Mmm-hmmm. That means it’s probably worse than I feared.
The other girls are ready now, so we get our purses and head to Ellie’s mom’s van. Skyler and Ellie get inside, my sister taking the driver’s seat because Ellie’s only fifteen.
“So, Amelia Grace and I aren’t coming,” I tell them.
“You aren’t?” Skyler asks.
“We aren’t?” Amelia Grace asks.
I can feel my cheeks getting red. I don’t blush often, but, being a redhead, I am a super blusher.
“No. We’re going to stay here and figure something out. It might be SBDC- related. Can you cover for us?”
“Yes,” says Ellie too quickly.
“Okay,” says my sister.
“Cool. Don’t drive away till I give you the signal.”
Amelia Grace and I go back to the house.
“Hey, I just forgot something upstairs. I’ll only be a sec,” I call.
“Okay,” comes the mom chorus from the back deck.
I make the “wait here” motion to Amelia Grace as I run upstairs and then back down. Open the door, wave to Ellie and Skyler, close the door. As they drive away, I sneak down the hallway.
“C’mon,” I whisper.
“What’re we doing?” she whispers back.
“We’re finding out what happened at that lunch.”
We tiptoe into the living room. Everything in the lake house is open floor plan, which means the only really good place to hide while spying on the back deck is inside the massive yellow velvet curtain that Mama pulls shut whenever we have movie night. It’s giant—we’re talking covers-the-whole-back-wall-of-windows-at-once, used-to-belong-to-a-theater-company huge. I pull Amelia Grace inside with me. It makes me think of being seven years old and hiding with Skyler.
Luckily, the windows are open, and our moms aren’t exactly quiet.
“Did you go back to his Airbnb with him?”
“He wanted me to.”
“When was the last time you—?”
“Too damn long ago.”
Ew.
The song on their old-people playlist changes, and they all go quiet. I don’t know why. It’s just some old country song about this girl and she’s seventeen and drinks strawberry wine and she likes some boy who’s way older than her and honestly sounds like kind of a tool.
“Do you know I didn’t realize this song was about losing your virginity until I was in college?” says my aunt Neely.
Ew. Is it really?
But the other moms laugh.
“Oh, Neely, are you serious?” says Aunt Val.
“Isn’t it weird how a song can bring back a memory for you?” Mama’s voice slides through the window, Southern and low. “I am physically incapable of listening to this song without thinking about losing my virginity.”
I grab Amelia Grace’s wrist and make big desperate eyes like, OMG IF I HAVE TO LISTEN TO MY MOM TALK ABOUT LOSING HER VIRGINITY WITH MY DAD, I WILL NOT SURVIVE IT.
“Same,” says Aunt Val. “Even if it wasn’t the heteronormative stuff of country songs.” Her voice goes softer. “Hey, whatever happened to Nick Ellison?”
Wait. WHAT? Nick, as in, I had sex with Nick on his back porch Nick?
“Oh,” says Mama. “I’m friends with him on Facebook. He’s not married to Kathy anymore. His new wife seems nice, and they have a couple of kids together.” Mama pauses. “She’s a butterface.”
The aunts laugh and squeal, but all I can think is Holy hell, our moms are the OGs of the SBDC.
“You just had to get that in there,” says Aunt Seema.
“Does that mean you still have feelings for him?” asks Aunt Neely.
I press my face so close to the window they’ll see my nose if I’m not careful.
“Ugh. No.” Mama laughs. “I just really enjoy being petty about my exes.”
Exes, plural? Are there more because I don’t think I can handle more? Also, something in my chest definitely loosened when she said no, and I don’t even want to think about what that means for how I feel about her and Daddy.
“You know, I actually ran into her at a baby shower last year? She was sloshed. Who needs three glasses of white wine to get through a dang baby shower?”
Aunt Neely clucks her tongue. “Bless her liver.”
The four of them cackle.
Mama speaks again, and she sounds serious. Thoughtful.
“Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision picking Jimmy all those years ago. I mean, how could I not after what happened? But I know without a doubt Nick wouldn’t have been the right choice. He wasn’t terrible or anything, he was perfectly fine, but somehow our relationship still felt like work most of the time. With Jimmy, it was just so easy. Being myself was easy. I felt like we made each other better than either of us was on our own. It was like magic. And I know it isn’t magic anymore, and I don’t know when it stopped being so, and the fact that I didn’t even catch it makes me scared we’ll never ever get it back again.”
She stops talking. Why has she stopped talking? I need to know more about this magic. I feel like it could be the key to knowing what to do about me and Reese. And then I realize. She’s crying. And suddenly I’m crying too.
“Nothing about him cheating on me and how bad things are now can erase that we used to have it. I didn’t build my life around a lie. I know that. And yeah, I feel completely pathetic sometimes for thinking about staying, but you know what? If there’s a chance of getting back what we had, I’m going to take it.”
She dissolves and so do I. Outside I hear the sounds of chairs scraping and tears muffled into shoulders, and beside me, Amelia Grace takes my hand and I squeeze hers so tight. The curtain wraps us up like a blanket fort, safe. And we just stare at each other, holding hands, our eyes telling each other all the important things because we can’t make a sound.
Are you sure you can handle it on your own?
You haven’t given yourself one of these since you met me.
Hey, remember how you used to eat lunch in the bathroom?
I know a lot of guys would take advantage, but I’m not like them. I’m one of the nice ones.
Well, it’s a good thing I’m here to rescue you.
I think about Reese. About the pact I made amid a circle of candles. And I think about what Mama said about magic. Maybe it is worth staying for. And maybe it’s also worth leaving for.
Amelia Grace
I don’t wear a dress. There’s a part of me that wants to because it’s a new church, and you only get one chance to make a first impression, and I’ve been taught my entire life that church means dresses and white shoes from Easter to Labor Day. Instead, I wear black pants and a black vest and black shoes, even though it is June 21. All kinds of sacrilege up in this outfit.
At the lake house, I am confident. But once Skyler and I are in the parking lot staring up at the church, not so much. It’s a white country church with a steeple and a bell. It looks just the way churches usually do.
You need to get your life right with God before you come back here.
My feet don’t want to move. What if they can tell from the moment I walk through the doors? What if I’m not welcome here? I walk up the path with Skyler, a half step behind like it’ll make a difference. She waves to everyone in the entire world. People smile at me just for being friends with her. No one makes the I’m-judging-you face, though a few of the smiles I get seem a smidgen concerned. I try to relax my face and shoulders and hands and breathing. Skyler and I sit on the left side of the church, midway from the front. That’s when I notice.
There are these two women sitting a few pews in front of me. Just sitting. But I can tell.
And it makes me wonder, what is it about two people that tells you they’re together? I mean, if they’re not holding hands or touching each other or something obvious. Is it that they’re sitting just an inch inside each other’s personal bubbles? Is it that her head is tilted ever so slightly?
The mi
nister comes to the front and starts talking. Surprise no. 1: She’s a she. I nudge Sky, even though of course she already knows. She giggles silently. Surprise no. 2: her sermon. She talks about how people can have two kinds of attitudes. The first: The church doesn’t do this thing that I want, so I’m going to leave. The second: The church isn’t doing this thing that I want, so I’m going to be the person that makes it happen. And then she starts talking about how people have started ministries at the church related to Black Lives Matter and Pride Week and making lunches for kids who need them, and where am I right now? Is this real?
“If you want things to be different, you have to make them different. We’re here as a community to make each other better and to make the world better, but we have to have people who feel so passionately about things that we’re willing to step up and suggest ideas and change how things operate. We’re going to have a Sunday school series starting at the end of July on what the Bible has to say about being LGBTQIA+. Karen Michaelson is putting it together. She’s been dedicating so much time to this, and it’s going to be wonderful. Please reach out to her if you have an idea for another series after that.”
I’m pretty sure my mouth is hanging open, and I keep looking at Sky, like, waiting for her to be shocked, but no one in the entire congregation bats an eyelash. This is their normal, and it is so mind-blowing and extraordinary, and they don’t even know it. They’ve grown up in a castle at the top of a beanstalk, never realizing that everyone else lives on the ground. This is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. I knew there had to be people out there who believed the same way as me.
And then the sermon is over, and the pianist starts to play “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and it’s one of my favorite hymns, and it reminds me, that, yes, this really is a church. On Earth. In reality. The two women a few rows in front of me stand. And only one of them is holding the hymnal, but she’s having trouble finding the hymn, and the woman beside her laughs as she helps her turn the pages, and for a split second they are holding the hymnal together, one hand on either side. In that moment, I see a different future. Or, no. It whacks me in the chest so hard I gasp.
Sky puts her hand on my shoulder. “Amelia?”
“Excuse me. Sorry,” I whisper.
I slide past her and walk as fast as I can down the aisle and out the back doors of the church. I’m crying before my feet touch the grass.
I find a bench surrounded by mountain laurel. I put my head in my hands. After a few seconds, I feel movement beside me. Skyler puts her hand on my back.
“I’m sorry. Was it something she said?”
I shake my head. “No, it was fine.” I try to figure out how to tell her all the things I’m thinking, and the tears threaten to spill over again.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Skyler hugs me to her shoulder, and I hug her back like she’s my lifeline. This entire day feels like a lifeline.
“I didn’t think it could be possible,” I say into her hair.
It’s scary to have that much hope dropped into your lap all at once.
Ellie
This is it. My final Instagram post in the series I’ve been working on. Also the one that makes me the most nervous. People can be pretty terrible to Muslim women on the internet. I make Sky sit beside me as I write it up. She squeezes my shoulder when I finish, and her eyes are a little red and so are mine. I didn’t understand that it would feel like this, when I spent all those years wanting what my momma and her friends had. I didn’t realize friendship could be a thing that makes you feel like you’ve been cracked wide open, but in the best possible way.
Thank you so much for all the responses I’ve been getting to this series of posts. I’ve been overwhelmed by your kindness and insight. Today I wanted to share a picture that my cousin took of me during Eid a few years ago. I chose this photo because I’m wearing my hijab. I don’t wear one all the time, but I do wear it when I go to our mosque.
Most people don’t guess that I’m Indian and Muslim. It’s something that I can choose to tell. Sometimes I feel guilty about that, especially when I see how differently my brother and I get treated at the airport or when Momma is exhausted from dealing with people who think being Muslim means she can’t be a feminist. I’ll never know what it’s like to live life from Zakir’s perspective or Momma’s. Passing = privilege, and I know it makes my life easier. Sometimes I feel like it means I’m not enough. Like I have to work harder to prove that I belong. I try to get each of my momma and nani’s recipes just perfect and I fast during Ramadan and I do and feel a million other big and little things. I know my family loves and accepts me, so it’s not that. It’s hard to say where the pressure comes from. But I feel it, every day. Like the world wants to make me feel like everything would be so much easier if I would keep my mouth shut and be one thing or the other. Just go along with it when people think I’m white or assume I celebrate Christmas. Don’t make waves.
I feel like I’m fighting just to take up space. Like I’m too much and not enough at exactly the same time.
I am Jameelah Rose Johnson. I love tennis and cooking and photography and making lists. I am Indian. I am Muslim. I am American. I am a feminist. I used to have issues with food and my body and I’m working really hard on it.
I am enough. And so are you.
I click share.
Scarlett
I get up from my deck chair and stretch. “I have to go into town to run a few errands. I’ll see y’all later,” I tell the other girls.
Amelia Grace stands too. “Oh! Is it cool if I come with you? I have to pick up some paint at the hardware store, and I don’t know if my mom will be back by then.”
“Sure.”
We go to the carriage house to get our stuff.
“Oh. Are you sure you don’t mind running a ton of errands with me?”
“No way. It’ll be fun! Let me text my mom so she knows I have a ride.”
We take my mom’s car, and we hit the hardware store, the boat store, the gas station, and the fabric store. I take forever choosing quilting supplies because, hi, I can’t pick until I’ve touched all the fabrics at least twice.
“Thanks for being super patient,” I say.
“It’s fine.” She grins at me. “I have a lot of feelings about fabrics. Are you sure you don’t want to do your quilt in Game of Thrones characters? Or Grumpy Cat, maybe?”
“Ha.”
Our last stop is Target, and I text Aunt Neely as we walk in.
Almost done. At Target now. Can I still come shadow you today?
She texts me back almost immediately.
I would love that! Also, can you pick up a nipple shield while you’re there?
Um. I look at Amelia Grace. “Do you know what a nipple shield is?”
“What?” She almost runs into a display of greeting cards. “I’m sorry, you can’t just ask people things like that while they’re walking.”
“Your mom told me to bring her one.”
“Oh, how’s that going anyway? The shadowing?”
“Awesome! There are two little babies who can totally drink milk now because of me. Well, mostly your mom, but a little bit me.”
“That’s really cool. Oh!” She holds her phone up. “Found it!”
Turns out nipple shields are thin and plasticky and are shaped about how you might expect but with four holes at the top.
“Where do you think we find one of these?” asks Amelia Grace.
“I don’t know, but we better figure it out because I would rather die than ask that dude at the customer service counter.”
She busts out laughing, and so do I. It’s been like that all day—laughing, singing songs along with the radio, putting our hands out the window to feel the breeze. I feel lighter and funnier and smarter and braver. Like being myself is a good thing, the best thing.
Running errands usually sucks, but with her it’s easy. Like magic.
Ellie
Today is the greatest. I had so many people
reach out to me after my newest Instagram post. I never realized how alone I felt sometimes until I had all these other people telling me how they felt alone in exactly the same way. And not just Indian girls or Muslim girls, but queer girls and disabled girls too. I don’t even bother looking at the likes—it’s not about likes anymore. I’ve had more life-changing talks about invisible marginalization in one week than I’ve had in the rest of my life combined. I’m just coming back from tennis with my new trainer, who is AMAZING. After our practice, I was so full of energy that I had Momma drop me off at the end of the road so I could jog all the way home. Things are finally coming together. With tennis. With the girls. I open the doors to the carriage house and take the stairs two at a time. I think Scarlett is actually starting to like me now. At breakfast this morning, she even—
“I have been looking everywhere for you!”
“Whoa! Hi!” I manage to stop myself from barreling into Scarlett, but only just. She looks happy. And excited, deeply, intensely excited.
“What’s going on?” I ask. (Somewhat skeptically.)
“We need to have an emergency club meeting! Tonight! No, a sleepover! On the dock!”
This is the moment I have been waiting for.
Okay, but did an alien come and switch our brains?
“That’s fine with me,” I say. “But what brought this on?”
Scarlett flashes her most mischievous smirk. “Just be at the dock tonight. You’ll see.”
What. The crap. This is more than I ever could have imagined. The entire upper floor of the dock has been transformed. Four air mattresses have been positioned geometrically to make a space in the middle for a coffee table topped with candles. Each mattress is made up with a colorful sheet and a quilt, and there are brightly patterned throw pillows and cushions lining every railing, so all you see is a swirl of color and softness.
“This is amazing,” I breathe.
“Right?” says Scarlett proudly. “Ames did it.”
Amelia Grace grins.
The Summer of Impossibilities Page 20