Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

Hannah cannot stop looking at Baker, cannot stop yearning to take her hand or touch her waist, cannot stop wanting to make her laugh or hear what she’s going to say next.

when they stand next to each other, all of the goodness inside Hannah swims to the surface of her skin and shines outward into the air, until she feels like a conductor for light and electricity.

looks over to Baker and feels drawn to her by a force so powerful, so lovely, that she can almost see it shimmering in the air between them. She wants to go to Baker immediately, to walk on water across the space that separates them, to wrap her in a hug and hold her forever.

“You’re just—you’re so—I wish you could believe me—”

“What’s funny,” Baker says, blinking down at their sun-spoiled sweet teas in the console, “is that, when I tell you these same things about yourself, I wish you could believe me, too.”

It’s a bursting, awakening feeling. It’s so potent that it almost hurts, the way it feels to eat a morsel of food after a long period of starvation. Every nerve beneath Hannah’s skin—every deep, hidden crevice in her body—every tiny atom that makes her who she is—they all jazz to life, as if they had been long ago buried and were simply waiting to be called upon to arise.

And it’s magic, it’s sacred ritual, it’s God.

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.

“This is why I don’t like Catholicism,” Luke says as they clean up their glasses. “It seems to get in the way of everything.”

Baker closes her eyes, then shifts closer to Hannah so that they’re lined up, front to front, like two hands meeting in prayer.

Baker looks at her with desperate eyes, lit only by the brightness of the moon. “Do you think we’re wrong?” Hannah’s heart hangs heavy in her chest. “No,” she breathes, and in the silence that follows her admission, she cannot discern truth from lie.

They kiss each other beautifully but brokenly, each kiss imparting wishes and prayers and shame, their tears mixing on each other’s mouths, and in a startling moment of clarity Hannah feels God there with her, pounding in her heart, flowing through her body and blood, but whether in jubilation or admonition, she doesn’t know.

Baker’s hands wander over Hannah’s hips and around to her back, and Hannah mirrors her actions, touching the stretchy fabric of Baker’s bathing suit, then the soft nakedness of her skin.

She wraps an arm around Hannah and kisses her on the mouth, and Hannah shares in the tasting of their covenant, of the fruit of their union.

Something in the room, some invisible line between them, has broken. Hannah can almost see it: a vine that had once connected them, had once wrapped them together, now lies, butchered, on the floor.

Is it wrong? Were we wrong? She lies there, bleeding into the sky, until the sky starts to bleed red with morning.

in the midst of it all, Hannah feels the gravity of Baker’s presence and aches to go stand next to her.

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.

“There is nothing you could be that God wouldn’t love. Your deepest nature—whatever it is—is who you are, and God loves you for it. You are good. And no matter what people might say, you need to believe that.”

Hannah watches Baker again, and the ache in her heart bleeds anew.

“Because now I won’t have to take Calculus in college,” Hannah answers distractedly. “I can just take all the English and humanities classes I want.”

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?

The stars sit still in the overwhelming sky. Hannah narrows her eyes, trying to determine the colors she sees, but she can’t distinguish blue from black. The mass of the sky is impenetrable.

“I hurt you,” Baker cries. “I hurt the one person I love more than anyone else in the world.”

And Hannah knows it’s true, because she sees the proof in Baker’s eyes: they are vulnerable, and full of wonder, and begging Hannah to love her in return. And something happens in Hannah’s heart: something spreads throughout it, warm and unstoppable and steady like the sun.