A Dark and Stormy Knight

by Bridget Essex

  But I can hear footsteps now, and there are definitely more than two people climbing the staircase.

  Heart skipping a beat, I blink, opening my bedroom door just a crack, raising a finger to Kim. Just a moment. I just have to see who’s out in the hallway...

  But it is my parents.

  And...someone else.

  I try to swallow, but my mouth has gone dry.

  Jonah. He’s been my youth pastor ever since I was a kid. My parents are pretty devout born-agains, and Jonah runs the youth group at our church.

  What the hell is he doing here?

  My father heads for my door, his eyes steely. I can feel my throat closing up. What's happening?

  Kim’s hand rests on my shoulder then, and it’s so reassuring, so comforting that I turn toward her, needing her. Needing a friend more than anything, as my mother and father and youth pastor stare at me, their faces grim.

  But Kim gives me that pitying look again, her mouth downturning at the corners. “I’m sorry, Mara.” She pats my shoulder. “It’s for your own good.”

  For.

  Your.

  Own.

  Good.

  I gape at Kim, my best friend, the only person in the world who knows I’m gay, and then my father is coming in, and mom and Jonah come in behind him, and all three nod to Kim.

  As if they know her.

  “What…what’s going on?” I back up, my calves brushing against the bed.

  There’s nowhere to run.

  “Mara, I think you know what this is about,” says Jonah, and his face is pitying, too, as he clasps his Bible in front of him. Why did he bring a Bible? He looks like that priest from The Exorcist—so serious, stoic. But he’s not a priest; he’s a youth pastor.

  Why is he here?

  “No, I have no idea what's going on. Is this…is this about my birthday?” I ask desperately, hoping against hope. Maybe this is some weird, pathetic attempt at a birthday party. Are my parents actually trying to do something nice for me?

  No.

  Not even close.

  “Mara, Kim has told us that you are a homosexual. That you have homosexual desires,” says Jonah, and his eyes take on a cool, hard cast. “So your parents have called me to take you to Camp Savior.”

  Camp Savior.

  A gay conversion camp. Oh, my God.

  I swallow around the dry lump in my throat, but I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe. I stare at Kim, at Kim, the only person in the world who knew, the only person in the world I trusted enough to keep my secret.

  She looks a little guilty as she stands there in my parents’ shadow. But she doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t even look at me, only glances aside, out the window.

  “Kim told us, sweetie,” says my mother, the hard edge in her tone making the word “sweetie” sound like an expletive. “You’re going to Camp Savior. Right now.”

  My heart is pounding against my rib cage. I’m staring at the four people gathered around me, looking at me as if I’m a freak of nature, a thing to be punished, pitied, remade.

  And something inside of me just snaps.

  “No,” I whisper, my heart hammering so hard that there are stars blinking at the corners of my vision. I feel dizzy, lightheaded, as I stare at my mother, and for a brief moment, storm clouds flash behind her gaze. But she recovers quickly.

  “What did you say?” she demands, her words so icy that they sting my ears.

  I lick my lips, stand up a little straighter, legs shaking. I hope my long skirt hides the worst of my trembling. “No,” I repeat, hands balling into fists. “I’m eighteen,” I say, reveling in that word, having waited for this moment my entire life. “You can’t make me go to gay conversion camp,” I tell them. The truth. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I add, my words so soft that I can barely hear them myself.

  But I’ve said them.

  And, finally, I believe them.

  There’s nothing wrong with me.

  I take a step forward, pulse thundering, and I say it again, just one more time: “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  My whole life, I’ve believed what my parents told me. That I was less than. That I was deserving of their anger and their harm.

  But I’m not. I’m not. I don’t know how I know that. Maybe it’s desperation. Maybe it’s the fight-or-flight instinct, or something primal inside of me trying to stay alive.

  Regardless, this truth fills me, fuels me.

  There’s nothing wrong with me.

  “We thought you might say that, sweetheart,” says Dad then, calling me a nickname he’s never spoken before in his life. He hardly even uses my name. Mostly, he just calls me “worthless.”

  “Which is why,” he goes on, clearing his throat, “we brought Pastor Jonah here. He’s going to help us mediate this situation.”

  “We really want you to go, Mara,” says Kim, and when I meet her eyes, there’s a flicker of sadness there. “For your own good.”

  “For my own good,” I repeat, the words falling, wooden, from my mouth. “No,” I say, and my voice is starting to rise, but I don’t care. “I don’t think it’s for my own good. I think it’s for my parents’ good, who don’t want to have a lesbian for a daughter.”

  “We don’t have a lesbian for a daughter,” my mother snarls. “We have a daughter who’s confused and deviant, who needs to be fixed.”

  “I don’t need to be fixed.” I push my shoulders back, curling my hands into fists. “I’m fine.”

  “Mara,” says Jonah, using the cajoling tone he resorts to when he's begging the congregation for donations, “your parents know what’s best for you.”

  I gape at him. I think about the concealer hiding my black eye. I think about the time my parents took me to the ER—because they were worried that the broken bone in my arm might turn gangrenous, not because they cared that I was in pain. I told the doctor that I'd tripped, and he believed me.

  “No, they don’t,” I say firmly, quietly.

  They're the truest words I’ve ever spoken.

  “Mara, if you don’t come with me to Camp Savior,” says Jonah, and again that maddening look of pity flits across his face, “your parents say that they’ll have no choice but to disown you.”

  “You’ll have to leave,” my mother adds quickly, as if I’m too stupid to understand what Jonah meant.

  My parents are kicking me out of my home.

  They want me to leave. Now. If I don’t agree to get “fixed.”

  I stand motionless in my bedroom, with all of my familiar things around me. My paintings hanging on the walls. My old desk, scribbled on, painted on. My winged horse treasure box on my bedside table. This little room has held me since I was small, sheltered me as I sobbed, alone.

  My parents stand before me, two people who have scarred me irrevocably, who never wanted me in the first place. My best friend stands before me, the girl I trusted with a soul-deep secret, only to now be betrayed.

  How could I have ever imagined I loved her? How could I have trusted someone who could do this to me?

  And there’s Jonah. The guy who’s preached about how homosexuality can be overcome. I only remember him talking about it once: he said that being gay is a choice. I was about thirteen at the time, and I knew he was wrong.

  I'm gay, and that's just an essential part of my being.

  Unchangeable. Immutable. Essential.

  “I’m not going,” I whisper.

  And it’s the first decision of the rest of my life.

  My father huffs, regarding me with glinting, unfeeling eyes. “You have twenty minutes to pack your things and get out,” he says simply, and then he turns on his heel, leaving the room just as quickly as he entered it. My mother doesn’t even look at me. She follows after my father, a small smile playing over her lips.

  Jonah tries again. He steps forward, gripping his Bible tightly. I don’t think he’s ever been told no about conversion camp before. “Mara, you can’t be serious. Think about wha
t you're doing—”

  “I only have twenty minutes,” I tell him, my voice hoarse. “Please leave.”

  And, surprisingly, he does. He walks out of the room…

  And I’m left alone with Kim.

  “You told them.” I look at her, squint at her, realizing that, after all of this time, I never really knew her at all.

  She’s staring back at me, her hands shoved deep into her pockets. “I care about you, Mara,” she says softly. “Being gay… Man, you know how wrong that is. Don’t you?”

  A tear streaks over my cheek. “Just go.”

  Shoulders hunched forward, she walks out of my room, closing the door gently behind her.

  I have twenty minutes—well, nineteen now—to gather up the remnants of my life that are precious to me before I leave my childhood home forever.

  I’m going to be homeless, I’m going to be homeless, I'm going to be homeless loops in my head as I stumble around my room, trying to stuff as much as I can into my battered suitcase. I’ve never gone on a trip with my parents, though they've taken plenty of trips without me. I found this suitcase on the roadside on trash day; I liked how vintage it looked. Baby blue, hard-case shell. It looks like something from the fifties, when women wore pretty dresses and went on great adventures in convertibles.

  I fill the suitcase with clothes. With a few favorite books. With my toiletries, my hands shaking as I press them into the case. I grab the money from beneath my mattress, the money I made on my artwork. The treasure box from my childhood with the winged horse on it.

  And then I pick up the suitcase, glancing around the bedroom.

  I leave everything else behind.

  I walk down the staircase. Kim is already gone, but I can hear my parents and Jonah arguing in the kitchen. With a hard lump in my throat, I step into the kitchen, set the suitcase down on the floor. I look at my parents, and they fall silent. They stare at me, and I stare back at them.

  This moment is crystallized: I’m waiting for my parents to say something to change all of this. Hoping, desperately, that—somehow—my whole life has been some sort of bad dream. That maybe I actually do have parents who love me, who want the best for me.

  “Get out,” my father says.

  My mother turns so that her back is facing me as she takes a sip from her martini glass.

  Only Jonah meets my gaze, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly, as if he's in shock.

  I turn on my heel, I pick up my suitcase, and I walk out of my home forever.

  I don't look back.

  Chapter 10: Across the Universe

  I stare at Cecile, unseeing, as the memory of that night washes over me in a single, cutting instant. My eyes prick with unshed tears, and I try to take deep, even breaths, but I’m panting with anxiety.

  “I found you near Elmwood Avenue,” murmurs Cecile, holding my gaze, squeezing my hand gently. “Six weeks after your parents kicked you out. You’d been living on the streets because you didn’t want to use the money you had for a hotel room, for an apartment. You wanted to go to UCLA, and you knew you’d need your savings to get there.”

  I watch her carefully, still trying to gain control of my breathing. I don’t remember much of those six weeks. Hardly anything, really. I remember stopping in the local YMCA to take a shower. I remember eating food from dumpsters. I remember getting sick, so sick, on the garbage cheeseburger that had been out in the open air for too long. I’ve blocked most of those memories out, probably for good reason.

  “You walked up to me,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “You asked me if I had a place to go. And I lied, told you I did, because I was worried you were a cop or something.”

  Cecile chuckles, glancing down at herself. She’s always dressed like a glamorous hippie, and only a scared kid could mistake her for a cop: Cecile with her white hair in a pretty updo; flowery handmade skirt so long that it trailed on the ground like a queen's train.

  But I was a scared kid. Newly eighteen. Homeless because her parents kicked her out for being something that she couldn’t change.

  I was so afraid—every moment. But Cecile gentled the terror in me that I would never be able to trust anyone again. Cecile saved me in more ways than I could ever articulate.

  “And the rest, as they say, is history.” Cecile squeezes my hand again, before letting me go. “I had a house in California. I took you to UCLA. I put you in contact with the right people.”

  “And I became the artist I’d always dreamed of being,” I murmur to Cecile, gazing at her fondly. “You were there when no one else in the whole world cared about me.” My eyes flood with tears. “You believed in me. For some reason, you picked me up out of the gutter and loved me unconditionally.”

  “But that’s the easy part, doll. You’re very easy to love.” She pats my thigh affectionately before standing, stretching, her hands at the small of her back. She picks up her empty teacup. “I saw the diamond that you were, and I just gave you a little shine.”

  I inhale. “But…do you ever think about what would have happened if you hadn’t found me?” I ask her, the familiar fear pressing down like a weight on my chest.

  “No,” says Cecile, “because I did find you. It’s a waste of time to consider ‘what ifs.’”

  I stand up, and I start to pace, restless. “But if you hadn’t found me that day,” I go on, because of course I’ve thought about it, far too many times to count, “I would have stayed homeless. I would have had no way to get out to UCLA, way on the other side of the country. I could never, ever have afforded the bus and an apartment. I would have just stayed here in Buffalo. I’d probably have started working low-paying jobs, because it’s all I would have been able to get. Maybe I would have started taking drugs. Maybe I would have ended up in a really dark, bad place. Maybe…maybe...” I gulp down air. “Maybe I wouldn't even be here anymore.”

  Cecile shifts uncomfortably, her eyes bright.

  I swallow hard. “I don’t know the paths that Mara took, the Mara you didn’t find. I don’t know what happened to her, the horrific life she ended up leading. But it scares me, Cecile—that I was that close.”

  She sets the china down, saucer and teacup clinking softly on the old table, before stepping forward and taking my hands. “I know you don’t believe in fate, my darling girl. But it was fate that led me to you that day. Fate, the unavoidable, inescapable force,” she murmurs fervently. “I knew you before I met you. I knew you were going to be like a daughter to me. That I’d love you with all of my heart, and that you’d fill the emptiness I had in my life…that I never knew how to fill.

  “That's because it was yours to fill, with a love that is profound, the kind a daughter has for a mother. I gained the daughter I never had, you gained the mother you never had, and it all worked out because it was meant to,” she says simply, certainly. “That’s how love works, Mara. A perfect give and a perfect take.” She gazes at me shrewdly now. “And what happened last night, my dear—that was fate, too.”

  “Cecile...the woman I brought home last night? Charaxus? She says she's from another world. She did… She did magic. Right in front of me. I feel like I don't understand anything anymore—”

  “Mara.” She searches my face. “A scientist cannot tell us how a person knows what another is thinking, or how, across time and space, two souls find one another. They can’t tell us why a body is lighter after it passes. They can't tell us...so many things.

  “You’ve been hurt in the past,” she whispers, her eyes shining with tears. “But you need to see, you need to understand, that some things cannot be explained. Some things just happen, are meant to happen. You and Charaxus found one another, and that is as it should be. Don’t throw that gift away. You are never going to find it again.”

  I stand there, shaking—physically, emotionally.

  You are never going to find it again.

  Oh, my God...

  “What did I do? Cecile.” I grip her arm. “Cecile, what did I do? I told Char
axus that she should go. That…that I…we...” A tear, hot as boiling water, falls from my eye.

  Then, I take a deep breath and sit back down on the futon.

  And I tell Cecile the story of last night.

  She listens intently. Occasionally, she asks a question, but mostly, Cecile just listens, because that’s what Cecile does. When I’m done, she considers all I've told her thoughtfully, nodding. She doesn't seem to doubt a word of it. Of course, Cecile has never doubted me for as long as we've known one another. She takes everything that I say at face value, believing me utterly. That's...priceless.

  “I did a tarot reading last night, you know. That’s how I knew that she had come for you, your dream woman. Well, that and the storm,” she says, inclining her head toward the window in her room. “Don’t you know that storms bring magic?” There's no hint of teasing in her tone. “Storms are so powerful that they just can’t help it. Magic naturally rises whenever a major storm breaks.”

  I think about this... Considering the events of last night, I am, frankly, open to believing anything is possible. Sighing, I regard Cecile with a pained expression. “All I know is that I've made the biggest mistake of my life. I...” Tears sting my eyes, blinding me. “I let her go.”

  “You were afraid,” says Cecile, and her words are so soft. “You were afraid, and sometimes we can't think clearly when we’re afraid. But you’ve done nothing irreparable, Mara.”

  “Haven't I?” I stare around Cecile's room with glazed eyes. “How can you know that? I have no idea how to find her. She left...two hours ago,” I say, after glancing at the clock on the table by the door. “She could be anywhere by now.”

  “Do you honestly believe, Mara, that after crossing worlds to find one another, it would be impossible to find each other again—in the same city? My dear,” she murmurs, giving me a warm smile, “I know it’s hard for you, but try to have a little faith.”

  I look at Cecile, this woman who, magically, found me when I needed her most. And I realize that, throughout my life, I’ve been through some terrible things. But a lot of good things have happened to me, too.