Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

“Let us bow our heads and pray,” Father Simon says. The mass of freshmen to Hannah’s left obeys his order, their skinny, acne-heavy faces tilted toward the bleachers. Across the gym, most of the sophomores and juniors follow suit. It is only here, in the senior section, that Hannah senses resistance. The anxious resistance of young adults, of people caught between the crayon drawings of Sunday school and the cognitive dissonance of grown-up theology.

Y’all weren’t waiting on me, were you?” She’s looking at Hannah;

Hannah watching Baker the whole time, watching how her eyes get even softer and her face looks disbelievingly happy, and how she tucks her hair self-consciously behind her ear when they all sing her name.

Hannah stands the plastic Baby Jesus on the table and dances him over to Baker’s plate until Baker, her eyes swinging sideways to meet Hannah’s, tugs him out of Hannah’s hand.

Hannah stands at the sink and rinses the plates and forks, watching Baker hug the boys goodnight. Clay’s hand lingers at the small of Baker’s back and Hannah concentrates on scraping a stubborn piece of icing off one of the plates.

Baker comes last, her long hair swinging behind her as she closes the door and turns to face the table. She meets Hannah’s eyes and her smile grows even larger than Hannah pictured.

HOW MANY TIMES ARE WE GONNA LOOK AT EACHOTHER GOD

Baker leans down and hugs Hannah from behind while the others talk and gather their trash. “Thanks,” she says quietly into Hannah’s ear.

These homoerotic ass behaviors

Hannah ignores the somersault in her stomach.

GAY

Hannah taps the salt and pepper shakers together and watches Baker sweep her long brown hair over her shoulder while she talks, and all the while Hannah feels that happy, sweet feeling in her stomach—the one she always feels when she’s with Baker, the one that’s been growing stronger and stronger inside her lately.

they roll up their shirtsleeves and fight over the chips and talk about the party on Tuesday, and all the while Hannah tries not to notice how Clay leans forward to talk to Baker with a different look in his eyes than she’s ever seen before.

It’s good, she tells herself, breathing in his scent. It’s good. It’s good.

Baker breezes into the house a few minutes later, grocery bags cutting into her arms and long brown hair falling over her floral-patterned dress, and Hannah concentrates hard on the lingering smell of Wally’s cologne.

and Baker, when Hannah shifts her head to look at her, wears the same expression Hannah has seen her wear many times before: the one that means her heart is battling with her head, that her instinct to empathize is wrestling with her compulsion to keep social order.

Ms. Carpenter shuts the door to signal the start of the class period, and the murmuring in the room trails off. Ms. Carpenter leans against the door with a funny smile on her face. “I guess we didn’t enjoy the assembly, huh?” she says. Hannah’s classmates launch into loud complaints. Ms. Carpenter’s eyebrows arch comically as she listens to them all.

There was always that one teacher, bless her heart.

They sit in silence while Hannah tries to articulate in her head. “I just…don’t like Father Simon.” “Liking and respecting are two different things.” “Well, I don’t respect him, either. Him or his religion or his faith. Any of it. It’s all just a huge fabrication that’s been used to oppress people for ages.”

“I don’t know what’s bothering you,” Ms. Carpenter says, “and I don’t need you to tell me. But I do need you to understand that words mean something, and the words you used just now were very damaging.” Hannah’s heart hammers in her chest. “I wasn’t being damaging, I was just speculating. Besides, so what if I’m right about him? How is that damaging? Because he’s not supposed to be that way?” Ms. Carpenter’s eyes rest steadily on Hannah’s. Her sharp, dark eyebrows crease inward again. “Damaging because you insinuated it would be a bad thing.”

Lowkey ate her up.

“You weren’t going for the laugh? You weren’t trying to wound? Your words were meant to hurt. Not just Father Simon, but anyone who could have been listening. What if one of the boys sitting around you yearns to be with a ‘dude,’ and you just made it clear to him that that option is repulsive?”

Tore her ass up

“Jesus, stop being so nosy. She just irritated me, okay?” Joanie bites a large pretzel in half and stares Hannah down. “You’re probably just pissed because she was right about whatever she said.”

“Will you go to the prom with me?” Hannah’s stomach hops. Wally looks earnestly at her, the question still showing in his eyes. “Yeah,” she says, and then she has the comforting sense that she is in a story, that she is correctly playing her part, that she has brought her personal touch to the role of Girl. She looks at Wally, at how he fits the role of Boy in his own way, with his fern green eyes and his square jaw and his hint of cologne, and she feels good.

“Are your parents home?” Clay asks. “No,” Hannah says, “why?” Clay takes on that look he gets when he knows he’s about to get his way. “I have some stuff in the car.” “What kind of stuff?” “Alcohol, Han, what do you think?”

You're so irritating oh my goodddddd

He wraps his arm tighter around her, and she looks up at him, and then they start kissing. And it’s exactly as she remembered: a series of motions, a mouth pushing against a mouth, a tongue sliding against a tongue, and that desperate voice, somewhere in the depths of her heart, wailing in panic. Why aren’t you liking this? Why aren’t you liking this?

Hannah feels a great anxiety in her heart, for something dangerous has grown in her, something she never planted or even wanted to plant.

Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one has to know.

So she lies to herself that everything is normal. That she is normal. She carries herself through the end of the school week by refusing to acknowledge it.

That she is normal.

Clay walks in step with Baker, teasing her about her church giggles. “We should get you tired more often,” he says, poking her arm with his palm frond.

You're soooooo funnyyyy and such a flirttt!

“Nah,” Clay says, grinning where he stands while Baker rubs sunscreen over his shoulders, “it’s just so the girls have an excuse to touch us.”

Im about to throw up.

“What’s the best make out you’ve ever had? More specifically, who was the best make out you’ve ever had?”

NENE DIOS MIO MATATE

“I should probably add that you are allowed to name someone here,” Clay says haughtily, raising his eyebrows.

Seriously kys

“Well,” he says, his voice embarrassingly hearty, “at least I know I was your best.”

HA

Tyler plays a quick succession of crowd-pleasing songs, and the party swells with peak noise when “Love Story” by Taylor Swift comes on.

This white ass fucking party

Wally smiles at her as he dances across from her, and she smiles back, fighting hard to stomp down her feelings. But she can’t ignore how Clay draws Baker in close to him and presses his forehead against hers. She can’t ignore how their bodies move together and Clay’s hand wraps around Baker’s waist. She can’t ignore how Baker seems to want it, how her hips move into his and her hand grips his upper arm.

Please. Please can you make it stop hurting it hurts so badly. I don’t want it. It hurts and I don’t want it. I’m trying to make it go away. Please, just make it go away, just make it go away.

But there’s an ancient voice deep inside of her that knows it will never go away, no matter what she does or how hard she prays.

“Let’s sing Nicki Minaj,” Luke says. “You are so fucking gay,” Clay laughs.

Everybody laugh! ha ha ha

“I’ve wanted to do this all week,” he says. His stubble burns against her chin. “Hold on. Wally, hold on.” He pulls away. His eyes are drunk; his lips are wet.

EUGHHHHHHHHHH

Around midnight, feeling tired and wrinkly from staying in the pool for so long, they grab towels and tiptoe upstairs to the family room. Clay turns on a movie and they all lay around on the couches, clutching their towels around their wet bodies and trying to stay awake on their last night.

I just KNOW they smell like chavitos prietos

And what about everything beyond that, Hannah? Tell me, how are you feeling about God at this point? Are you scared that He’s going to reject you? Maybe that He already has? Are you scared that we’re messing with something that goes all the way back to original creation? Are you scared that this is the one catch, the one thing that throws everything we’ve ever learned about God and religion into doubt?

that last part.

“Hannah,” Baker cries. “Hannah, make it stop.” “Bake?” “Make it stop,” she repeats, no longer fighting but continuing to cry. “Make it stop.”

Is it okay? The question bleeds forth from her and she imagines it rising into the sky, delivered on wind and air and atmospheric pressure until it reaches God. Is it wrong? Were we wrong?

Hannah pictures them at a fancy restaurant, strolling in hand-in-hand, Baker in the dress and Clay in the khakis, pleasing the world with their complementarity.

Hannah blushes, feeling touched that he would say that, but also sad that it doesn’t matter.

Please make it stop. Please take it away. Why can’t you just take it away. What am I doing wrong. Why did you give me these feelings. Please help me. Please.

Am I wrong? she asks. Just tell me if I am.

It feels like her sadness will stay with her forever. The future, a vague notion that at one time felt very exciting to her because it contained only possibilities, now seems like a prison sentence, a condemnation. For now that she understands the yearnings of her heart, what is she supposed to do?

Everything she’s learned about union with another person, about her body’s purpose—none of that can transfer to a girl, to Baker. Disordered. She is disordered.

She tries to ask God, but she can’t seem to find God anywhere.

She doesn’t know what’s right or wrong anymore; all she knows is this vast hollowness inside of herself—this place where God used to be, where the church used to be, where her parents used to be, where she used to be. Now there’s a heaviness inside her esophagus; a lodged stone that refuses to move, that she would like to vomit up if she could, that she could coax out with tears if only she was free enough to cry.

“You’re not—it’s not weird?” “Why would it be weird?”

But the possibility stays with her as she finally tucks in to sleep, and she wonders who the president was thinking about when he spoke those words. Was he imagining a scared teenaged girl in Louisiana? Was he imagining her?

“I’m here to talk to you,” she tells the sky. The leaves on the oak trees tickle with the breeze. The earth buzzes with insects and secrets, and Hannah listens carefully, wanting to know what they say. “Tell me what to do,” she says. “Tell me what’s right. I can’t sort the bullshit from the truth.”