Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

Hannah thinks, for the second time that night, Maybe this can be enough. “I like you, too,” Hannah says, and as soon as she speaks the words, she feels calmer, safer, like she’s finally fitting into the world.

The feeling of not totally "fitting in" to that world has only become more acute as I've grown older and more familiar with the ~progressive homophobia~ from the people in my own community alongside the familiar conservative homophobia of my childhood. Still, fitting in via these regressive hetero scripts reads like pure nightmare fuel.

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?

Lose-lose situation. Marry Wally. Marry a boy. Have the beautiful wedding in early autumn, when the air is warm and football season is in full swing. Have sex and make babies. Give them a mother and a father, that they may have casserole on the table and baseball in the yard. Go to the office holiday parties, hold onto Wally’s arm, wear a black cocktail dress and the necklace he bought her for Christmas. Grow old together. Watch him lose his hair only to grow a paunch on his waistline. Babysit the grandkids on the weekends. All the while, ignore the hole, the falsehood, in her heart.

“I think,” Hannah says evenly, tasting the words, “that I like girls in general. I think I always have.” “How long have you known?” “I don’t know—I mean, it’s like, how long have you known your own name?”

“That maybe that’s the right path for me! I mean, just because I feel a certain way, doesn’t mean I have to indulge it—doesn’t mean I have to go down that life path—” “Are you saying you like Wally now? Like, really like him?” “You ask that like it can be a straight answer.” “It is a straight answer.” “I could grow to like him! I really feel like I could. I love him in a way. I really do. He’s smart and sweet and totally devoted to his family—” “Does he make you happy?” “What?” “Does he make you happy?” Hannah hangs on the question.

Ugh, poor baby.

“Pain isn’t always a reflection of what’s right or wrong, Hannah.” “But if things were different, if I was straight, then there wouldn’t be any of this pain. You’d be okay, Baker would be okay, I would be okay. Ms. Carpenter, I just feel—I feel so lost. I can’t tell what’s right or wrong anymore. I can’t figure out the truth.

Spoiler: The pain comes from the homophobia and the expectation to conform to social norms.

It takes overwhelming amounts of bravery to call yourself out on who you are.” “It wasn’t bravery so much as an inevitability.”

An inevitability!!!

I realized I was afraid of the truth. I was scared. I felt, like—I felt like I was trapped by these feelings I didn’t want to have, and I didn’t want to deal with what it meant, and what people would say, and how I would negotiate with my faith…and I resented you for finding your way into my heart like you did. I was scared of you. Being around you, it was like—you were everything I wasn’t supposed to want. You’re—no one told me about you. When I was growing up, it was always, ‘One day, when you meet a nice boy,’ or, ‘When you have a husband….’ No one ever told me that it might be different. That it would be okay to be different. So I just—I had this deep sense of shame about myself. About the way that I felt.”