“Sorry!” Amy squeaked as she slammed a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say it like that! I meant that she changed so much, things I didn’t even knowcouldbe changed.”
“Did you get found out?” Don asked.
Becca sighed. “Of course we did. When you’re that age, you think everything you’re doing is smart. And you get so wrapped up in it that you forget someone is always watching.”
“Daddy took me to church,” Amy said, picking up a fallen leaf and beginning to shred it. “A bunch of other people were there from the congregation. They prayed over me for hours. Just kept going on and on and on. Talking about how I was hiding myself from the light of God. That I was turning away from Him. That if I returned, if I admitted my sins and turned away from them, all would be forgiven. They put their hands on my face, my shoulders, my arms, my legs. They tried to hold me down at one point, butI screamed and screamed. One of them—this old man with bad breath and bony fingers—told my father that I was possessed by the devil.”
“Alesbiandevil,” Becca said, and Don smiled at the fierce pride in her voice.
“I stopped fighting,” Amy said. “I knew it was the only way out. So I pretended. I said that I heard God. That He spoke in me. He loved me, I told them. He loved me and wanted me to be in His image. I repented right then and there.” She leaned forward, shadows dancing across her face. “But it was all a lie.”
“Why?” Rodney asked.
She shrugged. “Because I had this thought. I don’t know why I hadn’t considered it before, but when it hit me, it was all I could think about. We’re taught that God made us. That we are, in essence, His children. And like all parents, He was going to be disappointed in me a lot, but nothing that couldn’t be forgiven if you wanted it bad enough. But I kept thinking, well, if God didn’t want me to be this way, why am I? If God thinks being queer is so terrible, why did He make it so we couldbethat? That’s when I realized the truth.”
“Which is?” Don asked.
Amy laughed. “God’s not real. And even if He is, why would He give a shit about me having a girlfriend? It doesn’t make any sense! The Bible isn’t His thoughts, His words. Every single line in the Good Book is man-made. Interpretations passed down through generations like the world’s worst game of telephone.And,” she added, “queer people existed long before the Bible ever did. I mean, come on. There are queer whales! Queer lions! Surely,they’repart of God’s Plan, so why do they bone each other and we’re not allowed?”
“Succinct as usual,” Becca said.
“What happened with your father?” Don asked.
Amy looked away, jaw tense. “He found us again. A few months later, right after my fifteenth birthday. He threatened to send me away to a camp. Not the kind with crafts and swimming in a lake. The conversion kind. The worst kind. They still exist in Texas. Other places, too. You know what they do in places like those?”
Rodney nodded. “We’ve heard stories.”
“We ran,” Becca said. “Right then and there. Got on a bus and headed north. They tried to look for us, but we stayed one step ahead of them. Rough few years. Slept in the car a lot. Stayed in shelters. Found ourselves in Maryland. Got a shitty room to sublet. Got jobs. Our GEDs.”
“A good life,” Amy said. “The best life. God, do you remember that room? No hot water. No air-conditioning. A tiny window that only opened a crack. But it was ours. I loved it so much. I put up decorations. Plants. Rainbow flags. Little pillows I got from Goodwill to put on the bed to make it look fancy.”
“You did a great job,” Becca told her, kissing the side of her head. “I loved that home.”
“Did you ever see your parents again?” Don asked.
“Once,” Amy said. “Right after my twenty-first birthday. I was working as a waitress at a nice restaurant. Good tips. I liked it. One night, the hostess told me people had requested to be seated in my section. It was my dad, and other people from the church.”
“She didn’t tell me about it until she got home,” Becca said, glaring at the fire. “I wasn’t very happy about that, but I got over it because Amy can handle herself.”
“I can,” she said with a sniff. “And I did. I went over to them, and it felt like I was floating through a dream. As soon as my dad saw me, he grabbed my arm and said he was going to take me home. So I did the best thing I could.”
“Which was?” Rodney asked.
“I screamed that a man was touching me without my permission,” Amy said. “I screamed at him to let me go, that astrangerwas trying to hurt me. I’d been there for almost a year. I’d made friends, especially with the guys in the kitchen. They loved me. I loved them. They treated me like I was one of the boys. So when they heard me screaming, they all came running out. He tried to say that he was my dad, that he wasentitledto do with me whatever he wanted. So I lied. I said I’d never seen this man before in my life. It wasn’t the first lie I’d told, or the last. But it was the one that made me feel the most powerful. There was nothing he could do to prove anything. They forced him out and I never saw him again. He did send a letter to the restaurant, a few months later. I didn’t read it. Instead, I took a lighter from one of the cooks and burned it in the parking lot. Maybe it was him apologizing. Maybe it was him telling me that he’d been wrong all my life, and that he wanted nothing more than to love me like a father should.” She shook her head. “I didn’t need to read it to know it’d be filled with scripture and quotes about ungrateful children and returning to the light. But even if ithadbeen conciliatory, fuck him. Fuck him and his God that teaches hate and bigotry, all in the name of Christ.”
“Do you have any regrets?” Don asked.
She stared at him hard. “What would I regret? I escaped a prison and found all the color in the world. I’ve seen meteor showers. I’ve touched buffalo and bison. A few years ago, I read something about buried treasure hidden in the Appalachians and spent months dragging Becca around to look for it. We never found anything, but that didn’t matter. What matters is that I’m able to make my own choices. What matters is I survived. What matters is I flourished. Not because of my parents or where I came from, but despite them.Tospite them. The best revenge any queer person can get is to be happy. It took me a while to realize that, but when I did, I’d never felt so free.”
“And we found others like us,” Becca said. “So many others. Queer people. People like us, people not like us but loving all the same. So much is discussed around the idea of found family. But what most people don’t realize is that queer peoplemadethat. A lot of us aren’t born to people who will love their children like they should, so we have to go out and make families of our own. We did that. We found people who loved us for who we are. And no matter what happens next, no one can take that away from us.”
“And now you want to talk to the old gays,” Rodney said.
“Elders,” Amy corrected gently. “In this house, we show respect.”
Rodney groaned as Don laughed. “That’s… kind of you. I think?”
Amy ducked her head as she smiled. “I like people. Some of them. I don’t know. It’s weird, right? We all have mostly the same innards, but some people act like their family tree is a circle. I don’t get it.” Then, with barely a pause to suck in a quick breath, she asked, “Do you like being old? I’ll never get to be. Isn’t that crazy? Just wow. Wow. That’s a weird thought. I want to know what it’s like.”