My chest tightens at the concern in his voice. “Just the usual suspects.”
“You know, your mother and I would be happy to go up to the school and have a—”
“I think I’d rather take the day off.”
I can hear my mom whisper something in the background and after a second, Dad says, “Of course. That’s fine. Your mom wants to know if she can do anything.”
“Gimme that phone,” I hear her say.
“Baby?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“You know we love you just the way you are, right?”
I can practically hear my dad nodding dutifully in the background. “Yup.”
“And I haven’t seen this video yet, but if you—” Her voice catches. “If there’s something you’re not telling us about your gender i-identity or, uh, expression.” She stumbles over those last few words.
“Mom,” I say before she can go any further. “Thank you for being, like, basically the wokest middle-aged woman in Clover City, but I just really like drag and was messing around a little. The video got into the wrong hands and now everyone’s seen it. That’s it. But if I ever have any big gender revelations, you’ll be my first call.”
She sniffs. “Okay, good. That’s good to hear.”
“That’s great, son,” Dad says in the background. It’s adorably frustrating that they haven’t realized they can simply put me on speakerphone. My sister might be total trash right now, but at least I have the best parents.
“Wait,” I say. “Did y’all know about Clem going to Georgia?” They must have. “Was I the only one in the dark?”
Mom sighs. “We told her that she had to tell you, and y’all know we don’t like getting in between the two of you. But she should have told you instead of letting you find out . . . however you found out.”
There’s not much I can say to that. Mom has always frustratingly played Switzerland anytime Clem and I have had a standoff, only getting involved when someone’s life was in actual danger.
“Well, what am I supposed to do next year?”
“Stick with your plan, baby,” she says simply. “Go to Austin. I’ll visit on the weekends!”
“That wasn’t my plan. It was our plan.”
“Well, then we’ll make a new plan.” She clicks her tongue a few times, before really dropping a truth bomb. “Baby, you both knew there would come a time when you’d take separate paths. There’s no shame in taking your time while you find yours. Your father and I are in no hurry to shoo you out of the house. We’ll figure it out.”
“I’m going to Grammy’s,” I announce, not ready to confront the idea of living at home next fall without my sister. I’m going to Austin. That was the plan.
“Okay,” she says after a long moment.
“Help her install that video doorbell, would you?” Dad asks, having taken the phone back.
“Sure.” Though we all know that’s more up Clem’s alley than mine.
“It’ll all shake out,” he says.
We say our goodbyes and I love yous.
I shoot off a text to Grammy.
Fire up your commiserating engines. I’m coming over. It’s been a rough day and it’s not even 9 a.m. yet.
Revving it up now, she responds. Putting a pot of coffee on too.
Nine
When I get to Grammy’s, she’s on the porch waiting with two cups of coffee—black for her and black with sugar for me. Grammy says that anyone who drinks their coffee black probably likes it just a little bit when life stings.
And I guess that’s true in a way, because as I sit there on her porch, sipping coffee while Cleo is wrist deep in her flower beds, I can’t help but wonder what everyone at school is saying about me right now. Maybe Clem is in a death match for my honor, or perhaps Kyle is having an existential crisis about accidentally sharing the video and causing my mass humiliation.
Huh. That sounds nice, actually.
“Well, I saw your video on the Facebook,” says Grammy as she taps her nails on the arm of her hot-pink rocking chair. “Delores down the road shared it from her grandson.”
“Keith Fuller,” I mutter, an epic bully from when I was in ninth grade who dropped out.
I lie on her bench swing, my limbs dragging off every edge and side as the chains creak beneath my weight. When Dad first installed the thing I was convinced I’d break it if I even looked at it the wrong way, but he swore he’d reinforced it plenty and that if I broke it, it would be no big deal. He could just fix it. So for today, this swing is my fainting couch, and it’s sort of comforting to know that my dad is still there to fix things when I break them.
“What’d you think?” I ask, feeling a little timid. Grammy has always encouraged me in everything, but we don’t talk a lot about Clem and me being gay, which is nice, but sometimes I wonder if it’s a topic Grammy is nervous to tackle. I’m wild with anxiety at the thought of everything I’ve so carefully kept to myself just being out there for everyone to see, but my ego still wants to hear her impression of it all.
“I think I ought to teach you how to do your makeup.”
I laugh and relief swells in my chest. “Grammy, drag makeup isn’t the same as regular makeup.”
“Well, either way, we’ve got to fix that face. But honestly, Pumpkin, I found it charming. You’ve always been such a star. I wish you’d picked up theater or dance. I told your mama to get you started young, but she insisted that you’d find your passions on your own.”
I sigh and reach down for a sip of coffee. Ah, it burns so good. “I have passions,” I say.
I know. I should be super into theater or dance or something. But people who commit that hard to something kind of stress me out. In some inexplicable way, I feel embarrassed for them, but a tiny part of me has also always wanted to be them too. Like, I can’t help but wonder how freeing it must be to love performing so much that you’re okay with auditioning and not getting the part.
Choir, though, is the exact amount of commitment I’m comfortable with. There’s something almost mathematical about how you either hit your note or you don’t, and at least in our choir, there’s little to no competition. And then there’s the fact that if I’m going to be onstage, the only role I want to play is me.
“Well, you’re still young,” she says. “You’ve got plenty of time to explore every crevice of the world.”
But it doesn’t exactly feel like that. It feels like I’m supposed to know who I am right this moment.
“Clem’s leaving me,” I tell her. “She’s going to Georgia.”
She nods, eyeing me from over the rim of her coffee cup. “It won’t be easy to see you two apart.”
“So I guess I’m the only one who didn’t know.” I want to be angry at Grammy, but every effort to muster my disappointment fails.
“She didn’t know how to break the news. I swear, the girl was losing sleep over it.”
“We tell each other everything,” I say, my voice catching on that last syllable.
Grammy is silent for a moment. “Maybe you don’t. And maybe you shouldn’t.”