{"id":15927,"date":"2016-09-08T14:47:57","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T14:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/proudparenting.com\/?p=15927"},"modified":"2016-09-08T15:07:29","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T15:07:29","slug":"taught-hate-lesbian-neighbors-took-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proudparenting.com\/2016\/09\/taught-hate-lesbian-neighbors-took-anyway\/","title":{"rendered":"I was taught to hate my lesbian neighbors. They took me in anyway."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"narratively\"
\nThe summer my parents\u2019 marriage was falling apart, my best friend\u2019s two moms saved me \u2014 even though my dad said they were going to Hell.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Dena Landon<\/a>
\nPublished at Narratively<\/a> Human Stories, Boldly Told<\/strong>
\nIllustration by Vinnie Neuberg<\/em><\/p>\n

“Hey Penny, is Carrie awake?” I ducked through the screen door, letting it bang shut behind me. The sun had barely crested the Seattle skyline and I was already at my best friends\u2019 house. Her mom, Joy, grabbed a bowl from the cabinets and a box of cereal and set it on the kitchen table. “I\u2019ll go check,” she said. I pulled up a stool and sat down, pouring out the sugary cereal and adding the milk that Penny, Carrie\u2019s other mom, fetched from the fridge.<\/p>\n

It was the summer before my mother left my dad. My twelve-year-old self lived in books and fantasy worlds of unicorns and dragons, rather than the real world of dark bruises and a shattered living room lamp, swept up and never discussed. Unlikely friends, proximity brought Carrie and I together more than anything else. We were the only two girls our age in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

My strictly religious family attended church every Sunday morning, worship services on Sunday night, and Wednesday night youth group. I\u2019m not sure if Carrie had ever been to church. Her two mothers, Penny and Joy, lived around the block from my parents\u2019 brick Edwardian house in a small two-story bungalow that they were constantly improving. They played the Indigo Girls on their stereo, danced around their kitchen, and talked about summer solstice as casually as my mother discussed the church bake sale.<\/p>\n

I only went back to my house to sleep, escaping out the back door every morning before my dad could catch me. If I slept through my alarm and he hadn\u2019t left yet to meet a client I\u2019d have to stand barefoot in the kitchen and recite my assigned Bible verses for the week, or share with him the prayer requests he required me to write on 3\u00d75 index cards. My mom taught kindergarten, and had the summers off, but while physically present, she wasn\u2019t really there. She moved in a daze through my father\u2019s shouted words and hid for hours in the bathroom, planning the escape she\u2019d execute later that fall.<\/p>\n

Every morning I\u2019d show up on Carrie\u2019s doorstep and her mothers took me in. They never asked why I was there, and never told me to go home. They acted like it was perfectly natural to have a second daughter.<\/p>\n

At the top of a hill that overlooked Seattle, Carrie and I roamed in and out of back alleys, eating fruit that had fallen from neighbors\u2019 trees. Ripe juice dripped down our arms, staining our cutoffs red. We rode our bikes in circles through the crushed glass and burnt stubs of fireworks left at the elementary school\u2019s concrete yard after the Fourth of July. And at nights, when the air hung hot and humid, we\u2019d play truth or dare. We prank-called the boys at school who\u2019d made us cross our legs in class. We egged the neighbor\u2019s house after she yelled at us for eating plums from her trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cTruth,\u201d I picked, tossing the well-read issue of Sassy on her bed. After I\u2019d ripped the inseam of my brand new, eighty-dollar Guess jeans trying to scale the fence around the local cemetery I\u2019d been going for the \u2018truth\u2019 option more.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever kissed a boy?\u201d Carrie asked. We collapsed into giggles, tanned legs wound together and thighs touching, and later lied to her mothers about the hot pink nail polish we\u2019d spilled on her comforter.<\/p>\n

Our games veered back and forth between the children we\u2019d been and the women we\u2019d become.<\/p>\n

Too many things were changing all around me. Earlier that year, I\u2019d read the headline “War” on a newspaper and it wasn\u2019t in a history class. Signed out of all sex education classes by my religious parents, I had no idea what was going on with my body. When short, curly hairs started appearing between my thighs I cut them off with craft scissors, stuffing them into the bathroom wastebasket. And I sensed changes coming in my family, the way you can sense a summer rainstorm hanging in the clouds just before it lets loose.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re going swimming at Greenlake, why don\u2019t you run home and grab your suit?” Penny tossed out the suggestion, and I\u2019d duck through the back alley and run home to tell my mom I probably wouldn\u2019t be back for dinner. Trips to the lake, meals out at local restaurants or crowding around their kitchen table for pizza; I took for granted that I was included. With the myopic focus of youth I never wondered why they\u2019d opened their home to me so thoroughly.<\/p>\n

That winter, my mom finally left. A \u201990s latch-key kid, I was the first one home every day. The day she moved out, I opened the back door and walked into a bare kitchen. There were no chairs in the breakfast nook, or around the dining room table. I wandered through the house, past empty closets and vanity drawers that now held only the crumbs of blue eyeshadow and pencil shavings. She\u2019d left no note, no explanation, and given him no warning. It wasn\u2019t until my twenties that I assembled all the cracked and jumbled pieces of my parents\u2019 marriage into the shape of a missing living room lamp.<\/p>\n

Once she\u2019d left, my Dad noticed how much time I\u2019d been spending at Carrie\u2019s house. \u201cHate the sin, love the sinners!\u201d he\u2019d remind me at the nightly dinners we ate around the dining room table. I now had a bedtime, and he\u2019d sit cross-legged on the floor by my futon and read passages from the Bible. I\u2019d stare out the open window, up at the stars, while he read, \u201cIf a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.\u201d Then he\u2019d quiz me.<\/p>\n

“Dena, pay attention.” He\u2019d snap his fingers under my nose. “Do you understand? Penny and Joy are going to hell, but you can save them. You have to tell them about the Good News.”<\/p>\n

I\u2019d sigh, roll on my side and present him with my back. Any rebellion, no matter how small, had to be carefully chosen. The boundary between the territory of what I could get away with and a slap across the face constantly shifted. “Yes, Dad.”<\/p>\n

My parents\u2019 divorce dragged on, and the house went up on the market. It was winter and, trapped inside, Carrie and I switched to listening to Madonna\u2019s \u201cImmaculate Collection\u201d and practicing our dance moves. We decided to stage a show for her moms in their living room, setting up chairs and bed sheets that hung from the ceiling. Wearing blazers borrowed from their closet and black bras stuffed with tissue, we went all out to re-create her \u201cExpress Yourself\u201d video.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why my Dad showed up that night to sit, awkwardly perched on the edge of a folding chair, and watch our performance. I remember his stilted clapping and forced smile, the way he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of there. And suddenly I was busy watching my younger brother and sister, preparing meals for the family, and doing laundry, without any time for childish things like playing dress-up. Early that spring we moved across the water to Bellevue, leaving behind their bad influence. Even though I begged and pleaded, somehow there was never time to go back and visit the old neighborhood. The divorce went through and my Mom moved to Bellevue, too. I didn\u2019t understand the how and why of her leaving until I was older. For years we had a difficult relationship, until I gained the maturity and experience to understand my parents\u2019 marriage.<\/p>\n

The last time I was home was for my mother\u2019s funeral, in February of 2009. Afterwards, drained and exhausted, I begged my now ex-husband to drive with me to my old house. I gave him directions, the route burned into my memory even after fifteen years. Up the hill, past the graveyard where I\u2019d torn my jeans. Around the corner, past the elementary school where they\u2019d rebuilt the playground, tearing down the old wooden structures and replacing them with bright, colored plastic.<\/p>\n

The trees had grown to shadow and shade the entrance to my old house, hiding it from the street. We parked, and my ex stayed in the car while I walked around the block and stood on a sidewalk littered with evergreen needles. When I rang the doorbell, no one answered. There were no names on the mailbox, and no way of telling if they still lived there.<\/p>\n

They chose to love me even though they knew that I was being taught to hate them. They listened to my father\u2019s lectures about Jesus with a patience borne \u2013 I can see now, out of a desire to continue being a refuge for a lost and scared little girl.<\/p>\n

For one glorious summer they gave me the gift of freedom, a home, and a safe place to hide.<\/p>\n

When I finally responded to my husband\u2019s persistent honking and turned away from their front door, words and memories jumbled inside me, clogging my throat. But as I opened the passenger door and climbed inside, I looked back at the house that had sheltered me and whispered, \u201cTell them I said ‘thank you.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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