Just Girls

by Rachel Gold

  Right now I really wanted comfortable and light, not dark and dramatic. Shen was so much easier to be around. He made me laugh and not overthink things and around him I could just experience whatever we were doing together. Was it wrong to want that?

  Tucker squeezed my fingers in hers, then got up and went back to her room. I didn’t feel like walking into the dining hall by myself so I packed up my laptop and headed for the library.

  Shen was in the usual spot at the big table in the nook behind the vending machines. I sat in the chair next to him.

  “Your eyebrows are unhappy,” he said.

  “Tucker and Lindy,” I told him. “I keep thinking they’re going to split up and Tucker just stays with her.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Neither do I. It’s like now Lindy’s being nice again and Tucker just forgets how upset she was. I’m worried Tucker thinks some of it was her fault or feels like Lindy needs her around to fix things.”

  “Perhaps she likes chaos,” Shen said. “Not every person desires peace in the same amount.”

  “I’m glad you do,” I said. “You do, right?”

  “Peace in the real world,” he replied with a grin. “Winning in the game worlds. Now, maybe I can make you smile. I found a little something.”

  He reached into his backpack and pulled out a flat, square box with a ribbon around it. He set it on the table and pushed it a few inches toward me.

  “What this for?” I asked.

  “I think you’ll like it, that’s what it’s for.”

  I slipped the ribbon off the box and opened it. Nestled on a piece of white tissue paper was a silver charm bracelet with six old rectangular computer RAM chips dangling from it. In the context of jewelry, the small black, green and silver chips looked gem-like.

  I laughed. He smiled at me and lifted it out of the box. His fingers opened the clasp and I held out my left wrist. He fastened the bracelet onto it and I lifted it and jingled the charms lightly.

  “I love it,” I told him. “How much RAM do you think this is?”

  “Much less than your phone,” he said.

  Still smiling, he opened his textbook. I set up my laptop, but I watched him out of my peripheral vision. What did the bracelet mean? Were we dating? We’d been spending more and more time together, especially this last week and a half since fall break. He walked me from Machine Learning to my next class three days a week and most days we met up in the library or the dining hall, but he hadn’t asked me out.

  “Cal’s big Halloween party is in a week,” I said. “Do you want to go with me?”

  “I’d like that,” he said. “But Johnny will be upset if he and I aren’t at the same party.”

  “He can come too,” I said, but I felt disappointed. It definitely wouldn’t be a date if Johnny was coming with us and I was no closer to understanding how he really felt.

  “Do you know there is that movie opening Friday, Cloud Atlas? I’m fairly certain Johnny has no interest in it. He believes it will be too long and artsy,” Shen said.

  “Oh, do you want to go? I totally want to see that.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Just you and me, on Friday, we’ll go.”

  Then he turned back to his book.

  “Shen, are you asking me on a date?”

  His laughing eyes met my questioning look. “Ella Ramsey, will you accompany me on a date this Friday during which, at no point, will my cousin trouble us?”

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  I wanted to scoot around the table and kiss him right there, but that seemed too forward so I pretended to look at my laptop and wondered if he was only pretending too. He was so hard to read that I found it almost infuriating and yet it was one of my favorite things about him—maybe not that he was hard to read, but the sense of calm good humor that he projected most of the time. Even when Johnny beat him in a game, he wouldn’t yell or shake his fist at the screen like other guys, he just shrugged and said “Good game” and went on.

  * * *

  Halloween was midweek but that didn’t stop Cal from planning a blow-out house party. The upstairs renters were having a party too and from what I’d heard from Cal the whole house was covered in orange Halloween lights and fake spiderwebs.

  Tucker and I had our meeting with Professor Callander and Vivien the day before and as we walked across the campus I asked her about her plans for the party.

  “Are you going in costume?” I asked.

  “I hadn’t decided,” she said. “I’m tempted to go as a girl.”

  I laughed. “Does that include a dress?”

  “Do you have one to lend me?”

  “You’re like two sizes bigger than me, I’m not letting you get your hands on any of my dresses. Though I do have a stretchy skirt that would look cute on you. It would even go with your boots.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was thinking of going as a very white Nicki Minaj. I have the perfect shoes for it and I found a huge pink wig. I’ve got to figure out how she does her eye makeup, though. That’s way beyond my skill level.”

  “I thought you were good at that,” Tucker said.

  “You haven’t noticed that I always wear the same look?”

  “Well, it always looks good. And no, I don’t know how to tell one look from another,” Tucker admitted.

  “If I get the Nicki Minaj look down, you’ll see the difference, I promise.”

  We’d reached the English Department and I squeezed Tucker’s hand. She flashed me a worried smile.

  Professor Callander sat behind her desk and Vivien was in one of the chairs in front of it—the one farthest from the door. I’d never actually seen Professor Callander before. She looked younger than I expected—her hair was more black than gray and pulled back in a neat braid. She also looked tired. Having grown up with a professor mom I knew that professors had stuff come up in their lives just like anyone and sometimes that made it hard for them to keep up with their teaching schedules. I wondered what was going on in her life that made her look exhausted and haunted.

  I offered my hand and introduced myself.

  “You’re not in this department?” she asked.

  “Biology,” I said.

  “Ah, it’s good to see more women in science.”

  “Totally,” I told her and grinned.

  Once Tucker and I were sitting in the other two empty chairs, me in the middle between Tucker and Vivien, she continued, “I understand that you have an issue with the grade you received for your midterm paper.”

  “I worked hard on that,” Tucker said. “It didn’t deserve a D. It was at the high end of the length range and had multiple sources. I feel like I got that grade just because Vivien doesn’t agree with me.”

  Callander looked at Vivien who was sitting with her arms crossed and her pale hands in fists tucked into her elbows. Her red hair was tied back and up so it fanned behind her head and would have been pretty if she wasn’t scowling.

  “There was no critical thinking in it,” Vivien said. “That’s a hotly contested issue with strong works representing the other side and you didn’t cite any of them. It was a single viewpoint stated as if it was a fact.”

  “Which you know because you disagree with me on it,” Tucker said. “When you thought I was trans, you were dismissive and said I shouldn’t be in a women’s locker room. My paper can’t be the only one with a single viewpoint. Did you give all the others a D or only the ones you don’t like?”

  Callander held up her hand before Vivien could respond. “I missed something,” she said. She pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, like she had a headache, and motioned to Tucker to continue.

  “I told everyone I was transsexual even though I’m not,” Tucker said. “Because some girls were being horrible about there being a trans woman student at the school this year.”

  Tucker didn’t look at me as she said that and I was grateful. Vivien was high on my list of p
eople I didn’t want to come out to, her name right under Lindy.

  Callander’s thick, dark eyebrows rose high on her forehead. “That’s an interesting approach,” she said.

  “It’s not just that I disagree with you,” Vivien said. “Most of your citations were from sources that are feminist-bashing. How can I give that a good grade in a Women’s Studies course?”

  “It’s not feminist bashing to let trans women use the women’s bathroom,” Tucker’s voice gained volume as she said it.

  “Have you looked at how some of the sources you used attack feminists for daring to suggest that women-born-women should have the right to a protected safe space away from men?” Vivien asked at an equally loud volume.

  “Gender’s not as clear-cut as that,” I said, much more quietly, into the silence that followed her remark. “I mean, there’s still a lot more research to do, but it’s likely that it’s made up of many biological and social elements—and let me tell you the biological elements aren’t particularly clear-cut. There’s all sorts of craziness with the hormones and genetic receptors for hormones.”

  Vivien said, “But the patriarchy has had a lock on defining womanhood for so long, women need to be able to define what it means to be a woman.”

  “I get that. It makes sense,” I said. “But don’t all women get to figure out what being a woman is?”

  “Of course they do, but you said, ‘all women.’”

  “Even the ones born with male bodies,” I added. I glanced over at Callander, who was rubbing the back of her neck. She saw me and gave me a half smile, but it still looked like she was in pain.

  “Shouldn’t being born a woman also count for something?” Vivien demanded.

  “If the body is the issue, where do you draw the line?” I asked. “What if someone’s born with ambiguous genitals—are you going to describe the exact measurements they have to meet to be considered a woman? What happens if someone has a hysterectomy, is she no longer a woman or maybe just half a woman?”

  “Are you sure you’re not in our department?” Callander asked me. She waved a hand at Vivien in a gentling motion because it looked like Vivien might come out of her seat at me. Vivien sat back with a loud sigh and folded her arms tighter.

  “We had a biology of gender course in my high school,” I said. “It was pretty progressive.” I didn’t add that I co-taught the course.

  Vivien looked at Callander. “Don’t you think it’s critical for women to have safe spaces away from men?”

  “It’s important for any group to have safe spaces,” she said. “I suspect there are times when it’s very important for trans women to be in places that are just for them and address their concerns. But it becomes a different matter when you’re talking about shared public spaces.”

  “But trans women benefit from male privilege and then they think they gave it up but their insistence on being in women’s spaces shows that they didn’t,” Vivien said.

  I bit my tongue. Vivien was getting under my skin and this wasn’t about getting into a fight with her.

  Tucker picked up our side of the argument. “Maybe some of the people in the world who know the most about being women are the ones who gave up male privilege or whatever to be women. It’s not privilege to ask for the same rights as other people.”

  “This is a very rich discussion,” Callander remarked. “And I can see some of the factors that went into your paper, Tucker, and your thinking behind the grade, Vivien. Let’s focus on resolving this. Vivien, what do you think would raise the grade of the paper?”

  “Include sources in support of bathrooms and locker rooms being for women-born-women only,” she said. “At least two.”

  “You know ‘women-born-women’ is offensive and misleading, right?” Tucker said.

  “She’s not saying you have to use that term,” Callander interjected. “I don’t see harm in including the other side of the issue. You’re free to refute it. We want to encourage students to see all sides of an issue.”

  “But only some issues,” Tucker said. “You wouldn’t ask a student to refute feminism.”

  “Probably not in a Women’s Studies class, no,” Callander said with a faint smile. “Nevertheless, those terms seem fair to me. I’ll read the rewritten paper and Ms. Yarwood and I will determine the grade together.”

  Tucker opened her mouth but I kicked her in the ankle behind the desk where Callander couldn’t see it, though she probably gathered what had happened since Tucker let out a cough of surprise and glared at me.

  “It’s fair,” I said to her.

  Tucker rolled her eyes at me. “If you say so.” Then she straightened up and spoke to Callander. “Thanks for taking the time to meet with me.”

  We walked out of the office and down the hall to the door leading outside.

  “Women-born-women,” Tucker said with a growl.

  “Well, I guess no one wanted to say ‘making large gametes’ or maybe they just didn’t want to have to check that.”

  “Large gametes?” Tucker raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Hey, if you want to get really biological about it.”

  “How do you even check that?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Thanks for coming with me. Professor Callander seems pretty cool about all this, but if she hadn’t been…”

  She trailed off because Vivien was coming down the hall toward us.

  “Lindy told you I wasn’t trans,” Tucker said and the words came out half statement and half question.

  “She told me you’d said you were out of some noble and probably wasted gesture and you were riding it out for attention.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  Vivien turned so that she faced Tucker completely. “Why wouldn’t I be? What you want to tell people is your own deal, though there are a lot better ways to spend your energy. People do a lot of crazy stuff to get noticed.”

  “Lindy said that? She fucking said that?”

  “Ask her yourself,” Vivien replied. She pushed open the door next to us and walked out onto the quad.

  “That is such bullshit.”

  “Maybe Vivien is lying,” I offered.

  “I doubt it,” Tucker spat the words out. “Fuck, now I’m going to feel like a moron every time I’m in her class. I wonder what else Lindy said to her. It’s like one minute she’s all supportive and cool and then she’s coming after me about trans politics or doing this kind of shit.”

  “Maybe she’s threatened because you’re smarter,” I suggested.

  “I’m not.”

  “Um, yeah, you are.”

  Tucker gave a single, sharp laugh and opened the door. Outside it was crisp and the air smelled like decomposing leaves. Tucker walked steadily away from the building and I hurried to keep pace with her.

  “Fuck Lindy,” Tucker said. “I’m going to run off some of this anger and then I’m going to break up with her for good.”

  Thank God, I said, but not out loud.

  * * *

  After watching a few YouTube tutorials on Halloween morning, I did pull off a reasonable facsimile of the Nicki Minaj eye makeup. My pink wig looked fantastic and after that I just put on some tight black pants, boots and a hot pink, lacy mesh, silver-sparkles shirt that I picked up for two dollars in a secondhand store.

  We got Tucker into my black skirt and did the black bra under semi-transparent white shirt look for her. I applied her eye makeup and she surprised me by coming up with a pair of dangling rhinestone earrings, saying she “borrowed” them from her mother.

  “Look, I’m a girl,” she said and twirled in the skirt. “For some reason this is so much easier to wear on Halloween than on any other day.”

  “We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it,” I said, not mentioning that it was a line of Eeyore’s from Winnie the Pooh.

  “That’s exactly right. Let’s go to a party.”

  “Did you break up with Lindy last night?�
� I asked. “What are you going to do if she’s at the party?”

  “It was weird,” Tucker said. “I went over there so pissed off and she just shrank in on herself and listened to everything and said if that’s what I really wanted then there was nothing she could do. And then she locked herself in her bathroom and started crying, so I left. It didn’t feel like a real breakup, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  I texted Shen and he and Johnny met us on the corner of the North Quad to walk over together. Johnny was dressed as a character from some game I’d never played, with his hair spiked up and a mismatched ninja/samurai outfit. Shen wore a Starfleet uniform and had on an exceptionally lifelike pair of pointed ears.

  “Generic Vulcan science officer or Spock?” I asked.

  He and Johnny turned as if they were conjoined twins. “Spock,” they said in unison.

  “Of course.”

  “Who are you?” Johnny asked.

  I sighed. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Some kind of Barbie?”

  “Nicki Minaj, she’s a hip-hop star.”

  “Is she good?” Shen asked.

  “If you like obscenity and mild gender play.”

  “One out of two’s not bad,” he said and didn’t elaborate. I wanted to ask, but it didn’t seem like the right time.

  The house was decorated with a mishmash of Halloween lights and decorations on the first floor, and blue and white holiday lights on the second floor. I guessed they figured if they got them up this early they could just leave them up through the new year. We could hear the music a few doors away, but hopefully no one would call the cops to come tell us to turn it down for at least a few hours. Students already spilled over the porch and into the yard. But they made way for Nicki Minaj, her backup singer, ninja bodyguard and Spock.

  Shen and Johnny went to get us cups of barely chilled beer and I considered the dancing area in the hastily cleared living room. We could probably fit in there if no one in the group danced too wildly. When Shen and Johnny returned, Tucker wasn’t with them.

  “She knows everyone,” Johnny told me over the loud music. “She can’t go three feet without stopping to talk.”