“I know,” I said.
Which got me thinking about the difference between “I know” and “I see,” which got me thinking about Naoki and Thomas and my moms, and how much I wanted to just be home.
Screw this guy and his stupid “Save the Family,” I thought.
The Reverend White was turning purple. “Get out!”
“Fine,” I said, my voice echoing in the silence.
I turned stiffly and walked to the door, where I paused. I almost just said “goodbye.” Like maybe out of habit.
I should say something, I thought, holding my hand against the cold steel of the door.
“So … screw you,” I said. I wanted to say it like a punch, but it came out kind of lame. Like an impulse buy at the checkout.
As I pushed the door open, I heard him say, “Listen!” in this way that kind of caught in my gut.
I flung the door open and bolted down the street.
The next thing I heard …
Clomp. Clomp.
… was not something I think I could have predicted.
“Hey.”
That voice. Deep. I looked up.
“Kenneth?”
12
For the next four blocks, we played a weird game of tag, where Kenneth kind of jogged beside me, then fell back. Then I stopped and waited. And he stopped and waited.
Then I walked really fast and he walked slowly but with strides long enough to keep pace with me.
Then I heard him say, “Dammit,” and he just kind of strode up to me and pulled me over like a cop.
“Can I talk to you please?”
It would have been easier to say no if he hadn’t asked nicely. Maybe I was just sick of fighting.
“Fine. We’ll parkette.” I pointed at a nearby city-groomed grassy knoll with two benches.
Kenneth nodded.
I walked to the first bench and dropped down into it. “What do you want?”
Kenneth stood for a bit, then sat down on the bench across from me. He kept looking at his boots. “First I’m just thinking,” he said finally, still slowly, like a cowboy in a movie, “uh, that maybe you’re some sort of crazy person.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Can’t think of a sane reason for you to pop in on a service like that,” he said, running his hand over his short hair.
“It’s a free country,” I said.
Kenneth looked up. “I know it.”
“Oh yeah?” I shot. “I’m sure you do. Let me tell you something about this free country. It doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk and tell people their families are going to hell.”
“Well”—Kenneth sat into the bench, like he was in a rocking chair on a porch in some Southern state—“technically, it does.”
I stood up to leave or yell something. Who was this guy, anyway? Talking to me about freedom of speech?
Kenneth shook his head. “Hey. Sorry I said that. Just relax, okay? I’m sorry.” He held up his hands, like someone showing he wasn’t holding a weapon.
I dropped back down on the bench. “Uh, just so you know, so I’m not wasting your time, if you’re trying to convert me, it’s not going to happen.”
“I don’t think you need to be converted,” Kenneth said. “Though it’s strange you would show up at a place set for preaching when you don’t want to be converted.”
I thought about the empty chairs. It was like doing math with half an abacus. “Were you there?”
“I was waiting in the back for my ride home,” he said, pulling a small paperback from his pocket and shaking it. “Reading.”
“Reading. Really.” I squinted at the book. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Huh. “Science fiction?”
Kenneth shoved the book back in his pocket. “That’s hard to believe?”
Every word fell with the weight of a chess piece between us.
“No. I just. Wait. So, if you don’t care about converting and all that stuff, why did you…” My brain felt fuzzy, like I’d been time traveling all night and it was all Swiss cheese. “Why did you point me out to him at school?”
“My dad? I was pointing him to the door.” Kenneth stamped hard on the ground, like he was trying to shake dust off his feet. “He promised me he wouldn’t come by the school, and he broke his promise, as usual.”
I bit my lip. “Oh. I just thought.”
“I know what you thought.” Kenneth frowned. “Look. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Even though you snapped at me. I just, with the ‘preacher’ thing. People have been calling me that since…” Kenneth waved the words away. “I say it a million times, and it doesn’t matter, because no one listens. I am his son. Yes. But I’m not like him.”
A car roared by.
“You don’t believe in God? And Jesus? All of that?” I asked.
“A person can believe in God and Jesus Christ, can be a Christian, and not be like my father,” he said.
“You don’t want to be a good Christian?”
I could feel the cold of the night against the hot of my cheek.
“I don’t know about that. I’ve met a lot of people calling themselves good Christians.” He shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that.” Kenneth looked up at the sky. Which I thought for a second was him praying.
You look down when you pray? I wondered.
I could see his breath a little against the night sky.
Then, with sudden momentum, like a kite string unraveling upward, he started speaking. “I want to talk to you about this, you know? And make you understand. Because. Because I know you see me and you think you know everything about me, but you don’t. You see a preacher’s son and you think that you know … But it’s not like that. He does what he thinks he has to do, but I don’t agree with it.”
Kenneth popped out of his seat. “How about I don’t like dropping into town after town and papering the place like we’re getting ready for a garage sale?” he said, slapping his hand into his open palm. He started pacing, walking a circle around the bench. “How about I don’t like calling stuff sin and saying people will go to hell? I don’t think it’s right. And I’ve studied the Bible my whole life just like he has. I don’t see that the Bible says you have to do all this and break in on other peoples’ lives and…”
Finishing his circle, Kenneth sank back into his bench. “I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to do. I don’t think that’s being a good Christian, to answer your question.”
I could feel the bench cold pushing up against my butt. Something about all this was making me feel like there was suddenly less oxygen in the world. Or too much.
Kenneth brushed his hand over his head again. “My father … There’s so much he’ll never see, and that’s all there is to it. I just want … I just want to finish school and get out of here and go live my life somewhere.”
Kenneth sighed.
Wow, I thought. The statue speaks.
“I’m just going on and on now,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his thumb on his thigh.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean. Uh, thanks? I guess. I mean, I think … I know what you mean.”
“I don’t like talking much,” he offered. “So I usually don’t. Maybe none of that made any sense.”
“I think it made sense,” I said, crossing my arms to keep warm.
Kenneth leaned forward. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Looking at him, still and for longer than I’d looked at the front of him up until now, I noticed Kenneth’s face was freckled. Around his neck, I could see now, up close, a little coin with an eye on it.
“Nice eye,” I said.
“Huh. It’s, uh, for protection.” Kenneth picked up the coin between his fingers and looked down at it. “Ordered it on the Internet,” he added.
What are the odds?
Holding his hand out, Kenneth stammered, “Also. I. I just wanted to say. I didn’t know, you know. I didn’t know about your mothers. Even today. Unt
il Naoki told me. Today. But just. She told me after we had our fight. To explain to me. A little of why you might be mad. I don’t have any problem with that stuff. I just wanted you to know, that I didn’t know until today and … I mean, it’s fine by me.”
“Oh.” So Naoki was defending me? Maybe? For some stupid reason I suddenly wanted to cry.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry. For yelling at you today.”
How pointless is “I’m sorry” sometimes? I wasn’t even 100 percent sure what I was sorry for. Or even if I was saying it to the right person.
“Forget it.” Kenneth got off the bench. Took a step. “I should go. My ride is probably leaving soon.”
“Um. Yeah. Me too. I mean, I should go.” I stood. Took a step. Felt small under the night sky.
I looked at Kenneth standing there in the park. The new kid. In a weird, new little town.
“So,” I said. “I’m not sure if Naoki told you, but, I have this, uh, we have this club…”
“Oh yeah.” Kenneth looked at the ground.
“It’s not like a regular school club,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. “It’s like a talk-about-cool-stuff … group. Like ESP, and ghosts, and sometimes if Thomas is in a mood we just talk about our horoscopes. You know. Like unexplained stuff. It’s no big deal. I just thought maybe you could drop by.”
Kenneth paused and looked down at his boots. “You guys talk about trepanation?”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know?” Kenneth raised an eyebrow. “Should look it up.”
“Oh yeah?”
My phone gave a weak buzz. It was nearly out of power. Fifteen percent. Enough for me to see twenty messages.
Twenty “Monty, where are you?” messages.
“Geez. I really gotta go,” I said. Taking a step toward home, I turned. “This is going to sound dumb,” I added, “but I’m glad we got to, you know, talk. Even if it’s not something you like doing.”
“Yeah.” Kenneth’s lips folded up into a small smile. “Well, maybe we’ll do it again.”
“Maybe,” I said, turning and breaking into a run. “Bye.”
13
When I got home, the kitchen was courtroom-quiet except for a few electrical hums. Mama Kate and Momma Jo stood on their respective sides of the kitchen island as I walked in and slid onto a stool.
Momma Jo leaned forward on the island and clasped her hands expectantly. “Please explain to your moms what happened over the last four hours that meant you couldn’t respond to a single phone call or message. Even though that is specifically why we got you a phone in the first place.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Mama Kate added, pulling up a stool.
Momma Jo raised a finger. “Wait. In this explanation, Montgomery, we will also expect some mention of what has happened recently that has made you so upset you had to slam the door on your moms, who love you and do not deserve this treatment.”
Mama Kate frowned. “Monty, we know something is wrong…”
“Okay.” I took a breath. I placed my hands flat on the smooth surface of the marble island. “I didn’t answer your texts, because I was at the Reverend White’s ‘Save the Family’ thing.”
“What?” Momma Jo screamed.
“Monty! Why would you go there?” Mama Kate gasped.
“Excellent question,” Momma Jo noted. “Continue, Monty.”
“I guess because … Okay.” I shifted on my stool. Apparently there is no comfortable position when you’re about to deliver this kind of speech. “So it all started … Wait.”
After so many jumbled conversations that day, I had this thought that there was no way I could explain anything in any way that made sense.
I took another, even deeper breath.
“Okay. You know there was this whole Reverend White ‘Save the Family’ campaign thing.”
Mama Kate looked at Momma Jo.
Momma Jo looked at me. “Go on.”
“I mean, I go to a superignorant school where the only thing anyone gets is sports. You know? Fine. But then there’s this campaign thing and it’s just … it’s like suddenly everything got more terrible. I don’t know. I mean, Matt Truit was always an asshole…”
Momma Jo and Mama Kate exchanged confused stares.
“You don’t know him, but he’s a homophobic asshole, okay? I think even with recent events I can still say that that is true. Okay. And then there’s Kenneth, and he’s the Reverend White’s son, and today after school Kenneth was standing there with his dad and I thought…” I took another breath. Like maybe a hyperventilating breath.
“You thought what?” Mama Kate touched my hand, like giving me a little push on the swing.
“I thought he was pointing me out to his dad. Because I have gay moms. But he wasn’t. But I didn’t know that. And I was mad. So I kind of yelled at him. Then I got in a fight with Naoki and Thomas, and Naoki yelled at me, and I walked away and I guess … I guess I just ended up outside the vigil place. And I just … I went in because I wanted to say ‘Eff you,’ I guess.”
“Did you?” Momma Jo raised an eyebrow. “Say ‘eff’?”
“Ummm.” I replayed the exchange in my head. “Sort of. I think I said ‘screw you.’”
“That could have been a pretty … intense experience,” Mama Kate said.
Momma Jo whistled. “How was the vigil?”
I smiled. “There was no one there.”
Momma Jo clapped her hands. “Ha! Well, there you have it! What do you know, Aunty? Not quite as homophobic as some people would think!”
“Yeah, I was kind of surprised. I guess it’s been kind of a surprising day.” Maybe surprising was the wrong word. Strange. No. Not strange.
“I didn’t know this religious stuff was upsetting you so much.” Mama Kate’s voice was a wisp, it was so small. She looked down at her hands.
“It’s not, like, just the religious stuff, really,” I said, shifting my stare to the top of our kitchen island, which was covered in bills. “Sometimes I get tired of always feeling like I’m from Mars or something. I get that there’s nothing wrong with who I am, okay?” I added, preempting the everyone-is-okay-including-kids-with-gay-moms talk. “I just wish more people got it. Like at school. Sometimes it feels like no one around here gets anything.”
“Oh,” Momma Jo scoffed, “it’s not an around-here thing, Monty. Anywhere you go there are going to be some clueless and stupid people. Get used to it.”
“Great,” I mumbled.
Mama Kate gave Momma Jo a look of psychic mom intensity.
“Okay. Mama Kate would want me to say, not everyone is clueless and stupid.” Momma Jo softened. “People. People who live in Aunty, who live in big cities, who grow up religious or gay or what-have-you. People are complicated. Sometimes it’s more than just ‘they don’t get it.’ Sometimes there’s more to people than you can see.”
Now you tell me.
The doorbell rang. Momma Jo pushed off the island and jogged to the front door, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t move!”
Mama Kate was quiet. Aside from the creak of Momma Jo’s footsteps, and the muffled sound of her opening the door, the whole kitchen fell under some crazy spell of silence. Even the fridge was uncharacteristically chill, not humming or shaking or doing that weird ticking thing it’s started to do after I slammed the door too hard with my foot because my arms were full of snacks. Staring at Mama Kate, I could feel every breath like a tidal wave.
“I didn’t want to tell you about the Reverend White stuff,” I said, finally, “because I know, with your dad … I know talking about that stuff upsets you. And it really—it’s not a big deal.”
“Monty.” Mama Kate smiled a sad smile. “Just because something makes me sad or upsets me doesn’t mean it’s a terrible thing I can’t talk about. It’s okay to be sad.”
“Okay,” I said, sitting up. “Sure. Right.”
How is it okay to be sad? I thought. It’s the worst to be s
ad.
My face must have looked all twisted or something. Mama Kate curled her hand over her lip. “You don’t think it’s okay to be sad?”
“Oh yeah, I mean, it’s fine.” I kicked the island softly.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“What are you afraid is going to happen if someone is sad?” Mama Kate asked quietly.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
In the hallway I could hear Momma Jo hunting for her wallet and cursing.
My toes were ringing.
They could leave, I thought. They could fold in on themselves and just disappear. They could not come out of the bedroom, ever.
“Crappy things,” I said, finally.
“Well,” Mama Kate said, “I’m sure having someone be sad is pretty scary.”
I swallowed hard. “Right.”
Like the edge of a cliff. A dream you can’t wake up from.
“I know,” Mama Kate said, “it scares me when I see you upset.”
“Aha! But it’s okay to be sad and upset,” I sniffed, pointing playfully, as I blinked through my suddenly sweaty eyes. “Right?”
“Right,” Mama Kate said. “So, maybe … maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if we were sad sometimes. Maybe it’s not the end of the world. Because we have each other.”
I watched her hand reach over and grab mine.
Mama Kate has the best hands. Maybe that was weird to think. But, really, they’re never clammy and they never grab too hard. Imagine having a mom with a bony, sweaty hand.
That would be terrible.
I could taste the tears on my lips. “I know it’s stupid, I’m just, sometimes I’m scared if it all gets too bad … I’ll lose everyone.”
“Oh, Monty”—Mama Kate’s face was all rivers—“you won’t.”
Then we basically just … cried for a bit. I don’t know how long. Then I wiped my nose on an oven mitt, which is gross, but I couldn’t find a paper towel, or a tablecloth.
Momma Jo tiptoed in and slid a box of what smelled like cheese-and-pepperoni heaven on the counter.
“We ordered before you came back from your vigil,” Momma Jo said, walking over to kiss the top of my head. “I don’t know if they serve snacks at vigils these days.”
“They have cookies,” I said. “But I didn’t eat any.”