Visit #10: Lovelife
“That door is heavy.” Aubrielle, deVan’s possible new friend, had just strode up beside him to the first picture on the wall of the Church, the picture that was titled, “Jesus is condemned to die.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” deVan said. “I’ve been standing here for an hour.”
“I am three minutes late.”
“It seemed like an hour.”
Aubrielle looked up. “So, this is one of the Stations you talked about.”
“Yes, the first Station of the Cross.” deVan had recently informed Aubrielle of his frequent visits to the Catholic church. Of course, she wanted to join him and see things for herself, so he told her about the back door that was always ajar.
Aubrielle looked up at the picture. Jesus stood, hands tied, crown of thorns piercing his head, while several men stood around him. “That is how I pictured it.” Aubrielle, a five-star Christian, though not a Catholic, knew a lot about the Bible. “What now?”
“We go to the next Station, like a train. There are 14 of them all around the church.”
And Aubrielle and deVan walked the story. They saw Jesus take his cross. They saw him fall three times, (Jesus admitted he fell more often, though.) They saw the women weeping as he walked by. (“The men mostly ran and hid,” Aubrielle commented.) She became very quiet as she watched Jesus get his clothes stripped off, get nailed to the cross, get taken down and buried.
“Follow me,” deVan said, and they walked from the 14th Station to the 12th. Jesus was looking down from the cross. “Hello, Jesus, this is Aubrielle. She wanted to meet you.”
“Hello,” Aubrielle said as timidly as deVan had ever heard her. Her eyes widened then, and after a pause, she said, “Yes, I’m Aubrielle Vinly.”
deVan heard only Aubrielle’s voice but knew Jesus was conversing with her. He also became aware that his time with the man on the cross had come to an end. It was fine. Aubrielle knew a lot more about the Bible than deVan did; she might have more to talk about than deVan had.
deVan strode slowly and silently past the altar and through the sanctuary door. He pushed hard on the heavy outside door and squinted in the bright sunlight. “Hey deVan.”
deVan was a bit dazed as the bulky frame of Henry Slacken came into focus. Henry Slacken, the bully, deVan’s nemesis, the kid Aubrielle whacked in the face. “Henry,” he said.
Henry furrowed his brow. “I didn’t know you were an altar server.”
deVan knew Henry was Catholic and that this was probably his parish church, but he had no idea what an altar server was. “I served too,” Henry continued. “But I quit two years ago. What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean?” deVan said.
“Why are you crying?”
deVan had no idea tears were running down his cheeks. He put the fingertips of both hands on his face and confirmed it. How could he not know he was crying?
“A funeral, right?” Henry said.
“What?”
“There was a funeral in there, right?”
deVan knew the answer to this. “Yes,” he said accurately. “A funeral.”
Henry nodded wisely. “Serving a funeral mass can be sad. I get it.”
On the contrary, deVan thought. Neither of us is getting anything, although Henry seemed to have gotten everything figured out to his satisfaction. He surprised deVan by taking a seat on a small concrete pylon, getting all comfortable.
The silence that followed was less comfortable. deVan felt he couldn’t just leave, and Henry was sitting there looking down at his shoes, hands on his knees. “So,” deVan said. “You quit being an altar thingy.”
“I quit being a server two years ago. After a funeral.”
deVan took a stab. “Someone you knew?”
“Yes.”
Another silence. Henry looked like he was going to talk, and then he just exhaled.
deVan didn’t really know Henry Slacken. Henry moved into the neighborhood a couple of years ago, and it didn’t take him long to discover that deVan was transgender. Soon enough, deVan was the recipient of a full scale barrage of bullying from the former altar server and future WWE wrestler, perhaps. This ongoing encounter was less rancorous but no less disturbing.
Henry looked up. He mumbled something. “Sorry,” deVan said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“It was my sister’s funeral.” Henry almost yelled it. “My older sister.”
“Henry!” That was all deVan could think of to say.
Henry immediately took the tone he assumed when he bullied deVan. “I didn’t want to. I told my father I didn’t want to serve her funeral mass. He forced me to.”
“Why?”
Henry sniffed loudly. “He told me to be a man, to get up there and serve my sister’s mass. I yelled at him, said, okay, I’ll serve her mass, but I’ll never be a server again.”
“And you never were.”
Henry scoffed. “Never. He didn’t care, but that didn’t matter.”
deVan’s voice softened. “How did she die, Henry?”
“We were swimming. In the ocean. We swam way out; we’re both good swimmers, but Effie was really good, champion butterflier. No chance of anything going wrong.”
“What happened?”
“We were swimming along. Effie fell behind. I heard a kind of gurgle from her. When I turned around, I saw her shaking and gasping. It was awful.”
“Shaking?”
“Yes,” Henry said. “We found out later she had a seizure. She was farther away than I thought. With the waves and all, I had a hard time even getting to her. She looked like a buoy bobbing up and down. She couldn’t move her hands. When I got to her, she was unconscious and went limp in my arms.”
deVan stayed silent as Henry gathered himself to continue.
“It took a long, long time to get her to shore. No one even heard me yelling till I was pretty close. Then a bunch of people swam out. I was screaming help her help her but I knew.”
deVan was shaken. “Were your parents there?”
“No. They were back at the rental. I went in the ambulance to the hospital and they met us there. The doctor was sitting beside me when they ran in. She walked up to them and told them. Mom started screaming and fell on her knees. My father did what he always did and got mad, told the doctor to take him to Effie. He just left Mom there on the floor. I went to her, got her to a chair.”
deVan had been standing in front of Henry the whole time. “That’s the awfulest thing I ever heard. But you never left her, right?”
“I would have drowned myself rather than leave her out there.”
“That’s brave.”
“Not if you asked my father. Even after he found out about the seizure — the doctors said it was amazing I could get her in like I did — he blamed me, said I could have done more because I’m a man.”
“You couldn’t have done more, though. You couldn’t, Henry.”
“I know.”
“You were brave.”
“I wasn’t brave, deVan. She was my sister.”
“I know what you mean, Henry. You loved her. That’s all it took really.”
Henry nodded. He hadn’t cried this whole time. He would, but later.
“You’re the first person I told about Effie since I moved here.”
deVan smiled. “You can trust me to keep a secret because you’d squish my head if I didn’t.”
Henry couldn’t help smiling a bit himself. “Yes, that’s true. But I know I can trust you anyways.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re different, deVan.”
“Yes, Henry. You remind me of that every day.”
“No, it’s not that.” Henry took a breath. “Yeah, well, it kind of is that. Most guys hate it if they don’t fit in. That’s where you’re different. You fit in where you fit in, and when you don’t fit in, you just don’t and you’re okay with that. Even if people make fun of you.”
deVan shrugged. “It’s too much trouble trying to be what I’m not.”
Henry looked him in the eye. “It’s a lot of trouble being who you are, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But it’s who I am. That makes it worth the trouble.”
“deVan,” Henry said. “You’re the one who’s brave. My father should meet you.”
“What?” deVan said. “Why?”
Henry smirked. “He’d see what a real man is.”
