by Rachel Gold
I told Dr. Mendel what had happened, and she had tears in her eyes by the end of the story.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You should never have been treated that way.”
“I was stupid,” I grumbled.
“Just impatient,” she replied. “What actions are you taking for yourself?”
“I’m working on my voice,” I said. “Sometimes after school when I have some time alone in my car. And…a friend gave me some of her hormones. I know it’s illegal, but it’s only a little bit.”
Her eyebrows went up. “I understand that you want to be on hormones very badly, but there are medical risks.”
“Give me a break. Millions of women take hormones.”
“With their doctor’s supervision,” she pointed out.
“I’m so sick of waiting. You don’t know what it’s like. Some mornings I look in the mirror and I don’t know who that is!” I was yelling and made myself take a breath and lower the volume a notch. I didn’t want to be heard in the waiting room and I didn’t want to yell at Dr. Mendel.
I explained, “There’s this stranger with hair on his face and sharp angles and it’s one more day of faking it. I have to force myself into that face. I look at family photos and it’s Mom and Dad and Mikey and some guy who moved into my house and took my life away. Do you know what that’s like?”
“No,” she said. “The hormones help with that?”
“Everything helps. Getting to wear the clothes that make sense to me—I don’t know why that should matter. Girl pants and guy pants are really similar, but they’re not. And suddenly the shape of my body matches what’s in my head and I can relax. It helped when Claire called me ‘Chrissy’ before she knew my name’s Emily. Every second of that is a vote on the side of me being a real person in the world. And the hormones and feeling like my skin’s softer and I’m not so angry, maybe it’s all in my mind, but yeah, it helps so much.”
She sighed and turned the ring on her index finger. “Here’s my dilemma, Emily. I want you to be yourself. And I have concerns. Taking hormones can put stress on your heart and liver. You could be at risk for diabetes, even a stroke. Plus you’ll decrease your fertility, which is a real problem if you want to have biological kids someday. I know doctors who work with women through their transitions. Please consider pausing the hormones until we can get you to one of them.”
I considered it. For a whole second. Right now, no way. Maybe in a few days I’d think about it again.
“I’d need my parents’ permission to see a doctor, wouldn’t I? Since I’m underage and insurance and all that.”
“Yes.”
“They’re going to freak out,” I said. “I’ve been hinting to Mom and it’s not going well.”
I told her what had happened the two times I’d tried to bring up anything trans. She started laughing out loud at the impotence story and I laughed along with her, feeling each burst of air loosen my chest a little.
“Sometimes it takes a while for parents to adjust,” she said. “You and I can come up with a plan together. You have to be prepared for them to be upset at first and not assume that’s the end of the world.”
“Okay,” I told her, though I was fairly certain it would be the end of the world.
“Before we get to that, I want to spend the rest of this visit and our next few sessions talking about the ways in which people approach the transition process and what you want for yourself. There are people with gender dysphoria who choose only hormones and not surgery and some who opt for neither.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “I’ve been looking at all of this for years. I know there are risks to the surgery and some people decide they don’t want it. And there are trans women who never wanted surgery in the first place. I know I don’t need surgery to be a woman. But that’s years down the road. I can’t even afford it yet and anyway, I want facial surgery first.”
I paused and took a deep breath because she was watching me with that open, clear sky look that made me feel like no matter what I said it was okay.
“I’m sorry, I feel like everyone wants to challenge me on this,” I said.
“That’s not what we’re here for. We’re going to create the life you want for yourself. I’m asking that we start at the beginning and go through all the steps.”
“I can do that,” I told her. “Where do we start?”
“I have some basic psychological tests I’d like to give you. I see that Dr. Webber tested you for depression but I’d like to get my own results. It’s common for trans people to struggle with depression and anxiety, and I want to get a good feel for how much of that you’re dealing with.”
I cracked a big grin. “You mean I shouldn’t lie on the tests this time?”
She chuckled. “That is precisely what I mean. And I want you to understand that if you come out of this office with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, that does not mean that you as a person are disordered or diseased or that there’s anything wrong with who you are.”
“Thank you,” I told her.
We decided to start the tests on the next visit so that I’d have plenty of time for them and ended the hour chatting. As Dr. Mendel walked me to the door, she said, “Take care of yourself. And the next time you go shopping dressed as a girl, get support, don’t do it alone.”
In the waiting room, Claire stood up as I came out of the office. “Is everything okay?” she asked Dr. Mendel through the open door.
“Yes,” Dr. Mendel said. “Absolutely fine, but you’ve got someone here in need of cheering up, and maybe a shopping trip in the near future.” She went back into her office and Claire raised her eyebrows at me.
“Shopping?” she asked.
“I want to go shopping as a girl,” I said quietly, after making sure there was no one near.
Claire sat back down in the chair she’d been waiting in. I worried that I’d frayed her patience past the breaking point and, when she pulled out her phone, thought she might be calling her mother to come get her.
“What’s Natalie’s number?” she asked.
It took a moment for the question to register, and then I told her, following it with, “Wait, why are you calling her?”
Too late. She had the phone to her ear. “Natalie? Hey, it’s Claire, you know, from the boonies. Yeah. Yeah. Right here. Yeah, but we need a favor. She wants to go shopping. Sure. Yeah, it’s my cell. Cool.”
She put her phone in her purse and stood up. “All right, she’s calling me back.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “No, I reserve the right to freak out about this later when you’re not looking.”
I looped my arm over her shoulders. “You are so cool. Do you know that’s the first time you’ve called me ‘she’?”
“Don’t rub it in. Come on She-Ra Princess of Power, take me home.”
We’d been stuck watching a He-Man movie while babysitting Mikey a few months ago. Those characters seemed a lot funnier now. I asked, “Does that make you He-Man?”
She laughed. “I guess so. Gender nonconformity, here I come!”
* * *
The next morning on my way to study hall, Claire handed me a note. It said: “Overnight in the city. Set it up with your folks. Have them call Nat’s mom tonight. She’ll handle the ‘boy thing.’”
What boy thing? I thought, but that was answered as soon as I got home and broached the subject with my mom.
“You can’t have a sleepover with two girls in the city—one of whom we don’t even know!” she said.
“Oh, yeah, you’re supposed to call her mother.” I handed Mom a sheet of paper with Natalie’s home number on it.
“How do you even know this girl?” Mom asked.
“We met online. She plays the same games that Claire and I do. We’ve hung out with her a few times. Her mom’s a successful lawyer.” The part about games wasn’t true, but that last bit was the important part. It was meant to convey a sense of safety to my moth
er and a sense that I was spending time with the right kind of people.
Mom sighed and went to the phone. The conversation went: “Hello? Yes. Yes, Chris’s mom. Good to meet you too, Susan. Online games, he said. Well, I wonder that too.” Pause and a laugh. “Really? Oh separate rooms, of course. A daughter in college, that’s nice. Princeton? My goodness. And you’ll be there all night with them?” Pause and laugh again. “Oh no, no that’s not necessary. Yes, that would be nice. Yes, thank you. Goodbye.”
She hung up and turned to me. “Well, I suppose it’s all right. They sound like very nice people. She said you’ll have your own room for the night. She even offered to drive out here so we could meet her. Isn’t that nice?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking that Natalie’s mom had to be fantastic to make that offer.
“Go have a good time,” she said. “And tell me all about it. I bet they have a wonderful house.”
I smiled. “Okay, Mom.”
* * *
I picked up Claire at four on Saturday and we drove into the city. Her mom had also talked with Natalie’s mom and experienced a similarly reassuring conversation. What was it they thought we’d do without parental supervision? Maybe an all-night drunken, pot-smoking orgy. Of course if Mom knew what we were really up to, she might have preferred the orgy.
Natalie’s family lived in the northern part of the western suburbs in a sprawling two-story house. When we pulled up, Natalie came out in a coat with a line of white fur around the hood and tan boots that had white, furry cuffs on them, to help lug in our overnight bags along with the secret duffel.
“My brother’s at a friend’s until tomorrow afternoon,” she said when we all crammed into the entryway. “And Dad’s locked himself in the master bedroom. He tries to be cool, but this girl stuff weirds him out sometimes. So we have the house to ourselves.” She turned and yelled into the house, “Mom, they’re here!”
I expected Natalie’s mom to be kind of glamorous, but she wasn’t. She had dark hair shot through with gray that she’d looped into a bun at the base of her neck. She had the same big, dark eyes as Natalie, but a smaller chin and nose.
“Welcome,” she said. “You can call me Susan, I much prefer that to ‘Natalie’s mom’ or, heaven forbid, ‘ma’am.’ Come on in. We have enough beds for you if you want, but I thought you girls might like the lower level for a full slumber party atmosphere.”
She went toward the downstairs and Claire followed, but I didn’t know what to do. She’d said “girls”—did that include me? At the top of the stairs she paused and looked back at me, beckoning. I guess I was one of the girls. Grinning, I followed.
The lower level had been set up as an entertainment center, with a big TV and a huge L-shaped couch. Three rolled-up sleeping bags rested at the end of the couch and a small stack of blankets lay next to them.
“Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll go put the pizza in the oven,” she said and headed back up the stairs.
I followed her.
“You told my mom I was going to be in a separate room,” I said.
“Yes,” Natalie’s mom—Susan—said. “If you’re more comfortable, you can have Natalie’s sister’s room, but if you want to sleep in the lower level, you could roll a sleeping bag out on the left side of the TV, which is, technically, a separate room, or at least would be if we hadn’t torn down that wall. It’s still listed as separate on the property report.”
I smirked at her. “You planned that.”
“Natalie did,” she said with a wink. “She said it would be good for you to have a girls’ night and promised me no funny business.”
“No ma’am,” I said, unable to stop grinning. “Why are you so cool about all this? I think my mom would epically freak out.”
She pulled two pizzas out of the freezer. “I did some freaking out,” she admitted. “But, I don’t know if you’ll understand this until you’re a mother, there are much worse things in life than gender dysphoria. There were nights I’d lie awake and wonder if Nat was going to kill herself and why it was happening and if I’d be able to stop her. I’d try to think of how she might do it, and to take away anything I thought she could use to hurt herself, but it was never enough for me to know she’d be safe. I had some rough nights after she told me what the problem was, why she was so depressed, but I knew…after that I knew she’d live, that she’d grow up and have a good life. That’s a gift. That’s what a parent really wants for their kids. I think your mother will come to understand that too. She does love you and she wants you to be happy.”
“She’s not as…educated as you,” I ventured.
She laughed, a big, open-mouthed laugh. “Law school doesn’t prepare you for this, believe me. Your mom can learn the same things I did. Now come on, Claire said you need shopping therapy tomorrow, and we have another little surprise.”
The surprise turned out to be a couple of the wigs Natalie wore before her hair grew out and that her parents hadn’t gotten around to giving away yet. The fit was tight, but with the right bobby pins, the wig with plain brown, wavy hair worked. I spent an hour in the bathroom staring at myself with the hair falling past my shoulders. Without makeup, I looked too coarse and plain, but I could start to see how it would come together.
I counted my lucky stars that I’d been born at a good time. In earlier decades, earlier centuries, people like me had had to content themselves with only dressing as women, but I could change my body to match my sense of myself. I lifted the hair off my forehead and considered the ridge under my eyebrows. I definitely needed to save up a lot of money this summer, and the next and for a few after that, but I would figure out how to get the facial surgery that would take away the caveman aspects. Natalie hadn’t needed it and I envied her.
Claire banged on the door. “You going to stay in there all night?” When I came out she added, “You are such a girl.”
I’m not sure she meant it as a compliment, but I took it as one anyway. Then we all sat around, including Nat’s mom, and painted our toenails. We talked fairly unsuccessfully about makeup and movie stars for a few minutes, but I had a lack of knowledge and Claire protested the whole thing, so we ended up talking about school and politics and what the world had been like when Natalie’s mom was a kid. Okay, during that last part we just listened politely.
Natalie’s mom showed me where to put a sleeping bag so that I was technically in another room, and Natalie scared up a pair of silk pajama bottoms that fit me rather than the boxer shorts and T-shirt that were all I’d had.
I lay awake for a long time feeling my heart floating in my chest.
Chapter Sixteen
Claire
Claire lay awake for a long time. If my boyfriend is a girl, she wondered, what does that make me?
Sure she could say “a lesbian” half-joking, or “bisexual” for real, and leave it at that, but that didn’t address the doubts gnawing at her. From what she’d seen and read, even a lot of lesbians weren’t too keen about girls who dated girls who’d grown up as boys. If she continued through all this with Chris, would she wake up one morning to find there was nowhere in the world where she belonged?
She half laughed at that thought. When had she ever been worried about belonging? But she’d never felt this kind of isolation before. When she provoked other kids at school with her goth look or by spouting esoteric bits of poetry or religion, or her mom by talking about being bisexual—she was drawing the boundary and saying what groups she was and wasn’t in. Suddenly, a whole lot of lines had been drawn for her.
She pulled apart the different aspects of it. Number one was that she could end up even more of an outsider. Number two, much as she hated to admit it, was that Chris was getting more attention than she was. He’d been the quiet guy for most of their relationship, and now, at least here, all the attention was on him. Claire didn’t begrudge him that; he certainly deserved some care. She just wanted more of the spotlight, but she could learn to share.
Number
three was uglier than the first two. She accepted that Chris didn’t have a choice about this situation, that he…or she, rather, had been born this way and had to go through all kinds of hell to get to a life that worked. But Claire had a choice about loving Chris. She could walk away, she could explore whether that fairly normal-looking kid in her history class really was interested in her.
She glanced at Chris in his sleeping bag across the room. Who loved someone like that? Was she that desperate to be weird? Was there some way in which all of this was still about her?
No, she didn’t want to walk away. This whole business about sex and gender didn’t change the person she’d gotten to know. Well, except for making her a girl. But in some way she’d always been a girl, just in an amazing disguise.
Claire stared up at the ceiling’s gray waffle-board pattern. She missed the plain white of her bedroom. Why was she here? Had she really needed to come along on this mission? She could’ve sent Chris to spend the weekend with Natalie and stayed home.
Sometimes when she prayed or talked to God she had the feeling of a huge intelligence looking at her, usually smiling. It was there now, surrounding her. Trust me, it seemed to say.
She rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled across the basement floor to where Chris was lying on top of his sleeping bag with a light blanket over his legs. His eyes were still open. Claire snuggled down against Chris’s side and he put his arm around her. She took a deep breath and stopped—he smelled different. He’d always smelled like salt and sand and warm metal, but now the metallic part was fading. Claire knew she was smelling the lotion he’d put on earlier, but still there had been a change to his underlying scent. An edginess was gone and she kind of missed it.
This was good too. Would his scent keep changing?
But that wasn’t the most important question. When are you going to stop thinking of Chris as him? she asked herself. You know she doesn’t like that.
Oh shut up, she told the highly evolved part of her brain, I want to hold onto something of him.