April 6, Six Days to Austin Film Festival
Edie closed the front door of her house behind her quietly. She didn’t want to run into her parents on the way in. She shuffled silently into the living room to find her father seated on the couch reading the Bible. She was trapped. The scent of almost-burned eggs spilled over from the kitchen where her mother was cooking breakfast.
Her father’s thumb caught at the curling edge of a single page of the huge book. “Edie, where have you been?”
There it was. She instantly knew that they’d found out. She could hear it in the staleness of his voice. Her mouth went dry as she tried to stay calm. She placed her hand to her chest to make sure her heart was still there. It hurt so much.
Her queerness was finally on full display. She felt it all the time, but now, so did everyone else in her house. Maybe they had seen it all along. When you avoid something so intentionally, every conversation cannot help but be about it. It stuffs itself into the small spaces.
“Ronald, I got this. Edie, come to your room,” her mother’s voice swam in from the kitchen.
The hallway to her room stretched out far before her. Green carpeting ran down the hall, far into the future, and even beyond that. She saw herself coming and then going, dragging her bags behind her, not sobbing but accepting the separation from her family. She saw her life plan changing so fast, turning itself upside down in a split second. She scraped her fingernail along the wood paneling along the walls to remember the sound in case she never returned to this house.
Her mother’s back was perfectly straight as she opened the door to her room. Her pecan-shell skin glowed as morning light slipped in through Edie’s window.
“Shut the door.” Edie did. Her room felt foreign and messy to her. She looked up at the posters she hadn’t picked out and the fluffy comforter she didn’t buy covered in clothes that didn’t really make her feel like herself. It was as if someone else had been living there all this time, all seventeen years. Someone Christian, and straight, and really into science, and loved by two perfect parents.
Maybe this was the exact right thing for her. This was supposed to happen. Maybe it was in God’s plan for them to find out about her. Edie always did this: thought of God, who she didn’t entirely believe in at this exact moment but still held on to like a childhood toy. If this was going to happen, then it was going to happen. She closed her eyes and waited for her mother’s fire.
“Now, your brother told me something, and I just need you to tell me if it’s true or not.” Edie couldn’t muster up the energy to feel angry with Marvin. All she saw was his two eyes like honey-colored marbles staring up at her, asking questions about things he didn’t understand. She would miss him. She felt in her heart that this was the end of the line.
“Are you—”
“Mom—” Edie choked on her words and forced herself not to cry. Even when her mother’s eyes drifted out the window and refused to meet her, she didn’t cry.
“—Gay?”
“Yes.” She knew that this wasn’t technically true but thought explaining the nuances of her queerness to her mother was years or even lifetimes away. The air in her lungs flew out and she stiffened against the oncoming storm of words. She tightened her fist until her nails dug into the palms and began to sting.
Her mom moved to the bed where a pile of clean clothes from the laundry sat at the end of the bed. She began to fold a t-shirt almost mechanically and looked up at Edie’s bedroom walls. The silence was painful. Edie could hear how much she hated her in the silence. Her mother was quiet for a very long time, the sound of fabric moving in her hand filling the room aggressively.
Finally, she spoke: “No, you’re not. And I don’t want to hear about it again, okay?”
Edie took in a sharp breath and felt a pang below her ribs. It wasn’t relief, it was disappointment. She was being shut down to maintain her mother’s idea of who she was instead of who she actually was. After a moment of quick anger, things became clear and Edie wondered why she’d expected anything else from her mom. This was just like her mother, like her family. It was all one big game of let’s-never-talk-about-anything-real-and-hope-that-everyone-turns-out-well-adjusted. She knew that and had let herself get caught up in the fantasy of getting to tell her truth, and actually have it be heard, of the liberation that would come with finally just knowing if she would be rejected or not.
“Okay?” she asked again, her lips a flat line.
Luckily, Edie had mastered the game a long time ago. “Yes, okay.”
And that was it. Her mother placed the stack of folded shirts on her unmade bed and left the room without looking back. Now the truth was out, whatever that meant. Even if her mother refused to acknowledge it, she had some clue. It would come up later, and she would try to express herself again. Maybe she wasn’t big enough yet. Maybe she wasn’t stronger than the walls of her home yet.
She stood up and moved to look at herself in the full-length mirror at the far right corner of her room. She looked the same as before. Simple, ordinary. Somehow though, she knew she was unlike every other obedient woman in her family. She’d always known. They folded inwards and agreed and loved openly and folded back in again. In her early childhood, she’d tried to trace the movements of her mother and grandmother and the beautiful women of her family, but every soft pirouette like trying to flex a muscle she didn’t have. So here she was. Unseen and still standing. She was going to be fine.
Before the tear threatening to drop to her chest spilled out, she dug her phone out of her back pocket and called Ben.
They Facetimed. Edie wanted to leave and see them in person but felt too tired to lie or even face her parents at all. As the image on the screen opened into a picture of Ben’s just-opened eyes, Edie felt the weight of her mother’s rejection. She felt so weak. She wanted to be powerful and say what she felt. She wanted to own her words and identity in at least one part of her life.
“Ben, can you forgive me? I really need you to forgive me.”
“Of course, I forgive you.” They looked away for a moment, unable to meet Edie’s gaze. They ran their hand over their dark hair once, twice. “I actually forgave you two weeks ago after you got out of the car, but I wasn’t sure how to say it. I was afraid. I don’t know.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
The silence buzzed between them, their phones portals into each other’s not-at-all-separate worlds. Edie could hear Ben’s dog howling for attention from some far off room in their house.
“Edie, I know that you understand who I am. Maybe more than anyone. It’s not always safe to be out to everyone all the time. My parents are cool and yours are not. I should have understood that.”
“No, it’s not okay. I’m a weak person. I can’t stand up to my parents, I can’t be honest with my brother. I can’t even make you happy.” Edie began to cry harder than she’d ever cried.
“You’re not weak.” Edie didn’t believe it. She had no agency. Not a single choice she’d made up to this point in her life had been truly her own. “Come lay down with me,” they whispered. Edie listened as Ben shuffled their phone and pushed around the pillows on their bed. They propped the phone up on something so that Edie could see them with their head resting on a teddy bear, the one she’d gotten them as a present.
Edie lay down in her bed as well. She rested her phone against a stuffed animal Ben gave her on their second date. They both closed their eyes and listened to each other’s breathing.
“You’re not weak,” Ben said, eyes still closed. “I love you.”
They stayed still with each other for a long time. After a while, Edie’s phone buzzed as it was starting to die so she plugged it in. She watched the light outside of her window grow yellow then a dull orange again as Ben snored with their lips curled at the edges into what was almost a smile.
She closed her eyes again and let the day pass by locked in her room with the love of her young life.