No Looking Back

I make my way up the stone walkway that leads to the front of my mother’s house. The path cuts through the manicured lawn that stretches out in front of the ivory façade with its large gapping red entrance. She has taken exceptional care to restore the house to its former glory, even the old basketball hoop I installed over the garage has been removed and the paint has been redone to eliminate any imperfections.

I still remember the day we moved into this house. The summer before I started high school my parents decided to move out of our modest home on the outskirts of town and move into something bigger. I left the friends that I grew up with behind and settled into my new surroundings. Though I can’t complain about the life my parents provided me our lives definitely changed the moment we walked through the large red double doors for the first time.

Before moving we used to take family vacations and eat breakfast together on lazy Sundays before church. It was a simpler time when the little things mattered and we had time to enjoy each other’s company. The transition into a better neighborhood brought on the unexpected stress of obtaining and maintaining status. I busied myself with friends and sports so I wouldn’t have to sit in an empty house alone.

The house became a projection of wealth that was steadily diminishing. Furniture was rearranged to hide stains in the carpet we couldn’t afford to have removed. Curtains were draped over cracks in the walls and ceiling. Any blemish was covered up in an attempt to blend in with our neighbors. When I moved off to college and they lost the house I was flooded with a sense of relief. I thought I would never have to step foot in this house again. The ghosts of so many bad memories could be locked away here and become someone else’s problem.

In time the loss of all they had worshiped and worked so hard to attain drove my parents apart. I thought the scars were cut deep enough that they would refocus their priorities. Instead, my father never recovered and lived out the remainder of his short life chasing a dream that would always be just outside his grasp. My mother on the other hand clawed out from the ruin my father had left her in and through some savvy investments and hard work managed to buy back her house.

It’s been over a dozen years since I called this place my home. I’ve only been back a handful of times since Hannah and I got married. When Taylor was born we traveled even less and returning to our hometown seemed like a waste of our vacation time. Instead, we isolated ourselves in the city and created our own home away from our problematic pasts. I would likely never have returned if it hadn’t been for Hannah’s death.

After Hannah died I tried to maintain normalcy for Taylor, but I was quickly overwhelmed with the fact that I was now alone trying to compensate for a partner that was gone. When my mother extended an invitation to move back to our hometown and watch Taylor while I worked I jumped at the chance to change our fortunes. In my mind, this would give me that chance to get us back on our feet and give my mother a chance to spend time with her grandchild. Despite having enough room for both of us I couldn’t bring myself to live in her house again. Instead, I found a small two-bedroom house close enough to be able to drop Taylor off on the way to work.

The weight of the spare key feels heavy in the palm of my hand. I don’t even bother knocking and just let myself into the house. The tiled entrance is spotless and the railing of the grand spiral staircase leading to the bedrooms is polished to an almost unnatural shine.

“Donavan is that you?” my mother’s voice carries from the back of the house as I close the door behind me. I remove my shoes and place them next to the neon pink Sketchers Taylor picked out before we moved and make my way over to her. I find my mother in the middle of the kitchen hard at work making dinner.

“Smells good,” I say in an effort to make polite conversation. “Where’s Taylor?”

She turns towards me with a solemn look on her weathered face. “Up in your old room. He’s been locked up there since we got back from the store this afternoon.”

There is an icy chill in her voice as she places her hands on her hips expectantly. I choose my words carefully, “Did something happen today?”

“Yes,” she exhales deeply as she spits out the word at me like a reproach. “That ungrateful child of yours needs to learn some respect.”

I take a moment to calm myself before responding. Though not an angle by any means the word ungrateful has never been an adjective I would use to describe my son. In what I hope is a neutral tone I ask my mother “what happened?”

“Well everything was going alright until I took him to get his haircut,” she puts a strong emphasis on the last word.

“Haircut?” I try to make sense of what she has told me so far. “I told you I was going to take him this weekend, he’s particular about how it’s cut...”

“Cut!? Honestly, that child hasn’t had a proper haircut in years. It was well past his shoulders, and you have the audacity to put it in a ponytail.”

Her words buzz around my head like an electric pulse, triggering every parental alarm I have. I turn on the spot and run up to my old room. When I try to turn the handle I find it’s locked.

“Tay! Open up its dad,” I yell through the door and put my ear up against the frame. Faintly I hear a sniffling sound coming from behind the door a second before it flies open. Standing in the doorway is my son, though he is nearly unrecognizable from the child I dropped off this morning. His eyes are red and swollen from crying for who knows how long. He is no longer wearing the outfit I brought him in this morning. But the most striking difference to his appearance is his hair. Gone is his long flowing ponytail that I meticulously tamed this morning with hair clips and rubber bands. He stands in the doorway, arms wrapped around his chest gauging my reaction. I run into the room and pull him into a hug.

“What happened buddy?” I ask as I run my fingers through his tightly cropped hair.

“I…I was distracted by the movie they were showing at the haircut place,” his voice catches in his throat repeatedly as he tries to explain. “I t…tr..tried to tell grandma how I wanted it cut. She said sh…sh..she knew how I liked it so I just watched the movie and t…tr…trusted her.”

I can feel the betrayal radiating from him as he pauses to catch his breath. “What happened after that?” I ask gently.

“I heard the haircut lady say sh..she was done and I looked in the mirror,” he wraps his arms tightly around my throats as he talks. “All my hair was gone. When I started to cry grandma told me that now that I have a big boy haircut and need to start acting like one and st..stop crying.”

With that, the rest of his words become unintelligible as they mix up with his tears and sobs. I hold him tightly and try to comfort him. I don’t know how long we stand linked in that room but I know I have to get him out of there and back to our house. As gently as I can I pull us apart so I can speak to him more clearly.

“I need to go have a talk with grandma,” I look into his swollen face and hand him his backpack. “I need you to pack everything that is yours and be ready to leave, ok?”

He nods and begins packing up his toys and clothes as I head back downstairs. I find my mother putting the finishing touches on dinner.

“How dare you!” I shout as I burst into the kitchen.

“Don’t you dare raise your voice to me in my own house!” she yells back abandoning her cooking.

“Why did you chop all his hair off? He’s been growing it out for nearly two years now!”

“I have never told you how to raise your child while you and Hannah were away,” she fixes me with a disapproving stare. “How you allowed your child to dress and act like a girl was beyond me, but it was what you wanted to do. But if I am going to care for that child I’m going to raise him the way he should have been raised from the beginning. He will grow to be a man in this household, rather than the little freak you and Hannah have allowed him to become.”

I don’t hear Taylor enter the kitchen but I feel his eyes on me as it becomes clear that she has been waiting years for this moment. The ability to influence how my child is raised and undo so much of what Hannah and I have done to allow Taylor to be his true self.

“You can’t change him with a haircut and clothes. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, he identifies as male but prefers long hair and would rather play with a Barbie than a G.I.Joe. This is who he has been since he was four!” I yell back as I try to usher Taylor out of the house.

“And you think that’s normal,” the sarcasm is thick in her voice. “He is a boy, Donavan, you have to raise him to become a man. How did I go so wrong that you have forgotten that lesson?”

“That’s enough!” the anger in my voice cuts through her shrieks. “Hannah and I have raised Taylor to be unashamed of who he is. Haircuts, toys, and clothes are not going to change who he is. However, the bigotry you are showing now speaks more of what you fear than it does of my child’s character.”

The disgust on her face accentuates her wrinkles. It dawns on me that I’ve seen that look before. Whenever there was a new crack on the wall or a stain on the carpet she would look at it with the same expression she is fixing Taylor and me with now. We are just blemishes on her legacy that she has to paint over and undo. I grab Taylor's hand and we start making our way to the main entrance to get our shoes on.

“If you walk out that door, you’ll never be welcome here again!” her voice follows us through the hallway.

I turn and face her one last time, “then you have allowed your own hatred and bigotry to remove you from our lives. He’s only seven now, so that is a whole lot of time you’re missing out on. I hope you can live with that.”

Once our shoes are on I sweep Taylor out of the house and into his booster seat. As the engine comes alive I see her standing on the front porch defiantly, as if daring me to go back. I throw the car into drive watch the house shrink into the distance, determined never to return again.

I glance at the rearview mirror and look in the back seat. The dying light from the setting sun illuminates Taylor’s face. Tears flow freely down his cheeks as he strokes what’s left of his newly cut hair. His chest rises and falls in sporadic burst as he fights through silent sobs.

The car jerks to a stop as I hit the button for the garage door. Before I even get my seatbelt off Taylor has managed to get out of his seat and sprints into the house. I don’t know what to say to my child to frame the events that conspired today. I grip the steering wheel tightly and take deep breaths willing myself to follow him into the house.

A cacophony of sounds from upstairs bombards me as I walk into the house. The unmistakable clunk of toys being thrown into the trash raises my senses and draws me upstairs. Taking the steps two at a time I bust into Taylor’s room. I am not prepared for the sight I walk in on. The doll collection he has so meticulously curated is piled high into a heap in the trash bin. The dollhouse I spent hours building last Christmas lays discarded in splinters at the back of the room. In a single movement, I rush forward to catch hold of him around the waist as he goes to rip a Frozen poster off the wall.

“NO!” He screams out into the night as I try to hold him tight in the middle of the room. “NO! It all needs to go! She was right! I am not normal. I’m a freak! I need to get rid of it all!”

I don’t release my grip on him as he thrashes around trying to escape. I barely manage to duck his flailing arms as he tries to break my grip and regain his path of destruction. My words can’t reach him, so I just hold on trying to pull him into an embrace.

“Just let me destroy it all!” his screams start to soften after our continued struggle. His voice is barely audible when he speaks again, “please, I just want to be normal. Let me be normal!”

At that moment the strength goes out of his body. I hold him tight to my chest as he shakes uncontrollably while he weeps. With a gentle kiss on his forehead, I lean in and whisper into his ear, “I just want you to be you. 100%, unapologetically you.”