Like a Love Story(56)

Art leads me out the main entrance. When we taste the fresh air, he turns around and yells out at the church, “GO TO HELL!”

We try to get out of the chaos, but a video camera is pointed in our faces. A newscaster stands by the camera with a microphone. Art, unprovoked, grabs the microphone and speaks into the camera with ferocity. With his free hand, he tries to pull me close to him, but I squirm away.

“My name is Bartholomew Emerson Grant the Sixth,” he says, pronouncing each syllable carefully. This is the first time I have ever heard him use his full name, and I know exactly why he does it. He wants to be sure that all the powerful people who recognize this name listen. He will use anything he has at his disposal to make change. “And I am here protesting the Catholic Church’s policies, which are a direct attack on the lives of gay men and women, and all women. Cardinal O’Connor wants us dead. He wants us exterminated, and we won’t go quietly. Fags and dykes are here to stay. We are holy and we deserve the same rights as everyone else.” Art catches his breath, looks at the crowds around him. “We are on the right side of history,” he says. “And we are going to survive to write that history. Wait and see.”

The newscaster takes the microphone back and sticks it in my face. “And who are you and why are you here?” she asks.

The camera and the microphone feel like they are attacking me, shining a spotlight on my fears and cowardice. I had the courage to come here, but I am not Art. I am not ready to be seen on television, and more important, to be seen on television by my mother. I hide my face in my hands and turn away from the newscaster.

I am somewhere else now. I exist only inside my own anxiety, imagining what my mother will say if she finds out who I am. But the violence around me pulls me back to this moment. Protesters lie down in the road. Police arrest people. The chaos becomes louder, uglier, with screams of Get down, and Pigs, and Where’s your badge? The arrested do not resist. When the police get them, they go limp, like corpses.

Luckily, the newscaster has moved on, but I am still frozen in fear. I want Art to protect me, but he has his camera in front of his face. He documents the arrests until he sees Judy’s uncle is one of the men being arrested.

“Stephen!” he yells, and runs toward him, and I run after Art.

Art yells at the police to let Stephen go. “He’s sick. Just let him go.”

I watch as Art puts a hand on one of the officers, attempting to pull him off Stephen. “Art, don’t,” I beg. “Stop.”

I rush toward Art. And that’s when I feel it. Something pulls us apart. Policemen. Two of them. One of them yanks Art away and handcuffs him. The other pushes me to the ground. My cheek hits the cold pavement hard. My heart beats so fast that I might have stopped breathing. All I see are our bodies, so many bodies on the ground like corpses. And the voices feel so distant. Stephen’s voice. Art’s. The police.

These are children, officers.

Get down and stay down.

They’re just kids! They were trying to help me.

I’m seventeen. You make a habit of harassing seventeen-year-olds?

Shut up.

Reza. Reza, come back. Where are you taking him? Reza? Let him go!

Art, don’t resist. Don’t fight.

REZA!

I am standing again. The police have yanked me back up as fast as they took me down. I have no control over my body anymore. No control over my emotions. I feel fear but also excitement. Maybe even relief. Is my life over, or is it finally beginning?

“Reza!” Art yells as he is pulled away by one of the cops.

“Art!” I scream. “I came here for you.”

“It’ll be okay, Reza,” he says. “They always release protesters. Don’t resist. That’s the most important thing, okay?”

I hold Art’s gaze as long as I can, my eyes fixed on his. I wish I could read his expression.

When he’s out of view, I close my eyes. I go limp, letting the police lead me. But the irony is, I have never felt more in control. This is not the Iranian Revolution. I’m not a kid who is afraid of his father, desperate to please his mother, living in the shadow of his sister. That is not me anymore.

I’m seventeen, and yes, I still have fear in me, but I have strength too.

I am the chaos now.





Art


I replay his words in my mind. I hear them ringing in my head as the police take me to the station. “Art, I came here for you.” They echo inside me as I am released. “Art, I came here for you.” Those words inhabit me. They fill a void in me I never knew existed until I heard them. What did he mean? Did he come to the protest because he was inspired by me? Or did he come because . . . I don’t even let myself think it. I can’t set myself up for disappointment.

The words still reverberate in my head when I leave the police station and go back into the winter freeze, where Stephen waits for me, leaning against a newspaper stand. “Hey,” he says.

“Well, that was an adventure,” I say with a smile, still giddy from Reza sitting next to me in that church, from the feeling of his hot breath in my hands.

“You okay?” He places his palm tenderly on my cheek. The gesture immediately makes me think of how my own dad never touches me, never hugs me.

“Has Reza been released yet?” I ask.

He shakes his head. Stephen must catch the worry in my eyes, because he says, “He’ll be okay. They always release us.”