Page 18 of Ink & Snow
I stopped whisking and stared real hard at him. “Why are you asking?”
He blushed, the reaction an answer all itself. “No reason. Just. Some people are really prejudiced. I’m not implying that you are. My mom sort of was. Is, I guess. She kept telling me I’d never find a nice woman looking like a criminal, and that she’d really been trying to find one from church to set me up with. At least that’s what she said when I came back and she saw me with my shirt off after I took a shower. I got most of my ink in Korea. Before that, she would just warn me about the yakuza.”
“But you went to Korea.”
He shrugged. “I’m aware.”
“And if you don’t mind the follow-up, are you not out or bi?”
“Neither. My mother isn’t one hundred percent convinced it isn’t a phase or a lifestyle choice. I never brought anyone home.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, which he accepted with a shrug. I had several more follow-ups, but I didn’t want to be too nosy. And ideally, we’d talk more very soon.
I fiddled with the gas burners, then began dipping the first slice into the batter. When I lowered it into the pan, the smell of warmed cinnamon and caramel filled my nose and made my mouth water.
Amory had come closer. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
He bobbed his head. “Do you have a family other than your aunt? Do they know you like guys? Oh, do you have a tattoo?”
“Let’s see. My aunt passed, but she knew. I came out pretty early, and she just sat me down and told me she had prepared this whole talk about being responsible when I got together with a girl and about how to locate the clitoris.”
Amory’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“No, not even a little. Aunt Hedwig was all for equal opportunities, in life and in orgasm. Anyway, she told me she’d prepared all that, even had this diagram of the female anatomy ready which she’d titled—and I kid you not—‘Oh! Marks the spot.’ She complained it was all useless, and she’d have to start fresh in her research now. The next year, she took me to my first Pride Parade.”
Amory’s eyebrows had climbed up his forehead. “Wow. I think I would have liked to meet her.”
I bit my bottom lip. A few months before Hedwig had died, I’d come to visit her. She’d known in that way people near the end do. Once the strong person who had raised me, she looked so small in her bed then. And yet her eyes had been just as clear, as full of heart and humor.
You haven’t found your man yet, and I might not be here when you do,she’d told me, and she had shushed my protests.When you find him—and you will—you tell him this from me: you tell him I’ll watch over him too from wherever I get to go next. You tell him he is family to me. Which means, he fucks up, I get to haunt him like I would my own, and I will. Then you give him a kiss from me and hold him tight.
My eyes misted with the memory, but I pushed it down, pushed it away. I said, “Hedwig was one of a kind. My mother had no interest in raising me, so Hedwig did it. As far as I know, my mom is still around. I never knew my father. I don’t have a tattoo and am not currently in the market for one.”
“That’s…a lot,” Amory said. He didn’t sound like he was pitying me, and he didn’t awkwardly force the conversation to continue.
Instead I could see the gears turning in his head, possibly looking at me in a new light. I wanted to say it didn’t bother me at all, knowing I was unwanted, but it did. Children at school had teased me about it, and the fact that I was so visibly of color yet had no connection to my non-white heritage, whatever that was, hadn’t helped. Despite every good thing Hedwig had done for me, being abandoned would always haunt me, same as every occasional visit from my mother where she would tell me whatever she thought wasn’t right with me.
But Amory didn’t say anything else. He just stood there, holding the kitten, who was slowly falling asleep again and watching me flip the French toast.
I went to get plates from one of the moving boxes and arranged the first slice when Amory started shifting from one foot to the other excitedly. “I know! I’m taking you to the carolers on Christmas Eve, and then after to the potluck at the café. That way you don’t have to be alone on Christmas Eve.”
I turned to look at him, lifting an eyebrow. “Wow. You’re really rolling out the welcome mat. I might still be a serial murderer who is looking to lock you up in my basement.”
“Your daddy is strange, little Cherry,” Amory said to the kitten.
“I’m not keeping her.”
“Shh. You’ll scare her.”
I sighed. “All right. I’ll bite. You want to drag me before the carolers. That sounds very doom and gloom. And what’s potluck at the café?”
I flipped the second piece of French toast. Amory paced up and down my kitchen excitedly. Maybe he didn’t get to do as much walking as he needed at the tattoo parlor.
“Why would you think the carolers are doom and gloom? And I’m not taking you before them. I’m taking you to see and listen to them. They’re really good. The potluck is basically a cookout in the Village Green on Christmas Eve, only it’s then moved to the Moonlight Café so everyone can get out of the cold. It’s become sort of a tradition for people to bring stuff except for those who go home and do their own thing.” He made a face. “Or go to church. The mayor provides the booze each year.”
“Nice re-election campaign.”
