Page 14 of Innocent

There was so much normal-kid stuff I missed out on, I guess Mom guilt-tripped Dad into paying the extra expense for me.

Wasn’t like they had Little League fees to pony up on my behalf.

I saw a whole world that felt a million miles away on that little screen. I always wanted to go to New York City, but my parents shot down that idea every time. They hated the city with a passion, as did many of their friends. The general consensus among them was that regions like ours supported the metropolis, and yet we were the ones getting shit on while the world thought New York City was the entirety of our state.

As an adult, I guess I can see their point of view, even if I disagree with it.

One of the things having a TV helped teach me was that I wasdifferent, and there were others out there likeme. I knew for a long time it wasn’t just being sick a lot that set me apart from my peers.

By the time I was in middle school, and had seen Pride celebrations on TV, I’d done enough reading and research to put a name to my difference. The days when I was home sick and Mom was working, I watched a lot of stuff—and conducted online research—that I’m sure they wouldn’t have approved of.

I taught myself what I needed to know, including the fact that I would need to continue harboring my biggest secret, if I wanted to protect myself.

Especially so following a Christmas vacation I spent in Florida with my Grandmother Miriam, who I called Mimi. I was ten, and she was my only living grandparent, my father’s mother. She and Grandpa Jordan, who I was named after, had moved to Tallahassee, Florida, when I was three, after he retired from the state’s Department of Transportation. Unfortunately, I barely remember him, because I was only five when he died of cancer.

I didn’t get to see Mimi as much as I wanted, but I talked to her several times a week on the phone. She sent me a tablet for my tenth birthday, and then we could video chat for our talks.

Her Christmas gift to me that year was flying me down to Florida to spend the winter break with her. It wasn’t the first time I’d flown there, but this was the most special trip because it was the first time I would travel by myself. She booked a direct flight for me with few stops, so I wouldn’t have to change planes. I might have been small for my age, but I was also smarter and had more common sense than most of my peers, making people think I was older than I really was.

Usually, Mimi flew up, visited with us a few days, and then I flew back with her for a few weeks in the summer. She’d fly home with me at the end of summer, spend a few more days visiting my parents and seeing old friends, and then return to Florida.

I loved Florida, especially in the winter. I loved everything about it and hated leaving at the end of my visits. I always felt more like I was at home there than I did with my parents. I had my own room and everything.

It was around this time I also got really good at skipping a majority of church, either by claiming I didn’t feel good, or that I had schoolwork to do, or that I was working on art projects for competition in the county fair—anything. I would make myself go about once a month to keep Mom and Dad happy, and I shamelessly used my “sickly nature” to my advantage.

Everyone thought I was so sweet and innocent. The truth was, I learned early on to be a chameleon. To wear my innocence and health issues as a disguise. A series of masks I could pick and choose from as needed.

Some might call that sociopathic—I call it survival.

I usually wasn’t picked on in school by the other kids because I learned how to blend in, or would play to my weaknesses for sympathy to make them look like “saviors.” Even bullies don’t want targets who are so easy it makes them look like assholes. I was never a threat to them and always an asset. Either by helping them with schoolwork or making them look good by being the friend they watched out for and earned praise from adults for taking care of. I never appeared “needy,” so there was nothing they could leverage against me.

I survived.

I’ve always been a survivor, even as a baby.

Back to that special Christmas with Mimi. I’d been sending her pictures of my drawings, but I had made a few for her that I presented to her when I arrived. It wasn’t like I could afford to buy her a present.

She teared up as she looked at them and then hugged me. I’d used photos I’d taken on my previous visit to draw pictures of some of her favorite places in the Tallahassee area.

We went the next day so she could get them professionally framed, which blew me away. Usually, Mom and Dad hunted for cheap frames from discount stores or helped me comb through thrift shops and garage sales for frames that would work.

And she had friends over for dinner that night, including Edwin and Paul, who were older men.

A couple.

I’d met them before but, for some reason, I’d thought they were just friends.

That night, the conversation definitely indicated they were more, and I realized that I had missed a lot of context during previous visits.

It was no big deal to Mimi or her other friends that Edwin and Paul were together. When Mimi discovered me alone on the screened lanai later that evening, huddled in a ball and crying, she lowered herself to the concrete pool deck next to me, wrapped her arms tightly around me, held me, and told me she loved me, no matter what.

That she wouldalwayslove me, and that I was perfect just the way I was.

That I could always tell her anything I needed to, and nothing could ever change her love for me. Because I was her little miracle, and nothing as beautiful and sweet as I was, so talented and smart, could be “wrong,” no matter what anyone else might ever tell me.

Still unable to speak my secret and shed my disguise, I let her hold me, rock me, and for a brief moment in time I thought about begging to stay with her and never going home.

Because I knew my parents, especially my father, would likely never accept me the way she did if they knew the truth about me.