“I’m sorry,” I say once we’re outside, but I don’t really know what I’m sorry for.
“You’re sorry?” she says, not nasty exactly, but maybe a bit bewildered. “What for? Because some asshole called me a name? Because I’m a dyke? Because my dad found out and kicked me out and I’m sleeping in the fucking zoo? I’m at the end of my rope here, and you’re sorry? What exactly are you sorry about?”
I really don’t know what to do. So I do something I don’t do. I put my arms around her and gently hug. She smells lightly of sweat and something I can’t place, almost like olive oil. Her thick hair wraps around my ear and envelops it, and she hugs me back a little. I want to memorize the feeling of her body against mine. When she whimpers in my ear, I pull her closer.
“All of that. I didn’t know,” I say. “I’m sorry for whatever’s going on.”
We are standing in the parking lot of the coffee shop. It’s about half-full. She walks over to a gray fence and sits down next to it on a patch of grass, so I sit down too. It feels a little homeless, actually, sitting there. Like now that I know she’s homeless, sitting in a parking lot by a fence takes on a different meaning.
“Talk to me,” I say. “What’s going on? What happened?”
She sighs. “You want the long version?”
I nod.
“It happened last week. You sure you wanna hear this?”
I nod again.
“Well, let me back up. My dad and me, we’ve always been real close, especially around sports. I’m big into track and volleyball. He’s also real religious. Took us to church every Sunday of my life that I can remember. Ate that shit up. I did too, when I was younger. All that junk about a personal relationship with Christ and offering up my sins and stuff.
“So anyway, I guess early last week, he got suspicious that I was dating some boy, because I was away from home a lot. So he tracked my cell phone. He rang the doorbell and scared the crap out of my girlfriend, Kayla, who answered the door in a robe. He barged in to Kayla’s room, and I was in her bed and I’m like, ‘Dad.’ Shit. Well, this ain’t great.
“And that wasn’t cool, because it showed no trust, and I never gave him any reason not to trust me. I never showed the man anything but respect my whole entire life. We have one of those ‘Get in my truck right now’ moments, and he drives me home. We don’t talk, don’t say a word the whole way. The next day he sits me down at the dining room table and explains that he’s made some calls. I’m going to this place called Flowing Rivers in Mesa, Arizona. I have an aunt who lives there. And this place, he explains, is going to make me straight, through the Jesus.”
“Jesus,” I say. My mind is running wild. It’s like, who does that to their daughter? Try to change her? And this other, tiny part of me is thinking, Well, could that work? Could we be a couple if you went there? Because I’d totally wait for you.
“Right?” Aisha says, rubbing her eyes. “Because let’s just say I’m no longer a believer. So I ask him, ‘What if I won’t go?’ My voice is shaking. And my voice never shakes.
“And he says, ‘I don’t know, baby girl. But whatever you do, you won’t do it here under my roof.’
“My mom didn’t feel that way, but in our house, Dad is in charge. So I went into my room and thought about it. And for a few seconds there, I was thinking, Just go to Arizona. It won’t work, you’ll leave, and either you’ll come home again and Dad will calm down, or you’ll start a new life down there. But then I thought, What if it does work?
“I saw my reflection in the mirror. I thought about how, if I changed, I’d be someone else. I like me, you know? I thought, My dad has no right. He has no right to take me out of me. So I went out and I said, ‘Dad, we can work this out. We’ll get a therapist over here, and they’ll help. I’m not a bad person; I’m just a lesbian. Have been since forever. You know me. I’m your daughter. I was always exactly this way.’ But my dad. He just wasn’t having it. He said, ‘You’re going to Mesa.’ And I said I wasn’t, and he said ‘Get out,’ and I got out.”
“Jesus,” I say again. I try to imagine being kicked out of my home. Thousands of times in New York I sat on the radiator in my room, looking out the window at the mostly closed blinds of strangers across the air shaft, thinking about what it would be like to live in one of those other apartments. Thinking maybe I should just leave. And then I was like, And do what? And that’s when that idea goes away, because a fantasy is a fantasy. And the reality? I can’t imagine a reality of being on my own with no resources that doesn’t suck.
“I packed a bag, and that night I slept in my car,” Aisha says. “The next day, I went back to Kayla’s place, but she disappears when the going gets tough, I guess, because she wasn’t so much about me staying with her. I tried a couple friends, no dice. I couchsurfed a couple days with a family I found online before I wore out my welcome. There’s a women’s shelter downtown, but the idea of living in a shelter made me feel a little too much like I was really and truly homeless, so I nixed that. I guess it was Saturday night when I decided on the zoo, mostly because it seemed remote and safe, and I like zoos. Animals. Someday, I want to be a vet. Well, I did. I was gonna study veterinary medicine at Rocky Mountain this fall, but my dad withdrew me.”
“Shit,” I say.
“And then Dad turned off my phone. Had to get a new one on my own. And it ain’t easy getting a job for the summer, and even if it was, it’s not like you can just get a job and get an apartment. You need to bankroll some cash first. I have some cash saved up, but I’ve been petrified that if I start to use it, I’ll run out and then I’d really be in a situation.
“So I slept there in the zoo, where I showed you. The last four nights now.” She sighs. “What I really want to do, I guess, is get the hell out of Billings. I mean, this place sucks, and if I’m not part of my family anymore, why not go somewhere else? But part of me feels like I have to try and make it right with Dad. And anyway, I don’t have that much money. I’m a realist. I don’t want to end up on the streets of Portland or somewhere. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but it better happen soon,” she concludes.
“That’s … wow,” I say. I can’t do any better.
“I know. Not what you signed up for, right?”
I take her hand. She looks at me and tilts her head slightly, and I remember that we’re not actually boyfriend and girlfriend. I drop it. She half smiles.
“Sorry,” I say.
She shrugs.
“My dad’s dying,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t know. Sorry.”
“I mean, for what it’s worth. I don’t want to be all, ‘Poor me, my dad is dying, waah waah waah.’ But yeah, that’s why I’m here. Before Monday, I hadn’t seen him since I was three.”
“Wow.”
“He’s a drunk. It’s a lot of fun over at our house.”
“I bet.”
“Fathers,” I say.
She snorts. “Right? What really pisses me off is the whole ‘man of God’ thing. What is that? You disown your daughter in the name of God? I grew up with that evangelical shit. I’ll tell you, the second he kicked me out, that was over. Looking up at the stars in the zoo one night, I just realized. Religion is supposed to be all about loving thy neighbor, but religious people are hypocrites. Kicking your daughter out is an act of love? Please.
“I’m glad I’m out of there,” she says, scooping some gravel up in her fingers and then throwing it back onto the ground. “I’m glad.”
I think about religious zealots, like the ones who flew into the towers on 9/11, and the people who preach damnation for sinners on the subway. Once on the downtown 1 train, this cross-eyed guy started screaming about the wrath of God, and how it’s all the gays’ fault. This militant gay dude got in the guy’s face and told him to shut up, that he didn’t need some preacher to tell him right from wrong. When he was done, most of the car clapped for him. The preacher guy got off at the next stop. I clapped too. I mean, isn’t God (who doesn’t exist, by the way) supposed to be this all-loving Father to Us All?