Her Name in the Sky (33 page)

“You make it sound like Hannah has a disease,” Hannah’s mom says.

“Of course not,” Father Simon says patiently. “Though don’t forget that Christ tended to those with the meanest forms of disease. But, no, I would never suggest that Hannah has a disease. Same-sex attraction is not a disease, but rather a disorder. Counter to the natural law, counter to God’s plan for humanity—”

“A disorder?” Hannah’s mom says. “Father, with all due respect, Hannah doesn’t have a
disorder
.”

“Then how would you classify it, Anne? SSA is a deviation from the natural law. It is particularly sinister because many people—especially in our current culture—would have us believe that it’s normal, that it’s hereditary, that it can’t be helped and so we might as well give in to it, but the reality is that it
can
be helped and that people who experience SSA have a special place in the Church, either through the vocation of prayerful single life or, in some cases, Holy Matrimony with another person of the opposite sex. Hannah
will
be able to move past this. Through prayer, through choosing chastity, through faith in our generous God—”

“That’s not true,” Hannah says. She grips the seat of her chair until her knuckles hurt. When she speaks again, her voice is low and raspy. “I tried to believe all that stuff. I tried to trust that God could help me move past it. He couldn’t. He didn’t.”

“Hannah,” Father Simon says gently, stepping forward to place a hand on her shoulder. “He can. He will. And in the meantime, we’re going to make sure you don’t have to listen to the sort of outrageous heresy that you read in that e-mail—”

“Enough, Simon,” Mrs. Shackleford says, holding up her hand. “I’d like to speak to Hannah and Ms. Carpenter alone.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Brenda—”

“I don’t give a lick what you think right now,” Mrs. Shackleford says in a loud, harsh voice, her eyes narrowed dangerously at Father Simon. “Personally, Simon, I don’t consider it a good idea to hack into our teachers’ e-mail accounts. And yet here we are, and so we will proceed accordingly. But first, as St. Mary’s
principal
, I am going to have a word with Hannah and Ms. Carpenter
alone
.”

“We’re staying, too,” Hannah’s mom says, her voice quivering.

“Of course, Anne.”

Father Simon and Mr. Manceau stand silent and motionless. Father Simon swallows hard with his jaw still clenched. Mr. Manceau’s giant stomach moves up and down with his heavy breathing. Finally, after a long few seconds, both men turn and walk rigidly out of the office, closing the thick wooden door behind them.

“Well,” Mrs. Shackleford says, leaning her head against her hands, “here we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah says.

“Don’t be sorry, Hannah. This situation has been made into something much bigger than it should be because of politics and ignorance. It’s not your fault.”

“Ms. Carpenter,” Hannah says timidly, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize what would happen.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Ms. Carpenter says, stepping up to the desk and resting her hand on the corner of it. “Mrs. Shackleford’s right, Hannah—this is about things outside of your control. What happens to me isn’t important. I’ll be just fine. But you, Hannah—are you sure
you
want to claim responsibility for this burden?”

Her eyes bore into Hannah’s, and Hannah cannot look away even if she wants to: she feels like Ms. Carpenter is seeing into her soul. For a fleeting second, she wants to tell the truth, wants to shrug off this burden and be taken into her mother’s arms. But then she remembers Baker’s face, terrified beyond help as she sat in the courtyard.

“Yes,” Hannah answers. “Yes, I want to claim responsibility.”

Ms. Carpenter looks at her for another long moment, and then her eyes go soft.

“Hannah—Anne—Tom—” Mrs. Shackleford says. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen here. I’m going to fight hard to keep Ms. Carpenter at St. Mary’s, but that decision might be beyond the scope of my control. Either way, Hannah is going to take some heat from her classmates. This community will not be happy about losing a beloved teacher.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hannah says.

“Hannah—you’re going to hear conflicting opinions about the content of your e-mail. Some of them will not be kind. They may even be judgmental—”

“Yes, ma’am, I know—”

“But I want you to know that I support you. Understand?”

Hannah finds it hard to answer around the heaviness in her chest. “Yes, ma’am, I understand.”

“You can go home with your parents now. I’ll have Mrs. Stewart check you out of fourth block. If you need me for anything—” Mrs. Shackleford turns her eyes now to Hannah’s parents—“don’t hesitate to call.”

“Thank you,” Hannah’s mom says. Hannah’s dad clears his throat and nods.

Hannah stands to leave, but Ms. Carpenter rests a hand on her arm. “Hannah,” she says, “I want you to know I’m proud of you. Keep going, okay? Don’t lose faith.”

There is a great surge of emotion in Hannah’s throat. She takes a slow breath to speak around it, but she starts to cry anyway. “Thanks, Ms. Carpenter.”

Then she turns and walks to the door. Her parents flank her on either side, their posture slumped and their eyes focused straight ahead. Hannah takes one last look as she steps out of the room: Mrs. Shackleford sits at her desk, her shoulders hunched and her hand raised to her forehead; Ms. Carpenter stands next to her, her eyes trained on Hannah, and she is smiling and smiling and smiling.

Chapter Thirteen: The Arms of Hanging Men

“You can meet us at home,” her mom says once Hannah has retrieved her booksack. “We’ll get Joanie later.”

“You don’t have to go back to work?” Hannah asks.

“No, Hannah,” her dad says sadly. “Not today.”

Hannah’s hands shake on the steering wheel. She winds her way through the Garden District, over the black asphalt damp with rainwater and under the tall, lush trees that stretch above the streets, their branches twisted out to the side like the arms of hanging men. Her wrists ache from having gripped the chair in Mrs. Shackleford’s office for so long. The collar of her uniform shirt rubs against her neck, choking her.

Her parents’ cars sit in the carport. Hannah parks on the empty street and looks into the front windows of her house. She can imagine her parents inside, her father’s head in his hands as he bends over the kitchen table, her mother scrubbing at dirty dishes while furious tears run over the faded freckles on her cheeks.

Hannah’s throat burns with thick, hot emotion. She drops her hands from the steering wheel, but they still shake in her lap. She looks through the windshield at the tall oak trees that guard her neighborhood street, and she wants nothing more than to climb to the top of them and hide beneath their leaves.

She finds her parents standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, both of them silent as she walks into the room. Her dad leans against the stove and wipes his palms with a dishtowel. Her mom stands at the kitchen window, glancing out over the back porch.

Hannah drops her booksack on the floor and waits.

A long minute passes. Hannah’s dad drops the dishtowel over the stove plates, then picks it back up again and wipes at his left palm, then his right, back and forth, back and forth. Hannah’s mom stands as still as a deer, so that Hannah wonders if she even noticed her come into the house.

But then her mom speaks.

“You should have talked to us.”

“I didn’t know how.”

“But you knew how to drunkenly e-mail your teacher about it?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Hannah says, her voice shaking. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if you and Dad would be angry with me—”

“Well it looks like you managed to avoid that, huh?”

“Mama, I’m sorry—”

“Now we’re finding out at the same time as the entire school and church community,” her mom says in a thick voice. She turns around and crosses her arms over her chest. Her lip trembles. “No time to process—no time to figure out how to defend you—”

“You don’t have to defend me! I’m fine!”

“Don’t be so naïve, Hannah! If you think people aren’t going to talk about this—if you think people aren’t going to treat you differently—”

“Let them! I don’t care! I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks of me!”

“WELL WE DO!” her mom yells, slamming her hand down on the counter. “We do! You’re our daughter—you’re our daughter and we love you—we’ve loved you since the day we found out we were going to have you—and we don’t want you treated unfairly! We don’t want you discriminated against and shamed and hated! We don’t ever want to see you treated the way you were treated in that office today!”

Her mom starts to cry, her eyes swinging up at an angle as she tries to block the tears in frustration, and Hannah cries, too, her sinuses swelling and her tears falling onto her collared shirt.

Her dad clears his throat. His voice scratches when he speaks. “Joanie texted me. I’m going to pick her up.” He rubs at his chin as he leaves the room. A moment later, he returns. He clears his throat again. “Forgot my keys.”

Hannah slumps down onto one of the counter stools. She and her mom wipe their eyes and do not look at each other.

“I’m making you some soup,” her mom says. “What do you want?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Tomato or chicken noodle?”

“I don’t want anything.”

Her mom fills a midsized pot with water and places it on the stovetop. She steps into the pantry and grabs a can of soup.

“I don’t want it,” Hannah repeats.

Her mom sniffles and winds her hand around the can opener. “You need to eat something.”

Hannah relents. Her mom stands at the stovetop and stirs a spoon around the pot, occasionally tapping metal against metal. She sets crackers in front of Hannah without looking at her.

“Here you go,” she says a few minutes later, placing a white ceramic bowl in front of Hannah. Hannah swirls the tomato soup around the bowl, watching the thick orange-red liquid curve along her spoon.

“Mama? You haven’t said anything about the actual content of the e-mail.”

Her mom makes fleeting eye contact with her. “Let’s not talk about it right now. Just eat and put everything out of your mind.”

“But—how do you feel about it? Is it okay?”

Her mom carries the soup pot to the sink and flushes water over it. She scrubs hard at it with a soap sponge, her arm working fast as if she’s trying to shove the pot down the garbage disposal.

“Mom?”

“Give me some time, Hannah.”

Hannah’s tears drop into the tomato soup. She bites her lip to stop herself from crying again, but her whole body shakes and her breaths come out sharp and edgy, as if someone has taken a knife to her voice. 

“Oh, Hannah…” her mom says, turning around.

Her mom gathers her against her body and holds her. Hannah sobs into her mother’s satin shirt but keeps her hands balled at her sides, afraid to give herself over completely.

“Honey,” her mom coos. “It’s okay. I love you. Dad and I love you. Nothing could ever change that.”

Hannah cries until she hears the back door turn. Then she darts out of her seat, leaving her soup bowl and her mom in the kitchen.

She stays in her room on Saturday. She spends hours clicking around the Emory website, researching classes, memorizing the calendar, reading up on campus traditions. She hears her family walking around downstairs, hears them talking in the kitchen, hears the jarring music of TV commercials. She waits for her mom or dad to come check on her. They send Joanie instead.

“Will you get me some hash browns from Zeeland?” Hannah asks her. “I’m craving them.”

“Go get them yourself, lazy.”

Hannah turns back to her computer. “Never mind.”

“Ugh, fine, I’ll go with you.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, seriously, let’s go. I’ll drive.”

“No, I’m good.”

“You could use some fresh air. Come on.”

“Joanie. I don’t want to go.”

“You just said you were craving the hash browns.”

“I—never mind.”

“What?” Joanie shuts Hannah’s laptop screen. “Let’s go.”

“I don’t
want
to go.”

“Stop being such a brat.”

“I don’t want to go, okay?!”

Joanie pulls away from her. “Jeeze. I was just trying to be nice.”

Hannah pulls her lips into her mouth. “I don’t want to walk into Zeeland and see one of our classmates. Or one of their parents. Okay?”

Joanie drops her head and taps her fingers against her thigh. “Sorry,” she says quietly.

“It’s fine.”

“You want to watch a movie or something?”

“No, I’m okay. I’m just gonna take a nap.”

Joanie leaves, and Hannah falls into a restless sleep. When she wakes, she finds a Styrofoam box on her nightstand. She opens it. It’s full of Zeeland Street hash browns. 

Her parents call her downstairs for dinner around seven o’clock. Joanie looks up when Hannah walks into the kitchen. Her eyes ask a question. Hannah smiles in answer.

The four of them sit subdued around the table, each of them paying too much attention to their chicken. Joanie makes a valiant effort to stir the conversation, asking about everything from their dad’s friends at Albemarle to their mom’s recent tennis match. Neither one of their parents says much in response.

“Okay, this is just awkward,” Joanie says, dropping her fork. “Can we please address the rainbow-colored elephant in the room? So Hannah might not have a fairytale plantation wedding. So what?”

“Don’t start, Joanie,” their mom says.

“I think it’s brave what Hannah did.”

Their mom pauses with her fork in midair. “In what way?”

Hannah shoots Joanie a warning look. Joanie drops her eyes and says, clumsily, “In—telling the truth about how she feels.”

Their parents push pieces of chicken around their plates. Hannah drinks from her water glass for something to do, but the cold water makes the pit in her stomach feel even more hollowed.

Hannah wakes up late on Sunday morning and startles when she realizes her family is supposed to leave for Mass in three minutes.

“Don’t bother,” Joanie says when Hannah rushes into the bathroom and reaches for the toothpaste. “They already left.”

“What? They never let us miss church.”

Joanie shrugs. “I heard the backdoor slam, and then I looked out the window and saw them driving away.”

Hannah’s heart sinks. “They don’t want me there with them.”

“Don’t be dumb. Of course they do. They probably just—they probably don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, you know?”

The worst part of Sunday is when Aunt Ellie calls after lunch. Hannah stands outside the locked door of the study, listening to her mom whisper into the phone, listening to the breaths of silence that pour forth from her mom’s mouth.

“No,” her mom says after a few minutes, “never made it there. Couldn’t bring ourselves to face all those stares. We went to lunch on the other side of town instead.”

Hannah crawls back into her bed and stays there for the rest of the day.

Her stomach knots in on itself when she wakes on Monday morning. Joanie makes her toast, which Hannah takes only one bite of before she feels sick, and then they get into the car, neither one of them speaking. By the time they arrive at St. Mary’s, Hannah’s underarms are soaked through with sweat.

There aren’t many people in the parking lot when they pull in. Hannah looks automatically at Baker’s car, parked far down the lot next to Clay’s truck.

“Ready?” Joanie asks, her face pale.

“No,” Hannah breathes. “But let’s go.”

Several people cast her looks when she steps out of the car. She averts her eyes and follows Joanie’s path to the A-Hall doors. Just as they’re about to walk inside, a voice from behind them calls, “Hey, H’Eaden, wanna go out with me tonight?”

She falters in her steps, but Joanie clutches her arm and keeps her facing forward. “Go fuck yourself, Guthrie!” Joanie yells, her voice loud in Hannah’s ear.

“It’s fine,” Hannah says.

“He’s always been a jackass. Whatever. Come on.”

They walk into the building, and whereas Joanie would normally turn left for the junior hallway, today she turns right for the senior hallway.

“You don’t have to lead me the whole way,” Hannah tells her.

“I was just going to stop by Mrs. Paulk’s room to ask her something about our study guide.”