Aisha motions for me to come to her.
“What’s his problem?” I say.
“Long story,” she answers. “Just ignore him. Or better yet, when he goes in the back, get the girl to make us some new drinks. She’ll do it, I’m pretty sure.”
“Hmm,” I say, still talking loudly. “That’s really weird and possibly illegal.”
“Pick your battles,” Aisha replies, and I sit down next to her, latteless.
Conversation comes less easily today. Possibly it’s because I just charged drinks to Mommy’s credit card and I didn’t get them and that makes me feel like a wimp. But it’s also because Aisha called me, and I don’t know why. I mean, can’t she do better? I think she can.
“The Alamo,” I say, after a lengthy silence.
“What?”
I shrug. “You said, ‘Pick your battles.’ ”
She rolls her eyes, and I imagine permanently sewing my lips shut, because clearly she was at her dorky humor limit the other day at the zoo.
“The Bulge,” she says back, and I look down at my crotch without thinking about it.
She raises one eyebrow. “Mm-hmm,” she says. “I don’t know what you’re thinking. Me, I was picking a battle. I should have said, ‘Of the Bulge.’ Sorry.”
I crack up, relieved yet embarrassed to have so quickly brought the focus to my dick.
“So, Billings. Why?” she asks, and I’m happy to have the topic changed.
“Well, you know. It was South Beach or the French Riviera or here, so” — I cock my head and motion around us — “obviously we made the right choice. For me, anyway.”
“Obviously,” she says. “That’s what brought us here too, my family. Well, that and the huge black population.”
We look around the café. Fifteen or so people, all white except Aisha. Not a brownish hue to be seen. Not even a tanned person, really.
“So it’s massive,” I say.
She nods. “There are a hundred thousand people in this city and almost five hundred of us are black, so that’s … something.”
I laugh. She does not laugh. “Oh. You’re serious.”
She goes back to nodding, but this time really slowly.
“Oh my God. There are like five hundred black people at my school.”
“Take me with you,” she says.
I get a semi hard-on. “Um. Okay.”
“My dad was the offensive line coach for the Indoor Football League team here. Got the job and moved us here from Lincoln, Nebraska, when I was in ninth grade. Two years later, the team folded, and guess what? Still here! He coaches at Rocky Mountain College now.”
“Billings has a pro football team?”
“Had. The Billings Outlaws. Raised the black population of the city about ten percent.”
I do the math and realize that she is potentially not exaggerating. I don’t know whether to laugh or what, so I open my eyes wide to show her I know that’s crazy and sad and all of that. She accepts my reaction with a similar eye widening.
I hear a “psst” behind me. It’s the alternative barista girl. She has two steaming lattes on the counter. The barista guy is not in sight. I jump up and grab the coffees. The nice barista has sketched a pretty heart in the foam on our lattes.
“Isn’t that sweet?” I ask, handing Aisha one of the mugs.
Aisha looks down at her drink. “I love foam art,” she says.
“You do?”
“My favorite thing in the entire world.”
“Is this more misinformation? Should I assume that a lot of what you say isn’t true?”
She nods twice.
“Well, it’s my favorite thing too. It’s modern cave art. Years from now, anthropologists will study foam art formations and make sweeping generalizations about our lost coffee culture.”
“Most probably,” Aisha says, sipping her latte, thereby smudging her coffee heart. Now it looks like a cursive L.
She tells me she just graduated from high school and she’s looking for work, although obviously not too hard, since we’re sitting in a coffee shop in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. I explain the basic facts about coming to visit my dad, leaving out the parts about him dying and my not having seen him in fourteen years. There are some things you don’t tell a girl on your first date.
And yeah. This is definitely a date. The eye contact. Way crazy eye contact.
“So tell me a long story,” I say. “Why did that asshole pour our drinks out?”
She bites her lip. “I may have dumped the contents of a lunch tray on his head once.”
I laugh. “Ooh! Sounds like a good long story. Why’d you do it?”
She seems nervous, maybe. Her eyes keep darting around instead of staying focused on me, as they have been for the better part of ten minutes.
“I wouldn’t have come here if I knew he worked here.”
“What did he do?”
“He was being nasty to someone I care about,” she says.
“A friend?”
“Well …” She pauses, glancing back at me. “Me, actually.”
“Well, good for you,” I say, like someone would say to a child who has just painted a stick-figure portrait of his family. I cringe when I hear it. “I mean, that is — sticking up for yourself and all. Not to jump to conclusions, but, racial stuff?”
“Something like that,” she says, looking away again. I follow her glance and notice that the skinhead barista guy is back and now mopping the floor in front of the football guys. He looks kind of funny in an apron, and I hope he feels embarrassed.
“Maybe we should go someplace else?” she says.
This time I get fully hard. I’m about to invite Aisha home, which may or may not be okay with my parents, but I don’t care. I have a basement, and the stairs are right off the back door. If they have to know, I’ll make it okay with them. This is really happening. Aisha. Me. Really. Happening.
“Uh, sure,” I say, and Aisha is standing now and I’m really not in a good position to stand, so I stay seated and cross my legs.
The barista comes over to our area with his mop, and I feel my chest tighten. A part of me wants to hurt this guy, even though he’s bigger than me. As he mops around the table between us, he mumbles, “How do you like living on the streets, dyke sauce?”
“Piss off, Colt,” she mumbles back.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer man-girl,” he whispers.
“You say one more thing and I’ll stab you in the fucking neck. Don’t think I won’t.”
He blows her a kiss and moves on. I look at Aisha, who glances at me and then turns away.
I stare down at my feet as I try to figure out what just happened. I feel as if someone stole the air from my chest. Like a second ago I was pumped full of all these possibilities, and now they’re gone, and the air around us is thick and troubled.
I look back at Aisha. She is still not looking at me. I want her to tell me that I misheard. That this didn’t just happen. That this asshole barista guy didn’t just imply that she lives on the street, and she is, what, a lesbian?
And then Aisha just leaves. Walks to the door and leaves. I jump up and follow her.
“I’m sorry,” I say once we’re outside, but I don’t really know what I’m sorry for.
“You’re sorry?” she says, not nasty exactly, but maybe a bit bewildered. “What for? Because some asshole called me a name? Because I’m a dyke? Because my dad found out and kicked me out and I’m sleeping in the fucking zoo? I’m at the end of my rope here, and you’re sorry? What exactly are you sorry about?”
I really don’t know what to do. So I do something I don’t do. I put my arms around her and gently hug. She smells lightly of sweat and something I can’t place, almost like olive oil. Her thick hair wraps around my ear and envelops it, and she hugs me back a little. I want to memorize the feeling of her body against mine. When she whimpers in my ear, I pull her closer.
“All of that. I didn’t know,” I
say. “I’m sorry for whatever’s going on.”
We are standing in the parking lot of the coffee shop. It’s about half-full. She walks over to a gray fence and sits down next to it on a patch of grass, so I sit down too. It feels a little homeless, actually, sitting there. Like now that I know she’s homeless, sitting in a parking lot by a fence takes on a different meaning.
“Talk to me,” I say. “What’s going on? What happened?”
She sighs. “You want the long version?”
I nod.
“It happened last week. You sure you wanna hear this?”
I nod again.
“Well, let me back up. My dad and me, we’ve always been real close, especially around sports. I’m big into track and volleyball. He’s also real religious. Took us to church every Sunday of my life that I can remember. Ate that shit up. I did too, when I was younger. All that junk about a personal relationship with Christ and offering up my sins and stuff.
“So anyway, I guess early last week, he got suspicious that I was dating some boy, because I was away from home a lot. So he tracked my cell phone. He rang the doorbell and scared the crap out of my girlfriend, Kayla, who answered the door in a robe. He barged in to Kayla’s room, and I was in her bed and I’m like, ‘Dad.’ Shit. Well, this ain’t great.
“And that wasn’t cool, because it showed no trust, and I never gave him any reason not to trust me. I never showed the man anything but respect my whole entire life. We have one of those ‘Get in my truck right now’ moments, and he drives me home. We don’t talk, don’t say a word the whole way. The next day he sits me down at the dining room table and explains that he’s made some calls. I’m going to this place called Flowing Rivers in Mesa, Arizona. I have an aunt who lives there. And this place, he explains, is going to make me straight, through the Jesus.”
“Jesus,” I say. My mind is running wild. It’s like, who does that to their daughter? Try to change her? And this other, tiny part of me is thinking, Well, could that work? Could we be a couple if you went there? Because I’d totally wait for you.
“Right?” Aisha says, rubbing her eyes. “Because let’s just say I’m no longer a believer. So I ask him, ‘What if I won’t go?’ My voice is shaking. And my voice never shakes.
“And he says, ‘I don’t know, baby girl. But whatever you do, you won’t do it here under my roof.’
“My mom didn’t feel that way, but in our house, Dad is in charge. So I went into my room and thought about it. And for a few seconds there, I was thinking, Just go to Arizona. It won’t work, you’ll leave, and either you’ll come home again and Dad will calm down, or you’ll start a new life down there. But then I thought, What if it does work?
“I saw my reflection in the mirror. I thought about how, if I changed, I’d be someone else. I like me, you know? I thought, My dad has no right. He has no right to take me out of me. So I went out and I said, ‘Dad, we can work this out. We’ll get a therapist over here, and they’ll help. I’m not a bad person; I’m just a lesbian. Have been since forever. You know me. I’m your daughter. I was always exactly this way.’ But my dad. He just wasn’t having it. He said, ‘You’re going to Mesa.’ And I said I wasn’t, and he said ‘Get out,’ and I got out.”
“Jesus,” I say again. I try to imagine being kicked out of my home. Thousands of times in New York I sat on the radiator in my room, looking out the window at the mostly closed blinds of strangers across the air shaft, thinking about what it would be like to live in one of those other apartments. Thinking maybe I should just leave. And then I was like, And do what? And that’s when that idea goes away, because a fantasy is a fantasy. And the reality? I can’t imagine a reality of being on my own with no resources that doesn’t suck.
“I packed a bag, and that night I slept in my car,” Aisha says. “The next day, I went back to Kayla’s place, but she disappears when the going gets tough, I guess, because she wasn’t so much about me staying with her. I tried a couple friends, no dice. I couchsurfed a couple days with a family I found online before I wore out my welcome. There’s a women’s shelter downtown, but the idea of living in a shelter made me feel a little too much like I was really and truly homeless, so I nixed that. I guess it was Saturday night when I decided on the zoo, mostly because it seemed remote and safe, and I like zoos. Animals. Someday, I want to be a vet. Well, I did. I was gonna study veterinary medicine at Rocky Mountain this fall, but my dad withdrew me.”
“Shit,” I say.
“And then Dad turned off my phone. Had to get a new one on my own. And it ain’t easy getting a job for the summer, and even if it was, it’s not like you can just get a job and get an apartment. You need to bankroll some cash first. I have some cash saved up, but I’ve been petrified that if I start to use it, I’ll run out and then I’d really be in a situation.
“So I slept there in the zoo, where I showed you. The last four nights now.” She sighs. “What I really want to do, I guess, is get the hell out of Billings. I mean, this place sucks, and if I’m not part of my family anymore, why not go somewhere else? But part of me feels like I have to try and make it right with Dad. And anyway, I don’t have that much money. I’m a realist. I don’t want to end up on the streets of Portland or somewhere. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but it better happen soon,” she concludes.
“That’s … wow,” I say. I can’t do any better.
“I know. Not what you signed up for, right?”
I take her hand. She looks at me and tilts her head slightly, and I remember that we’re not actually boyfriend and girlfriend. I drop it. She half smiles.
“Sorry,” I say.
She shrugs.
“My dad’s dying,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t know. Sorry.”
“I mean, for what it’s worth. I don’t want to be all, ‘Poor me, my dad is dying, waah waah waah.’ But yeah, that’s why I’m here. Before Monday, I hadn’t seen him since I was three.”
“Wow.”
“He’s a drunk. It’s a lot of fun over at our house.”
“I bet.”
“Fathers,” I say.
She snorts. “Right? What really pisses me off is the whole ‘man of God’ thing. What is that? You disown your daughter in the name of God? I grew up with that evangelical shit. I’ll tell you, the second he kicked me out, that was over. Looking up at the stars in the zoo one night, I just realized. Religion is supposed to be all about loving thy neighbor, but religious people are hypocrites. Kicking your daughter out is an act of love? Please.
“I’m glad I’m out of there,” she says, scooping some gravel up in her fingers and then throwing it back onto the ground. “I’m glad.”
I think about religious zealots, like the ones who flew into the towers on 9/11, and the people who preach damnation for sinners on the subway. Once on the downtown 1 train, this cross-eyed guy started screaming about the wrath of God, and how it’s all the gays’ fault. This militant gay dude got in the guy’s face and told him to shut up, that he didn’t need some preacher to tell him right from wrong. When he was done, most of the car clapped for him. The preacher guy got off at the next stop. I clapped too. I mean, isn’t God (who doesn’t exist, by the way) supposed to be this all-loving Father to Us All?
“Religious people suck,” I say, and Aisha nods and continues to trace a pattern in the loose gravel around her, like a sole figure skater practicing.
We sit for a while, and somehow I feel a little relaxed, which is weird because nothing is okay, not really.
“So wait,” I say. “How come that felt kind of like a first date? Am I crazy?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t cool.”
“Were you, like, playing me?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath, looks up and to the right. Then she looks directly at me.
“No and yes. I mean, I knew you dug me, and I thought maybe … But I like you, Carson, really. You crack me up. I need a friend, and this isn’t the best plac
e to be a lesbian, you know?”
I stand up. “C’mon,” I say, sure of myself while knowing that it’s not my call to make.
“Where are we going?” she says, slowly standing.
“Home,” I say. “You’re staying with me.”
“I WISH THERE was a way I could make sure my mother wasn’t, like, in the kitchen,” I say as we stand in front of the door to the house.
Aisha looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “You don’t really get lesbianism, do you, Carson?” she says.
I turn away from her and pretend to have trouble with the lock. I mean, as far as getting lesbianism is concerned, I do and I don’t, I guess. I mean, I get that she’s a lesbian, and that she likes girls, aka not me. But that doesn’t mean that I’m a lesbian too, if you know what I mean. Just because visiting a guy’s house doesn’t do much for her, that doesn’t mean that having a hot girl come over doesn’t do something for me.
“I would just rather tell them, I don’t know, tomorrow, I guess,” I say.
Aisha drove us back to the house in her red Dodge Neon, and on the way, I’d formulated about ten arguments for why we need to let Aisha stay. While my mom barely notices my existence and is very chill about almost everything always, I can’t really picture her going along with a strange girl moving into the house. And not knowing my dad, whose place we’re in, it’s really hard to imagine everyone will be like, Sure! Why not?
“This isn’t a hookup. You get that, right?”
“Yep. Not into me. Got it.”
She exhales loudly. “Forget it. Let’s just. I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay, see ya,” I say, and this actually surprises her, because she turns quickly toward me, her eyes wide. “I’m kidding, God,” I say. “Like I’m really going to let you sleep with the monkeys because you won’t put out. Gimme a break. C’mon.”
I open the door for Aisha, and as she passes through, she says, “No monkeys at the zoo.”
And I reply, “Big shocker.”
Mom is searching through the refrigerator when we walk into the kitchen. Her hair is wet and she’s wearing a beige floral-print robe.