Orpheus Girl

by Brynne Rebele-Henry

We eat dinner with her family. My hands are shaking. I’m afraid of what might happen tonight and afraid of what Rosie might do if she learns more, if she starts to suspect that our kiss wasn’t really a joke.

  Sarah’s brother, John, also brought a friend tonight: Aristo. I’ve seen him around school, but he’s never spent the night when I was here before. I wonder for a second if they’re the same as Sarah and me. But I know from the easy way Aristo laughs at her daddy’s jokes that they’re not. Even though her house is as much my home as mine is, at these dinners I never let my hand linger over Sarah’s for too long, make sure that my laugh isn’t a little too bright. Though until now, I’ve never had a reason to need to be this careful around Sarah’s parents.

  That night Sarah tells her mom we’re tired, going to sleep early.

  She locks the door and pulls me into her, takes my clothes off slowly. Then we’re naked in her bed, and while nothing that we do is unfamiliar, it feels like I’ve found a new world for the two of us, together in the dark.

  The next day we go back to her house, spend the night together. Then it’s Saturday morning, and Grammy picks up a shipment of roses and gerbera daisies, and Sarah’s parents are out grocery shopping, so we’re in bed. I’m trying to go down on her for the first time under the blankets, but I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be doing, so I just keep trying to spell out the alphabet with my tongue like I saw in a lezzie mag I found tucked into one of the reference books in the library, then spent the rest of the year trying to figure out who put it there.

  In the picture, a woman with hair so crimson it looked like blood was on her knees, her head between the legs of a petite blonde. The blonde’s mouth was open and her eyes were closed and I thought, at first, that she was being captured in the moment after screaming. Her lip gloss was smeared down her face, and she had bite marks on her thighs. I started to study the picture like it could explain everything that had previously been unsaid, but then I saw one of the popular girls walking toward me, so I shoved the book back on the shelf. I thought about going back and looking for it, but I was too scared of being seen, worried it was some kind of trap. So I never did. And now I wish I had. While I’d hooked up with three girls since sleepaway camp in seventh grade, we never got past rubbing our bodies together in the dark, sometimes putting a leg between the other girl’s. Once, Jean brushed her hands up my skirt and stopped a few inches before she reached my underwear. But other than that, our clothes always stayed on and we never acknowledged it the next day.

  I’m starting to get the hang of it and Sarah’s moving underneath me, gripping my hair and clenching her thighs around my head, when I hear something. Since no one’s home, I think it’s one of their cats running around, but then I hear laughter.

  I sit up.

  It’s John’s friend, Aristo. He doesn’t say anything, just slams the bedroom door.

  Sarah’s eyes are wide and scared, and I feel dizzy. We get dressed shakily and run downstairs.

  “It’s not what you think,” I blurt out. I pause after that, trying to come up with some sort of excuse even though I know it’s futile, that it really is what he thinks, that I can’t lie my way out of it.

  He laughs. “What, you two were just playing doctor? You’re a little old for that.”

  I’m opening my mouth to say something, though I don’t know what.

  I run after him barefoot and start to chase him down Sarah’s driveway when he gets in the car with Sarah’s brother. I rap on the glass, but when Aristo rolls down the window, I realize I can’t beg him not to tell anyone in front of John, who’s staring at me with a confused expression. So I just walk back to the house where Sarah’s waiting on the porch.

  I sit down next to her.

  “Raya? What do we do now?”

  “Maybe he won’t tell anyone.”

  “You should probably go, just in case.”

  On the way home, I try to come up with excuses, but I know there’s nothing I can do or say that will get me out of this. Back at the house, I keep waiting for the phone to ring, for Grammy to show up with the look of disappointment that I’ve gotten used to over the years, though this time her disappointment will be mixed with disgust. This time she’ll look at me like she doesn’t know me anymore, like she doesn’t even want to, and there won’t be anything I can do. I sit on the faded leather couch in the living room, trace the cracks in the seat where the coiled wires and pale bits of stuffing slip through, and wait for her to come back. Though I’ve been waiting for this to happen, have known for years that whatever I do to hide I’ll still be found out, I’m terrified.

  When I look at my hands, they’re shaking, and my body doesn’t feel like my own, as if I’m seeing myself from somewhere else far away.

  The girl in question is small, awkward. Her cuticles are visibly ragged, scabs forming at the edge of her fingers from where she bites her nails. Her hair is wild, around her face in a frizzed-out cloud. When she stops mimicking the women she sees on TV, in magazines, and the girls at school, there’s a subtle kind of sadness etched into her face. In the dying light, her makeup is smeared. Now that she’s in the safety of her house, her shirt has slipped down and the scars on her back show, pale, almost knotted-looking lines where her wings were ripped out of her.

  When Grammy comes home, I watch her face for any sign of knowing. She just tosses me a plastic bag with a tub of vanilla Breyers and a chicken TV dinner in it. “I have to go out for a bit, but I brought you dinner.” Before I can try to gauge what she knows and what she doesn’t, she disappears upstairs.

  She’s gone long enough that the ice cream starts to melt, so I put it and the TV dinner in the freezer and go back to the couch, sit down carefully to avoid the sharp ridges of the split leather. When she comes downstairs, she’s wearing red lipstick, and pale face powder is smudged over her cheeks. She’s got on a black dress and the red pashmina I got her for her birthday last year.

  “Grams?”

  She smiles tearfully, smooths her dress with her hands. “How do I look?”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s true.”

  Grammy sighs. “I haven’t gone on a date since your grandfather. I was young then, so pretty all the boys would wait outside my house with flowers. But I wouldn’t go out with any of them until I met your grandpa.”

  I don’t respond. I never know what to say when she talks about my dead grandpa.

  Grammy’s quiet after that, probably because of all the time she’s spending with Paul. When Paul comes to pick her up, I’m as rude to him as I can be without outright snarling. I can’t stand the thought of our already fragile balance being disrupted by an outsider, of having another person bear witness to our half-formed life together.

  He hands me a daisy. I do my best to seem nonplussed, though I can’t help but smile a little bit.

  When they leave, I am unable to shake the feeling that I’ve been found out. I need to be ready for whatever happens next, so I sprint upstairs to fill my backpack with all the essentials in case I need to make a run for it: some clean clothes, a ten-dollar bill, a knife I got at a history museum a few years ago, and a plastic Ziploc with the picture of me and Mom. That’s all I have that feels worth bringing with me if I have to go. I don’t know how these things could save me, but it makes me feel better to have them ready.

  On Sunday Sarah’s mom comes to pick me up. Since no one is acting strangely toward me, I begin to let myself think that maybe we’re safe. When we go to her house for the night, I leave the backpack behind. Once her parents are asleep and the sounds of her house creaking and the night air are the only things around us, I kiss her for the first time since we were found, and my heart finally stops thudding and I sleep well.

  Part Two:

  The Beginning of

  My Descent

  Monday at school the
three girls from the bathroom are waiting for me at my locker. Madison steps forward. “There’s a party tonight at Lacey’s house. You and your friend should come.” She gestures at Sarah, down the hall, back turned on us as she tries to open her locker. “It starts at eight.”

  “Okay.”

  She hands me a paper with the address scrawled on it.

  When they’re gone, Sarah ambles up. “What did they want?”

  “They invited us to a party tonight at Lacey’s house. What do you think?” I try to make my voice sound neutral.

  I’ve been to only one school party in the past year, after a football game. Everyone drank spiked punch in the bleachers once the parents went home, and the cheerleaders kicked their shoes off and danced in circles around the field. I watched from a distance, afraid that if I drank I’d let myself go, even for a second, and then somehow I’d slip and they’d all know. So like always, I just sat on the edge of the field and watched everyone, taking mental notes about what they were all doing, gestures and phrases that I could mirror later when I pretended to be like them.

  After, I walked back from the party and stood in front of the bathroom mirror with the door locked. I piled my hair into one of the high, tight ponytails the girls at school wore. I’d watch them roam the halls like strange ibis birds, bobbing through the sea of high schoolers. The ponytail required that you comb your hair flat to your head, then twist the ponytail elastic so tight it would give you a migraine. Crimp the ends so that they fanned out of your head like feathers. When you took the elastic out, hair would be wrapped around the tie. Sometimes I’d yank the hair out on purpose just to marvel at the neatness with which something could come away from my body, then stare at the dark strands nestled in my palms. I’d always feel a sharp regret, the kind that comes with seeing something you wanted to destroy and also to save be ruined.

  I’d tried repeating some of the things I’d heard girls say to their boyfriends. I’d said the names of every boy on the football team. I’d swirled the shimmering hot pink blush that I’d bought before school started onto my cheeks, but it just made me look fevered and more desperate. So I’d washed the blush off quickly, jerking the washcloth over my cheeks so roughly that it left my skin redder than it had been before. And then, quietly so Grammy wouldn’t hear, I cried for a long, long time.

  Now, Sarah twists her hair around her fingers. “We should go. I don’t think anybody knows. It’d be fun.”

  For a second I wonder if this is a bad idea, if we should stay home. But she smiles at me, her eyes bright with excitement, and I decide not to worry so much.

  After school we go back to her house and sit nervously through dinner with her parents, then tell them we’re going to work on a group project at a friend’s. We walk the three miles to the party, holding hands in the dark. Before we turn into the neighborhood, she pulls me into the part of the road that’s hidden by trees and kisses me.

  When we get to the house, the yard is thrumming with teen bodies. Drunk girls are draping themselves over the porch railing. A boy’s throwing up in the front lawn. The musky scents of Drakkar Noir and Juicy Couture, sweat and beer fills the air. It’s one of those nights where the dark emptiness of the sky stretches out before you, huge and unmoored in its possibility.

  For a minute I think that anything is possible. That I could kiss Sarah right here, face the consequences of whatever will happen in the morning. But then she’s pulling on my arm, so I step inside.

  Aristo is there, in the front room. He’s drunk already, slurring.

  He lopes over to us, wraps his arms around our shoulders. “My girls.”

  I try to push his arm off me but he pulls me in tighter, so tight that when he lets go, I know I’ll have white fingerprints on my upper arm. I notice that people are starting to watch. Rosie, resplendent in a fuchsia sequined halter top and a tangerine-orange silk skirt with a camo jacket and high-heeled platform sandals that she can’t seem to balance in, stares intently with an expression that flutters between disgust and desire.

  Aristo tries to kiss my cheek but I duck. He lets go of both of us and I start to run away, but he grabs my arm, pulls me closer. Says in a low voice, “The way I see it, you kind of owe me for not telling anyone that you’re bull-dyking out together.”

  Then he tries to kiss me, but this time I punch him hard enough that his nose starts bleeding. He pushes me and I fall down.

  I realize now that we never should have come to this party.

  The room goes so quiet I don’t think anyone is breathing. He doesn’t say anything, just covers his hand with the sleeve of his shirt and tries to wipe away the blood with it.

  Sarah steps forward, her voice low and scary when she says, “Leave her alone.”

  He turns, and for a minute I think he’s going to leave, that what I have a feeling is about to happen isn’t going to happen.

  But instead of leaving, he goes out to the back porch. He throws his arms up, yells, “Everyone, I have an announcement to make.” He seems drunker than he did a few minutes ago, keeps swaying. I try to will my body to get up, to go stop him, but I can’t move. I’m trapped. And it’s like in the dream with the wings: everyone’s staring at me and I have the feeling that I’m about to be changed, that something is going to come exploding out of me, and with it will come the truth.

  “These two”—Aristo points at me and Sarah—“they’re lesbos.” He’s screaming. “I saw them carpet-munching each other. Disgusting.”

  Then, just like in my dream, everyone turns and stares at me, and I know that nothing will be the same again.

  Sarah lets go of the neck of the bottle that she was holding and it shatters on the floor. “That’s not true. He’s just mad because she wouldn’t let him kiss her.”

  But I know that they have already decided what the truth is.

  Everyone is staring at us, a mixture of anger and revulsion mottling their faces, their expressions ugly. One boy raises a beer bottle and gestures like he’s going to throw it at us. Rosie has turned to another girl, and they’re whispering loudly about how they knew something was wrong with me, with Sarah.

  We bolt, start running once we reach the end of Lacey’s driveway.

  I look back only once, see that everyone, including Sarah’s brother, watches to see where we are going. Lacey and Madison are following us, but stop at the edge of Lacey’s lawn and watch us leave.

  That night Sarah’s brother John doesn’t come home from the party, and neither does Aristo. We stay up all night watching for headlights, but none come. Eventually, when the sun starts to rise, we fall asleep for an hour before we have to get up for school. I dress carefully, swirl on blush and cake on eyeshadow, rim my eyes with teal-blue liner. I wear one of Sarah’s pink church dresses, even though it’s too late, I’ve already been found.

  When I get to my locker, there are several papers taped to it. They all say dyke or fag. I peel them off the metal like scabs, crumple them up and put them in my backpack. It should be a surprise, but I’ve known this moment would come for so long, and now that it’s happening, it feels like another one of my nightmares.

  When I look up, Rosie is glaring at me. She mouths, “Fag.”

  I think about smiling at her, pretending it’s nothing, but instead something sharp lodges itself under my rib cage and I move forward. I’ve decided if I’m going to come out, I’m going to come out swinging. I square my shoulders. My body is like a car on black ice spinning out in the road, something that’s beyond my control now.

  “Fuck you—I’m a dyke.”

  It comes out fast and hard, and when she opens her mouth, I know that I might as well have gone and put a gun between my lips and pulled the trigger. Just like that, it’s all over, and I know that it’s the end of my life as I knew it.

  I regret it instantly. I know that now, after spending so many years obsessing over staying invisible
, for the first time I’m being seen, and not in the way I wanted to be. The event that I’ve been dreaming about for so many years has finally taken place, and I can’t go back or wake up and pray with Grammy. Can’t lie and say that I dreamed about Mom or Jesus again, though I never did know why I felt like I had to cover up the dream about my wings.

  Now it’s happening. After all those wasted nights when I couldn’t sleep, nights when I stayed awake thinking of what would happen. Running through my head all of the things I could have done to better hide myself. Remembering all of the times I’d slipped up and looked at a girl for too long and then seen someone else looking at my looking. Flushing a deep red, awkwardly mumbling something about liking the girl’s dress, even though it wasn’t the dress that was turning my face hot and making me clench and unclench my hands into fists until my knuckles turned white.

  I’m moving. It feels like I’m underwater, my legs trembling, I walk away from Rosie, who’s shaking with something akin to anger. I’m not worried about them knowing that I’m gay. I’m just worried about what Grammy will do to me, what Sarah’s parents will do to her. Mostly I worry about what the other kids and the town will do. If they’ll make me disappear, or worse. The crowd disperses when I reach the door leading out of the cafeteria, and soon only one boy remains watching.

  Once I knew a boy from church who got found. Later I heard that the boy’s father saw him kissing another boy and tried to exorcise the gay out of them. Beat them with a cane and prayed in tongues until they swore they were cured. Nobody saw either boy again. Their parents sent them away. To be cured by one of the conversion facilities Texas is so proud of, or to be forgotten like yesterday’s sermon: reduced to the memory of a few words and some stray images you can’t place. Two boys. Gone completely. That’s what happens to gay teens in this town. They get disappeared.

  Or it’s like what happened with the girls they found last year, girls who never returned. They too got turned into cautionary tales about what happens to queers around here.