by Renee James
I think of my apartment as an oasis of calm and comfort. I occupy the first-floor unit of my two-flat. Both units are spacious and have a latter-day grandeur to them—high ceilings, lots of windows, hardwood floors, airy rooms. My decorating tastes are eclectic, and reflect the influence of Betsy and Robbie, who lived here for the greatest year of my life, and Phil, who stayed here for most of the greatest nights and mornings of my life. The living room is done in warm earth tones and comfortable furniture. Fluffy area rugs in orange and soft browns contrast gently with maple floors and tables in a variety of hardwoods. The walls are a pale orange with white window frames and wainscoting, and they display a schizophrenic variety of wall art, from prairie landscapes to Parisian cityscapes to photos of the most fabulous hairdos I’ve done myself or seen done. Like I say, my tastes are eclectic.
The kitchen has modern appliances, but with maple cabinets that hint at American colonial design, and butcherblock countertops. Again, eclectic.
My bedroom is appointed for comfort—soft colors, original oils from local artists depicting Chicago themes, a makeup table and dresser, and a cavernous walk-in closet because, even though I am fairly moderate in my purchases of clothing, I never throw anything away. I still have the minidress and fishnet hose I wore to my first party as Bobbi. That was my adolescent period, and I never wore the outfit again, but I keep it as a reminder not to judge too harshly my transgender sisters who are coming out now, for the first time, and have to pass through that stage, too.
As I do my hair and makeup and get ready for the day, last night’s confrontation keeps surging back into my mind, even though I try to erase it. The thought that keeps coming back to me is: I’ve just pissed off another person. It seems to happen a lot lately, and Cecelia keeps warning me that one of these days, one of those people is going to seek retribution. Her nagging seems prophetic, somehow, and a chill runs through my body.
Images from that night long ago start to invade the present—I can’t push them back. A dark night. Taking a shortcut home through a dim-lit alley. Me, oblivious to everything but my developing body, working on my girl-walk, letting my hips sway a little as I entered the maw of the beast. I hear the footsteps too late. I realize a man is stalking me from behind just as another appears like a goblin from the shadows, burly and nylon-masked, his features distorted and fearsome, grabbing me like a python seizing a monkey.
They carry me deeper into the shadows. I can still feel them slugging me in the face and stomach, kicking me in the crotch—enough of my male genitalia left that the blow paralyzes me. More blows and kicks. I’m splayed out on a packing crate. Being violated. Their low-volume laughter as I’m violated again, my body raw and bleeding. More kicks and punches.
Their message from John Strand. Be careful who you piss off.
Their laughter fades into the night as they leave. Me left in a puddle of my own blood and waste, wishing I was dead, knowing for certain I was not human.
Time will never sweep away this memory. It will live in me like a virus that alternates between dormancy and soul-searing eruptions. It will be part of me for as long as I have a mind.
When I open the door, Betsy and Robbie sweep into the apartment as if a dam had broken and they are riding the front wave.
“Hi, Aunt Bobbi.” Robbie bolts past me, hauling her suitcase to the bedroom that has been hers since she and Betsy lived with me. Robbie is a precocious eleven-year-old, lithe and athletic, somewhere between cute and beautiful, and at that stage of development where she still plays with dolls but she also watches shows about pubescent girls who are getting interested in boys.
Betsy gives me her mischievous, big-sister smile and blows past me just like her daughter did. She heads straight into my bedroom to look for evidence of last night’s orgy. Her face is animated and filled with good humor. She looks like a fashion model, still, even as she nears her fortieth birthday, dark hair in a graduated bob that ripples and glimmers with each step she takes, large, almond eyes with long, thick lashes, Mediterranean skin as flawless as a sunrise, an almost perfect body that I would sell my soul to have as my own.
I follow her into the bedroom.
“You destroyed the evidence,” she says, a mock accusation.
“If only that had been necessary,” I reply.
“Are you going to be able to handle Robbie?” She’s teasing, but I can tell, she wants a straight answer. She and Robbie have never been apart this long before.
“I promise. No distractions.” I say it without humor. I’m as devoted to this child as Betsy is. My official status is doting aunt, but really, I’m more like a fairy godmother, and I don’t mind if you emphasize the fairy part.
Betsy remarried around the time I was transitioning. She and her husband went out of their way to support me. Don was kind of creeped out by me, but he was a good guy and Betsy insisted and we re-bonded as sisters. From the time of her conception, I connected with Robbie. When Don wasn’t around, I used to talk to her softly when she was growing in Betsy’s womb, loving her as if she were my own child. It was calming for Betsy, and later in her pregnancy, it was calming for Robbie, too. When Robbie emerged into the world, she found my voice soothing and we formed a spiritual attachment to each other from the start.
Our bond got stronger after Don was killed in a car accident and Betsy lost everything in the Great Recession. She and Robbie lived with me for a year while Betsy got things back together. That was the year I had it all. I was a girl. I owned one of Chicago’s greatest beauty salons. I had a family I loved and a family that loved me back. I even had a leading man—someone I loved, not just a guy.
“No wild parties, promise?”
She’s teasing me again, but I repeat my promise because she needs to hear it again. Robbie is staying with me while Betsy jets off to Paris with her new love interest, a guy named Alex who’s a corporate big shot and appears nice enough, though he seems a little oily to me. Of course, Cecelia would point to my last few male encounters as proof I’m not exactly an expert in these matters.
“If anything happens, you will be the one to explain it to my parents.” Betsy says it with a grin. A worst-thing-that-could-ever-happen joke. The news media would call her parents “social conservatives”—but really, they’re middle-class, Midwestern Nazis. They didn’t like me when I was a man because I didn’t hate anyone.
You can’t even imagine how they feel about me now, a transsexual woman.
“I don’t need an incentive to dote on my niece,” I say. “But that’s a powerful one.”
I pour coffee and we go over Betsy’s itinerary and contact information, Robbie’s doctor, the phone numbers for the school, and on and on. Betsy is an organizer and a mom. Nothing is left to chance.
Robbie and I wave farewell to Betsy and watch her pull away. I put an arm around her as we walk up the steps to the front door. She’s a little weepy, I can hear it in her voice, but she’s also a worldly eleven-year-old, going on twenty-five, and isn’t about to admit it.
Inside, she starts to head for her room, but I stop her. “What are you up for this afternoon?”
“Nothing, really.” She says it like a snotty teenager would. “I’d like to be alone for a while.” She marches to her room like a commanding officer done talking to her unwashed subordinates.
I follow. Before she can close the door, I step inside. It’s a beautiful room done in pink and lavender with enough eggshell to keep it light. She’s long since outgrown the little-girl bed we had for her, and the new bed is adorned with linens and covers that bear no trace of the cartoon characters that were so much a part of her childhood. At least she let us get a frilly, girly bedspread and she’s still partial to the colors of her toddlerhood. I try not to push my issues on her, but truthfully, I experience these things with her as if I’m finally living the childhood I never had, the one where I was a girl with long hair and pretty dresses and slept in a cozy cotton nightie and was doted on by parents who loved me and thought I was cut
e.
“I could do your hair and makeup and we could go out to a fancy restaurant for dinner,” I offer. She’s already homesick for Mom. I can see it. I don’t want her being alone right now. She has always loved it when I do her hair. It makes her feel like a princess, which pleases us both. But it’s not working right now.
“I don’t think so, Aunt Bobbi.” She says it with a sort of royal poise that’s shocking. It has only been a week since I last saw her and she was still a little girl then. She read a story to her dolls and we had a tea party. Now, she’s waiting for me to leave the room.
“Okay, then we’re going for a walk.” I say it with the energy and insistence of a schoolteacher. I’m not giving her a chance to say no. I offer her sunscreen and a hat. She declines both, sighs that she doesn’t want to go. I insist, and I insist that she put on sunscreen. She refuses. I tickle her. She tries to be angry, but her inner little girl comes out. We laugh for a minute.
“She laughs!” I say. “It’s a sign.”
“Of what?” Robbie’s trying to resume her teen queen airs.
“That maybe you’re not too grown up to have fun.”
She stops a beat, surprised, then tries to grimace.
“Oh, come on, Princess,” I say. “Let’s go for a walk.
She stares at me, her face struggling to be solemn, but her little grin won’t be denied.
“Let’s do hair and makeup and go to a fancy restaurant,” she says.
Moments like this—and there are many of them—make me think we’re genetically linked. She’s the me who would have been if fate had given me a body to go with my female brain.
3
THE MORNING HAS been like a track meet, getting Robbie out to her school in Oak Park. She lagged and whined as I pulled her down the leafy sidewalk of my neighborhood, continued all the way through the storefronts on Halsted and Belmont, and settled into a sullen silence on the Red Line train. She started up again when we switched to the Blue Line for the run out to Oak Park.
“We can walk to the salon, Aunt Bobbi,” she started in. “I don’t want to go to school. I want to help in the salon. I can do shampoos and wash brushes and stuff.”
She has helped in the salon before, for an hour or so at a time. She loved it, and I’d love to cultivate her interest when she gets older, but today, she was going to school, come hell or high water.
Forty minutes after depositing Robbie at school, I’m finally walking into my beautiful salon. Most days, this is a transformative moment for me, like walking through a wormhole in space into a different reality, one festooned in blossoming flowers and soft music. It was like that the first time I came to work at Salon L’Elegance, a conflicted renegade from corporate life, not sure about my sexuality or my gender, not sure about my marriage, not sure about anything except I wanted to do hair, and I wanted it with the kind of passion that drives people to be priests or missionaries. I found myself here, first my inner artist, then my inner woman. When I came out, when I finally came out, it was the first place I ever really belonged, the only place on the planet I could forget how ugly I was and how strange I seemed to others and lose myself in precision cuts that rippled like water with every motion, complex colors that drew the eye into their depths like a beckoning sea, and sexy updos that blended sophistication and lust and vulnerability, like the women who wore them.
I’ve come a long way since my beginnings as a hairdresser, and my beginnings as a woman. I own the place. But this salon is still like heaven to me, an island of color and light and beautiful people, a congregation of brilliant artists who work in hair instead of oils.
The salon has undergone its own changes over the years. The business I bought was located on the ground floor of an office building, and every time the lease came up for renewal, the rental agent worked me over for more money with threats of casting us out. Cecelia convinced me to buy this building when the bottom fell out of the real estate market during the Great Recession. It’s a century-old, three-story brick building on a quiet stretch of Rush Street, with trees out front and cafés and restaurants all around.
By force of habit, I pause in the entry to observe the activity on the lower floor, a half-flight of stairs below, then the middle floor, a half-flight above. The lower floor has clients in four chairs and four fully engaged stylists supported by one assistant. I ascend to the middle floor where Samantha, my long-time assistant manager, runs the salon from a gleaming reception counter. The entire shop is done in a motif of white walls, chrome fixtures, and mirrors on every wall, a scheme that infuses the salon with natural light.
Bursts of color break up the sterility, flowers here, a painting there, a stream of ribbons between mirrors. Our staff wears black, white, and gray, the conservative neutrals of our profession, but we all dress with élan—some, an arty look, some, like me, a little extra cleavage and leg, all of us, elegant hair and perfect makeup. This is a high-end shop and we look the part.
As I reach the reception area, I can see that my morning will start with still more conflict. Cindy, a young stylist I fired last Saturday for chronic lateness and a sullen attitude, sits in reception with what has to be her boyfriend. She is young and blond and beautiful in a pouty sexpot sort of way. She has a smirk on her face like she just ate something that tastes awful. Her boyfriend, a thick, powerful hulk of a man, wears the impassive countenance of a dimwit. She’s here to ask for her job back, I suppose, and he’s here to hold her hand. They won’t be pleased by the results.
Another stylist talks with Samantha at the reception counter. Sam is retiring and the woman she’s talking to was one of the finalists for her job—the finalist who didn’t get it. Her name is Priscilla and her face is sour, too.
“Who’s first?” I ask Sam. Sam gestures to Priscilla. I greet her and we head for my office. Out of nowhere, a thick body looms in front of me, blocking out the light like an ominous cloud. It’s Cindy’s boyfriend. She’s hovering at his side, kind of a smirking Fae Wray to his King Kong. Cindy is here for revenge.
The man is as massive as a wall. I have to look up to see his eyes, me wearing three-inch heels. He has the bulges of a bodybuilder, tattoos all over his swarthy skin, and a fierce sneer on his face. Enough chest hair flows from his open shirt top to make an Arctic sweater.
Cindy peeks at me from his side, a sneaky smile on her face, like I’m about to get squashed and she gets to watch. I’m a little surprised. I’ve given her a lot of breaks, and a lot of support after a previous romance ended badly.
Kong crowds my personal space, his face inches from mine. I try to control my panic. Strength flows from his body like electricity. It envelopes me like a cocoon, reminding me of how weak I am, how I traded power for breasts and a butt. He can crush me. He can visualize it, and so can I.
But even though I’m afraid, I refuse to be intimidated. I’ve logged hundreds of hours of self-defense training since that terrible night in the alley to make sure the next person who tries to batter me pays a price.
I focus on defending myself. An esophagus blow would stop him like a gunshot, but he’s so close I don’t think I can get it off. I’ll never get a clean shot to his nose or eyes, either, and he’s too muscular for a karate fist to the solar plexus to work. That leaves a killer foot stomp. I’m wearing spike heels and I work out a lot. If I land the heel right, he’ll drop like a sack of garbage.
“You treat Cindy like that, you answer to me,” Kong tells me. He utters the words like a tough guy in the movies.
“Step back,” I tell him.
“Why?” It’s a challenge, not a question.
“Because I said so.” I stick a finger in his gut. It’s supposed to feel like a gun barrel, but as soon as I do it, I know this is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. I have long, feminine nails. My finger tip probably feels more like a pencil than a gun barrel. But we’re so close he can’t look down without stepping back. He laughs in my face and steps back a few inches to see what I’m packing. By the tim
e he looks up with a new scowl on his face, I have a can of Mace poised inches from his eyes.
“Get out now.” My best attempt to sound like a lethal queer psychopath is pathetic. My hand is shaking as if I have palsy. I can feel perspiration on my brow. I look in his eyes and feel only menace. I feel my life flash before me. Then I see some kind of recognition in his eyes. He’s not afraid of me, but he’s decided to back off. I can’t even guess why.
“That shit’s illegal,” he says.
“That’s because it works,” I respond. “Get out. Don’t come back.”
“You don’t scare me. Fuckin’ queer.”
“Yeah, man with tits, pervert, cocksucker. I’ve heard all that. Go away and don’t come back.”
Kong steps back, shrugs his coat up a little higher on his shoulders, puts a cocky smirk on his face. “This ain’t over,” he says. “I’ll settle up with you out there.” He nods toward the street. “The streets belong to me.” He struts out in a tough guy rolling gait, his girlfriend trotting behind. I watch him leave, trying to quell the fear rising inside me, trying not to visualize what a pathetic, easy prey I would be for him out there. Cecelia’s warning about too many enemies echoes in my mind. Add one more to the list, and this one is as real as a nightmare.
The image of the rapists in the alley looms in my memory. I fight to erase it, but the parallel is too strong to resist. The only difference between King Kong and the men who grabbed me in the alley is that Kong is much bigger than either of them. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself.
Priscilla is waiting impatiently to unload her rant. She at least has a case. She’s been here a long time and she is a fine stylist, a hard worker, reliable, all those good things. She’s angry about being passed over. When she’s done venting, all I can do is be honest with her.