Being Emily

by Gold, Rachel

  I smacked her shoulder. “Goof. Come on.”

  There were about two hundred people in the theater lobby. I was scanning, saying to myself “black skirt, boots, flower” when Claire grabbed my hand and dragged me over toward a girl. I thought Claire was going to ask for directions, until I realized the girl was wearing a black skirt and boots.

  I couldn’t stop beaming. She grinned back at me.

  “Natalie,” she said holding out her hand.

  I took it, wondering at how soft it felt. “Emily,” I said for the first time out loud. “But you should probably call me Chris. This is Claire.”

  “Hey,” Claire said.

  I looked Natalie up and down. She looked like a girl. She was a girl. She looked great. She wasn’t quite as tall as my six feet, but she was a lot taller than Claire. Of course everyone was taller than Claire, even in her boots. Natalie had shoulder-length dark brown hair with red highlights and big, dark eyes that she emphasized with makeup.

  “Come on,” she said, taking my right hand and Claire’s left. She pulled us away from the theater and down the mall to California Pizza Kitchen.

  I tried to stop staring, but I couldn’t stop watching Natalie out of the corner of my eye. She walked gracefully and if her hips were narrow and her shoulders broad and solid, they weren’t more so than some of the members of the girls’ swim team at my school. Natalie was so lucky to already be on hormones at seventeen, she could expect her body to pad her hips over the next few years. Her pelvic bones would always be narrow, but now her body knew that fat was supposed to go to the hips. We were probably the only two girls in the whole mall who wanted fatter hips.

  At the restaurant, I took a chair across from her and Claire sat next to me. We ordered pizza to share, and the waiter called Natalie “miss” without a second thought. In addition to the long, styled hair and the pretty makeup, Natalie wore a tight-fitting tan sweater that made her breasts obvious. She looked like a solid B-cup to me, and I wanted to ask her if that was all from hormones or if she was augmenting with a padded bra.

  If I looked hard, I could see how Natalie’s chin was thicker than most girls, but the dark copper and brown hair falling around her face masked the effect and drew my eye away. She already had great lips, not the thin lips I’d been stuck with, and her makeup on them was a very subtle pale pink. Her cheeks fell in the mid-range; I felt a little surge of guilty optimism because my cheeks weren’t as wide as hers and hers didn’t read male because her eyes dominated that part of her face.

  I had obsessed night after night over the pictures I could find online of women who transitioned. I scoured them for signs of maleness and tried to prove to myself that it was possible that I could someday live a normal life as a woman. But two-dimensional photos and even videos were nothing like the experience of sitting across from a real girl who’d been born into a male body. I wanted to touch her to make sure she was solid and not just a dream.

  I had so many questions that I couldn’t figure out where to start, so Claire took over.

  “Look, tell me if I’m being rude at any point here, okay? We’re the country mice, you know, and I think we have a lot of questions,” she said. I nodded and Claire went on. “Can we ask ’em?”

  “Sure,” Natalie said.

  Even that one word had a slight breathiness and lilt to it, putting it firmly on the feminine side of the line. Her voice wasn’t high-pitched, but my English teacher’s voice was a smokier, deeper woman’s voice than Natalie’s.

  “Start with ‘I was born a boy’ and tell the whole story,” Claire said.

  Natalie laughed. “Well, it was the usual. You’ll start hearing this a lot if you hang around us types.”

  “Wait,” Claire said. “What do you call yourself? Is ‘transsexual’ gauche?”

  “It’s not great, at least in the sense that it kind of objectifies us and narrows us to that one thing. My whole life isn’t about my gender identity, you know. I prefer to just be called a girl.”

  “But then how do you talk about it?” Claire asked.

  “Some people call themselves ‘survivors of transsexualism’ or ‘survivors’ and some just abbreviate it and say T-girls, or TS, and some say transsexual, trans or transwoman. It depends on where you come from. I like ‘girl’ or ‘T-girl’ if necessary.”

  “That’s cool, okay, go on with the story.”

  “When I was young I played with other girls, and I got upset when my sister got dresses for her birthday and I didn’t. I played with her dolls, and by the time I was about six I wouldn’t play with boys. Mom and Dad took me to two psychologists and one of them was really smart and said not to push me about my gender, just to make sure I had lots of all kinds of toys and watch how I developed. I told Mom I was a girl a few different times. She tried to explain that I was a boy, but I just wouldn’t believe her. When puberty hit, I started getting more and more upset. I mean really confused and sad and depressed. Some days I wouldn’t get out of bed at all unless my mom made me. We went back to the psychologist, and Mom explained that I could choose to have a girl’s body if that’s what I really, really wanted. They put me on hormones a couple years ago and then we moved here a year and a half ago so I could go to school as a girl. It’s been going really well and so this summer I get my last surgery and then we’re all done.”

  “What surgery?” Claire asked.

  Natalie raised an eyebrow and pointed under the table toward her lap.

  Claire stood up. “Okay, I’m going to the bathroom,” she said. “I don’t want to know this part. Back in a bit.”

  Natalie looked at me. “She’ll be okay,” she said, though I think she was trying to reassure both of us.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So, wow, that’s really cool about your parents. What’s it like taking the hormones?”

  “It’s great. I don’t feel so angry all the time, and it’s easier to cry when I’m upset, and all my hair got finer and softer and my skin.”

  I reached across the table and touched the back of her hand. “It didn’t used to be like that?” I asked.

  “No, not that soft. It was like yours.” She ran her fingertips down my forearm. “You shave your arms?”

  “Swimmer,” I said. “It’s a good excuse to shave just about everything.”

  She laughed. “That’s smart.”

  “Are you scared about the surgery?” I asked.

  “A little,” she admitted. “I just want it to go really well.”

  Claire came out of the bathroom and regarded us warily. I waved her back to the table. “We’re done talking about that part,” I said.

  She looked a little sad but forced a smile. “So, do you like boys or girls or both?” she asked Natalie.

  “Boys,” she said. “But there are all kinds of sexual orientations in the T-community. I think sometimes it’s harder for us who like boys to figure it out, because we can think we’re just gay. But then if you like girls it’s hard because you’re going to end up a lesbian and some therapists don’t like to recommend a sex change that’s going to make another lesbian. They think if you like girls you should just try to be a boy.”

  The pizza had long since arrived and been more or less nibbled to death. I took another piece and put it on my plate, though I was too curious to be hungry.

  “Were you always this pretty?” Claire asked. “I mean, were you a really pretty boy?”

  Natalie cocked one eyebrow at Claire. “I was never a boy,” she said. Claire blushed, but Natalie went on talking. “I look like my baby pictures. When I hit puberty, I really started looking like a guy. You might not recognize a picture of me if you didn’t know.”

  “Your makeup is amazing,” I said because it was true, but also to give Claire a moment to recover.

  “Years of practice,” Natalie said with a grin.

  “I’m sorry,” Claire started, but Natalie waved a hand to stop her.

  “You’re going to slip up, it’s natural. You’ve been really cool to Emi
ly, and I know your heart’s in the right place, so don’t worry about it. Do you want to catch a movie? Cloverfield is starting in about twenty minutes.”

  “Oh I totally want to see that,” Claire said and I agreed.

  Natalie paid for the pizza, though I tried to protest, and we were off. I watched her walk and smiled more. Sure her hips were a little narrow, but she looked great. There might be hope for me after all—the faint flickering glimmer of hope that lay on the far side of having to talk to my parents. Could I get on hormones without their permission? A bitter taste flooded my mouth. The answer was as close as Natalie walking two steps in front of me and still impossibly far away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CLAIRE

  She was glad of the darkness in the theater so she could collect her thoughts. She didn’t want it to bother her, but there was something about the way Natalie sounded so cavalier about surgeries and sex changes. There were only a few things in her life that Claire hadn’t gotten around to questioning, but sex and how bodies were made was one of them.

  And she liked Chris’s body. He was a cute guy. Except for the girl-brain part. He looked great in sweaters because of his swimmer’s shoulders, and she loved the feel of his hard chest and strong arms. Now he wanted to go and change everything. Was he going to grow breasts and have long hair and paint his nails? Wouldn’t he just look like her boyfriend in drag?

  Probably not, she had to admit after looking at Natalie for most of lunch. She might not know all the details, but she could see that the medical stuff they did to Natalie had worked. She had kind of a big jaw, but not bigger than a few of the girls at school. Claire knew plenty of girls who were taller than Natalie, and a few that were taller than Chris.

  When she and Chris started going out last summer, she always assumed he would dump her someday for a prettier girl, not that he would want to become a prettier girl. The thought made her giggle and she put her hands over her mouth.

  They’d met in a two-day poetry workshop offered by a visiting teacher from the Cities over a weekend. After the first day he came up and told her he really liked what she wrote, and how could she resist him after that? Besides, they liked a lot of the same things: music, computers, computer games, books, each other, and Chris even admitted to talking to God from time to time, but not in some weird super-religious way, which Claire thought was an adorable footnote to add to every other good quality about him. They’d been dating almost eight months. Chris was already her best friend and she felt like she’d known him most of her life—only to find she didn’t know him that well at all.

  She felt a little jealous of Natalie. Not that Chris was going to run off with her or something, just that she so clearly had what he needed right now.

  And then there was that dizzy feeling, like the seat was going to fall away from under her at any moment. Men didn’t just turn into women, and yet here in the theater, two seats away, was very distinctly a girl who had been born a boy. And, if Claire understood correctly, had at least one very boy part on her still. She couldn’t help but think about it. What would it be like to go to school and have to hide that? Natalie couldn’t change in the locker room, that was for sure. What happened if someone found out? She didn’t know about Minneapolis, but out in Liberty lesser infractions than that sent people to the hospital. Some of the Neanderthals at school still thought it was sporting to “roll fags.”

  Off balance as she felt, she also had a strong wave of protectiveness welling up in her. Chris had stepped in and stopped other kids at school from calling her “death freak” or worse for wearing all black. Just dating him improved her social standing immensely, which meant almost no taunting anymore and occasionally an invite to a cool party. Not that she cared about those and she’d lose all of that if anyone found out about this transsexual stuff, but he’d lose a lot more. No matter what happened, she wouldn’t let any harm come to Chris if she could stop it.

  When the movie ended, Claire realized she’d paid scant attention to it. It was only six and they had another hour to play with before they had to drive back and assure their parents that the big city hadn’t corrupted them.

  “Come on,” Natalie said. “Let’s go shopping. What’ve you got for girl clothes?”

  Chris blinked a couple times, looked over at her and then said, “Two sweaters, a pair of jeans and a skirt.”

  “What?” Claire asked before she could stop herself. “You have girl clothes? Do your parents know?”

  He blushed. “They’re in a duffel in my car with your name on it.”

  She laughed. “Oh. Cute. They’re like ten sizes too big.”

  “They’ll never notice.”

  “No pants?” Natalie cut in. “You need a good pair of dress pants. Come on.”

  She dragged them into Banana Republic and in a matter of minutes collected an armful of pants. Then she dragged the three of them into the large, handicap dressing room stall. “I need my boyfriend’s opinion,” she told the startled attendant and shut the door firmly, pushing the pants at Chris. “Brown first,” she whispered.

  Claire sat on the chair in the dressing room and watched with amazement. Natalie had plastered herself across the door and after a moment’s pause, Chris pulled off his jeans and stepped into the pants, turning away momentarily to tuck himself so he’d fit into girls’ pants. Claire forced herself not to look at Natalie and wonder what she did with her…Don’t think of that, she told herself.

  It wasn’t the fit of the pants Claire saw when she turned her eyes from Natalie back to Chris, it was Chris’s face. As the pants were zipped and buttoned and he turned to show them off, his face lightened. Most of the time his eyes were dark, haunted, and looked as if he was staring out of them from far away inside himself. Now they sparkled. It was like sitting in a dark room for months and then suddenly having the sun fall through an open window.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Do they look good?” Natalie asked because Chris couldn’t voice the question. If the attendant was lurking outside, they needed it to sound like Natalie was showing off the pants, not Chris.

  Claire stood up and touched Chris’s cheek. “You look really happy,” she said almost in a whisper. “I never saw how very sad you look all the time. I just thought that was how you looked, but this…this is you, happy.”

  Chris smiled, eyes bright with joy.

  “I think I should get these pants,” Natalie said loudly enough for the attendant to hear and winked at Chris.

  Chris tried on the next pair, while Natalie talked quietly to Claire. “My mom said something similar when I started going to school like this. She said she’d been really worried about me and suddenly I was full of confidence and optimism. I told her I’d always been like that, I’d just spent so much energy fighting against that other thing that I had nothing left over.”

  None of the other pairs of pants worked as well as that first chocolate brown pair. When Chris was back in jeans, Natalie took the brown pants and went to the register. Chris offered to pay her back when they left the store, but she insisted it was a gift.

  They said goodbye in the theater lobby with hugs all around. Claire tried not to pay attention to Natalie’s breasts during the hug, but she couldn’t help it. They felt very real, and she smelled like clover and oranges. It felt like hugging any other girl.

  All the way back to Liberty, Claire watched Chris’s face. It was like the sun coming out from behind clouds. She wanted to find a more unusual metaphor, but none came to mind. She just knew she’d never seen anything like it in her life. The closest was her mom the year after Dad left. She’d turned dark for a while, but mostly that was because she literally never opened the shades of the house to try and lift her mood. And then slowly, day by day, she went from being shadowed to the life-giving color Claire remembered. Even that wasn’t as dramatic a change as she’d seen in Chris.

  “You look good happy,” she said.

  “Is it really that obvious?”

  “
More than obvious.”

  She kissed Chris in the car and held tight to that newly alien, newly bright body for a few minutes. Then back through the snow to her living room where Mom was watching TV as usual.

  “How was the city?” Mom asked as she paused the episode of Bones that she’d recorded.

  “Great. Really fun.” Claire dropped onto the couch. “We went to a big mall for pizza and a movie. What about your day? I thought you had a dinner date tonight.”

  “Are you trying to get me out of the house?”

  Claire laughed. “If I wanted to see more of Chris, I’d just have him sneak in the window,” she said.

  “You’re kidding, right? I hope you’re kidding.”

  “Mom. Really.”

  “My date turned out to be a typical Aquarius,” Mom said with a sigh.

  “I told you those air signs are trouble for you.”

  Mom shook her head but she was smiling. She hit play and they watched to the next commercial. While her mom was fast forwarding through it, Claire asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Cleaning and I hope you are too, why?”

  “Can we go shopping for non-black makeup? I think it’s time for me to learn how to wear it.”

  Her mom grinned. She’d been trying to get Claire interested in cosmetics for the last year, especially since the lesbian jokes had started.

  “Sure honey.”

  Claire smiled and settled back into the couch. If her mom knew what she was really going to use the cosmetics for it would probably fry her brain, but let her be happy about it instead. Everyone deserved to be happy.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Saturday night I watched a stupid kids’ movie with Mikey, but I wasn’t really watching the movie. I just took the opportunity of sitting still on the couch to replay the afternoon with Natalie and Claire over and over again. I fell asleep later still thinking about what Claire said about me looking happy. I hadn’t known it was that obvious, but I did change that afternoon. No, “change” wasn’t the right word. That would mean I’d become something else. It was more like I relaxed into me.