The reason I said the thing I didn’t want to say is because I was tired of wondering if I could believe in her version of things—that my problems with my mother could be worked out. If she thought this was a deal breaker and she decided never mind about trying, then I could stop going back and forth about it in my head. And then I would know not to get my hopes up any higher for any longer.
“Wait,” she said. “What now?”
“My mother. I came out to her. That’s what happened.”
The baby was falling asleep. The driving was putting her into a nap mode, and her eyes kept flickering from most of the way closed to all the way closed. It was the sweetest thing I’d seen in a very long time. Then again, that wasn’t a hard contest to win.
“There must have been more to it than that,” she said.
Then I got mad again, because she didn’t know anything—she hadn’t even been there, and I had, so who was she to tell me I was wrong?
“There wasn’t,” I said. “I told you exactly what happened, and I wish you would give me credit for having eyes and ears and having been there.”
I wasn’t being loud, but the baby’s eyes shot open again because, even though I was saying words quietly, she knew they were mad words.
“How can a mother put her daughter out on the street just for that?”
“Wow, you don’t know much,” I said, and the baby started to fuss and cry because I was even madder, and keeping even less of a secret about it. “Because kids are getting turned out on the street every day for being gay. It happens all the time, and just because you live in a comfy little world where you don’t have to know about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. My parents are very religious. You know, like fundamentalist religious. To them everything is black and white and exactly what the Bible says it is.”
“But the Bible can say pretty much anything you want it to say.”
“Don’t tell me, tell my parents. I’m not the one who needs convincing.”
I had settled a little by then, so the baby settled, too, and we drove along and she didn’t cry anymore.
Also we weren’t stopping at any trash bins, so I figured Brooke had gotten all wrapped up in what we were talking about and forgotten about what we were doing out there. I didn’t remind her, because it was a stupid thing to be doing. I mean, all she had to do was give me a dollar and I’d be better off for that whole day than if we finished checking all my usual trash bins. It probably cost more in gas than I could earn.
“Mormon?” she asked after a time.
“No, not Mormon. Everybody says that. Everybody figures if you’re from Utah your family has to be Mormon, but they have other religions there, too, you know. They’re Baptist, actually, and they go to this church where the preacher is pretty hard-nosed about stuff like that. Whatever he tells them, they just automatically believe him, which I think is sad. It’s like they don’t even think for themselves anymore. So now you know my story and now you know why it would be a stupid idea to try to go back there.”
“Actually . . . ,” she said. And then she didn’t go on for a minute. Like what she was saying had gotten ahead of her thinking about it, and she needed time to catch up. “If what you say is the whole truth, and there really isn’t anything else that happened . . .”
Then I got a little mad again, because she wouldn’t believe me.
“You still think it’s my fault,” I said. “With everything you know about me you still won’t believe me.”
The baby started to fuss and cry again.
And then I realized I’d said a really stupid thing, because she didn’t know me at all. I was just some kid on the street, and even if I hadn’t been on the street, some kids just lie, especially when you ask them if something was their fault or not. All of a sudden I could see it from her eyes, how she’d just met me and I could be anything. But I didn’t say any of that, because it was all a jumble in my head, and besides, it seemed more important to comfort the baby.
“Okay,” she said, and I caught her eyes again in the rearview mirror. “Okay. Let’s just take you at your word on that. Nothing else happened. Then I think it’s more important than ever that we try to get you home. Sometimes a thing like that . . . and by ‘that’ I mean something where you turn out to be different than what they thought you were . . . different from them and different from what they were expecting . . . there might be some time required. Like it might be an idea they could adjust to over time. And we should at least try. Oh,” she added suddenly. “I’m sorry. I’m forgetting to stop.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If you buy me a hot dog I’m in better shape than I would be with every bit of recycling from every one of those trash cans.”
I didn’t answer that other thing, because I didn’t dare. Because I would get my hopes up, and then she might turn out to be wrong, and then it would be a long fall down to that crate on the street again.
“Where can you get a hot dog around here? At this hour?”
“Straight down three blocks,” I said. “On the right.”
Just as we were getting out of the car and walking up to the hot dog place, I asked her my really important question. I was scared to ask, because I was about to find out what she really thought of me. The real me, on the inside. Not just the stupid
