Introduction

“My dad’s not gay! You’re a liar!” I had never spoken to

anybody with such violence, but I did so now to Katie, a childhood
friend.
We were settled in her bedroom, and the emptiness of the
newly painted room echoed the grief that rang out in my voice. The
walls seemed to be closing in on me. It was well past bedtime, and
my two younger sisters were sprawled out on the carpet snoring in
their sleeping bags.
We had arrived in California a few days earlier, just in time to
visit our father for Christmas. My mother, step-father, and baby
brother remained in Utah. Though we often spent Christmas at
my dad’s condo in San José, this year we drove to Fresno. Dad
explained that his friend Dennis and his daughter Katie had moved
there, and that’s where we would be celebrating the holidays. Katie
and Dennis had been part of our lives since my parents’ divorce.
Spending Christmas with them sounded fun to me. Katie and I
had spent the last few days bonding over music and boys. But now,
2   Emily January

at the age of nine, I was learning the most devastating news of my

life. I had needed a drink a few moments before, so Katie and I
had crept to the kitchen. We passed the still-lit Christmas tree,
then flooded the kitchen with light and raided the refrigerator. But
tiptoeing back to bed, I noticed something I hadn’t before. As we
passed the master bedroom, I realized that both my dad and Den-
nis were sleeping in the same bed. The door was wide open and
the two of them lay resting on their backs, unaware that Katie and I
were up past bedtime. We reached her bedroom and shut the door
softly, thrilled that we hadn’t been caught.
As we clambered over piles of pillows on her bed, I giggled,
“Our dads are having a sleep-over, too! They’re sleeping in the
same bed.”
Katie’s smile vanished and she looked at me seriously. “Emily,
it isn’t a sleep-over.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you really want to know?” Her brown eyes were wide and
full of concern.
I wasn’t sure if I did, but I said yes anyway.
“They’re gay, Emily. That’s why they’re in the same bed.”
And that’s when my world exploded.
 Chapter 1

My first memory of my father is his teasing. In the early

1980s, the fast-forward and rewind buttons on the VCR had to be
held down in order to do their jobs. My father showed me how all
he had to do was push it once and let go, and the machine would
keep fast-forwarding. I was fascinated. How did he do it? After
a few minutes of awe and watching Star Search in record time, I
begged for him to share his secret. He pulled the remote control
from behind his back with a smirk on his face. What a joker! He’d
been holding down the button on the remote! Another early mem-
ory is my dad pulling an earwig out of my mouth. I know: how did
I manage to get one in there anyway? Well, my sisters and I always
“performed” for our parents, standing on the hearth as a stage and
using the dangling handles of the metal fireplace curtain as micro-
phones. Being young, I decided to suck on the end of the handle
after I finished a rousing rendition of “Thriller.” The consequences
were that my mouth and throat felt itchy. I complained to my dad,
who bravely investigated. He reached into my mouth, pulled out
4   Emily January

the offending earwig, and acted as if it were no big deal. I conse-

quently didn’t freak out too much. My dad had saved the day.
Those are the two earliest memories I have of my dad. He has
always been a tease, and he has always been my hero.
But the most vivid memory is of a Sunday morning, with my
dad in bed while my mom, my two sisters, and I got dressed for
church. My dad was a police officer who often worked graveyard
shifts, making this situation unremarkable. He could have been
sick. He could have been tired.
When we arrived home after church, my mom’s demeanor
seemed to alter. Her hands shook slightly as she fit the silver key
into the lock, her palm sweaty and struggling to grip the brass
knob. Then, instead of entering the house, she poked her head in
tentatively, her hot-rollered waves bouncing as she scanned the
living room, my youngest sister Mabel in her arms. She finally
stepped over the threshold, the heel of her shoe snagging slightly
before she fully entered the house.
My sister Chloe and I followed her, the two of us bumping into
her legs and each other, pushing to enter the familiar territory that
our mother was suddenly treating as unfamiliar. Mom seemed to
get her senses back after entering, striding into the kitchen, putting
down Mabel and her bag.
“Tom?” she called down the hallway of our rambler. “Thomas?
Are you still sleeping?” She paused to listen for a response that
didn’t come.
She removed one shoe, then the other. She took them in hand
and walked slowly down the brown-carpeted hallway toward the
master bedroom. We followed, tiptoeing so we wouldn’t wake
Dad. We knew the routine. We had to be quiet during the days: he
needed to sleep.
We entered the bedroom behind our mother. The bed was
neatly made and empty. The first thing that jumped out at me was
an envelope lying against the pillows. At age six, it was just at my
Home Yesterday   5

eye level. But Mom didn’t see it because she was staring into the
open closet. Half of it was empty, a stray tie dangling from a wire
hanger like an exclamation point. Mom gasped as she stared into
this void, not too loudly, but loudly enough. We all looked up at
her.
But when she turned around she wore a tight smile, although
her chin trembled. “Let’s find Daddy,” she chirped. “He must be
here somewhere.”
She began calling his name, stumbling from room to room,
finding the bathroom devoid of his toiletries and the linen closet
bare. Her act worked on me. My dread subsided, and I skipped
gaily after her, calling for Dad and thinking that he had devised a
new game of hide and seek, only removing his possessions to show
that he wasn’t hiding there.
After five desperate minutes of calling his name, my mother
switched on a Strawberry Shortcake video and filled our hands with
crackers. We sisters grinned at each other—watching cartoons was
more exciting than our usual routine of changing our clothes and
getting ready for dinner. But the change made me wary, and dread
began to pool in the bottom of my stomach. Usually Dad would
be here, too, just waking up or removing his tie if it hadn’t been a
late night.
Mom went to her bedroom and shut the door. Over the cheer-
ful cartoon voices, I could hear her talking in a hushed yet frantic
voice on the telephone. Chloe wanted to pick up the kitchen exten-
sion to see if Dad was on the other line. I wouldn’t let her. The
dread in my stomach made me think that Dad wasn’t on the line
and that Dad wasn’t coming home. Grandma was probably the
one comforting my mother right now; doubtless the envelope was
lying opened in my mother’s lap.

Dad and Mom met at Brigham Young University in Provo in the

late 1970s. Both were fresh off their proselyting missions for The
6   Emily January

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Argentina and met

in a student family home evening group. Both of my parents said
that they did not like one another at first. Mom found Dad to be
cocky and overconfident. I think Dad found Mom to be the same.
Yet they eventually fell in love and married in the Oakland Cali-
fornia LDS temple when my mom was 24 and my dad 22. They left
school at BYU and found jobs in San José, California, where my
mom had grown up. My dad, a native of Las Vegas and a convert
to the LDS Church, worked at Alpha Beta, becoming an expert
juggler of fruit and an irritated checker of groceries. He once had a
customer complain that he was scanning the food too slowly. This
customer made several snide remarks, finally driving my father to
grab him and flip him onto the conveyor belt with a Judo-style
move. (My dad has a black belt in Judo.) I think the manager broke
up the fight, but my dad wasn’t fired. All of the other customers in
line vouched for him and said the other customer deserved it.
At this time, my dad also began attending the police academy,
learning police codes, running a strenuous amount of time and
distance, and taking tests. He graduated just as I was born in May
1980. My mom worked at several fast food joints, a pattern that
had to stop due to her severe morning sickness. She tells of how
she would try to work, but the smells just kept getting to her. So,
she’d go home to their apartment and lie on the bed, which was
just about as big as the bedroom. My dad would come home and
open the bedroom door, hitting the bed, so he’d slip through the
just-large-enough crack to check on my mom.
Eventually they bought a house in San José on Serrano Avenue.
My sister Chloe was born there, and we lived a life of poopy dia-
pers and crying in the middle of the night. Once, my mom left my
sister at home napping during church with my dad, while she and I
attended our meetings. When we got home, my dad was still asleep
on the couch, exhausted from catching robbers during the night,
but my sister was wide awake in her crib, her diaper removed, and
Home Yesterday   7

poop smeared everywhere. My dad was roused from his slumber

by my mom’s shrieks at finding the mess. My parents got to work
cleaning up, and I had the important job of watching the water fill
the bathtub. I think my mom invented this job to keep me out of
the way; however, I remember feeling important. I enjoyed water!
My parents bought a fixer-upper on Laura Drive in a neighbor-
hood in San José that had a swimming pool for residents. On one
afternoon, the swimming pool was an oasis for our family until my
mom noticed that I wasn’t anywhere to be found. They panicked,
scanned the area, and spotted me at the bottom of the deep end.
I think my love of water had prompted me to jump into the pool
when my parents weren’t looking. My dad jumped in, rescued me
from a watery grave, and pounded me on the back. I lived. Once
again, my dad was a hero.
My mom went into labor with my littlest sister Mabel while
Dad was working. Chloe and I had woken up sick, throwing up the
hot dogs we’d eaten the night before. (We still can’t stand hot dogs
to this day.) After we finished barfing, my mom used the restroom,
calling to us from the toilet urgently.
“Call Grandma!” she said. “The baby’s head is coming!”
So, I dialed my grandmother, who rushed over to watch us
while my mom went to the hospital. I think at some point Mom
called Dad, who actually took her to the hospital. The story goes
that my mom tried to tell the hospital staff that Mabel was about
to be born. They all tried to calm her, saying it took hours to have
a baby. However, they didn’t realize this was my mom’s third baby
and that she’d already seen the baby’s crown. So Mabel was born in
an elevator in the hospital. The staff apologized afterward.
When we weren’t with our mother, Chloe and I were playing
with Barbies in our room. We enjoyed dressing them and redress-
ing them. Once, Dad brought home an entire box full of Barbie
clothes from the police department. They had been in the lost
and found so long that they were now free for any officer to take,
8   Emily January

so he brought them to us. It felt like Christmas morning. A few

weeks later, we decided it would be fun to take the lamp off of the
dresser and cover it with Barbie clothes. The light projected the
colors of the clothes onto the ceiling and walls. We felt like artists
creating something beautiful! Then, it was lunchtime. We went to
our mother who had called, leaving the clothes draped over the
heat of the lamp’s bulb. After a while, we began to smell something
burning. We followed Mom around the house to investigate, try-
ing to locate the suspicious smell. We finally discovered that the
Barbie clothes were starting to burn. A few had developed large
angry black spots ready to burst into flame. Mom saved the day
by removing all of the clothes, and we received a lecture on never
doing that again, ever. We’d almost burned down the house!
This was my early childhood: happy, eventful, fun, and filled
with laughter, joy, and family togetherness. We created our memo-
ries and solidified our myths. Then my dad left. He just left.
 Chapter 2

I don’t remember my mom ever announcing to us that

the divorce was final. Whenever that day came, it was probably a
private day of grief for her. We children were oblivious to her pain.
And then she began to date. According to my maternal grand-
mother, this happened quickly—my mom wanted to prove to my
dad how desirable she was, how she could capture a man without
any problems. Maybe it became a way for my mom to prove to my
dad that he was wrong, that there was something wrong with him,
not her.
She dated a man with the last name of Coleman who had a
son named Philip. We liked Philip, my sisters and I. He and Chloe
were the same age, and I remember they became chummy. I often
felt that he and Chloe were the ones visiting each other while
Mabel gurgled in a baby bouncer and I stood guard, hoping that
I’d be included in the conversations, dull as they probably were.
My mom and Philip’s dad would make dinner together, inviting us
to join them once the preparations were done. Or they’d sit in the
10   Emily January

other room and talk, a mirror of Chloe and Philip’s tete-a-tete in

the living room. Once, we went to their house, exploring the lush
green backyard. Philip led us down to a small stream, where we
searched for and found a few tiny frogs. Chloe enjoyed this more
than I did. She was the tomboy—maybe that’s why Philip liked her
more.
I remember finally being tired of trying to fit into the conver-
sation while I waited for dinner to be ready. So, I took my bike
out to the front yard. I rode back and forth on the bumpy and
uneven sidewalk in front of our house, admiring the maples and
sycamores, waving to Inge, the neighbor girl across the street. I
even tried to pop a few “wheelies,” something I’d been practicing.
Just as I passed our driveway, I tried the trick again, this time pull-
ing the bike with too much force and falling off. The bike landed on
top of me and scraped the soft part of the inside of my right foot.
I immediately began screaming. I saw the blood and kept right on
screaming, hollering for my life. I became hysterical, unable to do
anything for myself at that moment. I inwardly chided myself for
being so stupid as to do tricks on my bike.
The sounds of my misery made it into the open kitchen win-
dow of my house. Mom and Mr. Coleman ran out to see what was
the matter. Mr. Coleman ran to the spot where I lay, deftly lifting
the pink bike from on top of me and cradling me in his arms. He
ran into the house with me held against him like a baby. I dis-
tinctly remember this moment because I thought of what a great
dad he would make, and of the real dad who should’ve been there
to carry me into the house. I began to cry harder, the pain not any
greater in my foot, but in my heart. As Mom bandaged my foot and
I began to calm down, I realized I didn’t really want Mr. Coleman
to become my new father. I wanted my old one.
I kept thinking about the scar that my bike crash had left, a
perfect circle of white and mottled skin showed where the scab
had been. The scar made me sick with worry. I liked for things to
Home Yesterday   11

be perfect. I worried about having a scar and not being perfect.

I worried that it was something I couldn’t control about myself.
The only thing I could do to soothe these worries was to think of
what I was learning at church, about the Second Coming and the
Resurrection, in which we are promised that our bodies will be
made whole in “the twinkling of an eye.” I looked forward to that
day eagerly and thought that the first thing I’d do when resurrected
would be to check my foot to make sure the scar was gone.
By thinking this, I created a new scar in my heart. I wondered
if my father would be with us in the First Resurrection. Would
we be a family again? Would my heart be made whole? I recently
checked for that scar, the memory of it still so fresh in my mind. I
can’t locate it or even its outline. Time has healed that tiny white
patch of mottled flesh, but my heart is a different story.

Dad began picking us up each Saturday for visits. I don’t recall a

lot of detail about these outings. I only remember one moment in
particular. It is frozen in my mind like a small clip of video or a
faded Polaroid snapshot.
Dad picked us up from Laura Drive. We settled into his tan
Toyota pickup and pulled out of the driveway, leaving the green
neighborhood behind. Dad drove the stick shift expertly, changing
gears with ease. The tape deck blasted the latest music in Dad’s
collection, a song by John Denver called “Take Me Home, Coun-
try Roads.” We all sang, a tradition we continued with our father
over the years. (He has the entire soundtrack of The Little Mermaid
memorized, thanks to us.) He has a love of music and instilled that
in us from an early age, exposing us to Michael Jackson, Billy Joel,
John Denver, Sarah Brightman, Julio Iglesias, Nana Mouskouri,
and others.
Our family, the January family, has never been one to produce
social butterflies. We don’t talk much, as social situations cause
anxiety and fear. So, instead of having serious conversations about
12   Emily January

the weather or maybe why Daddy left, we turned on the music and
sang.
Dad would crank up the volume, and we would crank up our
voices. Singing together bonded us.

Take me home, country roads,

to the place, I belong
West Virginia, Mountain Mama,
Take me home, country roads.

I know all of the words by heart. I’ve sung them my entire life,
trying to hold on to that feeling in the car, the one where we were
together belting out our love for each other. The words that stick
the most are: “Driving down the road I get a feeling that I should’ve
been home yesterday, yesterday!” We’d practically shout the end of
this line along with Mr. Denver, our voices cracking with the effort.
We’d laugh and keep on singing.
This line takes on new meaning to me now. Was my Dad trying
to tell us something? Did he wish that he were home with us? Did
he have a feeling that he should have been home yesterday? I don’t
know the answers to these questions.
My mom once mentioned that after she remarried, my dad
expressed to her the wish that he had stayed, that they had worked
things out, gone to counseling, made amends. I wish all of those
things had happened, too, but maybe that wasn’t realistic. Maybe
my dad only said those things when he realized my mom was
remarried, that he couldn’t have his old life back, that he couldn’t
see us as often because we had moved. I don’t know.
What I do know is that I love my dad and that I cherish that
memory of singing John Denver in his truck.