Some Assembly Required

by Arin Andrews

  “It wasn’t my fault. It was just nature handing me something that wasn’t fair. I couldn’t look in the mirror without wanting to cry.”

  I knew exactly what she meant.

  Her mother, a woman named Jazzlyn, came across as supersupportive of Katie’s transition. In fact, she seemed awesome. The article said she even took Katie out shopping for girls’ clothes.

  I looked up at Mom, and for once she wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. She seemed so preoccupied that I probably could have slipped away and found Darian. Instead I followed her eyes and realized that they were glued to all the little girls running around in tutus, and the moms fixing their hair and putting makeup on them.

  She’s going to need time, I thought.

  But I had faith that she’d come around, maybe even become like this woman Jazzlyn. She had to. Or she was going to lose me. I could still scarcely believe that I’d actually had the courage to tell her, and now that I had, there was no going back. I needed her to help me, because I had no one else to turn to. She’d been willing to do so much for me when she’d believed she had a little girl, and I prayed that she’d be just as willing to help me figure out life as her teenage son.

  The alternative was too huge and scary to comprehend. I’d read so many heartbreaking stories online about trans kids who came out to their families and were rejected and tossed out onto the street. I didn’t think Mom would ever go that far, but I also knew that it would destroy me to live in a home where I was forced to be someone I wasn’t. I had to become the person I was supposed to be.

  When we all finished our dances and the final curtain fell, I made eye contact with Darian from across the room and held up three fingers. She did the same, and turned around. I knew that she was crying.

  On the ride home Mom asked, “Did you decide to tell me that you’re transgender tonight because you knew you wouldn’t be seeing Darian after this?”

  “No,” I told her. “I’ve been doing a lot of research, and I needed to finally get it off my chest. I figured now that summer is coming up, maybe we can start talking about it, without all the pressure of school.”

  She was silent the rest of the ride home. When we got to the house, I remembered the article about Katie that Darian had given me. I dug it out of my bag and pressed it into her hand.

  “Here. Read this,” I said. “It might help you understand. This isn’t abnormal—there are a lot of other people out there like me.”

  She glanced down at it and nodded. But on my way up the stairs to my room, I caught her shoving it, unread, into a drawer.

  9

  I managed to sneak a call to Darian from Susan’s house a couple of days later.

  “I told Mom,” I whispered. “That I’m trans.”

  “You’re kidding me,” she said. “Did she freak out? Was it because of the article?”

  “No, that’s the weird thing. I told her on the ride over before you even gave it to me. I didn’t get a chance to tell you before she came into the dressing room. She hasn’t brought it up since, though. She just took it in and then didn’t respond. I even gave her Katie’s story to read when we got home, but I don’t think she’s looked at it. Thanks for that, by the way.”

  “Well, I’m damn proud of you,” she said. “So what’s next?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Every day that goes by that Mom doesn’t mention it, I get more depressed. She can’t see me for who I am. On top of that, school would lynch me if they knew, and I’m not allowed to see you . . .”

  I stopped talking, and we sat there in silence for a few minutes.

  “Emerald?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  “No.”

  “Talk to me.”

  I could hear my cousins running through the house around me. Something thumped loudly against a wall, followed by a small crash and several screams, everyone blaming the other for whatever mishap had just occurred.

  They all sounded so alive. So normal.

  Depression poured over me. Why hadn’t Mom brought it up yet? I had thought coming out to her was going to change everything. I knew she’d need time to get used to the idea, but I hadn’t considered that who I really was might be ignored.

  “I don’t have a place here anymore,” I said slowly. “I don’t see the point.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They all think I’m someone I’m not. And I try to tell them the truth without words, by the way I dress when I’m at home, and by the way I talk, and the things I do. But they still don’t see it. It’s like being invisible. And now that I’ve finally admitted it to Mom, it hasn’t made a difference. I’m still invisible. Stuck inside this . . . thing.”

  I put my hand on one of my breasts, trying to flatten it with my palm while gritting my teeth. I pushed until it hurt, bringing tears to my eyes.

  “I hate it,” I whispered. “I hate myself. Being alive isn’t worth this.”

  “Emerald . . .”

  “I gotta go,” I said abruptly, and hung up the phone. I couldn’t talk about it anymore. It was too painful. I sucked the tears back in, tried to bury the dark thoughts. But it didn’t work. Whatever progress I’d made mentally by joining CAP no longer helped. I retreated back into my head and shut the world out.

  Darian was so freaked out by our conversation that she called Susan and told her that I might be suicidal. Susan assumed my depression was because Mom was keeping me apart from Darian, and immediately confronted her. Mom cornered me in return.

  “Isn’t the Prozac helping?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this bad?”

  “Why would I?” I said dully. “You’re the one keeping me away from Darian. And you know that’s not the only problem.”

  She refused to meet my eye, and decided to take me to a new shrink to see if my meds needed adjusting.

  The morning of our appointment with the psychiatrist, I dressed in my usual uniform of khaki shorts, a T-shirt, and my hair pulled back in a ponytail, with a bandana around my forehead. We walked into the doctor’s office, and I slid down on one side of the couch with my arms crossed, and glared, while Mom sat on the other, her back straight and her purse clutched in her lap.

  “Emerald has been really depressed, and I think she needs some help,” Mom said.

  “Depressed?” the psychiatrist asked, looking at me, then Mom, then me again. I watched him take in my outfit. “Anything in particular that you’re depressed about?”

  I glared at Mom.

  “I’m sensing some tension between the two of you,” he prodded gently.

  Mom sighed, giving in. “Emerald has a crush on a girl, and I haven’t been letting her see her.”

  “It’s not fair,” I said lamely.

  “So you’re gay, Emerald?” he asked.

  I froze, and then just nodded. There was no way I was telling this stranger that I was trans.

  Mom looked like she wanted to bolt toward the door. He turned to her. “And you’re not so happy about all of this.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve been exactly where you are,” he said kindly. “I have a gay son. And I was not happy about it at all when he came out to me.”

  She looked at him hopefully.

  “But here’s the thing,” he continued. “That’s who he is. There is nothing that I can do to change it. It took me some time to come around, but I’m so happy that I finally did. I took the time to listen to him and see the world through his eyes. He’s in his twenties now, and our relationship has never been better. I think what you two need is some family therapy, and I know just the person for it. Would you be willing to work together on this?”

  We looked at each other. I nodded, and then she did too. It wasn’t a giant breakthrough or anything, but I knew that this doctor had opened a small door for us that had the potential to get us to a better place.

  And that’s how we met our family therapist, Dr. Benton. We saw her once a week
, alternating between one of us having a thirty-minute session first, and then meeting with her together for the second half hour. But I couldn’t tell her I was trans yet either. She was essentially still a stranger, and I felt like I couldn’t talk about it with anyone besides Darian. And Mom wasn’t able to talk about it with Dr. Benton, because she was still too scared to fully accept it herself. We had reached a stalemate.

  “It’s okay to come out as gay,” Dr. Benton told me during our first session. “But you should also respect that it might take your mom a little bit of time to come around. Don’t go blowing the hinges off that closet door.”

  I didn’t see why I had to be the one making any concessions, but in our joint sessions Dr. Benton pushed Mom, too. Dr. Benton even convinced Mom that it was good for me to talk to Darian on the phone every now and then, and that it was important for me to be able to interact with other gay teenagers.

  Darian was the one who had told me about Openarms Youth Project. She had been hanging out there for some time and encouraged me to join her. They had a Wednesday night dinner with group therapy afterward. Thursdays they hosted a movie or craft night, and every Saturday there was a dance. I left out the detail about the monthly drag shows when I told Mom about OYP.

  Darian had told me that there was a church located next door to it, so I really played that fact up when I asked Mom if I could go, thinking that it might make the whole thing somehow seem safer to her. I actually played it up so much that she mistakenly got the impression that OYP was affiliated with the church. It’s totally not—the church is Baptist, and there’s a big fence separating the two structures. But she finally agreed to let me go to one of the Wednesday night dinners as long as Darian didn’t go too.

  I knew that Mom had another reason for letting me go, aside from Dr. Benton’s advice. She was so uncomfortable with Darian that she was willing to set me up with a group of strangers rather than have me spend time alone with Darian. But Darian and I were starting to drift a bit anyway. Never being able to see someone takes its toll. Plus there was suddenly so much change going on between me and Mom that I was distracted and not putting as much effort into trying to talk to Darian as I had before, even though I was now allowed to. She asked me about my distance, so we agreed to meet in secret at OYP my first night there.

  We almost got busted. Mom ended up walking in with me, but thankfully Darian hadn’t arrived yet. The room was filled with kids who looked nothing like me—lots of emo clothes and haircuts, but I headed straight toward them and introduced myself. Mom marched right up to an older man who was setting up food.

  “That’s my daughter,” I overheard her say as she pointed to me. “She’s never been here before.”

  I cringed a little, but none of the kids seemed to care. A cute girl with supershort blond hair came up to me. “I’m Cassie,” she said, oozing confidence. “Why don’t you sit with me?”

  Another girl named Tanya came up and introduced herself too. She was blond as well and had hair even shorter than Cassie’s. I actually mistook her for a guy at first, and wondered if she might be trans too. She reeked of pot and was obviously stoned out of her mind, but she was funny and self-deprecating in a way that made me feel immediately comfortable around her. As soon as Darian arrived, though, I excused myself and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with her. But something was off between us. We didn’t seem to be connecting as strongly, and I was pretty sure it was my fault. My eyes kept wandering around the room, checking everyone out. I couldn’t believe that there were this many gay kids in Tulsa. Where had they been hiding this whole time?

  I suddenly realized that I’d been staring at Cassie while Darian had been talking to me. Cassie caught me looking and winked. I blushed and quickly turned back to Darian.

  “Sorry. What was that?” I asked.

  “You should see if your mom will let you come back on Saturdays, to the dance parties. I still can’t believe you’re actually here.”

  “Me neither,” I said. I snuck a glance back at Cassie. She was still staring.

  Mom started letting me go to OYP pretty regularly, but Darian couldn’t always make it. She was working a full-time summer job, and I continued to make new casual friends of my own, but I mostly hung around with Cassie and Tanya.

  Being around other kids like me over that summer started to make me dread having to return to Lincoln in the fall. Almost everyone I met at OYP was sweet and kind and dedicated to helping others. I was too embarrassed to tell any of them that I went to a Christian school, thinking that they would make fun of me, but the weird thing is that they embodied all of the characteristics that make up the fundamental basis of what Christians are supposed to be. Unlike some of the teachers and a lot of the students at Lincoln.

  So I started to push back hard once the school year started. I wanted to show everyone at Lincoln that they were wrong in their homophobic beliefs, and I genuinely thought I could help teach them.

  Lincoln has something called the Question Box. It’s basically exactly what it sounds like—a box where anyone can write down any sort of question and put it inside anonymously, and the Bible study teacher reads the question out loud and gives an answer.

  One morning I slipped a piece of paper inside. Later that day in Bible study, the teacher held it up.

  “We’ve got a question here,” she said. “And I think it’s an important one. It reads: ‘What if someone were 100 percent Christian and spent their entire life devoted to only helping others, but they were also gay. Would they still go to hell?’ ”

  Everyone’s eyes turned to me, and half the class shot their hands up into the air. The teacher ignored them.

  “The answer is yes,” she said. “The Bible clearly states that being gay is a sin. And I would suggest that whoever questions this should spend less time trying to help others and try to save themselves first.”

  I sunk down in my seat, angry and embarrassed. But a few days later I wrote another one.

  “ ‘What if a gay person were also a missionary and managed to actually convert hundreds and hundreds of people to Christianity?’ ” the teacher read. “ ‘Would they still go to hell?’ ”

  She put my piece of paper down and sighed.

  “Spreading the word of God is without a doubt one of the most important things we can do as Christians. But if you’re not working on being a Christian yourself, it doesn’t matter. The gay person would still go to hell when he or she died.”

  I wrote a few more, pointing out all the weird things people do all the time that the Bible says will send you to hell, like eating pork or wearing clothes with two different kinds of thread. They were ignored, and eventually I just gave up.

  • • •

  The day that I got kicked out of Lincoln was beautiful.

  I mean the actual day itself, not the event. It was unseasonably warm and sunny for October, but mentally it was the darkest day of my life up until that point.

  I didn’t even know it was happening until it was all over; my mom had to fill me in. She told me that the vice principal had called her the day before and asked her to come for a meeting that Friday. They pulled out all the letters I’d written for the Question Box about the Bible’s contradictions when it came to homosexuality, and put them on the desk in front of her, using them as proof that I was gay myself, even though the notes were supposed to have been anonymous. The vice principal also said another student had claimed that I’d confessed that I was gay, and that homosexuality was a violation of their honor code and grounds for immediate expulsion. They made her feel like she was the worst mother on earth, that it was all her fault.

  When school let out that day, she was waiting for me. I got into the car and knew immediately that something was wrong. I could feel it emanating off her. As we pulled out of the parking lot, she kept her eyes straight ahead and said, “They’ve asked you to leave. That was your last day at Lincoln.”

  “Huh?” I asked, confused. “Like, right now? What a
bout my locker?” For some reason that was all that registered at first.

  “They’ll pack it up and send it in a box.”

  The reality refused to settle in. I had just ordered my letter jacket for track. I was training for another state run later in the year. But I was a Spotlight Student of the Year, I thought stupidly. Never mind that they were actually right about my violating their twisted honor code, but it was the fact that I had dared to even ask questions that they’d used as the foundation for the expulsion.

  This was not what Jesus was about. I knew it in my heart. Every single one of his teachings was based on love and acceptance. And this massive organization that claimed to do all of its work in his name was throwing me to the curb because of who I was. None of it made sense.

  The only thing that did make sense was that this was the last rejection of myself that I could take. It was clear to me that I was worthless. A disgusting degenerate that wasn’t fit to be around other people. All of the mental progress I’d made going to OYP, and in my weekly therapy meetings with Mom, vanished.

  The sun’s cheeriness felt like it was mocking me. The world outside was shiny and normal, but the inside of the car had never been darker. When we pulled into our driveway, I got out and walked quickly ahead of Mom. As I passed through the kitchen, I grabbed a butcher knife out of the drawer and went to my room. I tore off my uniform, that disgusting plaid skirt, and hurled it into a corner. I considered taking it out back and burning it, and for a moment I felt happy, realizing I’d never have to wear it again.

  From downstairs I heard the sound of Mom’s bedroom door shutting, and the second of joy passed. I threw my shirt into the same corner and pulled on some sweatpants and a baggy sweater. The full realization of what had just happened finally began to sink in. I looked at the knife, and light from the window flashed off it, blinding me for a second. And then I remembered that I did still have a place that accepted me. The Civil Air Patrol.