Unsightly Bulges

by Kim Hunt Harris

  “No, that’s perfect,” Tony said. “Cynthia asked that we be there at 5:30.”

  “Oh, well. That is...perfect,” I said. Crap.

  “I’ll come with you to the remodel thing first,” Tony said. “I read about that place in the newspaper. I’d never heard of it before, but it sounds like a good thing.”

  “Oh yeah, it’s – uh – they have a new chapter just started here.”

  “Great. I’ll meet you there at one o’clock on Sunday.”

  “It’s a date,” I said, then punched the end call button before I said anything else stupid.

  I was tired and neurotic and entirely too wound up to sleep. I logged onto the computer and scrolled through pictures of prairie dogs. I tried to determine what about them, exactly, put them into the cute rodent category rather than the disgusting rodent category. Was it the fat little tummies? The way they pressed their palms together in prayer, or spread their arms wide to the heavens? Or burrowed into their underground dens with their children curled snugly around them? I imagined rats in those same situations and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. So yeah. It was definitely their looks.

  I hadn’t meant to, but I found myself back on the Friends of Joshua site, scrolling tiredly through stories of kids being betrayed by their friends, of being cut off from their families, of being lost in the world and sure their lives were hopeless. The loneliness was overwhelming

  Viv and Dale had both given me more grief about Matt Macon after the party at Exodus, and I was feeling rather lonesome and victimized myself. Even a drama queen like me could see that there was no comparison of my suffering to theirs. But misery has always loved company, and it was some strange comfort to scroll through the horrible experiences people had been through, knowing they had come through it.

  “...beaten up every day...”

  “...shoved into lockers...”

  “...desecrated my body...”

  “...living for the chance to jump me...”

  I finally turned the computer off and climbed into bed, curling my body around Stump’s.

  Love never fails. The words floated through my mind as I drifted off, and I hoped that it was true. At the moment it looked like hate had the upper hand.

  Marky stood on the concrete block that was the back porch and cleared his throat. He raised his hands and stood for a moment, slowly shifting back and forth, gathering everyone’s attention.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to get to work in just a second. But there’s something I need to do first.”

  The crowd grew silent and people shifted on their feet, crossing hands in front of them.

  “I know most of you got the privilege of meeting CJ. I’m sure I’m not the only one whose heart is heavy today. His loss was...” He broke off, looking at the ground, bobbing his head quickly as if he was trying to force back the tears. “Well, it’s a loss, that’s all I can say. A huge loss, not only to me, but to all of us.”

  Marky scanned the crowd and his back stiffened. “There are a couple of important things that need to be said. One, the people who killed CJ didn’t want to just kill him. They want to kill this.” He spread his arms to take in the house and the group of volunteers. “They wanted to kill all of this. All the love that’s here today, all the hard work you’ve done, everything that Friends of Joshua represents. A safe place. A place to belong. They wanted to destroy that. But they can’t.”

  “Fuck no!” somebody in the crowd shouted.

  This made Marky smile for the first time that day, and I could see for a second what CJ must have seen in him. He was intense, but he also had a tender side.

  A few more comments drifted through the crowd, and Marky held his hands up. “That’s right. We won’t let them. We will fight for what is right, and we will not stop fighting. They don’t know who they’re dealing with. They’re dealing with people who have been fighting their entire lives!”

  A few claps and a few more cheers floated up from the crowd.

  “They’re dealing with people who have had to fight for every ounce of themselves, and they are certainly not frightened away now.”

  “Another thing. The police don’t know who killed CJ, and I’m sure they probably never will. I doubt they’re even looking very hard. So we might never know whose hand was on that hammer that gave CJ the final blow.”

  Marky scanned the crowd again, his lips tight together. His eyes not leaving the crowd, he bent and reached behind him, picking up the hammer. He hefted it as if testing the weight, his eyes blazing.

  “But one thing I do know. It might have been one person’s hands on that hammer, but CJ had many killers. Every hater killed CJ. Every hypocrite who told every gay and transgender kid there was something wrong with them. Every quack who claimed they could fix what was wrong.” He made quotation marks with his left hand, the hammer hefted in his right. “Every bully. Every hater. Every parent who couldn’t accept their own child. Every friend who betrayed us.”

  “But you know what I’ve learned? Love is stronger than hate, and it always has been. It always will be. Love will always win. Love is stronger than hate, and it’s stronger than fear. Our strength is greater. What they’ve torn down, we will build up. We will put our hands on this hammer, and we will pledge to make CJ’s death stand for something. We will build not only a place here where people can come and get out of the cold. Not only a place to sleep or take a shower or get a meal. We will build a place of refuge. We will build a safe place where we can rest from the fight. Where we can nurture each other. And in doing that, we’ll build a bigger, stronger community of love that will eventually overrule all the hate.”

  This was met with more cheers and clapping.

  “So here’s what we’re going to do. You know all those people I just said put their hands on CJ, just as surely as the actual killer did? We’re going to do the same thing. We’re going to put our hands on this hammer. Right now.” He took the hammer by the head and held the hand out, so those around him could touch it. “Right now. Reach in and put your hand on this tool. Take it now. Put your hand on it. Right now.”

  Slowly, hesitantly, people stepped up and put one hand on the handle of the hammer.

  I gave Tony a glance and he returned my hesitant look with a slight shrug. This was a little more touchy-feely than either one of us expected, but he seemed willing.

  I reached in and grabbed a bit of the handle with my thumb and forefinger. Tony’s broad hand rested just below mine, his skin darker than mine, the curve of his forearm strong and solid beside mine.

  The handle of the hammer filled with hands until Marky tugged it gently away and said, “Thank you, friends, thank you.” He turned and held it out to another group, and they all reached for it, holding the smooth wood for a moment before Marky moved on to another group.

  “CJ did what he could with his life to make this world a better place. You and I, working together, can make sure his death makes it even better.”

  Once everyone had touched the hammer, Marky returned to his place on the porch, his head higher and his back straighter. “Thank you, friends,” he said. “This moment is going to stay with me, and I hope it stays with you as well. We’re going to be working very hard over the next few weeks, and I hope you keep in mind what we’re working for. It’s not just about you and me, about one person or one group or one town. This is all of us. This is everyone. This is about creating a place for us all.”

  He raised his arms wide as if giving a benediction, and let the moment play out.

  Then he clapped his hands together, and grinning, shouted, “Okay! Let’s get to work!”

  I only broke one thing. I was actually quite proud of that. I was carrying an old sink outside to get it out of the way so Tony and his group of able-bodied workers could demo the bathroom. On the way to the spot Marky had designated as “re-usable,” I felt a deadly poisonous spider inching its fuzzy way up my finger, shrieked, and dropped the sink. It broke almost exactly in half. The spider turn
ed out to be just a trailing cobweb.

  But that was all, and I did haul out a fairly impressive pile of old boards, rotten linoleum, and threadbare carpet and managed to get it all into the trash bin Marky had rented. Plus, Tony was a machine. He tore out cabinets, hammered up drywall, and replaced a window. Since I’d brought him, I kind of took credit for the work he did, at least in my own head. It all balanced out the sink, I figured.

  I was a sweaty, smelly mess by the time we got through. Part of me hoped Tony would decide we didn’t need to go to the barbecue. But he walked me to my car and told me he’d be by the trailer around 5:15 to pick me up.

  By the time we got to Tony’s sister’s house, the backyard was full of people. Tony was the middle of five children, with two older sisters and one younger brother and sister. They all looked alike. Cynthia was the second oldest sister, and she looked most like Mrs. Solis. She was short and solid, with short, thick black hair. They were carrying large platters of food to picnic tables while the men stood around a smoker, talking and laughing.

  Tony, bless his heart, stayed close to me, introducing me to the ones I hadn’t met, saying, “Robert, Johnny, Diane, you remember Salem,” to the ones I had known before. They all smiled politely and anyone would have thought they were happy to see me. Not once did I hear, “Yeah, I remember that whore,” as I had expected. I didn’t even hear any Spanish insults. They either kept it to themselves or kept their voices low.

  Mrs. Solis nodded curtly when Tony presented me to her. “Glad you could make it,” she said, then turned away.

  Frankly, that was better than I had expected. According to Mrs. Solis, I had ruined Tony’s life when I got pregnant and he had to marry me when we were eighteen. Back then, I’d been honestly shocked when – after I got t-boned by another car and lost the baby – the entire Solis family had gone into mourning. I had expected them to be at least a little relieved. I was. I was much sadder than I expected, and even ten years later the loss slammed into me at the most unexpected times, taking my breath away with a fresh sharp pain, but a tiny part of me was also relieved.

  I latched onto that part and nurtured it, and made it grow, because I was much more comfortable being the jaded, “Yeah, whatever, easy come easy go,” type than I was with devastation and sadness. I refused to mourn. It was silly and pointless to make a big deal out of losing someone I’d never even met. I hadn’t even had time to feel pregnant, I told people, shoving down the memory of those few flutters I’d felt, and the heart-lifting sense of touching a miracle.

  My mom made no pretense of her opinion that the accident was a blessing, and not just one of the silver lining variety. Like, the wreck was the best possible outcome we could have hoped for, even if it did mean her daughter was in the hospital for two weeks and had pain for months. Best possible outcome.

  Mrs. Solis, she had been devastated, not least because, Tony was devastated and she loved Tony with her entire fierce little heart. Throughout the entire nightmare of learning I was pregnant, the ensuing mama-drama between Mom and Mrs. Solis (screaming accusations of entrapment, immoral behavior and oysters – as in ‘the-world-is-his-oyster – being stomped all over) I had assumed that everyone felt basically as I did: we’d made a terrible mistake and now would go through the motions of making the best of it, but there was no reasonable expectation that I would do anything but screw this up, and whatever child I had would have no chance to be anything but a screw-up like me.

  When I lost the baby, I expected a vast sigh of relief from all around, after which life would go back to normal. I would move back in with Mom, Tony could get an annulment, and we could all forget it ever happened.

  Tony didn’t see it that way. It didn’t seem to matter to him that ours had been a shotgun wedding, that we were only eighteen, or that neither of us was equipped to be a spouse or a parent. We were married in the church and it was a real marriage. After I lost the baby, he treated me like a beloved wife who had been through a horrible ordeal and needed to be comforted.

  That had freaked me completely out. I’d never been treated tenderly before, and had no clue how to deal with it. While Tony launched full-throttle into his role of young husband, getting a job at a construction company, signing up for part-time classes at the Lubbock Community College (giving up his full-ride scholarship to The University of Texas) I did everything I could to undermine his effort so we could get the charade over with. Tony was living in a delusion and I saw no reason to keep it going, but I couldn’t seem to convince him of that.

  Finally, I left. A part of me (I was able to admit years later) wanted him to come after me. If he was so sure this marriage was the right thing, I wanted him to fight for it. Fight for me. But I left and he let me go. Later I had filed for divorce, and hadn’t learned until just a few months ago that he’d never signed the papers. The entire time I’d thought I was a divorcee, I’d been a married woman.

  It took me about that long to stop being so stupid and see that Tony had been fighting for our marriage, in his own quiet, steady way.

  At any rate, one could probably see how a devoted mother like Mrs. Solis would not be happy to see a train wreck like me enter her precious son’s life. To my credit, I had done my best to exit as quickly as I had come, but Mrs. Solis had only herself to blame that she had raised such an honor-bound son. He tried to be a good husband to me, and he did his best to pick up the pieces of our life afterwards.

  He’d done okay for himself, after I left. He owned a large cleaning company and his house put my little trailer to shame. I had operated under the assumption that we were divorced for the past decade, but Tony had torn up the papers and waited for...I’m not even sure what. He believed divorce was a sin and he wasn’t going to give me one.

  I looked around at all the kids running around the backyard. If our daughter had lived, she would be on that swing set right now, I thought. She would probably have dark hair like Tony, brown eyes, and wide, smiling lips. These kids would be her cousins.

  I felt a lump in my throat, that bottomless chasm of a missed life opening up very near my feet. Maybe if I had let myself mourn at the time, I wouldn’t keep having it slam up against me. I wouldn’t have to hide from it.

  But I hadn’t mourned. I had gotten mad and drunk, and I had stayed drunk for nine years. Every time I felt the least bit bad – about the baby, about Tony, or about something so minor as a bad day at work or a large electric bill – I drank. Even one beer made me feel better. Like I could cope. Three drinks and I didn’t care whether I coped or not. Six and I didn’t remember what I needed to cope with.

  But suddenly it was there, all around me, the fact that I could have been part of this family all along. I could have not been such an idiot and thrown away my life with Tony like it was some old towel I’d wiped my muddy shoes on. Yes, we had lost that baby and that actually hadn’t been my fault. We could have stayed together. Tony wanted to make our marriage work, even at his young age. He wanted to work and support me; he wanted us to build a life together. He talked to me a lot about me going on to college and finding a career that I enjoyed. He was always telling me I could do good things if I applied myself.

  But me, I was so convinced that I was a born screw-up that I did everything I could think of to convince him otherwise. It had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  The sudden sense of loss – not just of the baby, but of all of it, an entire life – was staggering. I looked around, the thoughts in my heard roaring above the conversation around me. Tony was talking to his brother and he put one hand lightly on my shoulder. Not in a proprietary way, but reassuring.

  “Don’t let her bother you,” someone said from the other side, and I turned to see Tony’s younger sister Diane. I realized I had been staring in Mrs. Solis’s general direction, but I wasn’t truly seeing her.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “It’s not that, it’s just...” I looked around lamely, trying to think of a reason for my deer-in-the-headlights look.

  “Sh
e’s glad you’re here, I promise,” Diane said.

  I raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, maybe glad is not the word,” she acknowledged with a laugh. “But she’s thankful you helped Tony. That counts for something.”

  It counted a lot, for me. After ten years of no contact with the family, Viv and I had helped Tony prove he was not, in fact, guilty of a murder he’d been accused of. I was proud that we’d been able to help him, and grateful for the opportunity to do some good after all the damage I’d done. It was a bit awkward, though, when we’d found out that the bad guy was actually Mrs. Solis’s sister, Sylvia. Kind of a good news/bad news situation there.

  Sylvia had tried to frame Tony for the murder, with the excuse that he was likely to be acquitted and everything would work out. She’d been covering for her son, who had beaten and choked the girl, then panicked and called his mommy to bail him out (there was no love lost between me and Rey, in case that wasn’t obvious) and boy, did she. She fixed things so the girl could never report Rey’s abuse, then framed Tony for the deed.

  Sylvia put the hell in helicopter mom.

  Viv and I had accidentally solved the case. Sylvia tried to kill us in the process, but she and her creep of a son were both in prison, and I was sitting at a picnic table in her niece’s backyard.

  “You want a beer?” Diane asked me.

  I shook my head, but yes, I did want one. Bad.

  “Sorry, I forgot.” She gestured toward Tony with her head. “Tony told me you quit.”

  “No big deal,” I said, although it was, in fact, a colossal deal. The realization of what I’d thrown away was there, all around me, huge and terrifying. At the moment, one beer seemed like a trivial concern amidst all that ruin. I was having a hard time remembering why it would be so bad to have just one beer.

  But I didn’t. Diane made a few more attempts at conversation but I was failing miserably at holding up my end, so eventually we just drifted into silence and watched everyone else.