Getting ready for church is always a big deal. We have to get up extra early so that we all look as pressed and perfect as possible. My dad and I have to wear a suit and tie and my mother is either in a dress or skirt-blouse-blazer combo. We look like a Greek political family about to do a press conference.
My mother enters my room. We still haven’t spoken about what she did to my artwork. Apparently she said all she needed to. I feel nauseous and angry. “Let me take a look at you. Still haven’t picked a tie?”
“This one.” I hold up a navy tie with a graphic print of small turquoise flowers outlined in white.
“No. Here.” She reaches into my top dresser drawer and pulls out a politician’s tie. Stripes. Navy, Greek-flag blue, and white. “This is more appropriate.”
She comes over to me, raises my shirt collar, and starts to knot the press-conference tie around my neck. “Your father and I are happy to hear you worked yesterday.” Working is the only thing that can get me out of church and other activities deemed worthy of my time. Being lazy is just as evil as being ungodly.
“But you didn’t get enough time with Gaige, did you?”
My mind is reeling. What’s going on?
She stands back and admires her handiwork. “Looks nice.” And then: “Good clothes hide a lot of ugly.” She pats my head and then runs a single finger down the bridge of my nose and stops right at the tip. “Did you see your friend Gaige?” She then puts her hands in mine, starts to hum, and leads me in a slow dance. She’s smiling. I follow her lead but am completely confused. We’re dancing around my room, she’s still humming, and my head is throbbing. “You can pass for handsome if you try.”
“Well, look at you two. Smiling, dancing, and looking good.” My father enters. My mother releases my hands and twirls to show off her outfit and newly fluffed hair. “Very nice, Vee.”
I can barely hear what he’s saying because I’m so focused on trying to figure out what she knows.
My dad says, “You look very handsome, young man.”
“That suit helps. Give us a minute, Eli.” She smiles at him and he walks out.
She takes my hands again and this time slows down until we’re cheek to cheek. “Did you miss your boyfriend? The one you seduced?” My hands instantly go cold. The tone in her voice doesn’t change. “I showed your diary to the pastor and he told me what was in it.” She pulls back and looks at me with cold, hard eyes.
“When did you? How?” My throat tightens.
“You’re not the only one who can be sneaky. You forget that thing at home sometimes. I need to know what you’re doing behind my back.”
“It’s not what you— Nothing happened.”
“It’s my fault. I assumed that Bible camp would be a place to be with people are are right. Good. But evil can be anywhere. It’s always in you, so it doesn’t matter where I put you.” She sits on the edge of my bed and gently adjusts her hair with her left hand.
“Mom, it was nothing.”
She’s not looking at me. Her voice is steady. “I’m not sure what to do. I mean, clearly Gaige is not a boy who is of God, and you will never see him again, but I don’t know.”
“About?”
She lifts her head. “You.” She exhales slightly, gets up, and stands in front of me. With her high heels we’re almost closer to being eye to eye. She places a palm on each of my shoulders. “Pastor Kiriaditis said that it’s probably a phase. He wants to talk to you after service.” She flicks imaginary dust off my shoulder. “Like it will just—poof—go away.”
“It was a mistake. I’ll talk with him. We can pray,” I offer desperately.
What else did the pastor tell her? Did he read everything? It had to have been the last journal. The others were buried. Damn it, Evan. Remember what else was in there.
She cradles my face with her hands. “Let’s go to church. You look very handsome.” With that she turns around and exits. I stand there waiting, terrified.
My dad walks in. “Sleep okay?”
Still stunned. “Sure.”
“What’s wrong? You’re white as a wall. Sick?”
“Just my stomach.”
“Probably something you ate at the pool party. We’ll be down in the car.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket. Nothing. Not a single text. No Gaige. Most of all, no Henry.
Sitting in church I think of all the other kids my age who come here. I only see them when we’re at service. I wonder, are any of them gay? At least one.
Phase. Pastor Kiriaditis called it a phase. Gay. Will I ever be able to hear the word without the stigma?
Without shame?
My mother’s nails dig into my left leg. She leans in to me, smiling and scanning the room to make sure no one is watching. “Stop daydreaming.” She catches someone’s eye and smiles bigger and waves. “Don’t embarrass me.” She grabs a hymnal, motions for me to do so as well, and then we all stand. We start to sing. I roll my eyes covertly. She sings louder.
Objectively, my mother is tone deaf. So am I, but I know it. She thinks she has a beautiful singing voice. Listening to her sing is one thing, but watching her sing is a thing to behold. Like her favorite singer, Céline Dion, she sings with abandon, with closed eyes and lots of head swaying. I glance over and catch my dad’s eye. He sees me, smiles, and puts his right index finger to his lips.
Once service is over, everyone starts buzzing about, and my mother turns into the most social person here.
I tell her, “I’m going to see Pastor Kiriaditis.”
She nods. “Good.”
“I’ll meet you back up here once I’m done.”
I knock on the door to the pastor’s office.
“Come in. Sit down,” he says from his plain wooden desk. For a church that can be big on dramatics, the décor is surprisingly sparse. It’s one of the things I miss about the Greek Orthodox Church—the pomp, the circumstance, the over-the-top interiors and all the showmanship.
We look at each other, and even though I’m pissed and all I want to do is silently brood, of course I have to fill the silence. “Everything okay, Pastor?”
“I’m not sure where to begin, Evan.”
“I heard you read my journal.” All of a sudden, in this room, I don’t care what he thinks anymore. Let him know the truth—all of it.
“She told you?”
“This morning.” My voice is firm.
“Your mother asked me to look. I didn’t think it was right, but then she said she was worried about you. Worried that you are troubled and that you may try to hurt yourself, so . . .”
“I wasn’t going to hurt myself, Pastor. It was her way of getting you to read it.”
“I realize that now.” He seems uncomfortable.
“You told her about what happened with Gaige?”
He nods. “I told her you needed prayer, like most boys your age, and that you are probably conflicted about your sexuality.”
“What else?”
He goes silent.
“Pastor?”
“That’s all. I said everything else in there was about school. Your future. Things like that.”
“Did she ask about anything else?”
“She saw the drawings of her. The one where she’s standing over you.”
He looks conflicted, but not because he doesn’t know what to say but more like he doesn’t know what to do. “She wanted to know if there was anything in there about her. About your relationship. I told her that there wasn’t anything specific.” He looks right at me when he says, “It was more general. Things most kids feel about their parents.”
He lied to her. There’s nothing general in the journals. Maybe he’s more astute than I’m giving him credit for.
“Did she confess to anything?”
“There’s a trust between a pastor and his—”
“You read my journal. She took it from my room. Where’s that trust with me?”
He exhales. “She said that she may be hard on you sometimes but that it’s only because she wants you to be a good son. A godly man.” He stops for a few seconds, then adds softly, “Not a homosexual.”
I can feel myself getting angry.
“Evan, I told your mother—and, I believe, the Bible tells us—that homosexuality is a sin.”
“The prayers didn’t change anything.”
“You have to continue to pray and look to God for answers and strength.”
I rub my palms on each pant leg in an attempt to dry them. Between feeling nervous, then mad, then confused, my body has decided to respond with lots of sweat. “She didn’t tell you anything else? Did she tell you what our relationship is like? Between me and her?”
“When sin is involved sometimes harsh measures are needed, and dedicated action is proper.” His words come out flat.
I can feel myself getting angrier with every sentence. “Pastor. With all due respect, I don’t think you understand.” My phone is vibrating in my jacket pocket.
“Maybe a family conversation. All of us in the same room with the word of God.” He drops his head a bit. I stare at him. My phone keeps vibrating. Fuck.
He looks down at his hands and says earnestly, “Evan, God can help you.”
“Where’s he been, then?”
He raises his head and looks at me. “He’s always here. We’re the ones who turn our backs.”
“I’ve done almost everything right. Almost always.” My voice is cracking. My phone vibrates again. I start to cry but quickly pull myself together. “Where is God when she beats me?” And then I start crying again. “You read that, right? I know you read that.”
His eyes well up slightly as he says, “She wants you to be your best self in God. She believes you tried to lure another boy at camp.”
“I didn’t lure, seduce, or do anything to anyone. It was a kiss. Just a kiss.” I’m sobbing now, my voice cracking. “And you told her about it. You didn’t have to. You didn’t . . .” I stop because the tears take over and my voice gives out.
“That’s a sin. She has a right to be worried and to—”
“You read what she thinks is best for me. It’s just one notebook. There are others. Filled. Filled with what she’s done.”
He looks at me for a second with the face of a man who actually might understand. A man who can talk about this beyond what he has been taught by his church to say. Then that second is gone and he says, “We can all pray about this together. There’s healing in that.”
“She’s been getting away with this since I was five.”
His voice gets a little shaky. “Evan, we can figure out how to handle this. I believe we all want the same thing. The best for you. The best that God can offer. We can all talk about this.”
“Okay.” I attempt to pull myself together even though the level of anger I’m feeling accelerates my breathing. “I know how to do this. I do this all the time. Actually, this is what I do. I make everything okay. I make it all normal when it’s not at all.” I take longer, slower breaths.
“Prayer can be very powerful.”
“I’m going to be eighteen in less than two months. I can handle it.”
The pastor sighs. “That isn’t the right approach.”
Now I’m back to mad. “No. This”—I gesture with my hand around the room—“isn’t the right approach. You and this church are not the right approach. Even when you’re faced with the truth—when it’s right there in front of you in black and white—you pretend it’s something else. And I’m not doing that anymore.”
And I walk out.