11
Mother was sitting in her green stuffed rocking chair when I walked through the door. 'You can turn around and walk right out. I know everything that went on up there, the dean of women called me up. You just turn your ass around and get out.'
'Mom, you only know what they told you.'
'I know you let your ass run away with your head, that's what I know. A queer, I raised a queer, that's what I know. You're lower than them dirty fruit pickers in the groves, you know that?'
'Mom, you don't understand anything. Why don't you let me tell my side of it?'
'I don't want to hear nothing you can say. You always were a bad one. You never obeyed nobody's rules—mine, the school's, and now you go defying God's rules. Go on and get outa here. I don't want you. Why the hell you even bother to come back here?'
'Because you're the only family I got. Where else am I gonna go?'
'That's your problem, smart-pants. You'll have no friends and you got no family. Let's see how far you get, you little snot-nose. You thought you'd go to college and be better than me. You thought you'd go mix with the rich. And you still think you're dandy, don't you? Even being a stinking queer don't shake you none. I can see conceit writ all over your face. Well, I hope I live to see the day you put your tail between your legs. I'll laugh right in your face.'
'Then you'd better live to see me dead.' I picked up my suitcase by the door and walked out into the cool night air. I had $14.61 in my jeans, that's what was left over from Faye's money and the remains of mine after the bus ticket. That wouldn't get me half to New York City. And that's where I was going. There are so many queers in New York that one more wouldn't rock the boat.
I walked down northeast 14th Street to Route 1 and there I parked my suitcase on the ground and stuck out my thumb. Nobody seemed to notice me. I was beginning to think I'd have to walk to New York when a station wagon with Georgia plates pulled up.
A man, woman, and child sat inside looking me over. The woman motioned for me to hop in. She started right up. 'My husband thought you must be some stranded college student. Came on down here for a break and your money run out, did it?'
'Yes ma'am, that's exactly what happened and you know I couldn't tell my parents I was down here. They'd have fits.'
The man chuckled. 'Kids. Where do you go to school?'
'Oh, I go to Barnard up in New York City.'
'Oh, you do have a long way to go,' the woman said.
'Yes ma'am. And I bet you all aren't going up that far are you?'
'No, but we're going as far north as Statesboro, Georgia.' She laughed.
'You got spunk hitching,' her husband admired. 'I've never seen a girl hitch before.'
'Maybe you've never seen a girl broke before.'
They both roared and agreed that the days of flaming youth were back in style. They were nice people, homey, suburban, and boring, but nice all the same. They warned me not to get in a car with more than one man in it and to try to hold out for a car with a woman passenger. When they left me off at the Gulf station in Statesboro the man gave me a ten-dollar bill and wished me luck. They waved goodbye as they drove off into the sunset of the nuclear family.
I took up under an aging tree drenched in Spanish moss. After three or more hours a car finally pulled over. The driver was near my age, clean-cut, and alone. Well, if he tries anything, I have a fighting chance.
'Hi, how far are you going?'
'All the way to New York City.'
'Come on in, you hit the jackpot. I'm going to Boston.'
