Chapter 3 #3
There it was: the explicit confirmation. I breathed deep and moved the air through my belly, trying to anchor myself, to grasp onto this paradigm-shifting truth. Uncle George was gay. I had a gay relative. I’m not alone.
“He was gay,” I said aloud, tasting the words.
“So gay,” Hannah said.
“Super, super gay,” Baker added.
“Like, constantly-checking-out-the-delivery-guys gay.”
“I…” Suddenly, my throat felt thick. “I wish I’d known.
I came out, like, a month before he died.
I never got to talk to him about it.” My eyes found the copy of my senior portrait pinned to the bulletin board.
Dad showed him. Dad made sure he knew. A warm spring of affection broke through the anger I felt from earlier.
“He told me about you coming out,” Hannah said gently. “He told both of us, actually.”
“He was so excited,” Baker said. “So very proud of you.”
“He kept saying, ‘My niece is in the family!’ and we were like, ‘Yeah, George, she’s your blood—’”
“And he was like, ‘No, I mean she’s in the family!’”
In the family. It was such a simple way to say it. I felt overcome with pride, and affirmation, and belonging, and this warm, expansive, sunlit feeling that Uncle George had not only known but embraced my real self.
“I just wish I’d known about him,” I said thickly.
Hannah sighed in a defeated way. “Yeah. George kind of struggled with … well…”
“Integrating all parts of himself,” Baker finished.
There was something deep and knowing in the look Hannah gave her.
“Exactly. He was a master compartmentalizer. When he was George Wade the football star, it was like his private life didn’t exist. When he was here, all the ‘Georgie Boy’ stuff faded into the background.
And with his family, well…” She winced at me.
“I think he felt there were certain expectations.”
“So … he … he basically led a double life?” I asked.
Hannah gave me a sad smile. “I’d say it was a … layered life. He brought different parts of himself to different situations.”
“And nobody else knew? Like, people in Rustin? People in football?”
Hannah sighed. “I think the proof was there if they wanted to look for it, but how many of them wanted to look for it? The people who knew, knew. And the ones who didn’t seemed to like it that way.”
“People see what they want to see,” Baker clarified.
“And they profit off how things are seen, too,” Hannah said meaningfully.
I understood what she was saying. How many people had benefited from the image of Uncle George as a red-blooded, macho, inherently straight quarterback?
My grandparents. The Rustin Football machine.
The First Baptist minister, the mayor, the university president …
Uncle George’s barber and his neighbors and all the people he met in real estate …
How many of them had known the truth? How many had suspected?
How many refused to see? Had I refused to see?
The world kept spinning. Music pulsed through the wall. Hannah and Baker watched me carefully, their concerned expressions verging on pity.
“Do you both work here?” I asked eventually.
“I do,” Hannah said. “Full-time in the summers, and some part-time shifts during the school year. I’m a school counselor.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
Hannah gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve got major teacher energy. Bossy and nosy and very, like, I can relate to you.”
Baker burst out laughing, clutching her stomach in delight. Hannah’s mouth fell open like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I … don’t know how to respond to that.”
I shrugged. “You clocked me right away. I clocked you, too.”
Baker laughed even harder. She seemed utterly delighted, and I swelled with satisfaction.
“This is George’s fault,” Hannah grumbled, pointing vaguely skyward. “He sent you here to fuck with me.”
“And it’s delicious,” Baker said, wiping tears of laughter. “I think you’ve met your match, Han.”
Hannah tutted. “Don’t compare me to this insolent child.”
“You deserve this. It’s exactly what you were like at eighteen.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Currently Louisa’s.”
“You can forget about that back scratch later,” Hannah pretend-snarked.
They were momentarily in their own world, their eyes bright and smiles intimate. It was like they had completely forgotten I was sitting across from them.
“So…,” I said. “Y’all are—like—?”
“Roomies?” Hannah asked dryly.
“Yes, we’re together,” Baker confirmed with the air of someone who frequently had to translate Hannah’s humor.
In the same smooth motion, they held up their left hands. Small, sparkling diamonds glittered on their matching silver bands.
“Fiancées,” Hannah clarified. “But I’m really just looking for a tax break.”
“Shut up,” Baker said in a routine way.
“Cool,” I said, genuinely thrilled to see a future version of myself in them.
I had a few queer friends back in Connecticut—Gus and some other people we’d gone to prom with—and I was peripherally aware of a few queer teachers at my school, but this was the first time I’d had a genuine conversation with someone who had it all figured out. “I’ve never had, like, lesbian elders.”
Hannah practically choked. “Elders? We are thirty-two years old!”
Baker laughed good-naturedly. “I am okay with being an elder. We worked hard for it.”
I grinned at them. The entire moment felt surreal.
It wasn’t lost on me that I had spent the last twenty-four hours wishing desperately to get back to Connecticut, where I felt like I could be my whole queer self, but now here I was, in small-town Alabama, truly engaging with older queer people for the first time in a gay bar that made me feel like I belonged.
“This is probably going to sound stupid,” I started, looking between them, “but—being here tonight, and meeting you, and learning about Uncle George—it’s the first time it’s occurred to me that—well—that there are people like me in Rustin.”
Baker smiled softly. Hannah’s eyes twinkled as she said, “Well, yeah. We are everywhere.”
“It’s easy to assume we’re not. I somehow missed this part of Rustin even though it’s been right here in front of me.” I recited Baker’s earlier words. “People see what they want to see.”
Hannah smiled wryly. “Very good, grasshopper. These elders hardly need to impart any wisdom at all.”
“It’s late, though, and these elders need to get home,” Baker said pointedly. “Can we give you a ride, Louisa?”
“Oh, no thank you, I’m good. I have my dad’s truck.”
Hannah leveled me with a look. “You’ve been drinking.”
“I had one beer.”
“Yeah, and you’re young and still new to alcohol, and for all I know, that could have been your first ever drink. We don’t know how it affects you.”
“We’re taking you home,” Baker said decisively.
I hesitated, feeling preemptive grief at the thought of leaving the Frisky Cricket already. “Could we just go back out there for a few minutes?”
Hannah gave me an amused, knowing look. “You get three songs.”
“Deal,” I said, and we went back out to the waterfall, and my hungry heart took it all in.