Where You Are by J.H. Trumble Page B

yourself?” she asks.
    â€œYeah. I’m good.”
    â€œI don’t like you being alone.”
    â€œThanks, but I spend my days in a classroom so small I can’t spit without hitting a teenager.”
    â€œEew.”
    I laugh. “Trust me, after a day at school, alone is all I want to be.” I don’t look at her when I say this. “I’ll drop Kiki off in the morning.” I free the cat and scoop up the toddler.
    â€œAre you going to your folks?” Maya asks.
    Kiki pokes at my nose and giggles. “Yeah. I wish I could bring this one, but maybe Easter.”
    â€œSure,” she says.
    Maya and I have a good relationship, but it’s had its ups and downs. We both agree though that Kiki has been worth all the bad decisions. (I think of them as bad; I’m not so sure Maya agrees.)
    Kiki looks a lot like her mom—rich brown skin, thick black hair, and huge eyes set widely apart. I love her more than anything. Maya knows that. We share her, perhaps not equally, but there’s enough play in our agreement that I never feel shorted.
    My own parents barely skipped a beat when I came out. There was some discussion about how they already knew, but I think that was just a lie to get past that awkward phase. Because even though sexual orientation is really about identity, there’s no getting around the sexual part. If I’m gay, I’m interested in what’s going on between guys’ legs, and like it or not, my parents had to face that.
    So, not surprisingly, they were shocked and more than a little confused when Maya got pregnant. When I announced we were getting married, they sat me down for a real talk, the don’t-compound-one-mistake-by-making-another talk.
    I listened patiently to their arguments, even considered some of them, but in the end I did what I believed was the right thing. I married Maya. We’d slept together only that once. We didn’t even pretend to be a real husband and wife in that sense. For me, at least, we were friends and we were parents. I don’t know why I ever thought that would be enough for either of us.
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    The mall turns out to be a mixed bag. Kiki refuses to go anywhere near the poser in the red suit. I won’t traumatize her by forcing her onto his lap, but I drop to one knee just to make sure this isn’t a momentary case of cold feet. After all, you’re only two once.
    â€œNo like him,” Kiki says, her bottom lip jutting out. She sticks her thumb in her mouth and I gently pull it back out again.
    â€œBut he’s Santa. Like we saw in the movie, right? And Santa is nice. Don’t you want to tell him about the doll you want for Christmas so his elves can be sure and make one just for you? You could tell him how much you like Rudolph, too, and that red nose. I’m sure he’d like to hear that.”
    â€œHey, teach!”
    I look up and see one of my students, a freshman. He’s holding hands with a girl I don’t recognize, and he keeps flicking his head to the side to clear his early–Justin Bieber hair from his eyes.
    I’m trying to recall his name, but seeing him in a different environment makes him hard to place. And then I remember—second-period Algebra, back row, corner seat. “Hey, Alex. Doing a little Christmas shopping?”
    â€œNah. We’re just hanging out.”
    â€œWell, have fun!” And get a haircut, I think. They move on and I turn back to Kiki. She looks glum and maybe a little sleepy. “You want to build a teddy bear?”
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    Build-A-Bear is crazy. There’s a birthday party ahead of us with a gaggle of preteen girls, so it takes a while to get through all the stations. Kiki chooses a Dalmatian instead of a bear and dresses the stuffed animal in a froufrou little summer dress even though it’s winter outside. At the sound table, she picks out a little box that plays “Who Let the Dogs Out” and giggles