And She Was

by Jessica Verdi

  “Yeah, let’s keep driving. You can sleep if you want.”

  “Okay …”

  “But first can you look for a hotel for us to stay at when we get there?”

  Sam opens a new window on his phone, and a few minutes later he’s booked a room. It’s in Philadelphia, twenty minutes from Cherry Hill, and it had a low rating on TripAdvisor, but it was the cheapest room available on such short notice.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened now?” Sam asks. “No more laws to break or Google searches to do first?”

  I watch the dotted white lines of the three-lane highway pass on either side of the car. He’s going to need to know eventually, and it should probably be before he gets fed up with me and changes his mind about the trip. If the roles were reversed, I don’t think I would have been nearly as patient as he has.

  I shake my head faintly. “You’re not going to believe it when I tell you.”

  He waits.

  I take a deep breath. “Mellie is … transgender. Or transsexual. Or both? I’m not a hundred percent sure how it works.”

  This time Sam’s entire body jerks toward me. “She’s what?”

  “She was born a boy. Or … that’s not how she phrased it, but … you know what I mean.”

  “Whoaaa.” The word is a never-ending whisper.

  “Yeah.”

  “But she looks … I had no idea. Did you? I mean, did you ever suspect …?”

  “Oh yeah, all the time.” I shoot him a look.

  “Sorry.”

  But another memory sneaks up on me. An awful heat wave had descended on western New York the summer I was thirteen, and my mom and I spent her days off at the public pool in the next town over. Sometimes Sam would come with us, but on the days he didn’t, I would beg Mellie to come in the water with me. I hated swimming by myself, and she knew that. But she refused every time, insisting she was fine sitting under her umbrella with her book, her one-piece bathing suit mostly hidden under her caftan, untouched by water and chlorine. I was so mad at her for not being willing to even wade halfway in. Looking back, I wonder if she refused to go in the water because she was uncomfortable being in a swimsuit in public. There were hints; I just never knew how to decipher them.

  “She’s been lying to me my whole life, Sam. She’s been lying to everyone.”

  He takes a second and then says, “So she adopted you.”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Trans women can have babies? I didn’t know that.”

  Oh, Sam. “No. They can’t.”

  “So …” He still doesn’t get it.

  A pair of headlights comes up fast behind us, and I switch to the right lane to let them pass. I’m grateful for the few extra seconds before I have to say … what I have to say. “So,” I continue once the speeding car’s taillights are far in the distance, “she’s not my biological mother. She’s my father. The man in the pictures, the father line on the birth certificate … Marcus Hogan. That’s her.”

  I glance at him just in time to watch it all click. His eyes go so wide you can see the whites all around his irises. “Holy shit.”

  My heart is pounding. Sam’s reaction has brought it all to the surface again for me. All I say is, “Yeah.”

  “Tell me everything,” he says.

  Mom’s final request sounds in my ears, but I don’t care. Sam and I never keep secrets from each other.

  I tell him all I know as I drive. About Mellie being Marcus, and how she was a pro player, and about Celeste and her family, and how Mellie transitioned after Celeste died, how she spent our money on the hormones and procedures, and how she ran away from my grandparents and changed our names so they wouldn’t find us.

  My phone vibrates with one, then two, then three calls. I ignore it.

  “So I was kind of right about her kidnapping me. She stole me away, and lied to me and the world about who I am.” Now that I’m talking, it’s hard to stop. Every feeling that enters me comes right out again in a rush of words and tears and snot. I’m not even fully talking to Sam anymore. I’m talking to me, the highway, the universe. There’s something validating in saying it all out loud, as if somewhere between my heart and the tip of my tongue, between my brain and my lips, these vaporous, unnamed things inside me are given a shape and a name, and made real.

  “And you know,” I say, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my hoodie, “I think the worst part is, she didn’t have one good reason for why. Why it was so important that she do all of this. How she was able to justify all the deception. Even as she was speaking directly to my face, confessing this long overdue truth, she still wasn’t considering my position in any of it.”

  I glance at the speedometer and realize I’m going thirty miles an hour over the speed limit. Not surprising, considering my whole body is so tense that my foot is practically forcing the gas pedal as far forward as it will go. I ease up, and we slow down a bit.

  We’re nearly halfway to Philadelphia when Sam asks, “So what are you going to say to your grandparents when we get there?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m just going to introduce myself and see what happens?”

  “They’ll probably welcome you with open arms. I bet they’ve missed you.”

  I consider that. He’s right—Mellie didn’t only ruin my life with her selfishness. She took the Pembrokes’ granddaughter away from them. The one thing left to remind them of their dead daughter, gone.

  The photos of Celeste, blond and joyful and not much older than I am now, flash before my eyes. I wonder if I’m like her in any other way, if there’s anything similar about us apart from looks. Gestures, facial expressions, likes, dislikes. Maybe Ruth and William can help me find those things.

  Sam and I lapse into silence again. There are very few other cars out on the road now, and it feels like it’s just our little box on wheels and us, pioneering through the night.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Sam says after a while, almost to himself.

  “I know,” I murmur.

  “This is Mellie we’re talking about.”

  “I know,” I say again.

  “Mom’s best friend, kick-ass nurse, neat-freak Mellie.”

  “Yep.”

  “So weird.”

  “So weird,” I agree, though I can think of a lot of other adjectives too.

  My phone vibrates in the cup holder again. This time I check the screen. All the calls have been from Mellie. It’s 2:30 in the morning; looks like she’s not getting any sleep tonight, either. I send it to voicemail, and drop the phone back in its resting place.

  “You okay?” Sam asks.

  “I’m in top physical shape, Samarjit. Want to have a push-up battle?” I might be more tired than I thought. I’m suddenly feeling a little slap happy.

  He laughs. “Yeah, okay, but what about mentally?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “Change of subject?”

  I glance at him. There’s a hint of my favorite Sam smile there—the one where his right eyebrow lifts slightly higher than the left—and I’m overcome with gratitude that he’s here with me right now. “Yes, please.”

  “Did you know that for every person on Earth there are one point six billion ants?”

  I burst out laughing. The shock of it to my system jolts some of the tension loose. “What?”

  “But!” he continues, grinning. “If you total all the ants together and all the humans together, each group will weigh about the same.”

  I nod, mock seriously. “And where did you learn this very important fact?”

  “Online somewhere. I thought it was a good dose of perspective.”

  “Perspective about what?”

  “I don’t know … that we’re not as significant as we think we are?”

  I let that marinate. “Okay, now I’m depressed.”

  Sam chuckles. “But it got your mind off things for a minute there, didn’t it?”

  I pu
nch him in the arm. “It did. Thanks.”

  “Any time.”

  But I’m a little jealous of those zillions and zillions of ants. They always have one another, and they always have a clear goal. There’s not a lot of room for mystery or melancholy or loneliness in their little ant lives. And if they get stepped on, well, then at least they don’t die with any regrets.

  Sam spends the last hour of the drive asleep, and I have to put on some music to keep me awake. It’s amazing how quickly you can go from wired to exhausted. Especially when you’re at the end of the longest, hardest day of your life and you’re confused about everything, not the least of which is your own place in the world.

  We get to Philadelphia—the city where I lived for the first year of my life, apparently—just after four in the morning. I came to Philly once on a school field trip, and had assumed back then that it was my first time there. Yet another instance where Mellie could have told me about our past but chose not to.

  I pull into the hotel parking lot and turn off the car. Sam doesn’t stir, and I don’t wake him just yet. Gingerly, as if it’s a baby alligator that must be handled in just the right way, I lift my phone from the cup holder and swipe it on. Eleven missed calls and four voicemails, all from Mellie.

  As I debate listening to them, the screen lights up with a new text message.

  Please just let me know you’re okay.

  I sigh, and type back before I can talk myself out of it. I’m fine. Sam’s with me.

  Her reply comes immediately. Thank you for letting me know. I love you.

  I clench my teeth. She doesn’t get to just tell me she loves me and not have to go to the effort of actually showing it. That’s what led us to this point in the first place. I think back to what I said to Sam, and my thumbs flash across the keyboard.

  You still haven’t given me one good reason WHY. Why it was so important that you transition when you did. Why you thought it would be okay to take me from my grandparents. Why you kept it secret from me. It must have taken a LOT of energy to hide it all, and yet you kept making that choice, over and over, for all these years. You must have had a reason. Something more than a flimsy “I was scared” or “My feelings were hurt.” But when you had the chance to help me understand, you got defensive. I have my own answers to find now. My own story to track down. Please stop calling me.

  I turn the phone off before she can respond.

  The hotel isn’t horrible, but it’s not great, either. The sheets seem clean and the locks on the door work, but it’s cramped, with a threadbare, stained carpet, a vague mildew smell, and a window-unit air conditioner that makes so much noise we decide to keep it off. I guess this is what eighty dollars a night will get you.

  Sam and I are side by side in matching double beds. He’s fallen asleep on the couch next to me tons of times during our movie nights, and our moms used to put us down to nap together when we were little, but this is different. We’re in our pajamas, under the covers, in the dark, just feet away from each other, with no one else around. There’s something surprisingly intimate about brushing your teeth at the same sink, taking turns changing in the same bathroom, and crawling into bed knowing you’re about to sleep through the night in the same room. It’s a glimpse into a part of each other’s lives that we’ve never really seen before, despite how close we are. I hadn’t considered the logistics of all this when I asked Sam to book us a room … but then, I had other things on my mind.

  “Good night, Dara,” he murmurs, his face mushed up against the pillow. “Dream good dreams.” He’s asleep again in a matter of minutes, snoring lightly, one leg kicked out of the covers, his chest rising and falling in perfect rhythm.

  The glowing red numbers of the clock seem to pulse with the stuttered tempo of my own breaths; I’m too awake to close my eyes, and too exhausted to focus on anything except the uneasiness that has set up camp in my gut.

  I roll over to stare at the dark ceiling and walk myself through an exercise that sometimes helps me fall asleep the night before a big match. I go through the alphabet in my mind, taking time to visualize each letter, picturing it so clearly that if I shrunk down and went inside my own head, I’d be able to feel the solidity of the letter’s corners, climb up its spine, slide down its slopes and curves. When A has been perfectly constructed, I move on to B. Usually, by the time I get to H or I, I’ve succeeded in distracting myself enough that my body is relaxed, my bothersome thoughts have faded away, and I’m able to sleep. Tonight, I make it to W.

  The next morning, I’m given the gift of one perfect moment. I’ve mostly made my way out of sleep and am warm and snuggly in bed, fresh, rested, the sun warm on my face. It’s a blissful place. My lips curl into a smile all on their own.

  It lasts for about two seconds. Then yesterday catches up with me and my eyes fly open.

  Sam is awake and sitting cross-legged in his bed, his laptop propped up on a pillow in front of him. His hair is sticking up in a thousand directions.

  He smiles when he sees I’m awake. “Morning. I was about to wake you up. We have to check out of here in a half hour.”

  I check the clock—it’s 11:30 in the morning. “Holy crap.” I’ve never slept this late in my life. If I were home right now, I would have already eaten a bowl of granola with almond milk and two servings of fruit, and I’d be at the gym, soaked through with sweat.

  But today is not a normal day. Today is the day I finally get grandparents. Now that the initial shock of yesterday’s events has … not faded, but … settled, the idea of knocking on the Pembrokes’ door is a lot scarier than it was last night. Maybe I should have turned up in the middle of the night, while I was still high on adrenaline and fueled by fury.

  I’m antsy to get up and move. But this hotel doesn’t have a gym. And even though the area we’re staying in seems relatively safe—lots of office buildings—I can’t help thinking about the fact that Celeste was killed while running on this very city’s streets. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’m kind of scared to go out there by myself.

  “Want to go for a quick run with me?” I ask Sam, not getting my hopes up. He’s not exactly the athletic type.

  “Ha!” he barks. “You’re hilarious.”

  Yep. Expected that. He’d probably stop every three feet to take pictures of the flowers.

  “I really need to work out.”

  “You can take a day off,” he says.

  “I can, but I shouldn’t.”

  He gets a mischievous glimmer in his eye, and in one swift action, places his laptop on the nightstand and pops up to his feet on the bed. He starts jumping, his hair lifting off his forehead with each propulsion upward. “Come on!” he shouts. “It’s the cool new way to burn calories. All the kids are doing it.”

  I have to admit it does look sort of fun. I spring up and begin to jump too. As we bounce, something deep inside me, something unfamiliar, starts to glow with delight. I don’t know if I’ve ever done this before, even when I was a little kid.

  The beds squeak and groan under the pressure.

  We’re laughing like crazy now. He jumps from his bed to mine, and back again. I do the same. I switch it up—a cannonball, a toe-touch, a midair somersault. A few times, on a few particularly excellent bounces, the top of my head grazes the ceiling.

  “So,” I say, out of breath but still going, “what does one wear to meet their grandparents for the first time?”

  He slows his jumps and gives me a smile that says he knows I’m a lot more nervous than I’m letting on. “I don’t think it matters. I wore jeans and a T-shirt the first time we went to Mumbai to meet my dad’s family.”

  “Yeah, but they knew you were coming. And you’d Skyped together a million times. I’m about to surprise the hell out of these people. I think I need to wear a dress.”

  He gives me an incredulous look. “Do you even own a dress?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. And I brought it with me, Mr. Know-it-all.”

 
; Sam tries to do a cheerleader-type fancy leap from one bed to the other, but doesn’t quite stick the landing. His feet catch only the corner of my bed, and he slips and crashes down to the decidedly less-springy carpet.

  I end my current bounce on my butt, scoot to the edge of the mattress, and peer down at him.

  “You okay?”

  He looks embarrassed but unhurt. “I call that maneuver the You Think I Didn’t Mean to Do That but I Totally Did.”

  I laugh and pat his knee patronizingly. “Not everyone can be a born athlete. But don’t worry, Sammy, you’re talented in other ways.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He stands up and brushes invisible dirt off the seat of his pajama pants. “I’m hungry.” He holds out a hand and pulls me to standing too. He’s breathing heavily, and his face is flushed. His The Secret Life of Walter Mitty T-shirt is rumpled and snug at the same time, and I notice he actually has some muscles under there. I have no idea how, considering he never works out and last summer at Bethany Milford’s pool party (the one he invited me to as his date because Bethany had forgotten I was part of the incoming senior class too) he was still pretty scrawny.

  We take turns showering, and I put on the lavender jersey dress I bought months ago on a whim but never wore. I even dry my hair with the blow-dryer attached to the wall in the bathroom. Sam raises an eyebrow when I emerge. It’s not like I’m wearing a ball gown, for crying out loud, but this probably is the most dressed up he’s ever seen me—I didn’t go to the prom (latching myself on to Sam and Sarah’s date like a superfluous appendage wasn’t exactly appealing), and I wore shorts and a tank top under my graduation gown.

  “You look nice,” he says, but I can’t tell if he really means it or if he’s just being a good friend.

  The man at the front desk says it’s no problem to extend our stay another night. I don’t know how long things will take at the Pembrokes’, or even how it’s going to go, so it makes sense to guarantee ourselves a home base to come back to later tonight. One less thing to worry about.