“Could somebody please speak English?”
“Transgender,” Bobby said. “Female to male.”
My stomach burned in a weird way. I could hear my own pulse in my ears. “Are you talking about Frank?”
“That guy who was just here. Yeah. Pretty sure.”
“Then I think you need to leave.”
It came out sounding smooth. Cool. Not huffy or out of control at all. Like I’d just suddenly made up my mind and then the words said themselves.
They all looked at me. Shocked. Even Wilbur looked up. Full-on surprise.
Little Bobby immediately tried to smooth it over. “Elle, we didn’t mean it like … It’s not an insult. We weren’t saying anything bad about the guy.”
“Really. I think it would be best if you all went home.”
Annabel showed up just in time to hear that remark. She stopped and stood very still. Her face an absolute blank. Obviously wondering how things could have taken such a sudden wrong turn in her relatively brief absence.
Shane said, “Elle. Coming from us, that’s practically a compliment.”
I didn’t answer her. I was done with her. I was done with all of them. I didn’t even want to deal with them while they were gathering up to go. So I just crawled out on the fire escape. As far as I was concerned, the party was officially over.
I could hear their voices inside. Saying stuff like Maybe we should go talk to her. And Does she really want us to leave? And then also some slightly more indignant things, like Where does she get off acting like FTM is an insult? And Why do we keep apologizing? We didn’t do a damn thing wrong.
I heard Bobby say, “When she acts like she doesn’t want friends, she’s a good actor. Maybe we should just believe it.”
And some much quieter mumblings from Shane, which I didn’t like, even though I missed about every other word. But it was something like Can’t you see what’s going on? and that she’d explain it later. Which made me feel much better about the fact that I wouldn’t be seeing them again.
After a few minutes, it seemed quieter. I was trying to figure out if they were all really gone when Wilbur climbed out on the fire escape with me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. I didn’t mind his being there so much. Because he hadn’t said anything about Frank.
“I don’t think they meant any offense by it.”
“Yeah, well, it was a stupid thing to say.”
We sat there for a minute in the dark, watching people and cabs go by underneath us. It was perfect for Wilbur, who always liked to look down anyway.
“Is everybody else gone?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did they elect you to come talk to me?”
“No. My own idea.”
After a while, I decided that I needed to know where Wilbur stood on all this. In case it turned out I didn’t want him sitting on my fire escape with me after all.
“Do you think he is?” I asked. Trying not to tip my hand and let him see how much rested on his answer.
“I don’t know.”
It’s hard to describe the way he said it. Not like he couldn’t really figure it out. Not even like he had no opinion. More like if he had a guess, he wasn’t about to share it. But it didn’t feel like he was just afraid of my reaction. It felt more like he declined to offer judgments about people. Which I decided was okay. I mean, I would have liked a solid No, definitely not. But you had to respect him for that. So I let him stay.
“They weren’t trying to say anything bad about your friend. I know that, because I know them. They would almost, like, have more respect for him if he was trans. So I guess they never thought you would see that as, like … a bad thing.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I just don’t think he is. And I think they should just be careful what they say about people.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. He had a weirdly soft voice. Like he was afraid to let any volume out of his mouth to touch the world. Like his voice might cause some kind of explosion on impact. But I liked that gentleness. It reminded me a little bit of Frank.
We sat and watched the traffic awhile longer. The air was starting to feel barely cool, and a light breeze had come up. I breathed as deeply as I could. I was still rattled by what had happened, and I was feeling it like a vise around my heart and lungs.
After a while, Wilbur said, “I’m gonna take off now.” He came and sat closer to me. I watched in the dark as he took off something he was wearing on his wrist. A wide band of some sort. He reached his hands out.
“Give me one of your hands,” he said.
I gave him my left hand, even though I didn’t know why. He put the band on my wrist. Secured it with the two snaps.
“Happy birthday,” he said. And kissed me on the cheek.
I looked at my wrist more closely in the light from inside. It was a wide leather bracelet made from a piece of black leather over a piece of gray leather. Both layers were cut into long, lengthwise strips, so it separated out into thin strands and it looked like you were wearing a dozen really skinny gray and black leather bracelets.
“Thank you. I really like this.”
“It looks good on you.” A brief, awkward silence. Then he said, “I like your friend Frank. Whatever he is.”
He slipped through the window and I heard the front door close behind him.
And then I was alone. Really, completely alone.
FIVE
When Your Hair Turns Sweet Sixteen
When I showed up for homemade-chicken-noodle-soup night, Frank said, “I like your friends. They seem really nice.”
“I’m not so sure anymore,” I said.
“Really? I thought you liked them.”
“Yeah. I guess I thought so, too. But now I’m not so sure.”
“What went wrong?”
I couldn’t look at him. I just kept looking down at the table. I could feel both cats rubbing against my legs. Taking turns. I wished we didn’t have to talk about this. That I could change the subject.
“They just seem a little … judgmental.”
That sat on the table for a while in silence.
Molly was dishing up soup. When she set the bowl in front of me, she said, “Were they judging you, honey?”
“No,” I said. And I didn’t say anything more.
We had all been eating for a few minutes when Frank said, “I don’t know how bad it is. Because I wasn’t there …” Yes you were, I thought. Well, practically. “But don’t be too quick to throw friends away. They can be kinda hard to replace. And then even when you get new friends, turns out they’re not perfect, either.”
You are, I was thinking. But of course I didn’t say that out loud.
All I wanted was to talk about something else. So, without realizing I was about to, I took the conversation in a very weird new direction.
“What do you think is wrong with me?” I asked.
They were both silent for an uncomfortable length of time. I was half wishing I’d kept my damn mouth shut.
Molly spoke up first. “Why do you think anything is wrong with you?”
“Why do I fit in with them? Four of them are in that group because they’re gay. So I’m not saying that’s something wrong with them, but I guess it makes them different. Hard to fit in or something. Then before I met Annabel, I couldn’t figure out why she hung out with them if she’s not gay. But then when I met her, then I knew. So, what’s wrong with me that I fit in with them but not anywhere else?”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” Frank said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any of them. And I think you could probably fit in a lot of places, but I think the hair thing just got you off on the wrong foot, and I think they just happened to be the first ones who got to know you.”
“I think it’s because I’m not beautiful,” I said. Surprising myself yet again. I just seemed to be on a roll, spitting out things I hadn’t even known I was thinking. And I was also
vaguely aware that I was ignoring everything Frank had just said to me. And I’m not sure why. Because usually everything Frank said seemed important. “Sometimes I think even my own mother would love me more if I were beautiful.”
“But you are beautiful,” Molly said.
She said it like she really meant it. Like she believed it. I believed that she believed it. But she was still wrong.
“I’m not,” I said. “I know I’m not.”
“I’ll prove it to you.”
She got up from the table and rushed off into the bedroom and came back with an expensive-looking camera and a lot of other equipment, like some freestanding lights and a meter and stuff. She had to make several trips.
In between trips, Frank said, “Did you know that Molly is a photographic artist?”
“No. I had no idea.”
I had never thought much about Molly. Never wondered who she was or what she did. Now I had this bad sense that she was taking an interest in me. And I’d have to start liking her. I knew as soon as I got to know her better, I’d have to like her. I think that’s why I’d been putting it off.
“I’ll show you so you can see it with your own eyes,” she said, bursting back into the room. “Just be as close to yourself as you can possibly bring yourself to be.”
I sat in the corner of the darkroom—their converted second bedroom—watching Molly work. On a high wooden stool, sitting on my hands. I wasn’t sure what I was about to see.
“The thing to remember when you look at these,” she said, “is to give up the idea that there’s only one kind of beautiful. Hollywood has narrow ideas about beauty.”
“So does my mother.”
“Well, try to get your ideas to loosen up. Try to look at yourself the way you would look at somebody else. Imagine it’s your job to hire a model. Look at these photos and see if you would hire this girl.”
She started hanging wet black-and-white prints on a line, like a clothesline. I got up off my stool and felt my way over in the dim red photo light and looked at them close up.
In some of them I was looking away. I liked the angle of my jawline. It looked solid and strong. My hair being mostly gone really shifted the focus onto my face. I hated my freckles, I always had, but when I thought about this being some other girl I might hire as a model, they didn’t look all that bad. On somebody else, I guess I would just think: freckles. Rather than: freckles—bad.
In one picture, I was looking right into the camera, and my eyes were so intense I almost had to look away. I stared right into my own eyes as long as I could. There was plenty going on in there. They were like a window into something that just kept going. I never knew my face showed so much of what was going on inside. I had a cute, small nose. But that wasn’t even the important part. It was what I saw inside those eyes.
“I might hire her. I’m still thinking.”
“That’s a start,” Molly said. “You just keep thinking.”
I left her in the darkroom and found Frank again in the living room. Lying on his back on the couch, his eyes half closed. I thought about how hard Molly said he worked.
“How’d that go?” he asked. He never entirely opened his eyes.
“Better than I thought it would, I guess.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor next to him. He was wearing shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, and he had his arms folded behind his head. He had a lot of hair under his arms. And on his legs. And he was starting to get a five o’clock shadow. I could see the dark shape of a beard starting to form on his face.
Shane and The Bobs had no idea what they were talking about. They were just wrong. And when people are wrong, they ought to keep their damn mouths shut. If you don’t know what you’re saying, I think you should just stop talking.
I figured it would be best if I didn’t hang out with any of those guys again. They weren’t all the friends I had, anyway. I would still have Frank.
“You’re my best friend,” I said. Out loud.
He opened his eyes. But he didn’t say anything. Or at least, not in the first couple of seconds, and then I had to plunge right in again.
“I know it sounds weird to say that.”
“Why? Why is it weird?”
“Just because I haven’t known you very long, I guess.” Silence. Then I said, “I’m sorry if that was a dumb thing to say.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Just so long as I’m not your only friend. I think you might want to give those other kids a chance. They seemed nice to me.”
“You won’t be my only friend,” I said.
“Good. Diversify. You owe it to yourself.”
“Okay. Deal.”
Notice I didn’t specify who the others would be.
Maybe I could count my cat.
When I got back to my apartment, I found a very large, flat wrapped package leaning against my door. Probably as tall as my waist. Almost as wide as it was tall. Only a few inches thick. It was gift-wrapped in the world’s largest piece of solid dark-green wrapping paper. It had a card stuck on with a white premade ribbon bow.
I carried it inside.
I opened the card first.
I knew in my gut it was from some or all of the people I had ejected from my place the day before. I was not particularly surprised when it turned out to be from The Bobs.
The card said:
Elle,
We are so sorry if we offended you by anything we said about your friend. We liked him a lot and did not mean the comments in any negative way. We want you to have this for your birthday. Bobby/I did it him/myself.
Happy Birthday,
Bob and Bobby
I started to try to cut the tape with my fingernail. I don’t know why I do that. I feel like I should be polite to the wrapping paper while I’m opening presents. But then I just throw it away anyway.
“I guess I should just rip it, huh?” I said out loud to a perfectly empty room.
I tore off the wrapping paper to find the most beautiful painting of irises. Only three of them. Just a simple painting of three very long-stemmed flowers. I guess there’s no way I can really describe it so it won’t sound dumb. A painting of flowers. But they were graceful and peaceful in a way I can’t really explain. And the light was hitting them in a nicely complex way.
I just stared at it for a long time.
It didn’t look like a painting by somebody you knew. It looked like something you’d see hanging in a gallery. Something you couldn’t afford, by an artist you didn’t know and whose talent you couldn’t understand.
It had a wire picture hanger on the back, with a little right-sized nail in a plastic bag taped to the wire.
After a while, I borrowed a hammer from Molly to hang it up over my couch. Unfortunately, Frank was asleep by then.
I sat on my one comfortable chair and looked at the painting. Wishing it were from somebody I wasn’t mad at and hadn’t just put out of my life forever. But I liked the painting so much it almost didn’t matter. Well, it mattered some. But now that I’d seen the way it looked hanging over my couch, there was no going back again.
It made the place look almost like somebody’s home.
Unfortunately, Frank was still asleep when I returned the hammer.
The next morning—Monday morning—I ran into Wilbur on the way to my second class.
I was glad I was wearing the leather bracelet he’d given me. I saw him glance down at it. Quickly. Then he looked me in the eye. Which I’m pretty sure he’d never done before.
“Shane’s been looking for you everywhere.”
“Oh,” I said.
I think it was clear by the way I said it that I was not anxious to rush right off and be found.
“I think she wants to know if you guys are still friends.”
“Oh.”
I probably knew other words. I always had before. But none of them were coming to mind.
“If you don’t want to see her, that’s okay. But if you want, you could tell me w
here you’re going to be next period. And I’ll call her up and let her know.”
He lightly touched the cell phone sticking up from the front pocket of his very tight jeans. A moment of silence, during which I noticed that, in addition to the usual heavy eyeliner, he was wearing green eye shadow.
It occurred to me that I was going to see her sooner or later. Maybe this was better than seeing her by surprise.
“Science,” I said. “Ms. Lembecki.”
He smiled a little bit. Sadly. Just with one corner of his mouth. Like he knew exactly how everything felt to me. Like he found it touching when someone else’s day seemed as sad as his.
Shane was standing in front of Ms. Lembecki’s room by the time I got there.
She didn’t waste any time getting down to business.
“I know why you got so upset about what we said.”
“I’d rather not talk about that.”
“I just want you to know that a trans man is a man. I mean, in all the ways that count. Like a man who was born with this really bad birth defect. But, anyway, all I’m trying to say is that if you’re attracted to him, it’s the man stuff you’re attracted to. It doesn’t mean anything about you.”
“He is not a trans man!” I said.
Actually, I shouted it. I really hadn’t meant to shout it. The whole thing just sort of got away from me.
Every single kid within earshot—and I’m guessing there were at least twenty of them—turned around to look. And from the looks on their faces, they all knew exactly what a trans man was.
I guess the only person to ever have not known that was me.
I only saw Annabel once. Rounding the corner in my direction as I was headed to the cafeteria for lunch. She took one look at me and stopped dead. Like she had just seen a ghost, or a glimpse of her own death or something. Then she turned and rounded the corner again, right back the way she had come.
I sat by myself in the cafeteria.
I guess I should admit the whole cafeteria thing hadn’t been a well-thought-out plan. I should have gotten something at the deli and eaten by myself. As I’d headed to school that morning, I hadn’t been thinking how much this would change having lunch. I hadn’t thought out all the various ways in which things would be different now.
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