Year of the Guilty Soul

by A M Leibowitz

  I also broke it off with Elliot. As much as I enjoyed what we were doing, we can’t keep it up. He doesn’t feel about me the way I might about him if we were a real couple. I really like him, but I want someone who is with me for myself and not because they’re hiding from the truth. Even Cari doesn’t know, though I think she’s guessed at a good part of what really happened from the hints I’ve dropped. I would tell her everything, but I still don’t want to rat Elliot out.

  For the last few weeks of the summer, I keep busy spending time with Cari in between back-to-school shopping trips. Those never end well. Mom and Matteo had another fight the last time. It was about clothes, like always. He wanted to look in the girls’ section, but Mom said no. He hasn’t let up on asking us to call him Ariel, and he sobbed in his room for two hours after Mom said he couldn’t have the pink Little Mermaid backpack.

  I’m now hiding out in my room with Cari while they talk downstairs. Mom and Dad have had Matteo seeing a counselor for the last couple of months, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I don’t know what to think. I wish Matteo could just wear whatever he wants, but I know how mean kids can be. It’s only this year that I’ve stopped feeling everyone’s eyes on me and hearing the whispers.

  Currently, I’m turning this way and that, examining every angle in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. We hardly bought anything for me, partly because I haven’t grown at all and partly because I hate shopping. Nothing ever looks right. About eighty percent of the time, I want to stop looking like…well, me, for one thing. My current fashion style can best be described as “depressed potato.”

  Cari peers at me over the top of this months’ issue of Seventeen. Probably another thing on the Thou Shalt Not list, as Hannah calls it. It’s not a Christian magazine, and there’s always some stuff in there Pastor has words about.

  She sets the magazine down and crosses her legs, tilting her head to the side. I flush under her scrutiny. At last she says, “Why do you want to look like them?”

  I know who she means—the Stepford Teens. Those girls who look like they stepped out of a modesty fashion show. Or off the cover of Seventeen. And I do want to look like them, but not for the reasons Cari thinks.

  “What do you care?” I mutter. It’s easier than trying to explain the way my hair, my face, my body all feel like baggage.

  She stands and comes up behind me, peering over my shoulder at my reflection. “You don’t have to imitate all that boring, bland crap.”

  “I do if I want—” I take a deep breath and turn around. “If I want to blend in.”

  “And what if you don’t want to?” She puts her hands on her hips. Cari’s not exactly the blending-in type herself.

  It might sound strange, but I’ve never thought about it. From the time I was nine, I’ve always tried to mold myself to what I thought would make other people happy. And then for almost two years, I’ve tried to be inconspicuous, to keep my head down and prevent anyone from noticing me.

  “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.

  Cari pushes gently until I rotate again. She puts her hands on my shoulders and says, “What would you change right now if you could?”

  “My hair,” I say without hesitation. “I hate it. It’s so thick and wavy I can barely comb it, and it looks awful whether I put it up with a scrunchy or hold the front back with a barrette.”

  “Hm. I could cut it for you, if you want.”

  My mouth drops open. “Right now?”

  “Sure.”

  I peek out of my room to see if anyone is around. The house is silent, which means Mom and Matteo have finished their discussion. Or rather, Mom’s lecture. I motion to Cari, and we sneak into the bathroom to do the deed. There’s a pair of scissors in the drawer under the sink and towels on the shelf over the toilet.

  It doesn’t take long before what feels like an enormous weight has been lifted off my head. Cari’s given me this really cute cut. It’s messy and boyish and I love it. I can’t stop staring at my reflection and wondering why I never thought to do this before.

  We clean up and go back in my room. I’ll worry about Mom’s reaction later. She’ll probably be more annoyed that I didn’t tell her I wanted it done than that I had Cari do it. It’s not like I got a tattoo or had my nipples pierced or something. I didn’t even dye my hair purple.

  I’m too busy looking at my hair again and wondering what sorts of clothes might work with that style to notice when Cari pulls my bin of tapes out from under the bed. I hear her giggle, and I whip around to see her holding Billy Joel in one hand and a mix labeled “Wymyn’s Protest Music” in the other. I practically leap across the room to snatch them from her hands and throw them back in the box. I shove it under the bed with my foot.

  Cari is gaping at me, but I’m too upset to do anything except sit on Sofia’s bed with my knees drawn up. I know the tapes she found aren’t the worst thing in the world, and she probably listens to some really out there stuff too. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed because it doesn’t fit the good church girl image or because she probably thinks it’s stupid.

  “Toni?” Cari’s question is timid, like she’s afraid of what I’ll say when I respond.

  “What.”

  “Why are you so upset about the tapes?”

  I shrug. “You were laughing.”

  “Yeah, because I was remembering that stupid video series and how afterward, they didn’t just tell us to get rid of our AC/DC albums. They wanted us to, like, unspool all our secular music tapes! I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who didn’t.”

  I let out a breathy laugh and uncurl my legs. “I wasn’t sure whether you thought I was stupid for hiding them or stupid because I like stuff that’s kind of average. Well, maybe not the protest music, but the rest.”

  “Neither,” Cari assures me. “We’re gonna have to play some of that protest music later, though. And I definitely need the story of why you have it in the first place.” She tilts her head again, and now I know it means she’s assessing something she senses under the surface, like with my hair. “Why are you at that church, anyway?”

  “Gwen,” I say. “She invited me freshman year.”

  “But you’re not really close with her.” She doesn’t just mean the random fight at the party.

  “I was kind of her pet project, I guess.” This is dangerously close to having to tell Cari what happened, so I deflect. “What about you? Weren’t you one of her tag-alongs?”

  Cari laughs again. “No way. My parents go there because of the people my dad works with. We moved here from Ontario for his job. I don’t think they realized what kind of place it was.”

  “Can’t they just go somewhere else?”

  “I guess, but Mom says change happens slowly. They want to help make it better from the inside.” She smiles, and it makes my stomach flip in a way I know I can’t ever tell anyone. “So that’s what I’m trying to do too.”

  “Do you—” I bite my lip. I’ve never asked anyone this, mostly because I made assumptions about everyone else. “Do you believe the stuff they say?”

  “You mean, am I a Christian? Or do I believe all the crap they say about music and books and sex and gay people?”

  “Both?”

  “Then yes to the first, no to the second. Same for my parents.” She’s doing that piercing gaze thing again. “I’m guessing your answers are the exact opposite of mine.”

  I nod, relieved to be able to tell someone. “I don’t even know what religion I am. Gran and Gramps think I’m a Christian. Bubbe and Zayde say I could be Jewish if I convert like my oldest brother did. I don’t think I believe any of it, and maybe my parents are right after all. They’re both basically agnostic. My other brother is an atheist and thinks we’re all wrong. Not the little one,” I add hastily at Cari’s puzzled expression. “Vince, the one who’s in college.”

  “And yet you think they’re right about all the stuff God hates?” Cari wrinkles her nose.

&nb
sp; “They aren’t the only ones who hate all that stuff.”

  It’s now or never. I stand and go to the bookshelf to pull off a large hardbound volume. I bring it over and sit on the bed next to Cari, opening the book as I settle in. I flip through the black-and-white photos until I locate the one I want.

  “This is Philip Hanson,” I say, pointing at his yearbook picture.

  “Cute,” she says.

  “I thought so too at first, but he spent all of seventh and eighth grade tormenting me. He sat behind me in two of my classes. He used to throw stuff at me or poke me in the back to make me squirm. Twice, he spit on me.”

  “What a jerk.”

  “Yeah, but then we got to high school. He acted overnight like he’d changed.” My hands shake, and Cari takes one. As soon as our skin touches, I feel calmer. “At homecoming, he asked me to dance. He got me into a corner by the bleachers, and he—” I swallow. “He grabbed my breasts and tried to get me to put my hand down his jeans. He wouldn’t stop until I pushed on him and kicked him. I guess he got scared someone would hear us—no idea how, with the music so loud—so he let me go. He said I was lucky he tried it because that’s the best I’ll ever get. The next day, he and his friend poured milk inside my shirt in the cafeteria and called me a cow. They mooed at me for a month, and I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who started the lesbian rumors.”

  The only way I managed the rest of that year was by coming to the church group. There, I wasn’t Toni-the-lezzy-cow. I was just Toni. Some of the kids there knew what Philip did, but most didn’t because they weren’t in my grade or classes. It was the only place I didn’t have to think about it. Did it matter whether I believed or not? If I could be good enough, follow the rules, do what was expected, then no one ever had to know all the secret things about me. All the things they’d have easily used to keep hurting me.

  “That’s horrible,” Cari says, interrupting my thoughts.

  I look at her out of the corner of my eye. Before today, I hadn’t known there was a third option, to stay and be part of making changes. I don’t know what that means for me, but it gives me hope.

  “You know what?” I say.

  “What?”

  “I think you’re right. I don’t need to look like them. You want to come shopping with me for some new clothes?”

  “Now you’re talking. But first, let’s hear that protest music tape,” Cari says, and we both grin.

  October

  If last school year was our church taking a stand against the dangers of music, this year it’s all about sex. There’s a not-so-subtle shift, leaving behind some of the fear we’ll be tainted by satanic lyrics. Now they’re in fear for our bodies, and maybe they’re not entirely wrong. But the way they’re keeping us safe is by scaring us.

  I’m familiar with that tactic. They used it at school, too. Filmstrips with pictures of people messed up by drugs and diseases or videos of live births. A few years ago, they were all about how to keep us from getting pregnant. Now they want to keep us from dying. They won’t call it sin in a public school, but it amounts to the same thing. Some part of me wants to cling to the safety provided by the church. Another part is disgusted with it.

  I probably wouldn’t have been able to see it if not for Cari. I was surprised to learn her parents, even though they’re Christians, gave her a much better education even than I had from mine. Now I can’t unsee it. She and I are in a constant state of exchanging glances and biting the insides of our cheeks to keep from saying anything. Even so, it’s irresistible to show up for every youth group meeting waiting to see what they’ll tell us next.

  The first week, it was a story: a man put poop in his kids’ brownies to see if they were willing to tolerate a little bit of something gross. The next week, it was spitting into a glass of water and asking who would be willing to drink it. Week three, they gave us each a piece of gum and had us stick it together in one big wad. Then they offered us the chance to pull a piece off. They’ve been working their way up to something, but it’s hard to tell exactly what.

  We find out when we show up on Saturday night. Instead of our usual meeting, there’s a guest speaker. They’ve done that before, but it’s a bigger deal this time. He’s a local musician and popular enough we’ve heard of him. He starts the night with a set of pop-style versions of the songs we’re used to singing at youth group, stuff out of the YoungLife book.

  At some point, he invites us to sing that stupid camp song where you go around giving everyone hugs or head pats or whatever silly thing they come up with. I hate it specifically because someone inevitably suggests wet willies or noogies. This guy doesn’t do that, though. He works his way through the song until he tells us to get into it by shaking hands with as many people as we can during the verse. He has to repeat it a couple times because it’s not just our youth group—which is about sixty kids already—but several other churches as well.

  We’re all out of breath by the time he wraps up the song and invites us to sit. He tells us to look at our hands, so I do. I’m covered in red glitter. All around the room, the others are doing the same thing, and we’re all puzzled as to where it came from. I look at Cari on my right and Hannah on my left, and I see they’re equally confused. Cari wrinkles her nose in disgust.

  The speaker holds up his hands for silence. “Some of you have red glitter. Some of you don’t. It started with just three people, and you can see how fast it spread to all of you.”

  This sounds like typical evangelism talk. They’re forever telling us that just a few people can help spread the good news everywhere if they just tell one other person. I’m ready to roll my eyes, partly because I’ve never been all that enthusiastic about dragging anyone to church with me. But then the speaker continues.

  “Every single one of you with red glitter—congratulations, you now have HIV.”

  It’s like the air has been sucked out of the room all at once, leaving me gasping. I stare at the glitter covering my palms. The speaker’s voice sounds like the adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Every now and again I catch enough of it to piece together that this guy is telling us his own story of how he got it. Somewhere in there, he’s explaining the importance of saving ourselves for marriage because emotionally and physically, we’re apparently having sex with every single other person our partners have been with.

  I can’t listen anymore. He’s giving the kinder, gentler version of telling us this is God’s punishment for the immorality of a generation. He doesn’t use the word plague, but I know he means it. He’s not saying it’s just gay men—they’ve mostly stopped doing that everywhere already anyway now that so many people have died—but it’s implied in some of what he says. It’s obvious he still thinks God is punishing men like Mr. Sullivan and everyone else is collateral damage. He’s saying something about how it’s led to “the new feminism,” women who reject men to “burn with unnatural lust for each other.” I don’t want to hear the rest.

  I fight my way past Cari’s knees and take off for the exit. Once I’m through the doors at the back of the sanctuary, I race for the bathroom. I can barely open the door because I’m trying not to cover the handle in glitter. At last I manage a crack to wedge my foot in and kick it so the gap is wide enough to squeeze through.

  At the sink, I turn on the taps and stick my glittery hands under the running water. Some of it comes off, but getting it wet only seems to be making the mess worse. I let loose crying, tears pouring down my cheeks as the water sluices over my fingers. By the time I’ve been at it for a few minutes, I’m a mess and there’s glitter everywhere, including in my hair.

  A hand on my shoulder makes me jump, and I whirl to face Cari, leaving the tap running. She takes a step back.

  “Sorry!” Her expression relaxes. “Are you okay?”

  At least Cari hasn’t guessed what’s on my mind. I’m not even sure myself anymore. All my thoughts have become jumbled, mixed up with the red glitter experiment and the things the guest speaker w
as saying. Cari reaches around and shuts off the water while I think about how to answer her.

  “I—”

  It must’ve been a while since I left the other room because I hear the bathroom door open and a voice says, “Toni?” It’s Hannah, and Gwen is right behind her. I shrink back against the sink. Gwen and I still haven’t made peace, and I’m not sure I want her seeing me like this.

  “Y-yeah,” I reply. “In here.”

  “You okay?” Hannah repeats what Cari asked. “You looked for a sec like you’d seen a ghost, and then you took off.”

  “It was hot in there, that’s all.” The others look at me expectantly, and I know they don’t believe a word of what I’m saying. “I’m having kind of a rough night.”

  Hannah nods. “Because of your brother?”

  I want to pretend I have no idea what she’s talking about, but instead I shake my head. “Not exactly.”

  Cari squeezes my arm. “Not everyone thinks the same as that guy does. You know I don’t.”

  “But a lot do.” I glance at Gwen, whose gaze is on her toes. She’s biting her lip.

  “I used to,” Hannah agrees. “But not anymore.”

  “Wh-what changed your mind?”

  “A lot of things,” she replies. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I close my eyes for a moment. When I open them, I peek at Gwen, but she’s looking at me expectantly like the others. “Not just my brother. That too, but it’s the whole thing.”

  I start by telling them about Mr. Sullivan and how I’ve been spending time with him. And about what Elliot and I were up to over the summer and Philip Hanson and Dom and how I’m not sure about myself, the confusing feelings I have with girls. I stop short of confessing that I sometimes feel stuck between being a tomboy and a girlish guy. It’s too much for me to wrap my own head around, let alone explain it to someone else.

  Turning to Gwen, I say, “I’m sorry for how I acted over the summer. I was hiding all this stuff, and I took it out on you.”