The Aftermath

By Ely Percy

Photography by Miranda Wipperfure, via Unsplash 

Mum is in the kitchen alphabetising the herbs and spices.  I know I’m in trouble cause this is what she does when she’s pissed off: she goes into heavy organisation mode and empties all the cupboards, and when she’s finished she moves onto the living room.

“Mum,’’ I say,” I’m really sorry you had to find out that way.’’

No answer.

She picks up a glass container of oregano and shelves it next to the mustard seeds.

‘‘I know I should have told you…’’

Peppermint, rosemary, saffron, sage…

‘‘I wanted to tell you, but I wasn’t sure how you’d react…’’

She takes the mustard seeds out, sits them on the worktop next to the peppercorns and vanilla pods.

“Mum…”

She totally ignores me.

This wasn’t the way I’d wanted things to go.  I didn’t really have a plan but this definitely wasn’t it.  My mother was not supposed to have seen what she did, and I am not supposed to be hovering at her back, begging her to talk to me while she creates culinary subcategories.

I want to tell her to stop.  I want her to look at me, to quit juggling crockery and to actually deal with this. My mother has gay friends: two men she works with; our neighbour over the road is a lesbian; she’s even been to the Polo Lounge.

Every time I try to catch her eye though, she looks away, and it makes me angrier.

Finally, she turns around and smiles at me:

“Do you like it?’’ she says. She holds up the circular rotating herb and spice rack that she’s been loading up.  It arrived by post the day before inside a six by six inch balsa wood box and is a total waste of money if you ask me.

“Great.’’ I say.  Fucking fabulous.

I want to grab the thing out of her hands and hurl it against the wall.

We have a multitude of crappy kitchenware in our house: chrome toast stands and hen-shaped egg timers and a million different pieces of Tupperware.  In a month’s time, she will have forgotten about her spice rack; will’ve moved onto a new appliance or Ideal Home contraption. In a month’s time, I will still be gay.

I suppose I thought I’d never have to come out to my family, that I could just go about my merry business shagging women in secret forever.  It was naïve, I know, especially since I kept ballsing up my cover stories.

Suddenly, she says:

“Why?”

That’s it.

I’m so unbelievably irritated by her response that I want to rip her head off.

“What do you mean ‘why’?’’

She looks at me, eyes blazing.

“Why am I gay? Why do I fancy girls? Why what?”

She drops the spice rack then, and I watch it slip from her fingers ejecting kamikaze jars that crack and splinter against the terracotta tiles.

“Shit,” she says; she bends down to pick up the glass pieces, then changes her mind, stands up straight, looks at me and growls: “now look what you’ve made me do.”

She goes off on a mega rant after that: I’m selfish apparently, and I’m going through a phase, and I’m just trying to hurt her obviously.

She goes off on a mega rant after that: I’m selfish apparently, and I’m going through a phase, and I’m just trying to hurt her obviously.

Yeah, whatever you say.  I woke up and decided one day I’d be a lesbian just for the pure hilarity of it, and so I could push your buttons.  I don’t say that, but I want to.

Mum sighs, pure heavily melodramatic: “I can’t believe what you’ve done to this family, Julie.”

“Done what?” I say.

She doesn’t answer.  She simply starts up an encore of “you’re so selfish you didn’t think about how your actions would affect the other people in your life”, oh yeah oh yeah. Followed by “you must be looking for a mother figure,” and “this will kill your granny when we tell her… you know she’s not been keeping well.”

I stand there fizzing, trying to hold it all together.  Part of me wants to jump up and down and scream at her; part wants to beg for a hug.

“And what are the neighbours going to say?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!  Who gives a fuck about the fucking stupid neighbours?!”

“Julie, don’t speak to me like that.”

Silence.  I didn’t actually mean to say ‘fuck’ because I generally don’t swear in front of my parents.

Then she hits out with:

“It’s all those queer folk you’ve been hanging around with.”

She means the one-hundred-and-one prancing poofs that you can hardly avoid when you’re doing an HNC in Community Dance.

“Oh my actual God!”

“I’ve said it time and time again, Julie…you’re very easily led.”

“Did you never wonder, mum, just why I’m hanging around with ‘all those queer folk?’’’

She sighs again.

“Does this mean you’ve slept with men as well as women?”

Then I sigh.

The answer to that question is no.  Technically, I’m still a virgin — but only if you believe the whole ‘lesbian sex is not real sex’  bullshit. No, I’ve never slept with a man and have no intention of doing so.  But there’s no way I’m telling her that. I’ve known for years what I am, and I’m happy within myself, but I also know what she’d say if I responded: I’ve already heard all the “how do you know if you’ve never tried it” shite from Nicole and all my other straight pals. I’m sick of them as well, trying to set me up with their boyfriend’s pals and ramming their ‘real’ man-girl sex opinions down my throat. They seem to think it’s ok to snog the face off other lassies in front of guys at parties, just so they can get their attention (and a free taxi home plus a tenner, in Nicole’s case), but when you mention actual lesbianism they all screw up their faces and make comments about fish.

“Well?!” she shrieks. “I’m waiting to hear what you have to say.”

I beg Mum to keep her voice down.  I don’t want Vicky to hear us arguing.  It’s bad enough my mum walked in on us nearly-naked.

She starts criticising Vicky, saying she looks weird, and that any female who wears men’s underwear has a serious want with them; and that the whole “unfortunate situation” was Vicky’s fault because she’d somehow coerced me or brainwashed me into sleeping with her.

“I think it’s disgusting that you brought THAT THING into the house.”

“Mum, don’t say that.”

“Disgusting.”

“Mum, please, she’ll hear you.”

I’m trying not to cry. It feels like a huge bubble is expanding in my throat.

“Mum, I don’t know why you’re being like this.”

She keeps at it.

“How could you bring someone like that into my house?”

I don’t reply.

“And with your younger sister in the next room…”

“She’s seventeen,” I croak.  “Somehow I think she knows what a lesbian is.”

“Lesbian!” she screams. “So you’re a lesbian now?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Her eyes are thick with tears.

“I want that thing – that person,” she says, “out of my house.”

“Mu-um!”

“I mean it Julie… By the time I get back.”

She turns and stamps past me into the hall.

 

Vicky is scanning through my bookcase.  I hope that by some miracle she hasn’t heard the conversation, but when she turns around and I see her face I know that she has.

I shut the bedroom door behind me, walk over to her.

“Did you hear that?” I say.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

She is blushing.

I am mortified.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.  I can feel myself about to break down.

“Hey, it’s ok.”

“No, it’s really not.”

She looks awkward.  I guess she’s wishing she never came home with me.  I’m sure I’ll never see her again. After all, why would any self-respecting gay want to get involved with someone with a homophobic psycho mother?

“My mum’s a cunt,” I tell her.

“I thought she was your best friend?”

“Still a cunt.”

The front door slams.

I ask her to hold me.  She does, and I burst into tears.

She squeezes me against her chest, strokes my hair.

And the whole time I’m thinking about how much of a nightmare it is, how I can’t take it back even if I wanted to, and how Vicky is being really nice but inside she probably wants to run like fuck.

“It’ll be ok, baby,” she says. “The worst is over.  I promise. There is nothing anyone can do to hurt us.”

I look into her eyes and I know she means it.  I smile. And then she kisses away tears that are running down my cheeks.  And I know this sounds cheesy but I really do feel my heart skip a beat.

And I don’t know why, but right at this moment I actually believe that together we can take on the world.

 

Originally published by Callisto journal (2016)