Being Emily

by Gold, Rachel

  I tried to make myself look at the individual purses, but my hand shook when I took one off the long metal rack. I put that one back, it reminded me of my mother’s, and grabbed a small, plain black purse on my way to the cash registers. Then I paused. I was supposed to buy control top pantyhose. Someone online said that was the key to “tucking” successfully. I had no idea what size or where to look, but the store had only a couple dozen people in it and so far no alarms had gone off and no one was staring at me as far as I could tell.

  I followed the signs to lingerie and found myself staring at a long, long aisle of pantyhose. Tiered row after row of white, gray and tan packages with colorful labels stretched into the distance. This would be a good time to ask for help, I thought, except that I hadn’t worked on my voice enough. I couldn’t actually say anything without giving myself away.

  Good Lord, I was an idiot. I took a deep breath and then another.

  I walked down the row until I saw “control top” and then tried to read the sizing chart on the back. I had a few options, so I took one of each and made for the registers.

  I picked the one with a young, dark-skinned girl with a head-scarf. She looked like she’d come over from a foreign country recently, and I was hoping I’d seem like just another American oddity to her. “Good morning,” she said in heavily accented English and rang up the items. “That’ll be twenty-eight fifty-three, miss.”

  My heart soared. I unfolded two crumpled twenties from my palm and handed them to her. The change went into my new purse, the stockings into a bag, and I stepped out into the fresh, cold air.

  “Miss” reverberated in my head all the way back to the car. I’d done it! For the first time I was out in public as a woman and at least for a few minutes, I passed. The elation mixed with the caffeine from the bottled depth charge cold coffee drink I’d sipped all the way out here and it seemed like my heavy boots floated inches above the ground. I felt goofy about being so excited, but after years of having “boy” and “son” land like shrapnel in me, being called “miss” felt amazing.

  I downed the rest of the coffee and drove the next two miles to the little mall in Annandale. Now that I was out in public, I didn’t want to have to change back into my boy clothes and go home.

  Okay, I told myself in the mall parking lot, this has got to be a quick exercise; I’m going to walk through and out because I can’t actually talk to anyone. I was going to have to practice with my voice a lot more in the near future. Maybe I should take voice lessons. I wondered if Mom would go for that.

  It wasn’t noon yet and the mall’s main corridors looked almost empty. Two women with babies in strollers walked along one side of the main corridor, and I picked the other side so I could avoid them. An old woman holding onto the arm of an old man passed me but didn’t look up at my face. I went from one end to the other and then started to stroll back. I really needed new shoes. Through the windows I looked at a few pairs. They had a DSW, which was a discount shoe warehouse that skimped on staff to keep their prices low so you had to pick out your own shoes and try them on without assistance. I should be able to try on something in there without having to fend off a salesperson in pantomime.

  Quickly I found the section of women’s boots, but I didn’t know much about women’s shoes and had no idea what size I was. I should have brought Claire with me. I put two different shoes next to my foot and guessed that I was a size eleven or twelve in women’s sizes, but I wasn’t nearly comfortable enough to take off my boots and try one on. What if someone came up to me? Would I end up running out of the mall with my boots in my hands?

  With a sigh, I gave up and headed back in the direction of the car. Claire wasn’t terribly fond of shopping, but if I threw in a movie, she’d probably come with me. Three junior high school kids walking in front of their parents stared at me as I passed and my heart started thrumming hard against my breastbone. Did they know? I turned away from them and kept walking. I should have waited until I could do a better job at this. Thank goodness no one here knew me.

  Unfortunately, my racing heart along with the huge bottled coffee meant that I had to pee so badly that it hurt. All the people in the mall were down at the other end where the better shops were. This end just held the administrative office and the restrooms.

  I paused in the hall to the restrooms and waited for a few long minutes to see if there was anyone in the women’s restroom. No one came out. I really wanted to see what I looked like in something larger than a rearview mirror, and I was literally hopping from one foot to the other. If I went out to the car, I’d have to wait until after I changed and then go find a restroom at a crappy gas station.

  I ducked into the women’s restroom and looked at myself in the mirror. The hat looked cute and so did my makeup, but my eyebrows were terrible and the whole size and ratio of my body still looked wrong. A passerby might think I was a girl, and then again might not. It all depended on what their sense of reality included; I either looked like a very boyish girl, or a boy very much in drag.

  The outfit was good because it avoided the loud and dramatic, but I really needed to work on my ability to walk and to speak. For the first time out, though, it was a huge victory.

  I turned toward the stalls. There were so many of them and no urinals. This was for sure the first time in my life that a restroom actually made me happy.

  You don’t have time, I told myself sternly. What are you going to do if someone comes in? Go.

  I quickly stepped into a stall and sat down to pee. It was so clean in here. Not just the floor but the walls of the stall were almost bare. I’d never been to this mall before, but in Liberty’s two tiny malls both of the men’s bathrooms were covered with disgusting graffiti. I didn’t have anything against graffiti, it was the subject matter that disgusted me. The scrawls tended universally toward anti-gay sentiments, woman bashing and bragging about sexual prowess. In this stall there was a sticker about breast cancer awareness posted on one side and on the other in looping handwriting the message, “You are really beautiful.”

  The restroom door opened and closed and then a heavy fist pounded on the stall door. I leaped off the toilet and pulled up my underpants so fast I nearly tore them and the skirt right off.

  “All right, sir, come out of there,” a man demanded.

  When I got the door open, a potato-shaped security guard was glaring at me.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  I did. We ended up in the mall security office, which was a large closet off that same short hallway, furnished with a desk, one chair behind it and two in front of it. I got one of the chairs in front of it.

  “All right, son,” the man said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, while frantically running through stories in my mind. My voice sounded awful because it was not only too low but also rough with fear.

  “You’re damn right you are. Jesus Christ, look at you. What’s your name?”

  “Jim,” I said. “Jim Harding.”

  “You better not be lying to me. Let’s see some ID.”

  “I didn’t bring any,” I said, honestly. I opened the purse and showed him it was empty except for the money.

  “Where you from?”

  “The Cities,” I said.

  “They tolerate this kind of shit there?” he asked, then sat back in the chair. “What do you think you’re doing in a ladies’ restroom? You’re some kind of pervert, aren’t you? You think you’re going to see something in there? You looking at girls or just like to pretend you are one?”

  I felt so far outside myself I might have been in the next county. This had gone beyond nightmarish into the bizarre and unbelievable. I knew my heart was beating unbearably fast, but I couldn’t actually feel it anymore. My body was cold and numb.

  “No,” I said with some emphasis.

  “I suppose you’re some kind of fag,” he suggested.

  “No,” I said, equally vehemently.

&nb
sp; “Well then what, exactly, are you doing trolling around in women’s clothing, boy?”

  For a moment, I considered telling him some version of the truth, which might feel like less of a betrayal of myself than lying outright. I could tell him that I was transsexual and that my doctor said I needed to spend a certain amount of time living as a woman. I was certain he had no idea there were internationally accepted guidelines that health professionals used to support the wellbeing of people with gender identity disorders.

  As good as it would feel to be honest, I worried that he could try to hold me here and make me call my parents. I certainly didn’t want him saying anything about transsexualism to them.

  My neck shook with the effort not to put my head in my hands. If my parents had to come here and see me in a skirt…I was doomed. They’d never let me out of the house again, or they’d never let me into the house again, and Dad would certainly stop talking to me. I had to find another way out of this situation, even if I had to lie through my teeth to do it.

  “I lost a bet,” I said. “I’m on the swim team, see.” I flexed my shoulders for verisimilitude, a gesture that I’m sure looked monstrous in that outfit. “And we had a race and the loser, who clearly was me, had to dress up like a girl, with makeup and everything, and go to a mall and buy something. So I tried to pick a mall where none of the guys would see me.”

  “But the restroom?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I drank a lot of coffee. I couldn’t go into the guys’ like this, and it’s freezing outside.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “If I ever see you in this mall again, I am hauling you to the police station, understand? And, if you want my advice, don’t lose any more bets. Get out.”

  I did. I ran for my car and drove out of that messed-up town. At a rest stop I pulled over and, when I’d stopped shaking enough to use my fingers, awkwardly changed clothes in the car. I wiped off all the makeup and got out of the car to throw the used wipes away at an outdoor trash can, not bothering with my jacket. The cold made me feel real.

  I stood out there for a long time thinking about how incredibly stupid I was and wondering what the hell made me think I would ever make it in the world as a woman. The whole scene with the guard had been miserable, but the worst part was lying, making up that whole ridiculous story about losing a bet, having to pretend I was a guy all over again. How could I make my way in the world if I couldn’t stand up for myself?

  I looked at the big green trash can in front of me, wondering if I should just throw away my girl clothes and give up. Except that everyone did that at least once, and then they showed up years later in places like GenderPeace and Natalie’s support group saying they wished they’d never done that. I wanted to learn from someone’s mistakes, even if I wasn’t so good at learning from my own.

  And for just that second when I’d considered coming out to that guy, telling him I was transsexual, under all the fear and dread, it felt good. Deep down under the pounding heart and the sweat breaking out on my skin, under my burning eyes and clenched throat, I knew who I was. Did I have the courage to be that person?

  It was part of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s standards of care that transsexual people had to spend a good chunk of time, months or a year, living as the gender they were transitioning to before surgery of any kind was performed, and I could have recited all that to him, chapter and verse. I could have stood up for myself. But I couldn’t risk telling him the truth.

  I turned back to the car and slammed myself into it. What was the use of knowing all this information that I couldn’t use?

  When I got back to the house I was still shivering, which turned out to be the start of a fever.

  ***

  I missed school on Monday and Tuesday, miserably situated in front of droning daytime television with a head full of snot. It almost kept me distracted from reflecting on Saturday’s horror, but every few hours it would unfold in front of me again and play itself out. I’d be left second-guessing myself over and over. I shouldn’t have used the bathroom. I should have told him the truth. I should be on real hormones, not some I got from a friend. I should tell my parents. I should shoot myself. I should drink more hot tea and stop acting like a morose idiot.

  Claire called and checked on me every day, but I didn’t tell her what had happened. It was too stupid to bear repeating. She knew something was wrong, though.

  On Thursday, she came with me to Dr. Mendel, but I asked if she’d wait in the waiting area this time. She agreed and opened the book she’d brought for just such an occasion.

  I told Dr. Mendel what had happened, and she actually had tears in her eyes at the end of the story.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You should never have been treated that way.”

  “I was stupid,” I said.

  “Just impatient,” she said. “What actions are you taking for yourself?”

  “I’m working on my voice,” I said. “Sometimes after school when I have some time alone in my car. And…a friend gave me some estrogen I’m taking and an anti-androgen. I know it’s illegal, but it’s only a little bit.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “I understand that you want to be on hormones very badly, but there are medical risks. Taking hormones can put stress on your heart, liver and other systems in your body. I’d like to see you visiting a doctor who is knowledgeable about hormone use for transition so you can get regular checkups. I know two doctors in the Cities that I can recommend, but you’ll need your parents’ permission.”

  “They’re going to freak out,” I said. “I’ve been hinting to Mom and it’s not going well.”

  I told her what had happened the two times I’d tried to bring something up. She started laughing out loud at the impotence story and I laughed along with her, feeling each burst of air loosen my chest a little.

  “Sometimes it takes a while for parents to adjust,” she said. “We can come up with a plan together. You have to be prepared for them to be upset at first and not assume that’s the end of the world.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, though I was fairly certain it would be the end of the world.

  “Before we get to that, I want to spend the rest of this visit and our next few sessions really talking about the risks and benefits of the transition process. I can write you a letter for the physician who would prescribe hormones, but I want us to talk through all of this together first. There are people with gender dysphoria who choose only hormones and not surgery and even some who opt for neither.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I’ve been looking at all of this for years. I know there are risks to the surgery and some people decide they don’t want it, but that’s years down the road. I can’t even afford it yet and anyway, I’d get the facial surgery first.”

  I paused and took a deep breath because she was just looking at me with that open, clear sky look that made me feel like no matter what I said it was okay.

  “I’m sorry, I feel like everyone wants to challenge me on this,” I said.

  “That’s not what we’re here for. We’re going to create the life you want for yourself. I’m just asking that we start at the beginning and go through all the steps.”

  “I can do that,” I told her. “Where do we start?”

  “I have some basic psychological tests I’d like to give you. I see that Dr. Webber tested you for depression but I’d like to get my own results. It’s common with transsexualism to struggle with depression and anxiety, and I want to get a good feel for how much of that you’re dealing with.”

  I cracked a big grin. “You mean I shouldn’t lie on the tests this time?”

  She laughed. “That is precisely what I mean. And I want you to understand that if you come out of this office with a diagnosis of gender identity disorder, that does not mean that you as a person are disordered or diseased or that there’s something wrong with who you are.”

  “Thank you,” I told her.

  We decided to star
t the tests on the next visit so that I’d have plenty of time for them and ended the hour just chatting. As Dr. Mendel walked me to the door, she said, “Take care of yourself. And if you want to go shopping dressed as a girl, get support, don’t do it alone.”

  In the waiting room, Claire stood up as I came out of the office. “Is Chris okay?” she asked Dr. Mendel through the open door.

  “Yes,” Dr. Mendel said. “Absolutely fine, but in need of some cheering up, and maybe a shopping trip in the near future.” She left us after that and Claire looked at me questioningly.

  “Shopping?” she asked.

  “I want to go shopping as a girl,” I said quietly, after making sure there was no one near.

  Claire sat back down in the chair she’d been waiting in. I worried that I’d frayed her patience past the breaking point and, when she pulled out her phone, thought she might actually be calling her mother to come get her.

  “What’s Natalie’s number?” she asked.

  It took a moment for the question to register, and then I told her, following it with, “Wait, why are you calling her?”

  But it was too late. She’d dialed and had the phone to her ear. “Natalie? Hey, it’s Claire, you know, from the boonies. Yeah. Yeah. Right here. Yeah, but we need a favor. She wants to go shopping. Sure. Yeah, it’s my cell. Cool.”

  She hung up and stood up. “All right, she’s calling me back.”

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “No, I reserve the right to freak out about this later when you’re not looking.”

  I looped my arm over her shoulders. “You are so cool. Do you know that’s the first time you’ve called me ‘she’?”

  “Don’t rub it in. Come on She-Ra Princess of Power, take me home.”

  “Does that make you He-Man?”

  She laughed. “I guess so. Gender nonconformity, here I come!”

  ***

  The next morning on my way to study hall, she handed me a note. It said: “Overnight in the city. Set it up with your folks. Have them call Nat’s mom tonight. She’ll handle the ‘boy thing.’”