My mother never used her ATM card—she didn’t really know how to use an ATM card, to be honest, and she kept it in the top drawer of her dresser, under her underwear and socks, with the PIN number written on a piece of paper. When she went to her room that day, she found it right where she had left it.
“See, the card is here!”
What was going on? I started to wonder who could have done it.
A week or two later, Jose came home very late—it must have been well into the early hours of the morning, and he was completely fucked up. His face was red and swollen, like he had been in a fight and gotten punched. But what struck me most about Jose’s appearance that night was that his hair was long with extensions.
I knew that he took my makeup and clothes. I knew that he kept a stash of wigs and other items in the basement. I knew that he was discovering himself through friends like Miranda, and though he hadn’t directly come out and said to me “I am transgender,” he was letting me in on his discoveries, and I could tell that something was there, though I didn’t know exactly what. But seeing Jose that night, dressed in women’s clothes and with extensions in his hair, was a first for me. I was taken aback. And I was deeply disturbed by the pain and torment written all over his face. More than anything, though, I was fed up.
“Jose, what is going on? You can’t be partying like this—you aren’t even eighteen years old!”
He was bent over the toilet, heaving. I pulled his hair back and held it away from his face while he emptied his stomach. When he was finally finished, he broke down. “I’m a bad person,” he cried. “I’m such a bad person!”
I thought about how guilt can eat away at a person’s sense of self. How, with a guilty person, you don’t need to say anything; you just have to wait for the guilt to cause them to spiral out of themselves. I was reminded of Crime and Punishment, one of my favorite novels, and its protagonist Raskolnikov. After committing a double murder, Raskolnikov’s guilt eats away at him until he unravels. That night, I was watching Jose’s unraveling, and I had the distinct feeling that he needed me to say the words for him. For me to say, out loud, what he couldn’t admit: that he took the money, that he felt awful about it. It was almost as if he was wanting to get caught.
But I was ashamed to have these kinds of thoughts about my baby brother, and so I tried to push them away. I didn’t know who Jose was hanging out with, or what he was getting himself into, but none of it felt right. And because of this, I did question whether he had been the one to take the money. The reality was that he had been out with his friends a lot. How was he paying for it? I wondered.
Deep down, I knew what was going on. But I was in no state to confront it. I couldn’t say those words out loud, put them out there into the universe, because it would have somehow made it easier for him. It would have somehow released him from his responsibility to confess. At the same time, I didn’t want this to be the truth, so I convinced myself that he would never do that to our parents. I felt so dizzy just taking in what I knew to be crystal clear.
MY PARENTS’ NEIGHBOR had their ground floor apartment available for rent. I was hesitant about it right from the start; my husband and I could barely afford to give my parents the small amount of rent we were paying them, and anything more seemed risky and irresponsible. But my husband was insistent, convinced the neighbor to give us a deal, and we moved into the apartment next door to my parents’ house, just across the yardita. The layout was exactly the same—four bedrooms, two bathrooms—but the contrast between the two homes could not have been greater.
My parents’ home was bright, full of natural sunlight. It was well kept, newly painted. Cheery. With fresh yellow roses adorning Papi’s statue of La Virgen de la Caridad. But just next door, I lived in darkness.
The windows could not be opened. They were old, and never properly repaired, with new screens installed on top of ones that were old and torn. Layers upon layers of stuff you could not see through and that sunlight could not penetrate. The only window that opened just a crack was tiny and new, in one of the bathrooms. The kitchen was old and no matter how much I cleaned, it always felt dingy and worn. I slept in one room, Alina in another, and my husband in a third.
Every time I came home, I felt trapped. The apartment was this constant, physical reminder of how unhappy I was. I was doing theater with this Spanish company, but it wasn’t anything that really challenged me or inspired me artistically, and it certainly wasn’t supporting me financially. I felt stale. My marriage was absolutely stale. And this house was stale, too.
I hated being there. I would cry myself to sleep, thinking: This cannot be my life. Just close your eyes, go to sleep. It will be better in the morning.
But it was never better in the morning. I would wake up gasping, still physically and emotionally overwhelmed by the remnants of whatever conflict went down the night before. I opened my eyes, which, on most mornings, were so puffy from crying that I would need to put ice on them to control the swelling. And when I saw the dark windows, the old apartment, I’d think, Oh, fuck. This is still my life.
One particular moment from that time haunts me: I’m driving my Subaru on the highway, and I start to speed. Gradually at first, with a steady pressure on the accelerator. Just stay here, I think. Stay at this pace.
But my speed quickens. I see a concrete barrier coming up ahead of me.
Keep doing this, a voice inside my head tells me. Ram into that wall. And it will all be over, just like that.
I am going to do it. I am going to do it. I am going to do it.
And then, in my rearview mirror, I see my daughter’s car seat. Strapped into the rear passenger seat, all innocence and promise. I slow down and, through the tears that consume me, I know I need help. Enough is enough.
I began therapy. If Alina’s car seat hadn’t been there, I would not be here today.
THE BANK FOUND security footage of a young person withdrawing money from the ATM several blocks from my parents’ house. When Mami and Papi saw the video, everything came crashing down.
“Do you know who this is?” the bank official asked them.
“Yes,” they said. “Yes, we know him.”
“Well, we need to press charges.”
My parents panicked.
“No, no, please. Can we withdraw our complaint? Cancel the investigation since we know who’s behind it?”
The official sighed. “You don’t understand. Stealing that much money is a federal offense. We have no choice but to press charges.”
When my parents told me this, it was difficult to take. How could this have happened? Everything in my life, it seemed, was falling apart.
“YO NO PUEDO estar aqui,” my mother cried to Papi and me. “Esto me va matar!”
The police were coming to the house to arrest Jose and take him to Central Booking, and Mami decided that she couldn’t be around to witness what was going to unfold. I understood this impulse. It was the same impulse I had that kept me from confronting Jose. To be there, or to say something, would have been to acknowledge that this nightmare was, in fact, true.
I was at the house, but I could not physically be in the same space when it was all happening. My father was there, and my brother Tony was there. I remember being in a back room and hearing someone say, “They’re here.”
And this is where everything goes foggy. This is where my brain goes into survival mode to shut out whatever trauma came next. I don’t know where I went, or what happened exactly, but I know I was out of there. Like my mother, I knew that seeing whatever went down between Jose and the police would have destroyed me.
Chapter 13
MARIZOL
The cells were in the basement of Central Booking. No beds, just little stools. I remember that it was freezing down there, how I was shivering, how every hour they moved us to a new cell. I was there the whole night with adult men, just keeping to myself, trying not to engage with anybody. I did not talk, I did not eat, I did not sleep, I did no
t use the bathroom. I had to go so bad, but I held it in because I felt so out of place.
When the police came to the house, I hadn’t had a chance to get fully dressed, so I just threw on whatever I could. If I’d had time to get ready, maybe they would have taken me to a women’s jail. But other than my hair, long with extensions, and my manicured nails, nothing about me said that I was trans. I didn’t yet have my name changed or my gender on my ID changed. But even if I had, it might not have made a difference. Trans folk in jails and prisons are some of the most vulnerable: nearly 40 percent report being sexually assaulted, and nearly 30 percent are placed in solitary confinement for their own protection.5 In the back of the cop car, I prayed that nothing would happen to me, that the men in the jail wouldn’t beat my ass.
I had to remove my shoelaces from my sneakers, and a female officer cut off my nails.
“This is a form of a weapon,” she said.
But still, in the cell, the guys could tell I was different, and they made comments about me being feminine, being gay, all of those things I was used to people saying about me at school.
“Oh, here we go! Another faggot!”
Or, “Another wannabe-bitch!”
In that cell, full of grown men, I was scared and uncomfortable, like I was being stripped down. I felt so vulnerable. I wanted to say something to defend myself, but I was afraid that they would have beaten me up. So, I just pretended like I didn’t hear them, even though their words were loud and clear.
In the morning, around ten, still having to use the bathroom, I was finally called to appear before a judge. As I walked out of the cell and up the stairs, I saw a trans woman sitting alone in her cell. Wow, I thought, That’s me. I hadn’t fully started my transition, but seeing her there was like a sign that I just needed to go for it.
After I received my court date, I left Central Booking, alone and with nothing. I didn’t have a jacket or a wallet, and they didn’t return my shoelaces. An order of protection had been placed against me, meaning I couldn’t go home, but I didn’t know where else to go. The sun was shining, and I felt happy and relieved to be out of there. I went down to the subway and showed the MTA agent a slip of paper saying that I had just been released from Central Booking, and he buzzed me through the handicap entrance.
I went to the public restroom in the train station and finally let everything out. It was so painful—my bladder had been stretched and felt like it was going to explode. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I couldn’t process anything. All I could think of was that I had nowhere to go. I thought about living on the streets, how ashamed I would feel if people I knew saw me sleeping on a bench in Oval Park. Finally, I swallowed my pride and went to my friend Cameron’s. He was someone from the community I met on Myspace when I was just sixteen. He was eighteen at the time, and he happened to live close to my parents’ house. I had introduced him to my friends, and he had introduced me to his, and soon we were partying together.
When I got to his house that day, I didn’t tell him what had happened with the money. I was afraid of how he would look at me or that his family would think I would do something like that to them, too. I simply told them I had been kicked out of my parents’ house for who I was, that I didn’t have nowhere else to go. Once I got settled there, Seli offered to pay Cameron’s mom a weekly rent and to set me up with groceries so that I wouldn’t become a burden on their family. At the time, I didn’t know the full extent of all that was going on in my sister’s life and how much of a financial burden I was putting on her. I could just sense a distance, a sadness, that she was worried about something.
I WAS still living with Cameron and his family when I turned eighteen. On my birthday, Cameron announced, “We’re gonna go party!”
We went to the club that night, but it didn’t feel like anything special. At that point in my life, we were always going to the club. It was just like any other night. I remember thinking, Damn, I’m spending my eighteenth birthday like this? I didn’t even have a cake. No one to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. And that’s when it hit me how lonely I was: I was turning eighteen, which should have been a huge milestone, and here I was, spending it without my family.
I tried not to think about the situation because it was going to eat me alive. I knew that I couldn’t be angry at anyone but myself, and so I tried to make the best of it, but my emotions were all over the place. To say I was devastated by what had happened with my family is a serious understatement. I was also embarrassed and heartbroken. To this day, I don’t really understand how I could have betrayed Mami and Papi, the two people who’d always loved me and cared for me, in such a way. Over the years, I had gotten good at ignoring my feelings, pushing them aside and pretending that everything was okay with me, and at school, and at home. But it is exhausting to come off as a happy person—to always be smiling and positive—when you are really hurting inside.
After I’d been taken away in handcuffs, I was forced to confront what I had done, and I fell into a depression. I relied on partying even more as a way to forget all the pain I’d experienced—and all the pain I’d caused my family. But I tried to take advantage of this time I had away from my family. I tried to look at it as an opportunity: no longer living at home, I could finally begin living in public openly as Marizol. I started wearing feminine clothes out in public, and when I got my nails done, I didn’t try to hide them. I developed a big personality. I acted like I gave no fucks. I was always jolly, laughing, throwing shade. Being the open, fun, spirited person I’d always wanted to be. And so, though it is difficult to admit, and as painful as the whole experience of taking the money was, I also know that if I had never taken it, and if I had never been forced to live on my own, I wouldn’t have had the courage to really begin to live my life as me.
I DIDN’T tell Nathaniel about the money either. I felt so horrible for having hurt my parents, and I didn’t want him to think less of me. Honestly, even though I was the one who took the money, the whole situation surprised me. I didn’t think I was capable of doing such a thing to people I loved, and I didn’t want him to think that I was either. I also hadn’t planned on telling him about dropping out of school, but that was harder to hide, and he was upset when he found out. He was a successful person—he’d graduated from high school, gone to college, and had a good job. And he wanted the same for me. He didn’t want me to fall in with a bad crowd or go down a dark path.
He knew I didn’t live at home anymore, though he didn’t know why. And as I was discovering myself, I started to show him more and more of Marizol—the hair, the makeup, the clothing. He was still self-conscious about being out, though, and he didn’t like the attention I drew to him.
“Why do you have to be so feminine?” he asked me one day. He had picked me up from Cameron’s house, and we were driving around the neighborhood like we often did.
“What do you mean? You seem to like it when we’re alone.”
“Yeah, I do. But do you have to be so out there in public?”
“This is who I am! I’m happy this way.”
“Okay,” he said. “But why are you always going out in drag?”
That stung. “It’s not like that,” I said. “I’m not performing. This is just me.”
He was quiet. “Yeah, but why?”
I didn’t tell him the truth about how I was feeling: that I wasn’t just a gay guy going out in drag, but that I was a girl. A trans girl, yes; but a girl nonetheless. And dressing this way, being so out there—well, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was living life as me. I didn’t tell him any of this, though, because I think I was afraid of how he’d react or that I’d lose him.
We turned onto Bainbridge, my parents’ street. I hadn’t really been around since the incident, and I missed them. “Hey, can we just pull over here for a little bit? Like old times?”
He smiled. “Sure.”
I was full of so many conflicting feelings in that moment: I was sad that I couldn’t
see my family, but I was comforted by the sight of their street, the yardita, their house; I was afraid to really open up to Nathaniel about why I wanted to dress the way I did and to come out to him as trans, but around him I felt safe and loved. We parked across the street from my parents’ house for some time, just listening to music and talking, his arm around my shoulders. I could have stayed there forever.
CAMERON AND I partied nonstop. I got a fake ID from the place I used to take my disposable cameras to get developed. It was not a good fake at all—it said New York State and everything, but it did not look legit. Still, it meant that Cameron and I could go out to the twenty-one-and-over clubs till late in the night. And, most importantly, it used the name Marizol. I started to experiment with drugs like Ecstasy and coke, but it wasn’t a habit I let myself fall into. For one, doing coke felt wrong. This is what my biological mom fell into, I’d think. Not to mention that the taste made me want to vomit. But I often felt pressured, by Cameron and Jackie, who were always next to me, saying, “Come on! Do it! You only live once!”
Though the partying helped me forget my struggles and pain in the moment, the next day I always felt lonely. Miranda and Cameron didn’t get along well, and because I lived with Cameron, I felt like I had to be loyal to him—to leave parties when he wanted, to keep my mouth shut during stupid fights even when I knew he was in the wrong. I tried to open up to him, to talk to him about what it’s like to be transgender or how I felt about things with my family. But I always felt that there was a little bit of judgment on his end, a kind of negativity that wouldn’t go away no matter how much I tried.
WHEN I was just starting to find myself, to dress and live openly as Marizol, I met a girl at a bar in the neighborhood who was super goth. Emma was always wearing all black—clothes, lipstick, nail polish, the whole nine. Our styles were super different, but the more I got to know her, the more I saw her for the cool, creative person that she was. And she saw me for me, too. She was an artist, musician, and photographer, and around her, I felt safe to explore my creative side. It was something I had always wanted to do but never had the courage or confidence to put myself out there, and after everything that had happened with my family, I was finding it hard to focus on anything other than survival. But when I got together with Emma, we’d talk about ideas we had for creative projects, and it was like an escape from all that I was confronting in my daily life.
My Sister Page 12
