God Says No

by James Hannaham

  Annie and Cheryl met me in the food court before baggage claim. Annie hugged me and I was so nervous and excited that I picked her up off the ground. She laughed and struggled in my arms and I put her back down and kissed her. One thing I liked about straightness was that you could kiss in crowds without getting other people upset. Everybody approved of men with women. Men kissing, even in the dark, got people like my mother angry and could start an argument or a fight. It seemed like everybody had the responsibility to prevent that sort of thing from ever showing its face.

  Cheryl hugged and kissed me, too, but not as much as her mother. “You got here in time for my birthday,” she told me. “I’m gonna be six.” She had lost a baby tooth, and she showed me the gap and the tooth, too. She kept it in a box that used to have mints in it. The Tooth Fairy had given her a whole dollar. Miquel, I thought, would have made a joke about fairies and money. I searched her face for signs of still hating me. She stuck her tongue out at me, but playfully, giggling.

  We appeared to be just another happy Florida family as we got into the car. Annie had a new sedan with power windows and velvety seats. It smelled like pine trees. Cheryl sat between us and pretended to help her mother drive, while Annie pointed out things that were new since the last time I had lived there and businesses that had failed or moved. The pace of life surprised me-it always went too fast. I wanted to tell everything to slow down because I was getting lost, falling behind. I thought that and then I touched my daughter’s forearm, making a list of everything I had already missed in her life. Silently I vowed that if I got better, I’d stop missing all those events. Annie saw my face and asked if something was wrong. I said, “No, nothing,” smiling at her through my tears.

  Annie still lived at the Ponce de Leon-they had never raised the rent. She had also stayed there to keep the memory of me alive, and to wait for me to get back, she said. I had always liked the place and was happy to see it again, even though it had become shabbier. The fountain in the courtyard had broken and the fish in the center of the blue bowl didn’t spit water anymore. On the far side of the courtyard was an apartment with a FOR RENT sign in the window hanging by one corner. But the rest of the place had the same cheery atmosphere as before. Palms and almond trees decorated the arch out front. Vines climbed the stucco walls, and iron furniture circled the pool.

  We had another celebration supper, this time at a Mexican restaurant called Caramba’s. I wanted to go to Annie’s restaurant, Pago Pago, but she said we would go there some other time-she had taken time off and didn’t even want to see the place.

  Cheryl told me everything about her first days in first grade. Annie reached under the table for my hand and held it there, all sweaty. From time to time I remembered that something might have to happen in the bedroom that night. I knew Annie would understand if I couldn’t be a real man with her, but that didn’t take the pressure off.

  Cheryl’s bedtime had come when we arrived home, so I read her a story and tucked her into bed for the first time. The story was about a pig who leaves home and finds that the world is a scary place so he comes back to a warm trough of his mama’s best slop. Cheryl giggled uncontrollably as I closed the storybook. “That’s you, Daddy,” she said. “You’re like the pig!”

  I laughed at how right she was, and how little she knew about that painful journey. I wanted to protect her from that same scary world, but I didn’t know how. “Sleep tight,” I said. I kissed her on the forehead and she kissed me on the cheek. Lord, I asked, how can I be a good father to her?

  The moment of truth came after Annie and I watched some religious TV and drank some tea. I wasted time by carefully refolding some of my clothes as I unpacked. I traveled with my]esuses and arranged them on the night stand just so. I had stopped putting the one Russ gave me in front of the broken one to hide its imperfection, and stood them up side by side instead. We went to the bedroom and locked the door. Annie removed her clothes and slid under the covers. She didn’t even wear a nightie. Peeking at me from under there across the room, she winked. I took a breath and tugged my boxers down. I stood in front of her naked, but not proud. The moment passed without anybody saying anything, so I got into bed with her. I held her breasts in my palms and rubbed her nipples with my thumbs. Annie wiggled and moaned. I kissed her and ran my hands up and down the folds and bulges of her body. As I kneaded her behind, my chin over her shoulder, I caught myself thinking about being a pastry chef and rolling dough all day.

  I kept my front pressed tightly against Annie’s thigh, knowing it kept her from reaching between our crotches and finding my spongy little penis. Dr. Soffione’s book advised thinking manly thoughts in this situation, even vulgar comments about women and their bodies. That would keep the focus on your masculinity being different from and maybe superior to her. He also said you should keep focused on the sensations happening in your male member, and the good feelings of man-woman sexuality.

  I thought a whole lot of very bad sayings that I can’t bring myself to write down. Phrases about how I wanted to conquer my wife’s body and exercise my natural dominance over her. Connecting with the macho part of me turned me on a little, but it still took a bunch of effort to get anywhere. Soon as we rolled over for a little rest, Annie shoved her hand between my legs and flopped my thing around like a rag doll. Without realizing, she tore the scab from my activity the night before.

  “Nothing doing, eh?” she asked. As any man knows, the second-worst thing anybody can do when a fellow can’t perform is to call attention to it. Number one is laughing.

  “I guess not,” I said.

  She whacked at it, gently first, then almost violently, and I put up with the pain a mite longer than any man ought to.

  “Ow,” I said, softly but firmly.

  “Oh no! Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay.”

  For the next half hour we tried a whole bunch of different things to raise the barn, so to speak. But it turns out that getting an erection is also like a sneeze. By and by, Annie got a cramp in her leg. She stood up, stretched her leg against the wall, and shook her hand out. Then, giving us a fright, Cheryl tried the door and asked for a glass of water. Annie put on her nightie and ushered her into the kitchen. “Why can’t I sleep with you tonight?” I heard her moan in the hallway.

  “Your father is here, honey.”

  “It’s not fair! He gets to sleep in there and I don’t?”

  Annie didn’t answer, but it took almost an hour for her to get Cheryl into her bed. By the time she locked the bedroom door, I had nearly fallen asleep.

  In the second round, I had an even tougher time finding the spot and staying hard. My skin was so chafed, and after I rubbed lotion on it, it burned something fierce. I didn’t want to use any of my old male fantasies, but the masculine phrases didn’t help much either. In the end, neither of us came and we conked out, lying diagonally across the comforter like beached orca whales.

  “I’m exhausted,” she said.

  “So am I. Let’s try again in the morning.”

  “Maybe we should wait a couple of days,” she sighed. “To give you a running start.”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Do you think that would help?”

  Annie murmured something that wasn’t yes or no and pulled the covers over her shoulder to go to sleep. I thought about my encounter with Manny, and finally my juices started flowing, so much that I had to get up and go to the bathroom and masturbate carefully.

  The following morning, we loaded up the sedan and drove to Daytona. It was off-season and not a great beach day. Warm but mostly overcast. We set out anyway because we had faith that the weather would improve like they said it would on TV.

  Cheryl and I built a huge sand castle using only her bright pink pail and green shovel. I tried to make the sculpture look as much like Cinderella’s castle as I could, but nobody else thought it looked like that. I helped her swim for a while and then we got corn dogs on the boardwalk.

 
After lunch Annie and I sat back in our half chairs and talked. In sunglasses and a straw hat, she looked very cool.

  “It’s always going to be like that, isn’t it?” she said with a sigh, like we had already started a talk. I guessed that she meant the poor-quality sex of the night before. It had been loitering at the back of my mind the whole day, too.

  “I wish I could say it won’t. It’s a lifelong struggle.”

  Flat waves kept rushing up the sand like kids leaving school on the last day, but then the ocean would drag them right back down under the new ones. It had never seemed like such a sad story before. The story kept repeating as I watched, and as far as I knew, it would go on forever.

  “Doug thinks that he was born gay.”

  “Doug can think all he wants.” The shore fizzed up to our blanket.

  “Gary, maybe you should just be gay.”

  “But it’s against the Lord and the family, Annie. I can’t.”

  “It is? But everything you’ve done to stop being gay has ruined our family. Everyone in the program wants to be in a family. That’s why they’re trying to change. Their families kick them out or treat them bad or don’t understand. Doug’s twin brother tried to strangle him but Doug still wants a relationship with him. It’s like what happened to me with my family. I don’t want that. Maybe if you stop struggling we can all get some peace. This is such a big problem.”

  I sat up. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “But see, it’s the only problem.”

  “Sometimes one problem’s all you need, honey.”

  “The Bible says it’s wrong.”

  Her voice struck a deeply weary note. “The Bible says a lot of things. It says you can have three hundred concubines. It says Elisha can get a shebear to kill forty-two children and that’s okay. We have to live our lives.”

  “No, Annie. No. That’s wrong. Our lives aren’t our lives.”

  Annie gave me a strange look over her sunglasses and then looked off at the waves. The conversation ended there, but the idea had already been growing in my mind. Before, I would have lost control and begged her not to reject me, but this time I heard the high-pitched music of true love in her tone, the tenderness that sings above the rules people enforce on each other by saying God made them up. Her sacrifice staggered me. So often I had heard about Christ’s gift to humanity, but now that I’d experienced it through another person, it took on a whole new meaning. It began to dawn on me that I could maybe step into myself, into August, and into the Lord all at once.

  The clouds never blew away that day. But it didn’t rain, and parts of the weather cleared. The sun sank into a bright area on the horizon, and the rays played across the bottom of the clouds like the world had turned upside down. As Annie drove us back to Longwood, Cheryl plopped her head down on my stomach to take a nap. She said I was her pillow. For a little while, I was glad to be fat.

  EIGHTEEN

  Annie didn’t have to work until the afternoon, so we drove Cheryl to school and had breakfast at a chain restaurant the next day. Annie kept at me about my thoughts on gayness. I told her I didn’t know how to continue serving the Lord under those circumstances. Would I have to become a weakling who gave up on the hard work of changing myself and joined one of those illegitimate, gay-friendly congregations? I didn’t think Annie had thought it through carefully enough.

  “I couldn’t have a relationship with a man while I was still married to you. That would be adulterous,” I said.

  “It didn’t bother you when you were running around behind my back.”

  My heart sank into my feet. I had discussed this aspect of my personal life a great deal at Resurrection, but I didn’t think Annie knew that it had started long before Atlanta. My eyes widened and my spine curved under me, like a dog putting his tail between his legs.

  “How did you find out? Did Gay tell you?”

  Annie was silent and took a drink of water. Water droplets had formed on the glass. She put it down and the shapes of her fingers remained on the sides. She salted her last few home fries and put them into her mouth. When she finished chewing, she said, “I was bluffing. But I suspected.”

  A garbage truck full of shame emptied its payload all over me. Worst of all, she didn’t know how recently I’d slipped. I saw that I had torn my napkin to shreds and started on the placemat. “You want to divorce, don’t you? You said so before.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Well, what do you want?”

  “The truth?”

  In the picture window, a man in a chicken costume took off his enormous yellow head so he could get into his van. We watched without speaking until he drove off. Then she made me tell her what I’d done with men, but I had to sum up a lot, and I didn’t mention the recent thing with Manny. Honest to God, the shame of telling her just about liquified me. I could hardly remember half of my encounters with other men, and only a couple of names here and there. Annie turned away from me with her hand over her mouth, and tears ran hot and fast down her face.

  “You’re going to divorce me, aren’t you?” I said when I finished.

  “It will probably have to happen. But I’m not in a hurry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because ... I forgive you, I guess. Or I know I will eventually.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to be Christ-like. It’s too heartbreaking not to forgive you. I don’t want to add to everything. I’d rather be the turning point. Maybe it’s because you gave me Cheryl. It doesn’t mean I’m not angry. It’s an angry forgiveness.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and running errands for Annie’s restaurant. At one point, we had to drive near the strip mall where it was located, so she took me in just to have a look and meet some of the people.

  The restaurant had a lot of similarities to the Polynesian Resort Area of Disney World, but it also had a miniature volcano at the far end of the room. The volcano could erupt with sparklers at the top. Pago Pago had a more intimate atmosphere and lower prices than the Disney place. Annie introduced me to her business partner, a chef they called] ohn, even though that wasn’t his Samoan name. I also met her gay waiter friend, Douglas, and a few of the other waiters as they set up for the lunch crowd.

  Annie and I got Cheryl from school, then we drove back to the Ponce de Leon and she went back to work. Cheryl watched Droopy Dawg cartoons and I called home for my messages. One had come from Gay, saying she needed to talk to me and could I call back as soon as I got the message. She would be in the office until later because there was a meeting at 6:30. I didn’t like the grave tone in her voice. It didn’t fit my concept of Gay. The news was probably bad.

  I took the phone into the bedroom, pulled the door almost all the way closed, and dialed the office. Gay answered the phone in a cheery voice and I told her it was me. Instantly, her manner of speaking became uneasy.

  “Gary, how’s it going?”

  “Gay, I feel so blessed,” I said. “It’s so beautiful to come back to my wife and daughter. The Lord really does work miracles. My whole life feels like a miracle right now.” I told her what she wanted to hear in the words everybody used like shorthand.

  “That’s terrific, Gary. Praise the Lord. So is it hot down there?”

  “There’s a high of about eighty-eight degrees today. How’s Atlanta?”

  “About the same.”

  The small talk was a way of avoiding talking about the thing we knew we had to talk about. But I couldn’t stand to let it go so long. “What did Charlie and Bill say?”

  She huffed. “It’s actually weird. Charlie thinks you should go on some kind of probation. But Bill blew his stack. He told me some things you did that I didn’t know about, which explains why he was nervous about you opening the Atlanta branch without me. Did you and Jake and Keith really lie about going to the movies and stay downtown until 3 a.m.? Did you kiss Nicky? Needless to say, Bill’s talking about termination, and he’s trying to get Charl
ie on his side about it. But I think just a reprimand would be enough.”

  At first it didn’t make sense to me that the higher-up person would be more merciful. But Dr. Soffione was busy working on his book, so he had less at stake. Dr. Soffione had a quiet faith in the truth of his theories and their ability to work in the long term, while Bill had firsthand experience with the defective people who needed Dr. Soffione’s wisdom. He probably thought I was trying to get back at him. And how had he found out everything that happened? Was everybody wagging their tongues now that we’d graduated?

  “There’s a call coming in on line two. Can you hold, Gary?”

  I said “Sure,” but I didn’t mean it. She put me on hold. I expected music but I got religious talk radio, reminding me of my failed dreams. I bounced up and down on the bed nervously, playing with the strap of one of Annie’s shoes with my toes. Outside, Cheryl laughed and all kinds of crazy sound effects came from the television. Gay took a very long time. Ministers on the line said that prayer should be in the schools. The moment became suspended in time as I waited for Gay to return, and gradually grew heavier and heavier. I begged the Lord not to give me the challenge of separation from Resurrection Ministries.

  Once Gay returned to the line my nerves had reached their limit. She spoke slowly. “Gary, that was Charlie. He says that he and Bill have decided that it’s probably best to terminate. Bill wanted me to make sure you knew that it wasn’t personal. He says that the image of the program can’t support the kind of behavior you’ve been involved in, even though he knows that you weren’t intentionally trying to hurt us. He said best of luck in your journey and Christ be with you.”

  I went nuts. I always forget how I can do that. It frightened me to hear myself yell at Gay about the harsh justice of the program. “We’re supposed to be about forgiveness!” I shouted. “If God can forgive me, why can’t y’all?” I said that about ten times, but Gay didn’t raise her voice. Instead she apologized and tried to calm me down.