by Robin Talley
“I don’t expect you to do anything,” I say. “You asked me a question, and I answered you.”
“All right. Then give me your credit card.”
“What?” This had definitely not factored into my rehearsals.
She holds out her hand. Oh, my God.
I fumble in my wallet and pull out my Visa card.
“Your ATM card, too,” she says.
“What? How am I supposed to buy food and books and stuff?”
“You have a meal plan. We’ll have your books shipped to you.”
My throat closes. “You’re not serious.”
“It’s time you learned your decisions have consequences. If you’re so determined to do this, we won’t subsidize it. You’ll have to find a way to pay for it yourself.”
She’s giving me an ultimatum.
It isn’t too late to change my mind. I’m still not entirely sure I even made it up yet.
No. Screw this. Screw her. I can borrow money from my friends for a while. Then I’ll...get a job, or something.
But how am I going to get to Oxford this summer? What part-time job will pay my rent and airfare and work around my class schedule and—
I’ll deal with it later. I’ll figure everything out later.
I hand her my ATM card. Blood pulses in my veins. I’m hyperalert of the heat pumping through the ceiling vents, whooshing past my face. It’s hard to breathe. How will I even get back to Boston tonight?
Never mind.
“All right.” I stand up. “I’ve said what I came here for. I’m going home.”
Mom stands up, too. She folds her arms across her chest and turns to stare at the clock over the fireplace. It’s huge, three feet across, with a white-and-gold frame and giant black hands. It’s supposed to look like it’s hundreds of years old, but actually, Mom ordered it from some website when I was in fourth grade.
She stares at the clock, drumming her fingers against her elbows. The cigarette is burning down to nothing in her hand, but she doesn’t put it down. There are no ashtrays in this perfectly manufactured room.
“Toni,” she says, still looking at the clock. Huh. She usually calls me Antonia. “Listen. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
She slowly bends down and lays my two cards on the coffee table. Like an offering.
“You’re the one making it this way,” I say. I watch her carefully.
“I don’t see why you can’t just keep being like this.” She doesn’t meet my eye, but she nods toward my ambiguous button-down shirt and jeans. I traded my binder for a sports bra from a shop in the airport. I thought that might make her freak out a little less. I stuffed the binder in the airport gift bag and hoped she wouldn’t notice the way it bulged out of my back pocket, but my mother notices everything.
“There’s no reason for you to tell people you’re a boy,” she says. “If you really think you feel that way, I don’t see why you can’t keep it to yourself.”
Ah. I didn’t say a word about telling anyone else, but I should’ve known that’s exactly where her mind would go.
“Who are you worried about me telling?” I ask. “You don’t even know anyone at Harvard anymore.”
“Your father has contacts in the alumni associations. Word spreads fast about this sort of thing.”
Right. She’s worried about the neighbors.
And Dad’s coworkers. And the people at the snooty Catholic church we go to every Christmas and Easter. And the Republican congressmen who come to our catered May Day barbecue every year.
“The way you are now, everyone thinks—well, they used to see you as a tomboy.” My mother runs a hand over her perfectly waved hair. “When you were younger, it was cute. Even your father and I thought so. That’s how you got your nickname, you know. We’d meant to call you Annie, but when you were three, you insisted on going to church in slacks. Your father was the one who started calling you Toni.”
I don’t answer. I’m too stunned. I’d never known any of this before.
“You’re too old now to be a tomboy,” she goes on. Her cigarette is trembling where it dangles from the tips of her fingers. “I don’t like the way you dress or the way you talk, but at least our circle here is used to it. For you to take this farther because your new friends have planted some ideas in your head, however, is selfish and shortsighted. Even if you won’t think of how your behavior reflects on your father and I, you should at least care about what the community thinks of you. You’re getting a good education. You’re interested in politics. You could do well someday. Do you want to be known as a laughingstock in this city for the rest of your life?”
I swallow. I wish I thought what she was saying was completely ludicrous. I wish I couldn’t see her point.
I do want to work in politics someday. But you don’t see a lot of trans people on MSNBC.
“I don’t care what people think,” I say, shaking that off. “I need to tell the truth about who I am.”
She sighs. “When, exactly, did you decide this?”
Does she know? Can she sense, somehow, that I’m still deciding it right now, as I stand here?
No. That isn’t what she’s asking. She doesn’t want the details of when I went from cisgender to genderqueer to gender variant to wherever the hell I am right now.
She just wants to know when I started to hate wearing dresses.
“I told you,” I say. “I’ve always known.”
She nods slowly and looks back at the clock. “Is it because of something I did?”
I want to say yes. To say she raised me wrong. To hurt her back like she hurt me.
“No,” I say. “I’ve always been like this. When I was a kid I used to lie in bed at night and pray that when I woke up in the morning, I’d be a boy.”
I have to swallow more stale, heated air before I can keep going.
I’d forgotten all about that, but it happened. Oh, my God, that really happened. I never understood what it meant until now.
“When I got old enough to look it up, I found out it’s more common than you’d think,” I tell her. “I can send you some books—”
“No. Please don’t. I do not need those kinds of books in this house.”
She gets quiet after that.
My credit and ATM cards are still sitting on the coffee table. My mother pointedly looks down at the cards, then back up at the clock.
I pick them up off the table and hesitate, waiting for her to snatch them out of my hand. She doesn’t.
I don’t want her money. Not after what she said. But the five dollars in my wallet isn’t even enough to get me back to Boston for finals.
“Goodbye,” I say.
She still doesn’t say anything. So I leave.
I bang open the front door and take deep, long gulps of fresh air, my heart slamming in my chest as I walk as fast as I can down the sidewalk. There’s a cab stand by the convenience store three blocks away.
When, exactly, did you decide this?
I decided it five minutes ago, perched in my mother’s stark-white living room.
I decided it when I was twelve years old, the first time I saw myself in the mirror with my hair cut short.
I decided it this afternoon, on the street, outside the restaurant. Because some waitress called my friends and me “ladies.”
I don’t want anyone to ever call me a “lady” again. That’s the only thing I know for sure.
Oh, my God.
This isn’t theoretical anymore. This is happening. I can’t turn it back.
Is this what I even want? Did I just make a huge mistake?
Yes. I did.
I just told my mother I was a man.
Since when? Three weeks ago I wasn’t even using gendered pronouns.
How the hell am I supposed to know for sure? How does anyone ever know anything for sure?
I told my mom I wanted to start hormones. Where did that come from? Sure, I’ve been thinking about taking testosterone, especially since Eli’s T party. Did I at some point subconsciously decide I definitely wanted to do it? Or did I just say that to freak out my mom?
Why is it so hard to understand what’s happening inside my own damn brain?
I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to figure this out. I’m not ready. I’m not ready.
I stop walking. I can hardly breathe. I sit down on the sidewalk and put my head between my knees.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
What the hell did I just do?
Did I just lie? And if I did, what am I supposed to do now? Go back in the house and tell my mom, “Whoops, I changed my mind, I’m an idiot, please ignore me?”
WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST DO?
I can’t do this on my own.
I can’t go from point A to point B. I couldn’t find either on a map.
I need help. I need someone who knows me better than I know me.
Telling my mother might have been a mistake. I don’t know yet.
But I already made another huge mistake this year. I can fix that, at least.
I go to the convenience store and get in a cab. When I get to the airport, I go straight to the US Airways counter and change my flight.
Then I get on the next shuttle to New York.
18
DECEMBER
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE
3 WEEKS APART
GRETCHEN
My phone buzzes.
I don’t look up. I’m in the groove.
It’s ten-thirty on a Monday night. My middle school debate team has their final competition this week, so I’ll be spending all day tomorrow in Inwood helping them get ready. I’m going over the kids’ speeches now. They’re actually really good—for a bunch of seventh graders who rolled their eyes at me when I first said the word research to them back in September, they’ve done a ton of work and put together some really cool arguments—but they still need help. I’m trying to figure out how to explain gently that they shouldn’t make references to Disney movies in a speech about climate change, no matter how well they think the movie plot works as a metaphor for international environmental policy, when my phone buzzes again.
At first I ignore it, but then Samantha yells from across the room, “Gretchen, if you don’t check your daggone phone, I’ll throw my daggone computer at your daggone head!” So I check my phone.
At first I think I’m reading it wrong. The From line says Schnookums. That was how I programmed Toni’s name into my phone more than two years ago.
I haven’t gotten a text from Toni since Thanksgiving. Even if Toni did text me, there’s no reason Toni would say:
I’m downstairs, come get me?
But that’s what this text says.
I show it to Samantha to make sure.
“Yes, that’s what it says,” she snaps. Sam is writing a paper, but she isn’t enjoying her work as much as I am. “Your girlfriend is downstairs. Go get her before she texts again.”
“My girlfriend can’t be downstairs. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Okay, well, unless someone stole her phone and is playing an incredibly lame joke, you’d better go down. Just don’t bring her back up here. I don’t have time for lesbian drama.”
I’m on the elevator, still looking down at the text to make sure I didn’t imagine it, when someone shouts, “Could you hold it?”
I stick my hand out. The door bounces back open.
Carroll’s standing on the other side.
For a split second I start to smile. I want to tell him what’s going on. He’d appreciate the oddity of this moment.
It would be so easy. He’d sidle in next to me in the elevator as if we were going to grab a snack. I’d tell him about Toni, he’d chuckle and things would be normal, just for a second.
Except they can’t be. “Normal” between Carroll and me means something else now. Because he can’t deal with what happened. And that’s his problem, not mine.
No one can be perfect all the time. I deserve friends who don’t expect the impossible from me.
Carroll’s still standing outside the elevator doors, staring. His face has gone completely white.
Then he backs up until he’s against the wall. “Never mind. I’ll take the next one.”
I let the door close.
I don’t regret it, either, as I drop the fourteen floors to the lobby. Maybe by senior year, Carroll will have grown up enough to forgive me. I’m not going to wait around, though. I have more important things to do.
By the time I get to the lobby, all I can think about is Toni’s text. I still halfway think it has to be a mistake. Then I spot the Red Sox baseball cap sticking out like a beacon in the sea of black North Face coats.
Tons of people are moving around. Talking, laughing. Coming in, going out. In the middle of it all, there’s Toni, absolutely motionless.
I blink about twenty times. I shake my head and look again. Toni’s still there.
Then Toni’s walking over. It’s like we’re in slow motion.
The security desk is between us. Toni can’t come any farther without being signed in as a visitor. I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that or not. I blink some more.
Toni blinks back at me. “What did you do to your hair?”
The spell breaks.
“Oh, right.” My fingers twitch as I tug on a few black strands. I don’t know if it’s from nervousness or the three bottles of Diet Coke I’ve had tonight. “That. I was in a mood. Don’t worry, I’ll get it fixed when we go home for break. Sam says they’ll have to use some serious industrial-strength bleach, but whatever.”
Toni nods. “Can I come in?”
For a second I almost say no. Then I come back to myself. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
We sign in at the desk and Toni comes through to my side. We don’t kiss. We don’t hug. We don’t touch at all. It’s so, so strange. It’s like Toni’s someone I used to know from camp instead of the great love of my life.
I take Toni to the basement where we rehearsed Carroll’s coming-out scene a million years ago. I can’t think of anywhere else we could talk alone.
And I can tell Toni wants to talk. That’s a good thing, because I want to talk, too.
“So, uh.” I gaze around the basement, but there’s no one else here except the trash-compactor smells. My fingers itch to touch Toni. I clasp my hands behind my back. “I didn’t know you were coming to New York.”
“Yeah, me, neither.”
Toni sits down on the ratty couch. I lean against the wall opposite. Toni’s hands are shaking.
This whole scene feels way too much like that night by the fountain. There’s no way Toni came here to break up with me again, is there?
“I made a huge mistake at Thanksgiving,” Toni says. I stop breathing. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I ever thought those things, let alone said them. It must’ve been temporary insanity. I wish I could take it all back, but I know I can’t, so can we please just pretend it never happened?”
I close my eyes and savor this feeling.
I can smell the dank basement scent. I can feel the cinder block wall digging into my back. I can hear the hum of the industrial radiator. That’s how I know this isn’t a dream.
Toni’s really here. Toni’s really saying this.
I open my eyes and sit next to Toni on the couch. My arms slide around Toni’s shoulders. Toni’s ha
nds move to my back, my waist. Finally. Finally.
“Yeah,” I say. “We definitely can.”
We kiss. Oh, oh, we kiss.
Ten minutes ago I was upstairs thinking about climate change while Samantha banged on her computer keys behind me. Now I’m here. Kissing Toni.
I can pretend Thanksgiving didn’t happen. Pretend the past few weeks didn’t feel the way they felt. We can move on with our lives, together, the way I always wanted us to.
I hadn’t wanted to let myself hope this moment would come. But it did.
“I came out to my mom,” Toni says when we stop kissing.
I feel it like a jolt. The spell has broken a second time.
“Are you serious?” I ask. “When?”
“This afternoon.”
“Wow.” I’m not sure what to think about that, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m back to being the supportive girlfriend. I squeeze Toni’s shoulder. “What, on the phone?”
“No, I went to DC.”
“Wow,” I say again. This doesn’t even sound real, but I can tell it is from Toni’s face. “What happened?”
“She smoked a cigarette in front of me. I never knew she smoked.”
“What did she say?”
“She threatened to take my credit card away, but then she didn’t really do it. She was extremely pissed, though. I’m sure the real explosion is coming at winter break.”
“Wow.” I shake my head. This seems impossible. I didn’t even know this was happening until it was over. “Congratulations. I can’t believe you really did it.”
“Me, neither. I just decided to do it at lunch today, actually.”
“Lunch...in Boston?”
Toni nods.
“Wow.” I look at my watch. “It’s eleven p.m. You’ve had a busy day.”
“Yeah. Doing a lot of stuff I should’ve done a long time ago.”
I smile and kiss Toni on the cheek, just because I can. “Um, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know you’ve said the words she and her about twenty times so far?”
“Yeah, that.” Toni nods. “I decided I’m tired of letting language have so much power over me. I’m sick of worrying about labels. I started using gendered pronouns when I went to London and then I sort of never stopped. I presented as male over there, too. I’ve even started spelling my name with a y. And using he and him pronouns full-time.”
