Donetta sucked her teeth and frowned as her mind drifted to the past with the memory of how she had first met Vivana at Heavenly Hair Salon, where she and Geneva used to work. The way Vivana had made up a false identity so she could openly stalk Geneva had been more eyebrow raising than any work of fiction a novelist could write.
Donetta remembered seeing the gleam in Vivana’s eyes when she’d sit in Geneva’s chair and say things to intentionally piss Geneva off. But she didn’t stop there; she would spread her venom across the entire salon, upsetting and irritating stylists and customers alike. No one liked her, but Vivana hadn’t cared because she’d been on a mission.
“There’s something about that woman that ain’t right,” Donetta had told Geneva. “Watch her, because I have a feeling she’s up to no damn good.”
Donetta shuddered when she thought about how close Geneva had come to sharing Johnny’s fate. During the murder trial, Vivana had testified in open court that she’d wanted to kill Geneva first, and then do away with Johnny. But someone had gotten to Johnny before she could carry out her plan, causing her to forgo it entirely.
“What a psychopath,” Donetta said aloud, shaking her head. “I hope she rots in jail, because even if she didn’t kill Johnny, I’m sure her deranged ass has done something that justifies keeping her behind bars.”
Thinking about Vivana, along with her hectic day at the salon, had made Donetta’s head hurt. And it didn’t help that she’d just started taking a new dosage of hormone replacement therapy. Her new prescription, combined with her daily dose of anti-androgens—meant to further suppress what little testosterone she had left in her body—had left her feeling tired and a little light-headed. “Maybe if I eat something I’ll feel better.”
Donetta walked into her kitchen and rummaged through her pantry in search of something she could throw together for a quick meal. But she came up short, so she searched her refrigerator and then let out a frustrated sigh. “This is the only part of my life that’s just like a damn man,” she said jokingly, and then paused. “Yep, that’s definitely the only part.” Donetta looked down at her flat crotch and leaned against her gray quartz countertop. She ran her hand over the area between her legs where until a year ago, a bulge had been. Thanks to her gender reassignment surgery, she no longer had to worry about binding the penis and testicles that had never felt like they’d belonged on her body.
Over the past ten years, and particularly the last two, Donetta had embarked upon what she could only describe as an odyssey. She’d completed male-to-female transformation, or MTF, as it was commonly referred to in the transgender community. At times she’d felt anxious, excited, frustrated, and scared. But more than anything, she was grateful to finally be able to live comfortably as the woman she’d always known she was meant to be.
For as far back as Donetta could remember, she’d felt as if she’d been living in a body she was never meant to inhabit.
She’d been born Donald Eric Pierce, named after her maternal grandfather, who had been the epitome of an overtly masculine alpha male. But instead of little Donald inheriting his grandfather’s qualities, he’d leaned toward the exact opposite, acting dainty and more feminine than the girls in his neighborhood. When he was a child he’d gravitated toward Barbie instead of G.I. Joe, and he favored jump rope over stickball. He loved reading his grandmother’s Redbook magazine, and secretly longed to wear the green uniforms the Girl Scouts proudly sported to school, instead of their counterpart’s blue one that his mother had forced him into.
Donald was five years old the first time he realized with absolute knowing that, despite the fact that he looked like a boy on the outside, he was 100 percent female on the inside. It had been his first day of kindergarten, and his teacher announced that the class was going to take a bathroom break. She asked everyone to line up according to gender—girls on one side and boys on the other. Young Donald instinctively walked over to the side where the girls were standing.
“Donald,” the teacher had said, “I don’t think you heard me correctly. The boys are on the other side.”
The children giggled, and they all thought, along with their teacher, that Donald had misunderstood the directions. What they didn’t know was that Donald fully comprehended what the teacher had said, and that, in fact, he’d gone to the line that he believed he was meant to be in. After a moment, Donald complied and walked over to join the boys because he didn’t understand, let alone know how to articulate his position at such a young age.
As Donald grew older, he learned how to hide who he was, not wanting to bring embarrassment to his hardworking but insensitive single mother, or physical harm to himself. His father had checked out of the picture the day before his seventh birthday, and his mother had blamed him. “Your daddy didn’t want to raise no sissy, and that’s why he left,” Donald’s mother had told him. Donald had never gotten along with his mother, and she, too, eventually abandoned him at the start of his sixth grade year. “Your daddy didn’t want to raise a sissy, and I’ll be damned if I’ma raise a punk,” she’d said. One day when he came home from school, all her clothes and furniture was gone, and that was how he came to live with his grandma Winnie.
Junior high school was miserable for Donald, and high school was torturous. Gay, queer, fag, fairy, freak, and homo were all words he’d become used to hearing associated with his name. If it hadn’t been for his beloved grandma Winnie, whose husband Donald he had been named after, he wouldn’t have survived. She was the only person who showed him unconditional love. “Baby, you a part of me, and I’m a part of you, so we both gon’ make it, you hear?” she’d often tell him. He knew if he had a part of her goodness inside him, he could do anything, and that’s what helped him become her.
Donetta ran her hand across her soft, curvaceous C cups, and smiled. It had been a year and a half since she’d had her breast implant surgery, and she still couldn’t get over how much she loved the difference it made in her appearance. “Real boobs!” she’d said to Geneva when she showed her best friend the amazing results of her perfectly-shaped breasts.
Although Donetta had always been effeminate when she’d lived as a man, she’d tried as hard as she could to repress her feminine side for years, which helped protect her from retaliation in the rural South Carolina town where she’d grown up. But once she moved to Amber several years ago to enroll in cosmetology school after earning a degree in business from Florida A&M, she’d finally felt comfortable enough to break out of her shell. Little by little she took baby steps toward her dream to live fully as a woman.
She had always been slender, with narrow shoulders and lean muscles, which made looking female slightly less challenging than it was for many trans women she knew. She’d started off slowly, dressing androgynously in women’s blouses, low-rise jeans, and flat sandals. Then she stepped it up with accessories by wearing chandelier earrings that highlighted her long, slim neck, styling bold bangles that clanked at her slender wrists, and rocking a midlength weave that gave her a fresh look. She accentuated her feline-shaped eyes with black liner, smoky shadows, and perfectly arched brows. Her cheeks looked rose-kissed after applying the perfect shade of blush, and she played up the contours of her near-perfect bone structure with strategically applied bronzer.
But no matter how much estrogen she took, clothes she wore, or makeup she applied, Donetta knew she would never look the way she wanted without taking more drastic measures.
She smiled to herself as she remembered the day her late grandma Winnie and Geneva had sat by her side in the waiting room of the Gender Wellness Center, where she’d gone for her first hormone replacement therapy. She’d known that HRT was going to be a permanent part of her life from that point forward, and the thought had been a little daunting. She was glad she’d taken her primary care doctor’s advice years ago to not only seek clinical therapy, but to join a good support group to help her deal with the multitude of physical and emotional changes that were ahead.
During her first few months of HRT, Donetta had been sorely disappointed that the only noticeable results she’d experienced had been bloating, mood swings, and hot flashes. But slowly, the estrogen and anti-androgren drugs kicked in and began to transform her body. Her skin’s slightly rough texture started to soften and become smooth. Her flat chest began to morph into small breasts. The hard muscles in her arms, thighs, and legs seemed to melt away. Her weight slightly increased, and her body fat began to redistribute to her butt, hips, thighs, and legs, giving her a more womanly shape. But even with all those transformations, there were a few things the hormones couldn’t come close to touching, and her voice and facial features were two of them.
Donetta enlisted the help of a voice coach whom she trained with for six months to learn how to control the inflection in her tone and pitch when she spoke. Each morning on her drive to work, instead of listening to the radio, she practiced out loud, as if she was giving a speech to a room full of people. By the end of the summer, her voice mimicked the sound of a perfect Southern belle.
The next thing Donetta knew she had to address was her facial features, and although it had been costly, after much research she’d decided to undergo facial feminization surgery to further soften and enhance her good looks. Her first step had been to get her trachea shaved. She’d been nervous the day of the procedure, but the end result had made her jump with joy and forget she’d ever had a single worry. After she healed, she and Geneva had flown to Brazil, where medical procedures were much cheaper, to have her forehead, chin, jawline, and hairline cosmetically reshaped and repositioned, and after she recuperated from that, her once androgynous features now looked undeniably feminine.
Her transformation had come at just the right time, shortly before she and Geneva opened G&D Salon on the other side of town. Many of the clients and a few of the newer stylists at the salon had no idea that Donetta had once been a tall, good-looking, girlish-looking guy, because now she looked like a diva straight from the pages of Essence magazine. She turned heads wherever she went, and she felt confident and beautiful for the first time in her life.
Donetta knew all the sacrifices she’d made were well worth it, along with all the ups and downs she’d experienced. However, just like everything, there was a price to be paid, and she was experiencing a big one now as she looked around her gourmet kitchen that didn’t contain anything of substance she could cook. “All I have is a can of cream of chicken soup and some expired milk,” Donetta said with a sigh, shaking her head. “This is a damn shame.”
There had been a time when her pantry and refrigerator were always stocked, even with her busy days and long hours at the salon. But ironically, ever since she’d been living full-time as a woman, her kitchen had turned into a wasteland. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and my damn hormones are raging,” she said in frustration. “I need a good meal.” She picked up the to-go menu from her favorite restaurant and placed her take-out order.
Five minutes later, after changing into a pair of light gray leggings and an oversized gray sweatshirt, Donetta slipped on her hot pink Uggs and walked out her door, headed to Sebastian’s.
Chapter 5
PHILLIP
Normally when Phillip was in his car, he listened to talk radio, orchestral jazz from his iPod playlist, or his favorite old school hip-hop station. But right now, as he navigated his black rental car around the quiet streets of Amber, he was driving in complete silence. He was in deep thought from the conversation he’d just had with his mother about his love life.
Phillip was a ladies’ man, and he’d inherited his love of women from his father, whom he was now estranged from—mainly because of his father’s philandering ways. Phillip had known since he was a teenager that his father cheated on his mother on a regular basis, and it had angered him. During his senior year of high school, he’d been at a wild party one Saturday night at a hotel in downtown Birmingham, when he saw his father and a strange woman coming out of one of the hotel rooms. He and his father had gotten into a heated argument about that incident that nearly turned to blows.
Phillip had felt tormented, caught in a tug-of-war between loving his father in spite of his scandalous ways and protecting his mother from inevitable hurt. He didn’t want to insert himself into his parents’ marital affairs, but at the same time it bothered him to helplessly sit on the sidelines as he watched their marriage implode.
By the time Phillip had graduated from law school, his relationship with his father was strained at best. Their rift was noticeable to everyone, especially his mother. Phillip was glad she’d thought their distance was a result of a falling-out the two of them had had over a legal matter during Phillip’s last year of law school. He and his father were both stubborn men, and neither one of them budged once their mind was made up. Even though his mother’s feelings were temporarily spared, Phillip knew that she would eventually find out about his father’s cheating ways.
And sure enough, one hot summer night two years ago, the Honorable Charlene Harris made the discovery of her life. Phillip still shook his head to this day when he thought about the drama-filled night his family had learned just how trifling his father was. When mild-mannered, play-by-the-rules Lauren found out she’d been dating her half brother, she’d been crushed. She’d cursed out her father and vowed never to speak to him again. But her actions had come nowhere close to their mother’s.
Charlene had been so hurt and angry that she’d turned violent. That very night, after Lauren, her boyfriend, and Phillip had all stormed out of the house in disgust, Charlene remained behind, exacting her revenge with a baseball bat that had landed her husband in the emergency room.
Phillip had been angry too, but not because his father had suffered a black eye, broken arm, severe bruising, and was later kicked out of the house. He was upset because he’d never seen his mother so distraught, or his normally reserved sister so emotionally devastated and vulnerable. The pain of that night still lingered with all of them, and Phillip knew that neither his sister nor his mother had ever been the same. They rarely spoke of what happened, but the weight of it was always present.
“Damn, I’m hungry,” Phillip said as he pulled around to the designated take-out parking area of Sebastian’s restaurant. His mouth started watering as soon as he walked inside and smelled the delicious aroma of food and spices wafting through the air. He was actually glad that he’d had to get takeout tonight because, truth be told, after the stressful week he’d been having, and the rush of packing and traveling after working a half day, he really didn’t feel like cooking.
Phillip strolled up to the counter and smiled to himself when he saw that not only was the cashier checking him out, a woman who was sitting on one of the two long benches in the small to-go space was eyeing him too. Even though he resented his father in many ways for many things, he was thankful that he’d inherited the man’s impressive height, killer smile, handsome face, and muscular physique.
Phillip wasn’t conceited, nor was he stuck on himself like some of his friends who hung in the circle of well-heeled, successful professionals he was a part of. But he knew without a doubt that he was well above average when it came to looks, and he was confident in knowing that he could have just about any woman he wanted. Young, old, tall, short, slim, full-figured, short hair or long, Phillip loved them all. But he did have certain standards that he refused to compromise. Kindness, intelligence, and compassion were musts for him, and above all, he valued honesty.
If there was one great lesson he could say he’d learned from his father’s many mistakes, it was that honesty was truly the best way to operate within any type of relationship. His father had covered up, lied, and outright schemed about so many things that it was hard to believe anything he said or did. Phillip believed that as long as there was honesty, everything else, like respect, love, compassion, and understanding, would fall into place.
The cashier looked him up and down with an expression that Phillip could now see wasn’t
the admiration he’d originally thought. She hesitated and then greeted him in a flat tone. “Welcome to Sebastian’s. Do you need a menu, or do you already know what you want?”
Phillip could see that the woman was obviously having a bad night, so he tried to disarm her. “You’re perceptive.” He smiled. “Yes, I know what I want.”
“A man who knows what he wants . . . now that’s a trip.”
“Is it?” He wasn’t surprised by the woman’s remark because it went along with her salty attitude. He glanced down at her ring finger and saw a wedding band. If he had to wager, he’d bet her ring was a symbol of disappointment, not love.
“Yeah,” she answered. “Half the time y’all men don’t know what you want, and then when you finally figure it out and get it, you don’t know what to do with it or how to appreciate it.”
Phillip raised his brow, but instead of giving attitude right back to her, he looked at the woman’s name badge and smiled even wider. “Well, Angela, I have to agree with you, and it’s a real shame. But fortunately for me, my mother raised me to know exactly what I want, how to get it,” he said, pausing for emphasis, “and more important, how to keep it. And with that in mind I’m going to order the chicken marsala for my mother, and the T-bone entrée for myself.”
Phillip could see that not only had he broken Angela’s grumpy attitude, he’d just won over the woman sitting on the bench, too. Now both women were smiling.
Angela nodded. “All right, sir. Do you want any dessert with that?”
“You know, I think I will. What do you recommend?”
Angela’s smile grew. “Our cheesecake is delicious. And I’m not just sayin’ that. It tastes like what your mama would make.”
“Then cheesecake it is.”
Deadly Satisfaction Page 4