Being Emily (Anniversary Edition)

by Rachel Gold

  “For real, who was the red-head in the Cities?” he asked. “Chris break up with you?”

  “She’s a friend,” Claire said. “We’re still together. Why does no one believe that?”

  “You two don’t act like you used to. You don’t touch him as much. I figured something happened.”

  Now that made complete sense. No wonder the rumors had so much traction. Claire made a mental note to tell Emily they had to go back to being cutesy at school.

  “We went through some stuff,” she told Ramon. “But we came out more together. All that stuff before, in the halls, half of it was for show, to make other girls envious and show off my cute boyfriend and now…I know I’ve got this person in my life that I’m always going to love, no matter what, even if we go to different colleges. That other business about how things look doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s some deep knowledge, little goth,” he said with a nod to the colored scarf she was wearing. “I like it. What else do you know?”

  “This school would be a better place if queer and trans students didn’t have to be terrified all the time.”

  Ramon smirked and said, “Be nice if it was a little less white, too.”

  “That is so true.” She wanted to offer him something and, now that Jason was calling her queer all the time anyway, she didn’t have much to lose, so she added, “I am queer, though. The bisexual kind.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Hot.”

  “Jerk. Like you’d say that if I were a guy.”

  His face froze for a second and then his grin flashed across it and he shrugged. “You should get over that boyfriend-time thing. We need Chris on the team.”

  “Do you really?” Claire asked.

  “Nah. Going to miss him, though. Middle of those meets gets pretty boring.”

  “Don’t you guys ever just hang out? Like not at meets? You know Chris restores old cars, right? He works on them with his dad. Do you like cars?”

  “I could,” Ramon said.

  “Good, because I find them deeply tedious. I’ll ask Chris to invite you over sometime. Bring whoever you want.” She added that last without gender in case the frozen look on his face and the quick grin had been him starting to come out to her.

  He picked up his lunch tray. “Girlfriend jokes aside, I don’t have a whoever right now. But when I do, maybe I will.”

  Chapter Thirty

  School starting brought a welcome relief to the whole family. Despite the high temperatures of the summer, the house had been emotionally cold as a tomb since June. I dove into my classes with fervor, and started going over to Claire’s most nights after school, except for the dreaded Wednesdays when I still had to see messed-up Dr. Webber. He’d been taking lots of notes during my visits of late. What were they for? I started to feel paranoid. I had to figure out a way to stop seeing him, but for most of September I was content to have my regular life back.

  I fantasized about telling my swim coach the real reason I quit the team. I imagined walking into his office and saying, “Actually, here’s the truth. I’m a trans woman and I’m going to start growing breasts this year, so I can’t swim with the guys anymore.”

  Unfortunately, the second part of that imagined scenario involved him outing me to the whole school, so I never went with that plan. Instead I’d pointed out that I wasn’t in the top half of the team and that I needed to focus on schoolwork and earning money for college. He argued against it, but I was tenacious.

  Dad had more trouble with me quitting than the coach did. Maybe because coach had a crop of new hopeful swimmers to deal with and Dad was stuck with me.

  He brought it up a few times in the first weeks of school. Swimming practice didn’t start until October and he pointed out that I had time to change my mind.

  “You’re still a guy at school,” he said. “I thought you liked swimming.”

  “I do.”

  “You said no one else is as good at distance.”

  “No one else wants to do distance. They’ve got a bunch of new swimmers this year. The team will be fine,” I told him.

  “Don’t you want the varsity letter?”

  “Dad.” I didn’t know how to say the obvious truth that he’d forgotten or didn’t want to face. I moved the neckline of my shirt to the side and held up the strap of the training bra I was wearing under three layers of shirts.

  His eyes got very wide. And then he walked away.

  The door to the garage slammed shut.

  * * *

  Dad avoided me for about a week. I couldn’t stand it. I put on my very gray Henley and went to work on the car with him. We didn’t talk. But at least he’d let me hang out with him in his sanctuary.

  It was early October and the sun set around 6:30. Every evening I went up to my room, sat at my desk and got nothing done, staring out at the dark sky. I caught myself rubbing my arms, the softening skin there, thinking about the future. A year or two from now, I’d be in the Cities, being a girl. Except in that future there was no Claire, she’d been accepted to a college in Iowa, and there sure wasn’t Mom, also no Dad. And because Dad’s side of the family was the side known for being randomly, weirdly liberal, no Dad probably meant no family at all.

  Mom would keep me away from Mikey, so no brother.

  At least I had Natalie. But one person wasn’t nearly enough.

  Now that I’d come out to some people, had chances to be myself around them, it was so much harder to go back to being an automaton. The Chris programs were harder to run and every time I ran them I felt the chasm widen between myself and everyone else.

  Knowing what happy felt like, deliberately avoiding it hurt. Not that being happy was all about girl stuff. But the girl identity issue was the bouncer at the door. When I couldn’t get past that, when I couldn’t have that, it was impossibly hard to get into all the rest of it.

  A few times in the first weeks at school I tried wearing a girl T-shirt as a base layer under my other shirt and sweater, trying to feel like a real person. Instead I panicked that someone would figure it out, that they’d X-ray vision through my clothes and see. Claire had told me about the conversation she’d interrupted, about Jason saying she was queer and so was I. When Ramon came over to tinker on the car with me and Dad, he never mentioned it, but I couldn’t be too careful.

  I liked having Ramon over. Claire told me she thought he might be on “Team Bi.” While we tinkered with car parts, he’d tell me about his family and his dreams and the epic fantasy books he loved. But then I’d wonder if I should try to be a guy more like him. At least playing the guy role all the time I didn’t worry so much about being outed.

  Natalie kept telling me I wasn’t being healthy and Claire said about the same thing but not in words.

  They were right. I needed a break from the pressure. Feeling ridiculous about it, I got a girls’ pajama set: a turquoise top with hearts on it and cute half-sleeves and sleep shorts, striped pink and purple. I ordered it online and had it sent to Claire’s house.

  The first time I put it on was the middle of the night, when I got up to pee. I’d been sleeping in a T-shirt and boxers, but I changed into the pajamas and stared at myself in the mirror for a long time. I’d been on hormones for two months and I thought I could see the hint of breasts, though it was probably too soon. But the idea made me grin and grin.

  Nobody understood, except Natalie and the people in the support group, how for me gender was such a deep human thing that not being a girl meant not being a person, not being real. That telling me to be a boy meant telling me not only that other people were more important than I was, but that I had no importance at all. That I couldn’t be trusted to know who I was.

  Now I could start to grow up, to become the person I wanted to be. I just wished I didn’t have to do it alone.

  * * *

  A few weeks later, Dad knocked on my door, saying, “Chris, you up?”

  I’d been sitting in bed doing my History class reading in my girl pajamas.
A gray robe Mom had gotten me hung over the back of my desk chair and I pulled it on to cover all that scandalous color. It hung well past the sleep shorts and covered them up easily.

  I opened the door saying, “Yeah, it’s only nine.”

  “You’ve been going to bed early,” he said. “You sleeping a lot?”

  I wondered if Mom had sent him to administer the depression checklist, make sure I was okay. They could’ve just slipped it under my door on a clipboard.

  “Reading mostly.” I stepped out of the doorway.

  He came into the room and closed the door most of the way behind him. I braced myself.

  He contemplated my desk with its sleeping computer, mess of papers and the folded over Girls & Cars calendar. Looked back at me, brows coming together.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked in a tone of disbelief at best, maybe disdain.

  A glance down confirmed that the top of the bright turquoise shirt was visible and the upper curve of the big pink heart. I hadn’t pulled the gray completely over the bright colors. Subconscious much?

  It might send him running again, but I wanted him to see me, even for a minute.

  I braced my feet and said, “Girls’ pajamas.” Untying the robe, I let it fall open. I made myself not cross my arms over my chest, just stood there and let him see me in turquoise and hearts and ruffles. I waited for him to slam out of the room.

  He didn’t move.

  He looked at me so long I had to start talking again.

  “I’m trying, Dad. Trying to be your son. But I can’t do it all the time. It’s like I’m a robot, I’m not a person. I’m frozen in time as this non-thing and…”

  “Stop it,” he said. He unsnapped a vest pocket and pulled out a bolt that he turned in his fingers.

  “I can’t stop,” I told him.

  He shook his head and sank down onto my desk chair. “Sit down.”

  I crawled across my bed and sat against the pile of pillows where I’d been doing homework. He was across from me, not far, hands between his knees, rotating the bolt over and over.

  “You going to look like that girl Natalie someday?” he asked, watching the bolt move in his fingers.

  “Yes.”

  “Is this because you want to be pretty?”

  “I’d like to be pretty. I mean, I hope so. But it’s because I’m a girl. I know I’m a girl. And even if I didn’t know it now, every time I think about who I could be when I grow up, in the future, I’m always a woman.”

  Another long pause. He weighed the bolt in his palm, stared around the room.

  “Did I do this to you?” he asked. “You don’t want to be a man.”

  “No!”

  I hadn’t ever thought what it would be like to be my dad with all the shit Dr. Webber had been saying about how I only thought I wanted to be a girl because I hated my dad. That must’ve been awful to keep being told he’d screwed me up. I wanted to hug him and tell him no a dozen different ways.

  “Dad,” I said. “I love you. This is just something that happens. I knew when I was really little. It’s not anything you did. You don’t have to blame yourself.”

  He made a grunt of agreement and turned his face to me.

  “Don’t you coddle me,” he growled. “You aren’t the parent here. I’m the damned parent.”

  He pulled a grayed and folded piece of paper out of an upper vest pocket. From the creases, the dirt and the grease-defined fingerprints, he’d been carrying it around for days, maybe weeks, taking it out to unfold and fold up again.

  He unfolded it now and spread it on the edge of my desk: a single notebook page, torn out, written on with blunt pencil. It said:

  Brunch

  Go for a walk/hike

  Golf

  Photography

  Fishing

  Women’s sports

  Theater

  “I’ve been asking the guys at the shop what they do with their daughters,” he said. “I didn’t tell ’em why. Didn’t think that was their business. Now they probably think your mother’s expecting.” He snorted and asked, “You like any of this?”

  I blinked back tears so I could read the list again. He’d asked his buddies what they did with their daughters? I remembered hearing him talk to Natalie’s mom. Him walking away from me after the swimming/bra strap conversation. I’d thought he was mad. But maybe mad was how it looked when he got confused.

  I put my finger on number three and said, “You think golf is stupid.”

  “It’s better than theater.”

  “Where’s your pencil?”

  He pulled it from another pocket, a half-stub with the lead worn down. I started crossing off and re-writing the list until it read:

  Any food

  Go for a drive

  Cars

  Computers

  Hiking

  Family board game night

  Action movies

  He put his finger on number three, where mine had been. “You still like cars?”

  “I’m still me,” I said. “More me. And girls can like cars.”

  “Long as you don’t ever pose for one of those calendars.” His lips wrinkled, trying to hide a smirk.

  I smirked back at him and said, “Yeah, about that.”

  “I got something better for you this year,” he told me.

  “You don’t have to. This is what I want.”

  “What? Working on cars with your old man?” he asked.

  He pulled the bolt out of his pocket again and held it up, then put it between his fingers and turned it slowly. I watched his thick fingers with the crescents of grease under his nails.

  I told him, “I want to be a girl and still have a dad.”

  His brows drew closer as he asked, “Where’d you think I was going to go?”

  I didn’t have to answer because he turned his head to stare through my cracked-open bedroom door in the direction of the master bedroom. His jaw hardened. He had to be thinking about Mom, about how she and I avoided each other now, didn’t talk unless we had to. He got that I didn’t mean he’d go somewhere physically, but that he’d stop loving me. He blinked and rubbed a hand briskly across his face.

  Thumping his finger on the list on my desk, he said, “’Course you’ve got a dad. Anytime. Got it?”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He went to the door, then turned back to me. “Talking to Susan, Natalie’s mother, she told me I should call you Emily. That from your grandma?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh.” A half smile, faint and thoughtful. He nodded and said, “Emily.”

  He went out and shut the door behind him, which was good since I’d started crying a lot.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I didn’t know if I could refuse to go to Dr. Webber without Mom trying to cut off my supply of hormones, but I had to try. Claire and I brainstormed early in the weekend, and then I cornered Mom in her tiny office after dinner on Sunday.

  I tried to sound as plaintive as possible, and not demanding. “Mom, I don’t want to go to Dr. Webber anymore, he gives me the creeps.”

  “That was the deal,” she said. “You got to see your hormone doctor; you have to see Dr. Webber too.”

  I sat on the edge of her desk. “When we have appointments and you’re not there, he spends the whole time asking about my sexual fantasies,” I told her. “It’s gross.”

  Now she turned in her chair to look at me. “Are you lying to me, Christopher?”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I mean, you know I can’t stand him, but if that was it, I could keep going I suppose. He makes me feel disgusting. He wants to talk about masturbation and stuff. It’s nasty. And then he takes lots and lots of notes. I’m afraid of what he’s going to do with them. Can we find another doctor? You can pick one who wants to change me, just not a…you know, a gross one.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know why you persist in this delusion about womanhood. What do you think it’s going to solve? Do you think your life wo
uld be easier as a woman?”

  I sagged back against the desk, holding myself up with my arms. After months of this, even the first few lines of my mother’s argument made me feel like I’d gone three days without sleeping.

  “It’s not going to make my life easier,” I said. “Are you kidding?”

  “Then why?” she asked.

  “Because I am a woman,” I said simply. “That’s all. What would you do if you’d grown up as a boy?”

  “I’d be a boy,” she said. “I wouldn’t be myself. That’s the point, Chris, people don’t go from one to the other. You’re not a woman. You don’t act like a woman, you don’t think like a woman. I’m afraid you’re going to turn out to be a freak, and you’ll never get what you’re looking for.”

  Normally, I’d have fought her and insisted that I am a woman and therefore I think like one and so on. But I didn’t. Maybe it was the conversation with Dad, or the mellow weekend I’d had, or the hormones, or being able to be honest to more people than ever before. I didn’t feel as angry at her as usual. I could start to understand that she honestly wanted me to be happy but she didn’t see how all this could work.

  “I’m afraid of that, too,” I admitted. “I’m afraid I’ll get through all this and I won’t look or sound like a woman.”

  “Then why do it?” she asked.

  “Because being treated like a guy all the time, having to pretend I am a guy, I’m lying to everyone. It destroys me. I would rather fail at being myself than succeed at being someone I’m not.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand it, and I’m still going to look for another way out for you.”

  “But not Dr. Webber?”

  “No,” she said. “Not him. But you’re going to church at least twice a month.”

  I enjoyed church with Claire explaining it all to me, but I knew I had to pretend it was a chore. “Ugh, Mom,” I said and sighed heavily. “Fine. If I have to.”

  I was elated to have the weight of Dr. Webber off me, but Mom’s comment about me not thinking like a woman haunted me. Was it possible that even though I felt female inside, my growing up as a boy had changed me forever? Would I never fit in anywhere except for the transgender community? Although I found support there and liked the people I’d met, I couldn’t imagine living my whole life inside those boundaries.