“Oh. Yeah, me too.” Which isn’t a hundred percent true. Like right now. My senses are on high alert. I can smell the citrus shampoo she uses in her hair. The spot where her shoulder touched mine is practically tingling. The whole situation is making me nervous. “But what about Christina and them?” I say, just to say something.
“Well, yeah, of course I’m myself around them. But like, I dunno. Like I’ve always wanted to go to Stanford and be a doctor, right? So they’re totally supportive and they totally think I’m gonna go and like, find the cure for cancer or something. But sometimes it just feels like a lot of pressure, you know? And . . . they have a thing about honors kids, like you guys are a bunch of snobs, and why would I want to hang out with you. I mean, it’s true, I don’t fit in, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to, sometimes. So that’s hard.
“And teachers treat me like I’m this special snowflake just because I’m Mexican, like I should be doing average at best, or getting pregnant or something. They’ll pat me on the back and bend over backward for me even if I don’t get As. And I know there’s kids who think the teachers are going easy on me because I’m Mexican, which is bullshit—but sometimes I think, what if that’s true? What if I fail? My mom and everyone would be so disappointed. And the haters would be all, ‘I knew she couldn’t do it.’ So I have to work extra hard to make sure none of that happens.”
She heaves a sigh, and we sit in silence for a while, the weight of her burden heavy between us. Her knees are still tucked up under her chin. She starts picking at a stray thread on the cuff of her jeans and says, “That’s one reason I like running. I can just leave all that behind for a while, you know? I can just be me, and run.” Now she leans into me. “That’s kind of how I feel when I’m with you. The pressure’s off. I don’t have to be anyone but me.”
I nod. We’re just sitting there, arms touching, looking at each other, then not looking. After a few seconds, I don’t think I can take it anymore. I’m in a movie where the boy and girl are moments away from kissing, and I realize with a start that that’s exactly what I want to happen. Not just a hopeless and confused daydreamy wondering how it might feel, like with Trish. Not just a momentary flutter, like with Mark. This is for real. I want us to kiss. I want us to kiss now. I think Jamie might want the same thing. I turn to her, my heart pounding, and say:
“So. The significance of light and dark imagery in The Scarlet Letter. How many examples are we supposed to include?” And we’re back in the safety of Hester’s illicit love affair.
After Jamie gets on the bus, I wonder how Hester and Dimmesdale first kissed. In the woods—the dark, romantic, uncivilized woods, where anything goes. I imagine the time before they kissed, both of them wanting it but unsure if they should go for it. I wonder if they were happy when it finally happened. Probably not—the whole novel is so depressing.
But me, I’m happy. I know something, for once. I know what I want. I want to kiss Jamie, and I also want to spend days at the beach with her, spend winter vacation and Valentine’s Day with her, read poetry with her, go to prom with her. I want it all. Actually, I guess I’ve kind of wanted all of that since the beginning, but the difference now is that I’m not scared of wanting it anymore. I’m not scared of what it means. I don’t know if Jamie wants the same thing. That’s what scares me now. But if she does want what I want, then oh. Oh, how amazing that would be.
For the rest of the evening, it’s Jamie-land in my head. Jamie loves poetry. Jamie wants to be a doctor. Jamie’s talented and smart and tough and scared and she’s fighting her way toward a real goal—I don’t even know what I want to do next year, let alone with the rest of my life, except be with her. Jamie said she can be her true self when she’s with me. Jamie’s arm touching mine. Jamie’s face, so close to mine. Jamie.
So I guess I can be excused for bringing up the topic of gay relationships with Mom after dinner, while she relaxes with a cup of tea. It’s like when Rapunzel spaces out and asks why the prince is so much lighter than the witch, even though the witch is smaller—and the witch realizes that the prince has been climbing up to see Rapunzel. Maybe not quite so airheaded. Just a little reckless.
“Mom, do you know anyone who’s gay?”
She wrinkles her nose and gives me a funny look. “Nandé?”
“It uh . . . came up at school. In history,” I lie. “How uh . . . social attitudes toward different minority groups change over time.”
Mom blows on her tea and shakes her head. “Just your math teacher from sixth grade. Mr. Freiberg?” I nod. Mr. Freiberg was a walking stereotype. “You know,” she continues thoughtfully, “Shizuka-obasan married a gay.” Mom’s baby sister? I know she was divorced once, when I was a baby—is this why?
“You mean a gay person?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. She married a gay,” she repeats, thinking that I am expressing shock, rather than correcting her language. “That’s why she’s divorce and no children. So I know about the gay people.” She looks at me across her cup of tea. “I’m not as innocent as you think.”
“Na?ve, Mom. Innocent means you didn’t do it. Na?ve means you didn’t know it.” Suddenly I am sure that her look means that she does know it—about me. Quelling my panic, I return to the subject of my former uncle. “How did she know he was gay?”
“It was arrange-marriage,” she says, as if that explains everything.
“So?”
“So after they got married, he didn’t want to have a sex. So she figured out.”
“But why didn’t she figure it out earlier? Like while they were engaged or something?”
She draws herself up and says haughtily, “Japanese people have moral. They don’t have a sex all the time before marriage, like Americans.”
I happen to know that this is wrong, because in Health Ed last year we had to research attitudes toward premarital sex in different countries, and the teacher gave me an article about the huge popularity of Japanese “love hotels” that rent rooms by the hour to unmarried couples. “What about love hotels?” I say.
Mom turns up her nose and sniffs. “Only the loose-moral people in the city go to love hotels.” Of course that’s what she thinks. But as always, there’s no point in trying to change her mind.
So I just ask, “Why did he even marry her in the first place?”
She shrugs and sips her tea. “He wanted to get married like the respectable person.”
“So then why did he tell her after he married her?”
“He didn’t tell her. I told you, she figured out.”