Straightened

by Alana Terry

  Kennedy looked at the painting of Moses parting the Red Sea. Last year, the scene had been pretty typical, something you might have found in a children’s Bible storybook if it weren’t for all the colorful tropical fish that were twice the size of Moses’ head swimming around the waves. But now, instead of an old man with a beard, Moses was a rock guitarist on roller skates, holding up a large microphone instead of a staff.

  “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Nick sounded so proud, Kennedy didn’t have the heart to reply.

  “So my uncle got a new member for the Babylon Eunuchs,” Nick was saying once the van was running and they were all buckled in their seats. “They added a saxophone. Hear him in the background?” He turned up the volume on the stereo, and Kennedy tried not to wince at the music. If you could even call it that. The saxophonist seemed to be the only band member with talent, but his impressive riffs and licks just made the other musicians sound even more like amateurs.

  Not that it took much.

  “So, crazy day, eh?” Nick asked.

  Noah shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “You patch things up with your dad? I kind of thought you’d be at the Lindgrens’ for a while.”

  Another shrug. In the background, the leader of the Babylon Eunuchs cawed on about peace flooding his soul, setting him free. Free from what? Kennedy wondered. The lyrics were so vague, the band could have been droning on about a junior-high romance if it weren’t for an occasional reference to the Holy Spirit.

  It wasn’t any of her business what was going on with Noah, but still she was curious. Had his dad just found out he was gay? Is that what caused the big blow-up at Carl and Sandy’s? Kennedy had been sheltered enough she didn’t know much about the gay lifestyle until she got to Harvard, and there it was plastered all over the place. Her roommate Willow argued that everybody was bisexual, with some people on one end of the spectrum where they were mainly attracted to men, some on the other attracted to women, and everyone else in a happy sort of middle ground where they could swing either way. But there were so many questions. She knew her dad lamented about gay-friendly churches, but she had never actually known a gay Christian. What did that make Noah? Was he gay or was he Christian? Or could he be both?

  There was something else even more puzzling. Noah said God had made him that way. He hadn’t chosen to be like that. It went against everything she read about in her dad’s conservative political magazines or those family-values blogs he sometimes sent her links to. The writers there all made it sound like homosexuals were some sort of deviant cultural subset that “traded in” the heterosexual lifestyle for an alternative one. But what did that mean for people like Noah? Had he somehow “traded in” his straightness to become gay? And what did he actually mean by gay? Did that mean Noah was in a relationship with another boy? How serious of a relationship did it have to be to be considered gay? Or did being gay come first? Were you gay as soon as you started experiencing same-sex attractions?

  Kennedy had crushes before. She didn’t remember choosing any of them. The fact that she was committed to a life of sexual purity before marriage didn’t mean she didn’t like the idea of being kissed. Of being held. It wasn’t wrong for her to picture that happening to her one day, was it? Where was the line drawn between normal biology and sinful lust? And was that line different for people who were attracted to members of the same sex?

  She didn’t know which was giving her more of a headache: these weighty theological questions that never seemed to arrive at any logical conclusion, the disorientation she felt at being wide awake an hour before midnight, or the terrible music spewing out of Nick’s stereo.

  The Abernathys lived in a house in Weston that would have made Baptista’s mansion in The Taming of the Shrew look like a makeshift shanty. By the time Nick got them into their gated community and then past the security gate surrounding the family estate, the Babylon Eunuchs’ instrumentals mercifully faded away as the last song ended. Kennedy hoped Nick wouldn’t notice and start the whole half an hour of drivel all over again.

  “You sure everything’s all right?” Nick asked, and Kennedy wondered why he would drop Noah off here if he wasn’t sure he’d be safe. Was Wayne the kind of dad who’d beat his kid for coming out of the closet? Kennedy couldn’t tell. Wayne was a mystery, always presenting whatever side the public would find most endearing, but somehow managing to come across as the most genuine and sincere politician you could expect to meet. He’d dropped out of the state governor race last fall after his daughter was kidnapped. He said his family needed him, and he had determined to make them his priority. He and his wife Vivian had adopted their young nephew, Charlie, and were raising him as their own. By all appearances, they were a caring, close-knit family. But of course appearances could deceive, especially when you were talking about someone who could manipulate public opinion as well as Wayne.

  Noah thanked Nick for the ride. “I’ll shut the gate once you’re out.” He hopped out of the bus after the last of the security checkpoints. Kennedy wondered if Julius Caesar had been any more protected than the Abernathys.

  “You sure you’re doing all right? Kennedy and I don’t have anywhere else to be. We can just drive around and talk if you want to.”

  “I’m fine. It’s ok.” There was something soft in Noah’s smile that reminded Kennedy of his little sister Jodie.

  “You need something, you text me. Got that?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He shut the door to the bus, but Nick rolled the window down right away. “Hey.”

  Noah turned around. “Yeah?”

  “You stay safe. Got it?” There was something heavy in Nick’s tone. Something more serious than Kennedy was used to hearing from the youth pastor with his outlandish dreadlocks and crazy shirts.

  Noah gave one more nod and a tired half-smile. “Yeah, ok. I will.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Nick invited Kennedy up to the passenger seat once they pulled out of the Abernathys’ fortress. She figured if she didn’t get him talking soon, he’d be tempted to fill the silence with more from the Babylon Eunuchs, so she jumped up front and buckled quickly.

  “You ever been in their house before?” he asked, giving the Abernathys’ mansion one last glance in his rear-view mirror.

  Kennedy shook her head.

  “I went with the Lindgrens to a Christmas party there a couple years ago. Nice place.”

  Part of Kennedy wished he’d say more. Wished he’d tell her a little bit of Noah’s story, even though she knew it was none of her business. Her dad would chide her if he knew what she was thinking. Her whole life she’d grown up hearing his adages. Don’t judge someone just because they sin differently than you. Don’t judge someone who fails a test you yourself have yet to pass. Don’t judge someone until you’ve crawled into his skin and walked around a little bit. He stole that last one from the novelist Harper Lee, but it was probably Kennedy’s favorite quote of them all.

  “So.” Nick drummed a little beat on the bus’s steering wheel, while on the dashboard his Peter, James, and John bobble heads bounced around with enormous smiles painted on their caricatured faces. “You tired? You want me to take you back to the Lindgrens’ to get some sleep?”

  “It’s not too bad.” She couldn’t sleep now even if the fairies from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream were singing her lullabies. She glanced at the Frisbees strewn across the floor of the bus, along with some crushed water bottles and empty Gatorade containers. “But you’ve had a long night. I don’t want to keep you up.”

  Nick waved his hand. “Don’t worry about me. I had two energy drinks before youth group started. I’m in the same boat as you. Won’t be getting to sleep for another two or three hours at least.”

  Neither one spoke. Kennedy stared out the window at the ornate lamps lining the Newton streets. What would it be like to live out here? The Abernathys’ home was modest compared to a few of the other estates they passed. She thought about Woong, wondered
what his life had been like living on the streets before he ended up at that South Korean orphanage. How was it that some people could live in such superfluous luxury while half the world’s children were starving or malnourished? How could they be so calloused? So cruel to shut their ears to the cries of the needy?

  Then again, it wasn’t as if her own family was living in a hovel in Yanji. They owned a big home in an upscale expat neighborhood and more often than not had at least a few live-in housekeepers, gardeners, and security workers. She didn’t have to work a campus job to buy her textbooks. Thanks to an inheritance from her grandmother, she wouldn’t even need to take out student loans until med school. When she went hungry at Harvard, it was because she hadn’t taken the time to eat, not because she was too poor to buy food or because the rains had failed to produce a crop. Maybe she was more privileged than she cared to admit.

  When they left the gated community, Nick turned on a new CD.

  “Is this Potter’s Clay?” Kennedy asked. “I haven’t heard them since junior high.”

  “I’m impressed. I don’t find many people around today who know Potter’s Clay.”

  “I’m a little surprised anybody still listens to them anymore.”

  Nick chuckled. “Don’t be dissing on Potter’s now. Not unless you want me to turn this bus around and drive you straight home.”

  Kennedy smiled and tried to remember the last time she and Nick had done anything alone together. Probably that one night last winter when they’d gone out for clam chowder at the little walk-up restaurant stand in Harvard Square.

  “You hungry?” Nick’s dreadlocks whipped around slightly as he turned toward her for a quick glance. “We could stop somewhere if you want.”

  “That sounds nice.” What else was she supposed to do when her body was already awake for the day? She’d have to try to make it another twenty hours before she went to sleep again. Then maybe she could get herself back on East Coast schedule before she started her classes.

  “I know this neat little bakery in Harvard Square. It’s a drive, but it’s not like we’ll be fighting traffic. What do you say?”

  There was only one bakery Kennedy knew of near campus that stayed open this late. “Are you talking about L’Aroma? My roommate goes there all the time.”

  “No kidding? It’s a great little shop. So you up for it?”

  Kennedy had been hooked at the word bakery. Her mouth watered as readily as Pavlov’s pack of lab dogs’. “Sure. That sounds great.”

  They drove along in comfortable silence. Kennedy wondered what Reuben was doing right about now. It was morning in Kenya.

  Lucky him.

  She had spent a lot of time over the summer talking to both God and her mom about her relationship with Reuben. Of course, as soon as her mom heard about his diagnosis, she was against anything that even hinted at romance developing between them. She tried to be sympathetic, but Kennedy knew she was relieved that he wasn’t coming back to campus in the fall.

  It didn’t make sense. People could be together with HIV. It wasn’t the death sentence it had been a decade or two ago. Reuben was getting good medical care at Nairobi Hospital, and there were ways for patients to keep their loved ones from getting the virus themselves.

  It could have worked out. That’s what made the whole situation so depressing. It wasn’t as if it were a breakup, because they had never actually been dating, but that almost made it worse. When you broke up with somebody, you could at least tell yourself you’d tried and it hadn’t worked out. Why would you want to be with someone who didn’t want to be with you? But Kennedy didn’t have any of those nice platitudes to fall back on. She hadn’t chosen to say good-bye to Reuben at the end of last semester. Would she even see him again? She still couldn’t pinpoint exactly where home was for her, but Kenya was a long way off no matter how you looked at it.

  “I think I’m mostly a night owl. What about you?” Sometimes Nick’s thoughts materialized out of a vacuum. She didn’t know if it was some sort of social awkwardness or just the result of him being so comfortable with his own personal musings.

  “I stay up late when I’m studying,” she replied, “but if there’s nothing else going on I guess I’m more of a morning person. Except when I’m jetlagged.”

  “What time is it over at your parents’?”

  “Right around noon.”

  Nick let out a low whistle. “That’s got to be crazy to adjust to.”

  “Yeah, it’s actually easier going from here to there for some reason. Coming back to the States has always felt harder.”

  “So what exactly is it your parents do in China?” Nick asked.

  Kennedy was glad to have some trivial chitchat to offer. It beat moping in the bus, pining away for Reuben, while the apostles’ heads bobbled up and down with their mocking grins. “They work along the North Korean border. Take in refugees. A year ago they had a whole group of them. Gave them training and then sent them back to North Korea as underground missionaries.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “Yeah. One of the girls came back home. Back to my parents’, I mean. She’d been captured. Tortured pretty bad, I think.”

  “That’s pretty intense. What about your parents? Do they ever get in trouble or anything?”

  “The police stop by. They’re at least under suspicion at this point. That’s why they haven’t taken in any new refugees lately. They’ve started to move more toward brothel rescues there in Yanji, which is less likely to get them in trouble with the law. Except now it’s the pimps and stuff they’ve got to worry about.”

  “Sound like they’re amazing believers.”

  Kennedy had never really thought about her parents in those terms. Amazing? Maybe. If you were to look at their ministry, at least. But she had the feeling that if Nick saw her parents’ day-to-day lives, he might not be so impressed. Her dad spent fifty or sixty hours a week at his printing business, his legal front for living in China. Her mom had gotten so addicted to this TV medical drama she’d made Kennedy buy her a fourteen-disc DVD set in the States to bring to Yanji over the summer. Her parents argued and bickered all the time, and her mom was now menopausal and let everyone and everything within a mile radius know about it.

  Probably not the picture Nick had when he called them such amazing believers.

  He pulled the bus into the L’Aroma Bakery parking lot. There were a few other customers there, but it was quiet inside. They ordered at the counter and took their food and drinks to a table in the back.

  “I wonder how Noah’s doing.” Nick took out his cell phone. “No messages yet. I guess that’s a good sign.”

  “Are you two pretty close?”

  Nick took a bite of his egg and veggie burrito. “Sort of,” he said with his mouth full. “We got to talking a lot over the summer. That’s when all this stuff started coming out.”

  Kennedy tried to guess if he was making a pun as she took a sip from her hot chocolate, careful to keep her nose out of the whipped cream.

  “Today was the first time he told his dad. We had talked about it before then, but he never felt quite ready. I told him I’d go with him, and as far as I knew, that’s what the plan was. I don’t know why it all happened today. I wonder how Mr. Abernathy took it.”

  “I was there when he and Noah were talking with Carl. He was pretty upset.”

  Nick wiped his mouth on a napkin. “I’m not surprised. Senator Abernathy’s been the most conservative member of the state house when it comes to gay rights and these so-called family values.”

  There was something mocking in the way he said the phrase. She wasn’t sure how to read him.

  He laughed mirthlessly. “Not gonna look too good to all his constituents when it comes out that Mr. Homophobe himself has a son who’s gay.” He shook his head, and the tip of one dreadlock nearly landed in his salsa.

  Kennedy figured she’d probably come across sounding like a child, but Nick dealt with kids for a living. Maybe he wou
ldn’t mind. “I have a question.” She paused, wondering how to best word it. “When you say Noah’s gay, what exactly do you mean?”

  Nick’s eyes widened, and Kennedy imagined him trying to figure out how to explain the intricacies of male homosexual intimacy to a nineteen-year-old college virgin.

  She hurried on to explain better. “I mean, I wasn’t trying to overhear, but they were talking all over the place, and it was getting pretty loud, and Noah said he hadn’t ever ... He told his dad he wasn’t ... He’s never ...”

  “Actually had sex with a man?” Nick finished for her, and Kennedy’s face warmed to the temperature of her cocoa.

  She nodded, keeping her eyes on the shavings of nutmeg on top of her whipped cream.

  “That’s a really good question.”

  She let out her breath. Why did these talks always have to be so awkward? Her dad forced her into conversations about so many weird, random topics, like how to file a sexual harassment complaint or how to react if she thought a date spiked her drink. But then there were other subjects they never broached at all.

  Like whether or not a Christian boy who’s never slept with anybody could be gay.

  Nick took a noisy gulp of his herbal tea. “So, there’s some people who say that you’re not gay until you’ve actually had gay sex. That’s probably where the confusion comes in.”

  Kennedy was glad L’Aroma wasn’t very crowded. She didn’t think this was the kind of conversation she’d like to have with a dozen other diners listening in.

  “But then again, if you were to ask me if I’m gay or straight, it’s not like I need to have slept with a woman to know that I’m straight, right?”

  “I guess so.” In the back of Kennedy’s mind, she was wondering if listening to the Babylon Eunuchs would be more pleasant than this.

  “So it all boils down to identity. And that’s kind of a loaded word, because the way we’ve been throwing it around makes it sound kind of like it’s this big choice, right? Like today I identify as a white male. Well, there’s more to it than that, and that’s where we get someone like Noah Abernathy. It’s not like he woke up one day and said to himself, Gee, I could use some extra attention. Guess I’ll say that I’m gay. In fact, he went years hiding it from everyone. You just look at his father, and you’ll know why. This is the same guy who championed that photographer who refused to shoot photos at a lesbian wedding. The family-values set made her into this huge martyr when she got sued, said it’s her right to refuse to participate in a supposedly sinful ceremony, but did you see her boycotting weddings of adulterers? Did she boycott weddings where the bride and groom had been living together years before they finally made their commitment legal? No. So you get all these people like Senator Abernathy talking about family values and lamenting this so-called gay agenda, and so of course his son’s gonna try to hide the fact that he’s attracted to other boys.”