by Renee James
“You’re right,” I say. “You earned the promotion. So did Jalela. I had to make a choice between two great people.”
She cries and wrings her hands.
“You chose her because she’s trans. You feel sorry for her because she’s a black tranny hooker.”
I freeze, trying to process what Priscilla said, starting with the word tranny, a slur as vile as any in the lexicon of American bigotry.
Priscilla freezes, too, thunderstruck by her own words.
“Oh my God,” she says. “I can’t believe I said that. I’m sorry.”
I let the silence engulf us. She repeats her apology.
“Priscilla,” I begin, “Jalela used to be a prostitute. She sold her body so she could survive. She is a transwoman. She’s black. She’s also a supremely gifted hairdresser. The staff loves her, customers love her. She’s good with people. She earned the job as much as you did. I couldn’t give it to you both.”
Priscilla’s lips quiver a little, tears start again. She is a gorgeous young woman, early thirties, cute figure, blond hair, sexier than a romance heroine, smart and talented. I’d be her in a second if anyone gave me the option. “I’m sorry, Bobbi.” Her voice is a tiny squeak.
I accept her apology and urge her to hold off any decisions about leaving. She purses her lips and nods, a yes motion, then rises and leaves without another word.
On days like this, I sometimes think I should sell the business and just rent a chair somewhere, but the truth is, this place is me. The man who sold the salon to me once said it would fulfill me. He was right. Salon L’Elegance is my identity and my statement. It’s what I believe about femininity, and art, and beauty. I’m also the only person in the world who can run it the way it needs to be run. I have an assistant manager, but the truth is, when disaster looms, I’m the only one who’ll run through the flames to fight the fire. The salon is mine, and mine alone.
As soon as I step out the door, a starched businessman in a Hugo Boss suit nearly breaks his neck with a double take that ends with a stare at me. A thirtyish mom pushing a stroller in the other direction gawks, too. I’m used to it. People don’t see a towering, broad-shouldered woman showing lots of leg and cleavage walking down the street every day, not even in a hip neighborhood like this. I brush it off, like always, but God, it would be nice to look like the woman I am.
I’m hustling to the El station to collect Robbie from her after-school activities group and trying not to recall Priscilla’s tears and Cindy’s intimidating boyfriend, especially him, his rat eyes, the way he projected danger. He liked threatening me. He probably didn’t give a damn one way or the other about Cindy—she’s always had a gift for picking men who abuse her.
I try to rein in my judgement of him. I learned a long time ago I often misjudge people. I try to be ashamed of myself for imagining him to be a thug. I try, but it doesn’t work. He is. I know he is. The only thing that makes him different from the two men who brutalized me is that he’s much bigger and much stronger than they were.
That thought triggers the sense of peril I repressed when he towered over me in the salon. It floods back now, the fear, feeling fragile and weak. A moment of panic flares and even when it ebbs, my skin starts to crawl. I have an overwhelming sense of being followed. I whirl around, looking for a predator among streams of people walking in both directions. No one is paying attention to me. Still, my scalp tingles the way it does when I’m scared. It feels like my hair is standing on end. Something is wrong here, I just can’t see it.
I check for someone staring out of the windows of the offices and apartments above the storefronts. Nothing. I check the sidewalk again, looking for someone pretending to window-shop, a suspicion that comes from reading too many spy novels. Nothing. I move up the street to a tavern where I sometimes have lunch. I duck in, move briskly through the bar to a side door, and duck out into the alley. I stand there, a stone’s throw from Chicago Avenue, watching people pass by, searching for someone who shouldn’t be there.
A passerby on the street glances down the alley and spots me. He looks big and burly from this distance. He looks away, like he’d just seen something he wasn’t supposed to. He walks faster, out of my view. I dash for the street, trying to remember what he looked like. Heavyset, blue jeans, striped shirt, Cubs hat, sneakers. Could be a techie going home from work, or someone with a grudge.
I burst out of the alley and look down the sidewalk. Nothing. I jog as best I can in heels, checking storefronts. Nothing. At the third store, I duck in. He couldn’t have gotten further than this without me seeing him. It’s an electronics store, walls lined with cell phones and devices and wires I can’t identify. There’s one sales clerk and two customers in the whole place. None of them are wearing jeans and a striped shirt. I interrupt the sales clerk.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Did my friend just stop in here? A man, brown hair, Levi’s, striped shirt?”
The clerk looks at me like I’m an alien from another planet. He shakes his head no.
I walk to the El station on full alert, my heart pounding, my nerves on edge, my head filled with visions of the two goons jumping me in the alley, debasing me, laughing as they left. I examine every person and every storefront and window, but all I see is a steady stream of garden-variety working people. My scalp is still tingling, but I can’t find a reason for it.
Robbie stands with a clutch of kids in the back of the classroom when I arrive. The girls assume the posture of high school girls, or maybe it’s the hip adolescent role models who strut their stuff on TV. They don’t look like girls who play with dolls. They look like teenage girls talking about boys. Smirks and laughter come from the group as Robbie bounces toward me, her hair rising and falling like a fashion model strutting down a ramp. I prepare for our greeting hug, one of the joys of my life for as long as she’s been able to walk. Instead, she walks past me and out the door. I feel like the foil in a slapstick comedy.
More giggles from the kids she was with. I glance at the teacher. She knows me. She shrugs slightly and flashes a sympathetic smile: yes, she saw what happened; but no, she doesn’t understand it either. I turn and chase after Robbie.
I catch up and start to reach for her shoulder, but stop myself. “What’s going on, Princess?”
She has a smile on her face and keeps looking straight forward, like I’m not there.
“Robbie!” There’s more sharpness to my voice than I want, but I’m alarmed. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She sings it and speeds up, putting a couple of steps of distance between us. When I ask her to slow down, she doesn’t. When I speed up to her side, she wanders to the other side of the sidewalk and lags behind. Before we get to the El station, I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.
I let her keep her distance on the train—just a few feet away, close enough that I can incapacitate any cretin who tries to mess with her, but far enough away where she won’t be associated with a transsexual woman. My heart is in my throat. I don’t want her to see me as a blight on her life. This was supposed to happen in junior high, with the advent of puberty and social airs. I’ve been through the ridicule and stigmatizing a million times, so I shouldn’t feel so crushed but I love this little girl more than life itself. I swallow hard. This is going to take some getting used to.
As I watch over her, another thought forms like an unwanted storm. If someone really is stalking me, Robbie’s at risk, too.
When we get to the apartment she walks straight into her room and closes the door. We’re now at war. I follow her and open the door before she can lock it. I take her hand and lead her into the living room.
“Sit.” It’s a command. I repeat it and she finally complies. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” She has the sullen belligerence of a sixteen-year-old down perfectly. In a day! Good God, what’s next?
“Tell me why you don’t want to be seen with me anymore.”
She shrugs, noncommittal, like i
t’s none of my business.
“What did your friends say?” She looks away as I ask the question. “Look at me, Robbie,” I command. “What did your friends say?”
“Meredith said you’re not really a girl, and Paul said his dad said you’re queer.” She spits the words out, angry. I’ve humiliated her in front of her friends.
It’s not easy to control my emotions. Bigots don’t get to me anymore, but I don’t see how Robbie is going to be able to handle this. She’s way too young to have to deal with peer pressure to reject someone she loves.
“You know that I was born a boy.” I say it in a way that she has to respond. She nods yes.
“You know that I felt like a woman.”
She nods again.
“So I became a woman.”
She looks away.
“Did you tell your friends all this?”
She studies something on the other side of the room and shrugs her shoulders. It’s the way a teenager would say, I’m not saying, but she’s telling me, no.
“Why not?” I have to repeat the question again because she doesn’t answer. It’s not that I don’t know why she didn’t tell them, it’s that I can’t think of anything else to say.
“Look at me, Robbie.” I demand an answer.
She turns her eyes to me, defiant. “Paul said you’re my dad, and you had your dick cut off, and I was a boy, too, but you guys had my dick cut off.”
Right about now, it would be tempting to have Paul watch while I cut his dad’s dick off, then see if he’d like to talk about it some more. This sentiment is the echo of the testosterone that powered my male life, long ago. I sweep it aside and concentrate on the important stuff.
“Your father was a wonderful man who loved you and your mom very much.” I’m calm now. He was a good man, even if he was a Republican. “He died when you were very young, but you still see his parents, Grandma and Grandpa Richards.”
She thinks about this for a minute. “But the kids say you were married to Mom.”
“It’s true,” I answer. “I loved her very much, just like I do now. But when I realized I was a girl, I had to let her find someone else. Otherwise, she couldn’t have had you. And I wouldn’t have you, either.”
We talk about lighter things for a few minutes, Robbie smiling, even laughing now and then. Her walls are coming down.
“Do you like boys?” she asks. The question comes out of nowhere, like a heat-seeking missile. I shudder. If we get into my weird sex life, Betsy will boil me in oil. On the other hand, I’m the one who demanded we have this little talk. I owe her an honest answer.
“I date men,” I say. I date women, too, but we’re not going to get into that until she’s older.
“Did you ever marry one?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
Her innocent question pierces me. Phil’s handsome face floats in my vision. It’s warm and caring. I can feel his torso on mine as we made love. I can taste his lips, feel his strong arms wrapped around me. Marry him? In a heartbeat. I’d settle for being his concubine.
I sigh. “Yes. Once.”
She wants me to talk about it. I tell her we’ll save that for a little later in her life. Maybe the first time she has her heart broken by a lover.
After that, she’s back to being Princess Robbie again. Almost.
“I want to be called ‘Roberta’ now.” She says it with the solemnity of a Supreme Court justice, and the resolve of a feminist.
“Say again?” I’m so flustered I can’t think of anything intelligent to say or ask.
“I think it’s time people called me Roberta,” she says. “Robbie is a baby name.”
It also rhymed with “Bobbi,” which gave me great pleasure. Another casualty.
“Okay. Roberta.” I try to say it naturally, but the name sounds foreign rolling off my tongue.
She accepts my acceptance with a slight nod and a small smile. We sit in silence for a moment.
“You can tell your friends the truth about me, Roberta,” I say. “Or you can just tell them you love me and I love you back.”
“Would that work?” she asks, dubiously.
“It would if it works for you,” I say.
“I don’t understand, Aunt Bobbi.”
“You have to decide for yourself who you love and who you’re loyal to, even if the cool kids give you a hard time about it.”
She blinks. I think she understands what I’m saying. But the hard part is living it, or perhaps even worse, living with your failures when you go along with the crowd and inflict pain on someone just to stay on the A-list.
4
“HI, PHIL.”
There’s a nervous hush on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Bobbi.” He’s afraid I’m going to try to rekindle the relationship. I can hear it in his voice.
“Can you help me with something?” I start.
“I’ll try.” He’s being noncommittal. He sounds tense. I wonder if his new babe is sitting there with him. I saw them together once. She’s tiny and gorgeous, with wide, soft eyes, big breasts, and thick hair. Way out of my league. But maybe she’s inhibited in bed, or maybe she doesn’t like sex at all. Maybe Phil still dreams about me.
“I think someone’s following me.”
He exhales. “What are you into now, Bobbi?”
For one wicked second I think about how delicious it would be to make up a story about my wild sex life, with orgasms so loud the neighbors complain, maybe get him jealous. But it wouldn’t work and it wouldn’t be fair. He rejected me, but he did it like a gentleman and he is a good man. That’s why it’s so painful to go on without him.
“I’m not into anything. I do hair. I’m watching Robbie—she’s Roberta now—for a week. I have dinner with Cecelia, a date now and then.”
“Have you broken up with anyone lately?” For a horrible second I wonder if he’s been following me, but the thought is too stupid to consider. Why would he even think of me? He’s got Miss Gorgeous America to go home to, one-hundred-percent-natural tits and ass, a vagina made by God, shops at the size two petites. I feel like screaming.
“Not really,” I say. There was a pause and then the hedge. He caught it.
“What’s that mean?”
“I’ve, uh, had some dates, but, nothing steady.” Even I can tell I’m hiding something.
“What would you like me to do?” Phil asks. He’s always been too much of a gentleman to make me embarrass myself.
“Can you get someone to see if I’m being followed?” He’s a Chicago cop working in community relations downtown, but he still knows some of the cops in my neighborhood. He sighs, says he’ll see what he can do, warns me he probably won’t have much success. The department has a million problems right now thanks to highly publicized cases where cops shot unarmed black men, and they were stretched pretty thin even before the scandals broke.
I thank him and wait for him to say something. It won’t be “Let’s get naked,” but something warm and friendly would be nice. All I get is a repeat of, “I’ll see what I can do.”
I guess when we broke up, I got all the memories and he got all the freedom.
At Roberta’s insistence, we’re having dinner in the Rock’n Roll McDonald’s on Ohio. Cecelia has joined us, an act of sacrifice just this side of suffering on the cross. We’re both chronic dieters. It takes iron willpower to keep our bodies trim and at least slightly feminine. Just thinking about a Big Mac and fries bloats me up a full dress size, and even if I don’t succumb, the aromas will give me withdrawal effects for days as I sit down to plates full of bovine fodder. I’m here to finesse my relationship with the eleven-year-old formerly known as Robbie. I have to be here. Cecelia volunteered, probably to work on my penchant for flirting with—and occasionally sleeping with—men who don’t meet her high standards.
Cecelia has Roberta fully engaged in talking about school. As I watch Roberta’s effervescence, I wonder why Cecelia is consid
ered cool and I’m an embarrassment. Cecelia is even older and taller than me. She’s six-two and wears three-inch heels and favors big-hair wigs. True, she has a slimmer build than me, and a haughty presence that makes people accept her as a woman the moment she walks in a room. It’s working with Roberta. I’m not jealous—Cecelia deserves everything she gets. She’s in her sixties now, one of the pioneers of the transgender community in Chicago. She was out demanding acceptance for trans people many years before most Chicagoans even knew what transgender meant and decades before we became a more or less accepted part of the tapestry in Chicago life.
We poke at our salads while Roberta talks about who the cool girls are at school and on television. The TV stuff is a bone of contention with Roberta and me—I don’t have a television set in the house and I refuse to get one. At my house, we read books, tell stories, and listen to music. Yeah, boring spoken with rolled eyes, though she gets to play computer games for an hour each night.
Roberta finishes and wants to tour the exhibits on the walls. I tell her she has to stay in sight, and I watch her like a hawk. As soon as she’s gone, Cecelia starts in.
“What happened with Prince Charming?” she asks. She’s referring to Lover Boy, of course.
“He looked better in the bar than under a streetlamp,” I answer.
“So, you won’t be seeing him again?” Her frosty tone is social foreplay for the lecture that will come next.
“I don’t think so. He left telling me I was a man with tits.”
Cecelia frowns. “What did you say to him?”
“First, I just tried to say I was tired and we should do this some other time.”
“Second?” Cecelia asks. “What did you say second?”
“He got furious, red-in-the-face furious, and called me a prick-teaser and said I couldn’t just cut him off like that.”
“And you said?” Cecelia is getting impatient.
“I told him I could and I had, and if he didn’t get his fat ass off my steps, I’d rip his eyes out.”