Goddamnit

A Story by Alyssa Jensen

Adam

The driver never looked back, never even glanced at the broken body left plastered to the gravel road.

That broken body belonged to my sister.

I’ll never forget when I first learned of the “accident.” Accident, weird, huh? It’s weird how someone can end a life so sparingly and call it an accident. My father had come into my bedroom, his face shaking, his body shaking. He spoke to me, and I heard his words, and I saw his mouth move, but I didn’t believe it. It couldn’t be real, couldn’t be true.

Her funeral broke that illusion. Her body held captive in the coffin was my new reality.

I still laughed, and I still stretched my lips to form a smile that would fit my face, and I still partied, and I still went to school, but with every laugh, with every strain of my mouth, with every movement, and every thought I felt myself splinter.

Until one day I guess I just…

Shattered.

When my father visited me in the hospital, he gave me a look. It was the kind of look where his eyebrows furrowed, and his lips pursed, and his fingers twitched, and his hair was mussed from pulling at it in frustration. “Why?” He asked.

I shrugged. “Didn’t mean to. I guess I just drank too many beers.”

Growling, my father stood and nearly threw the chair he sat on across the room. My father was a pastor. He was never angered. “Goddamnit, Adam! Do you think you’re the only one that feels this way? Do you really believe - ” My father took note of how increasingly loud his voice had become and sat back down. His head fell to his hands. “We all lost Angela.”

Since then, three months had passed, and I was growing at ease with daily tasks. Every day after school, I would do my homework at my father’s church while he held his counseling sessions. The church’s ceiling was dome-shaped, and painted with angels that seemed to steal the chapel’s sunlight.

They reminded me of my sister, beautiful, still, and sometimes I would just gaze up at them and wonder if my sister really was one of the angels painted on the ceiling.

The night of her killing we sat outside on the porch and talked. We always talked about everything. She had just gotten into a fight with her boyfriend, and she was wrapped inside of a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate pressed against her palm.

It was that night that I told her everything. I told her how when I thought of love and sex, the vision in front of me always featured another man. My sister had only laughed and said that she knew. She’d known when she caught me staring at her boyfriend’s a*s.

And we talked about how our father would take it, and how I was taking it, and I went to bed, and she went on a walk, and she walked into the horizon, while her body remained on the road. Ever since then I refused to tell anybody else. I knew how ridiculous it sounded, but what if it was a curse? And everyone that heard me say it, say that I was gay, would leave?

Finishing the last of my assignments, I pushed my math textbook to the side along with my thoughts when I heard a voice echo from my father’s office. The words piqued my interest.

“I’m not gay! I don’t want… I mean, I don’t think I want… It’s just the dreams. I want them to end.” The voice sounded like tires on a gravel road, rumbling, and deep, and I felt my eyebrow lift.

I’ve heard that I’m nosy.

I swear that I’m not.

Standing from the pew, walking across the colorful beams of sunlight drifting through the pointed, stain-glass windows, I stood in front of my father’s office door, intently listening to the conversation.

“Those bruises on your body, Charles, where did you get them?”

“That’s not my point! I thought you said you could help me with this.”

I could almost hear the sigh creeping through my father’s voice. “I can’t help you be somebody you aren’t. I can’t force you to think certain things and feel a certain way. The best thing you can do, the only thing you can do, is accept who you are. ‘But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “why have you made me like this?”’ Romans 9:20. You are not a mistake, Charles.”

Interesting. I’ve never heard my father speak about homosexuality. My sister had said that he wouldn’t care. Even in the grave she was right.

“I just don’t understand.” I heard somebody stand from the leather sofa inside of my father’s office. There were muffled footsteps approaching the door.

“Well, if you ever need to talk again, son, my door is always open. And those bruises? You need to speak to someone.”

I jumped back just as the door flew open. On the other side was a man around my age, scruffy hair, glinting, brown eyes, and a strong chin that jutted out in defiance. The man’s mouth formed a surprised circle before a scarlet flush darkened his cheeks.

I tilted my head, slightly amused. “So, you’re a f****t?”

The man huffed, fists tightened. “Who are you?”

For a while, I just stared at him, eyes flitting across the mulberry splotches covering his muscled arms. Finally, I dragged my eyes back up to meet his and smirked. “I’m the pastor’s son.”

***

Charles

“I’m the pastor’s son.” The pastor’s son. What a little b***h. And that smirk… I should’ve throat punched him right then. Too bad his father had been sitting right behind me.

Wrapping my lips around the blunt, I inhaled deeply, hoping the swirling smoke would carry away my thoughts. “Puff, puff, pass, Charles,” Aaron reminded me with a slow chuckle.

I handed him the blunt and cleared my throat. “I’ve got to go.”

Ignoring the whines of my friends, I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the half-empty pizza boxes that littered Aaron’s stuffy room, and quickly found my way to the outside world. The trailer park that he and I lived in was a fishbowl, no matter how hard you pressed against the glass, and no matter how high you jumped out of the water, there was no escape from the everyday humdrum of swimming in circles.

This wasn’t who I wanted to be, a bum glued to a blunt. I wanted something more; I wanted to be more, be something that I could be proud of. The sidewalk was cracked, sprinkled with shimmering, jagged shards of alcohol bottles. Graffiti coated the walls of dingy stores that looked as though they were about to collapse.

Stopping in front of a park, I hiked up the hill blanketed with uncut grass and found haven beneath a massive oak tree, ugly, and twisting, and knotting, producing just the barest dusting of leaves. Leaning against it, I winced at the deep ache that pounded against my ribs.

I had come home at the wrong time, when my stepfather had already shot up and downed a pack of beers. He’d said that my footsteps were too loud, and that I was unworthy of the shelter he provided me, and that I needed to stop eating all of his damn food, because food stamps could only buy so much.

Resting my head against the dirty, brown bark, I let my eyes close, and I let my mind drift over the hills, and past the park, and down the street, and across the horizon to a place where the wind hummed and the grass became feathers.

A shadow fell over me. “You come here often? To watch all the little boys play?”

That voice. I felt a snarl rise to my lips. Snapping my eyes open, I glared at the pastor’s son, whose pale mouth wiggled into a grin. “Stalking me now?” I growled.

The pastor’s son raised an eyebrow. “Would you like that?”

Baring my teeth, rage boiled in my ears, burning, scorching my skin. I hated the pastor’s son. I hated that he reminded me of who I was, who I didn’t want to be. Jerkily standing to my feet, I fell into my stepfather’s footsteps and let violence dictate who I was, and because I was already who I didn’t want to be, what did I have to lose? I pulled my fist back and let it explode across his face.

The pastor’s son jumped forward, his body weight throwing both of us to the ground. Our limbs tangled, our flesh slid with sweat, and my fists and feet kept hitting whatever they could reach, each collision releasing waves of fury. Eventually, the pastor’s son had rolled on top of me. His lip bloodied, his once well-kept hair ruffled, and his high cheekbones coated with bruises. “Bet a f****t like you gets off on this.”

There was a brief second where it seemed as though the wind had died down, and all that was fell into the silence. I tried to conjure the anger, tried to conjure a plethora of insults, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “goddamnit,” and then laughter. I couldn’t stop it. My stomach heaved, my eyes slanted, and everything just seemed so damn funny.

The pastor’s son tilted his head in confusion before chuckling. He fell to the grass next to me, our amusement mingling in the air. Finally he turned to me. I liked how the sunlight poured over him. “Adam.” He stuck his hand out.

I clasped it. “Charles.”

***

Charles

It had been a year. The park’s tree had finally bloomed, branches dressed with vivid leaves that chattered in the breeze, glinting emerald beneath the falling sunset. The bark seemed healthier, alive, and I had memorized all of the knots and crooks and crannies. We met there, every day, every evening, the pastor’s son and I.

All of our memories that were gathered in the grass beneath the tree breathed life into the oak. “Goddamnit, Charles, did he do this?” Adam’s finger trailed down my arm, twisting around the jagged scar.

Capturing his hand, I laid it out underneath the sun’s last rays as they finished their sweep across the park’s hills. I still liked how he looked beneath the light, translucent. I felt like I could finally see all of him, all of who he was, and when I was with him, I could also see all of who I was.

And who I was, who I became, I liked it.

Before he had the chance to question me about my stepfather, I pressed my forehead against his, finding comfort in the words he breathed across my lips. We spent the last few hours laughing, touching, chasing our fingers and chasing the hills. Adam was warm.

When the dusk finally tumbled over the skyline, we jumped into his pickup truck. I liked how his face scrunched in concentration, how he would glance over at me and stare, just stare, as if he were worried I would vanish.

We pulled into the trailer park, and just like every other night for the past year, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to open the door. The words were right there, lying on my tongue, pressing against the back of my teeth, but I didn’t say them. I didn’t say them.

I couldn’t.

Not yet.

He waved good-bye, and he rolled out of the driveway.

I love you.

***

Adam

A ringing broke through my golden dreams of Charles, and firelight, and ravens hopping along tree branches. Exiting my bedroom, creeping down the hallway, I stopped when I saw my father.

His sleepy voice echoed from the kitchen where shadows rose against the brick walls. For a while he just listened to the person on the other end. He would nod as though the other person could see him. He would make a noise in the back of his throat, like a hum, an agreement, and then he brought his hand to his mouth. He took of his glasses and pressed the same hand against his eyes, lowering his head, whispering, “Goddamnit.”

***

Adam

Winter had set in; the tree had died. Ice clinging to the crumbling branches, clouds building against the gray, gray morning. I wondered how something so cold could hold so much beauty.

And I wondered if Charles would appreciate the coldness too, if he would stare at the frost and wonder how many snowflakes were trapped inside of it.

But Charles couldn’t see this, couldn’t see any of this. He was gone.

Gone.

Goddamnit.

Somewhere above me, I let my eyes wander the horizon. I hoped that wherever he was, he had met my sister, and she would laugh at his jokes, and say that she knew why we had been together.

But then I knew that if he could see me, he would find a way to be with me, and underneath our oak tree, pressed against the snow covered grass where our memories were buried, I felt the pressure of emptiness lingering in my hand where Charles’ hand should’ve been.

Yesterday, I went to court, and I gave my testimony as a witness, and I watched as Charles’ stepfather was led away in handcuffs, drugged up face withdrawn, maybe in remorse, but maybe he didn’t even know what was going on, what he did.

It didn’t matter.

None of it did.

I let my fingers run across the oak tree’s bark, and I stepped away. The clouds above me began to fall, and I left Charles there, beneath our tree, buried underneath the snow.

With a sigh, my thoughts vanished into the clouds, into the horizon.