40
I think probably if I could write it all out on a giant timeline and look out over it all, I could pick out the exact day that Oliver’s drinking really started. Not the first time he drank, but the first time he drank how he’d continue to drink. Gun to my head—I can’t say I blame him.
That day, I came home from school a little later than normal, and as soon as I walked in the house, I could hear yelling. And it was real yelling too—this nasty, persistent, wear-you-down hollering.
My mom mostly, but sometimes my dad…and holy shit, I hated it when my dad yelled. My mom was the yeller in our house, but when my dad yelled, the earth shook.
He didn’t not yell to be kind; I think he just didn’t yell because he didn’t care. I’d hear him raise his voice to Tens sometimes, about trying harder, focusing more, being better—never to Maryanne. Never to me either, but his nevers regarding me stretched far wider than yelling.
I remember knowing that whatever they were yelling, they were yelling it at Oliver. They’d never speak to Maryanne or Tennyson like that.
I walked into the kitchen, and I knew what was happening straight away. They’d found Oliver’s magazines that he hid behind the pipes under the bathroom sink. They were laid out on the bench.
Mom was horrified. Dad was pale the way you’d imagine a homophobic man would be when he finds out his kid is gay.
And Oliver was heartbroken. That’s all I could see; the rest melted away.
His eyes were brimming with tears he wouldn’t let himself cry now, but I’d hear him cry them later, chastised for being curious about his sexuality that no one in the world would talk to him about here, and punished for feeding his curiosity on his own accord.
He wasn’t ready to come out. He wasn’t ready for them to officially know what we’d all known all along. He wasn’t ready for them to reject him once and for all.
“They’re mine,” I blurted out. My parents’ heads snapped in my direction—it just flew out of me; I didn’t even really think about it.
I was fourteen at the time. Sexually active, unbeknownst to them (and primarily against my own will), but sexually active nonetheless. I didn’t need them to think I was a virginal, white, flower child anymore; I didn’t feel like that on the inside anyway.
Being the sort of fifteen-year-old who hid porn under her bathroom sink, that was more aligned to how I felt in those days.
“I beg your pardon?” my mother said, eyebrow cocked, hand on her hips.
Oliver’s face was frozen, eyes wide.
“They’re mine.” I nodded, swallowing heavily.
My mother’s face contorted in horror. “What are you talking about? Where in tarnation did you get magazines like those?”
“A girl from school,” I lied.
My father looked over at me curiously, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, and his eyed pinched a little. I don’t know whether he believed me.
My mother walked toward me, shaking her head slightly, peering down her nose at me.
And then she slapped me. She never slapped me before then, and she hasn’t slapped me since.
My head swung in the direction she hit me and I let it stay there, facing away from her, blinking, trying my best not to cry.
“You sicken me.” And then she walked away, my dad after her.
Oliver waited a few seconds before rushing over to me. He threw his arms around me and pulled me into his chest.
“Why did you do that?” he asked as I began to cry.
Except, even then, I don’t think I was crying for me.
Maybe it was a bit out of shock—no one had ever hit me before—but mostly, I think I was crying for him. Because I felt for a tiny, falsified second what my brother must have felt living in a small town in the South every single day. Fucked up and rejected for no acceptable reason at all.