Sasha Masha

by Agnes Borinsky

  Back in his room, Andre had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. He was cramming a pile of clothes into the closet.

  “Well,” I said. “Thanks again.”

  “Oh! Of course,” he said, and closed the door behind me. “Sorry, I just don’t want to make too much noise,” he added in a whisper.

  “Oh! Yeah, definitely.”

  “You had a good time?”

  “I had a really good time.”

  “If you’d like, you can keep the dress.”

  “Oh! No, I don’t have to…”

  “As you may have noticed, I have a lot of clothes. And it fits you better than it fits me.” He shrugged, and his face twitched into a winning grin. “So.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think I will.”

  “Good.”

  “I think my wallet and things are still in your…”

  “Oh! Yes yes yes.” He turned toward the bed to rummage through his backpack.

  I knew it was probably pretty late. But I didn’t want to look at my phone yet. I wasn’t ready to leave. Then Andre had my wallet, phone, and keys in his outstretched hands. He held them for me as I fit them, one by one, into my jeans pockets.

  “You got them all?”

  “Yeah,” I said. My heart was racing.

  “Excellent.”

  “Um,” I began, “would it be all right if I—”

  And I didn’t finish the sentence, because I knew if I waited any longer I’d persuade myself not to do what I was about to do, which was to step forward, lurch, really, place a shaking hand awkwardly on Andre’s arm, and lean in and up toward his face, where I landed my chilly, trembling lips on his.

  Our mouths touched for just a second—long enough for me to feel the warm tension of his narrow lips—and then he placed a hand on my chest and stepped back.

  “Oh, sorry, hey.”

  I immediately blushed all over and wanted to be a million miles away. What was maybe a little comforting was that Andre seemed completely flustered, too, in a way I’d never seen him before. He looked everywhere but at me, walked in a little circle, and landed sitting on his bed.

  “Sorry. I’m really sorry,” I said. And I could feel my heart speeding up with the fear that I’d broken something I wouldn’t be able to put back together. “That was really dumb.”

  “No, it’s—you just didn’t give me much warning.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “You didn’t even finish the question. You were asking and you didn’t even finish.”

  “I know, I’m really … I’m so sorry, Andre.”

  “It’s—sorry, no, that was harsher than I meant it to be. Can we just—hold on.”

  “I can go.”

  “No! No. It’s very … I like you very much, Sasha Masha, and I’m very flattered, but actually Timmy and I—”

  “Oh.” I almost didn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence. Why am I so stupid? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never again will I do anything like that ever. I only paid attention to snippets of what Andre said next, but that was enough.

  “… a long time since we were a real thing … off and on for a little bit … give it another go … the whole monogamy thing…”

  I nodded a bunch. He swallowed and looked at my face. “Sorry. I hope I wasn’t giving confusing signals.”

  “No, it’s…” I had no idea what was and wasn’t true anymore about the last few weeks. Maybe I was just fated to be alone for the rest of my life. Dumb and awkward and itchy and alone. I was stupid and a freak and I should just go home and hide and be Alex for the rest of my life.

  “I think you’re so great, and so … beautiful, Sasha Masha. And I just think figuring out who you are and who you want to be can be so hard when you don’t have friends who get it. And there was this kid who was really important to me when I was coming out, and I guess I thought … I don’t know. I wanted to be able to do for you what he did for me. But I guess I made kind of a mess of it all.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m just really sorry. Um. I have to go home.”

  “Okay. Well, get some rest and text me tomorrow, okay? We can—”

  But I was already out the door.

  So much for a pact. Stupid pact.

  In the car I pulled out my phone. 1:43. Fuck. I had two missed calls from my mom and four from my dad.

  There were text messages, too:

  “Alex it’s getting late.”

  “Alex where are you?”

  “Pls call one of us thx.”

  “Helloo?”

  My hands were trembling so much I could barely type, but I texted a quick, “Sorry coming home,” remembered to turn on the headlights, and shifted into gear. A hard, digital female voice led me back to familiar streets. I was shaking the whole time.

  When I got inside, the house was dark. They’d gone upstairs to sleep, which was almost more frightening than their being downstairs, awake and upset.

  “Alex?” The quiet voice of my mom came through the partially open door as I creaked up the stairs.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  No answer.

  The clock in my room said 2:34 when I had finally brushed my teeth, undressed, and slipped into bed. I played through images of the night, conversations, faces, feelings. I thought about the way things ended in the pizza parlor, but then I pushed back to what had happened before. I thought about the entryway, and the teenager who stamped my wrist, and the dance floor, and the bathroom. I thought about pineapple pizza and greasy napkins and I thought about the pact. I thought again about kissing—trying to kiss—Andre, and shuddered. I thought about what I didn’t know of Andre and Timmy’s history together. I thought about what I didn’t know about Andre. And I thought about what I didn’t know about myself.

  The last thing I remember thinking about before I drifted off was that red-orange dress, like a sunset, like a dream. I came so close, and then I fucked it all up. I heard the men’s laughter in the pizza parlor and I heard the phrase grown-ass boy in a dress. Then I remembered. The dress was just where I’d left it: folded carefully on the edge of the bathtub, back in Andre’s house.

  Chapter 20

  Early the next morning Murphy was scratching at the underside of my door like nothing had changed.

  Oh, Murphy. Dear Murphy.

  I wish you’d let me sleep.

  I dragged a pillow over my head. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Finally I got out of bed, shuffled downstairs to the kitchen, opened a new can of cat food, and scooped half into a bowl. I stood there, leaning against the doorway, and watched Murphy eat. My eyes were starting to open. He ate with focus and determination. I could hear his little tongue and lips clicking and smacking the puree. There were sounds from upstairs. So my parents were just getting up, too. I caught a glimpse of my hands and my green nail polish. The whole night before came flooding back. I turned to dash upstairs so I could get rid of the color, but my mom was already coming down. She was in her pajamas.

  “That was bad, Alex. That was really, really bad.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  I shoved my hands into the pockets of my gym shorts.

  “Your dad’s still sleeping. I don’t think either of us got much rest last night. We talked a lot, trying to figure out … You’ve never … we’ve never had to punish you before. But this was…” She shook her head. “This was bad, Alex.” She looked at me. “I sort of can’t believe you. What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What is going on, that all of a sudden you act like this?”

  “Mom, I just—”

  “You’re, like, grounded. You’re really, really grounded.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and flopped down on the couch, keeping my hands in my pockets.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t let you finish. But I just don’t understand what’s going on. Who is this Andrew person? Where were you?”

  “He’s a friend, Mom. He’s a new friend.”

  “What are you doing tog
ether until two in the morning? Are you getting high?”

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry to be crude about it, but I’m just trying to get a complete picture!”

  “Mom, no, he’s a new friend. I lost track of time. And then I had to give people rides.”

  “So you’re a taxi driver now? None of these people can get home themselves? Were people drinking, Alex? You’re lucky you didn’t get pulled over.”

  “No, nobody was drinking, I said I lost track of time.”

  “Do you need me to get you a watch? Would that help? I don’t know how you lose track of time for two whole hours. Fifteen, twenty minutes, maybe, but—where was your phone? We texted you a million times!”

  My dad came down with messy hair.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, I lost track of time.”

  “That’s not how this works, Alex! When you say you’re going to be home at a certain time—”

  “I told him,” my mom muttered.

  “If you say that, then you create expectations, and then to just not reply, to not communicate—”

  “I’m not on my phone all the time, Dad, in spite of what people your age like to think about people my age. Sometimes I’m paying attention to other things. I’m really sorry, but—”

  “Okay, but you don’t get to just not pay attention when we expect you home and suddenly it’s two in the morning and we have no idea where the hell you are!”

  “Okay! I heard you!”

  “You, my friend, are grounded.”

  “I told him,” my mom muttered again.

  “You are very, very grounded.”

  * * *

  I lay on my bed.

  A howl tore through my body and I slammed my fist into the blanket. Then I started to cry. I was crying because I felt like I’d lost something. Everything, maybe. A week ago I got a glimpse of something wonderful, and now it was gone. I was crying because I was afraid of what I would do with myself, who I would be, how I would love anybody. I was crying because of the guys at the pizza counter. I was crying because of what my parents would say. I was crying about Andre, too, tears of frustration and embarrassment.

  Why had I been such an idiot? My one shot at a new friend, and I’d turned it into a fantasy of a boyfriend. I wanted to peel my face off and die under a log. Why did I always have to mess things up like that? Why did I always have to get things wrong?

  I couldn’t go on like this anymore. The last week had been intense and revealed a lot. But this wasn’t just about last week. The stuff that had started to surface went deep. Into the past and the darkest, most secret parts of myself. I had opened a door and the light had come in. However scared I was, I couldn’t ever close that door again.

  When the tears slowed down, I pulled out my phone.

  “How do I know if I’m trans?” I asked the internet.

  You might be trans if you’ve never identified with the gender you were given at birth. You might be trans if you’ve never felt at home in your body. Think about how you feel when people use your assigned pronouns to refer to you, or about how you feel when you behave in ways that seem expected of someone of your gender. Does it feel like you’re faking it?

  I’d always told myself my body was like a bad, bulky costume. Now that I thought about it this way, I did feel like I was faking it, yes.

  Some trans people describe knowing from a very early age that their true gender was different from their assigned gender. But that’s not true for everyone. Some people only begin to feel that way during puberty, or even later in life. Some trans people feel very clearly that they were born into one gender, and want to live as the other. But gender is a spectrum, and there are a lot of places along that spectrum where you could fall. You have to explore and see what feels right for you.

  I skimmed a little more, let my eyes hop from paragraph to paragraph, from bold text to italic; there were glossaries and videos. I opened links in new tabs and flipped between them on the small rectangular screen. The prospect of answering all these questions here, now, right away, felt overwhelming. But I felt the chilly, unmistakable sense that this was exactly what I’d been experiencing most of my life.

  Just then I got a text from Andre.

  “Hey Sasha Masha”

  My stomach dropped and I started to panic.

  “Just wanted to say that I’m sorry if things got weird last night”

  “I had a nice time hanging out, and if u wanna do it again as friends I’m very down”

  He was typing something else—the three little dots were scrolling.

  Then he wasn’t typing anything.

  I stared at the screen a moment.

  I deleted his contact and blocked the number. I threw my phone down on the bed. Murphy came and scratched at the door, but I didn’t want to be around anybody. I wanted to stay in this bed forever. I started to cry again. Then I got tired of crying and just lay still.

  I don’t know how long I lay there. The sounds of the house crept into the room around me. The easy creaks and pops of wooden beams expanding and contracting. I heard my mom’s voice rising through the floor, and then my dad’s, both softened to a murmur. The rattle of dishes in the sink and the sound of water rushing through the pipes. Outside, the voices of two women came closer and then moved off. Birds, dogs, traffic. There was so much going on, always. Nearby and far away. The longer I listened, the more I heard. I heard the door open and close, and the car driving off. I heard Murphy scratching in his litter. I heard the electricity coursing through the walls of our house. I even heard the blood pumping through my veins.

  I got out of bed and went downstairs to find a snack. The house was empty. I stood in front of the refrigerator.

  I could only imagine how much my body had been trying to tell me all these years. About who I was, what clothes I wanted to wear, how I wanted to move through the world, how I saw myself, how I saw others. I never stayed still enough to listen.

  I pulled out a jar of pickles and sat at the kitchen table.

  Now it was like the shapes and scribbles and shadows of a murky past started to shift and slide and arrange themselves into a pattern I could recognize.

  I remembered the game I used to play with Ted Goldstein in fourth grade where he was a criminal mastermind and I was his assistant, Mara. I always pictured Mara in black leather pants and a ponytail.

  I remembered the story I wrote in middle school that ended with the main character saying, I’m just an ordinary gal, don’t mind me, hahaha!

  I remembered the picture I kept in a frame on my desk—not of me and Mabel, or me and my family—but of me and a drag queen who performed at the restaurant where Mabel had her sixteenth birthday party.

  I remembered the hope I always harbored, when there was a school play, of “having” to play a girl, “having” to wear a dress and a wig.

  All these years I’d never put the pieces together. They pointed to something that hadn’t made sense to me. I hid them in different corners of my memory, where I wouldn’t accidentally see them together and understand. But when I wasn’t looking, they’d banded together and given themselves a name.

  Sasha Masha, they said. That’s us.

  * * *

  I woke up in the dark. The sound of a key in the door. For a second I wasn’t sure where I was. Murphy was whining for dinner. I had a headache. Someone switched a light on in the hall and I squeezed my eyes shut. I’d fallen asleep in the living room. A person plopped down on the end of the couch by my feet and laid a hand on my leg. I muttered something.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes.

  “You catching up on some rest?”

  It was my dad.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  “All right, kiddo. I’ll let you get yourself together.”

  Through the trees outside the living room window, I could see the last purple light of day.

  I had a missed call from Mabel.

&nbs
p; I lay still with my eyes closed in the hopes that I could get this headache to go away. Someone was making dinner and had turned on the news. I remembered the feeling of being six years old and sick and curled up on the couch. I wanted to be a kid like that again.

  Eventually it was time for dinner.

  “It’s nice to have you home, Alex,” my mom said.

  “It is indeed,” my dad agreed. “Maybe we can watch a movie tonight?”

  “Sure,” I said, in a small voice.

  “Is there anything you’re in the mood for, sweetie?”

  Why were they being so nice? It was almost like they were extra nice to me now that they had had to punish me. I said I wasn’t sure. I said I’d watch anything. I set the table and brought out the big bowl of salad. I didn’t care anymore whether they saw my painted nails but if they did, they didn’t say anything. My dad brought out the chicken.

  “So, Alex,” my mom began, “we’re just a little worried about you. We’re worried something’s going on. Between these late nights, and the new friends, and the questions you were asking. We don’t know what it is, but we want you to know that we’re here for you. And we can talk about it, if you want to.” She looked to my dad for confirmation.

  “Yeah, kiddo. Just talk to us. We’re not perfect, but we do our best.”

  “Mostly we just want you to be safe. You know? And we’re a little worried.”

  I looked into both of their faces. And their faces were full of love. And I knew that I would try to explain to them.

  But right now I was just too tired.

  “I … appreciate it,” I said. “And … I think I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed today. Can we talk about it tomorrow? Would that be okay? I promise we can talk about it. I just can’t talk about it right now…” And as I was starting to say those last words, tears crowded my eyes. Before I knew it, I was sobbing. Soon I was on the couch and my mom was beside me and my dad was getting toilet paper because my nose was running like crazy. I cried and cried and ugly cried and my mom hugged me and I just kept crying.