This secret word play went on for several weeks as Sean’s mother became more and more distant. Sometimes he would catch her off guard and see how worried she looked, for to her and all her relatives, homosexuality was a terrible sin and the person committing it was an outcast to all.
The more and more his longing for Pablo increased the more disturbed Sean felt, torn in two by the beliefs of his family and his own feelings, newly awakened. The neighbors soon noticed that he’d stopped whistling as he walked to work. Instead, Sean walked quickly, head down, talking to himself and shaking his head.
As the warmth of Spring faded into Summer’s heat, one day Sean wore a sprig of butterfly weed in his buttonhole. ‘Let me go’ it meant, and Pablo responded with a cactus pin for ‘Endurance.’ That night, Sean went to church and prayed, and even though the altar flowers mocked him he knew what he had to do.
The next day he wove sprigs of forget me not from his mother’s garden into two bracelets. He came into the house and put one on her wrist and gave her a hug and a kiss. “Goodbye mother,” he said smiling, and left.
When he saw Pablo at work he put the other bracelet on his wrist and kissed him passionately, then and there, right in front of everyone. Then he turned and began to walk home, this time taking the shortcut along the railroad tracks rather than the road.