By Jennifer Martin
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Homophobic family members
The power lines whizzing past my car window have my full attention. I drowned out my grandparents’ conversation several minutes ago. I am tired of hearing about who and what is wrong in the world. I vaguely register my brother chiming in on the conversation.
Instead, I watch as the power lines pull apart and come back together when they reach a telephone pole, then pull apart again. Some trees are even resting lazily on the lines. I think about how they’re one too heavy tree branch away from snapping.
It’s vividly green outside, and I know that the air is warm and clear. I wish to be out there. I’m suffocating in the car. My grandparents don’t register that they pressed the wrong button several miles ago. Heat comes out lazily from the vents, and I don’t have the energy to tell them they did something wrong. A stretch of power lines disappears into the forest, then peeks back out in a flash.
I feel my eyes threatening to close. I almost give in when my grandmother speaks from the passenger seat, “Look, the flowers are out.”
I open my eyes, turning my head to look out my brother’s window. Immediately, I wish I hadn’t. We are almost home, but to get home we have to drive by my uncle’s house. The house with the pride flag.
Everyone laughs but me. I don’t have to listen to my grandmother to know the story she is now telling. It’s the same one every time we pass the house.
My uncle was devastated when his son came out. He was not surprised, but he was devastated. He still had one son to rely on. The older one. The one that still has some sense to him. Then he came out too, and my uncle was ruined. He mourned for days, my grandmother says, because what’s worse than one gay son? Two gay sons.
I stare at the flag, at my two cousins sitting on the porch, until they vanish from view. It is not my cousins’ house. It is my uncle’s house. The display of the pride flag has to mean something. That my uncle chose to support and love his children over time. I brought this up to my grandmother when the flag first went up.
They probably put it up without his permission, she said to me. Then why hasn’t he taken it down? I countered. He probably doesn’t know what it means. And that was that.
The power lines slow, then disappear as we turn into our driveway. I go to open my door, longing for the refuge of fresh air, but the door doesn’t budge. My grandparents are awkwardly twisted around to look at me. I ready myself for what they’re going to ask. The question they pose every time I don’t laugh at a homophobic joke.
My grandfather is the one to ask the question. “Sweetheart, if you ever found yourself leaning that way, you know you could tell us, right?” It’s a trap. It always is. I clench my teeth together and nod. My brother shifts uneasily beside me but stays quiet.
“You can tell us anything,” my grandmother says now, “We might not like it, but you can still tell us.”
I keep nodding. I say “Okay” and “I know”. I can feel their eyes bore into mine. I keep my mind blank out of fear that somehow, they will be able to read it. That they will see memories of my lips on another woman’s, gentle touches under soft sheets, hearts skittering when hearing an unexpected footstep. I fear that they will talk about me the way they talk about my cousins.
They won’t let me leave the car until they ask the final question. The one that decides if I’m allowed back in the house. “Are you gay?”
I am staring at the flowers in my yard. The flowers my grandmother takes such good care of. The roses that she pinches back when they get too wild. The weeds she rips out when they threaten to suffocate her perfect peonies.
It takes every muscle in my body, all my willpower, to look them in the eye.
“No.” I swing my car door open.
Jennifer Martin (she/they), known as Jenn by her friends, is a bisexual author that studies Creative Writing and Publishing & Editing at Susquehanna University. She’s passionate about raising queer voices in her writing and exploring queer stories in the books they read.
In her free time she is either reading anything fantasy or mystery, crocheting, or playing The Sims 4. Occasionally, you’ll find them at various craft fairs around SU’s campus where she loves to sell their crocheted creations while often wearing various homemade cardigans.
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