Buried Secrets

Chapter 1: Caught-2

The next few minutes or so is a blur of anger, shock, fear, and bigotry. I think each of these flashes over all three of us at one moment or another. Taylor and I have waited all summer to be together because of our own internalized homophobia. It’s hard to shake when you grow up in the Baptist Church…

Taylor gets out of the bed, wrapping my quilt around her and inching toward the door. Mom stops this retreat with a word, “No!” Taylor stops and stands wrapped in the quilt as if turned to stone, or that pillar of salt woman in the Bible. My mother stares at me while I struggle to cover my nakedness with the thin sheet.

“You filthy w***e! Get out of that bed right this minute. Go into the bathroom and cover yourself.”

Hearing these words destroys me in an instant. Everything horrible I had been thinking about myself for the past few months is now out in the open. I slip out of the bed and dash into the bathroom, praying that there is some item of clothing there that will do. From inside the bathroom, I can hear the muffled sounds of Mom yelling at Taylor, with the words slut and unnatural standing out. I feel responsible for putting Tay in this position. Nobody should have to get this treatment from my mom but me.

I stall as long as I can. By the time I come out dressed in sweatpants and tank top, Taylor is gone and my mother is in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea. She ignores me as I come in the room. I figure she has to speak to me some time, so I try to be quiet and patient, knowing that the offensive position never succeeds with this woman.

I go to the fridge and get a glass of milk, then sit down silently and wait. I have played this impossible scene over and over in my mind since I knew Taylor was more than a friend, but now I feel stiff and speechless. I sit at the kitchen counter, looking down at the patterns of scratches on the fake marble. Finally, she opens her mouth to speak, still not looking at me. I brace for the fall-out of last night’s pleasure.

“Emelia. You’ve always had a wild spirit, but thank the Lord you’ve usually kept it in check. I can’t believe you let it go to this extent. I’m physically sick at the picture of my child in bed with that…This isn’t a game. You choose the homosexual lifestyle and you’re choosing to align with the forces of evil—those who reject the word of God. How can you do that, Emelia?! After the way you were taught…?”

I wish I had more time to think of how to approach this. I’d been so focused on hating myself for my feelings I never even thought about presenting “being gay” in anything close to a positive way. I feel totally trapped. No matter how I act today, in this conversation, the Bible Baptist Church of Daytona, which includes most of my friends, will now always think of me as someone who has fallen from grace—the worst kind of sinner. As I sit there at the familiar kitchen counter where I have eaten my breakfast before school about a million times, I feel like I’m now a different person to my mother—a bad person. A person she doesn’t want anything to do with. She’s the only family I have…hot silent tears seep out and roll down my cheeks.

Mom looks at me as if I have no right to cry or be upset. I’ve seen that look when she’s giving a testimony in church, calling out the devil from some poor sinner. Sometimes it isn’t that hard to understand why my father left.

“Alright. I’ll give you one chance to explain to me what I think I saw in your bedroom. Do you have anything to say for yourself? You and that despicable girl?”

This gets me. She’s my mother, and I guess she does have some right to say what I do while I’m still at home. But calling the most kind-hearted and gentle girl I’ve ever met “despicable” is not okay. I stand up and open my mouth to speak. Mom pushes me back into my chair.

“Mom, please…There’s nothing wrong with Taylor! She…”

“Nothing wrong?! There certainly is something wrong—to lead a nice Christian girl like you down the path of sin and abomination…” At this point, Mom starts pacing, her heels making a staccato tapping sound on the kitchen floor. She reminds me of the white tigers we saw at Busch Gardens, endlessly circling their tiny island.

“You know what needs to be done, don’t you? I have to call Pastor Montes. We’ll get a prayer circle in place, and maybe a laying on of hands tonight.”

I was afraid this would happen. Only worse. I would rather Mom just kill me and get it over with. But that would be too easy. What is in store for me is much more complicated.