by Julia Watts
Bo must be thinking the same thing, because he says, “What do you reckon it’d cost to stay in a hotel like that un?”
“More’n we’ve got...a hundred dollars probably.”
“Well, someday I’m gonna stay in a hotel like that. I’ll wake up in the mornin’ and order eggs Benedict from room service. I don’t know for sure what eggs Benedict is, but I reckon I’ll find out.”
“They don’t build them hotels for people like you and me.” I bet there ain’t one person staying in that hotel whose permanent address is a trailer on the side of a strip-mine-scarred mountain, like where Bo lives. And I’m sure there’s nobody in there whose momma took off and left her to be raised by her memaw neither.
“I swear, H.F., you’re the most negative person I ever met in my life. There ain’t a thing to stop me from bein’ one of them people loungin’ around in that there hotel. This is America.”
I want to say, Tell that to the boys on the football team who bust your head every chance they get, not just because you’re a faggot but because you’re a white-trash faggot. But instead I say, “Call me when you win the lottery.” Bo buys a Kentucky lottery ticket every single week of his life, even though I tell him he might as well flush his five dollars down the toilet.
“Maybe I’ll call you...if you start bein’ nice to me.”
We’ve moved past the hotel now and past some high-rise apartment buildings. Finally, up ahead I think I see a place where we can pull over.
It’s a park, I reckon, but it’s much bigger than the Morgan City Park, which is about the size of Memaw’s front yard. This park is acres and acres of grass and trees, and it’s just crawling with people—people running, bicycling, playing with their dogs.
It’s funny: Back home Bo and me can be out in grass and trees whenever we feel like it, and so we always wonder what it’d be like to live where there’s tall buildings and excitement. These city people, though, look like they’re glad to be away from all that concrete and walking on some nice, soft grass. I guess it’s human nature to want to get away from what you’re used to.
“Why don’t we pull over here?” I say.
We do, and it feels good to get out and walk around. For my money, this park ain’t nothing compared to Deer Creek, if sunshine and green leaves is what you’re after, but it is fun to watch the people: the purple-haired kid skateboarding, the redheaded woman pushing a three-seated stroller holding three redheaded triplets. For a second the red hair reminds me of Wendy and my throat aches with the memory, but then my sadness is interrupted by the sight of something I never thought I’d live to see: two guys in their 20s, tan and good looking, both wearing sunglasses and cut-off Levi’s, walking through the park holding hands.
“Did you see that?” Bo says, and of course, I know right that second what he’s talking about.
“I sure did. Do you reckon it’s safe for them to be carryin’ on thataway?”
“I don’t know...it looks like they’d get beat up or arrested or somethin’. That one guy, though...the one with the brown hair?” Since Bo’s trailed off, I prompt him. “Yeah?”
Bo’s eyes look all dreamy. “I really liked his...his shoes.”
It’s the closest I’ve ever heard Bo come to saying he’s attracted to another guy. “You see two guys holding hands in public, and what you notice is what one of ‘em has on his feet? I bet his shoes wasn’t all you liked.”
“No, really, H.F.! You can tell a lot about a person by the shoes they wear—”
While Bo’s rattling on about footwear, I spot the two guys. They’re standing under a big oak tree, still holding hands, talking with their smiling faces real close to each other. “Look, Bo. They’re over there.”
Me and Bo keep watching them, waiting for somebody to say something or do them a meanness, but nobody ever does. Everybody just keeps right on jogging or skating or throwing Frisbees for their dogs. Nobody seems to notice the two hand-holding boys at all. Of all the things I’ve seen in one day, this is the most amazing.
When the couple starts to walk again, me and Bo follow them. Neither one of us says, “Let’s follow those guys”; we just do it like we’ve got no choice, like they’re the Pied Piper and we’re the rats. We stay a ways behind them so they won’t notice us, and just watch the easy way they touch and talk. One blond woman who’s watching her kids play looks at them a little funny, but her little frown is the closest thing to trouble that they get.
“Lord,” Bo says, “no wonder the preachers back home always talk about big cities bein’ hotbeds of sin and fornication. I reckon you could do pretty much whatever you wanted in a place like this.”
I picture myself skipping through the park holding hands with a girl, but then I remember I don’t have a girl to hold hands with. All of a sudden, I don’t feel like following the happy couple anymore. “Bo, let’s set down a minute. Want to?”
Bo looks longingly at the couple for a second, then says, “That’s probably a good idea. We don’t want them to think we’re stalkin’ them or somethin’.”
We sit on the grass and stretch our legs in front of us. “You’ll find somebody like that someday,” I say. ‘Y’all can stay at that big hotel and eat them eggs you wanted to try. Then you can walk through the park holdin’ hands.”
“How do you know that’s what I want?” Bo says. “Somebody to priss around and hold hands with?”
“Because it’s what everybody wants, whether they admit it or not. And you’ve got a good chance. I blew mine.”
“What are you talkin’ about, H.F.? You ain’t but 16 years old.”
“Memaw was about to get married when she was 16. Bo, Wendy was it. Her and me—we just connected, you know? They’ll never be another one like her.”
“Hey,” a voice deeper than Bo’s says.
I look up and see two black girls. One—the one who just said “hey,” I reckon—is short and full-figured, but muscular looking. She’s got on a red plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off and a pair of blue jeans cut off just above the knee. Heavy black boots are on her feet—the same kind Uncle Bobby wears with his work clothes. She don’t have much hair that I can see, but what she does have is hidden under a backwards baseball cap.
The girl beside her is taller and darker and thinner—kind of noble looking, like some African princess. She’s got on cut-offs too, but they’re much shorter than her friend’s. Her T-shirt’s short too, showing off her flat, brown belly.
Now, here’s the part where you’re gonna think I’m a bad person. When I see them, I get nervous. Real nervous. You’re not gonna believe this, but I’ve never met a black person before.
I was telling the truth when I said all the faces in Morgan are white. Not one black person goes to Morgan County High because not one black person lives in Morgan County.
There’s a story Memaw tells about something that happened before she was born. A bunch of black men had come to Morgan to work on the railroad, and some of the white men in town got to drinking and got all riled up talking about how black men were taking white men’s jobs. The drunker they got, the madder they got, until they finally got their guns, rounded up the black men, and forced them into boxcars and out of town. That was in 1919, and as far as I know, there ain’t been a black person living in Morgan since.
Memaw says anybody who’d treat other folks that way, no matter what color their skin is, ought not to be allowed to call himself a Christian. She’s right, but I’ll go further than that: I don’t think a person who’d do another person that way should be allowed to call himself a human being.
So when I look up and see the faces of these girls staring at me, I feel ashamed—ashamed of how the people in my hometown acted back in 1919, ashamed of how they act even today. But behind that shame, there’s something else: fear. Not fear that these two girls about my age are some kind of danger, but a fear of saying the wrong thing, the fear that comes from trying to figure out a way to talk to somebody who’s different than you. S
ince I don’t know what else to say, I finally just repeat what was said to me: “Hey.”
“Ain’t seen you ‘round here before,” the girl in the baseball cap says. Her voice is almost as low as a man’s. “Name’s Denise, but everybody call me Dee.” She nods at the tall girl beside her. “This here’s Chantal, and—” She whips her head around. “Laney, where you at, girl?”
“Back here.” Dee and Chantal move apart, and I see a girl standing a couple of feet behind them. She’s a white girl, but she’s not like any white girl I’ve ever seen before. For one thing, she’s got an earring stuck through her nose, which I reckon must be downright nasty when her sinuses start to bothering her. Her hair’s cut all lopsided and is bleached blond going back to black. Even though it’s sticky hot, she’s got on a black leather jacket covered in zippers. But underneath it she’s got on this skimpy black lace top that looks like underwear. From the waist down, though, she’s dressed the same as Dee, in cut-off jeans and black clodhoppers. She nods at us and sucks on her cigarette. I can tell she’s trying to look tough.
“I’m H.F., and this here’s my friend Bo.”
“Where y’all from?” Chantal asks. “You talk cute.”
“The Bluegrass State,” Bo says. “ ‘Course, the part of the state we’re from, most of the grass you see’s the green kind you smoke.”
Dee and Chantal both crack up at that. Even Laney lets down her guard long enough to smile a little. That’s the thing about Bo: When it comes to real personal conversations, he won’t tell you a thing about himself. But when it comes to chitchat, he can’t be beat.
“Y’all brother and sister?” Chantal asks.
“Nope, just friends.” I don’t know why I said it that way— “just friends”—because I’ve always hated that expression. It makes it sound like friends don’t mean nothing compared to family, but I don’t think that’s true. I mean, I love Bo better than any real-life brother I could’ve ended up with.
“Kentucky, huh?” Dee says. “Well, you a long way from home. What happened—your folks kick you out?”
I try to imagine Memaw ordering me to get my things and go. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” Dee says, like she’s explaining something to a dull-witted kindergartner, “because you’re queer.”
I wonder if we ought to run, if Dee’s trying to pick a fight with us. If she is, we’d better run. Even without her friends, I bet she could beat the living daylights out of Bo and me.
When I look over at Bo, he’s frozen like a possum waiting to become roadkill.
“Dee didn’t mean nothin’ bad by that,” Chantal says while I’m still trying to figure out what to do. “She just wanted to know if the same thing happened to you that happened to her.”
“You got kicked out of your house?” Here I’d been feeling sorry for myself all these years on accounta my momma leaving me, but shoot, at least I’ve always had a roof over my head.
“Sure did,” Dee says. “Of course, I wasn’t livin’ in no mansion...just a fallin’-down hole in the wall. Shit, you needed a baseball bat to beat the rats off. I never thought my momma give a shit what I done. Most of the time she was out drinkin’ anyway. Then one night she come home drunk off her ass, you know, and starts yelling at me how I’d better not get pregnant young like she done. I said, ‘Momma, you ain’t got to worry about that. I’m a dyke.’And the next thing I knew, she throwed all my clothes out the door with me behind ‘em.”
“Lord God a-mighty” Bo says. Me, I can’t say nothing.
“Even a momma don’t love a queer,” Dee says. “My brother out on the street sellin’ drugs to junior high kids, but Momma don’t mind that so much—says at least it bring some money into the house. I figure bein’ a dyke ain’t like bein’ a dealer, ‘cause bein’ a dyke don’t hurt nobody. Momma didn’t see it that way, though.”
“Same shit happened to me,” Chantal says, grabbing hold of Dee’s hand.
“Yeah,” Dee says, “but you had more to lose than I did—a daddy with a job, a momma that stayed sober, a nice apartment.”
Chantal shakes her head. “No point in talkin’ about what you lost after you’ve lost it. Sometimes I wish my little sister hadn’t showed Momma and Daddy them poems I wrote, but then I think if I hadn’t lost my family, I never would’ve found Dee.”
Dee and Chantal kiss. Seeing them like this out in public makes me shy, and I look down so I won’t feel like I’m spying on them. I don’t look over at Bo, but I know he’s looking down too.
After the kiss is over, Chantal says, “Laney’s the one you oughtta talk to, though. She’s the rich girl—got kicked out of a mansion in Marietta.”
“Which means I’m not a rich girl anymore, no matter how often you homegirls call me one.” Laney drops her cigarette and stomps on it with her heavy boot. “But, yeah, I’m from the ‘burbs. College-educated parents, big-ass house, full-time housekeeper, the whole shooting match. But then one night my mom didn’t knock before she came into my bedroom where I was with my girlfriend, who, incidentally, was tied to my bed.” Laney looks right at me and grins. Her lips are painted what Memaw would call “harlot red.” “An ostrich feather and a squeeze bottle of honey were involved.”
I feel my face burn red because of what Laney’s saying, because I realize there’s one thing that could’ve made the situation with Wendy worse: if one of her parents had walked in on us. Of course, I have no idea what Laney’s talking about with the ostrich feather and honey. Since I’ve never done nothing with honey except spread it on a biscuit, I say, “So, did your parents kick you out?”
Laney’s forehead wrinkles up. “Yeah and no. They gave me a choice, but it was the same kind of choice as if I held up a sharp stick to your face and said, ‘Which eye do you want to keep?’” She looks at her chewed fingernails for a second, then says, “They sent my girlfriend home. Then, after they’d talked to their minister, they called one of those bullshit family conferences that’s supposed to make you feel like something you say might matter. They told me I was sick and they wanted to help me...that if I wanted help, there was this place they could send me to—this Christian counseling center in, God, where was it? West Virginia? Someplace fuckin’ awful, I know that much. I could go there, and they’d ‘rehabilitate’ me—naturally, they didn’t say ‘brainwash,’ even though that’s what they meant—and after that, I could finish high school at this fundamentalist Christian academy, since public school was obviously a bad influence on me.”
“So what did you say?” I ask.
“I said, ‘What if I don’t want help? What if I think I’m fine, and you’re the ones who are sick?’ And my dad said, ‘Then you’re on your own.’ I grabbed what I could carry and hitched a ride to the city.”
“We do all right,” Dee says. “Sleep outside sometimes, sometimes on people’s couches.”
Chantal grins. “For a few weeks we stayed in this home these Christian ladies run, but then they caught me and Dee sneakin’ into bed together, and they busted Laney for smoking.”
Laney rolls her eyes, which are lined with black makeup. “It was the same ol’ shit, you know? ‘If you’re gonna live in my house, you’re gonna obey my rules.’ Well, fuck that! The weather in Atlanta’s great about 80% of the time. I don’t need a roof over my head that bad!”
“Preach it, sister!” Dee laughs.
“Usually me and Dee don’t have much use for rich white girls,” Chantal says, “but we like Laney because she’s got an attitude problem. At least that’s what them Christian ladies told her.”
Dee must realize me and Bo have hardly said a word the whole time they’ve been talking, because she says, “So that’s our life story. What you got to say for yourselves?” I wish I could do something for these girls whose lives are so much harder than mine—wish I could take them with me to Florida and let my momma be their momma too. While I’m standing there wishing I had something to give them, Bo says, “So...do y’all want a peanut butter sandwich
?”
Chantal smiles. “Crunchy or creamy?”
Chapter Thirteen
It’s funny: When I first saw Dee and Chantal, I was scared about what to say to them on accounta them being black, and I didn’t know what to think of anybody who’d wear a getup like Laney had on. Then, after they started telling me about getting throwed out of their houses, I started feeling sorry for them—the same way you feel sorry for starving children on TV. I couldn’t get over the fact that these girls were homeless.
But now, as we sit on the ground after we’ve finished our peanut butter picnic, I’m not scared of Dee and Chantal and Laney, and I’m not so quick to feel sorry for them either. While we ate, Dee asked Bo and me to tell them about where we’re from.
So we told them about Morgan—about how it’s all white people and everybody knows everybody else, how you can’t swing a cat without hitting a Baptist church, how there’s just one movie theater with only one screen and the movie only changes every two weeks. We talked about how after school we usually just drive around on the back roads, because there’s nothing else to do.
And you know what? After we told Dee and Chantal and Laney all that, they felt sorry for us. “That’s pitiful, having to live in a hellhole like that,” Dee said.
Laney just lit a cigarette and said, “I’d slit my fuckin’ wrists.”
So I guess you ought to be careful who you feel sorry for, because they just might be feeling sorry for you.
I was stupid to be afraid because Dee and Chantal and Laney look different—I might as well have been one of the snooty girls on the Morgan cheerleading squad for thinking that way. Dee and Chantal and Laney are different the way Bo and me have always been different. Different from—what is it Laney says?—“the hets.” No matter where we’re from or what we look like, we’re the same kind of different.
Even though we’re sitting under a tree and it’s getting dark, you can’t hardly hear the regular night sounds like crickets and frogs for all the noise of the city. Laney shucks off her leather jacket, folds it up to make a pillow, and lies back on it, her arms stretched over her head. Her boobies kinda spill out of the black lace top she’s wearing, and I notice she’s got a little black spider tattooed on her left one. It looks like a black widow.