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  But that kiss—how could anyone in their right mind find anything wrong with that kiss? When my lips touched Jolene’s cheek, a cheek cool and smooth like the belly of a minnow, I shuddered and said, “Mmm.”

  When I opened my eyes, Jolene was staring at me like I had two heads and both of them were butt-ugly.

  “What are you doing?” Jolene’s eyes widened and her face flushed. “Holy Sodom and Gomorrah, Lorraine! You want to put us both on the fast train to hell too?”

  I hadn’t a clue what she meant by that, but I didn’t say anything.

  She rummaged through her quilted book bag. “Here, you hold this.” Jolene handed me her Good News for Modern Man edition of the Bible. Then she grabbed it back again, stuffed it in her bag, and took my hands in hers. I loved her holding my hands, but it was obvious on Jolene’s face that she remembered all the things that I had forgotten. “I forgive you, Lorraine. I won’t tell anybody.”

  Since the kiss, I had allowed myself several daydreams about how I would eventually live with Jolene Grind. Previously, I had lived off the crumbs of friendship, times when Jolene rested her head on my shoulder during long bus rides for field trips, times we cuddled close against the cold Minnesota air during late-season football games, and times when I sat by Jolene in the pew of the church where Jolene’s father preached damnation for all queers like me.

  Why was it that boys had to have all the girls’ kisses for God to be happy? I didn’t want to kiss boys. I’d enjoyed football and baseball with them in their yards and at recess when I was in elementary school. I wanted to run faster, pass farther, and tackle harder than the boys, but I never wanted to kiss boys. I’d loved girls by first grade. I didn’t ask for the feelings to come, and they didn’t go away. Plenty of times over the past couple of years, Pastor Grind had said that if feelings like that didn’t go away, then the feeler of those feelings was going straight to hell.

  Thoughts of hell burned my eyes, and tears dammed up as I looked at Jolene Grind. Even though I believed she wouldn’t tell, some of me wanted to rewind, erase what happened. I was seven parts scared and eight parts embarrassed. I only half listened while Jolene spoke, searching my brain for a suitable lie for what I’d done, if anyone ever found out. Would they believe there’d been a fly on Jolene’s cheek and I’d gently swatted it away with my lips?

  “I’m so sorry, Jolene. I wasn’t thinking. Please don’t hate me.”

  “Lorraine, I could never hate you. But you don’t know the problems your desires could make for everybody.”

  Jolene cried. Seeing Jolene cry made my heart break all over again, and I hated myself for what I felt and the stupid mistake I’d made. Then I shuddered for a second time. A vision of Momma flashed in my mind. She was scowling at me, wearing her blue dress hiked up along her hips, because my mistake had staked her to a big wooden cross. I hated myself. Again.

  Jolene said she would pray for my soul at church. I wanted to tell Jolene that my soul could wait. I wanted to tell Jolene to pray for my body to have a place to live if Momma found out I kissed a girl. I wanted to tell Jolene if prayer helped, Momma would have prayed me into liking boys and shoehorned me into dresses and patent leather shoes ever since she had read about me loving girls in my journal. The sneak.

  I prayed too, but nothing changed. That’s what I wanted to scream at Jolene, but I didn’t. I stayed quiet and sorry.

  After the kiss, the promises of prayers, and the remorse, Jolene gathered up her stuff, touched my shoulder, and said she would see me the next day at school. Jolene never mentioned the incident to me again. The school year ended. Summer came.

  Now, a new school year was about to begin and still nothing had changed. I looked around the yard and at the cloud of dust Momma had left in her wake. I knew Momma hated me for being queer. Sure, she loved me some, but Momma worried more about my salvation than my happiness.

  I knew Dad knew I was homosexual, because Momma wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to tell him. I wasn’t certain that Dad really cared that I was queer. He probably had an animal story that evidenced the necessity of aberrant pairings for the survival of the species. To him, maybe I was just an interesting animal variation in nature. My dad had an animal story for everything. After I didn’t get up for school when Momma called me and I missed the bus, Dad told me I could walk. He said that every year the wildebeests of the Serengeti migrated five hundred miles to Kenya for better grazing. He reckoned I could walk the three miles to school for the sake of my education. I told him that many of those wildebeests were killed by predators on that journey. He said he’d take full responsibility if I were eaten on the way to school.

  The one time Momma had mentioned me being queer with Dad and me in the same room, Momma had sworn Dad to secrecy, but I was certain she wrote pages upon pages in her notebook, and I suspected she even added a couple of diagrams that I was too scared to look upon.

  “Once God heals Lorraine, nobody need know about her deformity,” she’d said.

  Hell, I figured Momma was pissed that God knew about it.

  Becky knew. I took some consolation that Becky couldn’t bring herself to use the words queer or homosexual. Becky wouldn’t advertise it. She’d have been afraid to catch it. Besides, Becky didn’t pay attention to anyone but herself and her dumb boyfriend, Kenny.

  Since I’d made my kissing mistake with Jolene, Jolene knew. This brought me right back to the question of what Pastor Grind had called about. I needed to go to the barn and tell Dad that Momma had gone to the church, and then I needed to press for information from the nearest all-knowing being: Becky.

  When I returned from telling Dad that Momma had gone to the church, Becky was back on the front porch, swinging and gazing at herself in a mirror.

  I just looked at Becky and wondered where she came from. “You give the roast permission to cook on its own?”

  Becky didn’t answer. She stared into the mirror of her compact and spackled her lips with a layer of Pepto-Bismol–colored lipstick. She licked her fingers and corralled a couple of hairs that had come loose from her French braid, which made me reach up and touch my own mop. That morning I had snared the back with a rubber band and subdued the top with a baseball cap. I pulled off my cap, the rubber band broke, and my hair sprang out from my head. “I bet you wish you had these curls.”

  Becky snorted. God forbid she just laugh at something I said anymore. Still, she motioned for me to sit in front of her on the floor of the porch.

  I knew what that meant. She wanted to play a game we had played since we were old enough to pull hair and hold a comb. We called it “beauty school dropout.” The object of the game was for Becky to make my unruly hair into some hairdo from her magazines. I didn’t always like the outcome, but I always liked when Becky touched my hair.

  We were shaded on the porch, but still sweating. The humidity hadn’t reached the state of locker room closeness yet, but the sun had burned the dew off the grass and warmed the air to eighty degrees. Pants and Sniff plopped on the porch floor beside me when I called them. I rubbed and scratched their bellies—the pleasure loosened their joints and they flailed like they were strumming a guitar. I knew just how they felt. I was slack-jawed and nearly drooling as Becky tamed and braided my hair. That perfect moment was blown to bits when the reason for Becky’s earlier primping barreled up the drive in a rusty Dodge truck. Kenny Hollister.

  He was bigger than any of the boys in our class, even though he was a year younger. He wasn’t bad looking if you liked boys, and Becky did. Muscled but lean, he moved like a big cat: agile and fast. He was a natural at any sport he decided to play. It was the deciding that caused a problem. Kenny joined the teams and did well at first, but then he quit—usually after a fight with another player or the coach.

  Becky let out a deep sigh. “Be still, my heart.”

  I groaned, “Be still, my gag reflex.”

  Although she’d braided only half my head, she pushed me to the side, tucked her makeup case
behind a pillow on the swing, and hustled to the top step of the porch as Kenny parked his truck near the house.

  Becky fiddled with her already perfect hair. “Why’s he got his smelly hunting dogs with him?”

  Kenny loped over to Becky. She lingered on the step. Once she could reach him, she kissed him. Kenny wiped lipstick off his face but leaned in for another kiss. She burnished his face and neck with her hands, and then let her arms fall around Kenny’s shoulders and kissed him again.

  I had to smile. I didn’t want to kiss Kenny, but I sure as hell wanted to kiss somebody like that.

  In the truck cab, Kenny’s dogs, Satan and Buck, barked and snarled. Pants and Sniff jumped at the truck door and barked at them. Kenny had rolled up the windows and left his dogs in the cab, their protests muted, but the truck was heating up. They fogged and smeared the windows with their breath and slobber.

  “Lorraine, go get our guest some lemonade.” Becky’s eyes were glued to Kenny. I couldn’t tell if Becky was going to kiss him again or eat him. Becky didn’t take her arms away from Kenny’s neck.

  “Morning is more of an orange juice moment,” I said.

  “Fine. Get my honey some orange juice, Lorraine.”

  “We’re out of orange juice. We just have lemonade, and I’m not going to get it. Sorry, your highness, but it’s my day off.” I fingered my half-baked hairdo and searched for my hat.

  Becky harrumphed into the house and mumbled something. Kenny slunk a few steps closer to me and the dogs.

  “You could learn a few things from your sister. Actually, you could learn a lot. She knows how to treat a man.” He wiped his mouth again. Both dogs turned their bellies up to Kenny for a rub. Sniff’s tongue lapped at Kenny’s hands and wrists. Kenny baby-talked to the hounds, which sickened me more.

  “You can’t hold your licker, can you boy?” he said. “Who’s a good boy?”

  It infuriated me that they liked Kenny as much as they did. I credited my dogs with better judgment.

  “I could get you a date with one of my cousins. Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself.” He leaned over me. I smelled his Brut cologne. It barely masked the odor of his family’s pig farm.

  “I’d rather be autopsied alive.” I shooed the dogs off the porch and stood up, facing Kenny.

  “Humph. One of these days some man’s going to slap your smart mouth.” He ran a finger down the side of my jaw. “I just hope I’m there to see it.” He winked.

  I swatted his creepy hand away, but he grabbed both my arms above the elbows and squeezed. Just then Becky came out with two glasses of lemonade. Kenny released his hold on me and headed toward his truck.

  “Where’re you going, Kenny? I brought you some lemonade.”

  “Nope, can’t stay. My chores are done. I’m going hunting. I’m going to run those dogs’ blame feet off. I’ll pick you up later.”

  Gravel and dust kicked up from Kenny’s truck and pelted the fiberglass woodchuck diorama Dad had put in the yard the day before. Kenny sped from the yard, barely missing Twitch’s Jeep coming up the drive.

  Becky offered his abandoned drink to me. “God Almighty, Kenny’s cute! Did you see the way his jeans fit him? I wish he didn’t have to leave so soon.”

  “Hmm, sugar on the rim. Nice touch, sis.” I took the glass from Becky. “You know Kenny, hard for him to hang around here kissing when he could be off killing something.” I rubbed one of the places on my arm where Kenny’s fingernails had cut into my skin. I thought of showing the marks to Becky, but it’d be pointless. Becky was unreachable when it came to seeing anything negative about Kenny. I saved myself the aggravation.

  Twitch got out of his Jeep and smiled. “Hello, girls.” He tipped his Twins cap at us, letting wavy brown hair brush against his forehead and cheeks for a moment before he reined it back in with his cap.

  I handed him the glass of lemonade.

  “Heavens, is it a margarita?”

  “Nope, Becky’s lemonade. What’re we doing today?”

  Twitch coming was the first good thing I’d seen all day. When he came for me on a Saturday it usually meant he had a job for me—drenching sheep, or pulling a calf, or neutering or spaying somebody’s pet. The pay was just above pitiful, but the labor was my idea of a vocation. Momma would only let me work for him a few times a month and never if it conflicted with a possible shift at the diner. She had forbidden me from taking the full-time summer job Twitch had offered every year since I turned fourteen. No matter how many times I asked, Momma never explained why I was forbidden to work for him.

  “I gotta talk with your dad, run an errand, and then I’ll pick you up.” He drained the lemonade and handed the glass to Becky, but looked back at me. “I like what you’ve done with your hair. No makeup or dresses required for this job. Come as you are. You two, hard to believe you’re from the same litter.” He laughed to himself and sidled off to the barn before I could kick him.

  “Becky, do you really think Grind was calling about the scholarship?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t tell you if I did. It’s more fun to watch you sweat.” She put the drink glasses on the porch railing, stretched her neck out, and balanced her box of Brides magazines on the railing. “It’s probably you in trouble.”

  She looked at me, licked her finger, and tore another blushing, blonde, boney bride from the glossy pages. “You’ll never win that scholarship. There’s a morality clause. Do you know what that means, Lorraine? Even if you manage to miraculously beat my GPA, which you won’t, you’re a queer, a homosexual. I haven’t said anything about it before, but you’re a freak and you’ll never win!”

  Becky said the words. She spit them like it was nothing, or just some shit in her mouth. She ripped out a picture of a model in a sequined wedding dress and added it to the pile on her white, satin-covered scrapbook.

  Dad came around the corner of the house just in time to hear Becky’s last bit of venom: “Like Momma says, the rewards of the faithful will not be squandered on the unholy. Lorraine Tyler, God will burn you in hell for being queer!”

  I lowered my shoulder and plowed into Becky. I swept her off the porch onto the lawn, and rolled her down a small hill. A perfume ad pressed against my face. We broke the porch railing, two gnomes, and flattened the hollow chipmunk tableau. Air whooshed out of Becky as I landed on her at the apron of the duck pond. We swatted at each other. She screeched. I yelled from a bruised part of me that I didn’t know I had.

  “You take that back!” I might’ve drowned Becky if Dad hadn’t plucked me off her.

  “Calm down, Lorraine! And you, Becky, get cleaned up and I’ll deal with you later!” He pointed Becky to the house. Covered in mud, Becky looked like a walking turd. I wished I had Momma’s camera so I could have taken Becky’s picture and submitted it to the senior yearbook committee—with the caption: most likely to be mistaken as fertilizer.

  “March!” Dad pointed me to the barn.

  I was covered in mud and duck shit. “I hate her! I’m so tired of her being perfect.”

  “Nobody’s perfect. I’ve proved that to your momma over and over again.” He pushed at my shoulder. “Calm yourself down. It’s going to be okay.”

  I’d never call my dad a hugger, but that day he halfway hugged me. He pulled me into his arms and ducked down so that our eyes met. I knew his look, knew he loved me. I tried to slow my breathing and quell my tears.

  He slung his arm around my shoulders again and pushed me toward the barn. “Jesus Christ! You’re a mess.”

  “Twitch gone?”

  “Yep. Sent him on his way.”

  Water spurted and splashed against the side of the cow trough as Dad worked the pump handle. He wet his handkerchief and wiped a clump of mud off my chin.

  “Let’s get rid of your mud beard first.” He took another swipe at my face and rinsed the rag before he worked the mud away from my leaky eyes. “You resemble that old raccoon you brought in the house. Jesus, your momma was mad.” He chuc
kled. “And remember how scared Becky was when the critter jumped on her lap? She don’t go in for animals much.” He laughed so hard he went into a coughing jag.

  Dad’s nostalgic inspection of my most recent battles just refueled my anger. I wanted somebody to take something from Becky for a change.

  “What’re you going to do to her, Dad? Will you ground her?”

  “What happens to your sister isn’t your concern. Your job is to worry about yourself.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “No buts about it. You’re smarter than this. That’s what gets my goat.”

  Then he did something I loved about him, but not always when he did it to me. From his shirt pocket he took out his little notebook and scribbled screwworm 1960 on a page and handed the note to me. Here we went again. Momma recorded sins in her notebook, and Dad wrote out homework assignments in his. I knew the drill. Research the animal at the library and figure out the lesson.

  “Most maggots eat dead things.” He paused, lowered his head, and squinted one eye. “The screwworm is a different animal. Learn about it and you’ll know something about anger and hate.” He rinsed his handkerchief again. “You know better than to fight. Get cleaned up and get to your room without ruffling Becky.” He coughed hard like he did in the morning before his coffee and first filterless Camel. I worried that I might have killed him by forcing him to manage a fight that Momma would have squelched with a threat. Dad’s face bloomed purple.

  “There’s gonna be people that got their own opinions, and you aren’t strong enough to knock all of them into the mud,” he said. “Although, if you tackle them like that, you probably will knock most of them down.” He grinned.

  He bent over with his hands on his skinny knees and let out a long breath. His eyes slid over a pile of salvaged building material. He picked up a glass block and raised it so that sunshine filtered through it and reflected a rainbow on an oily puddle of water on the ground where I toed at the gravel. He fingered a chipped spot on the corner and spit shined the smooth flat surface with the sleeve of his shirt.