Excerpt:
When I came home from school, my dad was in the living room, alone, sitting upright. He wore a fancy gray business suit. Papers and brochures were sprawled out over the table.
He
turned his head toward me in a slow, robotic fashion. “Sit down.”
I
stared back at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Do
what I ask.”
“But
I have homework to do—”
“Zipporah Green! I’m not going to say it
again!”
I sat
down and tried to pinpoint my crime. And then there it was, at the edge of the
table: my most recent e-mail from Mira, the one in which she said she wanted me
to come visit her this summer.
Dad turned to me, an expression on his face
that suggested I wouldn’t escape this little chat alive.
“I
know about Mira. I know all about your little friend from Seattle.”
The
immediate pain in my gut almost doubled me over. For my father to be so
condescending to call her “my little friend” made me want to pick up the living
room table and throw it against the wall. “I’ve been meaning to tell you about
her—”
“You’ve been talking to her online for two years? Zippy, I know you’ve
struggled trying to follow the righteous path of Jesus Christ. But never in my
wildest nightmares could I have ever conceived you, my own flesh and blood, as
the most blasphemous of sinners.”
“Dad,
it’s not like that.”
He
wiped his sweaty fingers against his chin. “What’s it going to look like if my
own child is a…” He struggled with the word. “A homo…”
I
didn’t want to have to finish the word for him; he was a big boy. “A what,
Dad?”
“A homosexual.”
I
should have been cordial. I should have sat with my little hands in my little
lap and pleasantly agreed with every statement he made. But it was time to be
strong. “I don’t understand why you have to come down on me for this. Why can’t
I have this one thing in my life that makes me happy? Mira makes me happy, Dad.”
“I
can’t have a gay child,” he said. He hadn’t locked eyes with me since the start
of our conversation. I always thought my dad to be close-minded, but I never knew
him to be a wimp. “I can’t have a lesbian daughter. I love you, sweetheart, you
know I do—but what you’re doing is wrong.”
I leaned toward him and whispered, “But
it’s the only thing to me that’s right.”
I
don’t think he heard me—at least, he pretended like he didn’t. “Promise me,
here and now, that you will suspend all communications with this girl.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Dad,
please—”
“I’m not asking.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“I
don’t want to know her.”
I
tried really, really hard not to cry. “If you could just look past your hate
for one second, you’d be able to see that she’s the best thing that’s ever
happened to me.”
“You
can’t mean that.”
“I
do,” I said. “She’s my best friend.”
“Your
best friend? But you’ve never even
met her. For all you know, she could be—”
“I love her.”
He
finally looked at me. His neck turned so slow I heard his bones twisting. “What did you say?”
“I
love her, Dad. I do.”
My
dad sighed and pushed away from the table, like the closest he could sit was a
yard’s length away. He shook his head and stood up, his hands shoved into his
pockets.
“Connie and I had a long talk about this,” he
said. “We’ve decided to send you away this summer. To a camp.”
“A
camp?” I shuddered. I didn’t know what to think. “What kind of camp?”
“It’s
called Moral Inventories. It’s in Memphis. And it’s for teenagers like you who
suffer from…” He searched for a word. “…abnormalities.”
“Abnormalities?” I looked away. I didn’t
want my father to see me cry.
He
turned to me. His chiseled face emitted strobes of anger and resentment. “I’ve
tried to guide you on the righteous path, but clearly I haven’t done enough.
You need proper, around-the-clock assistance if you want to have any chance of
being cured of this… disease.”
I sat
there stupefied. I tried to think of something to say. I had nothing.
“You’re young, honey,” my dad said, in a
calmer tone, “and I thank the Lord for that, because there’s time for you to be
set free through the power of Jesus Christ. When our Lord and Savior returns to
Earth and takes the Chosen up to Heaven, I don’t want you to be left behind.”
I
narrowed my eyes, tried to make sense of his madness. “Are you talking about
the rapture?”
“It could happen any day, sweetheart. You
have to be prepared. We all do.”
My dad had officially passed over from
closed-minded to completely nuts. “You really think this camp is going to make
God love me more?” I breathed in deeply, then asked the most pivotal question
of all: “You really think this camp is going to make me not gay?”
“It
better.” My dad finally looked at me. “Because if it doesn’t, I’ll see to it
you never come back.”
I ran
upstairs to my bedroom, slammed the door so loud my framed Spice Girls poster
fell and crashed against the carpet.
I wanted to write to Mira. Tell her what
had happened.
But my computer was gone.
About the author:
Website: http://brianrowebooks.com/
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Posted by Cheryl
~*Disclaimer: This post was written by Genuine Jenn. All opinions are honest and my own.*~
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