  Eventually we pull onto a private road. There’s a sign that reads friendly saviors, and I know that I’m being disappeared. It’s then I decide that I’m going to descend into the depths of the underworld just like Orpheus, and I’m going to save the girl I love. Because Orpheus? She’s a girl, who likes girls.

  Part Three:

  Entering Hell

  on Earth

  I step out of the car with my head held high. The driveway leading up to the camp is muddy, and dirt sticks to my shoes, spatters my legs. This is the middle of nowhere. The only neighbors we’ll have are trees and the wide stretch of sky that hangs low and blue over the horizon like a bride’s drooping veil.

  Now that the thing I’ve spent so many years avoiding is happening, I mostly feel numb. All I want is to see Sarah. So I try to think only about her on the night we walked home from the party, how she held me close and the moonlight cast shadows on her skin. She told me she loved me then, and I didn’t answer. I think she thought it was because I didn’t love her back, but really, I just loved her too much, so much that I couldn’t speak. I was too overwhelmed by everything.

  A pale man wearing faded, baggy clothes is waiting for me at the entrance. To the left side of the house, there’s a stretch of forest flanked by tall pine trees. The house has three stories and a little driveway on the side with a scratched red pickup truck parked in it. A small garden is in front with nothing but a few straggly tomatoes and what looks like a lavender bush that has been overrun by weeds. Upon closer inspection, I realize there’s a second, smaller house at the other end of the property. No lights are on and it looks slightly abandoned. The glass in the porch light’s busted, and the wooden porch is covered in a slippery-looking moss.

  The bigger house is gray, and I tell myself it almost looks like a boarding school, but really it looks like a prison. I can see what I think is a football field filled with large rocks behind the house. There’s an orange cat on the front porch with a strange dent in its tail and a lazy, clouded-over eye. That’s all I can see from the driveway. I think I see a face appear briefly in one of the windows, but when I watch the windows for any sign of life, the face doesn’t come back. The man who greeted me holds out his hands and, before I can react, grabs both of mine and peers uncomfortably intensely into my eyes. His eyes are so blue they remind me of a jellyfish—they have the same transparent quality—and his blond hair is buzzed so short that I can see his pink scalp.

  “I’m Hyde. I run the program. I’ll be helping you get back on your path to Jesus.” He smiles, and I notice he’s missing a front tooth. He sees me looking at it. “That was from before I found God.”

  Before I can reply, a tall, icy blonde woman comes out onto the porch. She’s wearing a doctor’s lab coat over tan riding pants.

  She holds a hand out coolly. “My name’s Char. I’m the doctor.”

  It’s unclear whether I’m supposed to shake or kiss her hand, so I do neither and just stand there awkwardly. Grammy’s worrying her cross necklace, her forehead crinkled up. Suddenly I want to shake her, to beg her not to leave me here, but I know it wouldn’t do anything. She’s already made up her mind.

  Then a petite girl wearing a “Jesus ROCKS!” T-shirt comes out. “Raya, right? My name’s Clio. Let’s get you settled in.” She’s wearing a long, shapeless, purple corduroy overall dress underneath the T-shirt, and her twists are wrapped up in a bright yellow headband.

  I turn to her. “What are you here for?”

  She grins sadly. “I fell in love at a bad time.”

  Under my breath I say, “Me too,” but quietly, so she won’t hear me.

  Before she opens the front door and ushers me into the house, she puts a hand on my shoulder, smiles at me, and for a second I feel hopeful.

  Then, just like that, she’s gone.

  Inside the house I give my name, height, and weight to a boy. He’s washed out and nervous-seeming. He looks like a sick elf. He’s got bandages wrapped around his wrists. His legs rock back and forth, kicking the desk. His brown hair has been buzzed—almost bald like the man I met outside. His hands tremble so much that while h
e’s typing things I can’t see into the computer, he brings one hand up to the other to still the shaking.

  My stomach drops a little bit when I see what looks like red suction marks on the inside of his wrist, as if something tried to suck the queerness out of him.

  Eventually he finishes typing and looks up from the computer.

  “My name’s Jason. You’re all entered in. I think this program will be good for you, Raya. It will help. It helped me. I used to be despicable”—his voice cracks in a way that sounds like a sob—“changed by Satan into something that even Jesus couldn’t love. And now I’m seeing a nice girl here, Clio. We’re going to get married as soon as we both complete the program. I can go back to trying to become a pastor like my dad was. I was going to be one, you know. Before everything.”

  I don’t respond. I’ve forced myself to go to that strange, calm place that girls can access only when they’re in trouble. The kind where you leave your body like you’re already dead, ball your fists until your fingers turn white, and pretend to be anywhere else but where you are right now. You take a deep breath but don’t exhale, just wait for the violence you know is coming for you. I learned how to do this in kindergarten when boys would throw rocks at me because I didn’t have parents, because I told our teacher I didn’t want a husband, only a pet horse. Even then I knew what I was, though I wasn’t smart enough to hide.

  When I learned, finally, that I was gay, I realized I’d always been hiding, but all those years before, I just didn’t know what I was hiding from, why my heart was always racing, why I always felt like I was only mimicking going through the motions of my girlhood.

  Whenever their rocks hit the back of my head, I’d close my eyes until the dull ache had faded to nothing but the memory of pain. I try to do that now, to forget what’s happening until after it already has.