Issue Ten

1. Learn how to talk, but be unable to correctly pronounce grandpa. Instead, call him “Pacquah” (paw-kah), as that’s about as close as you’ll be able to get. Your grandfather will be upset that he won’t be called grandpa but will get over it when he decides that he’s entitled to pick the most complicated spelling possible.
2. Be in preschool and love the days when it’s Pacquah’s turn to pick you up. Make sure you tell all of the other preschoolers that he’s your Pacquah.
3. Love your grandpa with all of your heart. Visit him all of the time in his red brick apartment building down the street from where your dad works.
4. When your mom drives you and your sister over to see him, always try to guess which window goes to his apartment. Never get it right.
5. Inside, greet the security guard by the doors and smell the chlorine-filled air from the indoor pool. Walk past the fountain and be misted by the cool spray of the water while brushing the back of your hand against the wet stone fountain rim.
6. Run at top-three-year-old speed to the second floor. Race your little sister down the hallway to his apartment. Then when you reach his door, stand there impatiently waiting for your mom to ring the doorbell since you can’t reach it yourself.
7. When the door opens, run to Pacquah. Sit on a stool at the kitchen counter and talk to him while he makes you Easy-Mac and wonder how he makes it taste so much better than the Easy-Mac mom makes you at home.
8. Attack him with the best bear hugs you can manage and fall on the floor laughing uncontrollably when he retaliates with tickles.
9. Take him into the small room by your favorite window with the flowers and attempt to play him something on his keyboard. It will be horrible, but he’ll tell you that it’s amazing anyway.
10. Take one of the colored stones from his miniature fountain that you love so much, but tell no one and feel extremely guilty over it. Keep it with you everywhere you go as a reminder of how much you love your grandpa.
11. Play with your toy dinosaurs when your mom walks in and tells you that he’s been diagnosed with brain cancer, but don’t care that much as you don’t know what that is. Continue playing with your dinosaurs once your mom leaves.
12. On your fourth birthday, when he comes over to see you and is waiting on the back porch for you, cry. Be too afraid to talk to him because all of his hair has fallen out and strange white fruit loops are glued in a circle around his head. Your mom tells you later that they’re for his brain surgery the next day.
13. Go to Disney World with him and your family and fight with your cousin and your mom over who gets to push him in his wheelchair.
14. Remember to always laugh at his jokes, no matter how bad they are because he loves to hear you laugh and to see you smile.
15. Go to his party celebrating him making it through twelve months with brain cancer and past when the doctors said he was expected to pass away. But only be upset that your mom wouldn’t let you bring a bathing suit when all of the other kids got to go swimming.
16. Don’t understand why your mom comes home crying one night six months after the party. You can’t remember having ever seen her cry; be extremely confused and slightly scared, feeling like you’ve just witnessed some deep secret that you were never supposed to see. Forget to ask her why she’s crying.
17. Go to Pacquah’s funeral eighteen months after he was first diagnosed. Think about seeing him again next week. Play with your cousins around the cemetery laughing and picking flowers as the service continues behind you.
18. The next weekend, ask your mom why you didn’t get to go see him. She’ll start crying and tell you that you can’t see him anymore. Finally, understand that he’s not coming back. Cry with her.
19. Start your first year of grief therapy at the age of six. You don’t want to keep going but you stay because the therapist gives you Oreos at the end of each session.
20. Miss giving him bear-hugs and miss his tickles. Miss his smile and his Easy-Mac. Miss his giant peacock statue that was in his bedroom that used to scare you. Miss everything.
21. Forget the last time you hugged him or how much you hated how scratchy his face felt when he didn’t shave. Cry some more.
22. Lose the rock you stole from his miniature, colorful-stone fountain while at camp. Don’t ever stop looking for it for the whole two weeks you’re there and cry to your counselor when camp ends and you still haven’t found the rock.
23. When you turn thirteen, save a seat for him up front at your bat mitzvah service using one of the stuffed animals he gave you when you were still a baby. When the service and the party end, sit in your room and wonder if he’d be proud of the person who you’ve become. Wonder how things would’ve been different if he hadn’t had cancer. Wish that he could have been with you that day.
24. Visit his grave with your dad a few months later in early spring. Ask to have some time by yourself. Go pick dandelions from the lawn and smooth stones from the gravel road and place them in front of his grave because you didn’t bring anything with you. Read a chapter from the library book you recently got out aloud just like he used to do for you.
25. Remember to keep him with you always and to keep smiling because you know he loved you best when you did and because that’s how you live with death.

 

Sarah Bett is an emerging writer from Western Pennsylvania. She is the winner of a 2017 Lincoln Park Writing Award in creative nonfiction judged by author and This American Life contributor, Davy Rothbart. She is also a staff member of BatCat Press.

“I’m gay,” I said.

Adam’s smile faltered as we continued to walk down the street. “Wait, you mean bisexual, right?”

I frowned slightly. “Nope, I meant what I said.”

There was an awkward pause between us, the first of many. The air was thick and the palm trees swayed slightly. The sun was blinding.

Adam broke the silence first. “Oh, well I’ve never had a gay friend before. I guess you’re the first. Yeah, I’m completely fine with the gay thing.” (Important note from the author: he was not completely fine with the gay thing.)

It was only a few days after our first real conversation when I heard the rumors that he liked me. It started with the freshman class that he was a part of. Then, it spread to the sophomore class I was in at the time. It wasn’t long until seniors would wave at me in the hallways then whisper to each other.

At first, the rumors were laughable. I had come out to some friends and family back in my home state only a couple of months ago with nothing but positive reactions. They accepted me, but I’m not sure I was too accepting of myself.

When I was 14, I was uncomfortable being gay. It was unexplored territory. I lived in a small town in California where That Word was a vile insult used daily. Hate crimes weren’t unheard of and a lot of students and teachers alike wouldn’t even say That Word aloud. Many students were still proud of their identity, but I was not one of them.

It wasn’t long before I fell back into my old heterosexual habits.

In August, Adam and I went from being friends to being boyfriend and girlfriend. It was safe and familiar. From the outside, it also had a great effect on my life. My stepmom was ecstatic when I told her about Adam over the phone. My mom was wildly confused at first, but grew to tolerate him. At school, I went from eating alone at lunch to eating with Adam at a different table everyday. The staff and students alike gushed at what a cute couple we made.

Focusing on Adam himself, he wasn’t a bad guy at all. He was tall and looked like a younger version of Usher. He was a classy gentleman, always wearing a sweater vest and loafers and holding the door open for me. He even drove a cherry red moped to and from school. His family was well off and his dad owned a business that sold custom hoverboards. (Trust me, the whole custom hoverboard thing was the epitome of coolness when I was in tenth grade.)

Adam and I had a golden relationship until both of our true colors began to show.

It was November. I sat at lunch with Adam and a table of his friends, and the one sitting across from us was talking about his weekend. I wasn’t listening though. A girl was walking towards the main office. She was a student in the school’s alternative program and only came on campus once every few weeks. She was stunning. The makeup she had on made her skin glow and she walked in a way that radiated confidence, one high heeled foot in front of the other. Her long hair flew behind her and into the sunlight, making it look like auburn with a golden undertone.

I didn’t get to admire much more because Adam’s friend threw a balled up napkin at me.

“Are you just gonna let Adam check her out,” he asked as he gestured at the golden-haired girl I had been in the middle of checking out myself. “I’d be angry if I were you.”

“Sorry, she was cute,” Adam mumbled as he bit into a chicken sandwich.

I wasn’t angry at all but I wanted to look normal to his friends so I put on a straight face.

“So you think she’s cute, huh,” I said indignantly with my hand on my hip to top it all off. The table went quiet.

“God, you’re so insecure!” Adam threw down his chicken sandwich so hard the top bun bounced off. He walked away to play football with his friends. I desperately wanted to call out to him or anybody, “No, I’m just very gay!”

Yet I remained silent with the rest of the table.

The year went by and soon it was January. My relationship with Adam was doing fantastic because we had an unspoken deal. I would ignore the obvious fact that he was cheating on me and he would let me continue enjoying the popularity that came with dating him.

It was “twin day” at school and he had brought me one of his sweater vests to wear. It was blue and beige with a crisp white dress shirt underneath. I paired it with black pants and oxfords to match him. My hair was slicked back into a bun and I didn’t have time that morning to put any makeup on. I also didn’t have the time to change into my normal clothes before I went home and had to go to the store with my mom.

I felt uncomfortable being in public and not looking as feminine as I usually did. As I walked up the street, I made eye contact with a girl waiting for the bus. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail and she was also dressed in men’s clothes. A backpack sat on the bench next to her covered in various pins and patches. She smiled at me and I put my head down, feeling strange in my sweater vest.

When my mom and I got in the store, she said something that surprised me.

“Did you see that girl checking you out as she was waiting for the bus,” my mom asked as she picked up a can of beans.

“Mom! She wasn’t looking at me like that. Was she?”

“She definitely was,” my mom said. “But nevermind, forget I said anything.”

I was in shock. I don’t quite know why the idea of a girl checking me out felt so revolutionary. I simply had never thought about that being able to happen. I suppose I had always viewed my sexual orientation like a one sided mirror, as if no other girl could see me glancing from the other side. I realized that just like Adam looked at me and pursued me, I could do that too.

I realized I didn’t have to settle for dating a guy.

I immediately knew I needed to break up with Adam, but I didn’t know how.

Two months later, I no longer needed to worry how. Adam opened the door for me one last time and sat me down on a bench. He couldn’t say the words aloud so he typed the message on his phone and slid it over for me to read.

I think we should break up.

I quickly put my head down on the lunch table and covered my face with my hands.

“I know you’re going to miss me,” Adam said sadly. “I know how hard this is.”

He continued to comfort me until the bell rang for first period. Once he was out of sight, I put my head up and let myself smile. I had been smiling since the moment I saw the message and just didn’t want Adam to see. I was happy to be free from the relationship I felt pressured to be in from the beginning.

Admittedly, I cried in a bathroom stall five minutes later. I didn’t miss him, but I knew I would miss the safety of being in a straight relationship. I was scared. Would my friends choose sides? Would I have to eat alone again? Who would help me deal with what was beyond my one sided mirror? Who would hold that door open for me?

It’s been two years since that day at the lunch table. I can’t say I haven’t struggled with my identity, but I can proudly say I haven’t dated an Usher lookalike who sells hoverboards since then. Even on the worst of days, I know who I really am.

I no longer exist in a space where I need a boy to hold the door open for me in the name of chivalry.

I open the door for myself nowadays.

 

 

Yasmine Duncan is an emerging young writer from the Pittsburgh area.