Kelsey Lou story

5 Growing Seeds

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

The morning sun was gentle. Kelsey Lou’d had the good sense to wake up and get to tending the garden before Ma could holler at her ’bout it. The birds were just waking up, singing to let their partners and friends know they’d survived another dark night of uncertainty.

Upstairs, Karly Lynn was just waking up, too. She’d slept a startlingly long time after going to bed early without supper the evening before. When Ma had asked, Karly Lynn just said it was “that time of the month,” and no further questions were asked. Ma dismissed her growing young lady from the table to spend most of the evening in the bathroom feeling sick.

Kelsey Lou had questions, though, as she pulled weeds from between the rows of vegetables and beans, intermixed to hold nitrogen in the roots just right. What was really going on? The reason Karly Lynn knew she was pregnant was that she hadn’t been having periods. Why would she say she’s having one now? Morning sickness? Would it be like this every day for the next six months? Sometime or other, Ma was gonna have to know. Kelsey Lou couldn’t have asked in front of Ma just yet, though, so she waited now for her sister this morning, pulling weeds in the plain sight of God.

“You got big plans for Spring Break?” An obnoxious, Southern tenor yelled, comin’ up the drive toward the garden on foot.

“Junior,” Kelsey Lou sighed with a roll of the eyes so heavy it coulda knocked down a bowling pin. She didn’t have to answer him. She could just pretend not to have heard him. She could keep weeding, minding her own work, and not give Junior the time of day.

“Awww, come oooooon now, Kelsey Lou Faye Farmer!” Junior hollered, kickin’ his Justins in the dirt to scuff up some dust. “We got a whole week off from school, and best you got fer me ain’t even a ‘Why hello, Junior. Mighty pleasant to see you today‘?”

Junior threw his arms up like an umpire had just denied him the score of his lifetime, and said to his imaginary version of Kelsey Lou, as if she herself were not mere feet from him, there in the flesh: “Why, Miss Farmer, thank you so kindly for askin’. It’s just a lovely mornin’ out, and I’m ever so grateful for your invitation to come work in the garden with ya today. Mighty obliged I get to be of service to such a fine young woman as yourself.”

Kelsey Lou felt as stunned and perplexed as she was curious. What trap had she just wandered into — and how could she have been the one to wander into it, when Junior was the one wanderin’ into her garden, at her home?

“What are you doing here, Junior?” Kelsey Lou reluctantly asked.

“Makin’ good on a debt to a friend,” Junior answered. “Three hours of labor in the garden to pay for the history homework you let him have a look at.”

Dear God almighty, Kelsey Lou thought. This is why I can’t date anyone. They are all insufferable buffoons. Every. Last. One of them.

“That wasn’t the deal,” Kelsey Lou responded bitterly. “Samuel Bybee needs to pay his own debts like he agreed. I said ‘weekend,’ and I didn’t ask for nobody else to come in his place. Today is a Monday, and you ain’t the same sack of shit he is.”

“Aww, you tryin’ to flatter me with your pertty compliments now, huh?” Junior laughed, reaching his hand uninvited to brush Kelsey Lou’s cheek. She retracted and swatted at him with the trowel in her hand.

“You’re a different sack of shit, Junior. At least I gave Bybee a chance to become fertilizer with his,” she answered. “You can’t pay this debt for him. It’s his, and his alone.”

“Maybe it started out his debt alone,” but it stopped bein’ his alone when he let me copy the same answers you gave him,” he admitted with an aggressive wink and a spit of the wintermint-smellin’ dip cloggin’ up his lower lip. “Thanks for the ‘A,’ professor.”

Yonder up the porch a ways, Karly Lynn ambled easy out the house to find her sister. She was feeling better, but she wasn’t sure what “better” meant, under the circumstances. Seeing Junior was standin’ awful close to Kelsey Lou in the garden gave Karly Lynn the same startle as a copperhead too near. She didn’t mind him so much herself, but her older sister was repulsed by Junior Jackson, and there wasn’t nothin’ decent could be happenin’ ‘tween the two of ’em this early in the day all alone.

“Thanks for stoppin’ by, Junior,” Kelsey Lou said, turning her attention toward her younger sister approaching the garden. “Don’t let the donkey kick ya on the way out.”

Junior ignored the advice and waved to little miss Karly Lynn. Polite as always, she waved right back.

How many times do I have to tell you, Kelsey Lou thought, do not be polite to men who make you feel creepy. Just don’t even be polite to them. Don’t wave. Don’t smile. Don’t move aside for them. Don’t light their cigarettes. It’s a game for them, and you’re the prize, Kelsey Lou wanted so urgently to say. She knew she couldn’t, though. Might as well kick the copperhead right in the face, to do that. She did not want her sister giving herself over like a won-and-claimed prize to a man-child who thought basic respect was a game in the first place.

“See?” Junior smiled, gesturing toward Karly Lynn as he addressed Kelsey Lou. “Even your kid sister knows how to be civil toward a guest. Shows a smile. Why cain’t you be more like her? I walked all the way out here to help you with your garden, and this is the thanks you give me for my selflessness? Tellin’ me off like I don’t even matter? “

Whatever she had walked into, like a copperhead nest, Karly Lynn didn’t see any good way to walk herself right back out of it.

“I need to spend time with my sister this morning, Junior,” Kelsey Lou stated with a matter-of-factness that about straightened Junior right up. “You can go wherever you’d like, except here.”

Both girls released a sigh of relief when Junior nodded with sharp understanding. He tipped his hat to be on his way, and wished them well.

Then, he walked right up onto their porch and sat himself down in the kitchen to have breakfast with Ma. The kitchen, after all, was a place that wasn’t the garden.

“No!” Karly Lynn shrieked as he neared the porch. It was too late. By the time the girls knew where he was headed, they couldn’t stop him.

“He can’t!” the younger sister urged, looking at Kelsey Lou for direction. How could they stop him? How could they — anything?

“Look,” Kelsey Lou said, bending back down with her trowel and jamming it into the ground like it was Samuel Bybee’s spleen. “You can control what you can control, and boys ain’t somethin’ you can control. Best you can do is not let them control you.”

“So you’re just gonna let him go sit inside our house and say whatever to Ma?” Karly Lynn probed.

“That’s ‘tween them. I take the bait, I’m playin’ his game then. Life’s too short to play games like his. I’m here for the long win,” Kelsey Lou answered. “I want you to be in it for the long win, too. Gotta learn to control yourself in the ways he obviously ain’t learned how. The best way to never be an asshole like him is to be fully and completely true to your own heart and self.

“Do you even like boys?” Karly Lynn asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

Getting no reply, little sister tried again. “You ever had sex?”

Kelsey Lou thought about the question a full ten seconds before deciding to answer her sister.

“I wouldn’t really call it that.”

Karly Lynn’s raised eyebrows waited for the rest of the answer with a nudge of the head. Kelsey Lou didn’t particularly want to answer. She also didn’t particularly want her baby sister to be pregnant. What she wanted didn’t seem to matter a whole lot right this moment.

“I was your age,” Kelsey Lou said. “He screamed at me a lot, was real demanding. I broke up with him in October of seventh grade, but a few days later, he showed up at the house with roses and chocolate.”

“I remember that!”

“Ma told me to stop being such a bitch and give him another chance. I told her he wasn’t good for me, didn’t make me feel good. She said he was still young and learning, and ‘boys don’t start out perfect, you gotta make ‘em that way.’ I took my first pregnancy test by the end of December that year.”

Karly Lynn gasped. “Did she know?” she asked.

“I wasn’t as smart as you,” Kelsey Lou chuckled. “I just asked her for a pregnancy test outright. That’s why they took my door off the hinges. Tried to make me go volunteer at an anti-abortion clinic, but the clinic said I was too young to be volunteering. Policy.”

“Weird, how we’re too young to volunteer,” Karly Lynn said with the emptiest voice her sister had heard in months, “but not too young to get pregnant. They told me the reason they took your door off the hinges was ‘cause you were doing something bad in there. I always thought maybe it was drugs. They said you lost your right to privacy ‘cause you done bad. Why didn’t you ever tell me the real reason?”

“They told me if I talked to you about it, then you might get ideas and it would happen to you, too,” Kelsey Lou confessed, choking back tears as much as rage. “I didn’t want you goin’ through what you’re goin’ through now. But I was just thinking on the way back from the Hoggs’ house yesterday, I guess it was just another lie.”

Kelsey Lou lost the battle against four tears, but wouldn’t let her voice crack when she said, “My silence is what hurt you, not my story.”

“This aint your fault, Kelsey Lou. You didn’t hurt me.”

“The bastard next door has been on you a year. We could have had this talk when it happened to me, and maybe you would have said something sooner.”

“So you never been with any other?” Karly Lynn asked, trying to make the conversation easier for her sister. “Never wanted to?”

“Oh I want to, plenty. But the options in Old Homestead County are like being offered a variety pack of leftovers that McDonald’s threw out into the dumpster at the end of their shift. I ain’t eatin’ ‘em just ‘cause I’m hungry. I’ll wait for somethin’ that don’t give me food poisonin’, thanks.”

“What kind of man would you go for, Kelsey Lou?”

What a doozy to answer. Kelsey Lou stabbed the trowel into a small patch of green sprigs of persistence, reaching for the sun at the expense of a precariously growing bell pepper plant, and leveraged them up roots and all.

“You do like women. I knew it.”

“No,” Kelsey Lou answered. “No, I mean, I like them, but I don’t like like them.”

“So what kind of man you like, if not women?” Karly Lynn tried again.

Kelsey Lou sighed, then chuckled, then gave her sister the most over-the-top, absurd answer she could think of: “I like the gay ones. Big, hairy, gay men who can walk into a room and don’t even have to be wearin’ leather to know they’re the one everyone is gonna answer to. The kind of man who can wear a t-shirt that says ‘I’m a faggot’ with as much confidence as a fancy three-piece suit. The kind of man who asks questions first, and never makes assumptions, unless he’s assuming the reason I’m following him into the bathroom is so we can fuck in the stall like Brian Kenny on Queer As Folk.”

“Queer As Folk?” Karly Lynn asked, otherwise stupefied by her sister’s reply. What, exactly, was she supposed to say to this anyway?

Kelsey Lou let out a patronizing laugh and said, “It’s a real old show. Before either of us was born. But it was a big deal at the time they made it.”

She realized her little sister had taken every word at face value, and felt suddenly very uncomfortable to have stated the truth so casually.

“It’s just a show, Kar,” she said. “I’m givin’ you crap. It’s an old show, and I don’t really want to have sex with Brian Kenny in a bathroom stall. It wasn’t even funny, ’cause you ain’t seen the show yourself. You’d know it was all a joke if you had.”

Karly Lynn nodded. She didn’t understand why her sister would make a joke like that instead of just answering the question. Why the distance? Hadn’t she been honest enough with Kelsey Lou? Maybe her older sister just really wasn’t into guys.

Or, maybe, she considered, her older sister was into exactly the kind of men she’d just described. If that were so, she reckoned it been a real long time ‘fore Kelsey Lou found happiness with a man, if he had to be gay to be attractive. Not a lot of gay men were gonna be too thrilled to date Kelsey Lou, she imagined — but she also hated the thought that her wonderful older sister, who deserved love and affection to make this world a less lonely one, might pass up dating anyone at all who’d date her back, on account of livin’ in this fantasy world where the only date-able men by Kelsey Lou’s standards existed only in the glowing LED shadow of the TV.

“Don’t you ever want romance?” Karly Lynn finally asked after a good few minutes of silently helping her sibling dig a little deeper.

“I want to know what got you sick last night,” Kelsey Lou answered. She was done havin’ her love life, as it were, picked apart.

Of course Kelsey Lou wanted romance. But she couldn’t imagine how to tell the story of such a romance in the Ozark English vernacular — not even in the vernacular of Granny Moses, mother of Jed Clampitt, who never took her husband’s name when she married, just before she got the right to vote.

Kelsey Lou wanted a romance full of kind, gentle men who only shot at food and fascists. She wanted a romance with banjos and square-neck dobros, mountain dulcimers and spoons, playing late into the night under the light of a full moon among men who knew themselves so unflinchingly that they felt no shame in knowing one another just as well.

Since none of this desire made any more sense than tellin’ her sister she aimed to marry a pond of frogs, there wasn’t no sense talkin’ nothin’ ’bout it at all.

“I guess I got a period last night, real sudden,” Karly Lynn answered.

“You think ’cause you been missin’ the last couple months, it might could just be all at once? Your body figurin’ it all out still?”

Karly Lynn shrugged and nodded. “It was real heavy. Definitely three months of bleeding all in one waterfall just poured right outta me last night. I woke up a couple times on the toilet. Don’t know what happened. I was feelin’ dizzy, and then I woke up some time later leaned up ‘gainst the sink. Lot of blood came out,” she whispered only loud enough for Kelsey Lou to hear. “So much blood.”

The front door slammed open as Ma came out with Junior and yelled from the porch, “Girls! Girls, clean yourselves up and come in this house to be cordial! We have a guest! My heavens! What manners have I not taught you? Come inside and clean yourselves up right this minute. We’re having breakfast with our guest.”

The siblings rinsed and sat their trowels out in the sun to dry. What choice did they have? To work in a garden is to work hand in hand with God. Junior thought he was more important than God, and he’d done convinced Ma he’s right on that count.

“The men,” Kelsey Lou mentioned to her little sister on the trudge toward the house, “could never have so much control, could never override our consent, could never amass the obscene amounts and types of power they have, if not for women like Ma who are so much more concerned with making boys feel manly than she is in making her own children safe.”

Her words rang flat, out of tune, in a sudden way that felt jarring. Ms. Maines’ history lesson echoed in her mind as she moved non-consensually in the direction of a boy she hadn’t given permission to steal her answers.

“White boys,” she added, eliciting a puzzled look from her younger sister. “Ma is so concerned with making white boys feel manly, she ain’t even able to think about making our safety a priority over that.”

“This aint got nothin’ to do with race,” Karly Lynn said. Does it?

“I don’t know why it does, sis. But it seems true, just lookin’ at the evidence. If you see I’m wrong, let me know what you see that tells you so,” Kelsey Lou shrugged.

“But all I see right now is this white boy on our porch controlling Ma like a puppet, and we’re just like dolphins tied up in those puppet strings like it’s a net. I don’t reckon she’d call us in from the garden for the kind of boy who’d’ve helped us out there ‘stead of givin’ us a hard time.”

Karly Lynn took her sister’s hand and squeezed it twice, like they used to do when they were little, to let each other know: I’m okay, and I know you don’t feel okay right now, but I still love you and you’re not alone.

“I guess I can see why it’s hard to want romance anymore, by the time you get to be your age.”

If you’d like to help Kelsey Lou continue telling this story, please consider buying them a cup of coffee or a meal at CashApp $BrandynRiver.

4 Class

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

Monday morning, the first bell rang. Kelsey Lou migrated like a salmon through the hallway past her locker and into Ms. Maines’ American History class.

“Hey,” Samuel Bybee whispered loudly at Kelsey Lou, soon as she sat down with her books. “Can I see your homework?

Kelsey Lou rolled her eyes and said nothing.

“I’ll pay you,” he added. “Five bucks.”

Ten would’ve made the request tempting – enough for three lunches in the cafeteria. Kelsey Lou shook her head no, though. Samuel hit her gently in the arm with a big gesture that implied she was being unfair; unreasonable, perhaps.

“You coulda done your own homework, ” Kelsey Lou said. “Your granma in the hospital or som’n?”

“I was busy gettin’ laid,” he said with a full-teeth grin of pride and accomplishment that exposed the chew he wasn’t s’posed to have in his mouth during class. 

“Hope it was worth whatever grade you’re gonna get for the work you ain’t put in, then,” Kelsey Lou shrugged.

“Ten bucks,” he begged.

Ten woulda been tempting earlier, but now that Samuel had annoyed Kelsey Lou this early in the morning, she wasn’t havin’ it. She’d have to spend those meals tasting the energy of Samuel’s smile at this exact moment for the next three days if she’d said yes. Whatever she’d buy at the cafeteria would be seasoned with his arrogance, entitlement, and the unwelcome imaginings of his recent procreative efforts.

Who would settle for a boy like him anyway, Kelsey Lou wondered? She hoped the girl had gotten herself on birth control. Lord knows Old Homestead County didn’t need another little Sam Bybee Junior runnin’ ’round,  askin’ every decently hardworkin’ kid in the county for a copy of their homework.

The answer to her question was obvious: A girl who didn’t have a job at Mr. Hogg’s impound, or any hope for a future – that’s who settles for makin’ a wet mess in the torn backseat of a 1996 Monte Carlo with a boy like Sam Bybee. Kelsey Lou knew that the work Mr. Hogg gave her meant more than a paycheck. If every girl in school could afford to create their own futures, most of ’em wouldn’t even give the fool-boys one whole glance.

It seemed to Kelsey Lou that the boys liked it this way, and somehow, their parents must like it this way, too. It’s not like there wasn’t plenty of money in the region, with local mega retailers and food production companies employing a majority of folks at too-low of wages to make ends meet. Meanwhile, their CEOs and the CEOs’ pastors enjoyed private jets and mansions without payin’ as much total in taxes every year as Kelsey Lou herself paid on them junk cars. Long as everyone stayed poor, no one could leave. If no one could leave, the companies would have workers. If enough girls get pregnant before they have a say, the companies would have workers for another generation, and their kids wouldn’t never know the means to leave neither.

Since no one could leave, the girls had to make it work with whatever boy they settled for, ’cause there wasn’t none others to pick from. Without better to pick from, boys never had to grow up to be real adult men-folk participatin’ in relationships like equals. Boys could stay perpetually 12 years old all their lives and nag someone like Kelsey Lou, until one day she’d finally just give up all hope for ever finding what she deserves or wants from a real partner, and say “okay” to marryin’ one of ’em, even if he had to propose three times to break her down to a “yes.”

Persistence was key. Boys like Samuel Bybee had persistence, if little else.

Kelsey Lou felt the weight of this truth, sittin’ beside Mr. Bybee smackin’ dip under his lip in American History. Even though he was asking for her homework, not sex, it felt the same. Fact was, she’d said no, and he wouldn’t take the answer she gave him.

“Twelve dollars?” Bybee whispered quickly, begging harder as the teacher stood up to begin class.

Is this how we got here? Kelsey Lou asked herself. My little sister just lost her whole future because every adult in this county teaches boys like Sam Bybee the rules don’t apply to them, and they can just take whatever they want, or maybe pay ten bucks to get off the hook for their negligence. Grown adults who know better actually let these boys keep believing that shit? But they don’t let me grow up to believe that shit. I’ve gotta do my own homework. Karly Lynn’s gotta do her own homework. For what? So she can spend the rest of her life barefoot in the kitchen and pregnant for some emotionally stunted man-child who never did his own homework? Who still copies her answers every day, lettin’ her tend all the cleanin’ and cookin’ and givin’ him everything he wants — because she was smart enough and powerful enough to learn to do all that herself without copyin’ answers? But the parents we’re supposed to trust to care for us, they raise us up to believe men-folk are the more powerful ones than us? Even though they can’t even cook their own dinners right, on account of never learnin’ fractions for all the math homework they copied off a girl in school?

She argued with herself over whether she was stretching this whole feeling out of proportion. He’d just asked to copy her homework, not confine her to the kitchen making his babies for the rest of her life. Right? Right? So why did this feel like the same thing? Why couldn’t she just stuff her ill, angry feelings about boys, and be like a normal girl? Why couldn’t she just let him copy her homework and take the twelve bucks?

“Good morning, class,” Ms. Maines greeted from the front of the room. “Today we’re gonna talk about the Emancipation Proclamation. Who knows what it is?”

A couple girls raised their hands, and one answered. Ms. Maines built on their answers, providing context and illumination. Kelsey Lou was only half-paying attention, half-distracted by her anger. Parents are supposed to act like grown-ups, teach their children not to abuse or exploit others. Why did so few parents in Homestead County believe was an important lesson to impart?

“… exactly!” Ms. Maines said to Veronica, as Kelsey Lou tuned back into the discussion. “So the 13th Amendment was touted as an end to slavery, but it really wasn’t ending slavery at all. In order to appease the Confederacy and get them to surrender to rejoin the Union as one nation, Lincoln made the compromise that he would allow them to continue slavery as long as the enslaved people had been convicted of a crime – this way, most of the enslavement was brought indoors where the white moderates and white liberals wouldn’t have their consciences bothered by seeing the slavery happening on their way to work anymore.”

“What?” Kelsey Lou didn’t mean to say out loud. She blinked, struggling to process the information she’d just heard. Lincoln didn’t end slavery? Last year’s textbook had said he did. 5th grade textbook said he did. The storybook in the library said he did. But he never ended slavery?

“Which part would you like clarification about, Ms. Farmer?” Ms. Maines asked kindly.

“Uh,” Kelsey Lou fumbled to find words. “If Lincoln didn’t end slavery in 1865, then when did slavery end?”

“That’s a good question,” Ms. Maines sighed. “The 13th Amendment’s ‘exception clause’ is still in effect today. Right this minute, there are workers making goods that you and I purchase from stores every day. If they get paid anything for their labor, the wage is about as much per hour as they’re charged per minute to call their families.”

“Hey,” Sam Bybee laughed, “you do the crime, you do the time!” Some of the other students agreed audibly.

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Bybee,” the teacher said, inhaling deeply as she readied for a learning lesson . “Your uncle went to prison in 1997 or so, didn’t he?”

Bybee’s ears pricked back like a rabbit. “You leave him out of this,” he snapped.

“Oh, but Mr. Bybee,” Ms. Maines said gently, “in my classroom: you raise your voice, you make a choice. You have a strong enough opinion about folks in prison to be makin’ comments about it for everyone to hear. So let’s discuss your opinion. I’m inviting you to share with the class why you hold this belief that you obviously regard very earnestly.”

The students all shifted in their seats. Sam Bybee said nothing.

“Now, as I recall, your uncle went to prison for life around 1997, that right?” Ms. Maines asked. Sam nodded. “Because then-President Bill Clinton had just made a new law called ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out.‘ Who here knows about that law?”

Everyone in the class raised their hands except the three offspring of corporate executives who’d moved to the Ozarks for work in the past few years.

“Show of hands: Who here has a family member or knows someone in prison today because of that law?” Ms. Maines asked.

Two of the hands went down in a room of 28 students.

“Mr. Bybee, I’m not sure what your family has told you about your uncle, but the story as I understand it is that he was just tryin’ to provide food and shelter for his family. His fourth child had just been born, and the ol’ factory plant closed down the same month, cost him his job. He took on work with Ol’ Man Downey who’d always made his livin’ for four generations off a moonshine still, and got to growin’ and sellin’ a particular plant folks like to smoke. Without better job prospects, he had no way out of that business, even after he’d got caught. Third time he was charged with sellin’ weed, he went to prison for life.”

“He wasn’t even sellin’ no more by then! Just workin’ at the chicken plant is all!” Bybee yelled. “He just had enough on him for himself, but the cops said he was gonna sell it.”

Ms. Maines looked on Bybee not with pity, but with compassion, and added, “And now today, these corporate folks got storefronts, sellin’ that same plant right in broad daylight, growin’ it in huge fields and grow-houses, advertisin’ it with coupons and billboards – while Uncle Bybee spends the rest of his life in prison for the exact same thing. These wealthy store owners are payin’ for their kids’ college off it, while Uncle Bybee’s kids are, uh, well I heard they been fallin’ into some troubles themselves lately, just tryin’ to make ends meet any way they can.”

“That’s what we get for votin’ a Democrat into office,” Bybee snarked. “Fucking Clinton.”

“Yeah, he just let the poultry industry give the whole eastern half the state cancer when he was governor!” Anthony added indignantly. “My ma’s still mad she had to leave her home ’cause there ain’t no drinkin’ water there no more but he still got elected President after he tried to kill so many of us here in Arkansas.”

“You may be interested to know,” Ms. Maines redirected with a nod acknowledging both students’ contributions, “the so-called ‘War on Drugs’ began with Republican President Ronald Regan, Mr. Bybee. So did the first gun control laws. But you are correct that under Clinton’s administration, the Corrections Corporation of America’s stock prices skyrocketed as he built up the private, for-profit prison industrial complex with legislation that benefitted them, and has taken so many people into its clutches without any regard for whether they are a genuine threat to society or not. The stock market charts tell a clear story on this. CCA’s stock tanked when Bush was elected. Then, investors turned their portfolio interests toward military weapons manufacturing. But those for-profit prisons are still thriving today, because the states have signed contracts agreeing to put a certain number of our human bodies into those prisons every day, whether anyone is committing crimes or not. Some of you will likely be in these prisons within the next decade.

“Think about it. They’re private prisons run by for-profit companies, but the government legislation is what keeps them running. The government which is supposed to protect and serve us, not enslave people for free labor. But because of the 13th Amendment, and because we never fully abolished slavery, that’s what the whole system of government and corporate interests working together are doing,” she explained.

“This ain’t a pro-Democrat or pro-Republican kind of issue, Mr. Bybee. We are learning here about a system that upholds slavery, which never ended; and how that system is kept alive by both political parties; and how good folks tend to get caught in that system, helpless to escape,” Ms. Maines explained.

“You could say your uncle ‘did the crime’ and should ‘do the time.’ But do you think that’s really fair to him? To his family? To his community? You think all of us here in Old Homestead County are better off with him laboring for free in prison the rest of his life than having him living in his home, raising his own kids, as a well-paid yet affordable electrician who helps us all keep our houses safe from burning down?”

Sam Bybee shook his head no.

“Then how about we apply that same consideration to Black and brown folks, who make up the majority of imprisoned people, even though they’re a minority of the U.S. population. They’re often in prison for crimes they didn’t even commit, or for minor non-violent offenses where they’ve been issued excessive sentences, because of this systemic effort to keep the prisons filled with unpaid workers ever since the 13th Amendment became the only way for the ultra-wealthy to legally enslave humans anymore. You think you might could wrap your head around caring about their lives as much as your uncle’s? As much as your own?”

The silence moved through the classroom in waves, each student feeling touched by spirits, ancestors, teachers who’d taken root in their hearts already. Most students were breathing like fish in freshly changed water, their gills hustling to adjust to this new, clearer, scary reality. The room was not filled with anxious tension, but with the pressure of comprehension. 23 students in the room had a family member in prison for life from Three Strikes and You’re Out.

23 students had a relative making someone’s cheap clothes or earbuds for $0.13 an hour, or painting the walls of new corporate buildings for $0.20 an hour under supervised excursions to job sites in freshly remodeled convention centers, where someday a non-profit might hold a gala to raise funds for helping inmates access education and skills training, so they could get promoted to being a plumber in prison making only $0.40 an hour. As a higher-paid plumber, an inmate could work 40 hours in a week to afford a 45-minute phone call to his kids on the weekend, and nothing else.

23 students in the mostly-white Old Homestead County region of the Ozark Mountains knew a bubbling anger in the marrow of their bones they’d never put words to before, and still weren’t sure they could. Ms. Maines did not disrupt them from feeling, deeply and attentively, the painful ache they’d so often been told to “just forget about.”

Of the 23 with kin in prison, Kelsey Lou looked around and noticed 19 of ’em looked white. She knew there was some mixing that happened here and there for just about everyone, but she reckoned “white” was less something a person really is, and more of a question ’bout what the cops or judge see when they decide whether you’re going to prison for life or not. If 19 students in this class were white and had kin in prison, but Black and brown folks took up as much or more space in prison as white folks, even though there were only four Black or brown students in the whole classroom… Kelsey Lou struggled to imagine the mathematics of what this must mean. How many kin of those four students must be in prison to make the numbers as big as they are? Obviously more than just one uncle.

“Ms. Maines,” Charlie spoke up without raising his hand to ask, “Is that why my pops never calls? It’s not ’cause he don’t love us? He just gots to choose ‘tween callin’ us and spendin’ his money gettin’ a snack?”

“I can’t say I know the answer to that, Mr. Daniels,” she replied. “I don’t know the details of every individual’s situation. What I do know is about the system they’re stuck in. It’s the system we’re all stuck in. Some of us, stuck in prisons. Some of us, stuck in classrooms. Some of us, stuck in workplaces. Some of us, able to see what’s on the other side of the walls. Some of us, cain’t see half a foot in front of our noses to tell which way forward leads to an exit. What I do know is: if we don’t care for one another and help one another here and now, including caring about folks in prisons and how they got there, how we got this way we are right now, ain’t none of us never gonna have freedom.”

“But we already live in a free country,” young Joseph H. Walten argued aloud with firm confidence. He hadn’t quite figured out how to fit in since relocating last year, when his father took on a new role in the family business at a large retail corporation which employed most of the other students’ parents for meager starvation wages. What he had noticed, though, was that having a different yet strong opinion, and being very committed to it, seemed to work fine for most of the boys. “I’m proud to live in a free country,” he added, showing his commitment to not hearing any of the real, lived experiences that had just been told to him.

Half an hour earlier, nearly all the boys in the class would have agreed with Mr. Walten, and more than half the girls, too. They had U.S. flags, black and blue flags, and ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ flags in stickers all over their binders to show for that agreement. But now, sitting with the truth they’d already known since they was kids, ’bout how their own fathers, uncles, cousins, and older brothers all fit into this big lie they’d been sold by every history book they hadn’t bothered to read, they weren’t sure they could say what it means to call this a “free country” no more.

Kelsey Lou took out her homework and put a note on top. “$15 cash or 3 hours helpin me garden this weekend.”

She passed it to Sam Bybee, who nodded in agreement and then looked back at Kelsey Lou with as much confusion as he’d already felt from Ms. Maine’s history lecture.

Kelsey Lou wrote on a scrap of paper: The point is to learn yourself smart. Seems you’re doin that today. I’ll help this time, but you gotta keep learnin’ yourself goin forward.

Then she added: I charge less for tutoring than for cheating.

This story will never be behind a paywall. If you’d like to help Kelsey Lou continue telling this story, please consider buying them a cup of coffee or a meal at CashApp $BrandynRiver.

3 The Walk

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

“Just where you think you two are goin’?” Ma asked from the kitchen as both her daughters grabbed their jackets near the door. She was spreading peanut butter on a piece of toast for herself.

“Kelsey’s going with me to Bible study,” Karly Lynn answered. Despite being the younger, Ma considered Karly Lynn the more trustworthy of the two offspring. She was more attentive in school, didn’t ask as many critical questions of her folks, helped clean the house more, and just plain knew “her place” better than her older sister. If Karly Lynn said she was going to Bible Study, their mother wouldn’t question it. If Kelsey Lou had said it though, they’d both be grounded, and they knew it.

“Well! The Lord does work miracles after all,” Ma bellowed, clutching her chest to express surprise that Kelsey Lou was takin’ after her baby sister and had chosen a path of righteousness for once — not as though Ma herself ever bothered to attend church, but she still got credit from the folks at the church for raisin’ her girls right if the kids were seen in attendance.

“You comin’ straight home?” Ma asked.

“We were talking about going down to the creek. We haven’t been down there since last year, and it’ll be too cold soon. I wanna visit the tadpoles and the fish, Ma,” Karly Lynn answered. Although her normal Ozarks Hillbilly drawl was somewhat inevitable, she knew to make a real effort at sounding more academic and enunciating properly when speaking to her mother, who always commended Karly Lynn’s “intelligent-sounding” television-ready speech, even though kids at school taunted her for it.

Kelsey Lou shrugged apathetically and nodded, as though she were being dragged along to the creek by her annoying baby sister.

“Alright, well don’t get yourselves too messy. I want you home by dinnertime,” Ma said, unconvincingly grateful to have the house to herself most of this foggy Sunday. She was already imagining the hours she could spend listening to Alison Krauss and Brooks & Dunn with nobody at home to hassle her about the volume while the kids were out and Pa was handling the harvest.

“Love you, Ma,” the kids said on their way out the door. This wasn’t the kind of love you’d walk across the kitchen to show with a hug or a kiss; just the kind of love you say to someone who feels like words are more important than actions, who expects those words to be said to her – or else.

“Love you, too,” Ma mumbled with a mouth full of toast, her tongue stuck to her roof with peanut butter. She fought for most of a minute against the food she’d chosen to eat, then washed it down with a swig of water before scooping up another spoonful.

“Man, George Washington Carver could’ve done a lot better when he invented this,” she groaned to herself between spoonfuls.

The sisters walked in silence for twice the length of the driveway. As much as needed to be said, and could safely be said, had already been said. Meaningful questions had to wait for a safe place to speak freely.

Is there even a safe place for the conversation waiting to happen, though? Kelsey Lou wondered where such a place might be. A place they could speak, sure, there were plenty. But can a place be considered safe to discuss pregnancy when there are no legal options for a victim to discuss and remedy the effects of a crime that’s already been committed?

“Where we headed?” Karly Lynn finally asked.

“You trusted me this morning with a very big secret,” Kelsey Lou said. “Am I safe trusting you with one of mine?”

Her little sister looked stunned. Last thing she really wanted right now was another secret to carry. Her sister must have a good reason though, she thought. They are on the same team, after all. Karly Lynn nodded.

“We’re going to Mr. Hogg’s impound,” Kelsey Lou answered.

Karly Lynn gasped. “You still goin’ out there after Ma told you not to?!”

“Baby girl, I love you. Don’t you be talkin’ at me right now ’bout doin’ things Ma don’t know about. She still don’t need to know, and I’m trusting you —,” Kelsey Lou looked sternly at her sister, “— not to tell her, or no one. I’m doin’ you a favor, Karly Lynn.”

Karly Lynn took a deep breath to shake off a layer of shame that kept trying to creep over her like a cloak. She’d worked so hard to be Ma’s favorite, and now Ma was gonna be so mad findin’ out her favorite preteen child’s pregnant, she’d soon treat her worse than Kelsey Lou. What if Karly Lynn had to sleep with the baby out in the barn now? That’s what Ma would make her do, Karly’d bet.

At least she can’t make me marry him, Karly Lynn thought to herself along the silent walk. Whichever one of ’em it is, he’s already married.

Kelsey Lou feared most everything about sex. Now this fear expanded to engulf her baby sister’s existence. When Kelsey Lou was only six years old, Ma had taught her how God made mommies and daddies able to make a baby together when a man and a woman love each other very much.

After the two-hour discussion, Kelsey Lou had asked how two daddies make a baby together when they love each other very much. Her mother looked immediately furious. Kelsey Lou backtracked quickly, suddenly realizing it might seem silly that she thought she would grow up to be a daddy someday. She then asked how two mommies make a baby together instead.

That’s when her mother pulled out the Bible alongside the encyclopedias and taught Kelsey Lou about a “special disease” God had made to punish men who try to become daddies with other men. For reasons Kelsey Lou didn’t have words for, she just immediately knew this warning was also meant for her, and feared that if she were ever to have sex with anyone, God would punish her for it.

It baffled her that Karly Lynn didn’t have that same instinct to avoid sex altogether, but she also understood her little sister’s desperate need to be validated. She just wanted to feel loved, and in the absence of affection from her folks, she took the affirmations wherever they came from. Good grades, teacher’s pet, “little helper” — Karly Lynn never said “no” to no one. Sure enough, folks liked her a lot more than her grumpy older sister. Karly Lynn was agreeable all the time.

“So how’d you find out?” Kelsey Lou asked.

“Brittney’s mom had some pregnancy tests under their counter in the bathroom. I stole one,” Karly Lynn admitted.

“Who’s the father?” Kelsey Lou asked.

“I’m not sure,” Karly Lynn said through a sudden waterfall of tears. “Papa started on me a year ago but promised he had a vasectomy. He wouldn’t really take no for an answer, and then it just kinda kept happening. Whenever he tells Ma he needs help with the dishes, she makes me go ‘help’ him. Won’t listen when I tell her I don’t feel like goin’.”

“Papa” was a neighbor who taught 6th grade at Karly Lynn’s middle school and was also a part-time police officer. Wasn’t no good could come from naming him to nobody unless the DNA made his actions an undeniable fact. With a vasectomy, that wasn’t gonna happen. Kelsey Lou’s heart sank into a well of rage as they walked past a house flying a Thin Blue Line flag, announcing the inhabitants’ allegiance to the very same police who kept themselves quiet for the Blue Code of Silence, knowing full well at least one of their own had been screwing a 12 year old for the past year with near-impenetrable immunity.

“Then Luke is this student teacher at the elementary school where I was helpin’ out with the summer program. He was, uh, a little more forceful about it than Papa. In the gym, after all the kids had gone home. I fought, but —”

The sisters just stopped and looked at one another, both in disbelief that two human beings so full of love, so full of potential, so intelligent and beautiful and worthy of everything good life can offer, could be born into a world dominated by these awful men and their sympathizers like Ma, who saw girl-children as nothing more than incubators.

The Ozarks produced some of the finest, most inspiring folks theyd’ve ever met, just as it had also beaten and stripped them of their life’s potential in the same swift stroke of God’s paintbrush, the very moment God seen fit to place them in the U.S. South on the divine canvas of possibilities. Kelsey Lou stood paralyzed, helplessly awed that her baby sister’s future was over before it had begun, and yet no one was even going to recognize the death of who she should’ve become.

Abortions were illegal; and anyway, if Ma had her way about it, Kelsey Lou knew full-well their mother would sooner have any of her children die so she could claim to be the victim of the loss, rather than the cause of it.

“I’m sorry,” Karly Lynn sobbed. “I didn’t mean to let it happen.”

Kelsey Lou hugged her tightly, shaking her head and repeating, “No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is not your fault, ma’am.”

They continued their discussion for the rest of the five miles out to ol’ Mr. Hogg’s impound, learning things about one another and blossoming into a new age of friendship as sisters.

By the time they arrived, Karly Lynn had been deeply schooled in what it means to care for yourself when no one else will. She wouldn’t get good fruits by relying on anyone else — least of all a man — to fill the void their wretched ol’ Ma left in her soul as a child. She needed to learn to fill the void within herself. Learning to say no, and to mean it, even if someone stops liking her for it, had to be part of that. She had to learn to like herself more than she cared whether anyone else did.

“Miss Kelsey Lou!” Mr. Hogg cheered from the rocker chair on his front porch. “I see you’ve brought comp’ny this mornin’. Whaddo I owe the pleasure?”

“Well Mr. Hogg, you see, I’ve come for my usual work,” Kelsey Lou answered. “Nobody but my sister here knows nothin’ ’bout this. But if I could, sir, I’d like to train her to do my job. And if you’ve got any extra we could do, her or me – but she can only come when I come with her – well, we’d sure be grateful.”

Mr. Hogg waited pensively before he spoke. “Fallen on hard times, have y’uns?”

The sisters looked at one another sheepishly as Kelsey Lou searched for a good story to cover the truth, but it was hard to find a decent lie big enough to stretch that far.

“Oh,” he said before either sister said a word. He knew. This wasn’t the first pregnant 12 year old he’d known, and if Arkansas kept havin’ its way, she surely wouldn’t be the last.

“Come inside,” he said. “Myrtle’s gonna fix y’all a cup of tea.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hogg,” Karly Lynn said, “but I don’t really drink tea myself.”

“You do today, young’n,” Mr. Hogg answered in an authoritative tone no fool would question. “You’ll drink as much of her homegrown Pennyroyal magic as the missus pours ya, and we’ll discuss the work and wages while you drink it all up.”

“Yes sir,” the younger sister answered. This didn’t seem like the right time to start practicing her “no” just yet.

Kelsey Lou was shocked to hear Mr. Hogg speak toward her sister so intensely, but her instincts said to let it be. She heard mercy in his voice, and she had never known him to be a forceful man. He must have a good reason, she thought. It was just tea.

On her fourth cup of fresh but rather unpleasant drink made from some terribly bitter plant in Mrs. Hogg’s special herb garden, Karly Lynn listened with almost-relief as Mr. Hogg and Kelsey Lou worked out the final details of her younger sister taking over the car sales role, while Mr. Hogg would start Kelsey Lou under his wing next week as a welding apprentice.

Kelsey Lou was about to learn a skilled trade that might could take her out of this death trap for girls and would give her a real shot at life as a whole human adult. She wanted to feel elated, but the weight of knowing it was already too late for her sister kept this precipitous offer from seeming so great now.

Kelsey Lou watched Karly Lynn wrap up the last signatures on two of the six cars she taught her how to sell after the tea was finished.

“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Hogg,” Kelsey Lou said, paying Mr. Hogg his share of the day’s cash. “You’ve been so much more than gracious. I don’t know why it just made sense to come here today, but I guess your home feels like a safe place to me. Ain’t many o’ those ’round here no more. Thanks for helpin’ me and my sister find our feet.”

“The South is a lot of things, especially for young girls,” Mrs. Hogg said gently, letting the wrinkles around her eyes punctuate the statement. “But most of all, the South is what we make of it. As for me and my house, we will serve love and mercy. We make Old Homestead County what we need it to be, if it ain’t already. Come have a cup of tea any time y’uns need it. Next time, I’ll make you one that tastes good.”

Mr. Hogg stepped forward to add, “And whatever it is that’s troublin’ y’uns, if you can take advice from an old man who ain’t as dumb as he looks, why don’t y’uns just get a good nap, put it out of your minds, and don’t go tellin’ your Ma nothin’ she don’t need to know.”

The sisters nodded nervously. Then Karly Lynn asked, “How will I know when she needs to know or not?”

Mrs. Hogg replied, “If she don’t ask you herself, she don’t need to know. Don’t offer an answer to a question ain’t been asked,” she said with her finger pointed at her brain, indicating Karly Lynn may wanna think a little harder about how much she tries to be liked by giving up too much unsolicited information to folks without her best interests at heart.

“Now, go be gentle with yourselves, y’hear?”

This story will never be behind a paywall. If you’d like to help Kelsey Lou continue telling her story, please consider buying the sisters a cup of coffee or a meal at CashApp $BrandynRiver.

2 Stretching in the Fog

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

The morning air was foggy enough to see it wasn’t still, and still enough to not see anything at all beyond the cloud. Looking out the upstairs bedroom window, Kelsey Lou Faye tapped her fingers against her thigh without any particular rhythm. She knew the sun was up ‘cause the fog was gray instead of black, but there was no knowin’ how long now it’d be before Ma’d wake up and start makin’ the whole family wish they’d died in their sleep.

Minutes passed. Kelsey Lou was sure someone in the house would have somethin’ to say ‘bout how much nothin’ she was doing, if they noticed. Each tick of the old Coca-Cola clock she’d confiscated from her late great-grandfolks’ front porch felt like a rebellion, an uprising of cosmic soldiers within her bones assembling to wage war against the long and valiant foe of Productivity.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Five whole seconds of nothin’ but breathing, being. Tick. Seven seconds of listenin’ to the fog outside the window. Kelsey Lou wondered why birds sing come the mornin’ light to assure one another they survived the night, but they don’t sing in fog to assure one another they’re still alive even when they’re invisible.

Breathing in the quiet old house while the seconds of life ticked themselves into the past was all Kelsey Lou could really do in the dense fog surrounding everything. Maybe the birds didn’t sing because they were too busy breathing slowly and deliberately, too? Maybe they were afraid of waking something scary sleeping on the other side of the fog.

Kelsey stretched her body. At fifteen years old, she’d already begun to know the consequences of skipping these moments of connection with the organic spacesuit she inhabited. She’d gotten a Nintendo for Christmas in the 4th grade and sat parked in front of it for about two years, paying no mind at all to her body. By the time her friend dragged her to Tae Kwon Do class at the Family and Community Center in Pentz County last year, she could barely touch her toes anymore.

Doing the splits on her bedroom floor didn’t feel good for its own sake, but it reminded her that she sometimes can change what doesn’t feel good. She can practice the movement she does like, and it’ll replace the stiffness and immobility she doesn’t like.

While stretching, she thought about going out to Mr. Hogg’s tow yard today to see about the 45-day impound junkers he’d have on hand. She made a decent enough way for herself at 15, buying up all the cars nobody came to pick up, then callin’ all the salvage companies close enough to give Old Homeplace County a moment’s thought. She’d schedule them to come bid on the cars and haul them away for parts and scraps, and made about 200% over what she paid Mr. Hogg on each one.

Kelsey Lou had been doin’ this work since she was 13, but she had to get real quiet about it last year when her mother threatened to call the police and tell ‘em her daughter was operating a business without a license and not payin’ taxes on her earnings. Mr. Hogg appreciated the extra hand haulin’ off his junkers, so he wouldn’ta let that wretched excuse of a mother know none of his business anyway. He’d told Ma he’d find a new worker to replace Kelsey Lou, shook Ma’s hand on it, and then spit on the ground as Ma walked off holding her head high in the air.

“Why’d you lie to her?” Kelsey Lou had asked when Mr. Hogg told her he had no intentions of replacing her at the impound, if she wanted to keep working for cash and keep it quiet.

“It ain’t easy gettin’ out of this county,” he said, “and it’s even harder stayin’ in it. Way I growed up, we care for one another. I can’t rightly reckon what got into that heathen Ma of yours, but she ain’t the carin’ type. Can’t survive a child to be an adult without someone who cares.” His eyes shifted off to the metal pile and retreated as quickly, as if he’d done seen a ghost.

“You’re a good worker, Miss Kelsey Lou Faye Farmer. Only thing harder’n gettin’ out of Hell is gettin’ out from under the thumb of your Ma. I can’t change what I can’t change, but I won’t change for her the way I run my business in the sight of God. God thinks you’re a fine worker who deserves a chance in life, and I sure do appreciate ya too. So what you wanna do, and what you tell that bat-bitten woman about it, that’s all ‘tween you and God now. I’ll hope to see you next week whenever you’re able to make it in. Just come on by.”

Kelsey leaned now onto her right leg, the left one satisfied to start the day. It’d been about a year since Mr. Hogg had said those words, and inside an old pickle jar she’d painted and decorated as an art project for school in the 6th grade she now had stashed two-thousand three-hundred forty dollars of U.S. currency from 117 salvaged car sales nobody but Mr. Hogg knowed about.

A tapping at the door startled Kelsey Lou out of her memory. It was gentle like a chipmunk. The door pushed open slow-like so as not to creak the hinges and stir Ma.

“Mornin’,” Kelsey Lou smiled at her baby sister.

Karly Lynn had just started 7th grade two months earlier and was an honor roll student. Kelsey Lou felt for her and wished their Ma wouldn’t ride her so hard. Not that it had been any different for her at that age, but she still hated seeing it happen to anyone else. Her sister had been such a burst of joy all her life, and it saddened Kelsey Lou to see her baby sister’s light starting to dim under the pressure of life in their home.

This morning, the dimness was especially noticeable, and Kelsey Lou came out of her leg stretches to sit upright, turning toward her sister. The concern in her eyes asked the question, and Karly Lynn hiccuped before she spoke.

“I’m pregnant, Kels.”

This story will never be behind a paywall. If you’d like to help Kelsey Lou continue telling her story, please consider buying her a cup of coffee or a meal at CashApp $BrandynRiver.

1 A Romantic Story in Ozark Vernacular English

~ Brandyn River Gallagher ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I was prompted to write a story. It’s below. Then, I was prompted to continue it. You’ll find its continuation with tags linking the chapters together as they get written. Following this blog will get you notifications when each new chapter is posted.

If you’d like to help Kelsey Lou continue telling her story, please consider buying her a cup of coffee or a meal at CashApp $BrandynRiver.

“Well ain’t you pertty as a chrome skull on the hood of a Chevy drivin’ down a paved road,” Junior smiled as he took off his hat.

Kelsey Lou Faye didn’t care for the dress her mama’d made for her. It waddn’t pretty like Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors. Kelsey Lou’s mama had stitched this dress with bitterness and spite — the kind that attracted the attention of good ol’ boys like Junior.

Junior spit a wad of dip on the ground and grinned again. He thought they was goin’ somewhere together. Amazing, she thought.

“I got more to me than looks,” Kelsey Lou rebutted.

“Don’t need too much more,” Junior assured her. “Yer looks is good enough for me.”

“I’m a lesbian,” she replied, blinking with pointed intent.

Junior laughed. “Ha! I ain’t heard nobody sayin’ that ’bout you b’fore. When’d you ‘cide you don’t like men folk no more?”

“When you ‘cided you like my mama’s awful dress more than the person wearing it. I’m done with the whole lot of y’uns. Done with men. Now let me pass on through here and get to my room. Star Trek is more interesting than you, and you’re keeping me from it.”

“How you know it’s more interestin’?” Junior asked insistently.

“Because I’ve seen every episode, twice at least. The longer I stand here wonderin’ why you ain’t as decent a human as your sister, the more urgently I need to go watch any of those episodes again. Right this minute. Alone.”

Junior stepped aside but whistled a cat-call as Kelsey Lou walked past to get inside her home. She latched the door behind her and didn’t stir nobody downstairs on the way to her room.

She sunk into the old, familiar, faded orange swivel chair in which she’d used to sit with her great-grandma on sunny afternoons helping answer the crosswords. The springs popped as the weight of her now-adult body paid the price for all those hours she’d spent spinning ’round and ’round, long after Grandma had told her to stop.

She clicked the remote to a newer television than seemed fitting for the old furniture she would never let go of, until she saw the man of her dreams.

Or was he? Maybe she really was a lesbian, she thought. She sure didn’t feel like a normal woman attracted to normal men. Hell, she waddn’t attracted to “normal,” for all the tea in China. She looked at the man of her dreams again, illuminated in LED hues of opportunity and possibility.

She was attracted to him, she admitted. But it sure would be nicer being with him as a man. If he wasn’t gay, he should be; and if she wasn’t the man he’d fall in love with, she should be.

Kelsey Lou breathed deeply. Cinnamon potpourri reminded her that what we cannot change can be made better by tidying what we can. She wondered, though, how much she might could change. How much truth could she manage not to cover up with cinnamon potpourri any longer?

“Alright, Captain Picard, you know just how I like it,” she said, pressing the button on the remote. “Make it so.”