The You I've Never Known(72)

times. Easy to find me there.”

I have no answer to that, or any opinion about why now.

All I know is, this is complicated.





Complicated


Zelda is the Queen of Understatement.

I mean, what am I supposed to do?

Go home?

Home?

What’s that?

Get up and go to work tomorrow, as if nothing unusual has happened?

Unusual?

More like

mind-bending.

And then on Monday, do I go to school, practice layups and free throws afterward?

Algebra.

Basketball.

Just another day?

How do I figure out my identity when I don’t even know my name?

Ariel?

Casey?

Who the hell am I?





My Sonora Anchor


Seems pretty flimsy

at the moment, and

it occurs to me that to Dad “attachment”

is a foreign concept.

“So what happened

with Dad? Did he say anything?”

I can’t repeat most of it. I try not to use language like that, but what he said to Ms. McCabe was totally inappropriate. . . .

“That much I already guessed. But what did he say to you? Did he offer any kind of an explanation?”

Denial, denial, denial.

That’s what he offered, and when I didn’t swallow a word of it, he stormed off. Left the rest of us standing there gawking.





The Word


That springs to mind concerning

Dad is “coward.” I’ve never before thought about him in that way.

Not sure why not. He was never

exactly hero material, but he was all I had, so I guess I respected him for that. I’ve lost all respect now.

“So what are you going to do?”

Zelda shrugs. The quickest way to destroy a relationship is dishonesty. I love your dad, or thought I did, and believed he loved me, too. Love can weather small deceptions, but this . . .

She shakes her head. To have absolutely no clue who the person you’ve devoted eight months of your life to really is? That’s hard to think about, and trusting him—or anyone— after this will be impossible, I’m afraid.

Eight months of your life? What

about the entire seventeen years

of my existence? Still, I feel sorry for her. She doesn’t deserve this.

Nobody does.





Trying to Process


Everything will take

a while. A long while.

Zelda and I sit in silent consideration.

Thoughts ping-pong

inside my skull, and the pain of that is very real.

I’ve spent years denying my mother’s existence.

Years wading through

resentment, completely sucked into the lie

that she didn’t want me.

Years with absolutely zero doubt I was Ariel Pearson.

What else don’t I know?

That terrifies me.

I think about Maya McCabe.

The excitement in her eyes.

Eyes, as I recall them, the approximate same shade as mine. And her hair, though it’s straighter, is the exact color of mine.

“I look like her, don’t I?”

No hesitation. Yes, you do.

“I . . . I just . . . I don’t . . .”

I know exactly how you feel.

But now Zelda takes the time to study me. Nope. Wrong.

I can’t possibly know how you feel. I’m sorry, Casey.

“Don’t call me that! I hate that name.” I’m Ariel.

Really? I think it’s cute. You should probably try it on for size. It sort of fits you, actually.

Me? Casey?

Casey.

Casey.

Casey and Maya.

“Dad never called her Maya.

He called her Jenny, when he bothered to call her anything other than dyke, bitch, or whore.

Do you think that woman with spiky hair is Maya’s partner?”

Not her partner. Her wife.

“So she is a lesbian.”

Apparently. Does it matter?





I Don’t See How It Can


I might be a lesbian, or at least halfway gay.

Why should it bother me

at all that my mother

is married to a woman?

But somehow it seems to.

I guess it’s been such a big part of Dad’s chronicle for so long.

He made me choke it down—

a heaping spoonful of bitterness.

At the moment I just want to puke it back up, spit it in Dad’s face.

“How the fuck could he do this to me?”

My eyes sting and I burrow them into the palms of my hands. “Holy shit, Zelda! My entire childhood is gone. He made me believe I was someone I wasn’t. He made me believe he was all I needed. Not friends. Not family. Not my . . .”





Mom


Mom.

I know the word.

Can’t comprehend its meaning.

I’ve seen moms on TV.

Handsome women with scripted senses of humor who forgive their kids’ mistakes, regardless of how huge and in-your-face the infractions are. Yeah, right.

TV moms don’t count.