Being Emily (Anniversary Edition)

by Rachel Gold

But why? She draped her arm over across the warm, familiar body next to her. This was all she needed to hold onto, she thought. Just the person.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the morning, Natalie’s mom made us eggs and bacon. Her dad came down for a few minutes to eat with us. He had a thick gray-and-brown goatee but had shaved his head to help disguise how bald he was on top. When he saw me, he blinked a few times but didn’t say anything other than to ask how we were all doing. After a quick cup of coffee and eggs, he excused himself to go to the gym.

  “What’s up with your dad?” Claire asked when Natalie’s mom was out of the room.

  “He’s my stepdad,” she said. “But he and Mom have been married for, like, twelve years, so I figure he gets to be a dad too. He’s pretty sweet about the whole trans thing, even though it scares him. Like he’s afraid that someone’s going to show up in the middle of the night and take his guy parts away and turn him into a girl.”

  Claire snorted at that, but I wondered how often nontrans people reacted badly to trans people because somewhere inside them they were afraid it was going to happen to them.

  “How about you?” I asked Claire teasingly. “Are you afraid the bad fairy is going to turn you into a boy?”

  She cocked her head, thinking hard. “Kind of,” she admitted. “I was thinking about that when I did your homework last week.” She paused and poked my arm for emphasis. “If I woke up as a guy, it might be kind of cool, but if I had all the memories of being in this body, and all the girl experiences I’ve had, and the dreams for my life, then yeah, I’d be totally freaked ’cause I’d know that wasn’t really me, you know?”

  “Boy do we,” Natalie said.

  Claire’s mouth hung open. “Oh yeah,” she managed. “I guess that is how it is for you. Everything inside you says one thing, but no one believes you. Wow, I never thought about it that clearly. It is how I’d feel if I were hit with the ‘boy gun.’”

  Natalie’s mom came back in and Natalie started clearing the dishes. “Okay,” her mom said. “Here’s the plan. We have two showers, so Nat and Emily you’re first. Then, Nat, you’re doing Emily’s makeup. Claire and I will sit in the living room and talk about politics.” She grinned so we knew she might be joking, though I suspected that was how it would go. “Then we are going to Southdale Mall to get Emily a decent pair of shoes and whatever else strikes our fancy. Natalie says you’re not great with your voice, so you can fake laryngitis. Anything you want to say, whisper to one of us. We’ll provide the cover story. Sound good?”

  I nodded, thinking that heaven was populated with people like this.

  Natalie gave me the upstairs shower and took the one in the basement, a generous gesture that I understood when I got into that shower. It had all sorts of fancy shampoos and soaps and scrubs. Except for the lure of shopping, I could have spent an hour in there.

  Natalie knocked on the door as I was drying off. When I cracked it open, she pushed in and looked at me. “Nice legs,” she said.

  I kept the towel around my waist and tried not to blush.

  “Here, use these in your bra,” she told me, and set down two fist-sized packets of an indeterminate nature.

  “What are they?”

  “Birdseed in pantyhose. They’re pretty close to the feel and shape of real breasts but if your parents find them, you can say they’re for a school project—unlike silicone inserts. You can keep ’em.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the inserts, but I feel like that would be so weird if Mom or Dad found those in ‘Claire’s’ duffel bag.”

  “Girls who aren’t trans use stuff like that all the time,” Natalie said. “That’s why it’s so easy to find. You can get padded bras that’ll make you two sizes bigger too. Put that with the silicone and you can get to a C-cup easily. It’s what the other late-blooming girls at your school are doing, I’ll bet.”

  “Thanks!”

  She slipped out and I dressed quickly in case she was going to barge in again. I wanted to wear the brown pants, so I used the control-top hose that I’d cut off mid-thigh to tuck up between my legs and brace the parts that didn’t really fit in girls’ pants. Then I put on my bra and fit the falsies into the cups. Natalie had a point, they filled out the bra much better than cotton balls. I pulled on my sweater and examined myself in the mirror.

  I looked odd. My body looked like an athletic girl’s body, but with no waist. My face read as half boy and half girl. “Jeez, I’m an alien,” I said, and pushed out the door in search of Natalie and makeup.

  Half an hour later I was back in the bathroom looking much better. Natalie’s mom had pinned the wig on in a way that gave me short bangs and long brown hair. I wasn’t sure I’d wear my hair like that if I had a choice, but I was not going to argue right now. The wispy bangs covered my typically male sloping brow and the ridge over my eyes. Natalie’s makeup job partly hid the other masculine planes of my face. I didn’t exactly look pretty, but I could pass if I didn’t talk.

  When we got close to the mall, I started getting extremely nervous, almost panicky. All I could think about was the stupid attempt I’d made by myself, and that jackass security guard. I took Claire’s hand and she squeezed my fingers.

  “You look good,” she said.

  I couldn’t tell how much of that was true and how much was her trying to make me feel better. But no one we would run into at the mall would want to go toe-to-toe with Natalie’s mom. She wore jeans but she’d put on a silk T-shirt and a navy blazer, along with thick gold hoop earrings. I could see a hint of how tough and capable she must look in court.

  She parked a few hundred feet from the doors because the lot was almost full, and we had to carefully avoid the frozen-over slush puddles that were the land mines of a Minnesota spring. With a light dusting of snow on the ground, you’d think you were going to step on solid land until your foot broke through the paper-thin sheet of ice and a couple inches of freezing water soaked your shoe.

  Inside the mall, it was hot so we took off our scarves and jackets right away. I carried mine under my right arm with my purse looped over my left shoulder. Natalie said the purse looked amazing for a thirty-second Walmart purchase. I hoped that was a compliment.

  “I can’t believe you tried this alone,” she told me. “I wouldn’t have had the guts.”

  “I figured if I screwed it up, no one would know,” I said quietly, and indeed they didn’t know the horrible details.

  Natalie’s mom beelined for a shoe store. “What’s your size?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Eleven maybe?”

  Three minutes later I was sitting on the shoe bench with four pairs of boots around me, a salesman running to the back room for more, and Natalie and Claire arguing over styles. Boot in hand, I took a deep breath of shoe leather and polish. If I’d kept a photo album of life’s central moments, I’d put this in. I wanted to be able to remember everything: the crazy fluorescent lights shining harshly on the red highlights of Natalie’s hair, the way Claire bit her lip when she was listening to something she disagreed with, Natalie’s mom calling all three of us “the girls,” the way the salesman called me “miss” without even thinking about it.

  Everything around me seemed so real, as if it had more weight and density than my former everyday life. I must have spent a lot of time not really looking at things until now. That made sense because I spent so much of it looking at myself and making sure I wasn’t going to screw up.

  I dropped right into the bit about laryngitis and figured out how to laugh soundlessly so I could join in the jokes Claire was making about women’s shoe styles.

  “Not the pointed toe,” she said about one pair, and I leaned in to whisper to her, “Too witchy?” She cracked up and repeated it to Natalie and her mom.

  The sales guy caught it and grinned. “Sorry about your voice,” he said as he dropped off another load of boxes.

  I smiled and shrugged.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

 
I held up my thumb and forefinger with a small gap between them to signify “a little.”

  He laughed. “Girls, nothing keeps you from shopping, does it?”

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop grinning.

  I felt like my heart had expanded to fill the whole store. It might sound silly, but I’d been crushed inside myself for so long that now that the binding was off, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t keep on expanding until I encompassed everything.

  “Earth to Emily,” Claire said. “Bring the Moon landing home.”

  “Sorry,” I mouthed.

  She patted my shoulder, “Don’t worry about it, you look like a kid at Christmas. I think you should get the brown pair. They’ll go with the pants you love.”

  I did, along with a pair of black flats that Natalie recommended: my first girl shoes. I wore the brown pair out of the store, putting my guy boots in the bag.

  We strolled down the mall, peering in windows and talking about who needed what. Natalie got interested in a new scarf, but she didn’t really need one, and her mother gave her the “you’re over your limit” look. Claire suggested we hunt for a sweater sale. The end of winter was always a good time to pick up half-price finds.

  A few stores turned up nothing worth buying. Natalie’s mom proposed lunch and we all filed into P.F. Chang’s for tea and shared appetizers.

  “Where are you girls from?” the waiter asked. He was a thick guy, probably a wrestler for his school, I thought.

  “We’re from down the street,” Natalie said. “And these are our country mouse cousins from Liberty in to the see the big city.”

  “Do you like it?” he asked Claire and me.

  I nodded.

  “She has laryngitis,” Claire said. “The cold, you know. We love it. We want to come to school here.”

  “Let me bring you some hot tea,” he said to me. I nodded. He added, “Put a little honey in it, that’ll help.”

  He went off for the tea and Claire poked me in the ribs. “I think he’s flirting.”

  “Oh right,” I whispered.

  But he behaved in a radically different way than if he thought I was a boy. He’d probably have left me to think of the tea myself, or expect that the women around me would take care of me. Strange.

  After lunch we figured we’d see a movie, a “chick flick.” There was a new romantic comedy that Natalie and her mom both wanted to see. They agreed that Natalie’s dad would never care about having missed it, so we ended up with popcorn and Junior Mints in the dark theater.

  “Hey,” Claire said. “Scrunch down, I want to try something.”

  I scooted low in my seat, propping my feet against the seat in front of me and bending my knees. Claire sat up tall and put her arm over my shoulders. I rested my head back on her arm.

  “This is cool,” I whispered.

  “I’m just checking it out,” she said.

  “You’re great.”

  She shrugged. “I’m just me.”

  After the movie, we wandered, blinking, into the afternoon sunlight of the lobby. “Okay girls,” Natalie’s mom said, “time to go and put our secret agent back into deep cover so I can get you home to your parents before my credibility slips.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Claire

  On the drive back to Liberty, Claire kept stealing glances at this person next to her. The transformation to Emily had been surprisingly effective. Emily was big for a girl. But as they walked through the mall and Claire examined the other women, she saw so much variety. A few were over six feet tall, some were muscular, some heavy, one had eyebrows like caterpillars. There were women with huge butts, women with flat chests, women with chests bigger than Claire’s butt, women who looked like models, women who looked like adolescent boys on purpose. Claire was glad that she got to date someone who looked good as either a boy or a girl. How many kids at her school could say that about their date?

  She rested her forehead against the cold window and let herself doze, exhausted. In hazy dreams her body shifted and changed, getting bigger and more spacious. When she woke with the car pulling into her driveway, she felt larger than usual, as if she extended outside her own skin.

  Her hazy eyes focused and she thought first: Chris. And then: Emily.

  The idea of Emily came with so many other ideas about Claire herself, her identity, her place in the world. A little exciting and a lot scary.

  She kissed the grinning person in the driver’s seat and scooped her bag out of the trunk. There was a lot more mystery in the world than she’d thought.

  Her own bedroom looked different to her, as if she’d walked into a stranger’s house. She didn’t feel as solid as usual but instead of being alarmed, she thought that she could choose which pieces of this life she wanted back and which she wanted to let go. How many people got that opportunity?

  She got out the T-shirt and sleeping shorts she wore to bed, but then paused in front of the full mirror by her closed door. She pulled off her shirt, bra, jeans and underpants and stood naked in front of the mirror. This was her. Maybe she wanted slightly larger breasts and worried that she’d put on weight on her butt when she was older, like her mom was starting to do, but there was no question in her mind that this body was right for her. She touched her arms, her belly, her thighs.

  What was the opposite of gender dysphoric? Gender euphoric?

  Claire grinned at herself in the mirror. Yes, she was gender euphoric. She’d have to remember to tell Emily.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When I got home, Mom was helping Mikey with homework in the dining room, or rather, standing over him and making sure he was actually doing it. Dad sat on the couch, watching TV with his feet up on the coffee table, wearing his one pair of sweatpants. Must be laundry day. He still had a gray-pocketed vest on over a worn T-shirt. I settled onto the couch next to him.

  “How was the city?” he asked.

  “Great,” I said, with real emotion behind the word for once.

  He turned away from the TV and examined my sweater and jeans like he was trying to guess if these were my good clothes or not.

  “Who’s this other girl?” he asked.

  “Someone I met online who turned out to be cool. She’s in my same grade.” I added that last bit so he wouldn’t think she was some kind of Internet pervert.

  “You like her?”

  “Sure,” I said, then thought through the implications of that question. “Oh, you mean do I like her?”

  He looked at me as if I’d lost a few brain cells.

  “Dad, if I was cheating on Claire, I wouldn’t take her along, would I? Natalie’s just cool. She’s from Chicago.”

  He made some grumbles of agreement and leaned back into the couch. “How’s that other problem?”

  I had to roll back the movie in my head to recall what he was talking about. Right, my alleged impotence. “It’s fine,” I answered. “I’m doing good.”

  “Good,” he said.

  That was it with the questions. Dad was funny that way. He’d have these spurts of concern and the rest of the time it was like the family was made up of supporting characters in the drama of his job and the cars.

  I watched TV with him for a while and then went upstairs to lie in bed and relive the day over and over again. For so long I’d thought I was trapped in this life and now I could see the way out and I knew I could take it. Now it was a matter of moving through the obstacles. My next milestone was set for my appointment with Dr. Mendel on Thursday.

  * * *

  “You said I should come up with a plan,” I told Dr. Mendel. “I want a plan.”

  “Good,” she said. “I think you probably already have one, you simply haven’t formalized it.”

  She was right. I told her how I planned to work as much as I could all summer and for the next few years. I’d go to community college until I could get the money together for the physical transformations that I wanted.

  “What about hormones?” she asked. “A
re you still taking the ones from your friend?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to get you to an endocrinologist and do this right. We need a plan for talking to your parents.”

  I sighed. “It’s going to suck.”

  “Do you want to do it here?” she asked.

  “You’re brave.”

  She smiled. “It’s my job.”

  “Yes,” I told her, with tremendous relief. “I do want to tell them here.” It was so good not to be in this all by myself anymore.

  “Okay, let’s talk about when you feel you’ll be ready.”

  I liked that she left it up to me to decide. It was late March now with spring break coming up next week and the potential for a few more trips to see Natalie. I didn’t want to risk losing that. Then I was in the crunch to the end of the school year.

  “Can we do it in June?” I asked.

  “Sounds like a good time to me. What are you going to do at home between now and then?”

  “Be a good boy,” I offered, raising my eyebrows at her.

  She laughed.

  For the next week, I was a good boy at home and it seemed so much easier now that I could get out of the boy role with Claire and Natalie and Dr. Mendel. Playing the good boy felt like a long dress rehearsal for a play I would never star in.

  I did some heavy-lifting chores around the house and even managed to play with Mikey a couple times. He was always making up these games in which superheroes from his favorite cartoons and comic books had to fight each other, and he never minded that I took the women heroes for my characters.

  * * *

  A whole week of playing the good boy felt long. By the following Friday night, I sat at my desk looking at my calendar. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Dad had gotten me another “Girls & Cars” calendar like last year and the year before. I left it on my desk where I could put things on top of it or fold it over to write on the days without seeing the hypersexualized women pretending to show off the muscle cars.

  I’d liked February though, and left the calendar open for that month, propped against the wall behind my desk. Mom had scowled at it a few times. The February model wore loose-legged pants, not short shorts, and she’d tucked them into the top of cute little boots. I loved the way the fabric of the pants billowed out at the top of the boots. If I had pants like that, people wouldn’t see how skinny my legs were. Plus the fabric looked so soft, like the new brown pants that I loved.