In the Silences

by Rachel Gold

  “Damn,” I said. “I never noticed, but I don’t raise my hand all that much. Also I don’t listen that much, so that’s what gets me, that people think because I have boobs I’m going to listen to them. I’d rather be reading or thinking or whatever.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, big, round ears on your chest, right? Like boob tissue makes you give a crap about people.”

  He fished chips out of the bag and crunched while I turned back to the mirror.

  “If I love this, does that make me a guy?” I asked.

  “Wear it around and see,” he suggested.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon in Zack’s room and went home with the binder and two of his shirts. If I felt this comfortable being a guy, maybe that solved all my problems. Maybe I wouldn’t even mind seeing Aisha with Meta.

  Yeah and maybe I’d figure out how to turn on the outdoor air conditioning for Wolvie.

  Chapter Eleven

  April-May 2017

  Was I a guy? I liked roughhousing, goofing off, running around, stupid jokes, but did guys have a lock on that? I wasn’t wild about the idea of a beard or having to shave my face. I liked guys, but did I want to have to be like that all the time? I watched a bunch of YouTube videos of trans guys talking about transition, trying to figure it out.

  Of course Mom walked in and I didn’t even have my headphones on. She walked in during the part where the guy talks about telling his mom he wanted to be a boy. I hit pause super fast.

  “What are you watching?” she asked.

  She wore brown leggings and a peach sweatshirt with rectangular holes cut out down the arms. Who needed a ventilated sweatshirt? If it was hot, just don’t wear a sweatshirt. Or was it one of those girl things that’s supposed to look delicate?

  I couldn’t tell how much she’d heard, so I said, “Just stuff. What do you need?”

  “What does FTM mean?”

  On the screen, under the video, of course it said, “FTM interview.”

  “Mom.”

  “Don’t ‘mom’ me.” She put her hands on her hips in the Wonder Woman pose which only worked because I knew it meant she thought she shouldn’t give up. I couldn’t think fast enough to come up with something else for FTM to mean. Obviously the “M” should stand for “math,” but what about the first two letters? I floundered.

  “Who is he?” Mom asked.

  “Just some YouTuber, you know. Everyone makes videos.”

  “Do we need to have a talk about boys?”

  “No, please, no.”

  The “t” could be “teaching?” Finally teaching math? Finally triumph at math? Would she buy that? If she asked me to play some of it, this was definitely not a math video.

  “Kaz, you have one minute to tell me or play that video. I want to know what you’re up to.”

  “Mom, seriously, it’s no big deal.”

  I held my breath, clicked the video forward a few minutes in hopes that I’d get out of his coming out story, and hit play. The very built trans man talked about dealing with his changing body and the new way people interacted with him. I paused it again. At least we were in a spot that made it sound like he was talking only about bodybuilding.

  “See,” I said. “It’s bodybuilding tips. Nothing about sex.”

  Brock had come up the stairs just in time to hear me say the word, “sex.” Or maybe “bodybuilding” was what paused him on the landing. Mom heard the wood creak and turned.

  “Do you know FTM means?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he said, leaning far enough through the doorway to see me at my desk and the paused video. “Killer delts on that guy, though. You bulking up, Kaz?”

  “Maybe?”

  Milo appeared next to Brock. Her worn, practical gray cotton T-shirt made his skinny-strap tank top look about as delicate as Mom’s ventilated sweatshirt.

  “Family meeting?” Milo asked.

  “Oh God no,” I said.

  “Kaz!” from Mom.

  “Sorry.” I looked up, “Sorry, God.” Did it count as taking God’s name in vain if it had been more of a prayer? Also, if you’re listening, God, please make this stop. “I’m just watching videos and mom thinks it about sex and it’s not.”

  “It’s about time you have some questions about sex,” Milo said.

  “Whoa, I’m out,” Brock announced and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

  “I don’t have questions about sex!” At least not any that they could answer. I had a lot of questions. I wasn’t even sure how to categorize them.

  “I see,” Milo said. She came into the room and stood behind my chair, then turned to my mom. “Carrie, could I talk to my grandkid alone for a minute?”

  “I’m her mother!”

  “How much did you want to talk to me at fifteen?” Milo asked.

  Mom looked away. “One of you has to tell me what this is about.”

  “Sure will, after we talk,” Milo said. “Why don’t you make us some tea and get the pie out, I’ll be down shortly.”

  After Mom left, Milo shut my bedroom door.

  “He is a handsome man,” she said, pointing at my screen.

  I shrugged.

  “He looks happy. Is this one where they dramatize his transition or it’s no big deal?”

  “You…know what this is?”

  “I’m a little ashamed that your mother doesn’t.” Milo sat on the edge of my bed. “Do you have a friend who’s a trans man?”

  “Yeah,” I said, still blown away to hear “transition” and “trans man” come out of Milo’s mouth. I mean, I should figure because she’s cooler than cool, but…whaaaaat? “Uh, he goes to the high school. You’d like him.”

  Milo scooted back to sit against the wall, her short legs stretched out across my bedspread, gray work pants contrasting with my brighter brown and red bedspread colors. Wolvie had been sleeping by my desk but hearing Milo get on the bed, Wolvie hopped up and settled next to her with a put-upon dog sigh, like it was such a big deal to keep track of all these people. Milo scratched her back.

  I said, “I met him in the queer and trans student group. There’s an unofficial one. I go with Aisha.”

  “With or with?”

  “Just with. She’s dating Meta, I mean, this other girl, whose real name sounds like that.”

  “And you like this boy you met there?”

  “Yeah. No. As friends. He’s just a friend. He has a girlfriend. Milo…what if I’m like him?” I waved at the letters FTM on my computer screen.

  She cocked her head to one side, frowned, nodded. “Then I think you’d make a fine man. Is that what you want?”

  I grinned like mad because that was so much better than everything I’d heard from my mom about gender. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m trying to figure it out. Aisha’s not into guys, but now she’s with Meta anyway. And…how did you get this cool? How do you know what all this stuff is?”

  “Nessa’s been talking to me,” Milo said. Seeing my puzzled look, she added, “Vanessa Warren, Aisha’s mom. Are you shocked that we talk about you?”

  “Uh, yeah. Like, what?”

  “Let’s see, when I returned her copy of Between the World and Me, we talked about you and Aisha and if the two of you would end up dating. That was early December. Then Aisha started dating that other girl and you’ve been dressing more trans masculine—”

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “Did I say that wrong?”

  “Exactly right. Just, wow.”

  I lunged across the room and hugged her hard. Then I settled on the other side of her from Wolvie, her arm still around my shoulders, even though I had to hunch down for that to work.

  “Has Aisha told you the story about her aunt coming out?” Milo asked.

  “That it was really awful for her aunt back then, not details.”

  “She’s Nessa’s big sister and they grew up close, like you and Brock, but when she came out as lesbian, the family disowned her. Their parents forbid any of the kids to
talk to her.”

  “Fu—shit, crap,” I said and Milo chuckled.

  “Once she got to college, out of her parents’ house, Nessa got back in touch with her sister. You might not see it, but she’s got a big rebellious streak. She even took a class in LGBTQ Lit, though she was the only straight person in there. And when Aisha came out to her, she told her parents, Aisha’s grandparents, that the first time she heard a homophobic word out of their mouths, they’d be the ones cut off from their grandkid.”

  “She’s a badass.”

  “She is. Makes me regret some things. Not spending more time with my uncle when he was alive.” Milo loosened her arm so she could turn and meet my eyes. “My uncle, your great uncle Matty was…well, we thought gay but these days I think if trans had been an option Matty would’ve been a lot happier. And I haven’t always been good about this. Lesbians maybe, I knew some in the seventies, but not gay men and definitely not trans anyone. I lost a lot of time I could’ve spent with Matty. We all have our blindspots but I wish mine had been smaller.”

  She sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. I rested my head on her arm.

  “I don’t want to regret anything about how I helped raise you,” Milo said quietly. “I asked Nessa about Aisha, about how she felt, what she’d learned, what she regretted. Now we have a two-person book club. She doesn’t know much about transgender people either, but there are some who come to her pharmacy, so she’s been learning. We’re reading The Transgender Teen together.”

  “I love you so much,” I said. “Can it be a three-person book club?”

  “Love you too, kid. Do you want to invite Aisha and make it a four-person club?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kaz, what should we tell your mom?”

  “That I had awkward questions about boys?” I suggested. “And sex. But, like, super awkward.”

  “I got it,” she said. “Do you want me to go with ‘can I get pregnant from touching a doorknob?’ or is that too sixties?”

  “Yeah, like the 1760s. Better go with period stuff instead of sex. No one ever wants to talk about that.”

  Milo smiled and asked, “And you? You know I’ll fight for you to have the life you want, best I can. What do you really need?”

  “I don’t know. There’s so much I like about being a guy, but I don’t know if I want to go through all the stuff to be one all the time. Like I’d be climbing out of one box and into another. I don’t like the boxes.”

  “Good thing you’re at that age where you’re supposed to try some things and see what fits,” she said.

  “Everyone else has it figured out by now,” I said.

  “I will bet you twenty dollars and two rides to the destination of your choice that they don’t. They only look more together because you’re seeing what they want the world to see, not all their worries and fears and struggles.”

  “Telepathy isn’t one of my superpowers,” I admitted. “That’s more Aisha’s thing.”

  “Are you talking to her about this?”

  “I…”

  “You should. There, that’s all the advice I’ve got right now. Can I watch that video with you?”

  “Sure,” I said and scooted back to my desk chair. I scrolled it back to the beginning and started it. We watched that one and another, then Milo went downstairs and I don’t even want to know what she told my mom about my fictitious period questions, but I got a lot of “oh, honey” from my mom that week.

  * * *

  I practiced like Zack said, wearing the binder and standing with my shoulders back. I didn’t have to practice sitting with my legs spread; that felt normal. The shoulders thing was hard; I’d gotten used to rolling them forward to hide my boobs.

  But suddenly I was dreaming about having boobs—and about how it had felt for that one second when mine pressed against Aisha’s, before I’d freaked out. How it could be the best thing ever. As if now that I didn’t have to have boobs all the time, I did want them some of the time.

  Random mornings I woke up with my boobs feeling interesting. Like touching them was a good idea rather than an annoying nuisance. And when I did, it seemed like some other things would also be a good idea: things that didn’t involve a rolled up sock or having my business stick out from my body.

  One afternoon in July I came in from yard work—I’d picked up a bunch of Brock’s old jobs because he had a gig at a coffee shop now—all covered in sweat, flat-chested, in a sleeveless T. I stepped out of my shorts and pulled on the baggy guy jeans I’d found in a second-hand store. My hair was slicked back with sweat.

  I watched myself in the mirror, struck my most guy pose and thought…no.

  I can’t do this all the time.

  I’m not a guy.

  Maybe I’m a guy sometimes and a girl sometimes?

  Could I be genderfluid if I sucked at fashion and only owned one set of clothes and wanted those to be guy clothes?

  The times I looked online at people who were genderfluid or nonbinary, they looked great. But the patterns hurt my brain. Like too often my brain translated the looks into boys-in-skirts and girls-in-vests. Like there were still only two options and you could only blend these two. Like blue and red and a lot of shades of purple, but I was green and gray and water and the whole night sky.

  How did people ever grow up into these bodies?

  * * *

  Some days the binder felt just right and other days it was fine to wear a bra. What did that even mean? File that under the general heading of “puberty” and hope my body sorted itself out.

  We only had a few weeks of school left. I didn’t want to wear the binder during the school day and deal with questions. But I decided to wear it to one of the last GSA meetings before finals.

  I’d already learned from wearing it all Sunday one weekend that more than seven hours made my back sore. Zack had warned me that wearing a binder all day wasn’t a great idea, particularly if I was still growing. But at least this one was a little too big so I didn’t figure it would smash all my ribs together.

  I changed before last period, because we’d go right from there to the meeting and I didn’t want to be ducking into the bathroom and making it all obvious while Aisha waited for me. Standing in the stall, unhooking my bra and balling it up in my bag, pulling the tank top on and then the binder, I felt like a superhero changing into my crime-fighting suit.

  I didn’t look that much different, but I did. Because boobs aren’t like elbows. They’re not some random part of your body. They’re this whole identity thing. People see boobs and they assume everything. Like that you’re going to be a person who wants to giggle and get pushed into gliding delicately down a slip-n-slide instead of a person who knows what all the trees in your neighborhood are.

  I’d worn the military shirt to school, knowing I was going to put the binder on. I still had on girl jeans, but the tails of the shirt covered my hips, giving me a broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted look.

  Aisha waited for me at the north doors of the school where we always met to go to GSA. Since Meta was in tenth grade, she drove over with kids from the high school.

  “You look taller,” Aisha said and studied my feet, like I’d changed shoes during the school day.

  “Binder,” I said. “No boobs.”

  “Oh! You look great,”

  “Thanks, but I’m pretty far from Kate Bishop style cuteness.”

  “I’m not into her anymore,” Aisha said.

  “Who are you into?” I asked.

  She shrugged. She didn’t name Meta. We headed away from the school, down tree-lined streets, past houses.

  “Hold up,” she said and stopped to blow her nose. She was getting over a late spring cold, her eyes still red-rimmed, her cheeks carrying a hint of gray. She’d pulled her hair into a bun, which was her “screw it” hairstyle, but curls must’ve started escaping earlier in the day because she’d tucked a few behind her ear.

  I’d seen Milo and Pops nurse each other throug
h colds every year. Pops got sick more often and Milo always made a huge pot of soup, bringing him bowls as often as he’d eat them. He made soup for her if she got sick first or instead of him. I wanted to bring Aisha a whole lifetime of bowls of soup. If I got sick, there’s no one I’d rather have sitting next to me in bed listening to me whine.

  She tucked her tissue back into a pocket. Before she could start walking again, I asked, louder, “Who do you like?”

  “You know who,” she said and slipped her hand into mine.

  We walked toward Main St. I figured she’d drop my hand well before we got to Five Star Chinese. We didn’t need another fight from Meta, like the one they’d had that day with the slip-n-slide. Aisha held my hand until we reached the end of residential streets, about to turn onto Main, and then her fingers loosened, paused, squeezed mine, let go.

  Too late. Coming out of the gas station on the corner, Meta saw us. She whispered intently to the girl next to her, the pretty one who kept the meetings going, and the two of them beelined for the restaurant.

  “Cat’s in the bag now,” I muttered. To Aisha’s quizzical look, I said, “It’s something Wolvie says. Maybe it won’t be that bad. Friends hold hands.”

  “No, I’m screwed. Let’s do this.”

  Bright side: with finals coming, the meeting was at half attendance. Jon and Zack were there, plus the rest of the trans crew from the high school. Meta sat with the pretty girl, whose name I could never remember, and the sporty lesbians.

  As soon as we’d crossed the threshold, Meta stood up. “You want to tell me what I just saw?”

  “Not really,” Aisha said. Her fingers found the back of the chair in front of her, but she didn’t pull it out and sit.

  “Then let me tell you. I see how you are with Kaz. You keep saying it’s nothing but I see your eyes light up. I think we’re good, but when I see the two of you, you’re full-on sparkles. I get half that, I get leftovers. Are you honestly going to keep telling me you’re not in love with Kaz?”