Being Emily (Anniversary Edition)

by Rachel Gold

  And even more importantly, why would God create a world in which women could be born as men and vice versa?

  She turned off the computer and sat on her bed. “God?” she asked in a whisper. “What were you thinking? Why would you make people transgender?”

  She talked to God a lot and sometimes God answered—or maybe God always answered and at times she was too boneheaded to figure it out. She’d been raised Lutheran, like just about everyone in these parts, but her relationship with God came from her earliest memories of Sunday school when she remembered Jesus as the kindest, wisest man in the whole world. At times she could feel Him near her.

  She regularly went to church, but she didn’t always feel God there. More often she skipped the service and attended an open Bible study held afterward. She didn’t believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, but she did believe it was a divinely inspired text and a way to engage in a relationship with God. Maybe it was because she loved words in all their forms that it was easiest for her to feel God’s presence when she read the Bible or even in the words of poets and writers.

  Pulling her worn Bible off the shelf by her bed, she let it open where it wanted. Her eyes fell to a verse toward the end of the Book of Job after Job loses his family and his health and all his money. He cries out to God for a reason for all the bad things that have happened to him.

  “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks Job. “Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!”

  What was that supposed to mean? What had the Bible study leader said when they studied Job? In the end of the story, Job actually gets to speak to God—and if she remembered right, that was the last time God spoke directly to a human being before the birth of Jesus. That was huge! The whole Book of Job was about testing the depth of Job’s faith, just as this situation with Chris tested her faith in God’s design. Job got to hear God answer his questions and came out of the situation with renewed faith, even if it wasn’t the answer he expected or wanted.

  While Job suffered, his friends blamed all his misfortunes on him and acted like huge jerks to him. That was the other lesson Claire remembered learning about this book: Job was a story about compassion.

  God was telling her that some hard things that happened to people were beyond her understanding. What God made for the joy of creation, that was God’s work, and if that included men who turned into women and women who turned into men, who was she to argue? Was she there when God created the world? No. Did she help to determine its measurements? No.

  Her work was to have faith and not be a blaming jerk like Job’s friends. No matter how upset she felt, Chris didn’t deserve to have her take it out on him.

  In the next verses, God asked Job if he knew what the foundation of the earth was laid upon, “or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

  She loved that image of the world being created and the sons of God shouting for joy. The world was made for joy. Did that include transgender people? She didn’t understand how it could, but maybe she didn’t have to. Plenty of people in the world were going to be awful to Chris if he kept going down this path, and she didn’t need to be one of them.

  But Chris also asked if this meant they were going to split up. Not being a jerk to him was one thing but being his girlfriend was a lot more than that and she didn’t know if she could. If he started to change his body like that, would she still be attracted to him?

  She had so much to learn and think about and maybe mourn…

  Chapter Four

  The small, quiet alarm beside my pillow chirped once and was silent, but that was enough to wake me. I wanted to run over to Claire’s house and ask her again if she was going to split up with me, but it was four a.m.

  Avoiding the creaky part in the middle of my bedroom floor, I slid the bolt on my door to the locked position. I’d installed the sliding bolt last summer and Dad let me keep it. He realized that I could only lock it when I was inside the room and contented himself in knowing he and Mom could still search for drugs, or whatever they looked for, when I wasn’t home. He probably thought I’d put it on so I could masturbate without Mom walking in on me. Dad thinks like that. I wasn’t going to argue as long as I had some measure of safety for what I really wanted to do.

  When I’d come in from school that afternoon, I’d carried my backpack up to my room, along with a nondescript black nylon gym bag. No one paid any attention to it, of course, which was the point. I’d thought all this through to the nth degree, and the bag was not only beneath notice but the luggage tag had Claire’s name and address on it.

  At least up until I’d come out to her the day before, Claire wouldn’t have minded me using her name to throw my parents off the track of a secret; she was pretty sneaky herself and had taught me a few tricks about hiding files on my computer. Luckily I had the kind of parents who hardly knew how to turn the thing on, unlike Claire’s mom, who had probably installed two kinds of cybersnoop software to protect her one precious daughter from sexual predators online. Claire came over and used my computer whenever she had something “of a delicate nature” that she needed to research, and paid me back in tips about how to keep my parents in the dark.

  The duffel bag had her name on it because inside it was a pair of girls’ jeans, a long skirt, two sweaters, a cute hat, underpants and two bras. None of them were anywhere near Claire’s size. But if my parents looked in the bag, they would never consider any possibility beyond the obvious explanation that the outfits belonged to Claire. Plus they had no idea that she hated hats.

  I unzipped the bag and paused to listen. Silence. More silence. Chirping bugs outside, neighbor’s dog barking, the distant sound of a car and the rapid thud of my pounding heart.

  I shucked my pajamas. The next few minutes were the best and worst of my whole day: the worst because I felt like such a freak, and the best because I slowly became visible. I went from being a charcoal outline of a person to being a flesh and blood human being, my skin filled from the inside out as I arrived into my body and my life.

  I put on the underpants and the skirt. Because of the competitive swimming, I had an excuse to shave my arms and legs—plus swimming got Dad off my back about doing something I could letter in—but mostly it was the smooth skin of the swimmers that caught my attention. If they’d told me before my sophomore year that they shaved for meets, I’d have been swimming my whole school career.

  I put on the bra and hooked it, filling the cups with cotton balls, because they were easy to have around, and I found it impossible to actually stuff a bra with socks the way girls did in books. Then I pulled on the short-sleeved sweater with the scalloped neck that was my favorite and set the hat on my head, tilted back.

  The inside of my closet door had a mirror that I could easily avoid in the mornings, but now I opened it and looked at myself in the darkness. Subtle light from the moon filtered in through my unshaded windows and mixed with the light of my computer monitor. I preferred that to the bright overhead light that would reveal too many of the rough details of my face. In this dreamy light I felt whole.

  When you’re a little kid, you don’t really think about what you are; you just are. Some of my happiest times were when I was four and five. We lived in a different town then, across the street from a blond girl named Heather whose mom would bring her over to play with me in the basement all afternoon. Heather’s mom often marveled that I was such a quiet kid, so thoughtful, and that I played so gently with her daughter. It seemed natural to me. We’d sit in the middle of the basement playroom that my dad had set up, and she’d show me her dolls. We’d dress them up in the other dolls’ clothes and drive them around in the cars I’d gotten for my birthdays or build them houses out of the empty boxes Dad brought home for me to play in.

  “Isn’t he such a sweet boy,” Heather’s mom said one afternoon. “He’s made a house for the dolls.”
I didn’t know who she was talking about, but I started to feel that something bad had happened and I didn’t know what it was.

  I ran into the laundry room and hid until Heather and her mom had gone. From then on, I was on the lookout, trying to figure out what had happened to make Heather’s mom talk about me like I was a boy.

  When I went to first grade, the problem started to become clear to me. The teacher wanted the girls to line up on one side of the door and the boys to line up on the other side. I lined up with the girls and she told me to get in the other line.

  “I’m not a boy!” I told her.

  She knelt down and took me by the shoulders. “Are you afraid of the other boys?” she asked. “Did they do something to you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m a girl.”

  She laughed, right in my face, her breath dark and earthy. “You’re funny,” she said. “You’re playing a game with me, aren’t you? You’re pretending to be a girl today, but I know you’re a boy. Do you know how I know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because of your name, Christopher. That’s a boy’s name, so you get in line with the other boys.”

  I got into line with the boys. She had said one thing I understood: “pretending.” Something had gone wrong with the world and I had to pretend to be a boy until I could figure out how to fix it. I knew how to pretend.

  When Mom came to pick me up, I asked if I could have another name. At six, I thought that maybe if I changed my name I could be a girl.

  “Why don’t you like your name?” she asked.

  “It’s a boy’s name,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, obviously not getting it. “It’s a good name for a boy. Your grandfather was named Christopher.”

  “I want a girl’s name,” I said.

  She stopped the car and looked at me. She stared at me for so long that another car started honking behind us. Then she let out a long breath.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes Chris is also a girl’s name. It can be short for Christine.”

  I beamed. I don’t know what prompted my mom to say that, but it was one of the best things she’d ever said to me. The teacher was wrong; I did have a girl’s name. I was going to be all right. Ever since then I’ve heard my name as “Chris, short for Christine.”

  Of course it turned out the name wasn’t the core issue, and Mom didn’t stop Dad from giving me a good whipping when he found me in her dresses a couple of years later.

  My body is the problem. It’s hard to tell people that you’re a girl when everything physical screams “guy.” Even in the semidarkness, my reflection in the mirror had these broad shoulders and no waist. I’ve got thin lips, but so does my mom, and my eyebrows look like Cro-Magnon man. They’d look better if I could pluck them, but I’m not too old to get a good whipping from Dad, so I leave them shaggy. I can still see his face, the grim set of his lips and how quiet his voice sounded as he told me, when I was eight, to take off the dress while he pulled his belt free from its loops. I think we both felt ashamed afterward, but for very different reasons. I never wanted to be the kind of kid my Dad would have to whip, so I retreated into my dreams and stayed away from girls’ clothes until this year when I was sure I could wear them in secret.

  I turned away from the mirror and went to my computer. It was a 2004 iMac that I’d gotten off eBay for a few hundred bucks a year and a half ago. Although slow, it still had some life in it, and anyway it only connected to the Internet at a blazing 56K. I wanted high-speed access, but Mom and Dad wouldn’t pay for it, and I didn’t want to spend that much of the money I made helping Dad with his cars just to get online.

  There were a few good online communities for trans girls, but my favorite was called GenderPeace. I’d found it last fall and had been hanging around on it for about six months. Members participated from all over the world. They gave great advice and talked about their lives. I spent a few months lurking and reading the public posts until I decided to create a free account and become a member. I had to sign in each time rather than being logged in automatically, because I erased any evidence of my having been there when I logged off for the night, in case Mom and Dad suddenly figured out computers. I assumed I could never be too paranoid.

  My user name was “EmilyCH” for Emily Christine Hesse. I thought I’d keep Christine in honor of my Mom’s cool moment and the choice they made to name me in the first place, and I got Emily partly from my Grandma Em and, I confess, a little from Emily Dickinson.

  A couple days ago, a new thread had caught my eye, especially a post from a girl whose online name was “Bratalie.” In her profile it turned out her name was Natalie and she had already transitioned and was going to high school as a girl in Minneapolis, an hour’s drive from me. First I had a gut-wrenching pang of jealousy. To be able to go to school as a girl, how amazing! But then I wanted to know all about it. I’d sent her a quick note saying I was in Liberty, Minnesota, still living in drab (dressed resembling a boy), and asking what it was like for her to go to school as herself.

  When I logged in that night, I saw that I had private mail from her.

  “Hi Emily,” she wrote. “We’re neighbors! Liberty is out in the boonies, though, how do you survive? You should come into the City! We could have lunch!” She included her cell phone number in the closing, along with more exclamation points.

  Between my excitement about Natalie, and the growing dread in my stomach about seeing Claire at school, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I stayed up posting on the GP board for a while and then doing my homework. I couldn’t explain it, but homework was easier to do in my girl clothes. Like I’d been concentrating on holding the shape of my body in my mind, but now I could relax and focus on school.

  Twenty minutes before my other, loud alarm was due to ring, I erased the evidence of my web surfing, undressed, put my clothes back in the decoy duffel bag and dropped it casually at the foot of the bed so it would look like I didn’t care about it. Then I crawled under the covers and waited for the alarm to ring while I searched for stars through the unshaded window. I only found a few points of light in the murky, dark gray sky.

  “You look awful,” Mom said when I appeared for breakfast in my jeans and sweater number two.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I didn’t want to attribute it to Claire or she’d think we’d had a fight and possibly ask why. “I might be getting a cold.”

  She touched my forehead. “You feel fine, but bundle up.” She turned back to the sandwiches she was making. “Chris, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about seeing a doctor for your moods.”

  “What?”

  “You’re so unhappy all the time. I want you to go talk to someone professional and have them help you.”

  I tried to figure out if I was supposed to fight about this or not. It really depended on the doctor whether it would be worthwhile. I settled for indifference, which always worked when I didn’t know what to do. “Sure, Mom,” I said.

  “Good, because you have an appointment today after school. I want you to meet me here at three forty-five and we’ll go over together.”

  Okay, that was my cue to get mad, which wasn’t hard since I already felt like crying. She’d messed with my schedule without asking, that was a clear violation. “What? You made an appointment without even asking? Mom, what the hell!”

  She closed a paper bag with a sharp snap and glared. “Chris, watch your language, young man!”

  That shut me up, but not for the reason she thought. I hated being called “young man” even more than “son.” I took a deep breath. “You didn’t even ask me.”

  “I’m your mother,” she said. “Sometimes I can do things just because they’re good for you.”

  I shrugged. On five hours of sleep for many nights running, I didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. “Fine.”

  “Don’t be late.”

  I stood up and automatically kissed her cheek though at that point I was honestly pissed.

  Ha
lfway to school, I realized I’d forgotten my lunch and would have to eat a dry hockey puck, or whatever the cafeteria was serving.

  A doctor? Some psychiatrist or psychologist, when what I needed was an endocrinologist to put me on the right hormones. I felt a miserable disconnect between my body, which wanted very badly to punch something, and my heart, which wanted to cry. My eyes burned but didn’t tear up, which was for the best if I didn’t want to get my ass kicked by the football guys.

  When I rounded the corner of the main hall, I saw Claire standing at my locker with her back to me. Momentum carried me toward her for a few more steps and then I stopped. If she dumped me now, I would fall apart.

  She turned and saw me, pushed through the two dozen students between us, while I stood frozen in place. She was wearing her favorite black sweater, the one with a cobweb design stitched around the elbows, and a long, black skirt over her boots. Despite her backpack, she held a blue-covered notebook to her chest.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Your face is all misery or exhaustion. I can’t tell.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” I told her.

  “Sorry for telling me?”

  “For my stupid question about us being together.”

  “Is that why you’re upset?” she asked.

  All I saw in her face was confusion, and what I wanted was certainty that she wasn’t going to break up with me. I didn’t have the guts to ask again if we were still together.

  “That and Mom wants me to go to a shrink,” I told her almost inaudibly.

  “That could be good.”

  Her fingers worked around the edge of her notebook, pushing ragged edges of paper back among the pages. She stared down at the notebook, not at me.