Page 58 of Leaving the Station
After a minute: “Are you asleep?”
“No,” I tell Oakley, laughing a little. The train blanket is thin, but in the stale air of the room I barely need it. “Of course not.”
“Me neither.” She takes a breath.
I wait.
“Can I tell you something?” she asks.
I nod, then I remember she can’t see me. “Anything.”
Finally, she says, “I’m not going back to New York after Thanksgiving.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, trying not to sound too interested.
“Yeah,” she says. “I’m going to stay in Washington. In Ritzville, I mean.”
“Okay.”
We’re silent for another moment, and then she adds, “I miss it. I miss the community I had there. I didn’t have that in New York. I might not agree with everything my family believes in, but I love them, and they love me.”
I make a noncommittalhmsound, neither an agreement nor a rebuke.
“I dreamed of having this queer community in New York,” Oakley says, and I have to flip on my side to hear her over the train.
“I know,” I say quietly. “You said—”
“I was sleeping in hostels every night until my money ran out.”
I freeze, and even the train quiets, waiting on Oakley’s next words.
“There are places to stay if you’re a queer person who needs housing, but I couldn’t do that. My family has money, and I didn’t want to take those spots away from people who really needed them.”
It sounds likeshereally needed them, like she’s exactly who those places are for—a queer person fleeing a high-demand religion—but I don’t say that.
“So I stayed with backpackers from all over the world in dirty sixteen-person dorms. I went on dates during the day and I slept where I could at night.” She breathes deeply. “I thought I’d start in New York, then go to Europe. I wanted to see the cities I’d only read about in books. But I never made it out there.”
“That sounds hard,” I whisper.
“I’m sure Europe isn’t all that good, anyway,” she says. Then: “Can I tell you what I miss about it? About home? About the Church?” When I don’t speak, she tells me anyway. “I always think about what Joseph Smith preached.”
I settle in. I know she’s about to talk for a while. And I know I’ll hang on to her every word.
“He was a terrible person. He was a liar and a narcissist with multiple underage wives—but I agree with him on this: he said that salvation can only be achieved through community, not individual actions.” She shifts in bed, and the creaks join in with the cacophony of train sounds. “That’s what an eternal family is: an interconnected web of people reuniting in the afterlife.”
“That sounds nice,” I tell her. Because, put that way, it does.
“It’s beautiful,” she agrees. “I don’t know if it’s a real quote, but apparently Joseph Smith once said something like, ‘I would rather go to hell with my friends than heaven alone.’”
“I love that,” I tell her. “It’s a little queer?”
“Exactly!” She sounds excited now. “It’s an extremely queer idea.”
“But that was Joseph Smith,” I say, staring up at the beige train ceiling that’s too close to my face. “That was hundreds of years ago.”
“I know,” she says. “Trust me, I know.”
We’re both quiet for another minute.
