Spacewalk

Papa and I stargaze together on these hot summer nights. We go to the soccer field and lie on our backs, cool grass poking our legs and making them itch. Mama says she’s jealous of how much time we spend together. She says it ain’t normal for father and son to be so close. But the way she says it, I know she’s proud. Her jealousy is just a cover—she’s afraid anything she tells me in earnest will send me packing in the opposite direction. And she’s right, I don’t much like being praised out loud. Tonight, I’m glad it’s just me and papa.

I take a big breath, inhaling starlight like it might fill my lungs with bravery. I keep my gaze on the glorious pinpricks beaming down at me, a kind of interstellar eye contact. The stars sure do look close together from here.

“Papa?”

“Mm.” Papa doesn’t say much, but he means every word.

“I like boys.”

When I was little and fell off my bike, papa would never rush over to me. He would stand still and silent, a wave on the verge of breaking, made entirely of anticipation. When he saw me get up, or laugh instead of cry, the wave would dissipate. But those few times that I truly was hurt, like the time I broke my wrist, papa would come to my side and comfort me. He’s not a withholding man. He just believes in letting me sort out my own mess before swooping in.

In this silence, I feel something like the wave form. I’m not sure if it’ll break or not. I keep my eyes on the stars and I know he does, too. Maybe this tension isn’t the wave. It feels more like dark matter: mysterious and invisible and everywhere between us.

We lay in this new truth long enough to see stars explode from lightyears away. When papa finally gets up, he gathers his hat and his keys from the grass. He waits for me to follow. 

Together, we walk home. He still hasn’t said anything. I’m not sure if that means he knows I don’t need his help—my gayness is no broken wrist—or if he has nothing left to say to me. The silence pulses, and I think about how papa once told me that dark matter is what pushes everything in the universe apart. I feel it tugging at my every cell, tearing me apart little by little.

We arrive at the house like astronauts from a spacewalk, grounded by the gravity of my mama’s smile. She leaves her post at the stovetop where she whisks our hot chocolate, and I let myself sink into familiarity as she picks the dried grass out of my hair. In this house right now, I’m not gay. Mama doesn’t know yet, nor the yellow lightbulbs above the kitchen table. Just me and papa and the stars.

“My boys,” she glows at us. To her, the silence between us is normal. Natural. Funny how stars, galaxies apart, can look close together from the right perspective. “How was it?”

“Good. No clouds at all.” Papa responds before I can.

“Right. Good.”

We sit around the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate while mama tells us about the call she had with Betsy, the neighbourhood gossip. Sal and Mary are getting a divorce, and the Barlow kid got into Harvard. Small towns are full of buried secrets, but the ground around them always erodes away after enough time. Then, we all become archaeologists, treasuring the thing that’s been unearthed and fitting it into the history we thought we knew. After a while, I excuse myself and get ready for bed.

Not minutes after I slip under the covers, I hear a knock at my door.

“Come in.”

Papa opens the door and sits on the edge of my bed.

“It’s okay,” he says, looking down at first, but then meeting my eyes. His eyes are a little glossy. Not tears, but the possibility of them. “I’m just new to this. I just thought I knew what your future looked like. I thought I knew you. I guess I was wrong. Not too used to that.”

My relief and my sorrow harmonize. He still loves me. But I’ve disappointed him, too.

“I like girls, too,” I say, even as I shrivel up inside at the lie. I didn’t mean to say it, but before I can take it back, I can see the tension leave papa’s shoulders.

“Oh. Okay,” he says. He doesn’t say that it’s good, that it means I can still have the future he envisioned for me. But I can tell that it’s what he’s thinking. This addendum to my sexuality has granted him relief. It’s made me recognizable again. He leans down over me, kisses me on the forehead, and leaves my room while saying goodnight.

I know this means I now have another lie I either have to keep buried or uncover myself again, later. But that can wait another few years at least. Until college, maybe. I can live with it.

Papa once told me that constellations are one of the best ways to remember which star is which. The stars are woven together with the stories we tell about them, connected by fiction and wonder, not true closeness. This makes them recognizable to us. The stars themselves exist without humans seeing them, but constellations only exist because we do.

That’s all I’ve done—coated the truth with a lie to make it more recognizable. I’ll just keep this story alive until I can think of another truer story.

I wonder if any constellation has ever been pulled apart by dark matter, bent into unrecognizable shapes. I hope not. But then, there are always more stories to tell. I wonder if we’ll ever run out of stories. I wonder if I’ll ever stop needing them.

I close my eyes and even as I fall asleep, the stars keep shining. They always do.