Julia Watts - Finding H.F.

by Julia Watts

  “They’re not,” I say. “H.F. stands for Heavenly Faith, and Bo’s short for Beauregard.”

  Preacher Dave throws his head back and laughs. “Let’s hear it for rural Kentucky, with guns for the boys and God for the girls. Still, Heavenly Faith is a beautiful name, even if it is a bit hyperfeminine for a handsome young woman such as yourself.”

  I look down at the grass. Nobody’s ever called me handsome before. To tell the truth, I never thought you could use that word to describe a girl.

  “So,” Preacher Dave says, “here’s the deal. I am in the habit of taking Dee and Chantal and Laney to Wednesday night church services with me. Dee and Chantal are remarkably good sports about it and even sing along with the hymns. Laney rolls her eyes and bites her nails and resents the fact that she can’t light up a cigarette right there in her pew.” Preacher Dave smiles at Laney, who smiles back like she doesn’t really want to but can’t help herself. “You two brierhoppers are welcome to join us, but I have no idea how I’m going to squeeze all of you into my car.”

  Before I can even say thanks but no thanks to his invitation, Bo says, “I’ve got a car. If you drive real slow, me and H.F.’ll follow you.”

  I know Bo’s trying to concentrate on following Preacher Dave’s Mercedes, but I can’t help pestering him. “Well, the last dadblamed thing I thought I’d be doin’ on this trip was goin’ to church.”

  “Me too, but I like him. Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but up till I found my momma’s address, I liked Memaw fine too. But I’d rather roll naked in a bed of poison ivy than go to church with her. Besides, what if it’s one of them churches that tries to ‘cure’ people like us?”

  “I don’t think the girls would agree to go to a church like that.”

  “They live on the streets, Bo. It’s no tellin’ what they’d do for a free meal.”

  “Well, what about you, H.F.? Was you really wantin’ another peanut butter sandwich tonight?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “All right. Then hush and let me drive.”

  Preacher Dave’s church is a little yellow brick house. The sign outside says METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CHURCH, which seems weird to me. All the churches I’m used to seeing are Baptist or Church of God or maybe Catholic. “Community Church” don’t seem like it says much about what kind of a church it is.

  It’s only when I get inside that I start to catch on to what kind of a church it is. On the left, as you come in the door there’s a big flag with the rainbow sign I recognize from the bookstore, only this time it’s in the shape of a triangle. But here’s the peculiar thing: In front of the rainbow-striped triangle is a big gold cross.

  It’s hard for me to say how I feel seeing these two signs mixed together. All my life I’ve heard gay people preached against as perverts, and now finding out that there’s such a thing as a church for gay people...well, it’s awful to say, but it feels like I just found out that the Ku Klux Klan started accepting black members and working for racial equality.

  “H.F., you all right?” Bo asks, and I realize I’ve just been froze right there, staring at that flag.

  “Yeah, it’s just that...I ain’t never been in a church like this before.”

  Bo does that thing he does where he kind of puckers up his lips and blares his eyes. “Really? Well, me...I go to gay churches all the time. Ain’t you heard of that gay church back home, out in Hoot Owl Holler?”

  I can tell Bo’s in a good mood, because he’s teasing me. “Yeah, what’s it called—the Fire-Baptized, Foot-Washing, Snake-Handling, Tongue-Speaking First Homosexual Church of Hoot Owl Holler?”

  Bo laughs. “You wanna go sit down?”

  We scoot into a pew next to Dee and Chantal and Laney. The organist is playing, and Laney already looks bored, gnawing on her nails and scooting around in her seat. She puts me in the mind of a squirmy little kid.

  For the first time in my life, I’m sitting in church and I’m not bored. I can’t get enough of watching the people. Two rows in front of us, there’s this pair of old women sitting together. They’ve got to be Memaw’s age at least. One of them has real short gray hair and is wearing a button-down shirt; the other has her white hair done in soft curls and looks like she could be one of the old ladies in the Morgan Methodist Church, except that a Methodist Church lady would never be cuddled up with another woman like that.

  In another pew, there’s a pair of guys with matching bald spots, which strikes me as kind of sweet. “His and his” hairlines.

  When the preacher gets up to talk, it’s not Preacher Dave. Instead it’s a woman. Have you ever heard anything to beat that? In Memaw’s church, women can’t do nothing but teach Sunday school and bring covered dishes for dinner.

  The woman preacher’s pretty too. She’s got short, wavy blond hair and has on one of them shirts with a collar like Catholic priests wear. I can’t stop staring at her, and I can’t stop thinking, She’s a woman, she’s a preacher, and she likes girls just the same as me.

  We sing a hymn, which isn’t as peppy as the jumping-Jesus music at Memaw’s church, and then the preacher woman starts talking. And do you know what? Nothing she says makes me mad or hurts my feelings. She reads from the Bible about how Jesus helped the woman at the well even though everybody else thought they were too good to have anything to do with her. She talks about how people in the church help people with AIDS and cancer, and teen runaways, which I know is true because I’m sitting next to three of them. She says it’s important that we follow Jesus’ example and help all the people we can. Now, it seems to me that whether you believe in Jesus or not, there’d have to be something wrong with you if you disagreed with the idea that you ought to help folks.

  And do you know how long the sermon takes? I timed it by Bo’s watch: 15 minutes. Memaw’s preacher couldn’t say “kiss my foot” in 15 minutes.

  After the service, all these people come up to shake our hands and say they’re glad to see us. Dee and Chantal and Bo and me smile right back at them and shake their hands, but Laney stomps off in her big clodhopper boots and says she’s going outside to smoke.

  When Bo and me are following the Mercedes to Preacher Dave’s house, I say, “So, what did you think?”

  “I think if they wanted me to sing in a church like that, they wouldn’t have to pay me.”

  “Well, their music sure could use some peppin’ up, that’s for sure.

  Bo shakes his head back and forth. “A church for queers. H.F., I swear to God, at this moment, I really feel like I’ve seen it all.”

  But as soon as we hit Preacher Dave’s house, I know that me and Bo haven’t seen it all, because up until this second we’ve never seen where a real rich person lives. We’re not talking a brick, ranch-style house, which is what passes for a rich person’s house in Morgan. This house looks like it came straight out of Gone With the Wind—white columns, green shutters, a big yard full of azaleas and magnolias. Dee and Chantal and Laney walk on up to the porch like it’s just like the house they grew up in, but me and Bo stand there like we’ve been pole-axed.

  “H.F. and Bo, you are witnessing every little gold digger’s dream,” Preacher Dave says. “I married an old fag from old money. And would you believe he’s a doctor, to boot? That’s why I can flutter around all day doing good deeds. Shoot, I’d probably join the Junior League, if they’d let me.” He motions us toward the house. “Come on in. Don’t be shy. I’m just a good ol’ boy from Pine Knob, remember?”

  The inside of the house takes my breath away. I’ve heard of crystal chandeliers, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen one in person. “You’ll be interested in this, General Beauregard,” Preacher Dave says, pointing at the huge painting hanging above stairs that look just like the ones Rhett carried Scarlett up. “That picture of Robert E. Lee was hanging there when we bought the house. It’d been there for generations, so we couldn’t bear to take it down. Instead we decided to add some new medals to the good general’s jacket.” I
look at Lee’s jacket and see they’ve painted two buttons onto his lapel: One is a pink triangle, and the other has a raised black fist on it.

  “I thought I heard you come in.” I look away from the painting and see a tall, silver-haired man who looks like an aging movie star. He leans down to kiss Preacher Dave. “Sorry I was too late for church,” he says. “Kidney stones.”

  “My honey’s a urologist, bless his heart,” Dave says. “Not everybody knows it, but the foundation of this house is built entirely of kidney stones. So,” he says brightly, “Chinese for dinner?”

  Bill goes to order the food, and Dee and Chantal and Laney have already taken their shoes off and piled up in what Dave calls the family room, in front of the biggest TV I’ve ever seen.

  “So,” Dave says, “would my fellow Kentuckians care to help me in the kitchen?”

  Bo gets out silverware for everybody while I take the candy-colored dishes out of the china cabinet. Preacher Dave calls the dishes “Fiesta ware,” which strikes me as funny...to call a plain old dish something that fancy. Did I mention that the danged kitchen’s about the size of Memaw’s whole house?

  “What did you think of church?” Preacher Dave says, filling glasses with ice that comes right out of some kind of spout on the refrigerator door.

  “You didn’t preach,” I say.

  He laughs. “I’m not really a preacher. The kids just call me that because I drag them to church all the time.”

  Bo looks up from the silverware drawer. “I never knew there was churches for...for...”

  “For us?” Dave says. “Well, think about it. What did Jesus say in the Bible about homosexuality? Not one word. Now, sure, homosexuality is prohibited in the Old Testament, but so is wearing mixed-knit fabric and eating shellfish. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen plenty of supposedly devout straight Christians wearing polyester and chowing down at the Red Lobster.”

  A real Chinese man brings the food right to the door, and after Bill pays him, we sit down to eat. The food is good and real different from anything I’ve ever ate before. When Memaw cooks vegetables, she cooks them till they’re good and done, which means you could practically pour them in a glass and drink them. The vegetables in the Chinese food don’t seem like they’ve been cooked hardly at all. They’re still crunchy.

  “So, girls...” Dave says. He’s sitting at one end of the long dining room table, and Bill’s sitting at the other. “What I want to know is why you three aren’t living in the place I found for you. I was downright shocked to see your winsome little faces in the park today.”

  “Got kicked out,” Dee says around a mouthful of Chinese food.

  “Let me guess,” Dave says, “you and Chantal couldn’t stay out of each other’s beds, and Laney couldn’t keep her mouth shut.”

  The girls laugh.

  “Well, I was actually going to call you at the halfway house anyway,” Dave says, dipping himself some more of that chicken stuff that’s called “moo-something.” It seems like if it’s called “moo,” it ought to be beef. “I was talking to my friend Robin the other day. She and her lover run Myrtle and Hortense’s, that trendy restaurant that serves nouvelle ‘50s food. Meat loaf sandwiches with goat cheese...”

  “Tuna noodle casserole, served with a side of irony,” Bill says, and Dave laughs.

  “Anyway,” Dave says, “I was talking to her about y’all...and particularly about Miss Dee’s culinary aspirations. And, well, she and her lover have a one-room garage apartment they don’t use. She said y’all would be welcome to crash there if you wanted and maybe come help out a few hours a week at the restaurant, washing dishes, bussing tables, that kind of thing. For pay, of course.”

  Dee and Chantal jump up and hug each other like they’ve just won the big money on a game show, and then they run over to hug Dave, till he says, “Come on now, girls. I’m a gay man. I can’t have women crawling all over me.”

  “You gonna live with us too, right Laney?” Dee says.

  Laney pushes her plate away. “I’ll think about it.”

  I swear, I can’t figure that girl out to save my life.

  After we eat, Dave and Bill give Bo and me a tour of the house. When we hit the music room, I think Bo’s gonna die from happiness right on the spot.

  “A grand piano!” He’s been trying to act like he sees fancy stuff like Dave and Bill’s every day, but when he sees that shiny black piano, I guess he just can’t contain himself anymore. “Not a baby grand neither! A full-size one—I swear, it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Do you play?” Bill asks.

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t on this one. You should see the old upright I practice on in the school music room.”

  “Please play something,” Dave says.

  Of course, Bo can’t resist. He plays this classical song the band leader at school gave him the sheet music for, and of course, now he’s got it memorized. Bo only has to play a song through twice, then he knows it by heart. The song’s beautiful, but it makes me sad too, because I think of Wendy that night at her house, when she played for her parents and me.

  “Wow, you’re really good,” Dave says, and Bo blushes.

  Pretty soon Bill and Dave have gotten out this big box of sheet music, and Bo starts playing these songs that sound like they’re from old movies or something. Before you know it, they’re all three singing, and the sound of it lures Dee and Chantal and Laney away from living room to listen.

  “Get a load of us,” Dave says. “We’re the Three Tenors.”

  “We look more like the Three Graces,” Bill laughs. “Three generations of queens coming together to sing you their favorite show tunes.”

  Bo doesn’t even bat an eye when Bill calls him a queen; he just keeps right on playing. For the first time, he’s in good company.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I just had the best bath of my life. The bedroom Dave and Bill put me in has a bathroom right next to it, the prettiest bathroom I’ve ever seen. The big, claw-footed tub is painted the color of the inside of a cantaloupe, and all the towels and rugs are fluffy and green.

  Well, I filled that big old cantaloupe full of hot water and this bubble bath they’ve got that smells like strawberries. I climbed in with the bubbles up to my neck, closed my eyes, and just lay there, feeling all the dirt and sweat floating right off of me. I washed my hair with this eucalyptus shampoo that made my head all tingly, and by the time I got out of the tub and brushed my teeth and put on a clean nightshirt, I felt like a snake that just crawled out of its dirty, dried-up old skin and found the shiny, fresh skin underneath.

  Now I’m laying in a big brass bed with a white fluffy bedspread and a mess of white fluffy pillows. It’s like laying on a great big pile of marshmallows. My eyes are closed, and I’m feeling real peaceful when I hear the tapping on the door. “Come in.”

  At first I don’t recognize her. The dark eye makeup and lipstick are gone from her face, which makes her look years younger, like the kid she really is. Her just-washed hair is drying in little curls around her face, and instead of black she’s wearing white —a clean, white oversize T-shirt that probably belongs to Dave. “Can I come in?” she says.

  “Sure, Laney.”

  She climbs onto the bed and sits right next to me. “Sometimes at night, when I’m by myself, I get...sad.”

  “I know what you mean.” I say it, but it’s just halfway true. I get sad too, and lonely, but even without my momma, I’ve never been all alone in the world the way Laney is.

  “I don’t know...” she says, hugging her knees to her chest so I can see she’s got boxer shorts on under her T-shirt. “Preacher Dave drives us to that fuckin’ church, and I just sit there and think about spending every damn Sunday of my childhood at the Calvary Baptist Church and how all that supposed Christian forgiveness didn’t amount to a hill of beans when my parents found out their daughter was a dyke.”

  “Have you ever talked to Preacher Dave about that?”
>
  “Oh, sure, I’ve talked to him about it. He said, ‘You were raised in hate, Laney, but you can be saved by love.’ I told him when he feels the urge to talk like that, he should just needlepoint it on a pillow instead.”

  I think about all the needlepoint sayings at Memaw’s and laugh.

  “But I don’t want to talk about me.” Laney stretches out her legs and leans back into the pillows. “I want to talk about you.”

  “Yeah? What do you want to know?”

  Laney smiles, which is something she should do more often. “How many girls have you been with?”

  City girls sure don’t beat around the bush. I start to say “one,” but then decide I don’t want to open up the can of worms that was my friendship with Wendy. Plus, I don’t know if what me and Wendy did together would fit Laney’s city-girl definition of “being with” somebody. “None,” I say.

  Laney’s mouth drops open, then she laughs. “None? You’re kidding! But...you do like girls, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Laney flips over on her side so she’s laying there like a pinup girl. A pinup girl in boxer shorts. “And...do you like me?”

  “Sure, I like you, Laney. You...you...” I don’t know what the sam hill I’m trying to say—except maybe “You confuse the living daylights out of me”—but I don’t get the chance to say it because Laney starts kissing me. It’s not a shy, little getting-toknow-you peck either. Her mouth is open, her lips are wet, and the tip of her tongue touches mine.

  “I wanted you the second I saw you,” she whispers when we pull apart. “You wiry little butch, you.”

  I have no idea what a wiry butch is—it sounds like some kind of dog to me—but I’ve got no time to ask questions because Laney is on me like a duck on a june bug, kissing me and sliding her hands all over me. I keep feeling like I ought to be doing things to her, at least at first, but I figure she knows what she’s doing and I don’t, so I might as well lay back and enjoy the ride.

  The Laney who holds me and kisses me is so different than the chain-smoking, tough-talking street kid I met yesterday. It’s crazy to think of, but Laney’s like an M&M. She’s got a hard shell, but if you can melt it away, what’s inside is soft and sweet. As I watch her drift off to sleep, I wish she didn’t have to live in a world where gay kids have to grow a hard shell to survive.