All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages

by Saundra Mitchell

  I found the few clothes of my grandfather’s that Abuela had kept, the ones he’d left behind. He had dared to hit her once, and her rage had struck him back so quickly, felling him, he called her a witch, yelling, “Bruja,” as he fled our village.

  I hemmed his trousers with quick, rough stitches. I stuffed his boots with scrap cloth so they would fit. I had the small, wide feet of my grandmother, the edges rough from years of running without shoes.

  Like a silent prayer, I gave her my gratitude. Abuela had wanted me to play outside barefoot as much as I could stand, so that if ever I could not afford shoes, my feet could go without them. Now I understood what my grandmother had wanted, for me to keep my heart soft but the edges of me hard enough to survive the world as it was.

  My grandfather’s poncho, I plunged into red dye, the rough agave taking it fast.

  At night, the color wouldn’t show. But I would feel it against my skin.

  I would not let this rage kill me. By using it, I would drive it from my body. I would turn it against the last man who would not save Léon. The man, who, by dawn, would be robbed of his finest things.

  Oropeza’s guards, I took first.

  I neared the hacienda with my head lowered. My hat hid the red of my hair. The brim shaded my face. I left the guards no chance to wonder if I was some messenger boy bearing midnight news, or whether they should draw their brass-throated pistols. I let my rage stream into them. I let it become liquid and alive.

  They fell, one gripping his side, another holding his chest as though the venom clutched his heart.

  Anything I could carry, I stole. Fine cigars. Money and papers from the desk drawers. Jewels that had once belonged to Oropeza’s wife; Abuela was sure he had killed her with his cold heart as well as we could with our poison.

  I slipped through the house, the moon casting clean squares of light through the vestíbulo windows. The strap of my woven bag cut into my shoulder, heavy with all I had taken.

  The rustling of grape leaves outside and the tangle of voices stilled me.

  Oropeza and his friends stumbled drunk through the dark grapevines. Calvo and Acevedo and other men with more power than sense and more money than mercy.

  They laughed. They swapped echoes of the same questions.

  “How much are los franceses giving you for the traitor?” Calvo asked.

  “How did you even manage this?” Acevedo asked. “I thought the only Frenchmen you knew were the ones you’d had shot.”

  “Why didn’t I think of this?” another man asked.

  “Because you’re not as smart as I am,” Oropeza said.

  A question had just formed in me when I saw the figure held between them, being shoved forward and made to walk. Blindfolded, his wrists bound behind his back.

  Because he could not see, he stumbled, drawing their laughter. The long points of their boots needled his shins.

  They were forcing him toward the road that ran behind Oropeza’s estate.

  My gasp was sharp as the first breath waking from a nightmare, the moment of wondering if, as in those dreams, my fingers were made of lightning or the sky was truly a wide blue blanket woven by my abuela’s hands.

  Léon.

  They hadn’t let the firing squad take him.

  Hope bubbled up under my rage, but with it my anger thickened.

  They hadn’t killed him, not yet. Instead, Oropeza was trading him to the country that now considered him an enemy. Trading him for money, for favors, for the currencies of men who owned so much ground but never bent down enough to touch it.

  He was surrendering El Lobo to the country that called him Le Loup, the country Oropeza declared his enemy but still bargained with in secret.

  My hope lifted my rage higher, driving it into a swirling cloud that flew out the windows and rushed at the men. It caught them, striking them down like el Espíritu Santo had slain them.

  But this was not God’s work. This was not the Holy Spirit filling these men. This was the work of una Roja. A poison girl, veiled in men’s clothing.

  The men fell to the ground, holding their throats and chests and sides. The richest ones, the ones whose boots had the longest tapered points, twisted to keep from stabbing themselves with their own shoes. Oropeza jerked as though demons poured through him. My vengeance, a vengeance I shared with my grandmother and all Las Rojas, was toxic as thorn apple and lantana. It was poison as strong as moonflower and oleander.

  I threw open the glass-inlaid doors to the back gardens. I stepped between writhing men and grabbed Léon’s arm, pulling him with me. I caught the smell of his hair. Even now, it held the scent I’d come to think of as the countryside in Alsace. Dust and rain on hills. Fields covered in the blue of flax flowers and the gold brush of oats. He’d brought it with him on his skin. And when he told me the brown of my naked back reminded him of the deer that roamed that land, he gave me a place in his country.

  Even through my rage and my fear, my lips felt hot with wanting to touch his skin. They trembled with wanting to give him my name.

  Oropeza gazed up at me. His face showed no recognition, only the fear that I was a boy born of robbers and devils.

  Through the open doors, Oropeza yelled into the house for his servants. He called them stupid and slow. He called them fools.

  They ran across the tile. But when they saw the scene, when they saw the writhing men, and me, and the blindfolded man I had stolen from their patrono, they sank to the floor. They clutched their stomachs as though they, too, had been poisoned.

  My breath stilled with worry that I had made them ill, that my venom was in them even though I had no rage for them.

  But they caught my eyes, and smiled.

  They twisted as though I was striking them down, so they could not be blamed for letting me rob Oropeza.

  They had heard the stories. Las Rojas. They noticed the wisp of hair falling from my grandfather’s hat and onto my neck. They saw me as the poison girl I was, a daughter made of venom, even as I hid in my grandfather’s clothes.

  I held on to Léon, leading him around the stricken men.

  Oropeza and his friends would not die, not tonight. But they would thrash on the tile and the dirt until I was too far for my anger to touch them.

  “Who are you?” Léon asked. His breath sounded short more from trying to press down his fear than from how fast I made him walk.

  I cut the rope off his wrists and pulled off his blindfold and kissed him as fast as if I had more hands than my own. I didn’t care if the act would reveal me. My rage kept these men down like a blanket over a fire.

  Léon’s lips recognized mine. He kissed me harder, setting his hands on my waist to hold me up.

  “Go,” I whispered, my mouth feathering against his jawline.

  Now he smelled like sweat, and the bitter almost-rust tang that I swore was the last trace of his fear. But under these things I found the smell I remembered. The warmth of flax and oats, things his family had grown for so long his skin carried the scent across the ocean.

  “You have to run,” I said, my forehead against his cheek.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. His breathing came hard. I could feel his heartbeat in his skin. “Not unless I’m going with you.”

  I pulled away so we could see each other as much as the dark let us.

  “They took you because you stayed for me,” I said, still keeping my voice to a whisper. “I am poison. Don’t you see that?”

  Léon set his hand against my cheek.

  “Emilia,” he said, quiet as a breath. He meant it for no one but me.

  The wind hid the strain of his breathing. The far lamp of the moon turned the gray of his eyes to iron. The sound of my name made me feel like the cloth on my body was blazing to red, my hair a cape as bright as marigolds.

  “You are here and I am
alive.” Now his accent turned sharp, not his practiced Spanish. “So tell me what makes you poison.”

  He put his hand on the back of my neck and kissed me, this boy who wanted to belong to the girl I was, brown and small and poisonous.

  To the men, we might have looked like two boys, one pressing his mouth to the other’s. Tonight, we would pull off our shirts and trousers for each other. Léon would be a boy, no matter the shape of his chest beneath his shirts. And I would let my hair fall from my grandfather’s hat and be the girl I had always been to him. For Léon, I would put on my best enagua just so he could push the soft cotton of the tiered skirt up my thighs. I would let my breasts lay against his skin. I would kiss where the rope had cut into his wrists and the cloth into his temples.

  I wanted to protect his body as though it were mine.

  But my own, I wanted these men to see it, and remember. I wanted them to know that I was my abuela’s granddaughter, that I carried the blood of poison girls.

  The men still lay on the floor, gripping their chests and ribs.

  I lifted my red poncho and my shirt, and I showed the men my breasts.

  The moon lit the rounded shapes. It lit the fear on the men’s faces, the horror on Oropeza’s.

  I gave them only that one second, just enough to let them wonder in the morning if they had imagined it, and then I let my shirt fall.

  I reached for Léon. But it was not the men he was watching, or even me. He stood in the moon silver on the vestíbulo floor, looking out toward the hills. He lifted his face to the sky, breathing like he was taking a drink of the night itself.

  And the wolves came. They came with their claws ticking against the ground and their muzzles stained with the blood of their last prey. They came with coats the same red gold as the hills they had run down from. They came with their backs streaked dark as the ink of the night sky.

  I drew back from them, the wolves now crouching at the edges of Oropeza’s property. Then I caught Léon’s smile, slight but intent, telling me we had nothing to fear from them.

  Léon took my hand, and we ran down the steps, the wolves filling the space behind us. They stood as guards, moving toward Oropeza’s men only when the men moved to pursue us. When the men lifted their heads to watch us run, the wolves showed their teeth. When they shouted curses at us, the wolves growled and snapped.

  That was how Léon and I left them, both of us showing hearts so fierce these men considered them knives. We fled from the feigned cries of the men and women who worked for Oropeza but who loved us for defying him. We fled from the howls of men who wailed more for their pride than their bodies. We left them with the salt-sting memory of us, a brazen girl, and a boy with a heart so fearless wolves were his guardian saints.

  Many stories found us after that night. Some said the French soldier known as El Lobo had called down from the hills a thousand wolves who not only scattered the men but ravaged Oropeza’s grapevines. Others said a girl known only as La Roja poisoned them all with her wicked heart, hiding the red of her hair so they would have no warning.

  Some said El Lobo and La Roja were enemies, rivals, the girl capturing the French soldier just so she could have the pleasure of killing him herself. Others said La Roja stole El Lobo, only to fall in love with him the moment she first touched him.

  When we hear word that every rich man who witnessed that night has died, I will tell the rest of the story. I will say what we have done since that night. What haciendas Léon has called wolves to destroy. What merciless hearts I have poisoned with the rage in my own. All that La Roja, the girl with the red hair and the red cape, and El Lobo, the boy as feared as wolves, have done.

  But this is the part I will tell now. We rode off on Oropeza’s finest Andalusians, the wolves’ call at our backs. We vanished into the midnight trees faster than first light could reach us. We lived. We survived to whisper our names to each other even if we could not yet confess them to anyone else.

  * * * * *

  Author’s Note

  I grew up loving fairy tales. But as a Latina, I didn’t look much like the girls I saw in storybooks. Later, realizing I was queer, the loves I saw portrayed in those fairy tales felt even further away.

  When I went looking to reclaim a fairy tale in a historical context, I could think of few better starting places than Leonarda Emilia. An outlaw in early 1870s Mexico, Leonarda had a short but infamous career that began when officials executed the French soldier she’d fallen in love with. Known to history as la Carambada, Leonarda wore men’s clothing, but became notorious for revealing her breasts to the powerful men she’d just robbed as she rode off.

  Léon is a tribute to the many assigned-female-at-birth soldiers who have fought in wars throughout history; though in most cases history doesn’t give enough context for us to know what these soldiers might have claimed as their gender identity, Léon is imagined here as a transgender character. As this story’s interpretation of the Wolf, he, along with Emilia’s Red, are meant to embody the spirit of la Carambada. With much respect to the historical Leonarda, this story takes liberties in the spirit of reclaiming a well-loved fairy tale for the communities I’m proud to call mine.

  For their thoughts, advice, and guidance, I owe much gratitude to Elliot Wake, Jayne Walters, Mackenzi Lee, Tehlor Kay Mejia, the trans boy I’m lucky to call my husband, and of course, editor Saundra Mitchell. Thank you for helping this story navigate the path between history and fairy tale.

  THE SWEET TRADE

  BY

  NATALIE C. PARKER

  Virginia Colony, 1717

  Clara Elizabeth Byrd had been married twice by the age of sixteen and she had decided she had no taste for it.

  Her first husband, Mr. John du Pont, being of Huguenot lineage with an estate on the James River, had been a kind man. Though nearly twenty years her senior, he had not laughed when Clara suggested he might make her a wedding gift of a sloop. Instead, he asked in what color he should commission the sails be dyed. Clara imagined that they’d have made good companions for one another had he not swallowed a chicken bone and died before the cake had been cut.

  It was a tragic affair, resulting in Clara’s return to her family home farther down the river. The sloop came, too, in accordance with Mr. du Pont’s presumed final wishes. Clara was incandescently thankful. Never mind that she had not yet learned to sail it. She had read every novel on the subject and was certain she could manage without too much trouble.

  Before she had occasion to try, her father selected a second husband for her. Mr. Frederick Earwood, as if the name weren’t bad enough, was a quiet young man with no humor about him. Upon learning of his betrothed’s sloop, he sat back in his chair, studied one corner of the ceiling so intently it seemed he’d quite forgotten there were others in the room and then said in a careful monotone, “We shall take the ship with us if only to dismantle it and use its parts for firewood this winter.”

  In that moment Clara determined her second husband would be her last. She devised a plan, requesting to be wed in the Lower River Chapel on the bank of the James. From there, they would retreat to Mr. Earwood’s holdings near the Carolina border. Her sloop would be moored by the dock awaiting its miserable journey inland.

  Which, of course, it would never take.

  In all the tales of adventure Clara had ever heard, it was never young girls who were daring. It was always boys running off to rescue a friend or fetch much-needed medicine or stumble into good fortune. Clara knew girls would be daring if given half the chance. And she intended to take that chance, right from under the pale nose of Mr. Earwood.

  And so it was that Clara Elizabeth Byrd took a second husband in order to have her first adventure.

  She spent the weeks leading up to the wedding putting her scholarly knowledge to practice, sailing the sloop a little farther each day. She loved it every bit as much as she expected. The sun on her f
ace and the wind in her hair, the horizon glinting with promise. She was meant for a life in full view of the sky.

  Soon, the wedding was upon her. The vows were necessary, and so, unfortunately, was the moment Mr. Earwood was given permission to kiss the bride. Mr. Earwood leaned close, his lips puckered as delicately as a doll’s. Clara feigned a girlish giggle, neatly pressing her own lips to his cheek.

  Though it displeased Mr. Earwood, the congregation applauded her charmingly modest sensibilities. No one raised an eyebrow when she begged for a few moments alone after the ceremony. And while the rest of the party processed toward the town green for cake and feasting, Clara raced to the river and climbed aboard her sloop, where she’d stored everything she would need to make her journey: a few precious coins, clothing, some food, a fishing pole and even a sword from her grandfather’s trunk.

  The sun was just passing into the west as she raised the main sail and jib. The air was sharp with the last chill of winter, the trees eager to send green shoots into the Virginia sky. A thin sweat coated Clara’s brow as she worked to unknot the ropes that kept her little boat tethered to the dock. If anyone saw, she would surely be stopped and dragged back to the side of an irritable Mr. Earwood.

  The skirts of her black silk gown were twisted around her ankles in the narrow spaces. She’d have preferred to wear her new green mantua gown for the occasion; its open cut would’ve made maneuvering around the ship much easier. But both her maid and her father had been horrified at the idea of a bride wearing such an unlucky color, so she’d relented rather than give herself away. Now she moved slower than she desired on account of not wanting to trip and fall headfirst into the water.

  Finally, with a ferocious shove, her little sloop drifted away from the dock and into the steady current of the river. Though the sloop was a modest size for traveling the James, twelve feet from prow to stern and four feet across, it would be noticeable due to the brilliant yellow of its sails. Mr. du Pont’s generosity was both a boon and a curse, and since she could not obscure the color of the sails, Clara needed to disguise herself to avoid discovery.