Chapter 11: A tutorial on how NOT to come out.
That night before our senior year in high school at the Ohio State Fair that started out so magical ended up totally FUBAR.
We stop for milkshakes at a highway diner not long after we leave the park, giggling and swapping bites of our shakes and playing footsies under the table until we lose track of time, the way sappy teenagers in love do. I drop her off at her house close to one in the morning, an hour past her curfew. We think we’re being sneaky and quiet and there are no lights on in the house, but unbeknownst to us, Jenny’s mother’s waiting for her in the living room, peering at us through curtains we think are closed.
Which is how we get caught a minute later, making out inside a soft yellow cone of porch light.
Jenny’s hands are halfway up my shirt, and she’s literally sending fucking moans down my throat when the front door flings open. And all the sudden, there’s Mrs. Pearson in the doorway, standing there in a blue nighty, eyebrows nearly meeting her hairline, mouth hanging open as wild eyes dart from Jenny, to me, to Jenny again.
“Jennifer Anne Pearson!” she bellows as a startled Jenny breaks away from me. “Inside! Now!” And she yanks her daughter roughly away from me by the arm and slams the door in my face.
I freeze, panicked. Total fucking deer in headlights. I want to help Jenny, but I know bursting in isn’t the right thing to do, and I don’t have any other ideas, so I just stand there stupidly on the front porch for a while, listening to the shouting match that’s unfolding inside. After a couple minute, I realize there’s nothing I can do, so I tuck my tail between my legs and go home, hoping but not really expecting that my own parents will have long since gone to bed.
They haven’t, of course; they don’t usually even get home from closing the restaurant until close to midnight, which means they’re sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, watching television on the couch when I try to tiptoe past them through the kitchen and down the stairs.
Like my mother would ever be fooled by that.
“You’re late,” she says just as the door to the basement squeaks open.
“Sorry,” I say. “Bad traffic on the way home.”
She turns around to face me, clicks the tongue against the roof of her mouth with unadulterated disdain. “I know you’re not late and lying about it to me, too,” she says.
I drop my eyes, rubbing my thumb over the same fingertips that had reached inside my girlfriend a few hours earlier. I know it’s only my paranoid imagination, and shit, it’s not like I didn’t wash my hands when we stopped for milkshakes, but I feel like my mom can fucking smell Jenny on my fingers all the way from where she sits.
“Sorry, Momma. We just left Columbus too late. Lost track of time.”
“Wrong answer.” She gets up from her place on the couch, walks towards me with arms crossed against her chest. My father follows her, and his face is stony.
That’s when I know I’m really in trouble.
“Mrs. Pearson called a few minutes ago.”
Aww, shit.
Then my mother, who I’ve known for eighteen fucking years and yet I’ve only seen her cry once, when her own mother died, starts to get tears in her eyes. “She told us what you and the Pearson girl were doing.”
“Momma, I — ”
“How could you, Ani?” she asks me through tears. My father’s lips press tightly together, and he puts a comforting arm around my mother’s shoulders. “We raised you to be Christian,” she says. “Christian! Your relations with that girl are not acceptable to us.”
“But Momma, she’s my girlfriend! She’s been my girlfriend for — ”
“Do not say that again under my roof again, young lady.”
“I love her,” I say quietly.
“You do not love her. That is disgusting, and unnatural, and you will — ”
“But she’s my soulmate! She’s my girlfriend and I’m in love with her and she — ”
“Anika Regina Singh!” she shouts, and she’s crying in earnest now. “I did not bring you up to raise your voice to your mother!”
I try lowering my voice, and it’s trembling with tears of my own. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I want you to understand — ”
“You are not to see her,” she says, talking over me. “You are not to call her. You are not to text her. You are not to talk to her in school. Mrs. Pearson, your father, and I already discussed this and — ”
“You can’t stop me from seeing her!”
“I can and I will!” Her hand snakes out, and at first, I think she’s going to slap me. I flinch instinctively, but she simply opens her hand before me. “Give me the keys to the car.”
“But I — ”
“Give me the keys!”
I drop the keys to the Explorer in her open palm.
“You are grounded until school starts. And once school starts, you’ll go straight to Soul Mountain every day after school and stay there until Dutch, your father, or I can take you home.”
“This isn’t fair,” I say, and I’m crying as hard as she is.
“You’re acting against God. All I’m trying to do — ” Her voice catches in her throat as she stifles a sob. “All I’m trying to do is protect your soul.”
#
I follow my mother’s orders. I move through life as a ghost. I don’t see Jenny, don’t call her, don’t text her. My mom’s checking my phone log every day, and I’m sure Jenny’s mom is doing the same, so there’s nothing for me to do but play basketball incessantly at the court near her neighborhood and hope for her to come by. She doesn’t.
School starts, and I find that Jenny has transferred to another trigonometry class. That first day after school at Soul Mountain, I take continuous breaks to go into the bathroom and cry.
Dutch is working that day, too, and she volunteers to drive me home when our parents let us go home early after the dinner rush.
I’m not in the mood to talk on the way home, and I try to make it as obvious as fucking possible, but Dutch has never been one to take a hint.
“So,” she says, “you finally opened your closet door. Hallelujah.”
I glance over at her, confused, and look back down at my lap.
“I’ve known you were gay since you were about twelve,” she continues. “Came into our room to find you reading one of my magazines, and the way you tried to hide what you were looking at…” She chuckles, shaking her head at the memory.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Dutch.”
“At first I thought, ‘Is she actually interested in makeup now and she’s just afraid to tell me?’ But that didn’t seem right, so I — ”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Will you shut up and let me finish? I’m on your side here and I’m trying to tell a story.”
Her pronouncement — that she’s on my side — shocks me into silence. Because when in our entire lives has Dutch ever claimed to be on my side?
“Anywho, I saw the actress who was on the cover — that girl in all those weird-ass science fiction movies you liked so much — and it just sorta clicked.” She glances over at me, then back to the road. “Why you were reading the magazine. Why you looked so embarrassed when I came in. Why you tried to hide it.” She shrugs. “So yeah, I’ve known for a long time. Maybe you’ll stop being so afraid to be who you are now.”
I look at my sister in sheer wonder. Did I actually just get encouragement from Dutch?
She reaches into the center console, fishes around until she pulls out her phone. Tosses it to me. “Here. We’ll swap phones. You use mine to call your little girlfriend, I’ll use yours. We can swap back afternoons at Soul Mountain.”
“You… you’re giving me your phone? So I can call Jenny?” I say, still dumbfounded.
“The words you’re looking for here are ‘Thank you, Dutch.’”
“Thank you, but… why are you being so nice to me? What do you want?”
She laughs out loud. “Is it so hard to believe I’d want to see you happy, Ani? Really?”
“A little, yeah.”
She holds out her palm, and it reminds me of Mom demanding the car keys. “Then give me my phone back, if you’re going to be a little shit about it.”
I put a phone in her hand, but it’s mine, not hers. Then I grin. “You can have this one.”