The Hard Way

The Hard Way

I never understood her. She was probably the strangest kid I’d ever met. Looking back, I would often reflect to myself that I should’ve looked into the children issue before I asked her mom to move in with me. But then, I’d met her before then. She was different, to be sure. But what did I know about it? My own kids were gone with their mother. I never really got the chance to experience teenagers of my own. She was thirteen then, living with her mom and her grandmother. She was weird then, and she just got weirder.
         She would talk too much about things I didn’t understand. She spent hours on the computer, or with her nose buried in some book or other. And that goddamn T.V. Sometimes it was like she never turned it off. She lived in a complete fantasy world, that’s what everyone said. And I believed them. It wasn’t until later that I realized how wrong we all were. Bye then, it was too late.
         I had only seen her a handful of times before she and her mom moved into my house with her older sister. She was quiet back then, and her sister? A hellion. They were nothing alike and at the same time they were almost identical. Nicole was brazen, self-assured and bossy, while Marie was introspective, shy and just plain strange. Marie would talk about dumb things like Star Trek and Spider-Man, and she argued a lot, especially with me. Nicole, she just plain argued. She and her mom rarely got along, and she moved out of the house practically the minute she graduated from high school. Marie was two years younger. She used to talk about feeling trapped. I guess she wanted to get out more than I ever thought. I used to joke about kicking her out the minute she turned 18, graduation or no. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
         But I joked a lot. She knew that, I’m sure. She was just so damned sensitive. It was too easy to make her angry, and then she’d come out swinging, yelling and arguing and debating like a politician or something. It was fun to watch her turn all red and clench her teeth. Her voice would rise and she’d be almost yelling at me.
         But it wasn’t my fault! She gave me so much to work with! She went to all of these witchcraft meetings and get-togethers with other voodoo people, and she was a HUGE supporter of gay people. How was I supposed to resist that? Especially that second one. The witchcraft thing wasn’t such a big deal with her, but if I ever insulted gay people, she’d go crazy. It was funny…back then.
         I mean, it was just for fun. And her mom never told there was anything wrong with what I said, hell she agreed with me for the most part. But Marie, for her it was personal. She’d get all excited about going to some Gay Pride Parade with her friends from the Queer Club (they called it AXCO or GSA or some shit like that). So, when I heard her say that, I’d joke about going there to join the protestors yelling about sin and going to Hell and all that shit. I didn’t do it. She knew I wouldn’t.
         Didn’t she?

         Marie had a lot of friends, and they were all freaks. Naturally, some of them were gay. She’d turn bright red every time I’d say the word “fag” or “queer”. I never understood it. They were just words, just names. She was just too damn sensitive. She stopped talking to me much, just ignored me. She almost never touched me. It was like she was trying to keep us as separate as possible. Once, I heard her saying that the fact we lived together was “just an unfortunate coincidence”. Hell, maybe she was right.
         But she was just a teenager. What do they know? She had a lot to learn about the real world. People out there don’t sugar coat their opinions. They’re gonna say “fag” and “queer”, and a lot of other things that are much worse. She had best get used to it, or she wasn’t going to make it on her own. I was doing her a favor. I was showing her what she had to deal with for the rest of her life.
         Her friends never came over. I don’t know if it was because of me, or because it just never came up. She’d talk to them online and on the phone, and she’d go to their houses and their parties, but she never brought them to hers. I didn’t know a single one of them by name. So I guess it was only natural that I never saw it coming.
         It was a Thursday. She usually stayed after for “AXCO” (that was what they called it, short for “Acceptance Coalition”. I remember now). She came walking through the door. Slowly. Her head was hung low. I was in the kitchen, making myself a sandwich when I heard the door close. It seemed early for her to be home. I looked at the clock. It was barely noon.
         “Mom.” She said weakly. “I’m home. I’m sorry, I skipped the rest of school. I walked home.” There was a thud as her backpack slid to the floor. She didn’t bother to pick it up and put it away. Something was up.
         “You’re mom’s not home.” I called, walking out of the kitchen.
         She froze. She just stood there, not moving. Slowly, she raised her head to look at me. She looked angry. She looked hurt. She looked like she hated me. Suddenly, before I even had time to think, she reached up to the mantle, grabbed a candleholder and threw it at me as hard as she could. It missed me by a mile. I stood there blinking, stunned.
         “He’s dead!” She screamed at me. “He’s dead, you asshole! And you killed him! It’s all your fault!” She ran around the room, picking up anything she could get her hands on and throwing it at me. She missed every time. Here eyes were filled with tears, and her face was soaked from crying. She ran out of things to throw, and she sank to her knees on the floor, clutching her stomach and sobbing.
         “People like you.” She moaned. “You killed him. You fucking slime balls. You never change. All you know how to do is hate. You killed him.” Her voice had faded to a strained whisper. She was rocking, her face only inches from the hardwood floor. Her tears were splashing against the finish.
         I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t move. What was she talking about? Who was dead? How the fuck did I kill him? Finally, I decided to call her mother.
         “Diane.” I said hoarsely into the phone. “Diane I think you better come home.”
         “Not now, babe, I’m working.” She sounded tired and irritated.
         “I know, but…” I paused. “It’s Marie. There’s something wrong.”
         “What!” She screamed into the phone. I looked out into the front hall. Marie was still there, she was still clutching her stomach and rocking. She was still heaving with sobs. I told Diane what had happened.
         Diane worked about a half hour to forty-five minutes away from our house. She was home in fifteen minutes flat. She threw open the door and took one look at Marie, huddled in the middle of the floor and tried to run to her, to hold her and find out what was wrong.
         “DON’T TOUCH ME!” Marie screamed. Her voice was raw and hoarse. “You’re as guilty as he is! Don’t you dare touch me!”
         Diane flinched away, unsure of herself. What the hell? Sure Marie and her mom fought sometimes, but she’d never screamed at her like that. She’d never talked to her mother with so much hate in her voice.
         Marie didn’t move. She just stayed there, rocking and holding herself tight. She started making weird noises, and after a while I realized that she was talking to herself.
         “Kyle…Kyle…oh, God, Kyle!” She said it over and over again.
         Kyle. Did I know a Kyle? I looked questioningly at Diane. She looked like she recognized the name, and was trying to remember where she had heard it. I was still in shock, and for a long time we stayed like that, Marie crumpled on the floor, her mom kneeling beside her, and me standing about ten feet away, frozen. Suddenly, the phone jangled from the next room, and I ran to get it, not caring who it was.
         “Hello? Hello, is anyone there?” The voice on the other end of the line was frantic, panicking. It sounded like a girl, about Marie’s age.
         “Yeah, hello, this is Joe.” I said quickly.
         “Joe? Joe, you’re the step-dad, right?” She still sounded terrified.
         “Yeah.” I said. It wasn’t true. Diane and I had never gotten married and didn’t intend to. But I didn’t feel like bringing it up.
         “Oh, God!” The girl nearly screamed. “Is she there? Is she at home? Dear          God is she okay?” She was pleading.
         “Marie is here.” I said. “She’s um…she’s…fine.” I said at last.
         “Oh, my God it’s bad, isn’t it?” The girl said. “After she heard, she just started running. No one in school could find her. No one saw her in the halls. We’ve been searching everywhere. What’s going to happen to her? She was closer to him than anyone!”
         “Who is this?” I demanded, interrupting.
         “It’s Anna.” She said. “Marie’s friend.”
         I didn’t know Anna. I’d never learned her name. Later I found out that she was the president of Marie’s AXCO group. She was, naturally, a lesbian. Not that that matters. Not anymore.
         “What happened, Anna?” I asked her.
         “You don’t know?” She sounded shocked. “She didn’t tell you? Maybe she can’t talk, maybe she’s in shock.”
         “ANNA!” I yelled. “What. Happened?”
         “It’s Kyle.” Anna explained, sounding hurt and scared. “Marie’s best friend. They found him this morning. He’s been murdered.” She broke down, crying into the receiver.
         I hung up the phone and slammed it back into its cradle. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I could figure it out for myself.
         I remembered something. It was something Marie had said once to her mother when she didn’t know I was around to hear.

         “Why do you let him do that, mom?” She had demanded, sounding hurt. “Why do you just stand by and let him say those things? You know how I feel about it. You know it hurts me!”
         “He doesn’t mean anything by it.” Diane had explained. “You know he isn’t serious.”
         “But it is serious!” She insisted. “I don’t care if he doesn’t think so! It is! People kill because of it. People die because of it!”

         It was true. People did die for being gay. It happened every day. It had happened just then, to Marie’s best friend. He was dead. Marie blamed me.
Was she right?

         I went back out to the front hall. Marie and Diane were gone. I could hear sounds upstairs. They were in Marie’s room. I found myself walking up the stairs myself, and turning towards her door.
         I never went into Marie’s room. I never had a reason, never wanted to. I’d gone in to install an air conditioner and her T.V., but that was about it. Now, there was nothing to hook up, nothing to fix. What was I going to do? What business did I have being on the other side of this door?
         I turned the knob.
         Marie was on her bed, her mother beside her. She was rubbing her arms as though she was cold. Suddenly, I felt cold, too. I shivered.
         “Go away.” She said softly. Her mother didn’t look up. She was looking at Marie, rubbing her back.
         “Get out.” Marie demanded. Her voice didn’t rise at all. “You don’t get to be here. You don’t get to hear about him. You’re not going to insult him. Not today. Not ever again.”
         I won’t. I wanted to say. I couldn’t get any words to come out. I just stood there.
         She was a ghost. She looked pale, faded. She looked weak and tired and empty. Her eyes were sunken and hollow. Her face was shadowed, her hair hung limply in the light from her bedside lamp. Her entire room looked dark and sad.
         “How could you?” She asked me. “Did it feel good to you? Does it entertain you, knowing that people are suffering because of what you say? How is it that you get to keep breathing, you get to be here tomorrow, and he doesn’t? He never hurt anyone. You hurt everyone. You could spend your whole life trying to make up for what you’ve done, and you’ll still never be half the human being he was. You are nothing.”
         Diane didn’t defend me. She didn’t even look at me.
         What could I say? How was I supposed to argue with her? She was right. It did feel good, it was entertaining. It amused me to watch her become more and more indignant. I wasn’t hurting anyone. At least, I didn’t think I was.
         “There was a guy he liked. He wanted to ask him out. But the guy’s family was just like you. They made the same cracks you make. They said the same things you say. They were just. Like. You.”
         She looked up at me, her eyes were dark and burned with hatred. Hatred of me. “So the guy didn’t tell them he was bi. He never dated guys, even when he wanted to. He kept to girls so they wouldn’t punish him. But Kyle was sweet and kind and the guy liked him. So he gave it a shot.” She clenched her teeth. “But his brother found out about them! And this morning he got a bunch of his buddies to help him gang up on Kyle when he walked to school!” She wasn’t yelling. Her voice was dangerously quiet.
         “They beat him. They pounded him into the ground and just kept beating him! He hit his head on the concrete and he bled to death!” She fell silent. Then she said, “The guy Kyle liked told me about it. His brother got scared and told him everything. When I found him curled up in the hallway between classes he told me all about it.”
         She stood up and walked toward me. I didn’t move. I watched in slow motion as she raised her hand and slapped me across the face. My mouth dropped open.
         This time she did scream. “Did they mean it, Joe?” She demanded. “Were they being ‘serious’? All those dinners when his parents gay-bashed at every chance they got, were they meaning no harm? Where did he learn it, Joe? Where did that scumbag get the idea to murder my best friend!” She was crying again. She started hammering her fists into my chest.
         “FUCK YOU!” She screamed. “Fuck you, and everyone like you! I hate you!”
She shoved me with all her might. I stumbled backwards and fell into the hall. She slammed her door without even looking at me.
         A second later, behind the closed door, I heard her scream. There were no words, it was just a sound. A primal, inhuman sound of absolute grief. The sound of a heart being broken.
         I had lost my best friend a few years before. I’d known him since I was a kid. He’d died on the operating table. Heart failure. What was it like to have the person closest to your heart taken from you without warning? What was it like to lose the person you loved more than anyone to some heartless punk?
Was she right? Was it my fault? Was I as guilty as that kid? I just sat there, my back and arms aching from the fall.
         Marie had known Chet before he died. She’d liked him, and at his funeral she had cried with the rest of us. She’d been there to share in the grief of losing him. Who did she have, now that Kyle was gone? Who could she turn to for comfort, for love? I could tell from how she’d ignored her that Marie was only tolerating Diane. That she received no comfort from her mother being there. She was alone in her pain.
         Pain I had helped to cause.
         She never spoke to me again. That year she graduated and moved away. She never came back to the house. Every vacation she would stay with her sister until she got her own place. I only saw her rarely. I never got the chance to apologize. I could never get the words right. I had lost my chance to be anything to her but an unfortunate coincidence.

         I was wrong to say what I had said. I was wrong to refuse to stop when she’d begged me to. I was wrong to ignore her tears when she cried after an argument. It was a lesson I was bound to learn. One that I couldn’t hope to avoid.
It was just too bad I had to learn it the hard way.


*Author’s note:
There is a lot of truth in this work of fiction. Almost all of the characters are based on real people. Marie is based entirely on me, and how I believe I would react to this kind of situation. It is with a great deal of gratitude and relief that I tell you, the reader, that I have never experienced the loss of a friend the way Marie lost Kyle. Kyle is not based on any of my real friends, but rather all of them, which made this all the harder to write. Instead of envisioning how it would be to lose just one of my friends, I wanted to channel how I would feel at losing all of my closest companions, and give it one face. I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried quite a bit when I wrote this.
         Anna is based on the two wonderful young women who have lead my school’s chapter of Acceptance Coalition, both of whom are wonderful people and great friends of mine. I owe a lot to them, and I learned so much just from being around them. They taught me that acceptance isn’t just for the people who are oppressed, but also for the people doing the oppressing.
         Joe was named for Average Joe, because I want the reader to connect with him and to realize what it is like to be in his mind. He is based on my mother’s boyfriend, while Diane is based on my mother. It’s difficult in a short story to communicate all that there is to these people, because there’s a lot to say. There is certainly more to Joe’s real-life alter ego than gay bashing, and he can actually be a very nice guy. Making him seem cruel and heartless wasn’t the point. I wanted to write this story to illustrate the harm that certain behaviors can cause, and how not knowing that you’re doing something wrong is just as harmful as willfully doing something you know will hurt someone.
         No, the man Joe was modeled after has not had the same epiphany that Jo had. He still says and does the same hurtful things. I wrote this story in hopes that one day he will change, and that it won’t take something like this to make that happen.
Thank you.