Far From the Tree

by Solomon, Andrew

  By the time I met Keely, she was seven: beautiful, chatty, and poised beyond her years, with a wicked glint of humor. “I know it was definitely maneuvered by God Himself,” Shannon wrote to me afterward. “It was a simple choice for me: a dead son or a living daughter. It really is the choice that most parents with trans kids face. Keely has always been told that she can marry whomever she wants. She told me that she wasn’t going to disclose her status to her ‘person,’ and I told her that it wouldn’t be right to withhold that information. I told her that if the person really loved her . . . She finished the sentence, ‘Then they won’t care!’ I said, ‘Exactly.’”

  • • •

  Many parents lag far behind this level of acceptance. More than half of trans people are rejected by their families; even in families with some acceptance, it often comes from only one parent. “In a two-parent family, it’s not unusual for one parent to hold the fear and the other to hold the acceptance,” Brill said. In her memoir of working with disadvantaged trans kids, Cris Beam writes of the mother of one transgirl, “She told Christina she wished she would just die of AIDS if she was going to act this way.” An ostensibly more sophisticated mother wrote in a letter to her trans daughter, “For you to insinuate your man-dressed-as-a-woman self into the whole process and actuality of being a woman is arrogant and insulting. You discredit and discount not only my own experience of being female but the entire community of women.”

  In May 2009, a popular radio program out of Sacramento, Rob, Arnie & Dawn in the Morning, featured a segment on trans kids. Rob Williams and Arnie States referred to the kids as “idiots” and “freaks,” out “for attention,” with “a mental disorder that just needs to somehow be gotten out of them.” They added, “It makes me sick. ‘Mommy, I’m a girl trapped in a boy’s body. I want to wear a dwess.’” Later they said, “Allowing transgenders to exist, pretty soon it becomes normal to fall in love with animals.” One boasted that if his son ever put on high heels, he’d beat him with his own shoe.

  Outcry about this broadcast triggered an advertising boycott. Kim Pearson and San Diego transgender activist Autumn Sandeen were invited to appear on the show to discuss the issue. Kim explained that any trans-inclined child whose mother had driven him or her to school while listening to the broadcast would now never broach the subject with her. When the show opened to call-ins, one came from the brother of a transman who had killed himself. Kim warned Williams and States that they had blood on their hands. When the show began, they had made it clear that their apology was required to mollify advertisers; by the end, they were abject.

  • • •

  While wealth and education do not guarantee families of trans kids an easy time, poverty increases the chances that everything will go horribly wrong. Indigence exacerbated the difficulties for Hailey Krueger and Jane Ritter. Each had lived a long secret life. Neither wanted to admit to her mother that she was a lesbian, and both married men. Their hollow marriages were full of lies and abuse and dysfunction. Hailey had dropped out of school in Kansas in the ninth grade; Jane had completed high school in Missouri, but had no professional qualifications. Jane had an adolescent daughter; each had a young son. Hailey was femme, and Jane was butch, and they met in a homeless shelter in Wichita.

  Hailey’s husband was given to cross-dressing, but only at home and in complete privacy. Soon after marriage, they had a son, whom they named Jayden. “My child was always embarrassed of down there,” Hailey said. “He was always trying to hide it, even when he was a baby. He sat down to pee and wiped, like a girl.” At five, Jayden declared that his name was Hannah, after Hannah Montana, the Disney character who lives as a normal teenager by day and a rock star by night; that story had resonance for many trans kids I met who were leading a double life.

  Jane said, “The first time I met Jayden, in the shelter, age six, I honestly thought it was a girl.” After a few months, Hailey and Jane moved out to a trailer with Jayden, and Jane’s kids, Bryan and Lillian. “Jayden had just had enough of hiding,” Hailey said. “We settled in, and he says, ‘Mama, can I put my bra on?’ I said, ‘Go ahead. No one can see it.’” Jayden told Jane he had something to tell her. “He goes, ‘I got a bra on,’” Jane said. “I said, ‘Okay.’ He was like, ‘You’re not mad?’ I said, ‘No, baby, because Mama Jane thinks that everybody needs to be themselves.’ His face lit up, and he was so happy.” Jane told Bryan and Lillian, “Nobody’s going to make no fun.” Before long Jayden started introducing himself to other children as Hannah. His father was horrified.

  Jane found a job at McDonald’s, and Hailey, at Dollar General. They moved into a depressed area of Wichita. By the time Jayden was seven, he was sporting fingernail polish at school. “The school would bring it up, and I’m like, ‘Kids will be kids,’” Hailey said. “Then he started wanting to grow his hair out. He wanted a pair of tights, makeup. He cried a lot, wanting to go to school as a girl.” As soon as Jayden came home, he’d put on girl clothes. One night, he said to Jane, “I’m so mad at you.” Jane said, “Why, baby?” Jayden said, “Because you’re able to be who you are. And I can’t.” Jane said to me, “That just about broke my heart.”

  The school wanted Jayden in therapy, but Hailey and Jane didn’t want him to see someone who would, as Jane put it, “deprogram” him. They had never heard the word transgender, had no idea that there were other children like Hannah. They learned of a sixty-five-year-old transwoman, Leona Lambert, who ran a support group. Leona, in turn, introduced them to the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), the LGBT-positive denomination to which she belonged, and to her pastor, the Reverend Kristina Kohl. MCC was the first public place where Hannah presented herself as a girl.

  When Hannah entered first grade, pressure mounted from the school for her to act more like a boy; pressure mounted from Hannah to go to school as a girl. Leona said to Hannah, “For your safety, it’s best for you to live a double life right now. They’ll beat you up, they’ll pick on you. Just fit the norm. Then when you get home, run put on that dress and watch TV. There is no law to protect you in this state.” Kristina Kohl said, “All her life, she’ll have to make concessions. We all do.” Hailey and Jane had three meetings at school to discuss the situation. “I told Jayden, ‘If you’re purple, and you’re the only purple person in this world, I’d love you to death,’” Hailey said. “‘But you cannot be Hannah at school.’” Jane said, “Hannah was calling herself a freak. It upset me so bad. I said, ‘Hannah, please do not use that word. You are not a freak.’”

  Jane’s daughter had moved out, but her son was home. Bryan has since been given diagnoses of oppositional defiant disorder—a dysregulated relationship to those in authority—and major depression. At thirteen, he took to attacking his mother. He eventually made a suicide attempt, so Jane contacted Social Services to get him treatment. Bryan complained about his mothers to the social worker and was put into state care. Among his accusations, he said they encouraged his brother to wear dresses.

  On February 24, 2009, Jane got Hannah ready for school. “I gave her a hug and a kiss, and I said, ‘I got a surprise when you get out of school. We’re going to eat pizza and go bowling.’” At one thirty, the social worker who had done Bryan’s intake called Hailey. “I’ve got your child,” she said. “You have a court date Tuesday at eight thirty in the morning.” The social worker had interviewed Jayden at school and asked what he would wish if he had three wishes. Jayden said, “Change all my boy clothes into girl clothes; me be a girl; my boy body parts be girl body parts.” The social worker presented this as evidence that Hailey and Jane had “convinced” their child that he was female. The paperwork noted that Hailey had a female partner, and that her child was therefore subject to “more confusion and social difficulties than other children.” The judge ruled that Hannah be placed in a foster family with “healthy parents.”

  In a little more than a week, Hailey and Jane had lost both children. Kristina became their chief adviser. “Hailey and Jane are e
ducationally challenged; they come out of generational poverty,” Kristina told me. “The kids hadn’t been to a dentist or a doctor, didn’t have shoes that fit. It’s not simple. But they love those kids, and Hannah absolutely loves her home.” Hannah’s foster family would not allow Hannah to use her female name, wear female clothes, or do anything else outside masculine norms. On Hailey and Jane’s first supervised visit there, Hannah said, “If I have to be a boy to go home, I will. I’ll do anything to go home.”

  Social and Rehabilitative Services of Kansas (SRS) was now in charge. “SRS dug up some 1950-something psychiatric journal entry about cross-dressers,” Kristina told me. “I’m like, ‘This has no bearing on the situation we’re here to discuss.’ But I don’t have much clout. I don’t know if you can understand how bad it is here.” It can be hard to tease the transphobia apart from the homophobia. SRS continued to say in court, “We’re not giving this child back to lesbians.” SRS finally appointed a therapist, Mia Huntsman, for Hannah and her mothers. They all loved Mia. Hailey said, “We brought Hannah some dresses in therapy because Mia said that she could wear them. Hannah was, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do it in case my foster parents find out.’ Mia said, ‘I’m the therapist, I set guidelines. For your safety, you can do this only in my office, at home, and at church. You can be yourself in these three places.’” On another occasion, Mia said, “I know you want to talk to your mama. I’ll leave the room so you can talk.” Hannah said, “No, don’t do that. I don’t want to get in trouble from SRS.” Hailey wept openly. “Hannah is that scared,” she told me, complaining that Hannah had withdrawn. “She was like a bird being able to fly, okay? Free. Now, even with us, it’s like she’s caged.”

  Leona Lambert drove Hailey and Jane to their therapy sessions with Hannah and was eventually allowed to participate. “God, I wish I’d had her guts at that age,” Leona said. “Even with being taken away from her moms, seeing her with her little heart broken, I want to trade places with Hannah so bad.” Leona showed me her business card, which said FEMALE IMPERSONATOR. I asked her if that was how she thought of herself. She said, “That was the best I could do. I hope Hannah will do better.”

  Hailey and Jane are allowed to attend Hannah’s baseball games. “At the ballpark, she loves my pink sandals,” Hailey said. “She says, ‘Mama, can I wear those to the picnic table?’ I want to just sit there and scream, ‘What’s it going to hurt for my child to put my flip-flops on and wear them to where she can get her own shoes on?’ But they told me no. So I have to abide by that.” Following these rules seems like the best way to get Hannah back and may help Hannah get by in Wichita. But it teaches troubling lessons. “In therapy, she said she was tired of the double life,” Hailey said. “Then she said, ‘But I have to do it because I’m a bad person.’” Mia Huntsman diagnosed her with situational depression. At that point, Hailey said that she was ready to give up, that maybe she and Jane should just have another child and stop trying to get Bryan and Hannah back. It was despair talking, but it was frightening to everyone.

  When I met Hailey and Jane, Hannah had been away for seven months. The women saw their child for an hour of therapy and one two-hour supervised home visit each week. They were not allowed to call Hannah, and she was not allowed to call them. It was Hannah’s eighth birthday, and Hailey and Jane had done their best to make it festive. “I had a little present,” Hailey said, “and I gave it to Hannah and said, ‘Here you go, baby boy.’ She just looked at me like, ‘Mama, do you not accept me anymore?’ So the social worker walked out for a second, and Hannah looked at me real quick and said, ‘You mean “baby girl”?’ I said, ‘When these people are around, I can’t say that.’ I felt so low.” Jane said, “How can you just tell this child, ‘Okay, here and here you can be yourself, but out here you can’t be yourself’? What kind of confusing message are you sending?” Hailey said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say and what I’m not. My biggest fear is of getting her back and then just losing her again. It will definitely be very dangerous for her and for us if she’s herself.”

  • • •

  Parents are right to fear for their transgender children. The level of prejudice against them is unimaginable for those who have not encountered the problem. In 2009, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force published a large survey of transgender people from every state and territory of the United States, with ethnic distribution roughly comparable to that of the general population. The online distribution of the questionnaire meant that it was skewed toward relatively privileged subjects. Four out of five people surveyed had been harassed or physically or sexually attacked in school, almost half by teachers. Although almost 90 percent had completed at least some college, compared to less than half of the general population, they were twice as likely to be unemployed. One out of ten had been sexually assaulted at work, and almost as many had been physically assaulted at work. A quarter had been fired for gender nonconformity. They experienced poverty at twice the national rate. One out of five had been homeless; a third of that group had been refused entry to a shelter because of their gender. A third had postponed or avoided medical care due to disrespect or discrimination by providers. More than half of trans youth have made a suicide attempt, as opposed to 2 percent of the general population. The rates of substance abuse and depression are staggering. Some 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth are gay or trans, and more than half of trans people of color have supported themselves by streetwalking. One sex worker in a shelter for trans kids in Queens, New York, said, “I like the attention; it makes me feel loved.”

  • • •

  Albert Cannon and Roxanne Green knew early on that their son Moses wasn’t boyish. At two, he wanted dolls and was much more interested in picking out clothes that would look good on his sister, Shakona, than in toys for himself. In the inner city in Syracuse where they lived, the streets could be tough; Albert worried about his son, but never tried to change him. “God got my kids confused,” Albert said. “Shakona more manly than Moses was.” Moses insisted on wearing patent leather shoes to school every day and was called a faggot and beaten up all the time. “He could throw a football and could run,” Albert said. “Oh my God, could he ever! But he wasn’t interested in it.” By the time Moses was fourteen, Albert knew what was going on. “I’ve been sleeping in the living room, and he was in the back with his girlfriends, learning how to tuck it in and seeing if he could look like a woman.”

  At sixteen, Moses wrote to his parents, “I’m going to buy all girls’ clothes and I’m going to become a woman. If you can’t accept it, I’m going to kill myself.” Roxanne knocked on Moses’s bedroom door. “I said, ‘Are you sure this is what you want to do? There’s a lot of gay-hating people.’ He said, ‘Mommy, if I’m going to be an embarrassment, I’ll just leave.’ I said, ‘You never can embarrass me.’” Albert was not pleased, but after a few days, he relented. “Ain’t no man can tell me they ain’t got no feminine in them,” he commented. “If they do, they’re lying to themselves. But I said, ‘Are you sure you’re ready for how the world is going to react?’ Moses said, ‘The question is, is the world ready for me!’ I said, ‘I’m not even ready for you, babe.’”

  Moses took the name Lateisha Latoya Kyesha Green, Teish for short. The girls at school loved the way she dressed; she was suddenly popular. A week after she started dressing, she was jumped and badly beaten, but her determination did not flag. One of the hall monitors told Lateisha that she was going straight to hell because the Bible said so; Roxanne called the principal and reminded him that you cannot preach religion in school. It eventually got to be too much, and Lateisha dropped out. She did hair and got a job as a housekeeper at Motel 7. She was spirited and joyful, but longed for one thing. “Dad,” she said to Albert, “I’ll never be happy until I become a complete woman.” Albert said, “You’ll never become a complete woman. But if you mean you want a sex change, I’ll help you when I can.” Albert began setting
money aside and wrote into his will that it was for the surgery. As a bridesmaid in her sister’s wedding, Teish wore a red taffeta dress. Albert said, “My sister warned her girls, who were the other bridesmaids, ‘You are all in trouble, because Teish is going to outdress you all.’”

  At seventeen, Teish liked to “talk to” (in Roxanne’s euphemistic phrase) a man who was closeted; when he heard that she had boasted of their relationship, he slashed her face with a knife. “Wow, she was so tough,” Albert said. “She wanted to kill him.” At home, Teish would sleep between her parents in their bed. “I could keep an eye on her,” Roxanne said. “Know she wasn’t out with that bastard getting her face cut up.” Roxanne and Teish argued constantly, but they also fought for each other fiercely. The Cannon house became the unofficial gathering place for local trans kids. “They tell me they is using drugs to ease the pain,” Albert said. “I said, ‘The pain ain’t going nowhere.’ Not that Lateisha didn’t try drugs, but she didn’t use drugs to escape reality. She had friends who could live here. I never would turn them away. They want to sit down and talk? I’ll listen.”

  Teish had been involved with a number of men, but she didn’t fall in love until, at nineteen, she met Dante Haynes, a devastatingly handsome gang member. She soon began referring to him as her fiancé. Dante and Lateisha were together for two and a half years. “So he did experience love as a woman,” Albert said. “At least he got that.” Roxanne said, “This one wasn’t no hush-hush thing. They went everywhere together. Dante always said she.” Teish had dreams for Dante. “She changed me from doing stupid stuff that I’d probably be in jail for,” Dante told me. “I thought I could sell drugs for the rest of my life to get by. She showed me how to feel like you’re somebody.” Lateisha and Dante broke up; she stayed with her parents. Then on Friday, November 14, 2008, they decided to move back in together. “She was so happy that day,” Roxanne said. “It was going to be for the long term.”