He was pissed. Don’t say that, he said. You can still go home. That’s not nothing. You can still fucking go home.
Shawn wanted me to bring him here, to show him the places that made me and undid me, the hills and trees and dirt. What would people have said? Would they have guessed we were boyfriends? I grew up not knowing a single gay person. I also didn’t know anyone who wasn’t white. I tried to explain this to Shawn, but he wasn’t afraid. “What are they gonna do?” he asked. “Stare? Talk shit? Kill me? Well, I’m still not gonna hide.”
What would it have been like, him and me in the woods? We’d fuck under the branches of a sweetgum, yellow stars falling around us. I’d make him a crown of bittersweet. His strong hands holding me down, his hot mouth on mine. All of it, happening out here, in the dirt and leaves of the place I tried so hard to escape.
July 19, 1986
Hello.
Just me at home. On a beautiful, sunny, hot as hell afternoon.
My parents and Jess went swimming. Without me. Weren’t even going to tell me. But I saw my mother getting things together. Towels, a cooler. She told me it was a church thing. Then Jess went out the door, saying she was riding her bike and would see them there.
My father came downstairs wearing swim trunks, his legs pale and hairy. He looked at me, then at my mother. Asked if she was ready.
My mother told me I should go over to Mamaw’s to keep her company. Trying to appease me. She offered to drop me off at Mamaw’s house, but I asked her just to leave me her car.
I said, I could meet you there. I think I have a pair of swim trunks.
My mother was still. My father folded his arms over his chest.
He says, That’s not a good idea.
I asked why not.
You’re not feeling well, he says, a little too loudly.
My father, master of understatement. I wanted him to say it, but he never will. He grabbed the cooler and his car keys, and told my mother he’d be outside.
Dad, I called for him.
I didn’t think he’d turn around, but he did. His eyes were hard, his face clenched. My father has not been able to look at me since I came home. He has not touched me. He can barely be in the same room as me. I wanted him to fucking apologize. My heart was beating like crazy.
You can’t get it like that, I said.
Nothing. He just turned and went out the door. I stood at the window, like Sadie, like a dog, and watched him load the cooler in the back of his pickup—the one that runs—and my mother came up behind me and patted me on the shoulder.
She said she’d stay home with me. She started to make an excuse for him, but I cut her off. Just go, I told her. Go!
I thought I heard a sob, but I didn’t turn around.
A few months ago, I sat staring at the Hudson. I didn’t kill myself because I wanted to come back home. Now here I am. In my old room, me and my stupid baseball glove, all these trophies. Look—I’m shaking. With anger or fear, I don’t know. I’m not a goddamn ghost. Not yet, anyway.
Jess
My mother wanted us to go as a family, to show the church we’re still a part of things. I probably wouldn’t have gone, but then Carrie Driggs, who is fighting with Molly, called and asked me to go, and it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve hung out with anyone except Nick.
We ride our bikes—I refuse to go with my parents—and set up our towels away from the church members. The pool is open to the public, but our church has taken over one side—balloons tied to the backs of pool chairs, and dishes of fattening food spread across two picnic tables.
“So embarrassing,” Carrie says, reading my mind.
It’s weird seeing my parents here. My father talks to Reverend Clay under the shade of an umbrella, wearing dad-style Bermuda-print swim trunks—mortifying. My mother, in sunglasses and a floral blue one-piece, wades into the shallow end. My aunts and uncles are here too, and a few of my cousins. Mamaw made an excuse about cleaning up around her house, but I think she just wants to stay with Brian, who wasn’t invited.
Everyone in the family knows about him now. My mother tried to have a talk with me about it. “I already knew,” I snapped, and then I felt bad because she looked like she was going to burst into tears. “We’re going to keep this in the family,” she said. “It’s going to be okay.” My parents wanted us to come to this church pool party so that we’ll look like a normal family. A family of three.
The heat wave has brought out a huge crowd. Kids swarm the concession stand and call out Marco Polo from the water, and long lines form at the diving boards. A few elderly women in ruffled swimsuits dip their pasty legs in the shallow end. I keep an eye out for Josh Clay, but don’t see him. Carrie said she heard his wife is pregnant. Every day I hope he’s miraculously forgotten what I told him.
Carrie turns the pages of Seventeen and checks out boys, and looks around for other girls she’d rather be hanging out with—I’m not her first choice. Sweat dampens my back, trickles down the sides of my face. It’s 101 degrees, with high humidity. I sip my perspiring Diet Sprite, already warm, and tell Carrie I’m getting in.
“Whatever,” she says, bored.
I slip in at the six feet marker, where a rope of floating giant blue beads separates the shallow from the deep end, and as soon as my body touches the water, the worry about my family melts away. I forgot how perfect this feels—underwater, I’m quick and slippery, but still too human. I wish I was a whale. My body shifts and turns and moves along with the water, not fighting it. Brian used to tell me that: Don’t fight it, kiddo, just go with it. I dive down and open my eyes underwater—I’ve always been able to—and strangers’ feet and legs kick and pedal around me. I hold my breath and sway in the silence as long as I can, and when I come up through the surface, the noise explodes around me. All I want is to go back down to the bottom.
Then a pair of wet hands cover my eyes. A voice, close to my ear. “Guess who?”
The hands lift. I blink a couple of times in the sunlight and turn, but I already know.
“Surprise,” Josh Clay says, laughing. “Did I scare you?”
“I knew it was you.”
He holds onto the wall with one hand as he bobs in the water just a few inches from me, showing off his bare chest and arms, the cut muscle.
“Race you to the other side,” he says.
Josh doesn’t put his face in, and his hands spastically stab the water. I give him a little bit of a head start, then easily glide by. Swimming is a different feeling than running—no struggle, no fighting for breath. But, like running, swimming makes me feel more awake and inside myself. I reach the other side, far ahead of Josh, and wait for him. He stops at the wall, sputtering, sucking air.
“Dang, you’re good,” he says, and spits water from his mouth back into the pool.
“I used to take lessons.” I don’t add that it was my brother who taught me.
Josh shakes water from his face like a dog and doesn’t let go of the wall. I’m bicycle pedaling my legs, treading easily. All around us, people swim and play, and two kids throw a Nerf ball. Josh’s breathing slows to normal. The water laps between us. Maybe things will be okay.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he says. “I’ve missed you.”
Bristles of his hair shine almost red in the bright sunlight. Delicate droplets of water stuck in his eyelashes. He’s not my priest, he never was, just like he was never my boyfriend. As we float next to each other, Josh rattles on about youth group. I promise I’ll come back, but he must know I’m lying.
Then Josh stops talking. His smooth brow wrinkles. Looking toward the other side of the pool, he raises his hand over his eyes like a sailor scanning for land.
“Jessie, is that your brother?”
My body suddenly feels heavy and immovable, I’m sinking. I don’t want to look, but I can’t not. I follow Josh’s gaze, past all the people in the pool, and I see him standing on the edge, around the four feet marker. It’s him all rig
ht. He strips off his T-shirt, and the lines of his ribs press up like twigs under his skin. His scrawny pale legs poke out from a pair of faded black swim trunks he’s had since high school, loose on his hips. He crouches down and dips his spindly old man legs in the water.
“He can’t get in,” Josh exclaims. He heaves himself over the edge, biceps and back flexing, before I can say anything.
I scan the crowd for my parents. My mother sits on a beach chair, flipping through Good Housekeeping, and my father stands on the lawn talking to Gus. They have no idea.
I dive under, darting around other swimmers, and when I come up, the world is hazy, blurry, fuzzy. Brian’s no longer there. It wasn’t him, I think—I hope.
Then I see him. He’s floating about six feet from me, looking up at the cloudless sky, oblivious. He lifted his hands under my back, teaching me how to float. I got you, he’d say. Just relax, enjoy it, I got you.
How much time has passed? Five minutes? Fifteen? A lifeguard, Greg Kennedy, a popular senior, heads in our direction, and behind him is Wanda Spellman, the pool manager, all angles and sharp lines. Wanda’s gray hair is short like a man’s, and her skin is leathery and orange, like a worn out basketball. She wears old-lady knit shorts and a baggy pink T-shirt that says TGIF with a cat blowing a party horn. I float over toward the wall, my face poking out of the water.
“You need to get out,” Wanda says. “Hey, you.”
It takes her calling a few more times before Brian hears her or realizes she’s talking to him. He holds his hand up over his eyes like a visor blocking the sun.
“You need to get out of the pool!”
I lift my head higher out of the water. A few people cluster behind Wanda, watching curiously. I find my father in the crowd. At first, he looks surprised, confused. And, then, a shadow crosses his face, like he’s resigned himself to this: he waves his hand, motioning to my brother. I think of Shamu—the trainer giving hand signals, everyone watching with bated breath, waiting for the miraculous leap toward the sky.
There is a moment when I think maybe everything will be okay—all Brian has to do is swim over, climb out of the pool, and be on his way. No one will even know. But he doesn’t do that. He’s no longer floating on his back, just treading water. He raises his hands up, palms up.
“Why should I?” he challenges.
“I know who you are,” Wanda says. “You can’t be in there, infecting the water.”
My father steps closer to the edge. He’s still got that look of resignation, and something else—sadness or fear.
“Let’s go, Brian,” he calls.
Past my father, I see my mother get up from the reclining chair, then she stops, frozen in place. I hide against the wall, my heart racing. The smell of chlorine stings my nose. More people are looking over. I want to sink to the bottom and never come up.
“Don’t you give me any trouble,” Wanda warns. “The police are on their way. I already called them, in case you wouldn’t leave.”
The police? Brian swims over and reaches for the ladder and climbs out one step at a time. His swim trunks, heavy with water, cling to his bony legs, and his little chest sucks in and out. Wanda takes a step back like she’s terrified he’s going to wipe his germs all over her. Josh stands with his arms folded over his chest, straight back, watching. No one notices as I pull myself up over the edge.
My father stands just behind Wanda, barefoot and no shirt on, his gray chest hair exposed, and looks like he doesn’t know if he should go to Brian or run the other way. But my mother has snapped to action—she rolls up the towels, and pulls a T-shirt and shorts over her swimsuit.
“You can’t do this,” Brian says.
“Just go,” Wanda says. “Don’t make trouble.”
My brother huffily grabs his things and wraps a towel around his waist like a skirt, Wanda watching him the whole time like he’s a criminal. More people are starting to gather around. My wet swimsuit sticks to me, and I feel the icky sensation of water dripping down my legs and between them, a small puddle blooming under me on the cement. I want to die.
As my brother walks in the direction of the exit, Wanda’s at his heels, herding him out. I join the crowd that follows, pretending I don’t know anything. My parents are ahead of me, walking quickly with their heads down, like movie stars ducking from the paparazzi.
Brian, wearing his towel-skirt, holds his head high. Everyone is watching, and as he passes by the concession stand, a crowd of senior boys start to laugh.
Brett Wilson, a pimple-faced, brawny football player who is always terrorizing freshmen, points at my brother. I get a horrible feeling. I’m watching it happen in slow motion.
“He’s got the AIDS!” Brett yells.
Silence. Then, laughter. High fives. Gross-out squeals, gasps, giggles.
Brandy White stands behind Brett, and she’s laughing too. The hate I feel is sudden and fierce. I hate all of them. Wanda Spellman and Brett Wilson and Brandy White. Josh Clay. My brother.
Brian heads toward the metal turnstile connected to the chain-link fence that leads into the parking lot, but stops when a patrol car pulls up, the red and blue lights swirling. Two cops get out—one my father’s age, the other one closer to Brian’s. Their faces are sweaty and pink, and they look tired.
Wanda lets them in a special side gate, next to the exit, and they approach my brother warily, don’t get too close. He unties the towel from his waist and drapes it around his shoulders like a cape. My parents stand behind him, both of them shaken, not knowing what to do. My mother’s face scrunches. She’s going to cry.
“We’re just leaving,” my father says, trying to smooth everything over.
It’s like Brian has just realized he’s not alone. He turns and looks around. There’s Uncle Wayne, Gus, cousin Matthew. Church members, and kids from school. Instead of trying to save face, instead of just leaving, he seems to gain confidence from the crowd.
Brian steps up to Wanda, and she takes two steps back. He’s wearing red Wayfarers. His gold earring catches the light.
“Brian,” my mother says.
He points his finger in Wanda’s face. His words are measured and controlled. “I will sue you for every last penny, you ignorant bitch.”
Wanda, stunned, sucks in her breath. Her eyes are wild. Speechless, furious, she waves her arms at the cops. “I want him arrested,” she says.
“I went for a swim,” Brian says. “Is that against the law?”
“He’s got the AIDS,” Wanda screeches.
The young cop looks at the older cop, like he’s waiting for an order. The older one, sweat trickling down his gray sideburns, his face long like it’s melted from the sun, looks at my father.
“Travis, just get him out of here.”
“He’s going,” my father says. “He’s going right now.”
He motions for Brian. My mother has already exited and she’s on the other side of the fence, her shoulders hunched, trying to hold back her sobs. They haven’t seen me. They’ve forgotten all about me. I’m standing next to a woman I don’t know, a couple of little kids. Invisible.
Brian walks through the revolving door, the towel still around him like a cape—a rejected, ruined superhero.
“Don’t you come back here,” Wanda calls in a mean, hateful voice.
As they cross the parking lot, I hear Wanda prattling on to one of the cops, asking if she should close the pool, call the mayor. On and on. Voices and laughter tangle around me, and I don’t know where to turn. My aunt Liz starts toward me, but I quickly head back to my towel.
“Your brother has AIDS?” Carrie moves back as if she’s nervous I’m going to breathe on her. “That’s disgusting.”
Without saying a word, I pull on my shorts and T-shirt, and step into my tennis shoes, tugging at the canvas with my fingers, squeezing my damp feet into them.
“I can’t believe you sat here,” Carrie accuses. She reaches for her towel and makes a show of covering herself. “You trying
to give it to me?”
I walk one foot in front of the other, melting in the heat, and when I’m at the exit, Josh Clay reaches for my arm.
“Jessie, wait.”
He explains this is for the best, it wasn’t right to keep it a secret. People deserve to know, he says, so they can protect themselves. His lips move and move, but I stop listening. There is no way to get out except to slide around him. I push the revolving door, the metal bar hot on my fingers, and spin until I’m on the other side, alone.
Rebel Rebel
Brian
July 20, 1986
Still here.
The house is a bunker. Jess is in her room drowning in music. My mother cooking and cleaning. My dad hiding in the garage.
Last night, after a slew of hateful calls, my mother unplugged the phone. Anyone could be making them. Neighbors. Friends. Relatives.
The idiot mayor has closed the pool for a week, to drain and disinfect it. The town rallied behind him. Discrimination, Annie says.
I called her right after I left the pool. I was losing it. Why the hell did I get in? I asked.
Because it was fucking hot, she said. You didn’t do anything wrong.
I did everything wrong. What is it I want? Acceptance? Forgiveness? I don’t know why the fuck I came back here.
Annie wants me to sue—something I said to that bitch that now makes me laugh. It’s against the law, Annie says. Not here it’s not. Or if it is, it doesn’t matter. She says it’s like the 1950s, segregation all over again. Um, no, I said. It’s not the same thing.
But, yeah, it still sucks.
What would be the point of suing? This town doesn’t have any money. I don’t know even how much time I have left. I don’t want to spend it in courts, burying my family in paperwork and legal matters.
At least call all the papers, Annie urged. Don’t worry, I told her. The news will spread.
The Prettiest Star Page 15