by Amber Smith
My fingertips grazed the surface of the letters, the slightest indentations from where her pen had pressed down. I closed my eyes, and I was instantly brought back to that day in the car when I first saw her write on her palm.
I picked the envelope up and held it my hands. It felt substantial, more than just paper. The postmark was from Carson, NC. Red capital letters across the front spelled out:
DO NOT BEND
I walked directly to the garbage can and stomped on the foot pedal. The lid swung open like the mouth of a whale, ready to devour. The corners of the envelope collapsed as I stuffed it in, and I felt the bubble wrap inside crushing and snapping under my palm as I pressed it toward the bottom of the garbage.
Mom shouted, “Chris!”
I didn’t acknowledge her. I simply went to the cupboard and pulled down a glass—the afternoon sun shining through the window exposing all the spots and streaks left behind by the dishwasher—and filled it with water.
I gulped it down, trying to drown out whatever was boiling up inside me. I swallowed hard several times and washed it away. “I’ll be upstairs,” I told her on my way out of the room.
I took the stairs two at a time. I closed the door behind me. I exhaled. No sooner had I taken one step inside than my mom pushed the door open, walked in, and slammed it shut again behind her.
“Look.” She planted her feet firmly into my carpet. “Love is messy. It’s painful and confusing and fucked up—”
“Mom.”
“Well, it is.” She thrashed her arms around. “Nobody knows how to do it right, okay? It takes a lifetime to figure it out.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“That’s just too damn bad!” she shouted. “You wanted space, I gave you space. But enough is enough.”
“Not to me, it’s not enough.”
“You know what, Chris? I’ve known you your entire life, from the moment you came into this world—”
I had to interrupt her. “A lot’s changed since then, Mom.”
“And a lot hasn’t,” she countered. “I see this girl, this Maia, trying so hard, and you’re just shutting her down.”
I winced at the sound of her name.
“You have no idea what happened, Mom.”
“You’re right. Maybe I don’t. But I know you. Whether you believe it or not, I know you.”
I shook my head. “I appreciate the fact that you’re trying to help or whatever, but you don’t understand,” I told her.
“I know that you expect people to always know the exact right thing to do and say, the exact right way to feel and love and be.”
“No I don’t,” I snorted.
“Oh, Chris.” She smiled, but it was not a smile. “Please.”
“Who are we talking about, anyway? Me and Maia, or me and you?”
“Both, all right?” She tossed her arms up in the air, and as they fell to her sides something in her softened. She brought her hand to her forehead and held her face at the temples between her thumb and the rest of her fingers. She walked over to my bed and sat down.
“Please,” she said again, but this time it wasn’t a “give me a break please”; it was simply a request, as she patted the empty space next to her. “I’m not gonna try to pry it out of you, okay? You don’t have to tell me what happened with her. I just want you to listen.”
“Fine,” I relented.
“I love you. You’re special. And beautiful—”
“God, Mom, please don’t—”
“No, I mean beautiful in your soul, honey.” She reached out and placed her hand above my heart. “It has nothing to do with appearance or being a girl or a boy, or anything like that. It just is.” She held my face between her hands so that I was forced to look at her. They felt so soft and cool, and I couldn’t remember the last time she had touched me with this kind of tenderness.
“I wouldn’t change a single, minute, microscopic thing about you,” she said. “Do you understand that?”
I pulled away from her. “I don’t believe that for one second, Mom.”
She sighed, and rubbed her temples once more. “You challenge me. You make me think and question and doubt myself, and that’s good. You force me to do better—you force everyone around you to do better, you always have. And that’s what I’m trying to do here.”
“Then why do you look at me like you . . .” I’d thought the word so many times, but looking her in the eye, I was having trouble getting it out of my mouth. “Like you hate me?”
“No, no, no.” She just kept repeating it as she pulled me in toward her, and I gave in and let my head fall against her shoulder. “NoNoNoNoNo,” she whispered, like the chorus to a song.
My forehead was touching her neck, and her skin was so cool, it reminded me of being a kid, back when she’d have defended me and whatever I wanted to the death. I suddenly felt a million words I’d never been able to say to her bubbling up from somewhere deep within me, crawling up through my stomach and into my throat, getting lodged there in one giant lump I needed to release before it strangled me. If I could convince myself I really was just a kid again, then maybe it was okay to cry just one more time.
She let me, rocking me slowly, not saying anything, not trying to make me feel better or find the magic words or tell me any of her old standby white lies about how this will pass and how great I am and how one day everyone will see it too.
She was silent.
I lifted my head, and wiped my eyes, and laughed at myself because I was embarrassed. But she didn’t laugh or smile or frown; she looked me in the eye and repeated, firmly, “I could never hate you.”
“Then why have you been so hard on me?” I finally asked the question I hadn’t been able to bring myself to utter this whole past year.
“When you’re a parent, you’ll understand. You are everything to me—it’s like you’re walking around with my heart inside your chest. And I am terrified for you, Chris. I am terrified of what could happen to you because of other people’s hatred and ignorance.”
“I know, but—” I argued.
“Chris! You were not just beat up. You were targeted, and those boys could’ve raped or killed you. I know you don’t want to believe that, but it’s true, and you were so very lucky that you weren’t hurt worse than you were.”
“Mom, that’s not what was going to—” I tried once more, but her words sent this tingle crawling along the back of my neck that prevented me from finishing.
“And then I see you wanting to just put yourself back out there in this big, bold way and it’s terrifying,” she continued. “I was so angry at you for so long.”
“But why? That’s what I don’t understand. It wasn’t my fault. I can’t help being who I am!”
“I know it wasn’t your fault. You weren’t asking for it. You did not deserve what happened.”
“Then why are you so angry at me?” I said again.
She shook her head with purpose. “It’s not about you being trans. It truly isn’t. It’s taken me all year to realize this, but it was about me. I think it felt like as you were rejecting being a woman, you were rejecting me—”
“That’s not what I was doing, Mom.”
“I know that now,” she said. “But it was more than just my fragile little ego.” She paused and grabbed my hand, her voice low when she said, “I loved my daughter something fierce. You know that.”
“Yes,” I agreed—that was one thing I knew for sure.
“You have to understand”—she gripped my hands tight—“you were taking her away from me. That’s why I was angry. I had to get all mama tiger on someone, and that someone was you.” She coughed, trying to hold back her tears. “And I think I was grieving too, mourning you. I was holding on so hard to the person you used to be, I didn’t realize you were still here. But that’s what you were telling me all along, wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I never wanted to hurt you, Chris—I wanted to protect you, even fr
om yourself.”
“I know,” I told her. And this time I did.
“I’m sorry, and I will try my best to be what you need,” she said, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to lose you.”
I suddenly felt all these walls crashing down around me. Walls I didn’t even know were there. I swallowed hard and told her the truth: “You won’t.”
MAIA
I WAITED THREE DAYS. STILL nothing from Chris. I called Hayden and Gabby to come over. It was an emergency, I told them. I needed a favor—a big one—and they agreed before even knowing what it was.
We told our parents we were heading out to the beach for one last hurrah before school started back up.
But that was a lie.
We got into Hayden’s car at daybreak and drove.
We only stopped twice for gas and food, then one last time when we were twenty minutes away so I could change my clothes and brush my teeth and fix my hair, and pretend like I hadn’t just spent the last ten hours in a car.
CHRIS
THE UNIVERSE IS FULL OF paradoxes. It’s the nature of reality. Black holes are both creative and destructive. Mom—protecting me from myself by hurting me—was also a paradox.
I was trying to concentrate on my breath, on keeping my pace, on beating my last time, but my mind kept drifting to that envelope that was sitting on my desk unopened, slightly crumpled after Mom had fished it from the trash, smoothed it out, and handed it to me. I had taken it without fighting, a silent acceptance of the olive branch we had both built together. That battered envelope with its hand lettering was yet another paradox.
There was this physics lesson I learned about when I was a kid: Schrödinger’s cat. In 1935, this physicist, Schrödinger, devised an experiment—a theoretical experiment—all about paradox. You’re supposed to imagine a cat sealed in a metal box with a flask of poison. I used to know all about it, the quantum mechanics of it all, but the bottom line is that as long as the box remains sealed, the cat is both dead and alive.
The envelope was like that box. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the truth of what was really left inside. I wanted to love and hate Maia at the same time, with equal passion. I knew it was fucked up, but it was the only thing that made sense to me.
I must’ve run five miles: past the elementary school and the playground and the grocery store. I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. I slowed to a jog as I approached the trailhead behind the high school. I followed the path, the pull growing stronger and stronger, until I found the exact spot where I’d veered off the trail nearly one year earlier. I looked around just like I had that day. I tried to quiet the world around me so I could listen to that inner voice I had ignored before. It wasn’t telling me to run this time..
Carefully I traced the path I’d taken then, noting all the ways it looked different in the full bloom of summer, as opposed to the chill of fall. My fingers grazed the trunks of the trees as I waded deeper into the woods, their bark my own personalized braille, telling me the story of myself.
The closer I came to the clearing, the slower my pace became. Without warning, my memories began to spark one by one, fired up by some kind of electrical charge that was still bound to these woods after all this time. I could see it and hear it and feel it all around me. I followed along behind Ben and Jake and Tobey until I was standing there in the same spot where I’d been standing then.
The scene played out before me like a panoramic movie, and I could do nothing to stop it. I couldn’t rewind or fast-forward or do anything to change it. But I was watching it all from a different perspective, I realized. Because now I could see all the parts that I couldn’t see then. I could see how hard I was trying to be tough and cool and calm, making myself ignore all the signs. The way the boys kept glancing at one another with these secret exchanges.
I watched as they grabbed me and held my arms—this time I could see the look on my face, how scared I was. And I could also see the way I looked to them as they chased me, because I was following along too. I saw the rock I tripped on and I watched my ankle turn, watched how I fell, then got back up and limped a few more steps. I followed behind as they caught up, screaming after me. And then I watched them beat me, until I folded to the ground—it had felt fast, I remember that, but this time it happened in slow motion.
While Tobey and Jake were kicking me, I was covering my head with my arms. That’s why I missed the part when Ben had already unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. I missed how the other boys were laughing. I missed what they were planning to do to me. And I missed that Coleton had stood there, frozen, for several seconds before he made the phone call to the police.
I don’t think I realized until now how much hate they had inside, how much it wasn’t even about me, not anything I did or didn’t do. If not me, they would’ve found someone else to fill my place. The hologram played forward until it was just Coleton and Chris there on the ground. Coleton was crying, muttering something to himself or to me. I stepped closer now and looked down. My face was so bruised and swollen, I could barely recognize myself.
And I knew for certain something I had suspected but couldn’t be sure of until now: This thing, this terrible thing that had happened, happened to me. Not someone else I used to be, but someone I still was, always was, always will be. Not someone who was the weak, wrong part of me, but someone who was, is, strong and real. All of my running away had finally brought me back here to see that, to remember, and to finally lay it to rest.
The vision vanished and it was summer again and I was alone, standing on this grave. I looked around, and my eyes set on the rock, the one that had tripped me. I lifted it out of the dirt and brought it back to the spot where I’d lain. I crouched down and dug at the earth with my fingers and set the rock inside, packed the dirt up around it like I was planting something new. The smooth, round dome just breached the surface.
• • •
I walked home slowly. And I got this feeling like I was lighter, like maybe I’d been carrying the past of me around on my back all this time and now I was finally walking into the rest of my life. I couldn’t help smiling. In fact, I was laughing softly to myself when I entered my front door.
But I stopped in my tracks when I looked up and saw Maia sitting there on my couch in my living room with my mother.
I opened my mouth, and I didn’t know what would come out. Because, while my mind told me I should still be mad, told me that I was still furious, another part of me was so damned happy to see her.
MAIA
WHILE I WAITED FOR CHRIS to get home, his mom and I talked about Carson and growing up there and how little has changed since she lived in that gray house. We talked about which teachers were still at the school and the creepy DairyLand Fairy logo, and a million other small-town girl things. We specifically did not talk about Chris. If she knew what I had done to him, she didn’t let on.
When he finally walked through the door, I braced myself for whatever was about to come my way.
He stood in the entryway and looked at me from across the room, his expression smooth and even, not giving anything away. He didn’t look surprised or happy to see me, not even angry; it was almost like he’d been expecting me.
“Well, I’ll leave you two alone,” his mother said, standing up. “Nice meeting you, Maia.”
I stood too, and thanked her for the soda she gave me. As she exited the room, I felt myself being pulled, once again, toward Chris. I took a few steps closer, but he remained in the same spot.
“So what are you doing here?” he said in a disconcertingly casual way, looking down as he wound the cord of his earbuds around his phone.
“I didn’t think you’d call,” I answered.
He looked up at me then, and there was the tiniest hint of a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “So you drove seven hundred miles?”
I shrugged.
He took exactly two steps and stopped short like there was an invisible barrier dividing the room
and we were on opposite sides of it.
“I’m not here to try to start over or pick up where we left off, but I couldn’t leave things the way they ended—we deserve better than that, after everything,” I tried to explain. “I mean, don’t we?”
He sighed, and then nodded in the direction of the kitchen, where his mother had disappeared, and said, “Come on.” Then he turned around and started toward the stairs. I followed him to the second story of the house, the carpet plush and soft under my feet, the handrail smooth and cool against the palm of my hand.
He led me down a hall and into his bedroom—his real bedroom, not the room at his aunt’s house where I had spent so many hours with him.
This room was completely different, his walls full of posters, and endless books on bookshelves and a desk with his notebook and laptop and pens and pencils and a huge lunar calendar pinned up to a corkboard on the wall in front of it.
There, propped up on top of the desk, under the calendar, was the envelope with my handwriting on it. It looked a little worn and wrinkled, but intact. Unopened.
He closed the door behind us and stood there, waiting for me to say something.
“You didn’t open it?” I asked. I walked over to the desk and picked up the envelope. I brought it over to where he was standing and held it out to him. He let me place it in his hands. Then he looked up at me the way he used to, and for a moment I thought we might kiss, I thought maybe things hadn’t changed so irreparably after all, but he looked back down at the envelope and went over to sit on the edge of his bed.
I sat down next to him, leaving an arm’s length between us, because I knew things had changed. I watched as he peeled back the sticky closure of the envelope and pulled out the photo. I’d wrapped it in a sheet of white tissue paper and placed it between two pieces of cardboard to keep it flat. He unwrapped it and carefully set the pieces aside.
“That was one of Mallory’s,” I explained as he examined the black-and-white photo of that place where I’d taken him, that place that had changed us both.