Southern Belle

Growing up, you had to hide a lot. Secrets dictated your speech, so you were constantly lying. Lying so much that it became harder to tell the truth. You’ve only just started to unlearn this inherited bad habit. It and many other bad habits were passed down to you by your parents. Most of the time, these bad habits: the lying, the self-harm, the self-sabotaging you coat in self-sacrificing behavior–which isn’t any healthier but makes you feel better. They did give you one good habit, more like a skill. A skill that comes in handy to this day. While other parents taught their children love, trust, and kindness, you learned about monsters. Not the monsters hiding under the bed. No, you learned to see the monster in someone’s smile, in someone’s face when they think no one is watching them. You learned to see how monsters hold the thing or the one they love in a way that if you hadn’t been emotionally, physically, and mentally abused during the entirety of your youth, even you would miss the slight darkness in their grip. But you learned. You learned to see the marks of an abuser so that you would never be a victim or an abuser. It could have gone either way, really. A different choice here, a different interpretation there and maybe you would be the one feeding off someone’s pain or maybe you would be the one trapped in someone’s suffocating grip–but instead, you are here.

“Here” is meeting someone in an abusive relationship whom you can’t help. Usually, when you meet someone new, you do so with little to no context of who they are. All that you have of them is first impressions. Which, by the way, you’ve mastered the skill of portraying yourself in a way that will be received positively depending on the crowd. This time though, this particular first meeting, you had context. Here’s the context.

Christina is your roommate’s best friend. Your roommate Hope mentioned Christina to you a few times. Best friends tend to be major characters in someone’s life. Christina was a significant character in Hope’s life and vice versa. Since childhood, they have been friends, a friendship that withstood Hope moving away for some time only to come back to Georgia for college—where she met you. During the many conversations, you and Hope had, she told you about Christina. She told you that Christina was funny, kind, and wanted to be a nurse. She told you that she had a boyfriend. She told you that Christina had been abandoned by her father, neglected by her mother and raised by a grandmother who resented raising her. So, while most first meetings consist of only first impressions, that is not the case when you meet Christina.

The first time you met Christina, you were getting ready to go out. Hope was somewhere, probably in the room you shared, when you walked into the living room. You introduced yourself and headed straight to the ottoman in your living room, where you kept your small bags.

“You look really pretty,” she said to you. That made you happy because she was beautiful, and the compliment sent a thrill up your spine. It meant that you had succeeded in making yourself a thing for pretty women to admire. Although, as a bisexual woman, you are attracted to men, thanks to your father, you hate when they look at you. So, you put all your effort into appealing to women. You adore being adored and admired by them. Especially when they have the soft smile of a woman who knows she’s holy, a gift from God, just like the one on Christina’s lips.

You thanked her and then asked if they wanted to come along.

“Oh no.” Her smile disappeared for a second before returning. “Drake wouldn’t like it.”

From Hope’s quick bio on her best friend, you knew that Christina and Drake had not been dating long, but he behaved as if he already owned her. As if being in a relationship meant ownership rather than companionship. You also knew from experience that Christina would not see this behavior for its truth until she was willing.

So, you smiled at her. “Alright. Hope you guys have fun.”

And you left.

The following morning Hope asked you what you thought about her friend’s situation. Your friend comes to you with adult topics because she knows that you know more than you should know at 20. She had discussed her discomfort towards her friend’s relationship before but never asked you to comment because you didn’t know Christina. You learned long ago that you couldn’t speak about someone you don’t know. Sometimes you can speak all you want and still be wrong about someone you know. Hope, however, seemed to believe a quick meeting suddenly meant you could comment.

“She already stopped talking to so many other friends because Drake called them a bad influence,” Hope whispered to you. Almost as if she was afraid Drake could hear her despite the fact that they lived an hour out from Atlanta.

You told Hope the one truth you did know. “He will continue this behavior, and it will only get worse, and you cannot tell her that it’s not okay.”

Hope’s face scrunched up in confusion.

“Christina is going to believe him and the delusions he feeds her until she can admit the truth to herself. If you tell her to leave him, she’ll cut you off.” You reached over and grabbed your friend’s hands. “Hun, you can’t let her cut you off. She’s going to need you when she realizes. All you can do now is to be there for her and make sure you’re there for her when it gets really bad.”

You gave Christina advice on how to survive her relationship through Hope. “Survive” being the keyword. But you and Christina were never close. Not really. Maybe you could have been, but that would have involved Christina not being Christina and you not being bisexual. She knew. It’s not like you sat her down and came out to her like when you came out to your best friends during your senior year of high school, but you were out, which meant people just knew. You tend to make it really easy for people to figure it out—so yeah, she knew, but she never mentioned it. You didn’t mention it because something else you knew about her was that she was Christian, the kind of Christian that believes you will go to hell for being Queer.

Even with that. Even though this woman thought you were going to hell. Even though this woman was in a cage labeled as a relationship and even though she was straight—you developed an infatuation because of that inherited bad habit of self-harm. Self-harm is more than just slicing your wrist, which you did during high school; it’s also wanting to run away with a woman that is absolutely wrong for you in every way and give her a happily ever after.

You took to calling Christina your Southern Belle because, in your eyes, she was the representation of the beautiful, wide-eyed damsel-in-distress Southern Belle you’d seen in the films with a sweet Southern accent that made everything she said sound beautiful to your ears. You called her your Southern Belle in whispers because it made her smile in a way that made you wonder if she was really as straight as she claimed.

Thankfully, it was rare that you and Christina were ever alone for more than a few minutes which happened whenever Hope exited stage left. When you were alone, though, you would cross your legs and move as far from her as possible because, to be blunt, you wanted to make love to that woman. You wanted to hear her scream your name in bed as you made her cum. Every time she smiled at you, your head started running a movie where you asked her to let you be her knight in shining armor. In that movie, you would slay Drake and take off with Christina to live happily ever after. When you were alone, you made sure to have one thing running through your head the entire time: she’s straight, she’s straight, she’s straight.

It maybe should have been the fact that she was straight and in a relationship, but Drake certainly didn’t evoke any feelings of respect. You would never normally want to be a homewrecker, but you found it incredibly hard to give a rat’s ass about Drake.

You only encountered Drake twice before you and Christina stopped speaking. The first time was at a Super Bowl party you and Hope hosted just before they got engaged. An engagement that neither you nor Hope approved of, but the options were to keep quiet or be shut out. So, quiet, you and Hope went. The second time was at their wedding, which you had been surprised to be invited to, considering you knew Drake did not like you because of that Super Bowl party.

They walked in like this: Christina tucked into him, his arm tight around her waist to keep her in place until they sat and then she was allowed to move only to adjust herself right back into his grip. To anyone else, this might have seemed cute. No one else at the party paid it any mind. But you saw what others didn’t. You saw it in his eyes, the possession, the barely caged rage that men like him have. He smiled at everyone as Hope introduced them, but you didn’t miss it. The twitch in his smile at the sight of these women in front of him with their confidence and independence, a threat to him. Nonetheless, you played as nice as your stomach would allow. You watched as he sat there with his arm around Christina unless he instructed her to fetch something for him.

Hope gave her a beer, then another. And each time Drake’s eyes followed Hope’s movement as if he was afraid, she would give Christina just the thing she needed to escape his grip. After a few beers, Christina got tipsy, her smile became real, and she bobbed her head to the background music. She stood up. You wanted to watch her. At first, your eyes did go to her; you couldn’t help it. She was beautiful and sexy, and she was dancing, and you wanted to look at her like that for as long as you could. But you remembered, so your eyes moved to him instead. He noticed and replaced the thin line of anger on his lips with a smile.

Christina danced over to Hope, who was smiling at her. Hope spun her around, and the two of them laughed. It was lovely to see and heartwarming to know that their smiles were genuine and honest. Again, you wanted to watch them, but you knew where your eyes needed to be. Drake was having a harder time now keeping the disgust from his face. You wanted him to show his true colors. You wanted him to break character publicly with all the witnesses in your home so Christina would know her memories were true.

You stood and asked Christina if she wanted to dance with you knowing that it would anger him. Knowing that whether or not Christina was straight, she had a tendency of melting under your touch. Christina reached for you. Her eyes were wide, just like a Southern Belle. She put her arms around you–then she was gone. Once again at his side, her laughter stopped. You looked to Hope who was a little past tipsy, and she looked at you as if she was trying to put together a puzzle with missing pieces. Your other friends were watching the game and drunk. Drake would spend the rest of the night looking at you. And you would make sure to meet his eyes every single time.

Drake proposed on Christina’s 19th birthday. Something that upset Hope because they were too young to get married; Drake was only a year older. It upset you because you knew what Drake was doing. You knew the traps he was setting around your Southern Belle that would trap her and clip her wings. Still, neither of you said anything. Hope rallied and told Christina that she would use the graphic designing skills she was learning at school to design the wedding invitations. Hope took to wedding planning with her best friend to keep her dread at bay as she watched Drake keep pressuring Christina to get married even though she had asked for a long engagement. Christina eventually said yes on the condition that they would wait to get married after she had graduated nursing school.

But Drake would not risk waiting for her to realize the danger she was in, so he pressured her until she gave in. First, Drake got them a house. He told her it was her responsibility to care for. Then Drake told Christina that her grandmother was being vindictive for trying to get her to think critically about getting married so young. Then Drake told Christina that he was the only one who could support her. Then Drake got angry when Christina spent too much time on school and not enough on their relationship. Then Drake told Christina that she needed to be a better partner. Then Drake got angry when Christina said she wanted to be married before moving in together. Then he began to lash out by leaving her stranded in the middle of the road when they got into an argument on the way home. He only circled back to get her when his sister called him, yelling at him to go back after receiving a call from a scared and crying Christina. You and Hope never said that he shouldn’t have left her stranded in the middle of the road, that he shouldn’t need his sister yelling at him for him to go back for her. This happened more than once, more than a few times, more than should have been allowed by God.

They married only a few months after the engagement. During the summer when Hope was away, she had almost missed the wedding because the new date conflicted so much. This was something that you knew Drake knew. There was no way he hadn’t known considering how important it was for his fiancé to have her best friend be at the wedding. Christina hadn’t even done bridesmaids because he insisted that his sister be her maid of honor. Christina told him that if Hope could not be her maid of honor, then she would have no bridesmaids at all. Christina made many other sacrifices before the wedding and even more after they were married.

Hope flew in just in time for the wedding, and for a last-minute bachelorette party that you attended. The first half of that party you were sat between Christina and Hope, and the rest of the seats were taken by women related to Drake. Drake’s grandmother and mother, his sister and his sister’s best friend. You leaned over at one point to ask Hope why neither Christina’s grandmother nor mother were there. She told you that Drake didn’t want Christina’s grandmother at the wedding and that the date was so rushed that Christina’s mother couldn’t fly out. Christina’s relationship with either of those women was not perfect, but you knew she loved them, and they were trying to mend the wounds in their relationship. You knew that Christina should have been able to have her mother and grandmother at the wedding—but again, you remained silent.

Maybe that’s where you fucked up. In staying silent, you created all that desire with nowhere to go. You and Christina didn’t even stop talking because of her wedding night. You stopped talking because one day you posted something on Instagram she disapproved of. One Sunday morning, you went to a Pride parade because you always go to pride and then after the parade, you went to church and had dinner with your church friends. On the post where you dared put church and your queerness side by side, she quoted one of the clobber verses at you. The clobber verses are the six bible verses used to justify hate and discrimination. You know now that those verses are hugely misinterpreted and that you are loved by God and made in his image, but at the time, she wrote out a whole note page on why you were going to hell—her words stung. They stung for many reasons, one being that you had only ever been kind to that woman, and it hurt that she felt that way. The other was that you knew her words were not just aimed at you. She was saying them to herself as well. You and her, after all, had sinned together. The very sin she was saying would send you to hell.

The night of her wedding, you were drinking, and she was dancing again, and Drake wasn’t there. The night of her wedding, she was laughing and leading you to a dark room. The night of her wedding, she laid back on a bed, and she brought you down on top of her. You kissed her gently. Drunk or not, you knew to be careful, that she needed to be touched softly. It made her moan. That moan nearly drove you over the edge.

Maybe there’s a timeline where you run away with her. A timeline where she isn’t straight, or at least one where she doesn’t refuse to be anything but straight. A timeline where she didn’t marry him and the two of you have a studio apartment, but it isn’t this timeline. In this timeline, Hope came in looking for the both of you. She must have made a noise because it broke through your desire long enough for your actions to become real. You let go of Christina and she pouted. She pouted and reached for you, and God, you wanted to let her, but thankfully, Hope stepped in front of her. She looked at you confused and still asking for direction when you clearly had none.

“Get her water.” You told her while looking at the ground. Her presence reminded you that your role was meant to be the adult, the stable one, the one that didn’t let her desire win. “Don’t let her come to me again.”