Chapter 12

One day in particular agitated the harmony that at one point I felt belonged to my home life. The happenings of one day pulled a thread, tearing it apart at the seams. I don't remember the exact date or even the month, but I was somewhere between twelve and thirteen, and my sister, Gina, was seventeen. That much I can be sure of. There wasn't one catastrophic event that set the unraveling in motion but rather a hundred little moments in which no one saw the significance. A wave crashed, or maybe it was more like a gentle tide rippling in over time, but like dominoes leaning into one another, my family toppled, falling as we pushed each other's buttons to the brink of balance. My home became a pressure cooker over the course of our childhood, the floor bubbling, the roof rattling, but the events of that day when my sister was seventeen and I was on the cusp of everything set the stage for the simmering, the boiling over that would last a lifetime.

Maybe it was the enduring blanket of guilt that seemed to drape over our youth, the outcome of a licentious adolescence, complete with pent-up sexuality and a drive to express oneself in a religious household. Maybe it was simply the inevitability of a family to fight about something—anything—as they navigated a path toward independence, the night foggy and black, the road muddy and riddled with potholes. But we felt the tension building in the O'Leary household. It was invisible and sustained. Like butter to warm bread, it loomed over top, seeping deeper into our pores the longer it went unaddressed. And my family never addressed anything. No, it would have been too crass to bring up the misfortunes of others, too vulgar to discuss controversial societal issues. It simply would have been too uncomfortable to have honest conversations about the consequences of teenage experience. The depth of dialogue in our home was shallow. The mandate was simple: If one fucked up, one recited their Hail Marys, got grounded, and moved on.

The late eighties were a provocation, the early nineties a great awakening, an incitement. Rap music infiltrated the suburbs, and my friends and I felt like we'd become part of some strange, foreign world. Our lives suddenly had meaning and purpose, the way a kid's life suddenly does. We rode our bikes to the record store every Tuesday, trying to get our hands on every new tape we could, even if it meant we had to swipe them. We got quite good at it. There were thrilling introductions to vandalism: tagging bus stations with fat-tip markers, then porno magazines, whippets, and weed, if we could find the right person on the right night. Back then, it seemed we always could.

Eventually, our clothes grew bigger and baggier, and we traded our bicycles for skateboards. Monotonous, pounding techno music joined hip-hop in our catalogs of tapes and compact discs, illegal raves in abandoned warehouses and under expressway on-ramps serving as our go-to hangout spots after dark. They were ideal places for underage kids to party. At some point, we figured out the townies that hung out in front of the Quik Mart on Montauk Highway would buy us beer and cigarettes for a little extra cash. It was an enlightening time in a boy's life, a time in which one started to figure out what truly mattered to them as a young adult. We walked a fine line between youthful innocence and criminal delinquency, never stopping to think about how close we came to crossing it.

I'm getting ahead of myself though.

When I was maybe ten years old, the existence of a world that I'd been shielded from as a child made a glimmering appearance during a segment on the evening news. Watching the news with my pops after he got home from work had become routine, an unofficial tradition, and would eventually open my eyes to things happening outside the bubble of Babylon in which we lived. At such a tender age, I had no interest in what was going on outside of my little corner of the world. My life up to that point had been defined by Sunday school and long division, comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. But fragmented scenes of societal shift had a way of peripherally creeping in, drawing my attention for one reason or another, adding layers of enlightenment and confusion to my sheltered worldview. Those snippets of real life felt like missing puzzle pieces that were needed to complete the slivered whole of myself, the tattered patchwork of thoughts and ideas and realizations that I was as a young boy, each one a clouded recollection, opaque in its purpose.

It wasn't like I'd never been to the city. During school breaks, my ma would sometimes shuffle us onto the train to visit my pops at his office in Manhattan, go to lunch, maybe do some shopping afterward. When one is young, there isn't much concern for the seedier side of life. One doesn't necessarily notice a boarded-up building being occupied by vacant faces long sunken in and smudged with grime. You pass it by unnoticed, focusing on the individual colors and sounds and smells of a new environment as your mother in her long, belted coat and sensible low-rise pumps pulls you by the arm through the mist to shield you from the grit, steam billowing from openings in manhole covers in the middle of the street. And just like that, the boarded-up building is gone, neither here nor there, no different than the luxury condo tower next to it.

But I started paying attention to the news at one point. I listened, absorbed, and processed—the news and my surroundings—as I sat on the couch in our living room next to my pops in his recliner, still dressed for work: suit, tie, loafers. My ma made dinner in the kitchen, some brand-name version of an Italian American staple. Gina occupied the phone in the upstairs hallway, lying on her back, leg propped against the wall, a social call of the utmost importance.

The news drew me in. Night after night back then, urges for action from the city by concerned citizen groups dominated the airwaves. Vigilante activists shouted at correspondents and cameras alike about crack cocaine and crime and burned-out buildings and people dead on the sidewalks with needles in their arms. Stories about "the homelessness problem" cascaded from the lips of reporter after reporter standing on the grittiest street corners they could find to capture the state of disarray in New York City, buildings with broken windows and graffiti in clear view over their shoulders. Those burned-out buildings meant nothing to me without context, without voice-over, without producers shepherding my thoughts.

Those same reporters chronicled raucous, all-night parties at giant clubs downtown and the fabulous people that attended them. I loved those segments. There was a freedom about those people that partied all night, a freedom that I felt, that I could recognize but couldn't rationalize, couldn't quite understand. There was an excitement to their lives that somehow seemed to be missing from mine, a dark, whimsical aura surrounding the on-screen images of them, dancing and carefree.

They were carefree in a different way than I was. My freedom was juvenile but lacked enthusiasm. A heaviness sat upon my freedom, choking it, suffocating it with fingers gripping its throat. Sometimes the heaviness would take a break, letting me breathe for a minute or two when I listened to music by myself in my room. It would sit lighter on my chest when I rode bikes with my friends. But it would always return, taunting me, strangling a life out of me that I didn't know I had. My freedom was conditional. The evening news cast a shadow on my juvenile freedom.

The piece that stuck with me, the one that I still remember, was nothing but a few minutes' worth of grainy video clips hastily edited together, clips of rainbow-flag-waving activists in the Village, protesters behind them, off to the side of what appeared to be a march, carrying signs that read things like "God Hates Fags" and "Burn in Hell." I didn't know they were protesters then. I don't think I even understood what I was watching, not quite. But those images—the flags, the signs, the dancing, the yelling—scarred themselves into my brain. I remember them just as clearly now, probably more clearly than the grainy clips allowed me to witness them on the television almost thirty years ago. The newscaster, the voice-over, spoke of a gay cancer, an epidemic that was ravaging gay men in the city.

Some of what I saw on the news was exhilarating. Some of it was terrifying, instilling a fear in me that I carry to this day. It's an innate fear, one that lingers beneath the surface. Not crippling but always there.

The report about the epidemic was one of the terrifying segments. Even if I didn't comprehend the impact of what was happening "in the city," I understood that it was bad. And while I didn't understand why at the time, I knew I felt a communion with those flag-waving, banner-carrying, yelling-with-fists-in-the-air people, a compassion that superseded plain sympathy. That segment gave me one of those missing puzzle pieces to carry around and play with, to trace my fingers along, soothing my fears on the smooth, rounded edges and pricking my nerves with the jagged corners. I didn't know where it fit, but I held on to it with a tight grip, searching for years for the perfect place to put it.

That segment on the news, the one about the march and the epidemic and the protesters, narrated as if those things were one and the same, as if every participant had been stricken ill, as if the protesters had a valid counterpoint, as if the march and the cancer were so deeply intertwined that they couldn't possibly be split into separate segments, was preceded by a smiling, disaffected weatherman forecasting the upcoming precipitation totals and immediately followed by a vapid woman excitedly announcing the week's winning lottery numbers. One and the same, those things—the march and the cancer. Different than the weather, separate from the lotto, the producers inferred. Cancer one and the same as pride. Maybe they were. How could I know? The words didn't string together as easily back then, didn't form comprehensive sentences as they might now.

My pops sometimes switched off the TV in the middle of segments and made snide comments to my ma, too quiet for her to hear in the kitchen. The comments were more of an aside, a self-confirmation that the world was going to shit. I didn't understand what he meant most of the time, but for some reason, it always felt personal, like he was trying to convince me that I needed to be better, to be stronger, to be a man so I could fight for the good side.

"What a bunch of perverts," he said to no one before looking directly at his ten-year-old son sitting on that couch that butted up against the window facing out to Roosevelt Street, legs not yet long enough for his feet to touch that carpeted floor when he sat all the way back. "There are some sick people in this world, Brandon. This is why I don't take you to the city. You're just asking to get hit in the head with one of those fruity rainbow flags. They're everywhere. You need to be careful."

I haven't been hit in the head with a fruity rainbow flag yet. Well, once, but it was during the Pride march in Atlanta, and I was pretty wasted. So was Calvin when he accidentally hit me in the head with the flag.

That "…be careful" wasn't relayed to me in one of those protective, fatherly tones though. No, it was delivered with disgust and accusation, an impending threat of undeserved blame that made no sense in the mind of a child. The words were aimed like arrows in a bow, hurled at me in a way that implied I should carry the burden for an entire generation of what my pops considered misfits and hoodlums.

What was a ten-year-old supposed to do with those words? All I knew was that the people in the grainy clips on the news were bad; they were to blame for something. Apparently, I was too. I had no idea what their crime was or why it was so awful, but that information seemed irrelevant. It was up to me to ensure I wasn't like them, whatever that meant. And just like that, that knife full of thick, creamy, buttery guilt—guilt for nothing in particular—had been smeared on my focaccia, my brown soda bread, my ten-year-old existence. It seeped into my pores.

But back to that day when the first big crack began to form, that day when it widened and deepened after my sister snuck off to Philadelphia with her friends. For most kids in Babylon, watching Dance Party on TV after school, even dancing along to the music in their living rooms would suffice. But for some, including Gina, it wasn't enough to work out their moves at home; they needed to join the other dancers on-screen, interact with the hosts, the cameras, the studio lights and sounds. They needed the spotlight.

1989

I didn't know it at the time, but Gina and her friends had been covertly arranging their Philly excursion for weeks. Probably over the phone in that upstairs hallway while my pops and I sat watching the news and my ma made dinner in the kitchen. They watched the show religiously, she and her friends, forever discussing what they would wear and which dance moves they would premiere if they ever got the chance. For them, it was a pilgrimage, a spiritual rite of passage one had to take with or without consequence. Our pops never would have let her go without supervision, probably never would have let her go with supervision, so she secretly plotted with her friends, well aware she'd be in trouble after the fact.

Sometimes those moments are worth it. They're necessary for establishing a sense of self, for cultivating life experience, the lessons of which one can later impart on their own children should they dare to have any.

I'd become a regular viewer of the show most days after school, not by choice but by default. I would hang out in my pops's recliner in the background while Gina, Tracie, and Michelle sat on the couch and talked incessantly—over and under one another—about the best dancers and the hottest guys while chomping on chewing gum and twirling overworked strands of hair around their idle fingers. Sometimes, they would show off their choreographed dance moves in the middle of the living room, moves they eventually planned to perform on camera without anyone's knowledge. I found all of this out later, of course.

It was a Friday, in the spring, I think, and Gina should have been at school with the rest of her eleventh-grade class. Her high school was a quick walk from our house, a walk in a different direction than was the trek to my junior high school, which was next to the school at which our ma taught. The high school sat just next to Babylon station. That's where she met her friends that Friday morning, instead of the steps outside the front door of the school, where they would regularly sit and gossip and smoke cigarettes until the first bell rang. From there, they took the train into Manhattan, where they caught another train into Philly. I still have no idea how they didn't get lost. Or caught.

"I've done it, like, a hundred times," Tracie would say about everything, always in a smartass tone that led you to believe she really hadn't. Michelle was the nicer of my sister's friends, cooler, more laid-back than either Tracie or Gina. "We go to Philly every year to see my grandparents. We'll just get off at Suburban Station. It's so easy."

I had doubts it would be so easy. But I also had no manner of sway over what my sister and her friends got up to. Had I known what they were going on about, I probably wouldn't have tried to stop them. I would have come up with a better story for my folks though.

That afternoon, Ricky came over to hang out after school as he sometimes did when no one was hanging out at the basketball courts or the arcade. It was rare, but when it happened, we were relegated to either his house or mine. His parents didn't like him bringing friends over when they weren't there, so it had to be mine that day. We dropped our bikes in the front yard after rolling in like bats out of hell and headed inside, tossing our backpacks onto the floor just inside the front door. I stepped into the living room and turned on the TV, pretending to unenthusiastically flip through a few channels before landing on Dance Party. Ricky sometimes watched it too, even if he denied it. It was simply one of those games we played as kids, pretending we didn't like something until another person relented, paving the way for us to say, "Oh, yeah, that show. Sure, it's alright, I guess."

We weren't ten minutes in when we saw Gina and Tracie in party dresses that I'd never before seen, hair teased higher than usual, wearing more makeup than a drag queen would have advised. They were doing a synchronized dance to "Two to Make It Right" by Seduction that I'm sure they thought was stealing the show, the same dance I had watched them practice for weeks in our living room.

That must have been what Tracie was talking about, I thought to myself in shock as everything suddenly clicked, the disjointed rantings of my sister's friends finally coming together to form a complete thought.

The camera panned around them, then stopped to showcase their performance for maybe ten seconds. They were really vamping it up, confident in the knowledge that their parents didn't watch the show or weren't yet home from work. Or maybe they didn't care. It was a pilgrimage, after all, as necessary for the soul as water is for the body. I saw Michelle in the background too, but she was doing her own thing on a raised platform to the right of where Gina and Tracie danced.

My jaw dropped.

"Oh shit, dude. Is that your sister?" Ricky asked with as much consternation in his voice as I felt in my gut.

"My pops is gonna kill her" was the only response I could think of, my eyes wide as I sat in the recliner with both hands behind my head, fingers interlocked on the back of my skull, unable to move. I couldn't get too worked up. If I did, I'd be labeled dramatic. I couldn't laugh. Laughing would forsake the severity of the situation, and Gina wasn't yet in my path of ire. I could simply take it in, imbibe the trauma.

Ricky lay on the couch with one leg draped over the arm and the other planted firmly on the floor as my ma paced into the room with purpose. I flung myself out of the chair in an attempt to turn off the TV. My sister and I didn't have a bad relationship. It wasn't perfect, but we tried to look out for each other, especially when it came to shit we knew my pops wouldn't handle well.

"When did you get home?" she demanded.

"Just now," I shot back. I don't know why I was so defensive in my words.

"Do you have homework?"

There was always a hint of disappointment in her tone once we reached a certain age. She couldn't hide it. Her voice may have taken on a subservient and demure timbre when my pops was around, but when it was just her, a more authoritative demeanor was adopted in the form of abrasive Sicilian American Brooklynese that was as much a part of her heritage as was cannoli. That same abrasive Brooklynese she had so lovingly gifted to me and Gina. Maybe she felt she had to make up for my pops's exasperation in his absence. I quietly wondered which voice she utilized with her students, the abrasive one or the put-on one she used around my pops.

"A little."

"Well, go get it done before your father gets home. Hi, Ricky," she announced caustically, no pause to let me respond as she finally turned to notice another person in the room.

"Hey, Mrs. O'Leary," Ricky replied softly, as though stunned by her sharp words, quickly turning himself to sit upright on the couch.

"Does your mother know you're here?"

"Yeah."

"Fine. Are you staying for dinner?"

Ricky looked at me from the corner of his eye. Lifting my shoulders and raising my eyebrows, I gestured that it was okay without really knowing.

"Sure," he stated, a brief pause punctuating his response.

"Alright. Both of you get upstairs and get your homework done, then."

By the time she glanced at the television, the camera had panned to another part of the sound stage, focused squarely on a different set of dancers.

Ricky moved swiftly toward the stairs, grabbing our backpacks as I switched the TV off on my way out of the room. Had my ma seen Gina dancing on that show, she would have blown a gasket. Then, she would have phoned my pops at the office so he could blow a gasket. Gaskets were better blown in pairs, I'd found. That way, one has someone to speak to about the blown gasket, someone who understands, someone else who uses an abrasive tone.

I couldn't fathom what he would do if he found out that Gina and her friends had skipped school and taken a series of trains to Philadelphia. The relationship between the two of them had steadily deteriorated over the years due to her outfit choices and the fact that she had developed normal teenage interests and emotions, such as guys and frustration (mostly about guys). My pops's inability to deal with her development had become apparent.

As I made my way toward the stairs, I remember thinking to myself that we'd dodged a bullet. But bullets have a way of finding their targets.

Ricky and I sat at the dinner table across from one another in our small dining room that night, Ricky taking the chair that would normally be occupied by Gina had she been there. She would be staying at Tracie's that night; at least, that's what she'd told our folks. They sat across from each other as well, in their normal seats, both of them going on about their days, ignoring Ricky and me as if we were photos hung on the wall collecting dust. It was a typical, boring dinner of chicken alfredo at my house, but Ricky was used to that.

My sister had been snapping at our folks a lot, so their conversations had become strained and disjointed, elevated without necessity. Neither of them knew how to deal with a teenager that was acting out, and it showed. Everyone seemed less happy, less interested in talking, jovial dinner conversations taking a back seat to those dotted by tension and silence.

In the middle of our meal, the phone rang. It was during one of those awkward lulls in conversation, and I distinctly remember that loud, jarring tone startling me. My parents acted like it was incredibly rude for someone to be calling during dinner, as if everyone sat down to eat at the same time every night. It was Tracie's mom. I could only hear my ma's side of the short conversation, of course, but as the volume of her voice heightened, the tension in the room grew thicker, and it became clear what was happening.

"Oh… Hi, Linda… What do you mean Tracie left her toothbrush?… Gina told me she was staying at your house… Well, do you know where they went?… Should we call the police?… Oh, for God's sake… Don't you worry. As soon as I hear from them, you'll be the first to know. And they'll be getting an earful from Gina's father and me… Alright. Goodbye."

During that brief conversation, Ricky and I kept our heads low as my ma's tone grew in severity. We occasionally glanced across the table, tossing knowing looks at one another, forks in hand, well aware of exactly where Gina, Tracie, and Michelle had gone and exactly how much trouble they would be in when they got back.

"What the hell is goin' on?" my pops, in his Bostonian accent, demanded to know before my ma even had a chance to hang the handset back on the base of the phone.

"The girls have gone and lied to us. That's what's goin' on," she angrily huffed at my pops before looking at Ricky and me. "Ricky, I think it's time for you to head home."

"Yeah, alright. Thanks for dinner, Mrs. O'Leary," he said, quickly standing and pushing his chair back from the table on his way to the front door.

I was about to be grilled. At least Ricky was able to finish most of his meal.

"You're welcome," she said in the same breath as, "Brandon, I swear to God. If you know where your sister is, you better tell us now."

"How would I know?" I asked defensively.

"Because I know you and your sister are closer than you let on. So, do you know where she is?"

"Answer your mother," my pops chimed in, his hands folded underneath his chin, elbows resting on the table, using that same …be careful voice he'd used years earlier when assigning me guilt, spreading it like butter on my soda bread.

I was stuck, and I knew it. Maybe I could have lied, but it would have come back to bite me in the ass had they found out the truth, which at that point seemed likely. Ratting Gina out wasn't something I was proud of, but I didn't see any other option. I did my best to deflect. "She didn't tell me anything."

I didn't lie about that, anyway.

"But you know something, don't you?"

Well played, Ma.

"Brandon." My pops shook his head. "You've got five seconds to answer your mother."

Fuck. Gina was going to kill me. I sighed, "She's in Philly."

"What?" My pops damn near choked on his food, spit out half the meal he still seemed to be chewing. "What the hell do you mean she's in Philly?"

"I mean she's in Philly." I balked, mentally constructing what I hoped would be a wall of defense around myself. "I saw her and Tracie on Dance Party earlier."

I figured I'd spare Michelle, seeing as how she was at least nice to me from time to time.

"You mean to tell me your sister cut school today and somehow made it to the next state over?" my ma aggressively appealed as my pops sat and stared at his plate, quietly fuming.

"No. She made it to Philadelphia," I corrected, unable to control my sarcasm or conceal the fact that I had at one point looked at a map. My tongue was a weapon that I brandished unnecessarily, a reliable trait that never left my side.

"Oh, for God's sake, Brandon. You know what I mean. Why do you have to do that?"

"Take your plate to the living room and finish eating while you watch TV," my pops commanded, using a calm, albeit more frightening tone than I was used to. I didn't hesitate.

I had no idea what they talked about as I turned on the evening news while I finished my chicken alfredo, but I knew it was bad. And I knew that wouldn't be the end of it for me either. Even if my parents weren't mad at me, Gina would be. There would be a conversation when she got home. And it wouldn't be so much a conversation as it would be a bloodbath. They would kill her, but she would kill me. I wanted to jump on my bike and head somewhere else, anywhere else, but that wasn't an option. Until my sister got home, I'd be stuck, so I decided to wait it out in my room. For the next three hours, I listened to tapes on my Walkman: Run DMC, Beastie Boys, De La Soul. It was a mysterious feat that the batteries didn't die.

It was nearly eleven when I heard the phone ring and twenty minutes later, I was called down from my room. Gina had returned, first to Tracie's house, where the three of them spun the lie to her mother that they were going to stay there instead of our house. That didn't work. My pops drove to the Rossetti's house and carted Gina home. She had changed and wiped off the makeup, but she'd been caught in a lie, and for some reason, I needed to be a part of that conversation. That bloodbath.

We all sat at the dining room table, dirty dishes never having been cleared, the food that was left over as cold as my dad's stare. Having a conversation at the dining room table felt more official than the living room, more formal.

Gina attempted to circumvent, to put on a guise of innocence, as though she didn't understand what was happening, as though she deserved the right to confront her accuser. But she knew. And she knew she was going to catch the wrath of my pops and the piercing, disappointed glare of my ma.

"What the hell were you thinking going to Philadelphia?" my pops asked quite matter-of-factly. "Do you know what could have happened to you? Do you know what kind of crazies there are out there? You could've been killed." His direct, even tone betrayed how angry he was. But I could see it. I could feel it simmering below the surface. Gina would have been smart to remain silent.

"I—"

"Save it," my ma interrupted before Gina had the chance to smartass her way through the conversation like I'd tried to do earlier. "And we know you had to skip school to get there. Brandon told us he saw you on that show."

My sister scowled at me from across the table, staring daggers, a look that conveyed she would deal with me later.

"I didn't—" I started, trying to explain myself. It was no use.

"Don't worry. You're not in trouble for that," my ma began.

"No. You're in trouble for being a smartass," my pops interjected as though he'd been tagged back in. His volume was elevating just like my ma's had on the phone with Linda Rossetti, the simmering more noticeable. "I am sick of you kids thinking you can do whatever the hell you want whenever the hell you want to do it. I don't care how old you are. Going forward, you will respect your mother, you will respect me, and you will respect the rules of this house. Is that understood?"

Gina and I sat silently. I had been blindsided by something I wasn't even aware was a problem. Had I been disrespectful to an extent that would summon this sort of castigation? Gina was simply pissed off, arms crossed, shaking her head at me. She knew she was in trouble, and she knew why. She wasn't going to escape the repercussions of our folks. She'd decided to direct her frustration at me though, a mere scapegoat for an admission I had fallen prey to. I was a deer caught in the headlights, subject to a censure for an apparent lack of respect I hadn't even had the chance to take full advantage of.

"Is that understood?" my pops repeated, louder that time as he shifted his glare between the two of us.

"I can't believe you ratted me out," Gina mumbled in my general direction. "You know what? I can do that too."

"Do what?" I asked, unsure of exactly what I could be blamed for then and there. I hadn't done anything wrong, at least not that Gina knew about.

"Narc you out. You know Brandon's a queer, don't you?" she blurted out to my pops, even as she looked at me.

What the hell? I hadn't even figured that out myself yet. How could Gina know? My face turned red, and my head pounded. A ringing in my ears picked up, then gave way to numbness, a suppression of the sounds around me. My fists clenched, and I gritted my teeth, staring at her from across the table in shock. I wasn't sure how to respond or if I should even try.

"What the hell are you talking about?" my pops asked, confusion and violence washing over his face. My ma's expression could only be described as horrified.

"Yeah," she continued in the most know-it-all voice she could muster. "He's got a porno mag under his mattress, and it ain't just women."

So what? What kind of straight porno magazine wouldn't feature a dick or two? I had to laugh about it now, Calvin's coming out story sharing a history with mine, a sexual secret between the box springs.

"You've got a what?" my ma asked as if a magazine were some sort of contraband.

"Yeah. And you know he's friends with Julio Gutierrez."

"No, I'm not," I argued. "And so what if I was?"

"There's a lot of rumors goin' around about him. And people are sayin' you two hang out. I'm just sayin'."

"Yeah? Well, last Friday, Gina went over to Vincent Fiore's house instead of goin' to the mall like she said she was."

"You little snitch!"

"Enough!" my pops shouted, slamming his fists onto the table, rattling the dishes and startling my ma. There it was—the simmering had grown into a rolling boil, overflowing from the pot, hissing and steaming as it landed on the burner below, staining the surface with a crispy, charred substance that resembled abhorrence, repulsion, loathing. He commanded our undivided attention.

"You." He seethed, looking at my sister. "You're grounded. You're not allowed out of this house for a month."

Gina tried to protest, but it was no use.

"And you," he announced, turning his attention to me, his tone severe but even. "If I ever hear about you flitting around town with another boy, that'll be the last thing you do. Is that understood?"

I lifted my gaze from the table to see flames in his eyes, a hatred emblazoned on his face, one that I'd never witnessed come to such an apex. "Yeah."

What else could I say? I had just been indicted on charges for something I didn't even realize I was involved in. And my pops meant what he'd said, the prick. I again lowered my head, unable to face the room. Humiliation crept into me, a scarlet letter branded on my chest for no reason at all. I would never recover from such an accusation. One can't fight their way out of something that simply hovers overhead, an idea, an abstract notion. I could deny it, but there would forever be a question, a persistent, sickening ache in the stomach of those within earshot. It couldn't possibly be lifted. It could never be backtracked. It would live in the minds of those enmeshed in that conversation for perpetuity, true or not.

A porno mag and passing hearsay about a goth kid I knew from school changed my life, altered the perception of those around me. I hated Gina at that moment. But I hated my pops more.

"Now, both of you are going to clean up this table and go to your rooms. Your mother and I are going to bed."

Gina and I huffed and snapped at each other each time we passed as we cleared the table and washed the dishes, relaying our sincere contempt for one another with dish after dish, glass after glass.

"You were supposed to look out for me," she said.

"I didn't even say anything. They figured it out," I protested, telling a half-truth to save myself.

"Bullshit. They couldn't have figured it out. They don't even watch the show."

"Tracie's mom called over here looking for her. It wasn't your smartest plan, Gina."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you," I snapped back. "I'm not a queer. I can't believe you said that to Pops."

"How do I know you ain't queer? Besides, you deserved it."

A few weeks passed before Gina and I spoke again, and the only reason we started was an undeniable, shared disdain for my pops, who had quickly become a shell of a human being whose sole purpose seemed to be making our lives hell. Gina had it a little easier; she had less than a year to go before she embarked on a college career. I was left to fend for myself with two parents who couldn't figure out how to cope with the idea of individuality in their children. I would have to put in another four years after she left.

At night, my pops would sit in his recliner watching television while my ma would sit at the dining room table grading papers, creating lesson plans, sometimes calling her friends. Avoidance was our new reality. They rarely spoke to each other and they spoke to me even less. As I forged my way into adolescence, they effectively turned off the power switch to any sort of discussion, any type of debate, any modicum of communication. There was no ceremonial guidance provided. Processing feelings was something elites had the time and audacity to do. There was a divine, theological answer to every question, and if the way, the truth, and the life hadn't taken hold in my being yet, it probably never would.

I responded by sneaking out, smoking pot, partying. The worst they could do was ground me, which was no different than not being grounded.

"Kids these days have no sense of moral obligation," my pops would huff as he hopped out of the car, ignoring a homeless man begging for food on his way into the market. My ma would then repeat those words amongst her friends.