The Boy I Love (22 page)

We all made our way back to the kitchen. Mom put the teakettle on to boil, and Dad poured himself a shot of whiskey. He started right in, insisting we call Tim's parents. Mom kept shushing him, then coaxed the whole story out of Tim. He sat there at our table and told her everything, as opposed to the bits and pieces he'd told me.

“We kept getting all these crank calls,” Tim said. “I
couldn't see how my parents wouldn't figure it out. And I just couldn't go back to school today. So I told them.”

Tim's father had thrown up. He turned white as a ghost, excused himself from the room, and left Tim and Mrs. Greenlaw in the living room, listening to him retch away in the half bath. “I just sat there,” Tim said, “thinking that I make my own father sick.”

When that part was over his mother cried, and his father yelled, and they got their pastor on the phone and he came right over with all sorts of literature about where they could send him to cure him of his sinful inclinations. While Tim told us all this he was trying to drink his tea, but his hands were shaking too hard and he kept having to put it back down. As my mom listened, I could see some sort of force lifting her up from the center of her being. Suddenly she didn't look defeated anymore. She looked energized, and I knew exactly what was happening. She'd found someone new to rescue—someone who didn't require acres of land and regular veterinary care.

“Don't you worry, Tim,” she said. “I'm going to talk to your parents. You can stay right here with us until they see this thing clearly.”

“Elizabeth,” Dad said. His eyes had gone wide, and I could see him battling not to roll them.

Mom held up her hand like a crossing guard stopping traffic. “Let me tell you something, honey,” she said, keeping
her eyes on Tim. “You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to get changed. You are exactly as God made you, and you are perfect. Do you understand that?”

She reached out across the table and took both Tim's hands in hers, stopping their shaking. “You see?” she said. “Ten fingers. I'm guessing you have ten toes, too?”

Tim smiled a little with the corners of his mouth and bloodshot eyes, and then he nodded.

“Well, then,” Mom said. “No adjustments needed. Why don't you just get some rest and try not to worry about anything else tonight. Okay?”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. I loved the way Mom kept instructing people not to worry. If only it were that easy!

She sent Dad to get something of his for Tim to sleep in. We all went upstairs, and when Dad handed Tim a pair of striped pajamas—his newest, nicest ones—Tim said thank you. And then he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Piner, I feel weird asking this. But would y'all mind if I slept in Wren's bedroom? I just really don't think I can handle being alone right now.”

Well. If you want a long moment of awkward silence, that is one way to go about getting it. I could see Dad's face, a tightness around his jaw, like for a split second he wondered if this whole thing was all some elaborate ploy. Part of me wanted to make a joke about how they could be confident my honor would stay secure, given the situation. But
the bigger part of me knew I wouldn't be making any jokes that had to do with a person's sexuality, not anytime soon, and hopefully not ever.

Finally Mom put her hand on Tim's shoulder. “That's fine with us, honey,” she said. “You just make sure to get some sleep. Okay?”

Tim nodded. While he used the bathroom, I changed into my own pajamas and did my best to get the straw out of my hair. Tim changed in my room while I brushed my teeth. The one thing I didn't bother with was pulling the twin mattress out from under my bed. Tim and I crawled into bed together, my head resting on his chest and his arms tight around me. Despite everything, it felt powerfully nice to sleep being held this way; not only because I felt safe, and protected, and loved, but because I could feel from his arms that Tim was strong enough to get through whatever hardship the days and years ahead might hold.

*   *   *

It occurs to me that I never told you what I decided to write about for my history of Williamsport paper. The topic I ended up choosing was the first interracial marriage to legally take place in the city, Nathan and Ophelia Brookwood. Nathan was white, and Ophelia was African American. They got married in 1968. Ophelia had just died last year, but I got to talk to her granddaughter on the phone. Researching this paper I learned all kinds of things, like the fact that Ohio was
the first state to make it legal for people of different races to marry, and that was in 1887. The next state to allow it was Oregon, but that wasn't until 1951! And by different races I don't just mean black and white people marrying each other, but Asian, and Native American, and just about any color you can think of. None of it was allowed. The truth is that until 1967 only fifteen states didn't consider miscegenation—a fancy/ugly word for interracial marriage—an out-and-out crime. Then this couple from Virginia whose last name was Loving (I'm not kidding, their real names were Mildred and Richard Loving) got married legally in Washington, DC, then got arrested in Virginia, where they lived. The police burst in on them in their own bedroom! Well, thank goodness there was some outrage over this, and the case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was decided that banning interracial marriage was unconstitutional. So in 1967, the other thirty-five states, including North Carolina, had to take those miscegenation laws off the books. Hip hip hooray.

The reason I tell you this now is that the second day of my suspension I worked on my paper while Mom and Tim went for a long walk. Sitting at my laptop in the kitchen (my parents didn't allow me to go online upstairs), I double-checked my research and put the finishing touches on everything I had to say. I included a little personal history about how Holly and James were getting married and how happy I felt about it, and at the same time how sick to my
stomach it made me that such a thing would ever have been considered a crime. I also wrote about how things had certainly changed since 1967. Even though an old woman in the grocery store once told Holly she should be ashamed of herself, most days she and James can hold hands on the street in Raleigh or anywhere else, with nobody minding a single bit, or hardly even noticing.

Reading over what I'd written so far, I worried I was making the world today sound a little too rosy. So I added some stories James had told me about patients who refused to let him treat them, even when they were screaming from pain. And I put in a paragraph about how J. K. Polk High, which is 76 percent African American, has much fewer resources than Williamsport High, which is 83 percent white.

But mostly I wanted my paper to focus on the positive stuff. For people of different races who fell in love with each other, forty-four years—a little bit longer than either of my parents had been alive—was the space of time between police bursting into bedrooms and just perfectly normal. I wondered if a similar space of time waited for Tim, and it would take forty-four years before a pair of guys could kiss at a party without causing a gigantic fuss. It seemed to me that was a long time to wait for the world to recognize its own mean silliness. After all, back when the Lovings got married, most people in the world probably didn't care one way or another. Most people were just going about their own lives, thinking
on their own problems—paying the electric bill, saving the family farm—and not minding a bit who married who. They finally stood up, though, when the Lovings got burst in on in their very own bedroom. That's when the whole world sat up and took notice. Hey, the world said. They aren't doing harm to anybody. So how about letting them be?

*   *   *

When Mom and Tim got back from their walk, Mom called Tim's parents to let them know he was with us. She happened to get his father, and from where Tim and I sat at the kitchen table we could hear him shout through the receiver about how Tim could just stay away until he decided to do what was right and fix himself. Mom was shaking by the time she hung up. Tim looked awful shaky himself, but not near so desperate as he did last night. I think he was relieved to be over here with us.

“Well,” Mom said later, at dinner. She passed around a bowl of green beans. “Wren's got to go back to school tomorrow. What do you think, Tim? What are you going to do?”

Tim took a heaping pile of green beans, then passed the bowl to me. He moved his food around on his plate with his fork, though none of us had started eating yet. “I think I'll go too, Mrs. Piner,” he said. “I think I'm tired of being kept away from my own damn life.”

“Good man,” Dad said. My parents smiled at him, but inside I felt this coldness. I thought of everything the Lovings
had to go through before things finally got put right, and even though I admired them for it, it was nothing I would ever wish on anyone I loved.

*   *   *

The next morning Dad said we could take his Jeep to school, but Tim said no. “I'm guessing I'll have to get used to staring,” he said. “I might as well get my practice on the bus.”

We waited together at the end of my driveway, holding hands. I felt glad that we only had a week and a half before winter vacation, so no matter how bad things ended up being, Tim wouldn't have to bear it for long. Or at least he'd get a break from it very quickly. We watched as the bus came rumbling down the road.

“I wonder if Jay's gone back to school,” Tim said. It was the first time I'd heard him say Jay's name since before all this happened.

“I didn't see him on Monday,” I said. “But then I wasn't there very long.” Tim smiled a little, and I hoped it was because he was picturing me kicking Devon.

The bus wheezed to a stop, and the door opened. “Well,” Tim said, with a deep intake of breath. “Here goes nothing.”

I stepped onto the bus first, and Tim followed. And you know what? Nothing happened. All the kids, they just sat in their seats, continuing their conversations. One or two might have looked over at us like they had heard about it, but they mostly just looked kind of curious. I saw one girl
smile at Tim, like she wanted to make sure he knew he was welcome.

The two of us filed down the aisle to our usual seat in back and flopped down, panting like we'd just sprinted through the first leg of a series of trials. All I could do now was hope that once Tim got to school, whatever mean and bigoted people there were would find a way to mind their manners, not to mention their own damn business.

*   *   *

They never do, though, do they? All morning Tim and I stuck close, even though we didn't have any classes together. First we got off the bus, our arms kind of pressing against each other. He came with me to my locker, then we went to his, and I walked him to his first class. It seemed kind of weird that I would be protecting him when I barely came up to his shoulder, but that's what it felt like. Tim tried his best to look calm, but I could tell by his face he felt anything but.

I got to every class late that morning on account of my resolve to walk with Tim to every one of his, and that included American history, which worked out just fine because when I arrived Ms. Durand was already there, which meant Devon couldn't say a word to me. Luckily, he had positioned himself on the other side of the classroom anyway, so I didn't even have to look his way as I headed to the back to sit next to Allie. She waved at me and mouthed, “How's Tim?”

I shrugged. How could I even begin to answer that?

As Ms. Durand talked on and on about the post–Civil War economy in the South, Allie passed me a note. It said,
Jay came back yesterday, and they wouldn't let him in the locker room.

Who?
I wrote back.
The football team?

She nodded. I wrote,
Why didn't you text me or something?

Allie looked over at Ms. Durand, who had turned to write something on the board. Then she handed the paper back to me.
Can't text. Cell phone confiscated. Plus, I didn't want to freak you out. But maybe you guys should avoid the cafeteria.

Caroline Jones was of the same opinion. When I went to collect Tim from calculus, she stood there with him in the hall. “They really busted up Jay's face,” she told us, adding that the main two kids who'd done it had been suspended and might even be expelled. “But the rest of the football team is super pissed that you guys were in the locker room with them all those times,” Caroline said.

“Maybe I should tell them it wasn't all that exciting,” Tim said.

Caroline bit her lip. “Nobody thought you'd come back,” she said. “But I'm betting by now people will for sure be watching out for you in the cafeteria. So we should go somewhere else.”

We hardly ever ate in the cafeteria anyway, so this didn't
seem like such a radical suggestion. I said, “Let's eat outside on the bleachers. It's not that cold.”

“I'll go with you,” Caroline said.

Tim headed for his locker, fast. Caroline and I found ourselves trotting to keep up with him. As we passed, lots of heads turned our way. Hardly anyone said a word, and I thought we'd made it, when one kid hissed, “Homo.” And then another threw a crumpled-up piece of paper at him.

Even so, I thought—not so bad. Out of about a hundred kids crowding these hallways, two of them cared enough to be mean. Then I thought, what if the other ninety-eight stepped up and did something about that?

Tim opened his locker and traded his books for his lunch. He turned to me and Caroline.

“Listen,” he said. “If they want to kick my ass, they're going to do it, right? I might as well get this over with.”

Caroline and I looked at each other. “Well,” she said, nodding. “I guess maybe it's safer to eat in the cafeteria anyway. There's not much they can do with teachers around.”

So we all took deep breaths and walked in together, automatically looking at the table where Devon and Rachel and a bunch of their cronies sat eating. It may have been my imagination, but the buzz of the room seemed to lower the second we walked in. I could see Rachel elbow Devon, who looked right over at us. Another thing that might have been my imagination: Devon looked kind of
sad, maybe even worried, as his eyes settled on Tim.