If You Could See What I See

by Cathy Lamb

  She fingered the blue topazes on her necklace. “People want pretty, people want the gloss and shine when one tells a story, but there’s none of that in my earlier years. It’s more like broken glass and splintered wood.”

  I stood quietly as she dabbed at her eyes.

  “I don’t need the gloss and shine. I’ll take the raw truth.” I put my arm around her shoulders, so sad that I’d made her sad. Maybe we shouldn’t do it. “It’ll be okay, Grandma.”

  “Oh, shut up, Meggie.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I know it’ll be okay. I was crying because you’re wearing a sloppy beige shirt and large, manly jeans and floppy tennis shoes. Tennis shoes! Strike me down now with a sledgehammer. How come you’re not wearing the clothes I bought you? Perfection—all of them.” She strode toward the door—tap, tap, tap. “The day you don’t look like a skinny garbage hauler will be a glorious day indeed.”

  I laughed.

  She doubled back and kissed both my cheeks. “I love you, Meggie.”

  “You too, Grandma.”

  Our tears mixed.

  I had a feeling that she had a lot more to cry about than I did.

  “By the way, I’m planning our first Bust Out and Shake It Adventure Club event. I’ll let you know about it soon.”

  Ohhhh boy.

  Her heels tapped on out.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Hello, Meeegie!” Kalani grinned at me through my computer.

  “Hello, Kalani, how are you?” It’s so automatic to ask “How are you?” in America. The automatic response, especially in a business transaction, is “fine.”

  With Kalani, she took it literally. She always told me how she was down to the last detail.

  “Oh me me me? I fine, I fine. No, not fine!” All of the sudden, her happy expression changed to anger. “My brother number two wife, she did another curse on me. I got gas now. I curse her, too. Nothing bad happen her. I think I need work on my curses. I need more, what you call? Black Magic. Ya. I need that. But I okay. I like my house! Every day I say, thank you God, I got my own house. I work for you, Meeegie. And your grandma, that good, old woman, that why I have house.

  “You good woman, too, Meeegie. Okay, so I have women’s bleeding today, tummy hurt here. That a curse, too. So I say how I am. How you, Meeegie?”

  “I’m fine, Kalani. I need to talk to you about the bras I received from you yesterday. The padding is . . .”

  “Oh ya! The padding good.” She grabbed her boobs. I bent my head and rolled my eyes. “See! Even me small Asian woman, with that bra, I got the boobies! Big ones!”

  “Kalani, I didn’t want that much padding. We talked about how much padding there should be—”

  “Ya. I changed my mind, though.” Her smile reached ear to ear.

  She changed her mind? “Kalani, I need you to change your mind back to what we discussed.”

  Her face fell. “You no like bra I sent?”

  I could be gentle, but I was stressed and under fire about our catalogue, Web site, products, and going right the heck out of business. “No, Kalani, I don’t. The padding is way too much. It’s like having another full boob over your boob. It looks completely unnatural. It doesn’t look good under a T-shirt. You might as well tell women to stick balled-up socks in their bras. No, I don’t like it. Why did you make it different when I specifically told you, down to the millimeter, what we needed? We talked about it, I e-mailed you, we discussed it.”

  Kalani’s eyes started to swim in tears.

  “Oh, damn,” I whispered. “Kalani, this isn’t personal. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “I know. I know. I sorry, Meeegie. I thought my idea a good one. More booby, more sales, you know?”

  “Kalani, I always like your input.” No, I really didn’t. “I like your ideas.” No, I really didn’t. “You know a lot about designing bras.” Not enough, but okay. “But I already told people here about the bra that you and the women in your factory are making for us, using all your skills and talents, all your knowledge about lingerie . . .” Her expression lifted. “And they’re so excited.”

  “They excite?” She wiped her tears.

  “Yes.” Heaven help the teeny, tiny white lies I tell sometimes to save someone’s feelings. “People are excited about this new bra.”

  “Excite good, that good.” She smiled.

  “You’re right. Excite good. If you could stick to the measurements that you and I, Kalani, did together, then that would be perfect.”

  She sighed. “You know, you right, Meeegie. I stick to measure. I do again.”

  I felt my shoulders slump with relief. “Thank you, Kalani.”

  “No, I thank you, Meeegie!” Up came the smile. “I do right this time. I don’t think I do the sexy thing with my boyfriend this weekend. I think next weekend. This weekend I got the cramps, no fun, you know what I mean, Meeegie? Sexy thing better when you don’t have the women’s curses in the ya ya place.”

  “You’re right, Kalani. You’re right about the ya ya place.”

  “I do the pads good now! Bye-bye, Meeegie. I love you, seeester!”

  “Love you, too.”

  “Hayden says he’s a girl.” Lacey ran her hands through her red curls, then briefly put her head down on my desk. She had shadows under her coffee-colored eyes.

  Hayden says he’s a girl? “What?” I dropped the cracker in my hand. Lacey and I were spreading guacamole on crackers, then dipping them in salsa. I was chasing it down with my morning beer. Breakfast.

  “He says he’s a girl.”

  “I don’t understand. Is he joking?”

  Lacey’s hands shook and her voice plunged down to a whisper. “Remember how Hayden always wanted to wear fancy dresses and skirts when he was a little boy, starting before he was two?”

  “Yes.”

  “And remember that pink bike that he wanted with the white flowered basket?”

  “Yes.”

  “And remember how he loved playing dolls and thought Cassidy’s dollhouse was the coolest thing ever? How he’s always liked makeup and nail polish?”

  “Yes.”

  “And remember how he kept trying to sit on the toilet as a little boy, even though Matt told him that men pee standing up and how he cried and refused to do it?”

  I nodded.

  “He says that he’s not a boy”—her voice cracked—“he’s a girl.”

  I thought of Hayden, sweet Hayden. I loved that kid. Funny, witty, gently effeminate. Loves clothes and style. Artsy. An actor in school plays. “I thought he was gay,” I said.

  “Me too,” my sister said, the tears falling. “You and I have always thought that. Remember when he was three and he came out all dressed up in pink with Cassidy’s pink parasol and that hat with red roses? You looked at me and said, ‘I hope you like his partner.’ And I agreed. But Hayden says he’s a girl in his head and in his heart. He does like guys. Does that make him gay if he thinks he’s a girl?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “I don’t know if it makes him gay. Maybe it makes him straight. He believes he’s a girl and he likes guys. I’m so confused. This is too much. How is he doing?”

  “He says he’s known for years.” She put a protective hand on her stomach. “I remember him telling me when he was so young that he wanted to be a girl many times. He just sobbed when he was in boy clothes. He told me when he was three that he didn’t like his penis, that it was ‘wrong.’ That was his word for it, ‘wrong.’ He hit it, like he wanted it off. One time I caught him with scissors. He was going to cut it off.” Lacey and I both shuddered.

  “I remember fighting with him in first grade when I told him he wasn’t allowed to wear dresses anymore. I let him in kindergarten, because the kids all dress strange then, but I didn’t want the kids at school to tease him. He insisted on pink socks. The kids teased him, but he kept wearing his pink socks.”

  I remembered how brutal that teasing was on Hayden. He refused to change, though. He
was true to himself. “When did he tell you this?”

  She bent her head, and I held her shaking hand. “On Monday. The reason he told me is because he says he keeps thinking about . . . thinking about . . .” She started gasping. “He says he’s desperate and thinking of kill-kill-killing himself.”

  “Oh, my God.” My entire body felt like it was filling with sharp chards of ice.

  “He says he’s so depressed and it’s been like this for years. He said, ‘Mom, can you at least try to understand this? I feel like a freak. I’ve got a penis and I know I’m a girl. I don’t have boobs, but I have balls. I am so screwed up. Please, Mom, you have to help me. Please help me. I don’t want to die, but I can’t live like this.’ Then he said . . .” Lacey tried to get a deep, ragged breath in and couldn’t. “He said, ‘Mom I can’t be a boy anymore. I have to be me. A girl.’ ”

  “And you said?” My hands were shaking. Oh, Hayden, don’t even think about it.

  “I had to get over the shock first. I felt like I’d been hit in the face, but I was looking at my son, my son crying, and I said I would help him, of course I would. He said he’s transgender. Transgender. I’ve been blind, Meggie. I thought he was gay. I didn’t want to see the truth, didn’t want to deal with it. He knew it, too. He knew his mother didn’t want to deal with it, that’s why he didn’t talk about the transgender part with me. What kind of mother am I? By being deliberately blind I’ve let my kid hang himself out there all alone. If I’d opened my eyes to the obvious, been a better mother, I could have talked to him about it, been there for him, supported him.”

  “Lacey, you’ve been a great mom . . .”

  “I’ve never been a great mom,” she wailed. “I’m exhausted all the time. I yell at the kids. I work too much. I’m a blind, in-denial mother whose son can’t talk with her about being transgender, so he’s completely alone and wanting to die!”

  I got up, sat down next to Lacey, and hugged her as she cried.

  “We need to do everything we can to tell him and show him we love him and accept him, because this is going to be a hard, hard road,” I said, even as my mind was trying hard to grasp this one. “We cannot have a suicide. We cannot.”

  “I know, I know. I love Hayden. I love him so much.” Lacey put a tissue to her face. “And he is a she. My son will be my daughter. I can hardly get my mind around it. I can hardly get it. It’s not what I wanted, but what else do I do? Punish him? Deny what he’s saying? Try to invalidate his feelings? Yell? Tell him he’s wrong? Take him to a shrink so a shrink can tell him he’s wrong? Make him feel more freaky and lost than he already feels? I saw this. I saw this when he was two. I heard him ask to have ribbons in his hair, pink ones. I saw him reach for his sister’s Mary Jane shoes. I saw his fascination with dolls and glitter and magic wands and princesses. He refused to wear swimming trunks, he insisted on a bikini. He was born like this. He was born a girl, and a penis and balls dropped down.”

  She burst into another round of tears, her shoulders shaking.

  “Daughter. Son. Niece. Nephew. We love him. We love her,” I said, utterly shaken. “She’s a part of our family, and we’re not going to get lost in all the details.”

  “Right. No details.” She blew into her cupped hands, in and out, her face red. “I have to accept it, I know this, that my son wants to be my daughter.”

  “I love you, Lacey.” I brushed the tears off her cheeks. “And Hayden will look pretty in dresses and high heels. Grandma will probably pick them out for him.”

  “Or Tory. She’ll have him in a leopard-print bra in no time.”

  “Hopefully Hayden won’t dress slutty.”

  Lacey paused in her semihysteria and shook her head, a mixture of disbelief and humor. “Right. I don’t need a slutty daughter.”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “I already have Cassidy, who doesn’t want to keep her skirt down or her jeans up. Can’t have another kid like that.”

  “No, never. Long skirts for Hayden. No cleavage. No tight jeans.”

  “Modest ladies clothing only.”

  “Churchlike.”

  For some strange, strange reason we found ourselves hilarious. When we were done laughing, we cried some more.

  I checked on Mrs. Friendly the Lizard that night, and he was quite quiet in his cage. Perhaps he was enjoying all the moons he saw in the rafters.

  I headed to the deck and sat in a yellow Adirondack chair with a jacket on. The maple trees swayed and swished and whispered. I was so glad I had found this house. Being wrapped in a hug by trees is helpful to my precarious and somewhat demented mental state.

  I thought of all the pain Hayden had been through, knowing he was a girl in the body of a boy. It didn’t take much to understand. There are millions of things that have to go right in utero for babies to turn into healthy people, complete with eyelashes, elbows, a heart, Grandma’s eyes, Daddy’s chin, Mother’s nose. Estrogen, progesterone, the circulatory and respiratory systems, a liver, and intestines that curve the right way down.

  Reproductive systems, too.

  It is absolutely understandable that gender would flip now and then. That the body would not turn out like the mind. A girl body, a boy in his head. A boy body, a girl in her head.

  I thought of how Hayden said he wanted to die, and my heart clenched tight. How can you even move forward in life, be happy, when a basic, fundamental part of personhood—your gender—is not correct in your own body? How do you get through that psychologically?

  I thought of the film I made on the homeless kids. I remembered what the girl told me about being invisible, a bad whisper, and wondering which bridge to jump off so she, too, could die and escape the pain.

  In the last year I have been trying to be invisible.

  I have been a bad whisper.

  I have often wondered if I should jump off a bridge, too.

  It’s amazing what we have in common with our fellow humans.

  Sometimes it’s euphoria, sometimes it’s tragic.

  The most important thing is to see that it’s there.

  “We’re going to have a fashion show.”

  “A fashion show?” Lacey said, aghast. “Those are expensive.”

  “Yes they are.” I pushed aside fabrics for nightgowns, a design book, and two pink folders that Lacey, Tory, and I had been working on in our pink conference room. The chandelier above us twinkled, catching the sunlight streaking in the windows. “We’ll strip the costs down as much as we can.”

  “Having a fashion show is like planning an invasion, Meggie,” Tory protested. “A fashion invasion. Location. Stage. Models. Clothes. I feel my ovaries shrinking in stress already.”

  “We all know they’re a ton of work, stress, trouble. That’s why you and I and Lacey are going to organize it along with a whole gang of our employees.”

  “What do you mean that you, Lacey, and I are going to organize it? Not me.” Tory leaned forward. She was wearing a red wrap dress. One of our red, pure lace negligees showed through. She was dressing more seductively ever since she threw her temper tantrum and left Scotty because she didn’t think he paid her enough attention. I understood. She wanted other men to show her they thought she was attractive, since Scotty wouldn’t. “I’m busy.”

  I stared right at her. “I am, too. So is Lacey.”

  “I have three teenagers, all strange,” Lacey said, her voice pitching. She shoved her red curls back off her face with both hands. “I’m knocked up again. Matt told me he wants the gender of the baby to be a surprise, which will drive me crazy because I like to obsessively plan ahead. Cassidy snuck out again last night and I was up until three making sure she came back in safe so I could scream at her, Regan is crying because he wants me to save all the dogs at the pound, and Hayden’s wearing panties. You think I’m not busy?”

  Tory glared at us, fidgeted.

  “You want to help save this company or not, Tory?” I asked.

  She kept the glare but blinked. She want
ed to save it, I knew that. “I suppose I can help some.”

  “Not some. We’re all going to have to work till our heads spin. We’ll show off the lines, invite a bunch of people. We have to do something different, though. We have to be fabulous and colorful, but we need depth, human interest, something more than models strutting, which we’ve all seen a thousand times. We need a show that will bring us media attention and increase sales. We have to stay true to our brand, the history of this company, to Grandma and our traditions, yet we have to haul this company up to a higher place. We have to relaunch.”

  “We have to sell what’s behind the product,” Tory said. “Steaming hot sex.”

  “Seduction,” Lacey said. “Romance.”

  “Yes. But more,” I said. “That’s what all lingerie companies sell. Lingerie is a promise. It’s a hope. It’s fun and frilly. But we have to have more than that. We must be more than that.”

  “But what?” Tory asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know.” I put my feet up on the chair next to me and studied them. My shoes were brown and scuffed. Years ago I would not have worn them if I was running through a mud field. They depressed me. “I don’t know, but I know that that’s what we have to do.”

  Lacey climbed on the conference table and lay down, her pregnant belly sticking up.

  Tory stared out the window, arms crossed, face set. I was well aware of how difficult my coming back had been for Tory. I felt bad about it.

  I climbed up on the conference table with Lacey and lay down beside her.

  Tory looked at us and turned away.

  I saw stark, harsh hurt in her eyes.

  “Tory, come and lay on top of the table,” I said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Come on, Tory,” I said.

  “No.” She fixed her gaze out the window. My years away had given me a totally new perspective on Tory. Her own family disappeared in one horrific crash. She went to a new family with two sisters. She’d felt left out forever, as if she didn’t belong. It about knocked me over to think about it.