The Plot.

Staying off script.

Unlike menstruation, marriage was something that - in the back of my head - I was cognizant of as being this inevitable part of my future for as long as I can remember. School, job, marriage, children, retirement, death. It was as much of a fact of life as reading off the months on a calendar. There was nothing to be done about it and there was nothing to have an opinion about. It is simply what will come to pass. At no point in my childhood, however, did I make an association between marriage and romance. 

By every measure, I believe I grew up in a wonderful household. It is through watching my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles that I formed an understanding of what marriage was, dismissing the noise of popular media as a work of fiction. You can’t just go around believing what you see on TV, after all. So at the holiday dinner table, I would look around me and see adults who reinforced the same values I’d encountered in my other familial setting - church. Respect your parents. Work hard. Stay out of trouble. Do well by your community. 

How many times was I out in groups picking up trash around the neighborhood? How many times was I brought to homes for senior citizens? How many times was I stopped at the front door of the house by my parents if a single hair was out of place? Because once you go out there it’s not just about you, it’s about what you represent. 

Even as I grew older and encountered new ideas and circumstances, most of them were generally spoken about as if they only applied to white people. Because they just do things differently “over there” in their own homes. It made enough sense to me. I understood the concept of cultural differences. Examples? ADHD, therapy and “mental health days,” taking a gap year to “find yourself,” anorexia, cutting your wrists, and all this talk of sexual orientation. I’m talking about the 2000s here. I guess I wasn’t under the impression that none of this existed amongst black people, it just wasn’t talked about in my familial circles. Keep it to yourself and get to work. It’s only a problem if you let it become a problem. 

Which brings us back to marriage. Who is the right man to fit into this familial equation? Is he from the right place? Are his parents the right kind of people? Did he go to the right college? Does he have a career? Is he black? Is he Christian? Can he go toe to toe with your father in a conversation about obscure mechanics? Even during my college years when I felt perfectly at liberty to not think about dating at all (college was for studying), that is how I thought about “romantic relationships.” You know, the sensible way. Figuring out how someone fits into the larger picture rather than how they fit with me as an individual. I’d tapped myself out years ago. I knew that someday if a man came along who checked all the boxes for the collective, it would be seen as unreasonable to say no. I figured at best I’d find myself in a bit of a bachelorette situation with a lineup of family approved rapists to pick from. 

How am I ever going to get married? It’s an odd first thought to have after being… assaulted is a strong word. I still think it’s best to go with “forcibly apprehended with sexual intent resulting in severe demoralization.” Because by that point I had turned down a few men who I suspected my family would like. Their anger felt justified. I’d stuck with the plan I’d hatched long ago to be repulsive to any men who tried to come near me because if they left on their own there would be no dilemma until I got old enough that people would begin asking questions.  

“Don’t let this experience color your opinion of other men,” my mother told me on the phone the next night. Again, an odd first piece of advice to give to your daughter after being forcibly apprehended with sexual intent resulting in severe demoralization. 

I never truly believed in god and I knew a driving factor for my parents to bring me to church in the first place was to reinforce structure and have a sense of community. So it’s no surprise that it made me feel good to be regarded as a reliable and upstanding individual. I did just as well in church environments as I did on sports teams or in group projects. I was never afraid to be myself. My whole family knew how I felt about men. But I was known for talking about tons of things that no one else understood to the extent that even if I tried to convey how serious I was about something, there was a decent chance it would be viewed as a joke.

“I’m not getting married,” I said several months later during dinner after my imaginary future children were brought up again in conversation. I had the attention of my audience - my parents. “So you shouldn’t expect any children from me either.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” my father asked.

“It means what I said it means.” 

“Then what are you going to do with your life?”

“I’m already doing lots of things with my life so I guess I’ll just do more of that.” 

“Steve,” my mother interjected, looking at me. It had been a long time… probably a decade since we last had a plain conversation about this. And it wasn’t even a conversation. It was a comment. “If you’re a lesbian, keep it to yourself until your grandparents are dead. I’ll handle your father,” is what she said at the time. Now she said, “You know Anna has always been a little different.” 

“Unsure what that has to do with suddenly declaring she’s going to just waste away.” 

“It’s actually my plan to live with friends.”

“Which friends?” 

“I don’t know. It’s too early to say.” 

“But not too early to say you’re never going to get married.” 

“Yes. Especially not to a man. It would destroy me.” That seemed to be the right wording to press the brakes on the bullet train. “I’m asexual.”

“Whatever that is, I don’t want to know. You know I love you no matter what,” he said. “But you’ve still got a lot of living to do so there’s no reason to talk like that. You’re a smart girl with a lot to offer, so you need to shake this off and open yourself back up to the reality of your situation. You need someone in life and you’ll find him someday.” 

“Like at a Star Wars convention. There’s lots of people there you could like,” my mother chimed in again, attempting to lighten the mood. 

Over the history of humanity and even by present day’s standards, there are not a lot of women who have had the options and the freedoms that I do. It is as tragic as it is motivating to think about, all the things that had to be done so I could have this. But to know that the only thing keeping you from anything realistic in life is just your decision and willingness to get up and do it? 

I got off the train in a small town in Virginia, a town small enough that this was the only train the platform would see until the exact same time the following week. The man I’d been working for since finishing college had fled to Los Angeles and his righthand man had been stabbed to death outside a club one night in Manhattan. I’d later hear that two million dollars were unaccounted for. Luckily, that trail of breadcrumbs didn’t lead to anything I had done but my roommate bailed on me at the same time so I quickly found myself jobless and priced out of New York City. Now I was here and ready to start my apprenticeship at a university way out halfway to nowhere with the hope I’d be able to get a real job somewhere nice afterward. But as always when rolling into a new town, it was common sense protocol to introduce yourself to a church community so at minimum, it won’t just be your coworkers who notice if you’ve mysteriously gone missing.

I’d looked up the place beforehand and saw the preacher was a woman, so that Sunday I walked a solid mile along the side of the road to get to the service. I was pleased to see that not only was the church leader a woman, but seemingly so was the entire congregation numbering around ten total. Among them were two women studying abroad from Uganda, a hotel staff member, a few retired widowers, and (most importantly) the owner of a hair salon and her sister. Those two knew everything about everybody and in taking me around town, they didn’t disguise their intent to know everything about me too. But that was alright. 

“You have so much thick hair,” she said once I was in her shop a couple of weeks after getting settled in. “Your mother must be proud.” 

“It’s the crown jewel of my family.” 

“But your ends are split to shreds.” 

“I don’t speak hair but… you do what you gotta do. Someday I swear I’m going to shave it all off.” She frowned.

“Want me to do that now?” I thought about it.

“No… not yet.”  

She gave me the lowdown on everyone in the congregation and everyone related to the congregation which included the other two churches that were only a block away in either direction. One was very fire and brimstone. The other often had Sunday dinner that all were invited to. But what stood out about her explanations was that no one at our church was married, and it wasn’t for lack of men being around either. I’d see a bunch of them sitting on porches Sunday mornings using the time to get ready for whichever football game was on that day. The older women were long widowed and everyone else - women who must’ve been in their forties and fifties - were living solo. But they looked out for each other. 

“I know a sign when I see one,” she said. “There comes a time in every woman’s life when you need to take the gifts God gave you and follow your light and there’s nothing more reliable than a man to snuff it out. You might have more gifts than most I’ve ever seen. Don’t let anyone scare you into thinking otherwise.”

At this point, I’d been out of high school for five years. And in those five years, I had not been in the type of quiet, insulated women’s space that had defined my childhood and that this church revealed itself to be. Even the team I was working with at my apprenticeship were all women. So as the months went by, I uncomplicated the things about my situation that felt like they were complicated. 

I yanked myself away from this weird place of all-encompassing and uncharacteristic passivity. I fixed up my resume. Wrote some short stories for fun. I went back to wearing short sleeves in public without feeling horribly indecent. Got my hands dirty. Found comfortable camaraderie. My boss, horrified that I didn’t know how to drive yet, let me roll past farmlands in her Jeep for practice. I admitted to myself that I’d already gone way off the script I was supposed to be following and the sky hadn’t yet fallen. Most importantly, I convinced myself that veering the way I was didn’t make me a bad person. More than that, it was likely a sign of me being quite sensible. There’s no need to drown oneself in a puddle even if that puddle is at the bottom of a well and there were deep superstitions that if you grabbed the very enticing, sturdy rope that dangled in front of you, something terrible would happen.

Sitting on the loading dock of the theater, I ate my lunch and typed out a response to Molly who at that time was on a team excavating a medieval leper hospital out in some forgotten field in England. 

God’s gifts, am I right?