Part 1

I should begin by saying that my mother is a deeply religious woman. Her love for the church was borderline obsessive, praying at least once an hour and donating the majority of her paycheck on Sundays. She went to confession every night it was available and would confess to even the most innocuous of sins. “Father, I thought of taking one of Cindy’s tomatoes from her garden this morning.” As if her divine fate depended on whether or not she coveted thy neighbor’s wormy fruit. My mother’s nature and, uhm, special connection to Jesus made my teenage years particularly hard. Because as she was telling me that I would never find myself a good Christian husband if I wore ripped jeans, I was beginning to think I didn’t want one.

And that, for my mother, and the church, was the biggest sin of all. Christianity forgives you for being a rapist. You’re a murderer? As long as you have faith in the Lord you’re alright in my book. But gay? A dirty word. A sinful word. Down to the fiery pits with you. As a child growing up surrounded by the loving image of Jesus, this was the ultimate betrayal. It was engrained in my little homosexual skull that Jesus would accept me no matter what, that he would open his robed arms and care for me as his child and his creation and I would live forever in the kingdom of heaven because I was loved. All this was taught to me via Clyde the Christian Cat, a puppet made of socks and old ping pong balls in a dusty church basement while my mom sung her praises upstairs with the other adults. It was in that basement that I met Danielle. She was a few months younger than me, with a mess of kinky black hair her mom was always doing interesting things with. It was her hair I was originally intrigued by, though I would grow to love other things. I was jealous of her braids and ponytail holders, and the tight curls that were sometimes let to roam free.

“How do you do that?” I asked, softly touching my own boring brown pigtails.

“Do what?” she replied, prying her big brown eyes from the plush Noah’s Ark demonstration.

“Make your hair go all…” I made curlicues in the air with my fingers. She laughed at me.

“I don’t know,” she giggled. “It just does.”

And with that, we were friends.

Slightly less on the scale of unnatural sins but right up there for my mother, was interracial relationships. She believed in the purity of race, and backed it up with the science she chose to ignore at other times. She never showed any outward signs of disapproval of mine and Danielle’s friendship, though I’m sure if she knew what was really going she’d never leave church again.

Part 2

CRASH! The pot my mom was scrubbing clattered into the sink loudly as she saw Danielle and I walk through the front door.

“Mom, this is Danielle, from church.” I said hesitantly, taking her hand and guiding her into the kitchen. “We’re going together.”

“Going where?” my mother asked, scrubbing the pot with a newfound intensity, not looking at us.

“No,”  I sighed, trying to make eye contact with Dani from the corner of my eye. “Together, together. She’s my girlfriend, Mom.”

And with those words, the false narrative my mom had been constructing for years fell apart. Every time she told herself I was just strange, every time she said I would find the right man someday, and her invisioning me with the perfect Christian husband, all died as she stopped scrubbing the pot and stood very, very still. She didn’t touch the cross around her neck. She didn’t look up to the heavens. She didn’t even look at me. All she said was:

“Leave.”

Part 3

I left. Danielle came with me. The years we were homeless hadn’t been kind to Danielle and I, but we had each other and tried to convince ourselves that that was enough. Young Danielle’s braids were gone, she’d let her hair grow natural and long. I’d lost a tooth in a fight with some meth head over a spot in an alleyway. But as quickly as things went south they began looking up again. We were only on the streets for a few month when Danielle got a job working as a waitress in the Village.

The wedding was small. And naturally, not in a church. Our friends came, along with Danielle’s parents who were always more supporting than my own. I tried not to think of my own mother, miles away, who wouldn’t get to see me on such a precious day. Not that she would want to. Danielle braided her hair.

A year went by, then another, until it felt as if her and I had spent a lifetime together. We adopted a little girl named Emma with hair just like Danielle’s, and she taught me how to braid it. We promised each other we would love Emma and support her no matter who she loved, and I was determined to be the mother to her I never had. Emma grew up to be strong and beautiful. Eventually there came a time when she realized she had two moms, and when we had to have that talk with her, we both cried. We decided that when the time came that we would let her choose what religion she believed in and try our hardest to support her, despite both of our overwhelmingly Christian upbringings. And all this time I hardly thought of my mother. Hardly.

Rrrring Rrring! The phone in the kitchen rang as Emma and I were curled up on the couch in the living room watching Scooby Doo reruns. Danielle was cooking, and answered it in her lovely alto voice, and I paid no mind.

“It’s your aunt.” She poked her head out of the kitchen, and tossed the phone to me.

Part 4

The drive upstate was nerve-racking. I felt as if my thoughts were a million swarming bees in my head and I couldn’t focus on just one. We left Emma with a friend in the Village, neither I nor my spouse wanted her to see the situation. Danielle drove, her long box braids wrapped up in a turban, her hand resting on my knee, trying to stop the shaking.

My mother, the epitome of health, if not mental, was dying. Fast.

She seemed to be the only source of color in the room. Her frail body lay limp in the lime green hospital sheets. Her head rested on the flat pillow, resting her eyes, sleeping, or perhaps unconscious, I couldn’t tell. Around her thin neck, her once dainty cross seemed cumbersome and absurd. I could feel myself about to think something bitter about that but I knew it wasn’t the time. That part of our relationship was over.

“Joy.” She said weakly, her paper thin lips rasping out my name. “Joy, baby, come here.” I obeyed. “Joy, have you found Jesus?”

I didn’t know how to respond. Do I lie or say I’m living with my black wife in the gayest part of the city with my adopted agnostic daughter? I lie, “Yes, mama.”

The paper forms some semblance of a smile, “Good girl.”

Even if it was the result of a lie, just hearing my mother have some type of approval for me was enough to send tears to my eyes. “I missed you, mom.”
“I know. God told me you were alright, though. He told me you were happy and well and I knew you had a good Christian husband and a good life and you were okay and that’s all I ever wanted.” She said all in one breath, and it took a second of her gasping before I could answer.

“I AM happy, ma.”

“Good.” She sighed, and coughed. “I love you, Joy.”

“I love you too, ma.” That, I knew, wasn’t a lie.