Sam
In January, I started school again.
I’d missed an entire semester, but with a couple of extra classes in summer school I’d likely be able to graduate on time. The bigger issue was what it would be like dealing with the other kids. I was presenting as a girl now, and I refused to go back.
Dad, in his typically awkward way, asked me if I wanted to consider other options. Georgia had a virtual high school where you could take all of your classes online. Private school wasn’t an option, but there were others. I could get a GED and go straight into college maybe next fall. With the level of AP classes I’d taken freshman and sophomore year, it was likely I’d pass.
But I didn’t want that. I wanted to go back to school.
It seemed crazy. I hated school. Or more accurately, I hated being harassed. I hated dealing with bullies. I hated dealing with hiding myself. But I wasn’t hiding anymore. I had a best friend now. I wanted to try. So Mom and Dad helped set it up, and I started school in January.
I won’t lie and say it was easy and that everyone accepted me. But it wasn’t terrible either. I actually made some friends. And … I bought tickets to prom. Hayley had to get special permission from Children’s Services in Alabama, but she got permission to come to Atlanta that weekend and come to prom with me. She’s my best friend … and maybe a little more.
Brenna has been talking about maybe going to community college in the fall. In the meantime, she’s been in a lot of therapy and addiction treatment. She’s nothing like I remember. She’s scared all the time and sometimes angry. But every once in a while she smiles, and in that smile, I see the sister I lost, and I know that slowly, ever so slowly, I seem to be getting her back.
It won’t happen in a hurry. It can’t. She’ll be broken some ways her entire life. We all will. I don’t know how she’ll ever trust again, except that in small increments, she does it every day.
She goes outside and sits in the sunshine with Grandpa, and she goes to her meetings, and every day she adjusts a little more to being back in our lives.
On my birthday, Grandpa gave me a hundred-dollar bill. Brenna and I went to the mall, and then we went and got a very early dinner at a nice restaurant. Even though I’d been presenting as a girl for months, I still felt a small shiver of a thrill inside when the waiter asked, “What can I get you ladies?”
“I don’t have much to give you for your birthday since I don’t have a job yet,” Brenna said. “But I did make you something small.”
She handed me a tiny box, wrapped in bright gold gift wrap. I thought I recognized it, maybe from Christmas? Maybe Grandpa helped her wrap it.
I tore open the paper, because why screw around when it’s your seventeenth birthday?
Inside was an old jewelry box. I opened it and stared. It was a bracelet, made of small smooth stones, mostly grey, but some tiny white and pink polished quartz crystals.
“You don’t have much to give me?” I squeaked. “How much did this cost?”
She blushed. “It didn’t cost anything except some digging and work. I found all the stones and polished them, and Grandpa helped me drill the holes.”
Unexpectedly, I felt tears run down my face. She must have spent weeks working on this. “You did this for me?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer.
After a long few seconds I said, “All I ever wanted was to get you back, you know. I missed you like crazy. I was so scared without you.”
She smiled, a sad smile, but a real one. She took the bracelet and fastened it around my wrist. “You did okay though. Not just okay. You … grew up. You blossomed. When I left, you were a terrified little mouse, and when you found me you’d become a beautiful woman. I’m so … I’m so proud of you.”
It was too much emotion to handle. I wiped my face and she wiped hers and we ordered our dinner. We laughed and joked. After dinner we went for a walk, mostly just people-watching in the mall. It was crowded, and there were all kinds of people around us.
It was all terribly boring and normal. And I was with my sister.
###
Author’s Note
The Roberts family’s story was fiction, but the experiences of Brenna and Sam were not unique.
Transgender youth in America are far more likely than their peers to end up homeless, drug addicted, sex trafficked and to be victims of homicide and suicide. This is significantly aggravated by the fact that they are often rejected by the people they need the most—their families, churches and friends. It was only until late in the Obama administration that any federal protections existed for transgender people against discrimination in housing, health care and other services. Those new protections have been almost entirely rolled back by the Trump administration in the last two years.
In other words, if you are transgender, you can be denied access to bathrooms. You can be fired from your job. You can be denied housing, kicked out the military or be ejected from a homeless shelter, all based on who you are.
Brenna’s experience as described in this novel is also not all that unusual. Traffickers and pimps often prey on kids who are troubled, already abused, isolated or otherwise don’t have strong support systems. They manipulate and abuse young women and children, and too often law enforcement treats the victims as criminals themselves, locking them up or worse.
The scale of the problem is staggering. Estimates vary wildly depending on which organization and what research you look at, but it’s clear that anywhere from 35,000 to hundreds of thousands of children and teens are trafficked in the United States every year.
To learn more, including how you can help, here are three organizations which provide services, information and advocacy in these areas.
My Life, My Choice
https://fightingexploitation.org
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, My Life, My Choice provides community, stability and hope to exploited children. The average age their clients entered the sex trade is 14 years old. They provide survivor empowerment, prevention, training and advocacy.
The Polaris Project
https://polarisproject.org
Polaris works with a wide variety of organizations to help stop human trafficking.
The Transgender Youth Equality Foundation
http://www.transyouthequality.org
Transgender Youth Equality Foundation provides education, advocacy and support for transgender children, youth and their families.
sheehanmiles.com
Published by Cincinnatus Press
South Hadley, Massachusetts
United States of America
Copyright © 2019 Charles Miles.
Edited by Lori Sabin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN:
v05212019
Winter Flower Page 50
