My Sister

by Selenis Leyva

  She told me that she wanted to do a photo shoot, and she wanted me—Marizol!—to model for her.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “Really?”

  “Yeah, girl! Come on.”

  A long time before this, I had bought this dress that I’d never gotten the chance to wear. It was like a disco ball, covered in black and silver sequins. I thought of it as my “Freakum Dress,” like in the Beyoncé song. I had dreams of wearing it on New Year’s Eve with my family. Of course, that couldn’t happen, and this dress had just been sitting there, waiting. But now I had a chance to wear it, to get all dolled up like my sisters and cousins would on New Year’s Eve.

  I added studs and chains to a pair of black ankle booties to wear with a silver tinsel wig. We walked all around the neighborhood finding spots to shoot, and the whole time, I felt a deep affirmation to follow my dreams, to not hold back. Emma was such a special, thoughtful person, and she made me feel special, too. At some point, I put on a second outfit: a purple satin cocktail dress with a purple tinsel wig to match. In Oval Park, I posed by some flowering trees. I leaned against a wrought-iron fence, raised my skirt a little to show some leg. I smoked a cigarette, laid on the hood of a white SUV. The whole time, I felt bold and beautiful. Like I was capable of doing anything.

  “DO YOU have to get so dressed up?” Cameron asked me one night while we were getting ready to go out.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “This is just me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re gonna get spooked.”

  I was the only one in our crew who identified as trans at the time, but no one else took issue with how I dressed or how I presented myself to the world. But with Cameron, there was often a negativity, or an attempt to control how I acted in public. If I was gonna get spooked, he said, he didn’t want to be around me. And because I was living with him, I felt like I had to do what he wanted. I felt like his hospitality was something that was held over my head. I was afraid that if I didn’t comply with his demands, or, if I didn’t show enough appreciation, I’d be out on the streets. Whenever we had an argument and I tried to speak up, he’d make me feel less-than.

  “Oh, well, you know that I could kick you out right now, don’t you?” he’d remind me. “And then where would you go?”

  It was true. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I only ended up staying at Cameron’s for two months or so, but it felt like an eternity.

  I will always appreciate how Cameron and his family opened their doors to me. Once I asked him and his family to refer to me as Marizol, they never called me by my birth name again. Years later, Cameron came out as trans, too. And I realized that he put me down because he knew that he didn’t have the courage to be as open and free as I was at the time. Of course, I didn’t know this while we lived together; I only felt the effects of his dismissals.

  Often, during those months of living with Cameron, I felt vulnerable, like I had nowhere else to turn. I constantly felt like I was being taken advantage of or emotionally abused. Unfortunately, this is the case for many trans people struggling to find safe, reliable housing. Discriminatory hiring practices make it difficult to find work, and even if you can afford rent on your own, trans folk still fear being kicked out by landlords who discriminate. This, combined with the fact that many trans individuals are rejected by their families, makes any available housing situation feel valuable—even if it means withstanding emotional and physical abuse, or more.

  NATHANIEL KNEW where I was staying, and he would pop in on me from time to time. At the hair salon, outside of Cameron’s building, outside our friends’ building down the block. One day, a group of us were hanging outside of our friend’s apartment, just having a good time, laughing and joking and dancing. We had a little bit of cocktails. Some smoke. Some rush that we liked to call Kiki Juice.

  I knew Nathaniel’s car, of course. But on this day, I didn’t pay no mind to the car with tinted windows parked across the street. I was ratchet as hell. There was a big group of us out there voguing, and every time we took a sniff of the Kiki Juice, we’d hold hands and spin around in a circle until we couldn’t any longer, and then we were high as kites. Laughing. Telling jokes. Laughing even more because we couldn’t control it.

  When we finally got ahold of ourselves, Nathaniel rolled down his window. I didn’t realize it was him—I just thought it was some random guy from the block tryna holla at us. Feeling bold and free from the Kiki Juice and alcohol and weed, I walked up to the car and said, “Hey, what’s good?”

  And that’s when I looked down and saw that it was him. He didn’t say anything but gave me this look that told me he was pissed as hell. My friends knew he didn’t approve of this kind of behavior—and once they noticed, they all started yelling, “Oh, shit!”

  After Nathaniel left, Cameron said to me: “Oh, just fucking do what you want and leave him! You’re mad young—do what you wanna do!”

  I really cared for Nathaniel, but in the moment, I thought, “Yeah, fuck that. I’m young! I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I want!” At the same time, though, I knew I was going to lose him.

  MY FRIENDS were giving me an outlet to forget the pain I was going through. And, at the time, because they welcomed my transition, I felt like they were supporting me. But we were reckless, and I wasn’t always as safe and supported as I thought I was.

  The night I woke up in the hospital, the cops had found me wasted, by myself, in Oval Park. Selenis was at my bedside, angry and worried. She told me she was mad about the drugs—but I had no idea what drugs she was talking about.

  “The drugs you were taking,” she said.

  I hadn’t been taking any drugs. I’d been drinking, sure. But no drugs.

  “Who were you with?”

  At first, I was hesitant to tell her the whole truth. “I was with my friends,” I said.

  “Well, your friends—they left you on the street.”

  She took me home, to her apartment next door to Mami and Papi’s, and I slept it off. The next day—after she gave me coffee and some food—I realized what had happened. Someone in the group I’d been with the night before must have drugged me and left me to be picked up by the cops. I remembered how Mami and Seli used to say to me, “Your friends are not your friends!” How I didn’t understand—or, maybe, how I didn’t want to understand—what they were saying. This was all too painful to admit to myself, let alone say out loud. But I did tell Seli the truth about what happened.

  “I was with Cameron and some other people,” I admitted.

  She sighed. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get your things.”

  “What?”

  “I am paying that woman for you to stay there, and then something like this happens? No no no.”

  We made the short drive to Cameron’s house for me to get my things. I didn’t have that much, but what I did have, I couldn’t find, including my envelope of documents. Everything was in there—my passport, Social Security card, ID—but I had no way of knowing who took it and didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. My relationship with Cameron was never the same after that. We saw each other out every once in a blue and we were friendly, but I always kept my distance.

  OVER THE next few years I stayed in several different apartments. First was with a friend of a friend named Paola. She was my age, had a young daughter and a little baby, and had extra space in her apartment off of Grand Concourse. The vibe at Paola’s house was so different from the vibe at Cameron’s. Her mom and sister would come over a lot, and all of them told me that they were going to accept me for who I was. Living there lifted my spirits, reminded me what it was like to be part of a loving, caring family. They always kept me laughing. And after Nathaniel and I finally had our conversation about our relationship, ultimately deciding to part ways, I was grateful to be around people like them. But after a short time, Paola’s mom and sister decided that they were moving in with her, which meant I needed to find somewher
e else.

  Seli helped me rent a room in the South Bronx, but I could tell that she had a lot going on in her life and that I was only adding to her stress. I decided to move in with Jackie. She and I were constantly partying, going to house parties at an apartment across the street from El Coral. The people there were the types who liked to gamble and do coke. I did neither, but they liked having me around, and sometimes, I’d get the sense that Jackie was jealous of the attention I’d get.

  And it wasn’t just with her friends—it was with strangers, too. If we were at a club, and guys would eye me and not her, I could tell that she was feeling some type of way about it. She’d make faces of disgust, and I’d try to ignore it, to keep having a good time. More than once, she pulled a guy aside and said to him, “My cousin is really pretty for a tranny, right?”

  I started to wonder whether she was really my friend. Would a friend call me that?

  But still—sometimes it was good with Jackie. We fought like crazy, but she and I were really close, and I am thankful to her for how she opened her doors to me during those years. Late at night, when the clubs had closed and we were drunk as hell, we’d head to Oval Park with Miranda or Lorenzo or a new friend we’d just made. The sprinklers were open, watering the grass in huge, shimmering arcs. We dared each other to run through them, and soon, we were all laughing and cackling and soaking wet.

  Chapter 14

  SELENIS

  From the time Jose had been kicked out of my parents’ house, I wanted to help him, to be the Big Sister I’d always been. But it was difficult for me. Everything in my life, it seemed, was falling apart. I was falling apart. My marriage was not getting any better. I was a struggling actor doing theater—and theater doesn’t pay! There was a time I was collecting unemployment, and I tried to make my unemployment check stretch to support my own family and Jose. And I was barely there for myself. Every ounce of energy I had I felt I needed to give to my young child. To get out of bed and take her to school and just be a functional mother. But I worried so much about Jose. Even after I took him to the SVU at the local precinct, I worried that I would get that call in the middle of the night. Even now, years later, I still worry about getting that call. Eventually, I felt like my life was a revolving door around Jose. It was like I was in high school again, and Jose the little boy who held on to my every movement and word.

  When it looked like Jose was going to be staying at Cameron’s for an extended amount of time, I went over to the apartment to talk things through with his mother. Right away, I was suspicious of the whole situation. I’m not sure I trust this woman, I thought. But I needed to know that Jose had a place to live, and I didn’t have time to figure out something else. We agreed that I would bring groceries for Jose, and that I’d pay her a rent of $125 a week.

  And then, one night, when I was living in the dark apartment next door to my parents, I got one of those calls I’d always dreaded.

  Jose had been found in the park, alone and unconscious. He was in the emergency room at North Central, the city hospital nearby. I was up and out the door.

  The emergency room was chaotic and gross. I finally saw him, lying in a bed, wearing a hoodie and baggy jeans, looking disheveled. I remember noticing traces of his other life, including purple acrylic nails, chipped and broken off. It was a life I had known about, but one that he didn’t yet seem ready to share with me. I had only gotten a glimpse of it that night he came home to Mami and Papi’s, crying and drunk. The staff there was not friendly or kind, and finally I pulled a nurse into the room made of curtains and asked for a doctor. She gave me serious attitude, saying, “You’re gonna have to hold on.”

  Hours later, at dawn, I finally spoke to a doctor.

  “Well, he was brought in after being found unconscious on the sidewalk. We found traces of alcohol, cocaine—”

  At some point, I stopped listening. I was so angry at Jose for getting himself into this mess. For having me called in the middle of the night because he was doing drugs. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.

  When we were once again alone, I said to him: “Oh, so you’re doing hard-core drugs now?”

  “What? No.”

  “This doctor is just lying to me?”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  I could see that this reaction of his wasn’t simply him trying to get out of trouble. He seemed sincere. Hurt, even.

  “Well, who were you with?” I asked.

  “My friends.” And then he was the one to become angry.

  This could only have meant one thing: “Well, your friends left you on the sidewalk.”

  That night, I took him home to my apartment and let him sleep it off. He was embarrassed about what had happened, but more than that, he was depressed and angry. Finally, he told me that he had been with a group that included Cameron, and then it was my turn to be angry.

  “That’s it,” I said. “You’re never going back there.”

  FOR THE NEXT several months, my life didn’t get much better—and, though we didn’t talk about it much, I sensed that Jose’s didn’t either. But after I got him out of Cameron’s, and later into a rented room I paid for, I didn’t know what else I could do.

  Holidays were especially rough for us all. Because of the order of protection, that first year, Jose wasn’t allowed to be in my parents’ house. Later, he legally could come, but it was too uncomfortable, so he would spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at my apartment next door. My father was still very angry. “We gave him everything,” he would say. And the rest of us were all still dealing with it emotionally. I found it especially difficult to cross the yardita with my daughter and husband, knowing that Jose was in that dark apartment, alone, waiting for me to bring over a plate of food.

  I used to like holidays, but these were so sad. There were so many years of us all not being together, and being the in-between person took its toll.

  That first year, Mami and I didn’t make a big production out of it, but we also didn’t hide the fact that we were putting together a meal for someone who wasn’t there. Papi noticed our movements.

  “Who’s that for?”

  Earlier, Mami had stood up to my father, saying to him: “Fine, Jose doesn’t have to come here, but you can’t prevent me from seeing him.”

  And that day, with the whole family there, she looked into Papi’s eyes and said, “Jose.”

  She and I went over to my apartment, and we had our little wine and our little meal, and we just talked. I know that it was sad for all three of us—here we were, in this difficult situation—but we tried to make the best of it. We were there to have a good time, and we did! But there was an underlying sadness that couldn’t be completely ignored.

  This went on for several years and, over time, I started to see that Papi’s anger was more hurt than anything else. As each holiday passed, he started to soften up a bit, and his anger gradually subsided. And then he became the one who would say to my mother, “Aren’t you going to take some food over?”

  It was then that I started to see a glimmer of hope. Maybe we could all be a family again. With one holiday dinner as opposed to two, with everyone in the same room.

  Chapter 15

  MARIZOL

  When I was living with Cameron, I started going to the adolescent clinic at Montefiore Hospital, which was right down the street from my middle school. It was geared toward LGBTQ+ youth, but many people in the cis community went there, too, whether to have a checkup or to get tested for STDs. It was an accepting place, with inclusive posters and flyers pinned around the office. I remember seeing a lot of trans girls in the waiting room and thinking to myself, Someday, I’ll come here for my hormones.

  Dr. Raquel was my primary care doctor for several years before I approached her about hormone therapy. After being forced out of my parents’ home, I didn’t feel comfortable going to the pediatrician I had seen my entire life. And I didn’t want to jump into it. I wanted to do everything the right way. Live in the world as Marizo
l. Be okay with who I was. I didn’t want to physically start changing myself before I understood what it was like to be me.

  When I had taken the money from Mami and Papi, part of me thought that I would use it for my gender affirmation surgery. Of course, this was impossible. I had never been on hormones, and I didn’t know anyone who had done it before—I didn’t even know where to go. Once I was out of the house, I thought about starting hormones, but I was afraid of the side effects—liver damage, increased chance of breast cancer. I knew of girls getting their hormones on the street, but I didn’t feel comfortable taking that path. Sometimes, people would trick young trans girls, giving them testosterone pills instead of estrogen. And the medical risks were just too high. I wasn’t in much contact with my family, but I always thought about them, about how they’d want me to go about things, take care of myself, be a good, responsible person in the world. I asked myself, How would my family want me to do this? Right away, I knew that they’d want me to be safe, to go through a doctor. Finally, not too long before my twenty-first birthday, I felt like I was ready. I couldn’t wait any longer.

  I’d always felt comfortable around Dr. Raquel, but even though I knew that the clinic was a safe space, I was nervous that day in the examination room. Finally, I got up the courage to say to her: “I’m transgender, and I would like to start taking hormones.”