Ma coughed out a sob, and her church folk rubbed her back in compassion. She buried her face in her hands and screamed, “Keith! Answer Pastor Michael!” I hated my name.
“What was the question?!”
“The question is, are you walking away from God?”
“How would I be walking away from God? Is this about my hair? Is this about school? What did I do?”
“Are you walking away from God?”
“What do you mean? I’m not walking away from anything.” I put on a confused face. “I went to all of my fellowships this past week, didn’t I?” I did attend, staring out the window of the community centre, wondering about where Randell was, the corners he loitered on or the company he kept.
“‘Lying with a man as with a woman is an abomination.’” Pastor Michael referenced Leviticus to me as he struggled to stand up and round the kitchen table, slowly making his way to me. Ma stood up, unsure of the pastor’s next move. “Hold your mother’s hands.” He gestured for Ma to come closer. She held my hands.
“Keith. You are not like other boys. I can see that,” she said. My hands were molten and moist. My jaw was locked. My eyes wide and preparing for the worst. “You tell Mommy. Tell me. What are you doing? Who are you seeing? Who is this Randell?”
“That photo isn’t mine.”
“Then why do you have it?” Ma fished the photo from her sleeve. The tissue came out with it and fell to the floor. She held the photo up to my face, almost touching my forehead. “Why is he seeing you after school?”
“I stole the photo. I mean . . . I found the photo! It fell on the floor at school! It belongs to his girlfriend, Nadine! It’s not mine! I meant to return it!”
“Why are you looking at this photo? Is Randell influencing you?” said Pastor Michael as he hiked up his pants.
“No! Randell doesn’t even know me that well. We just have gym and social sciences together. His girlfriend dropped the photo and—”
“You’re a liar.” Ma’s thumbs stroked the tops of my hands, gently, but her words were sharp. She cried as she would cry over a dying animal she was about to put out of its misery. “I can see you’re lying to me, Keith.” The rest of her church friends rose from the kitchen table and approached me in the hallway slowly, like I was an animal on the loose. What do I remember of them? One was a burly man in a white shirt with a red bank logo on it. One was a stocky woman with feathered brown hair pinned behind one ear. Another was a teenage boy, slightly older than me, whose determination carved two deep lines in his young forehead. Another was a tall woman who wrung her hands in worry. Ma backed into the kitchen as they proceeded to corner me. She cried over the sink.
“Ma? Maaaaaa!” I tried to move swiftly to the side and fool them, but just as Coach Smythe had said during gym class, I was “too much of a gaylord to be an athlete.” They surrounded me, and despite my most sincere protestations, I was dragged towards a chair in the kitchen. No. No, Evan. That did not happen. What happened? Wait. I remember now. There were no protestations. No. My body froze, Evan. My body was still. In my mind I was dragged, but I was not. My body froze. It floated, compliant and limp, towards the chair in the kitchen. Slight pressure on my shoulders coaxed me to sit on it. My limbs were numb. A ringing in my ear. A swelling of my tongue. I stared at my hands, willing them to move. They never did. Red bank logo. Feathered hair with pin. Two deep lines in a young forehead. Wringing hands.
My mother, my own mother, filled a glass with water from the tap. My own mother did not look at me as they zip-tied my hands behind the chair, poked and prodded me. My own mother shut her face off, shut her body off and spirited herself towards the apartment balcony. Look at me. Look at me. I prayed as they threw holy water on me. Look at me. Look at me. Ma. Look at me. I prayed as they shaved my hair and clipped my nails down to the nubs. Red bank logo. Feathered hair with pin. Two deep lines in a young forehead. Wringing hands. They screamed at me to repent, to change. Not until the sun rose in the morning did I finally, with my voice scratchy and weak from screaming, say the magic words. “I admit it. I have been walking away from God. I am a homosexual. I ask God for forgiveness. I am sorry. I will change.” My body was limp. My lips numbly gave them what they wanted. I had soiled my pyjamas. The exorcism, as they saw it, was complete. The burly man cut the zip-tie, and my newly repentant body was free to leave. I walked out into the chill of the early morning. I walked and walked past curious neighbours, through forests, under bridges, until I reached an old cemetery. I sat there among the dead until something deep inside reminded me it was time to join the living. I made my way to school.
“Hey! What happened to the knots I put in your hair?!” Nadine passed by me in the school hallway and laughed. I was sitting on the floor near my locker hugging my knees. I began to cry so hard that I drooled on my lap, unable to contain the water within. “Jesus! Are you okay?! Where’s your uniform? What are you wearing?” She helped me to my feet and looked at the sad state of me in my pyjamas from the night before. I explained what had happened. This was my coming-out moment. She was the first person I came out to. In my pyjamas, in the hallway of our high school. Me crying into the hollow of Nadine’s collarbone. Nadine tied her curly hair back, gathered up the sleeves of her Catholic school uniform and wrote a note on a lined piece of paper: PLEASE NOTE THAT MY SON, KEITH NOPUENTE, WILL BE ABSENT AFTER LUNCH PERIOD. SINCERELY, GABBY NOPUENTE.
She signed and dated it like an expert. Like a person who had done this many times before. I handed it in to the school office. I never returned home.
Nadine lived on the twenty-second floor of a high-rise in Crescent Town near the Victoria Park subway station. Since her parents were in the middle of a divorce involving extra-marital affairs with younger people in international locations, Nadine revelled in perfectly quiet nights where she could invite over her boyfriend, Randell, or me, her newly outed homosexual friend Keith. On my first night living with her, still tender from the day’s events, we sat on two plastic stools on her balcony watching the subway trains head east and west.
“You can stay for as long as you want.” My eyebrows rose. “No, really. My parents will do anything to please me right now. Each one wants me to love them more than the other. Plus, they’re always away on business. They feel guilty, but not guilty enough to stay home or work things out with each other. So I get what I want. It makes me sick to my stomach.” Nadine was half Black like me, but her dad was some dude from Australia whose work had him travelling often. I looked at the length of her legs pointing out from her cut-off jeans. The length of her curly hair, perfectly blond at the tips. Her breasts. Her makeup. She had grown in length and confidence since I drew her outline so many years ago. I ached looking at her, wondering what it would be like to be that confident in my body.
“Where did you get your name?” Nadine changed the subject suddenly.
“My dad. I never met him, though. Why?”
“You don’t even look like a Keith.”
“You don’t look like a Nadine.”
“What do you want your name to be?”
“Huh?”
“If you could change your name, what would it be?”