Fuck it, I thought as I stared at the big-eyed girl in the mirror. I’m not doing this halfway. I have to do it the right way, and I'm doing it today, but I’m not doing it without chocolate.
It had been awhile since I’d baked. Since I cut off my hair, I had made an active effort to avoid doing things that would give my dad any false hope that there was still a chance that I would blossom into some kind of housewife-ready girlie girl. Things felt different; it was like I didn’t have to try to be one way or the other anymore. Like if I was going to come clean to them anyway, I might as well embrace all my parts.
It was cheesy as hell and maybe a little cliched, but I liked the whole metaphor of me as a baked good. The idea that all these different parts had to fit together just right to get the desired result. That there could be parts I absolutely hated, like touching flour and feeling its chalky grit on my skin, and parts I loved, like mixing in chocolate chips and thinking about the gooey bite they would give my brownies. That it would take time for all the ingredients to come together, but when they did, the result would be something delicious.
I didn’t frost my brownies, but I did like them to be extra chocolatey, which was why I added chocolate chips. A few years ago, there had finally been a mix on the market that was perfect; so rich and fudgy that it made me a bit queasy, but absolutely satisfying. The mix had come with a bag of chocolate chips and you were supposed to mix some into the batter and then sprinkle some onto the top after they’d cooked for ten minutes. Of course it didn’t take long for them to be discontinued, so I had set about creating my own replica. It took a few tries, but once I had taken the time to experiment with ingredients, I’d created the perfect chewy, gooey brownie.
When my batch was pulled from the oven and cooled, I arranged them on my mom’s favorite serving platter. It was old and the violets were a bit faded from use, but it reminded me of when I was a kid and Mom had out together tea parties for the two us. She wasn’t ever big on hands-on play, so the time we’d spend alone together had always been some of my favorite. She would ask me about my day and actually listen to me talk; it bummed me out to think of it, but listening to me was something neither parent did anymore. My family never talked unless there was some sort of big drama and then nobody wanted to listen, they just wanted everyone else to listen to what they had to say. For once it was my turn. Both of my parents were home, I’d made a snack, and I was going to call a little meeting of my own.
The brownies sat on the table in front of me. Everything was ready for me to call my parents, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. For what was likely the ninetieth time, I thought about Noah. His way really was the easiest way. I could do it that way. I didn’t owe my parents my honesty. They’d never done anything to earn it. But I couldn’t make myself subscribe to a middle ground. For me, it was all or nothing. I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to my parents. I asked them to come down so that we could talk.
My mom looked worried as she walked into the living room; Dad looked annoyed. He was so tall and he looked down on me with eyes so narrow that I could practically hear him asking me who I thought I was to summon him. My resolve almost broke, but I thought of Hannah and what I could have.
“I need to talk to you both about something,” I said. I gestured to the plate of brownies on the coffee table. “Please help yourselves to a brownie I made.”
My arm hovered stiffly in the air and the whole thing felt so awkward I just wanted to die. Mom took a brownie and a cocktail napkin and held the two on her lap. I waited for her to take a bite, but she didn’t. Dad looked from the brownies to me, then crossed his arms with a roll of the eyes.
“What’s this about?” he asked.
I didn’t sit down. I liked the little bit of authority it gave me to be higher than them for a change, to be the one looking down instead of being looked down on. I cleared my throat. I had tried to plan out a speech in a million different ways, but nothing had felt right, so I decided I would use the brownie metaphor to explain it and hope for the best.
“I made these brownies today,” I started. A wave of heat rolled my belly and I thought for a minute I was going to have to make a run for the bathroom, but the nausea passed. “I made these brownies because lots of different parts have to go into brownies for them to be good. If the parts aren’t the right combination of different things—”
Dad cut me off. “Lennox, I don’t bake. I don’t care what goes into your brownies. Please just get to the point.”
He couldn’t even give me five minutes of his life to get my thoughts together. I had given him most of my life; given it over to him to control like a puppet master while more and more things I had loved were stripped away from me. I had tried every day to be less of myself to please him and Mom and he couldn’t even give me five minutes.
“Okay,” I said, and I could feel the cool settle over me. My own arms crossed as I looked down on the couch where he sat next to Mom. “I’m a lesbian and I’m in love with a girl. I am going to date her, and I am not spending another day pretending this isn’t who I am.”
Stillness settled over the room so thickly that it stopped the air flow. I tried to keep firm, not to back down or cower, but I could feel the muscles in my lower lip tremble and twitch from anxiety. As the moments passed, I was so desperate for someone to talk that I almost said more just to end the silence.
Dad stood up, his movements slow and controlled. He walked so close to me that I thought maybe he was going to hug me or reach out to me. He didn’t. He leaned in, back at straight angles and hard, eyes narrowed.
“If you think for one second that I’m going to let you throw your life away, you are crazy,” his face was so close to mine that little beads of spit were landing on my chin every time he enunciated a word. It was crazy; there were so many times I had hated my dad, like a deep-in-the-bones- kind of hate, but I had never actually been scared of him before that moment. I tried to tell myself that there was no reason to be. He wasn’t even shouting. It was his stance, the way his body leaned rigidly into my bubble. The way I could see in his eyes that he hated me.
With a hard swallow, I matched his rigidness. He could threaten and bluster. He could do whatever he thought he needed to do to make himself a man, but I wasn’t giving up another day. I blinked back tears and answered him. “No, Dad, throwing away my life is what I have already been doing. I’ve thrown away my whole freaking childhood trying to make myself be something you could be proud of and I am not throwing away one more day.”
I didn’t yell and I was proud of my control when everything inside of me was screaming. My nerves were humming with built up adrenaline and that whole fight or flight thing was really kicking in. I wanted more than anything to turn and run from the room. But I didn’t. I stood firm.
“And all this is about some girl you think you love? Some pervert like you?” he asked.
It was like a slap in the face. All the adrenaline was washed away, and I wasn’t scared or confident anymore. All it took was that one question to make me feel exhausted. Everything that had been steady wanted to collapse.
“No, Dad. It’s not about Hannah, the girl I’m in love with.” Even as I said the words, I knew they were true, that my stance was so much bigger than her. “I do love her, but this is all about me. I am sick of not having the chance to love someone. I am sick of never being able to tell anyone how I feel because I don’t want to embarrass you. This is all about me being me.” I slapped my chest. “Me. Lennox. Who I am.”