Chapter 1:
There were two things in Dietrick Smith’s life that he never expected to happen. The first one was getting married, let alone finding a life partner in a man of all people. Not that he hadn’t known that he was attracted to men since he was in middle school, but he thought there’d never come a day where their marriage would be accepted country wide. He’d always figured that if he ended up with another man they’d just have to settle for a partnership. Of course there were dissenters towards gay marriage, but that would never change. Hatred was a powerful tool.
The second thing he had never thought would happen, because he was in a same sex relationship,was having kids despite the fact that he adored them. Of course same sex couples had been adopting kids for years, the foster system needed good homes regardless of the couple inside it, but he and his husband, Harrison, were already in their thirties by the time they met. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be parents, but they wanted to be settled before they took on the responsibility of another life. That and Dietrick was still paying off student loans; becoming a doctor, even a pediatric one, didn’t come cheap.
While he was still paying them off right now, they’d settled into a budget that worked and they weren’t hurting for cash. Not to mention that Harrison did quite well for himself as a freelance IT specialist. His degree had cost him significantly less and didn’t take such a toll on their combined wallets. Again, not that they were hurting for money. Sometimes Dietrick felt like they maybe had too much and weren’t doing enough with it.
Which was part of what had led the two of them here, puttering around the seldom used spare bedroom - putting brand new sheets in a soft spring green color onto a brand new queen sized mattress with a lush navy blue comforter. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this, Dietrick.” Harrison effused, color creeping up his tanned cheeks with his happiness. “It felt like everyone we asked kept telling us we were too old to deal with kids anymore.” His excitement brought out his southern lilt just that little bit more. He’d lived in Minnesota for the better part of three decades but, while you could take a man out of Alabama, you could never quite take the Alabama out of the man.
Dietrick grinned and let out a low chuckle as he caught the square decorative pillow, in a green just a few shades darker than the sheets and another rectangular one in the same blue as the comforter, thrown his way. The bed took up the middle of the 12’ x 12’ space and they stood across from each other as they placed the finishing touches on it. With the white linen curtains thrown wide - the window facing west - the space was awash with warm spring light that made the room feel cozier than it would otherwise. From the room, one could see the backyard that had a few large maple trees whose canopy covered most of the lawn in shade and the recently added stone patio and firepit. “An old dog can be taught new tricks, love. The question is always, does it want to be taught? This old dog here,” he poked himself in the chest with his pointer finger, “happens to love learning new tricks.”
Harrison snorted. “Dogs are loving companions so I suppose there’s worse things to be compared to.” His light dimmed some and his expression fell as he fiddled with an invisible loose thread on the comforter. “I know we’re going to be amazing parents, Deet, but I can’t help feeling like maybe all those people were right.” He let his head drop, and his eyes, no longer looking at his husband. “What if we take a kid in and we can’t give them what they need? What if we’re out of our depths?”
That wouldn’t do. With four strides of his long legs, Dietrick maneuvered around the bed and wrapped the ever so slightly smaller man up into a bear hug and pressed a kiss to his greying locks. “Nope. None of that now. I’ve listened to people say I can’t for as long as I can remember and you know what? When I really wanted something, I got it. When I came out, my parents said I’d never make it. Remember the story I told you about how my mom reacted when I first came out to her?” He huffed and shook his head a bit, exasperated by the memory alone.
“Then, when god didn’t smite me down for liking both boys and girls, they told me that I’d never get married because no good woman would marry a man with my… proclivities.” He nuzzled his nose into Harrison’s temple. “I didn’t care who I married as long as we loved each other, and I’m pretty sure you tick that box.” Harrison chuffed a half laugh at that and knuckled Dietrick gently in the gut. “All those same naysayers told me I could never be a doctor; said black men - even half black men - don’t become doctors. I proved them wrong.”
“I get it, Dietrick.We can do anything we put our minds to.” Harrison snorted, finally lifting his eyes. That wasn’t enough for Dietrick, so he cupped his hands under that perfectly angular jawline, and tilted Harrison's head back so they were looking at each other eye to eye. “What?” Harrison breathed, word catching in his throat.
“Then sound like it. There’s going to be bumps in the road, there is for every first time parent, but we’ll be okay as long as we stick together. We’ll take one step at a time, and if one of us fumbles, the other will be there to pick them back up. Okay?”
“Okay.” They paused there for a long minute, Dietrick staring down into those familiar warm amber eyes, Harrison’s hands planted firmly at Dietrick’s waist. Finally Harrison blinked, snorted, and chided, “C’mon big guy. We’ve got a bedroom to finish decorating.” He accented it with a kiss before pushing away and heading over to the newly built desk that was littered with bags filled with knicknacks and accessories.
Sighing, Dietrick watched as the person he’d chosen to live the rest of forever with started placing some of the small decorative figurines on the L shaped desk. It had a small shelf along the upper fifth that had just enough room to fit a few items. They’d chosen a little glass, green house shaped, terrarium with fake desert plants - like a tiny little round cactus with a pink flower blooming at the top - a miniature globe in a steel gray, and an old fashioned alarm clock, once again in green.
Dietrick, age 17, 1989
His mother blinked at him, her dark brown, nearly black eyes swirling with confusion. “Excuse me, say that again?” Her voice came out high and reedy, breathlessly. Her stubby black fingers flexed around the gold medallion necklace his father had given her on their last anniversary. They were celebrating a quarter century together.
Dietrick shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels some. “I think I like boys, too, momma. Not just girls.” He wanted to say it confidently, not second guess himself, but it was hard when his heart beat so loudly in his chest it was like someone beat on the bass drum in the marching band. It wasn’t like he could change the fact that he liked boys if he just pretended like his eyes didn’t linger in the locker room longer than they should. Speaking of eyes, he couldn’t look directly into hers.
“Henry Adams asked me to be his prom date and I said yes.” How cute and petite, little Henry looked as he gazed up at the much taller boy through his lashes, inky curls neatly styled on his head, dark brown cheeks the most adorable shade of purplish-pink. The way he’d scuffed the toe of his converse sneaker against the linoleum of the high school’s hallway. It made Dietrick’s heart flutter just thinking about it. He didn’t tell his momma that Henry said that they could pretend they were just going as friends. They could ask a couple of girls to go with so no one gave them any shit.
Silence dragged until he lifted his eyes to peer at his mother. She stared at him with a look of… horror? Shame? Disgust…? He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what she was feeling. “Didja hear me, momma?”
He watched her throat bob before she vaulted to her feet from the squeaky plastic kitchen chair, crowding his space as she spat in face, “No, absolutely not. No son of mine is going to be some queer. I won’t allow it. You tell that boy to leave you out of his sick ideations.” Her deeply brown knuckles turned a few shades lighter with the strength of her grip on the necklace. She backed away, shaking her head and mumbling, “Where did I go wrong? I’ve gone to church every Sunday since the day my mother brought me into this world. Perhaps God is testing me. This is just a trial that I have to face.” With eyes wide, she paced the length of the galley style kitchen - as worn as the trailer it inhabited - eventually stopping and spinning on her heel to stomp back towards him, pointer finger poised and ready to bruise the area over his heart. Narrowing her eyes, voice trembling, she jabbed him in the shoulder and borderline growled, “This isn’t how I raised you to be. I raised you to be a God fearing man. Not some faggot that will die from the sickness.”
Dietrick frowned deeply, untamed eyebrows meeting in the middle, not liking the way this was headed. “What are you talking about, momma? Are you talking about the GRIDS sickness? It’s not just queers who can get it -”
“Hush your mouth, child. You don’t know what you’re talking about. The news says that it’s sodomites and transvestites that get the sickness. I won’t have that. You will not act on that perversion, do you hear me? Can you even imagine what our neighbors would say if you brought some… boy… home on your arm? How would I ever show my face at the church again?” She jabbed him again, more aggressively, and he winced, trying to take a step back but waylaid by the edge of the grubby tobacco-stained counter top.
She crowded into him once more. “Starting immediately, you will return to the house of God with me. Every Sunday. I will speak with the Reverend and ask for the congregation to pray over you. I won’t be able to tell him why but that’s alright. They’ll pray for you anyway. You will not speak a word of this to another living soul, do you hear me? Your father and grandmama, especially. They don’t need that kind of stress in their lives.”
Dietrick’s heart dropped. He felt the way his soul shredded into pieces the more that his mother spoke. She’d been his rock for his entire life, the one he’d always gone to whenever he had a problem. She would hold him and tell him everything would be alright. From when he was very young, he’d trusted her to love him, exactly as he was but now…?
Expression morphing into one of fury, he did something he never thought he would do and pushed his mother back, straightening to his full 6’ 3 height as he said, voice thick with unspoken emotion, “I’m not broken, mama. I don’t need to be fixed. I think you saying that I do says more about you than about me. I won’t tell pops or grammy, but I’m going to prom with Henry and I’m going to have a fantastic time. I won’t be going to church with you, either. You shouldn’t care so much what the neighbors think. It’s none of their business who I fancy.”
His heart felt heavy, his soul burdened with the sorrow of rejection. The growing empty look on Mama Smith’s face made it all the heavier. He’d regretted putting his hands on her the second he’d pushed her, but he was so angry. Hurt, anger, confusion, all roiled in his gut like a growing storm. Nausea pulled at his conscience as he stood there, waiting.
For a long time, too long a time by his standards, she stood motionless, not even blinking. Eventually, with a voice so toneless she could have been a recording on the telephone she replied, “Is that so? Well then. I guess you’ll just meet the Devil in Hell when you die. I will continue to pray for your soul, though I fear that it is already lost.” Robotically, limbs jerking like she’d forgotten how they worked, she shoved him aside and ambled into the living room where she plopped herself into her recliner with the remote, crossing her long gangly legs at the ankles, pink fluffy slippers making her feet look huge.
He had been totally rebuffed and the growing chasm in his stomach grew exponentially as he turned away from the woman that should have loved him unconditionally, tears so hot they burned pricking behind his eyes.