Page 20 of Leaving the Station
“No, yeah,” she says, sounding excited. “That makes sense, but I also think we shouldn’t have to fit into those stereotypes at all.”
“I’m not the one who gave some random person they just met a label.”
It comes out harsher than I mean to, but I don’t even know what I’d callmyselfand definitely don’t want to be defined by an aesthetic, queer or otherwise.
Like I said, labels can be helpful. But only if you know how to label yourself.
“Okay, I’m glad I found you here,” Oakley says, eyes wide. “This is the kind of thing I’ve been wanting to talk about for months.”
“What? Queer labels?”
“Not specifically,” she says, wired now. “This is just what I thought I’d be talking about all the time when I moved to New York.”
“But you didn’t get to?”
She shrugs and turns away. After a moment, she asks, “Where are you heading?”
It doesn’t escape me that she ignored my question. But asking someone on the train where they’re heading is the equivalent of asking someone at college what their major is, so I knew it was coming.
“Back to Seattle,” I say. “To my parents’ house.”
“I’m going back to Washington to see my parents too,” she says. “They live in Ritzville.”
I frown. “That’s not a real place.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, it is,” she says. “It’s in Eastern Washington, about an hour outside of Spokane.”
I make half-hearted jazz hands as I say, “Ritzville,” like it’s the title of a vaudeville show.
But then I take in what she said: Oakley isn’t getting off the train in Chicago. She’s going to Washington.
She’s going to be with me for the next three days.
“I’ve literally never heard of Ritzville,” I say when she doesn’t add anything else.
“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” She hugs her knees to her chest. “People from Seattle have blinders on. You have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the state.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You didn’t even know that my town existed.”
“How am I supposed to know every town in Eastern Washington?”
“You’re not,” she says. “But you have to at least acknowledge that there are places you don’t know. Places where other people live and work and pray.”
“Exactly—they’re praying at church. I’d bet you money there’s not a single Jew living there,” I say, ignoring her comment in favor of being contrarian. “Or at least that there’s not a synagogue.”
“No, yeah, theredefinitelyisn’t,” she says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that there isn’t a synagogue,” she says plainly.
“Why’d you say ‘definitely’ like that, then?” I don’t know why I’m getting defensive, but if I’m talking to someone who has some weird thing about Jews I’d rather know now. “I’m Jewish—and look, no horns.” I scrape through my short thick hair like I’m doing a lice test.
I’m being a piece of shit—at least that hasn’t changed.
She rolls the sleeves of her silk pajamas, then unrolls them. “My Sunday school teacher would always say that people think Mormons have horns too.”
