The Week Lawrence King was Shot
When Lawrence King, an out 8th grader in
Larry was shot because he told the other boy he had a crush on him. The murder came after several weeks of harassment based on Larry’s sexual orientation.
The week Lawrence King was shot, a group of 8th grade girls generously agreed to meet my future daughter. They weathered her inability to look them in the eye. They were kind, made jokes, tried to make her feel at ease as best they could. S. is a strange child; she has difficulty making social connections because of the years of trauma in her life. She regularly makes off-the-wall comments. She’s a messy eater, she’s uncoordinated, she’s strange. And yet, at the end of the visit, she said, “I have to move here now. I don’t want to disappoint my new friends.”
The week Lawrence King was shot, my cat Snowbee hissed at S. I had warned her that my cat was not friendly. I had explained that she’d been an abused cat. Still, the first time Snowbee hissed, S. wept—then grew calm, and asked me to tell the story of how I’d come to rescue her. I did. She said to me, “I want you to keep her until she dies. She just needs love.” She wanted to know if I would have gotten her out earlier if I’d realized she was in danger. She wanted to know if I would be willing to take her back if, in the future, she got into trouble with a man and needed to leave quickly, and whether my “yes” to that question would still be valid if, by that time, she had her own kids.
The week Lawrence King was shot, S. told me she didn’t mind that I was a lesbian. “I can be open minded,” she said, “even though nobody else in my life really agrees with gay rights.” We talked about what it is like to be different. We talked about what it is like to be hated or ridiculed just because of who you are. “It’s not fair,” she said.
The week Lawrence King was shot, S. fell in love with a horse named Honey who, like my cat, had also been abused. She groomed Honey gently and lovingly. She learned the voice and arm commands to make Honey walk around her in a circle, and in the center of the horse-prints that circled her, she looked confident, proud. She was not afraid. I will never forget her face as she raised her arm to tell him it was time to stop—determined, open.
The week Lawrence King was shot, S. and I walked across a frozen lake to a small island, which we circled, noting every pawprint in the snow, touching the barks of fallen trees, the branches of trees still standing. S. was afraid at first; she’d never walked on ice; but then she moved by leaps and bounds, talking quietly to herself, saying, “It’s OK. The ice will hold me.”
The week Lawrence King was shot, S. and I went to a church I’d never attended and heard the reading about Jesus walking on water. We smiled widely at each other—the story was about wonder, about miracles, like ours. Later, when we sang “Leaning on Jesus,” S. and I leaned hard into each other and laughed out loud.
The week Lawrence King was shot, S. told me she wanted to live with me, and we began making plans. I felt my heart lift—this is really going to happen!—and then I felt everything else all at once, the fear, the joy, the wonder, the exhaustion, the surge of energy, the grief. I don’t know what I am in for, and neither does she—but we are willing to take the risk to love each other, to live together, to figure things out as we go along.
The week Lawrence King was shot, S. asked if a lesbian couple I am friends with could be her new godparents since “my own godparents gave up on me.” She joked with students she met—students from all walks of life—and she wept about her past, let herself get angry, let herself open to me. She asked if I would love her as she is and I said yes, I would, even when things got hard. She said the same about me. She met a snake named Ramses and got to take home a piece of snakeskin.
S. has probably come close to death more times than I can imagine in her short life. The terror she experienced, the rejection, the humiliation, the pain of being ignored by the people who live with her, by her peers—this, if not the abuse itself, surely could have killed her. She is a survivor; despite everything, she is still loving and hopeful and willing to get her hands dirty, literally and figuratively, to create change. She is still capable of experiencing wonder.
The week Lawrence King was killed, two boys’ lives were ruined. The system that is supposed to provide an education to our youth failed miserably. One boy thought that another boy’s sexual orientation was a good enough reason to kill him. One boy was so threatened by another boy’s crush that he believed violence was the answer. One boy is dead, and another will spend his life in prison.
The week Lawrence King was killed was perhaps the happiest week of my life. I cannot speak for S., but I know she was also happy, truly happy, for much of the week—and when she wasn’t happy per se, she was open to the world, thriving in a community of people who are willing to accept her, and have accepted me, with open arms.
The week Lawrence King was killed, and after, some people said stupid things to me. They asked personal questions no one would ever ask or say to someone welcoming a biological child—does she have “mental problems,” am I sure I know what I’m getting into, am I sure my heart is not bigger than my head. I felt the piercing grief I’ll feel, I’m sure, all of my life on her behalf; I felt the urge to demand that they reframe their questions, rethink their statements. I was insulted and angered, but not shaken. Each time, I tried to answer with integrity, turning the conversation to S’s strengths rather than her challenges, to say, “She’s had a difficult life and struggles with social skills and school, but she’s also an amazing artist, an avid reader, wonderfully at ease around horses.”
In the end, these words did not hurt me as the same words would have hurt S.; I know who I am; I have learned to be confident and secure in my identity; I know I am doing what I am called to do at this point in my life.
I want to believe we don’t live in a world in which being gay is such a threat, such a tragedy, that it merits murder—but clearly, we still live in such a world. I want to believe my daughter will be safe from the comments that sting, the violence that marked her early life—but clearly, I cannot be sure she will be. She is not a lesbian, but she is different in other ways, markedly different—she’s a teenage adoptee, she’s got a single, lesbian mom, she’s disabled and marked by trauma. These differences are apparent, obvious, especially in the small town where I live.
I don’t know who the world lost when Brandon McInerney killed Lawrence King. Perhaps we lost two people with the capacity for compassion—one whose compassion was warped by the messages he’d received about GLBT people, messages we desperately need to change, and one whose compassion was warped by the abuse he faced from his peers. Lawrence King, it turns out, like many queer teenagers who lose their families when they come out, did not have a safe home to which to return—he was living in a youth shelter.
S. could have given in to the negative messages about queers, rejected the opportunity to be adopted by somebody different, but she didn’t. She chose love and open-mindedness over hate and ignorance. I am proud of her for this, and grateful—but I am also afraid. Love and open-mindedness are equated with difference, and difference is hated and feared, even in the world of 8th graders who are just now figuring out who they are, who they want to be, who are just beginning the dance of self-exploration, of self- and world-discovery.
The week Lawrence King was shot because he dared to be different, S. and I visited the local school. I watched the body that had just two days before moved confidently in sync with a horse’s neck slump toward the linoleum floor, her eyes focused on her tennis shoes. She was in a school, and schools, she has already learned, are not safe places. In the end, especially after seeing some girls her age whom she’d met earlier who took the time to say hello, she was willing to consider the notion that perhaps this school could be better than her old school, where race, class, sexual orientation, and ability govern interactions, where she is constantly teased to the point that she now preemptively strikes, verbally or physically, when another child approaches her. Still, she is hopeful; she believes things can get better.
I hope she is right.
The week Lawrence King was shot, 1,000 young people showed up to a hastily planned march in his honor. Many of the youth spoke eloquently about the need for compassion and understanding and open-mindedness. Since his death, even the relatively non-political people like Ellen Degeneres have spoken out about the need to change the message young people are getting about sexual orientation. Despite some misleading or biased reports, the tragic state of school climate for GLBT teens has made national headlines, the first step to national change.
“We forget the goodness that is in most of our kids,” said the superintendent of King’s school, who marched with the youth. He pointed out that the high number of marchers is a sign of hope for the future.
I hope he is right.
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