“They don’t call me anything. It’s like they go out of the way to avoid using pronouns at all. The way you do. For different reasons, obviously.”
“Do they call you the right name?”
“I don’t know what they call me when I’m not there. But they don’t call me anything to my face. They start out their emails with just ‘Hi.’ But they’re better than they used to be. High school was pretty awful. I’m just lucky I made it out of there in one piece.”
I nod. “What was your name before?”
Derek takes a sip of soda. “Michelle.”
“How’d you pick Derek?”
“I used to be really into Derek Jeter. Look, I’m sorry, but can we please change the subject? No offense, because I understand why you want to know, but I get asked these questions all the time, and I really don’t like talking about this. The past is the past, and it’s better if it stays there.”
“Okay,” I say. Even though I desperately want to know if the Derek Jeter part was a joke. “Want to talk about Inez some more?”
“That’s okay. Why don’t you tell me about your parents? You said your mom is scary, right?”
Now that it’s on me, I’m not sure I want to talk about this, either.
“My mom’s scary,” I say. “That’s basically it.”
That’s a sufficient summary anyway.
My mother and I have gotten good at avoiding each other over the past couple of years. Over our whole lives, really.
I can count on one hand the number of significant conversations we’ve had. There was the time in fifth grade when I announced I was quitting piano lessons and had to listen to a speech about the tragic death of my mother’s dreams of having a concert pianist in the family. The time freshman year when I came out as a “lesbian” (ick). The time junior year when I admitted that my friends and I had broken the Tiffany iced tea pitcher while we were playing Wii.
My mother and I manage to avoid most insignificant conversations, too. That became a lot easier once I got a driver’s license and could spend as much time as I wanted at Gretchen’s. Even before that, though, we were never the sit-around-the-dinner-table-and-talk-about-your-day kind of family. Mostly, when I had dinner at home, it consisted of me and my sister hanging off the kitchen counter eating Salvadoran food and begging our housekeeper, Consuela, to tell us stories about the crazy families Consuela worked for before ours. One was a high-ranking Republican White House official—Consuela never told me which, but I have theories—who insisted that the floor rugs be inspected every day for evidence of either bedbugs or planted recording devices.
Sometimes I wonder if my mother actually personally hates me, or if I’m just a major lifestyle inconvenience. It always seemed to bother Mom way more when I did “weird” stuff in front of other people—like when I went through my middle-school goth phase and wore a fake nose ring to school for a week—than when I just did it in the house, where none of our snooty neighbors had to know about it.
“What about your dad?” Derek asks. I blink before I remember we’re still having this conversation.
“My dad would be scary, too, if my dad was ever home,” I say. “But that doesn’t usually happen, so.”
“What particular variety of scary are your parents?”
“Oh, your basic Republican nouveau-riche Harvard-alum lawyer-for-the-overprivileged and semialcoholic housewife couple. They hate me, I hate them, et cetera. All we’ve talked about since I came out was my GPA.”
“When you came out as gay, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d they take that?”
I shrug. I’m starting to wish I hadn’t asked Derek all those questions.
“I’m not sure my dad even heard,” I say. “Dad was listening to a Bluetooth headset the whole time. Had it on during my valedictorian speech, too. My mom, though—she flipped out. I had to go stay with my friend Chris for a week.”
“Seriously? She kicked you out of the house?”
“Not technically. It was like we were playing chicken. Mom was all, ‘I won’t tolerate this under my roof,’ and I was all, ‘So rent me an apartment,’ and Mom was all, ‘Don’t get smart with me, Antonia,’ and I was all, ‘What if I did move out? Would you even care?’ and Mom was all, ‘Don’t be absurd, I’m simply stating the facts, and the fact is, I will not have any foolishness in this family.’ So I bolted.”
I’ve told this story before. I always leave out the parts about the crying and the doors slamming and the thinking I was going to have to transfer to public school and move into foster care and never make it to Harvard. I figure people can fill in the blanks.
Even though I wind up thinking about it every time I tell the story anyway.
“Wow,” Derek says. “But you went back home eventually?”