It wasn't much of a surprise when my neighbors put their house up for sale a few months ago. Even in 2021, the self-righteous gossip of small town America has a way of chewing up and spitting out anyone deemed "different" by the church crowd, and out here the church crowd is just about everybody. As a chronically single lesbian, I've escaped most of that judgement from my neighbors by being essentially invisible to them, though I still cringe on the inside whenever one of the nosy Karens starts prying into my personal life and demands to know when I'm going to find myself a husband and start popping out kids.
My neighbors Amanda and Heather didn't have the luxury of being invisible, and I honestly don't think the two of them ever had any intention of trying to hide their marriage in the first place. The whispers around town started as soon as word got out that two women in their 30s had moved into the old Victorian house next to mine on Elderberry Street. Heather was the granddaughter of my previous neighbor, Judith, and Judith left the house to Heather in her will when she passed away a couple years ago. So Amanda and Heather took the opportunity to live the quiet life together that they'd always dreamed of in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, complete with a thriving garden and a house full of cats. I considered them friends, but we weren't particularly close in any of the time that they lived next door. I mostly just quietly adored from a distance how unabashed they were with their love, and admired how they confidently strolled through the neighborhood on their evening walks, holding hands and chatting and laughing, as though the company of each other was all they needed to drown out the negativity of the more ignorant-minded folks in town. I liked to hope that one day I'd also be so smitten with the woman of my dreams, and perhaps then the two of them would let me borrow a page from their book of giving zero fucks.
Of course, it wasn't long after they moved in before the rumors began circulating that they were witches. Yes, apparently that's still a thing that some rural folks are happy to accuse women of being, especially women who don't care to hide anything about who they are just to comfort those who are perpetually uncomfortable. It started as whispers among the schoolkids, and it eventually spiraled into groups of middle schoolers congregating in front of the "witch house," daring each other to knock on the door or disturb the peace in some other way. Unfortunately, around here, when the peace is disturbed and it involves anyone who breaks the mold of dusty old traditions, folks will always blame the disturbance on the people who they deem to be too different, regardless of who is really at fault. Things got really out of hand when the teenage son of one of the more outspoken church moms left a flaming bag of dog shit on Amanda and Heather's doorstep, and then inexplicably ended up with a case of hiccups that lasted for four days on end. From then on, the town acted like the Devil himself had strolled naked down Main Street on Jesus's birthday. There were town meetings about the supposed witches that erupted in anger, protests of angry moms on the sidewalk outside of Heather and Amanda's house, and at one point a brick was thrown through their living room window late at night while the neighborhood slept.
I suppose that's probably when Heather and Amanda decided they had seen enough. After two years of living in that gorgeous Victorian home next to mine, they put their house on the market and they disappeared.
For the next few months, realtors and prospective buyers would come and go, and I got used to all the new faces and all the different cars sitting out on the street. Sometimes things would quiet down for a few days, and I wondered if someone had started the process of closing on the house, but then the weekend would come around and new couples would show up to take their tour of the home and things would pick up again. I missed seeing Amanda and Heather stroll by every evening, their love shining through the neighborhood like a beacon. But I didn't blame them for leaving. What happened to them made me start thinking seriously about how much longer I could endure this town.
