Uncle Jimmy

Janelle is my oldest friend, but the word “friend” is outdated. We are sitting in a diner that smells of old oil and toxic cleaning solution. My personal chef prepared a salmon benedict an hour before we got on the road, which Janelle refused before plopping down on an antique divan and barely looking at my wife, Gita, who had just come in from a jog.

I try not to gawk at the way she shoves strips of bacon into her mouth.

“You not gon’ eat?” She drags some through syrup.

“Do you recall the day Uncle Jimmy arrived?” It’s an overt redirect, but the place disorients me.

“Nope.”

“He came to pick you up from school.” One look at her coats my tongue, thick and buttery, with its former southern twang like I never left, though I haven’t lived down south in years.

She had shown up on my doorstep at dawn, looking like a castaway washed up and stranded in an unknown land, the decade since I had last seen her swirling circles of fatigue around her eyes. She had driven all night. South Carolina to Philadelphia is a stretch for anyone, but it takes stamina and soul for someone who only leaves home to go to church, who believes that people who move away are heathens hiding something. She stood next to a painting Gita and I bought in Senegal of one woman cradling another in her lap, laid in broad, blue strokes. On an antique table behind her in the foyer were souvenirs from my diplomacy assignments in Açores, Guatemala, and Tokyo.

“My uncle. Jimmy. James.” Her voice crumbled. I reached to embrace her—what any friend would do—but she drew back.

She proceeded to inform me that Uncle Jimmy’s church wouldn’t bury him because of the manner in which he had died. They found him on the bathroom floor with his head busted open and a needle in his arm. I’d called him uncle since the year he lived with Janelle’s family when we were twelve. I remembered that mammoth of a man, that bigness of heart. Only something insidious could have taken him down, a secret battle fought so long that he forgot he was fighting some days, an enemy that hit him with a sneak attack when something else had him down. A church member was praying with him, like an AA sponsor, but the Church of the Light Fellows doesn’t allow help from secular sources. Jimmy vowed to never touch substances. His death proved he’d broken it—the church had washed their hands. Standing in my living room, I willed Janelle to see through the church nonsense, but she’d been a Light Fellow even longer than Jimmy.

“Jimmy needed professional help. Not no pastor praying for him.” I was speaking frankly, but if there was anything my diplomatic career had taught me, it was that sometimes the best words are the plainest.

Before I could ask why she’d come all the way to Philadelphia to tell me what my mama would likely tell me on the phone, she came out and said it: she needed my help. She knew how much I loved Jimmy and didn’t know who else to ask. My secretary adjusted the calendar. Gita held me. Janelle refused the breakfast offer, glanced in Gita’s direction like homosexuality was contagious, and headed off to wait in the car. Gita noticed but was too concerned about me to care.

“LaTrice, he was your first queer role model. It’s okay to cry,” she whispered in my ear, even though I hadn’t shed a tear. I took a few breaths and shook myself from her arms. By noon, I was in Janelle’s car heading south.

I offer to drive when we leave the diner so Janelle can get some rest, and then I end up rambling on about my travels. She drove through three states to ask me to help bury her uncle, and somehow, I’m still trying to impress her. I ask no questions about her life. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing of interest to say—every time I go home, the place appears frozen in time as if a plastic cover, like the one Mama keeps on the living room furniture, has been stretched out over everything, distorting definition and blurring the visual field but keeping it all locked in place.

“You want some gum?” she says, the words riding the tail end of a sigh.

“Gum? Sure.”

She digs through her purse and drops a tab in my hand. “It’ll help you relax.”

“Is that so? Is it a specialty gum?” I sound a bit too chipper.

“A specialty gum? What?” She snorts and I giggle, only mildly embarrassed.

Her sense of humor isn’t dead, at least, though she side-eyes me like mine is. But then again, Janelle has always looked at everyone that way—like she gets a joke the simpletons slept on. Even after joining the Light Fellows—a church in a strip mall plaza that has, for years, prophesied wrong dates for Armageddon and controlled the lives of its members with tactics that are so transparent, they’re pathetic—she still has that smirk. Even after that church drove a wedge between us that we never got around, she still has that smirk. She’s not even beautiful anymore. The rough hairline beneath her wig had shown under the light of my foyer that morning, and I looked away, ashamed of how I pitied her. Her shoes are scuffed, and there is a hole near the collar of her cardigan, which is so worn out that every time I see it when I look away from the road, I want to take a nap. In another time, I would have set her up with my stylist, but those times are as gone as our friendship. Commenting on her appearance, as I might have in the past, would close the door between us that I had apparently just opened.

We pull into Janelle’s drive after sunset with a plan to clean Jimmy’s place in the morning. She inherited her mother’s house—a squat, brick bungalow with wooden shutters on the windows. The shutters had been red when we were kids, but now the paint is no more than a sad, understated pink as if it trudged through the years in a depressing time lapse. We enter the house through the basement. It had once seemed like another world to me. Jimmy hasn’t lived there since I was twelve, but I somehow expect it to be exactly as he left it when the basement was his room. Instead, it’s at capacity, every inch commandeered by Light Fellow Bibles and pamphlets. I picture Janelle hiding out down there with her husband and kids, anticipating Armageddon.

“We keep our ministry materials here now,” she says, gesturing like the room is filled with golden coins. I pretend to be impressed.

Decades earlier, about a week after Uncle Jimmy had arrived, Janelle and I crept by that same room. She shot a devilish look and swayed her shoulder across the door until it swung open, and we stood in full view of Jimmy. He had installed a makeup counter with a row of spotlights that bathed the room in warm light. There were enough mannequin heads for a beauty store. He moved like lightning, dropping makeup brushes, hair gel, and eye shadow into a ginormous black handbag. I wanted to hide.

“I know you didn’t come in here and not speak,” he said finally, not breaking his motion.

“Hi, Uncle Jimmy,” said Janelle.

“Hi,” I said, my voice a whisper. “I like your room.”

“What do you like most?” He looked up at me with a smile.

I shrugged. He paused, raised his eyebrows to coax another word.

“I … like … the lights.” The words sputtered out into the air, and he caught them, delighted.

“Go on and stand in ‘em, then.”

“Come on!” Janelle shrieked and ran down ahead of me and, then we all stood in Jimmy’s mirror.

“Janelle has cheekbones like her mama.” He gazed at her with naked adoration and turned to me.

“Whew! Girl, you got eyes that look at something and really see it! But don’t worry, you can trust what you see.” His regard was so serious that it was tangible, and I grasped it like a gem that could tell my future. Then he grabbed his bag and told us to get the hell out of his room.

The first time I saw him was a day when middle school had wrapped loneliness around my neck so tight that I forgot how to talk. We were waiting for the bus after school. On a typical day, Janelle pulled me to the back of the bus, and I hesitated until she stomped her foot like I was slow or dumb. I was neither, just risk averse—the kind of kid who looked at hyped-up teenagers running to a fight and, sensing imminent threat, searched for a path the other way. Janelle knew how to navigate all of it: she hoofed in crowds toward cat fights, slayed in every class, and clowned any kid who stepped to us for wearing reject sneakers. On the bus, we would lay our heads on each other, and, as the tires crunched over the gravel to take us to the other side of town, near her body, I would remember how to breathe. But Uncle Jimmy showed up before the bus that day. Janelle hollered his name. I ducked and swung my head around and saw him: a planet in his own rite, orbiting in his own moons and stars. He had finger waves in the back of his head, a curly fade on top, hazel contact lenses, and wet, glossy, pink lips. He took Janelle home, and I rode the bus alone, but I could have stared at him for the rest of the afternoon. I could hardly wait to ask Mama about him.

He was Miss Jamison’s baby brother, back home from working in Atlanta as a celebrity stylist. I didn’t know that our town of browned fields, abandoned neighborhoods, and buildings haunted by Jim Crow had ever produced the likes of him.

“Jimmy been like that since he was little,” Mama said when she finished delivering the intel. If my mother ever said that now, I’d challenge her: Like what? Motivated? Stylish? Successful? But I knew what she meant.

That night, I went to bed and dreamt of him. His face blurred into mine, and for the first time that I can remember, I imagined being free.

After the day when we looked at ourselves in his mirror, Jimmy never let us into his room without a conversation. We discussed world politics and issues in our community, like why our grocery store and the one across town had different food selections and why there were so few healthy options at ours. We took each other to task, pushed each other to ask better questions. Whatever we liked, he wanted us to show it. Out loud. No secrets. I liked his white jean jacket; he made me wear it for an afternoon. Janelle loved New Edition; he made her learn the moves from the “Can You Stand the Rain” video. He had a Bobby Brown “It’s My Prerogative” poster on his wall, and he explained how Bobby’s thin mustache created an illusion that made his lips look fuller and even more beautiful, and then leaned over and kissed Bobby right on the lips.

Janelle drops me off at my mother’s. Mama isn’t surprised that they won’t bury Jimmy. She never gotten over how the Light Fellows changed Janelle’s mother, Miss Jamison, who was an old friend, but Mama is more at peace about it than I will ever be. She has a well-honed habit of forgiving churches, an ancestral reflex that I never developed.

My eyes scan the hallway, searching for the travel souvenirs I’ve gifted her over the years, before I realize she’s moved them to a smaller shelf.

“Where’s that turquoise from Bali?” I search for it behind a stack of old magazines and yank back my hand when I realize my palms are in a pile of dust.

“I didn’t know you were coming, you know,” she offers as more of an explanation than an apology.

“You should let me hire someone to do your cleaning.”

“What I look like, having somebody over here all up in my stuff? You hungry?”

I know she has stew chicken simmering on the stove without lifting a lid. We ate stew chicken so much when I was a kid that the earthy, oniony smell is as fixed to the house as the first nails of foundation. Since I stopped eating meat, the most I can partake of my mother’s staple dish is the broth poured over white rice with a few bits of carrot scooped in for good measure.

I find the turquoise, dulled with grime, behind a picture of me in pigtails. The photo is crooked in the frame. I snatch a kleenex and dust it off and take the turquoise to the sink for a scrub, barely hiding my disgust.

“What you mad about?” She puts a plate of food on the table.

“I’m not angry, Mama,” I say and take a bite. The carrot is so stewed down that it’s no more than orange mush with dubious nutritional value, but the flavor is so familiar, it’s flawless.

“Geraldine called. She’s ready to see you at service tomorrow.” She stares at me while I eat.

“I haven’t decided whether I’m going to church.”

“Take your day of rest then. The Lord knows your heart.” She takes a breath like it’s something she’s rehearsed.

I don’t remember the last time I went to church with Mama. When I was last at home, Gita had accompanied her while I spent the morning catching up on emails. They came home buzzing about the sermon, making plans to cook together. Gita came into the bedroom and said I should have gone. Then she started pacing around with the kind of energy I’ve trained myself to let dissipate before engaging.

“Your mother needs you.” She closed my laptop and looked up at the ceiling like she was calling down some spirit to find the words to say to me.

“Sorry, sweetie, coming down south and going to church with my mother one Sunday doesn’t make you an expert on her needs,” I said and restarted my computer. She slammed the door on her way out, and she and Mama were cackling in the kitchen before I’d calmed down. The meal they made—Mama’s soul food with hints of Moroccan spices from Gita’s homeland that they managed to find at the supermarket—tasted like the past, present, and future, but I still didn’t talk to Gita for the rest of the time we were there.

The morning after Janelle drops me off, my body aches from either the drive or the box spring mattress in my old bedroom. I roll over and leave a voice memo for my secretary to make a chiropractor appointment and close my eyes, thinking I’d slept through church and dodged a bullet, but I hear Mama in the kitchen a short while later. When I come in, she looks at me, giddy as a child, from where she stands stirring mountains of instant coffee into a yellowing mug. She was out shopping.

“Look what I found on sale!” She shakes a bag of rice flour. “I’m ’bout to make my baby some of those gluten-free pancakes. They got a recipe on here! Watch out now!”

I clap my hand over my mouth and hug her. Before I know it, I decide to go to church with her.

We walk in, hand in hand, Mama pumping my fist like she’s parading a prize. I catch myself looking for Janelle and Jimmy in their old pew, but they haven’t been to that church in decades, and Jimmy is two weeks dead. When I was a kid, I used to wear socks with lace ruffles and patent leather shoes that hurt my feet so bad I’d sit through the whole sermon imagining my toe trapped like a can weenie, screaming to get out. The week Uncle Jimmy arrived, he wore a skinny tie and scratched his neck under the collar and wriggled the knot every few minutes. When he did that, I wriggled my toe like there was some kind of unconscious solidarity, and I swear it gave me some relief. He kept his chin pointed forward, and sometimes, he put his hand in the air when the spirit got him. The spirit never got me. I didn’t care about stuff that made people feel bad about themselves just so they could repent on Sunday, feel better, and repeat the same cycle the next week. Church was about seeing Janelle and being next to Mama. No matter how much I wished otherwise, the spirit eluded me like the butterflies Janelle and I spent hours chasing with cupped hands extended in the air, gleeful at the chase but never victorious. But you absorb a lot, even without paying attention. No matter how many cathedral domes I’ve stood under, or how many mosques I’ve veiled my head to enter, I still find words from those old sermons from my family’s church bobbing around my head. I once heard someone say that it didn’t matter if you hadn’t been to church in a month of Sundays; if you were in a pinch, you would pray to the first God you knew because the relationship is in your DNA. No expiration date. I don’t know about that. Being here with Mama is more a study than anything else: how she closes her eyes and sways when the pastor’s voice swells, how she jumps to her feet when the choir gets going, though I know her knees ache, how her shoulders move in time to something invisible in the pauses between sound. My eyes dart around the congregation: she isn’t alone, but they are all in their own private devotions. Aside from making love with Gita, almost nothing moves me that way. As usual, Mama has on so much perfume, I think I’m wearing it. But when she reaches over and takes my hand, something in me wants the scent to never wash off.

I went to the county fair with Janelle and Uncle Jimmy that year. I sat in the back seat, watching Uncle Jimmy’s head with the Luther Vandross curly texturizer bop along to an Earth, Wind and Fire jam. He tried to make us sing along, but I was too shy.

“Aww. Baby girl, just sing.” Jimmy laughed when I looked out the window. Janelle sucked her teeth, cut her eyes at me, and sang with Jimmy.

We rode all of the roller coasters. On the last one, I grabbed Janelle’s hand at the top of a drop and pulled it away after the thrill passed, but she took it back and didn’t let go until we left the park. Back at her place, we laid on our bellies, sticking pink, yellow, and blue wads of cotton candy on our tongues. She asked whether her tongue looked blue or purple, like there was only one right answer. I shrugged. She glared at me.

“Quit acting shy!” she said and started tickling me.

“Quit! I’m ticklish!” I shrieked, blocking her with my elbows.

She grabbed my waist and tickled until I rolled over. In a fit of giggles, she straddled my stomach. One of her braids was coming undone. She smelled like cotton candy. She paused. I caught my breath. Then she kissed me. She looked frightened—her eyes bright and surprised, like headlights were flashing in them—but I felt anything but scared. I felt peaceful, as if I’d been discovered after a long game of hide-and-seek where I had chosen a too-good hiding spot.

That winter, we wore each other’s coats to always feel close; we saved money to buy half-moon silver chains and promised to never take them off that spring; slept in our underwear at sleepovers that spanned days all summer; and then, one day in the fall, after we went back to school, she came over to my house looking haunted, saying we were going to hell. She wasn’t even a Light Fellow then, but church girls don’t do what we were doing—not with each other. I kissed her and said I either didn’t believe or didn’t care—wherever I was going, I wanted it to be with her. She said she’d never leave me, but we were different after that. Her fears hung over us, and challenging them made me bolder. Our relationship, coupled with Uncle Jimmy’s talks, made my thoughts clearer, but it only confused her. She became more subdued, while the knots in me that I had called shyness had all but disappeared.

Janelle picks me up the next day. We pull into the parking lot at Jimmy’s, and she bows her head to pray while I stare through the windshield. The air in the apartment is stale and sad.

“Lord, cleanse this house!” she wields a can of air freshener like it’s a devil extinguisher. It’s an insufficient response, but I laugh.

In the bedroom, there is no way to tell where the trash ends and the clothes begin. There are no sheets on the bed. Any number of pill bottles litter the dresser. No theater lights line the mirror. No makeup or wig heads. No Jimmy. I feel like I am going to cry or vomit, but then a silk turquoise bathrobe with a golden peacock pattern catches my eye and makes me smile. Janelle holds it in front of her body, and the gold dances on her skin.

“James never mastered modesty.” She throws the robe down and goes outside.

Alone in Jimmy’s room, I pick up an empty bottle of cologne, conjuring what I remember of his smell, but the scent is unfamiliar—not the sleek, expensive fragrance of my memory, but an unassuming musk, like sandalwood. I open a drawer: cigarettes and used kleenex. I open another: socks and a burnt spoon. I open a third and feel my knees go weak. Janelle comes in wearing a face mask.

“What are you doing?”

I jump.

“There’s nothing here, you know. I don’t know what you think you’re looking for, but there’s nothing.”

“I’m not looking for anything.”

She looks at the open drawers.

“You think this is a Law and Order episode? It’s not. I just needed a hand is all.”

“Fine. I’m here to help.” I glance around and compose myself.

“Don’t got enough of your own stuff up there in that fancy house in Philly?” she says after a moment and laughs to herself.

“I’ll go find some bags.”

She’s on her stomach, reaching under the bed, when I come back.

“This is exactly why the brethren wouldn’t help. We are people of God. We don’t deal in uncleanliness.”

“I don’t tend to enjoy filth either,” I say and hand her a trash bag. “Did you see him often?”

“Three times a week and all day Sunday.”

“Did you ever come here?”

“What are you getting at?”

“He must have been lonely.”

“Don’t do that. Nope. You not gonna come here and talk about how he was doing.”

“Clearly he wasn’t well.”

“Big time college degree made you a genius.”

“Don’t talk about my life choices as if you didn’t have options. You had a higher GPA than I did, Janelle.”

“Don’t tell me nothing about my life, ‘Trice. Surrender to the Lord and let your soul be well.”

She sorts clothing. I clean.

“Which pile is this?” I ask a while later, pointing to the largest pile.

“The throwaways,” she says, without looking up. The gold and turquoise robe is at the bottom.

The last time we were among Jimmy’s things was the year he lived with Janelle. We snuck into his room, turned on the vanity lights, and made silly faces in the mirror. Janelle threw a blond Tina Turner wig on my head and looked at me like I was a movie star. I tugged on her jeans and moved in to kiss her.

“Think Uncle Jimmy ever wears these for his boyfriends?” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist.

“My uncle ain’t no faggot.” She jerked away from me.

“Yes, he is. You just too stupid to know it,” I said, my body trembling with sudden aggression.

She pushed me. I ripped the wig off and pushed back—harder than I realized because her body hit the ground. She jumped up, grabbed me by the collar. By the time Jimmy walked in, we were all out brawling. Makeup kits were everywhere—cracked cakes of eyeshadow, trails of purple, blue, and silver dust. It could have been a party if we weren’t scratched up and fuming.

“What in God’s name?” Jimmy screamed, running down the basement steps.

Janelle froze.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Jimmy,” she stuttered.

“Y’all little asses better start talking.” He fell to his knees, gathering his things. His armpits were stained with sweat. I hated seeing him so desperate.

“You can go to hell!” I kicked a box and sent more makeup flying and ran out of the basement.

Janelle ignored me at school and treated me like I was dead at church on Sunday. After the service, the pastor asked to see my mother and me. We went into his office, and Janelle and Miss Jamison were there, heavy with grievance.

“Janelle here has said that LaTrice has been making her do some rather disturbing things,” the pastor said.

“You gon’ have to find another little friend. Janelle is not like that,” Miss Jamison said.

“Well, ‘Trice’s not like that either.” Mama said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself.

The pastor prayed to cast the demons out of our midst. Janelle swayed like I was a bad seed she needed to be rid of, as his voice swelled just like it had during the sermon. Back in the car, I asked Mama about Uncle Jimmy.

“He’s working on those demons. That’s why he’s staying with his sister. And what’s that got to do with you?” Mama shot back like she was accusing me of something.

Jimmy moved away a short while later. We heard at church that he was back on the wrong path, that living with his sister was too hard for him. When we started high school the next year, Janelle’s mom stopped going to our church and got in deep with the Light Fellows. She took one of those free Bible studies they always offered, and that was all it took. I never imagined that Janelle would follow in her mother’s footsteps, but by the end of the year, she’d started wearing long skirts to school, answering questions with Bible verses, and avoiding me. She and Miss Jamison wanted Jimmy to join too, but I knew Jimmy was too smart for that. Being a Light Fellow meant that Janelle abandoned her college plans. For my admissions essays, I wrote about how dysfunctional democracies contribute to the rise in hate crimes against queer kids in countries around the world, borrowing things I learned from Uncle Jimmy. I didn’t let my mom read it, but I got a full ride to all my top choices, and she never asked. The summer after graduation, I left the south with no plans to come back.

Away at school, anytime I was lonely, I’d fantasize about Janelle and end up searching for Jimmy online. He wasn’t in the grasp of the Light Fellow church just yet then. He was in Manhattan, working as a makeup artist on Broadway. I imagined taking a train to New York and catching him coming out of a theater after a show. I pictured him taking me under his wing after I told him how much he’d meant to me as a kid. I would apologize about the time in the basement. I would tell him that I had come out, and that I thought of him as a hero. I tried to get as much info as I could about him whenever I called home, but Miss Jamison barely spoke to my mother anymore. At night, I fell asleep to fantasies of busting Janelle out of the church—me ripping off that long skirt; her whispering that she’d love me forever, that no crazy church could ever take her away from me.

She contacted me the year I graduated. There was a church event, and they were inviting friends, old and new, to worship with them. I drove back home and met her at the LF church wearing jeans and a necktie. When I told her that I’d landed a job in the office of a US senator and that I was dating a woman, her eyes glazed over. Uncle Jimmy was on my mind the whole service. Just when I was about to ask about him on the car ride home, Janelle told me she was engaged. I tried to tune her out while she explained to me that Light Fellows don’t date, so her supposed fiancé had expressed an interest, she hadn’t refused, and that sealed the deal on their engagement.

“You seem really serious about someone you barely know,” I said.

“I know him in Christ,” she said.

“And how long have you known him in Christ?” Sweat gathered at my temples.

“I don’t like your tone.” She sighed and looked out the window.

We drove in silence. I wanted to ask her then: Why did she lie about us when we were kids? Was she happy? How was Uncle Jimmy?

“You know, Uncle James would like to become a Light Fellow too, but he has to work on himself,” she said, changing the subject.

“Work on himself? You mean pretend to like women?” I laughed louder than was necessary.

“You clearly still have a lot to learn about the power of Christ. Bless your soul.” We didn’t speak another word.

Jimmy moved back home and joined the Light Fellows when Miss Jamison passed away a few years later. He got a studio apartment and decided to only answer to James: Jimmy was the old self, and James was the new, his sins washed away in the blood of Jesus. Mama told me someone had seen him in the Piggly Wiggly and he had looked right past them when they called him Jimmy. I was organizing my makeup and dropped a compact, scattering golden flecks all over the floor when she said his name. I smeared a brown circle with my toe and ended the call. I started seeing a new therapist. The next time I heard from Janelle, she was standing in my foyer, telling me Jimmy was dead.

We load Jimmy’s things into the car to take them to the dumpster. “You sure you won’t keep anything for yourself?” I ask, as I lug the final garbage bag into the trunk.

“He clearly had a life he never shared while he was alive. I doubt he’d want me to have any of his things.”

“Just because someone has secrets doesn’t mean—” I say.

“Don’t start with me, ‘Trice. Not today.”

“He was struggling, Nelle. You have to see that.”

I follow her into Jimmy’s room. “When we were kids—”

“Don’t go there. Look in the rear-view mirror too much, and you’ll crash, you know that.” She uses a sing-song voice like she’s doing timetables or spelling a word in a spelling bee. She’s a kid again, forcing herself to believe something just to stay safe.

“You know, it was really hard for me. Jimmy gave me a lot of courage, and he didn’t even know it. I never got to thank him.” My voice tightens around the words.

“What we were doing was wrong. James was leading a life of sin we didn’t know the half of.” She claps her hands and raises her voice like she’s daring someone to fight. I glance at her and burst into a fit of laughter.

“This is not a joke, LaTrice.”

“You’re right. It’s not funny. Jimmy’s dead, and you never loved him for who he was.”

“His name was James. And you don’t know a thing about me. Twelve hours on the road, and you didn’t fix your mouth to ask not one thing about my life. Not even once!”

I gulp. “How is your family, Janelle? You have, what … two kids now?”

She shakes her head like I’m the embodiment of every disappointment that life has dealt her. I call Mama to pick me up. As soon as I get in her car, I double the flower order for the funeral—vibrant orange tiger lilies, velvety purple African violets, and hydrangeas in every color of the rainbow. I then call to inform Janelle, and she tells me that Light Fellows do things simply; she only wants white peace lilies. I tell her that Uncle Jimmy would have hated only white flowers at his funeral, that he loved color, no matter what that cult brainwashed him to think. She ends the call.

Next to the funeral parlor entrance is a photo of Jimmy wearing a bowtie and a low fade at a Light Fellows convention. A handful of his old theater friends have gathered to pay their respects, but other than that, it will be a small service. From the photo, Jimmy’s tired eyes gaze out like they’re fixed on a deliverance no one else can see. He looks thinner than ever. I think of all the questions I would ask him if I could while Janelle greets guests.

The funeral director ushers us to sit, and I take a spot in the back row, staring at a clumsy montage of photos in the program while Janelle reads verses from the Light Fellows Bible at the podium. I have instructions to read the obituary after she is finished, but halfway through her reading, I get up. I am going to testify—speak loud and proud about what Jimmy meant to a queer kid like me, how I didn’t know my existence was possible until he sauntered into my little world, how the church robbed him of his identity and mired him in addiction. The words are burning my throat. Ghosts are pushing my feet. I will either cry or sing when I get there. I almost knock Janelle over. Mama walks in just then. She appraises the room, raising her eyebrows at the flowers. I lower my head and only realize I’m crying when a tear rolls onto the back of my hand. The program is crinkled in my palm. I pull it open, still set on testifying, and then I notice a small photo of Jimmy that I hadn’t seen before. He was in conversation with someone, his body angled toward the lens, his eyebrows arched high into his forehead, his mouth open like he was in the middle of telling a joke, geared up to laugh when he hit the punch line. For once, I stop thinking of myself when I look at him. I look at Mama, Janelle, and the small crowd and realize I didn’t know a thing about him.

We bury Jimmy that evening. It’s late summer, and the air sighs from carrying a season’s worth of heat. These nights make me love where I am from, even more than Janelle’s face lit by the setting sun crossing paths with early moonlight. She and I stand at the freshly dug plot with our arms wrapped around each other’s, an old bind like the loops of string we once made figures with, circling thread around fingertips and pulling down through a labyrinth of holes.