Out of the Closet

by Aimee Norin

  Simi stood before her parents. “Mom? Dad.”

  “Tommie?!” Kathleen said.

  Kathleen and Simi both broke into tears and hugged, crying on each other’s shoulder.

  “What?” Fulton said, looking at everyone.

  “Wake up, Fulton!” said Gayland in front of the T.V. “Your son’s one of them, now.” He flagged a hand at the couch.

  “Oh, my God,” Eileen said, standing and taking a step backward. She glanced at the photo on the mantle and back to Simi.

  Fulton’s eyes widened, and a broad smile came across his face which turned into a laugh of joy. “Tommieeeeeeeee! Get over here!”

  The three of them hugged in a fit of tears.

  “My God, I worried about you,” Fulton said, “They told us they found you but no news after that! “Nothing!”

  Fulton held Simi and Kathleen back at arm’s length to look at Simi. “You really in there?” he asked. “Come here!” He hugged Simi again.

  Simi nodded, crushed into his chest.

  “That’s you? My boy!”

  Simi’s face scrunched up at the thought.

  “But it’s you?” Fulton asked, releasing her.

  “Yes,” Simi said.

  “It is, Fulton. I can see it in his eyes. Can’t you tell?” Kathleen said.

  “Well, I’ve had so much experience!”

  “Larry did this, too?” Simi asked, referring to her little brother.

  “Your dad’s just being sarcastic,” Kathleen said.

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Tommie! Come here!” Fulton brought Simi into a bear hug once again that had to be survived to be appreciated.

  “Everybody!” Fulton shouted to the house. “Tommie’s back from the war! Tommie’s back!”

  Oceanna let out a sign of relief and looked to Mason with teary eyes.

  “Sit down here with me!” Kathleen said to Simi, indicating for everyone to scoot over a little to make room.

  Fulton slapped the T.V. off. The game came to an abrupt end.

  Eileen went back into the kitchen with a scowl on her face. “Lunch will burn.”

  “Tommie—” Kathleen began.

  “It’s Simi, now,” Simi said.

  “Simi—after your Grandmother?” Kathleen asked.

  Simi nodded.

  “She was always kind— You told her about this, didn’t you?”

  Simi teared some more, smiled and nodded.

  “But you couldn’t tell me?” Kathleen asked

  “Or me? I’m your dad. Nobody ever clues me in.”

  “I know you are, and I’m sorry,” Simi said to both of them. But I was so scared.”

  “Simi!” Her dad took her hands in his. “Let me look at you.” He did. “Your hands are so soft, your hair— How did you get—you have actual breasts? Trashy not to wear a bra!” Then he spoke to his wife. “She looks like a girl, now. Gonna have to repaint his room.”

  “What’s the rest of your name?” Kathleen asked, reaching out to hold Simi’s hands as well.

  “Simi Annette Fisher,” Simi said. “She’s the only person—”

  “Not any more!” Fulton said.

  “You took her whole name,” Kathleen asked.

  “Yes.”

  Kathleen ran her fingers through Simi’s hair, brushing it away from her face, gathering the hair on the left side of Simi’s head behind her ear. “A girl,” she said.

  “Aren’t you guys gonna kill her?” Harry said. “I rode all this way.”

  “Ha!” Fulton said. “You don’t know this family!”

  “Apparently, Simi doesn’t either,” Hila said. “She was afraid to breathe.”

  Kathleen leaned over to Harry and, choking back a chuckle, spoke almost as if confidentially. “Besides, we could always tell, anyway!”

  “It’s true,” Fulton said. “Just didn’t really think we were right. Who’d a thought we’d be right about anything? Especially after all that hell she gave us when she was a teenager.”

  Gayland and Eileen looked a little upset.

  Hila got out her phone and thumbed a few icons.

  “She was such a girl!” Kathleen said. “She couldn’t help it. We always watched her try, she hurt so much. It’s how God made her. And now she is a girl outside, too!” Kathleen hugged Simi again and gave her a brief kiss on her lips.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Simi said, getting up to go toward the hallway.

  “You know where it is— Of course you do. You know how to do it? Simi?”

  “I’ve got it covered, Mom.”

  “Of course you do. But I’d have taught you when you were little.”

  “Covered with pink little nylon panties, probably,” Gayland said.

  Simi stood to go but stopped at Gayland’s comment.

  Gayland continued. “Oh, my God, your son is one of those.”

  “Gayland!” Kathleen said.

  “Well, it’s true! We can’t stop this kind of thing from happening out in the world, but now it’s in your own house!”

  “That’s right,” Eileen said from the kitchen.

  “We didn’t have this kind of thing in Idaho,” Gayland said.

  “Surely you did,” Mason said. “They just didn’t let you know.”

  “You should pray for forgiveness,” Gayland said. “What did you do to her, Fulton? When you were raising her up. Are you a transvestite? Did he pick this stuff up from you?”

  “Gayland!” Kathleen said again.

  Simi stood in defense of her father. “Not at all! It’s probably genetic! I’ve had it from birth, somehow!”

  “Then they did give it to you,” Gayland said, still sitting in the recliner.

  “It’s just something natural that happens sometimes,” Hila said in Simi’s defense.

  “He could fight it!” Gayland said. “He could go do repairing therapy and learn to act normal! Not this flitting around gender-bending!”

  “It’s Texas all over again,” Harry said.

  Gayland stood angrily. “I’ve seen that Governor on T.V., and I think he’s right.”

  “You know Pastor Bain doesn’t think so,” Fulton said. “She’s God’s child, and she’s beautiful.” He turned to his wife. “She actually is beautiful, too! Would you look at that?” he said, looking at Simi.

  “He is an abomination before the Lord, and he can’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” Gayland said, stepping toward the front door. “Eileen! Lets get out of here.”

  “Gayland!” Fulton said, this time.

  Eileen stepped out of the kitchen toward the front door, also. “It’s true,” she said. “It’s in the Holy Bible. If you were a Christian, you’d do what God says.”

  “And if you were a Christian, you’d love your neighbor as yourself and leave the judging to God!” Fulton said, angrily.

  Gayland and Eileen moved straight to the front door.

  “No, Eileen! Gayland! Please stay,” Kathleen said. “You’ll see! Get to know her! Give it some time? I’m sure you’ll like her!”

  “Such are the ways of sin,” Gayland said, stopping briefly in the door. “It’s seductive. There’s always a ‘good’ reason. You could give in to anything—prostitution, marijuana, abortion—but that is not the way. The way to Hell is paved with candies like that.” Gayland indicated all of the transpeople there. “God’s way isn’t easy, but we intend to follow it.”

  Gayland and Eileen left, leaving the front door open.

  “We’ll see you in church,” Kathleen called out after them.”

  “Not that one,” Gayland said over his shoulder, making his way to their car. “Not any more.”

  Simi stood in the entrance to the hallway, shaking, looking to everyone for support.

  “I really think Pastor Bain will be as happy as we are,” Kathleen said.

  “I agree,” Fulton said. “And the rest of them can—”

  Kathleen slapped him on the stomach to shut him up.

  “Mom and Dad!” Mason sai
d as a cheer with some hearty clapping.

  “Way to go!” Harry said, moving to go with Simi to the bathroom.

  “They’re really not that way,” Kathleen said to them all. “I’ve never seen ‘em that way. I think they were just caught off guard—”

  “Denial comes in all forms,” Oceanna said.

  “People feel that way about us a lot and don’t say,” Hila said.

  “I think she’s right,” Mason said. “They do.”

  “But they’re nice people,” Kathleen asserted.

  “Not nice to us,” Oceanna said.

  Simi and Harry disappeared around the corner into the hall.

  Kathleen turned around. “And so who are you four? Friends?”

  They nodded.

  Harry called from the other end of the hallway. “A cowboy, a transgender, a C.D., and a dyke.”

  Fulton laughed. “I’m so happy, I could drop a load!”

  “Don’t talk like that in front of guests!” Kathleen’s embarrassment looked almost real.

  “We got to get this party started.” Fulton headed into the dining room. “I’ll set more places. Three, ‘cause we got five and we lost two.” He headed into the kitchen. They could hear Fulton talking to himself in the kitchen, Singing Vagner, rattling dishes.

  “We have prayed so hard for—her,” Kathleen said. “Thank God Almighty for bringing her back to us—” Kathleen turned to speak more loudly so her husband could hear her in the kitchen. “—and thank God for bringing the real her back to us for the first time!”

  “Amen!” Fulton shouted back from the kitchen. He opened the kitchen window and shouted to the world: “Our soldier is back from the war!” He laughed and slammed the window shut again.

  Turning back to her guests, Kathleen asked, “How in the world did all you get together?” Kathleen asked. She turned to look straight through the walls toward the bathroom.

  They started talking and the house filled with sounds of friends and family. Instead of sitting on the couch, they walked around the guest areas of the house, looking at photos on the walls, hearing stories from Simi’s mother.

  “What am I in the kitchen for? You’re the woman!” Fulton teased from the kitchen.

  “Because you’re the man, and I run the house!” Kathleen teased him back.

  “This is so unreal,” Hila said.

  “This doesn’t happen,” Oceanna agreed. “That happens,” she said, indicating the people who left.

  “Maybe it’s a miracle,” Harry said, re-entering the living room.

  Simi came back into the living room after her and stopped the show.

  Harry went back over to her. They hugged, and Simi cried on her shoulder.

  Kathleen looked at Oceanna with raised eyebrows.

  “Double whammy, today, Kath,” Mason said. “She’s gay, too.”

  * * *

  A crowd had gathered around Wajia and Asfand’s T.V. They were eating and drinking, discussing the family’s personal reality show.

  “She’s gay, too!? I bet they get married later!” one woman said to the next.

  “Probably, that one girl was gay and changed her sex so she could get laid, and wore the panties and corrupted Hila! That was it,” a man said.

  “You’re an idiot,” a woman said to him.

  “So what happened in the beginning?” a woman asked the group.

  Another answered. “That one, the little one, was a man and now he’s a woman. And he was in the war—over here in Afghanistan—and he went home and we made him become a girl. And ‘she’ had a friend—”

  “The tall one—” another interjected.

  “—and the tall one wears panties, and Asfand’s son is among them in panties, too and walked in public in a parade in a ‘dress’—”

  Laughter and derision went through the room.

  Asfand sunk his face into his hands.

  “They’re probably ‘Demodats’ like Obama!” someone shouted. “Americans can do anything!”

  “I love that country.”

  “I hate that country.”

  “It’s probably the panties that got them all!” a man said. “Asfand! You dog!” He laughed and slapped Asfand on the back.

  * * *

  Kathleen laughed out loud and clapped her hands repeatedly. “You’re kidding!?” She laughed some more. “She’s gay?” she asked Harry. “You’re lesbian?” she asked Simi.

  “Well, I didn’t think so, but,” Simi looked at Harry. “Yes. Mom, she drives me wild!”

  “It all fits!” Kathleen said to anyone, to herself. “I can see it! It all makes sense, now! Things were so off before.” She turned to her guests. “She really did like girls, but not the ones who’d like him, before. You could feel it, you just knew.”

  Fulton came in from the kitchen with a dishtowel in his hands. “Knew what?”

  He looked at the way Simi and Harry were hugging. “Oh.”

  Folks seemed to begin to gravitate toward the dining room table.

  Harry led Simi over and took seats on the far side, looking back toward the living room.

  “You should have been here for her Senior Prom,” Kathleen said to them all. “Looking back, I think it would have worked out a lot better. Everything in her life was a fiasco, because of this in the background. The orientation was all wrong.”

  Kathleen looked at Simi in wonder. “’Her.’ ‘She.’ I’m going to have to re-write my whole history with you. Rethink everything. ‘Simi.’ I have a—daughter?”

  Simi looked too shy to nod. She blushed instead.

  “We’ve got to go shopping!” Kathleen said. “Finally I can ask someone other than your father about my hair!”

  “It always looks fine, Kath,” Fulton said.

  “See what I mean?” Kathleen asked Simi.

  Simi ran her fingers through her hair. “Mine needs something, too?”

  “And some new clothes,” Kathleen said. She looked at Simi. “Dresses?”

  “She does. She’s got nothing,” Mason said.

  “I don’t do dresses, Mom,” Simi said.

  “Honey, they’re beautiful!” Kathleen said.

  “All she seems to want is her little bag of things she’s carried on the back of her bike,” Hila said.

  “Great! We’re on.” Kathleen said, as if Simi had agreed. “You’ve— I don’t mean to ask— I mean I don’t mean to pry— I don’t mean be intrusive. But have you had—?” She almost pointed to Simi’s groin.

  Simi blushed yet again and looked at Harry.

  “She does that at the drop of a hat,” Harry said. “No reason needed. Now somebody a’ probably turn on the faucet.”

  “Just over two months ago,” Oceanna said.

  “So, you’re a girl there, too?” Kathleen said.

  Simi looked away.

  “Yes,” Harry said strongly. “That’s a fact. And those I know.” She smiled at Simi, who covered her face with her hands.

  “Will you guys stop it?” Simi asked.

  “Did it hurt?” Kathleen asked.

  The look on Simi’s face showed it did. It was a major ordeal. “They give you drugs, but—”

  “I should have been there!” Kathleen said.

  “I’d have been too embarrassed,” Simi said. “I think it’s better to just meet me anew and not have those images in your head.”

  “Not for me!” Kathleen said to everyone at the table. “My baby goes to the hospital, I want to be there! Let me tell you! My little girl— I have a little girl.”

  Simi’s smile was broad and genuine.

  Mason started laughing at Simi. “Ooooo, kay!” he said. “Life is without a plan, let me tell you. I never thought—”

  “Me neither,” Fulton said, sticking his nose out of the kitchen. “Not even an hour ago, and look at us.”

  “You got enough food for everyone?” Oceanna asked Fulton. “We’re more than you expected.”

  Fulton disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged
with a large roast in a casserole dish surrounded by carrots and potatoes.

  “Sure do!” he said. “Didn’t know you were comin’, but Sunday is cook day. Made this up for a whole week, so we got plenty!” He sat it in the middle of the table.

  When they were all seated, Fulton was at the head of the table next to Simi on his right. “Let us pray,” he said.

  They all held hands.

  “Father, who is here with us today,” Fulton began, “you brought our son back—” Fulton’s voice choked a little.

  Oceanna’s eyes weren’t entirely closed. She saw small tears forming at the corners of Fulton’s eyes.

  “—our daughter—I’m so sorry—from the war, and—” he choked, “Thank you so very much. We thought we’d lost her. She was lost, and then she was found. She could have been killed, but you brought her back better than she was when she left, in your wisdom, Heavenly Father. In your wisdom, a way was found.

  “And thank you, Father, for her friends who helped bring her home to us.” Fulton squeezed Hila’s hand on his left. “We’re thankful to you for everything! You’ve made this family whole again, we missed her so much. She’s back! I just can’t believe it. In Jesus’ name we pray.”

  Fulton, Kathleen, Mason and Simi all said, “Amen” together.

  The rest acknowledged the prayer in their own way to be supportive of friends.

  “Miracles can sooooo change your life,” Kathleen said.

  “My parents had trouble with me, too,” Harry said. “And my job and my friends.”

  “Not in this house,” Fulton said. “She’s a miracle from God, and we’ll love her for the rest of her life. You, too, if you come around.”

  “I’m Jewish,” Harry said, “And experienced. I’m no pushover for Sunday kindness.”

  Fulton got up, went around to Harry—two to his right—hugged her from behind and kissed her on the head. “And you’ll have to put up with that here, too!”

  CHAPTER

  16

  They had a joyous Sunday lunch. Way too much food was eaten, but with considerable satisfaction. People talked, asked questions of each other, made jokes, and got to know one another. Phone and address information was exchanged along with more than a few photos.

  Later in the afternoon, they all stood in the front yard, saying goodbye.

  “But Mom, I’m all grown up, now,” Simi protested.

  “You don’t have an apartment, yet, dear!” Kathleen said. “You can’t stay here?”

  “Staying with me will be fine,” Harry said. “No rush on the apartment.”