“Oh,” I said with a sharp nod. Mom later said my mouth was set in a straight line and it was the most matter of fact she’d ever heard me. “I’m a lesbian, too.”
She told that story a few times over the years: when my grandparents first found out I was gay and told her that I wasn’t old enough to know things like that about myself, when she met my first girlfriend and was teasing me with childhood memories, when her best friend asked how I knew. Her version never included her reaction to my revelation, probably because it hadn’t really mattered. She gave me a hug, told me that was good or something else vague, and we both kept watching television. The story itself, this retelling of something that was supposed to be so huge, was pretty unsubstantial. The part I always returned to was the part about my confidence, how absolutely certain I had been that I was gay. Every time she talked about my set mouth and assertive nod, I was so proud of the way I’d been able to just say it without the fear and shame involved in coming out. It had, to me, been a given. Now I wasn’t so sure . . . was that something to be proud of? Without risk, could it really be considered bravery? If, instead of my childhood I had had Lennox’s, would I be able to be so certain?
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. I let my body bend even more, resting my whole face against the cool, smooth counter. “My new friend Lennox? She thinks she can just choose not to be gay because she doesn’t want to deal with bullies and stuff. I feel . . . I’m not sure I believe her, and I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I guess just, do you think it’s a choice?”
It wasn’t the first time I’d asked her that; even without bullying and harassment, I hadn’t grown up in a bubble. I knew how common that belief was, that we sinning gays could just turn off who we were any time we wanted. It never really occurred to me that people my age believed that, somehow. I thought it was all older people from the rural parts of the state, people who hadn’t had conversations with gay people and had the opportunity to hear how wrong they really were. Lennox shook me.
“No, of course not,” Mom answered as she filled a pot with water and sat it on the range to boil. She wiped her hands on the front of her jeans and walked over to the side of the island counters opposite me. She, too, rested her elbows on the counter and leaned down so that when I looked up at her, we were close to eye level. “You have the choice to be strong, to face who you are, to take risks. Those are choices. But you can no more choose liking girls than I could choose liking men,” she smirked, one side of her face revealing a deep dimple. “And trust me, little girl, I could never choose not to like the fellas.”
Eyes rolling dramatically back into my head, I released a put on groan. It didn’t really bother me to hear my mom talk about her love life, but it was in the mother-daughter contract that I pretend it did. In that moment, hearing her talk about the choices we make, I knew what I really wanted to ask.
“How can I get Lennox to see who she really is?” I asked.
Mom sighed and I knew she wasn’t sure exactly how to answer. With a tap of her fingers, she answered, “Well, you can’t.” I started to open my mouth to argue, but she held up her hand to stop me from cutting her off. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but how can you be so certain you know who Lennox is? She’s a new friend, you don’t know her that well. When she tells you who she is and what she wants, your only choice is to respect her choices.” She stood up straight then and went to check the boiling water. With her back to me now, she finished her motherly advice. “If you want to know what I think you should do, my advice is there’s only one thing you can do. If you want to be Lennox’s friend, you show her she can trust you and that you won’t judge her. And before you get lippy, you need to realize that you are judging her right now.”
The weight of what she said felt heavy on my chest and I knew that meant she was right. I was being judgmental. No matter how much I wanted Lennox to have a sudden epiphany that caused her to live her truth and jump into the LGBT community with both feet, hers wasn’t my story to dictate and I was being a bit of an ass.
I thought about everything that had so convinced me that Lennox was into girls. Could it be wishful thinking? Could I have imagined all those looks between us and the way she seemed to tease me? Crap. My unrequited crush had me projecting my own baggage onto this chick who was probably just friendly because she was new to our school and in need of a friend. I had to stop. I needed to stop reading into what it had meant when she said that she was choosing not to be gay. I needed to stop reading into the look in her eyes when she had insisted that she wouldn’t be gay. I had to stop before I became a fixated dudebro who couldn’t accept someone else’s boundaries. Full stop, all the stops. I just had to stop.
Chapter Six
Lennox
It hadn’t been the whole truth, the story I told Hannah.
It hadn’t been my depression that my dad had been worried about. It was true that I was depressed, but that had barely registered as important in his mind. He only cared that my “troubles” at school were going to cause a problem with the neighbors, a problem at church, a problem with my reputation. What happened at school had only been part of it. Yes, I had managed to get away from Nick and Dalton in the hall that day. My arms had fingerprint shaped bruises on it from the force they’d used to try to pull me into the stairwell, but I had squirmed away and hoped it was over.
It hadn’t been.
What I hadn’t told Hannah was that Nick and Dalton were not only brothers but my neighbors, so even when I went home from school, I wasn’t safe. I mean, for the most part, that’s an exaggeration. My house had a locked door and they couldn’t get me or anything like that, but it was like I could feel them out there, two houses away. What I also hadn’t told Hannah was that even though Columbus is a city, most people in my neighborhood went to the same church. Nick and Dalton were there, too. Before we moved, I used to have panic attacks whenever I left my house because there was nowhere I could go where they weren’t. Sometimes I thought they were my own special punishment for being . . . I don’t know. Whatever I am.
But most of the time it didn’t matter because it was all just feelings. They made me nervous. They said stuff at school that embarrassed me. It hurt and it stuck with me and it made me constantly feel like I was this giant mistake, but I could push through it.
That day, though, something had shifted. The look in their eyes as they had hissed in my ear that we should compare dick sizes wasn’t that mean, teasing glint that let me know that while they were cruel, they were having fun. They both had a look of hatred, like something under the surface was eating away at them. I knew if I didn’t get away, they were really going to hurt me.
That same night, after dinner, Dad had told me to take out the trash. It was such a simple request, but it made my heart feel like it had stopped right in the center of my chest. I looked at the door and didn’t move.
"Lennox," Dad said, his voice steel.
I took the bags and walked to the alley. The streetlights were on outside, but they didn’t light up the area near my garage. It was dark and the gravel crunched under my feet. I could feel a humming under my skin and every noise, even the way the wind crept across my skin, made me freeze.
Suddenly a silent, shrill whistle lit me up like fireworks and my blood ran cold. They were there. I whipped around and saw Dalton and Nick, leaned against the garage door, smoking with their hoods up. As soon as I saw them, something in me gave up. All the thoughts I’d normally have, the questions that would gnaw at me, just melted. It didn’t matter how long they’d waited for me to take out my bag of trash. It didn’t matter that they were that desperate to get me alone. All the fight was drained and I knew I wouldn’t be getting away. It sounds crazy, but some part of me felt like I was meeting my destiny in this dark alley with the breeze kissing my skin.
Afterwards, in my bed, I stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore the ache from where their hands had pried into places that weren’t for them to touch. N
ever had I hated myself so much. If I was born different, this wouldn’t have happened. If I’d like dolls, wanted to braid my hair, worn skirts. If I hadn’t been something that they felt the need to try to figure out, they would have kept their hands to themselves like they did with other girls and I would’ve been able to be what I so desperately wanted to be: invisible.
But everything changed that night. Before they got me that night, I could ignore it all. I could face school each day, come home, do homework, and mark off the days on the calendar. I could tell myself that being bullied was a rite of passage and play “it gets better” commercials on my phone. I could blog and play Sims and invent lives that were so much easier to swallow. None of that would be possible anymore.
I knew as I stared at the ceiling that I wouldn’t be going back to school. That Hell would freeze over before I ever again darkened the doors of Martin Prince High. I would have to tell my parents, have to come clean about what things had been like the past few months, have to look in their eyes and see the blame that was under the surface. I shut my eyes. It would have to wait for the next day. There was no fight left in me that night. As sleep took me, my last thought was hopeful: if everything could get so bad so quickly, maybe someday, just as quickly, things would get good.
Then I woke up. I went downstairs, my heart racing with the thought of talking about what had happened, but I was determined to get it out. There was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t see Nick and Dalton again.
And that’s what I said after I asked my parents to meet me in the living room. I sat across from them, the two of them, a team, on the couch and me, alone, in the recliner.
“Something happened last night,” I started, picking at the arm of the chair with my fingernail. “When I went out to take out the trash.”
Mom paled, but Dad’s face didn’t even tighten. He showed no emotion or anticipation, just sat with him hands folded together, waiting for me to go on. I had the thought later that his calmness should have been reassuring, that his unflappability should have made himfeel sturdy and dependable. It didn’t. It just made him feel cold. I fixed my eyes on Mom as I went on.
“When I went outside, Nick and Dalton were waiting for me in the alley. You know they’ve been giving me a hard time for awhile now,” I cleared my throat. It felt dry and tight. I coughed. “When they saw me, Nick held my wrists and Dalton put his hand down my pants. They said they wanted to check—”
My dad stood from the chair so fast that his knees knocked into the coffee table, flipping it to the floor. He raised his hand so that his palms were flat in the air like a stop sign.
“Do not say another word,” he said. “I am not going to sit here and listen to you complain about how you have the neighbor boys so confused they don’t even know what you are anymore.”
Spit flew out of his mouth with the sharpness of his words and I felt each one like a physical blow. They knocked the wind out of me. I looked away from him again, again fixing my eyes on my mom. She was looking at the floor and tears were like eyeliner against the rims of her eyes. She didn’t speak as my dad stormed out. She didn’t speak as we heard the front door slam shut in the distance. She didn’t speak until I stood up on wobbly legs, planning to go to my room and figure out what to do with my trash heap of a life.
“Your dad didn’t mean what he said,” she called after me, voice soft and shaking. “He loves you, Lennox.”
I whipped around, poised to argue with her, ready to tell her that people who love you don’t make you feel like shit, but then I saw her and froze. She looked so defeated in that moment. She still hadn’t looked up from the carpet and her tears were still perched on the rims of her eyelids, threatening to fall but holding steady.
I walked over to where she sat and nudged her tiny, thin foot with my sneaker. She looked up and the tears rolled down her cheeks, finally succumbing to defeat. Color had drained so completely from her face that even her freckles had gone pale. Our eyes, matching shades of steel grey, locked onto each other’s.
I wish we had one of those mother-daughter bonds where a conversation could pass between us without words being necessary. Where words didn’t even matter because our expressions could communicate everything. I wish I hadn’t found myself practically begging when I did finally find the words I was looking for.
“But Mom, he’s so angry at me. And why? Because I’m gay? Does that really change anything?”
It was like all the air had left the room everything went so still. I had never said the word gay before and definitely not in reference to myself. As soon as my lips were finished forming the words, I could feel a physical change in my own world.
“Don’t ever say that to me again,” my mom said, almost wheezing each syllable. “There is no such thing as gay. Gay is a lie that the Devil tells us to make excuses for our deviance.”
With her weight centered on her hand as she pushed up against the coffee table, Mom righted herself. She crossed the space between us slowly, and I felt guilty, like it was my fault the word gay had knocked the wind from her. She left the room without speaking and I took her place on the couch. I felt the warmth of the fabric where she’d just been sitting. I breathed in the scent of the musky, floral perfume my dad always bought her. We were in the same house, but the distance felt like it was bigger than you could show on any map. I missed her with everything inside me even though she had just been in the same spot where I was sitting.
When Hannah said the word gay so easily, I’d been startled.
That’s weird, I know, but before the day I told my mom that I was gay, I’d never heard anyone talk about it casually. People only said gay in the context of other people being gay and it was never like it was no big deal. It had always been a capital S sin, this thing that was looming in the back of my mind that would make me unworthy to everyone I knew if I didn’t hide it well enough. When she shruggingly announced that she was gay like it was no big deal, it was like my Dad was in the room, like I could feel his eyes on me, catching me in the act of something not only forbidden but dangerous. Even as I insisted to her that I wasn’t, that I wouldn’t be, it wasn’t her that I was talking to. It was Mom and Dad, it was Dalton and Nick, it was everything I had left behind. Everything I hadn’t been able to leave behind.
Chapter Seven
Hannah
The next day was Marley and my annual Christmas Break tradition: crappy holiday movies followed by cocoa and grilled cheese that we cut into bells with cookie cutters. It wasn’t a particularly unique tradition, but it was ours and I had looked forward to it every year since the first one when we were nine and spent the day with A Christmas Story and Home Alone.
Marley came in like a comet, all quick movements and fiery red hair. She had threatened to cut off her crazy red curls for as long as I knew her, but I had begged her not to; with anyone else, I wouldn’t care about hair, but something about the crimson mane that Marley was so well-known for had just become who she was. Everything about her screamed fireball, even the way she walked into my house without knocking, throwing the door wide. She had no small movements, even though she was easily my smallest friend. At five foot even and about 90 pounds, she was the last person you would imagine would take up all the space in every room, but that was Marley.
She plopped down on my family’s old, slightly fraying sectional and produced a Tupperware container from her tote. It was full of Christmas Crack, a crunchy, toffee and chocolate coated treat that had been my favorite for as long as I could remember. I vented the lid and breathed in the sweet smell of toffee and butter before sealing it tight.
“I thought we agreed no crack this year!” I hooted at her. “We can’t all stay at a permanent state of size 00.”
With a roll of her eyes and a shrug of her shoulders, Marley jerked the tub away from me and pulled the lid completely off. She shoved it up under my nose. “It’s Christmas,” she said simply. “Diets are for New Year’s.”
I laughed at that and sna
tched up one of the bigger pieces I saw. She was right, of course, and it’s not like the five extra pounds I was carrying were crisis level or anything. Definitely nothing that warranted a total refusal of my favorite holiday morsel. As I bit into the cookie, my eyelids fluttered with delight.
“I reject these as a Christmas treat,” I told her, getting ready to start the same dialogue we had exchanged for nearly a decade with absolutely no change to our behavior. “We can make these all year and just call them different things.”
She laughed and rested her head against the seat so that she was staring up at the ceiling. “We go through this every year,” she says, echoing my thoughts. “We just don’t know enough drug slang to make it work for the different seasons.”
“Valentine’s Valium?” I countered. “Spring Speed?”
She shook her head. “Nope,” she stated firmly. “Neither of those has the same meaning as crack. Face it, Hannah, there’s only one.”
With the kind of synchronicity that can only be achieved through years of practice, we both shut down the jokes and settled in for our binge watching session. I had the remote because Marley chose the first movie last year, and I was feeling torn between two of my favorite cheesy films: Holiday in Handcuffs or Santa Baby. Still mad at Jenny McCarthy for her effect on vaccination, I went with the former and settled in to watch two nineties heart throbs fall in love over a festive kidnapping. We got about ten minutes into the movie, when I started to feel eyeballs on me. Marley was staring at me.
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