by Ryan Almroth
I kick my better leg out and try to get up with Karim’s hands under my arms, but I cry out when my foot catches the ground again.
“You boys okay?” the woman calls, voice gruff and low. She stops when she notices our alarm, and she holds her free hand up. “They’re gone,” she assures, taking a few slow steps forward. “I scared them off by shooting some blanks. Are you okay?”
Neither of us can say anything, and I almost think I might be in shock.
The woman squats down in front of me and holds her hand out to us. Her hands are bigger than mine. “I don’t bite,” she says. “Can you get up, bud?”
“He can’t,” Karim finally answers for me. “We’ve tried.”
I shake my head, and the overbearing weight of everything happening all at once stops any words from coming out.
“You won’t get him up so easily that way,” the woman tells Karim. “Get on one side and I’ll get on the other.” She looks me in the eye before touching me. “Is that all right with you?”
There’s no other choice. I exhale and manage a quiet “Yeah.”
The woman pushes me up under the arm at the same time as Karim does and slings my arm over her neck. They pull me up onto one foot, but my knee aches in protest too. “Come on,” she tells Karim, “put your shoulder under his arm if you want him to walk.”
Even leaning on both of them, I can’t balance easily on one leg. The woman is significantly taller than either of us, and it’s painful to put my weight on her even when she bends down. They try to help me forward one step, but my bad foot catches the ground again and I groan.
Karim’s hand fists in my shirt like he’s trying to hold on to me for dear life. “We can’t make it over the creek like this.”
“How far is it to your house?” the woman asks.
“Far,” Karim says.
“Well, then,” the woman sighs, slinging her rifle over her free shoulder. “Would you be cool with me picking you up?”
I blink at her, unsure if I heard right. Somehow I’m stunned into asking, “What?”
“My place is just up the hill. I can carry you that far and take a look at your ankle. My car’s in the shop, so I can’t drive you home, but you can call your parents and they can pick you up from my place. Up to you boys how you wanna do this, but I wouldn’t risk weight on that leg.”
Normally, I’d give in to my terror and decline, but there’s no other reasonable way out of this situation. She chased away the other boys, and her concern sounds genuine. I glance at Karim, who looks astonished but remains silent. “Okay,” I finally say. “That’s fine.”
The woman gestures for Karim to step away, so he reluctantly lets go of me and holds my hand instead. She squats down and grabs under my knees so I fall into her arms bridal-style. I wince from the jolt to my knees and ankle, but the pain is more manageable now that I’m not standing. She straightens up and starts climbing the rocks. Karim drops my hand to follow behind us, and I catch a glimpse of his face straddling the line between mortification and relief. Once we’re at the top of the hill and through the dense trees, Karim falls in step with her and keeps eyeing me nervously.
The hike takes hardly two minutes, and soon the trees stop obscuring most of the small house. If the woman is getting tired, she barely shows it. She marches onto the petite wooden porch and looks over her shoulder at Karim. “Hey, bud, you mind getting the keys off my belt and opening the door? It’s the round silver key.” When he hesitates, she says, “I might haul around a lot of heavy wood all day, but your boyfriend is feeling awfully heavy, and if you want me to take a look at his leg without dropping him first, I implore you to please open the door.”
Karim stares at her with wide eyes and looks at me for a second, then mumbles, “Sorry,” and unclips her key ring from her belt. He opens the door after finding the right key, and the woman carries me inside, nodding for Karim to close the door behind us.
She carries me down the hall and into a living room. She bumps the glass coffee table with her shin to nudge it out of the way so she can set me down on the rustic couch. I keep my leg raised to avoid it touching anything and set my calf down on the corner of the coffee table.
“All right,” the woman says, taking her rifle off her shoulder and setting it on a high shelf. She nods to me. “What’s your name, bud?”
“Nico.”
“Okay, Nico. You got your phone? Wanna do me a favor and call your parents to let them know you’re okay? Say you’re at Jude’s place and they’re welcome to pick you up whenever they can. If they need help figuring out how to get in my driveway from the road, I’ll tell them.” While I try to fish my phone out of my pocket, she nods to Karim. “How ’bout you, kiddo? What’s your name?”
He’s zoned out with his worried eyes searching me, but he flinches when she repeats the question. He quietly answers, “Karim.”
“Okay, Karim. Can you run to the kitchen down the hall, open the cabinet directly above the sink, and get out the medical kit? It’s bright orange—you can’t miss it.”
He backs out of the doorway slowly without taking his gaze off me, waiting for some kind of signal that I’m okay. I give him a small smile, and he vanishes down the hall, sneakers clacking quickly on the hardwood flooring. Jude sits down in the armchair next to the edge of the table and scoots it closer to me.
“I’m gonna take a look at your ankle, that all right?” Jude asks. I nod, and she begins unlacing my shoe while I dial my mom.
When neither my mom nor my dad answers their phones, I resort to sending them both texts. The cuts on my hands aren’t too bad, but they slow my typing. “My parents work,” I tell her. “I texted them.”
“Good, good. Let’s see what we can do to help you walk in the meantime.” She tries taking my shoe off, but I wince and she stops. “Sorry, kiddo. You really did a number on your leg, huh?”
Karim reappears in the doorway with an orange zippered pouch and wordlessly hands it to Jude. She thanks him and ushers him back into the kitchen to get ice packs out of the freezer, then he’s gone again.
“He’s really lookin’ out for you,” Jude says without looking up from the medical kit as her fingers rifle through it. “I saw when those boys were trying to threaten you, and he looked ready to defend you. He’s quiet, though.”
I swallow. “He’s just nervous around….”
“Witches?” She shoots me a grin with yellowed teeth and a missing left incisor.
My face is suddenly hot, and I look down at my hands, wringing them in my lap. “New people, I meant. He’s nervous around new people.” I close my eyes. “And it was just a joke,” I stutter. “The witch thing. Christian started it, and we…. We didn’t really think….”
Jude laughs, loud and bellowing. “Oh, you are precious. Of all the fantasies I’ve heard others say about me, that one has to take the cake. You kids and your imaginations. Precious.”
“We’re sorry.” It’s Karim’s voice, and we both glance at the doorway to see him standing there with two blue ice packs in his hands.
Jude chuckles and holds out her hand. “It’s quite all right, bud, thank you.” He walks up to give her the ice packs and she puts them on the table. Carefully, she unlaces my shoe all the way, takes it off, and rolls my sock down. My ankle is hot and swollen, with a bruise forming beneath the bone, and I flinch when she repositions my foot. “Sorry, bud. Can you move it?”
I rotate it against a flash of pain, but nod. “A little.”
“Lift your leg up,” she instructs me, then slides an ice pack under my foot when I do.
Karim hovers across the table from me, clearly unsure of what to do with himself. “That looks bad,” he says.
“Doesn’t seem like anything’s broken, thankfully,” Jude observes. “But I’d go see a doctor anyway if I was you. It’s probably a bad sprain.” She slides the medical kit across the table so it’s within my reach. “Get some alcohol pads out of there and tend to your knees.”
I star
t rolling my loose jeans up carefully, and Karim finally walks around the table and sits down next to me. He sorts through the medical kit and hands me the alcohol wipes. I wipe my palms first, flinching at the subtle sting. The cuts on my knees aren’t as bad as I thought, but the blood that welled around them has dried up and stuck to the denim. I wince as I dab at it and separate the fabric from my skin, and Karim gives my shoulder a light squeeze of reassurance.
Jude takes out a roll of medical tape and carefully fixes the end of it around my foot. “So,” she says while she starts wrapping up my ankle, “doesn’t seem like you boys were being very careful out there.”
I look at Karim, and he stares back at me with unconcealed concern. “Christian had a knife,” he says emptily, like he’s desperate to detach the words from their meaning.
“Oh, I saw. I’m going to be taking that up with his parents.”
Jude’s words take both of us by surprise. “Really?” I ask.
“I’ve been considering threatening legal action for their persistent vandalism of my yard,” Jude says without looking up from her work. “They’ve repeatedly been trespassing and breaking my property, and I didn’t think it was worth reporting until now. I’ve been scaring them away, but they’re kids, you know. They can pick on me all they want for being a big bad butch and living my life, but trying to hate-crime other kids is unjustifiable. I will be talking to their parents about it, but in the meantime, you boys should be careful about being alone in the woods.”
Karim rubs his brow. “But can’t they say something about you threatening them with a gun?”
Jude shrugs her shoulder with a dry chuckle. “Let them. It’s never loaded with anything but blanks. I don’t keep real bullets in the house and never have. If they want to claim aggravated assault, I was only trying to stop them from hurting you and putting themselves in jail for life. I didn’t even aim the gun at them or yell direct threats. I’ve got cameras out back and footage of them peeping into my house and trying to break in, so if their parents want to let them be incriminated by that, it’s up to them to press charges against me.”
A stiff silence settles upon us, and Jude finishes wrapping up my ankle. I patch some Band-Aids onto the scratches on my knees with Karim’s help and roll my pants down, but the lack of conversation is an open gate for the question burning a hole through my brain.
“Why are you helping us?” I ask, then feel stupid for having voiced it. “I mean, we’ve also trespassed on your property. We’ve spread those lies. It was a joke, but we still did it.”
Jude gives me a solemn look. A soft smile creeps onto her face, almost negligible at first. “I think I see myself in you. My older self, I mean. Young, wild, free, resistant of the path that society has decided I should take. Critical of what society says I should be, but not so critical of what it says about other people.” She gestures for Karim to slide the medical kit back to her and puts the rest of the bandage back inside. “I want you boys to tell me what justifies the rumors that you’ve heard and were complicit in spreading about me.”
Both of us tense up. I glance at Karim, knowing he’s as much at a loss for words as I am. Finally I say, “My sister kept seeing you in our neighbor’s yard and started listening to the stories the other boys made up. They said they saw you lighting candles and chanting at night with Satanic runes and things like that.”
“Ah,” Jude says quietly. She stands up and moves to the window, picking up a candle with a small glass rim. “My yahrzeit candle.” She sets it on the coffee table and sits down in the armchair with her elbows on her knees, gazing at the candle longingly. “Three years ago I lost someone I loved more dearly than anyone else in the world.” She wipes her eye with her knuckle and smiles sadly. “She was raised Jewish, and I was in the process of converting. Every year I light this candle in memory of her, because I know it’s what she would have wanted. And I say the Hebrew prayers, and I study and devote myself as much as I can on my lonesome. Because in both our hearts, Dinah was my wife.”
The dread in my stomach is almost physically agonizing. “I’m sorry,” I say. “We didn’t know—”
“You didn’t,” Jude says. “But imagine that your natural expression of grief is mischaracterized so strongly by those who don’t make efforts to understand, and that the first instinct they have is to weave tales and paint you as the furthest thing from who you are. You know the first thing people think when they see my bald head? They usually assume I had cancer. And they’re sorry for me, and they ask when my hair’s going to grow back, and some have the audacity to tell me I can still look beautiful without hair. But I don’t care to look beautiful to them, and I shaved my head years before I had cancer. I just like it this way, and that’s for me. And even those comments are ones I’m used to hearing, but having my grief ceremony for my wife mocked is quite the more heartbreaking.
“I’m no stranger to being judged for who I am,” she continues. “I’m butch, I’m masculine, I’m big, I’m a lesbian in my late forties, and I don’t take shit from men—I get that. It scares some people, because society thinks that most women aren’t supposed to be this way. That we’re not supposed to live for and love other women.” She takes a deep breath. “So am I all that surprised that my normal mannerisms were mistaken for witchcraft by a bunch of children with wild imaginations, just because I don’t look or act like they think a woman should? No, not really. I’m just disappointed that people are so quick to attribute inane characteristics to me just because I don’t fit into their picture-perfect mold of a woman. And most of all, I wish they wouldn’t distort the way I grieve.”
The silence that falls upon us this time is nearly deafening. The shame and guilt overwhelm me, and so does my inability to deny having thought those things. Maybe I never truly bought into the ideas they spread, but I did nothing to stop them.
Jude seems as fazed by the stillness as we are. “As for your neighbor,” she says in a quieter tone now, “I feed his pet rats. Perhaps that’s the most witchy part about me.” She laughs softly, but her baritone voice still rumbles in her chest. “Victor is a bit senile and asked me to make sure no weeds sprout up on his lawn. But any time I’m over there, his honeysuckle bushes enrapture me. They’re the bright pink and yellow ones, like Dinah used to love. I keep meaning to plant some closer to my home, but I walk the path near the creek by them every chance I get. I know you boys like them too.”
“You do?” Karim asks. His voice is uncharacteristically hushed, even for his stranger shyness.
Jude chuckles. “I live in the woods. You think I never see anything? I may be big and heavy, but I’m quiet when I want to be. I don’t like to disturb the fauna, so I learned how to observe them timidly. I bird-watch sometimes on the other side of the creek. You boys scare the birds away with your goose-chases and buffoonery, but I don’t think I mind it much. When I saw you first, that might be why you reminded me of Dinah and myself.”
I lean my shoulder into Karim’s and place my hand on his. He flinches briefly from the unexpected contact, but his fingers quickly intertwine with mine. For once I feel safe about displaying my affection for him in front of someone else. Jude smiles and touches her hand to her heart.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say. “You don’t deserve any of what you got, and we fed into that without thinking. It wasn’t our right to do any of that. We were….”
“Awful,” Karim finishes for me. “Judgmental. Prejudiced. Ignorant. We’re sorry.”
Jude gazes quietly between us both. She nods slowly. “Thank you both. I appreciate that. I appreciate your willingness to listen and accept my help despite your initial beliefs. Your ignorance was bred out of fear, not malice, but it’s important to let yourself grow.”
I glance at Karim and squeeze his hand before meeting Jude’s eyes again. “And thank you for letting us feel safe when… it’s hard to feel safe anywhere else.”
Jude leans forward and gives me an almost serious look. “Nico, believe me that j
ust because this is the first place with a roof that you might feel safe in doesn’t mean it’ll be the last or only one. We look out for each other, okay? You’re gonna meet other gay people, other bi people, other trans people who’ll lift you up and never let you sink back down. And for now you have this big butch lesbian watching out for you. You’ll be just fine.”
Karim and I laugh, and for once, it feels almost like the weight of today on my chest is a little bit lighter.
“Now,” Jude says as she stands up and claps her hands. “Did your parents say when they could come grab you? You’re welcome to stay here, but I want to make sure you make it home safe sooner rather than later.”
“They’re still working,” I tell her. “But they should be able to get here soon.”
“All right, then. Would you boys like some tea for now?” Jude asks. If there was a point in time when I thought she might poison us with it, I don’t think about it now. Karim and I both accept, and Jude leaves for the kitchen. She comes back with two glass jars filled with something dry and holds them up in turn. “I’m thinking hibiscus or peach herbal, but if either of you want to choose something else, I have a plethora in the kitchen.”
“Is that loose tea?” Karim asks.
“Oh, yes. Don’t let this slip, but I’m a big softie when it comes to nature,” Jude says. “I collect loose teas like nobody’s business.”
Karim points at the jars of tea and looks at me with dawning realization. “The jars Sam saw,” he says. When Jude gives him a strange look, he stutters for a second. “The kids, they said you were a witch because you had weird things in jars.”
Jude blinks, dumbfounded, then she laughs. “And you believed that?”
He jabs his thumb into my shoulder. “Nico did.”
I swat his hand away. “They also claimed the Star of David was Satanic and you listened to that too, so you know they’re bad at logic and good at twisting the truth.”