Being Emily (Anniversary Edition) Read online

  The bell rang, warning us that we only had a minute to flee to class.

  “Hang in there,” she said.

  I tried to smile, but failed pretty badly. She hadn’t said we were together. Was she trying to let me down gently?

  Chapter Five

  I stumbled through the day on autopilot.

  /run: please teacher

  1. raise hand

  2. give correct answer

  3. repeat once per class

  /run: lunch with the guys

  1. pick one parent—complain

  2. mention sports

  3. mention car

  4. joke about girls

  5. nod

  6. nod

  7. nod

  8. grunt

  9. nod

  While that covered me externally, I tried to puzzle out how Claire felt from our brief conversation. She hadn’t said one way or the other if we were going out or how she was dealing with everything I’d told her. Was she freaking out and hiding it, or was she supportive? Did she want to break up with me and not know what to say?

  In psych class we learned how embryos developed in the womb. That was a good distraction though I had to keep my eyes half-closed in mock boredom and remember to groan when the guys did. Mr. Cooper gave a lightly updated version of the classic story. He did say that in the first weeks of gestation, embryos are all the same. But then in his version once the hormones started, everyone fit neatly into a female or male configuration.

  I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to get into the full spectrum of diversity in human bodies, not with this lot. But I wished he’d said the part where although the sex of the body was kicked off at around eight weeks, the parts of the brain that determined gender identity didn’t start coming together until months later. So gestating babies could have one hormonal environment for their bodies and a different one when their brains started working on gender identity.

  Even as the fetus developed physically, it wasn’t as clear-cut as simple male and female. Mr. Cooper didn’t talk about it, but a small percentage of babies were born with ambiguous genitals or genitals that didn’t match their genes or their internal sex organs. In the past doctors picked which one they thought the baby should be, but recently some had started letting the kids grow up and say for themselves what gender they were, which made sense to me. I wished I’d had a chance to tell a doctor that I was a girl and have them work that out for me.

  By the end of class I needed to talk to someone who would understand how I felt. I hightailed it for the door the minute it ended. The school lobby was a mess of sound, but I went for the pay phone anyway. I had no cell phone for the same reason I had no high-speed Internet: cha-ching. I crammed a bunch of quarters into the phone.

  On the third ring, someone answered.

  “Natalie?” I asked.

  “Who’s this?” she asked and my heart fluttered because she had a girl’s voice, a little throaty, but clearly feminine.

  “I’m from GP,” I said neutrally. “You sent me your number last night. I’m the one in Liberty.” I was hyperaware of every word I used because there were about a hundred students who could overhear me if they wanted. Of course none of them were listening, but I couldn’t be too careful.

  “Emily?” she asked.

  “Um, yeah, I’m at school. No cell phone.”

  “Oh, you can’t talk, got it. Do you have a car? You want to meet this weekend?”

  “Totally,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning.

  “Saturday afternoon? Do you know where Southdale is?”

  I wanted to say so much to her, but I could tell I was forgetting how to look like a guy. I’d leaned into the phone, cradled it to my ear, a suppressed grin twisting my mouth into a weird smirk. I blanked my face, rocked back on my heels, pushed my voice flatter and said, “I can figure it out.”

  “Great, meet me at two in the lobby of the theaters. What do you look like?”

  “Orlando Bloom,” I said. “Only taller and a lot less cute. And my hair’s lighter. You?”

  She was laughing at my description. “I’m tall with red-brown hair. I’ll wear a black skirt and black boots and carry a flower or something.”

  “Hey, can I bring my girlfriend if she wants to come?”

  “The one you just came out to? Your post was awesome! Of course, that would be great. She sounds fantastic! See you on Saturday!” Natalie talked with as many exclamation points as she used in her forum posts.

  “Cool,” I said and hung up. Then I glanced at the clock hanging over the big double doors of the school and bolted for my car. I drove it cold, groaning and complaining all the way, and skidded up to my house at three forty-five on the nose.

  Mom came out of the front door as I pulled up. I slammed my car door and crossed the icy front lawn, hands jammed deep in my pockets. She was in gray slacks from work with her eyes made up and little earrings glinting in the amber sunlight.

  “You’re pushing it, kid,” Mom said as she locked the front door behind her and gave me a shove toward her car.

  “Sorry, school’s crowded when it lets out, you know. I don’t have a clear shot home.”

  “No lip,” she said. “Get in.”

  We drove in silence to a low office complex.

  On the second floor was a uniformly beige waiting room where we waited. Mom filled out a bunch of forms and then a man came out of an office and shook her hand. He was almost handsome, with short black hair that grayed in that dignified way over his ears, and steel-colored eyes. Two elements messed up his good looks: his thick brow ridge, like seriously caveman thick, and how his smile looked like someone had pushed the sides of his mouth up with their fingers and he was trying hard to hold the shape.

  “I’m Doctor Dean Webber,” he said. “Thanks for bringing Chris in to see me.”

  He shook Mom’s hand and then mine. His hand was strong and dry, but really smooth and I slipped out of it mid-shake.

  “Thank you for fitting us into the schedule,” Mom said.

  He nodded to her. “I’ll have him back to you in an hour.”

  Dr. Webber showed me into his office. It was big enough for a long couch, a couple of comfy chairs, a few folding chairs, a clunky coffee table and a big, dark wood desk. Brown colors dominated the room. I sat down on the side of the couch away from the desk. He took the wingback chair across from me.

  “Hi, Chris,” he said, as if we hadn’t just met in the lobby. “Your mother tells me you’re not very happy.”

  I shrugged. He hadn’t done much to sway me one way or the other to liking him or disliking him, but I erred on the side of caution.

  “If I’m going to help you, you have to tell me what’s going on with you. It’s not unusual for boys your age to struggle with anger and sometimes depression. Your mother is worried about you, and I’d like us to have productive visits here. What you say to me is confidential.”

  Right, I thought, my ass. I had the distinct impression that it was confidential as long as it fit within his expectations. There was no way I was going to tell him the truth and trust him not to talk to my parents.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I told him.

  “Why don’t we start with a small test,” he suggested.

  He handed me a form on a clipboard with the same depression questions that were on tests like this all over the Internet. Did I have a loss of appetite? Was I having trouble sleeping? Did I think about suicide? I answered it, putting in some positives and fudging the other answers toward the middle.

  When I gave it back to him, he read it for a few minutes, nodding. “What about anger?” he asked. “Do you have a lot of anger?”

  Yeah, I wanted to tell him, but it’s because of all the fucking testosterone that my mutant gonads are shooting into my bloodstream.

  “I suppose,” I said. “I don’t yell and stuff, but I can get pretty mad.”

  “What makes you angry?” he asked.

  “
My brother’s a pest. Some of my teachers are pretty stupid.” Oh, and did I mention that I’m stuck in the wrong body 24/7 and people keep treating me like someone I’m not?

  “What about your father?”

  His question cut through my thinking. Why did he want to know about Dad?

  “Dad’s okay,” I said, picking at the round border at the edge of the couch arm. “He’s a regular dad, you know. He’s not home a lot these days, now that he has the building job.”

  “Has he ever hit you?” he asked.

  Now I was on to him. He thought I was all depressed and pissed off because I was abused and sublimating my anger at my father. I debated whether it would work to use the word “sublimating” out loud to him, but then he’d probably say I was transferring my anger at my father on to him. I’d read plenty of psychology books while trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

  “No, not really. He whipped me a few times when I was misbehaving, when I was a kid, but like a spanking, nothing major,” I told him, all of which was true. It’s important when hiding something big to tell as many small, distracting truths as possible.

  Dr. Webber rubbed his chin, which would have come across as very distinguished except his face was too square and smooth to pull it off without looking self-mocking. “And what were you doing to misbehave?”

  Wearing a dress, I thought. “I was going through my parents’ stuff,” I answered. “I was eight, and I was curious. I think he had his porn stash in there or something.” I went on spinning a story that was as close to the truth as possible without revealing any dangerous details.

  I went into my mom’s closet a lot as a kid. I loved the way her clothes felt. I’d rub her dresses against my cheeks and sometimes I’d fall asleep in there. My parents thought it was cute. I guess they figured I was comforted by her smell, or the close darkness of the closet, both of which were true, but what I loved most was dreaming of the day when I’d grow up and get to wear clothes like that.

  I knew what kind of woman I would be. I’d be a lot like my grandma Em who made her own clothes and devoured memoirs of powerful women—last time I’d visited her, she’d been reading Nawal El Saadawi. And I’d be a little like my mom, the way she knew the birthdays and tastes of all the people at her office and always took them gifts or food.

  That afternoon when I was eight, Mom and Dad were out and the babysitter was watching TV. I figured I’d try on Mom’s dresses, in practice for that far-off day when they’d be mine. In my kid’s logic I’d already given up on changing my name as a way to change sex, but I still figured that when we grew up, Mikey would get all of Dad’s stuff and I’d get all of Mom’s stuff. When I got to wear her clothes for real, I’d become the woman I was supposed to be.

  Dad caught me in one of Mom’s summer dresses and that was the end of that fantasy. I stayed out of the closet from then on, but not because of the punishment. What really scared me was the way Dad stayed quiet the whole time. The few other times he’d spanked me in the past, he’d talked through the whole thing, telling me what I did wrong and how he was sorry to have to spank me but it was for my own good and so on. This time he didn’t say a word, and I knew I’d done something so awful he couldn’t talk about it.

  And I knew I shouldn’t talk about it now either. I told Dr. Webber that I’d been making a real mess in their bedroom and didn’t mention dresses. He nodded and made understanding sounds and notes on his clipboard. I kept an eye on the clock and kept talking.

  I was trying to draw these stories out as long as possible and fill up the hour. I told him about another time Dad gave me a spanking for stealing some of his tools and burying them out back of the house. Actually the tools were mine. Dad gave me a toolbox for my tenth birthday and I was trying to get rid of it, but that story sounded close enough. Dr. Webber kept asking for more details about how I felt, what I remembered Dad saying. I paused as long as I could before answering, pretending to scour my memory for details about each question. The minutes ticked by.

  At the end of the hour, Dr. Webber shook my hand and said we’d see each other again next week.

  I got into the car with Mom and stared out the window, trying not to feel like I’d been kicked in the gut. Saturday, I told myself, would make it all worthwhile.

  “How did it go?” Mom asked.

  “Fine, I guess. Hey, can I take Claire to the city on Saturday for a movie?”

  I planned to go whether or not Claire would come with me, but saying that I wanted to take Claire made the trip sound less suspicious. If Claire didn’t want to come, she’d probably cover for me. Or if she wasn’t talking to me, at least she wouldn’t be around for my mom to ask how she liked the movie.

  “At night?” Mom asked.

  “No, a matinee. We’ll be back by eight.”

  “All right,” she said.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. One more day of school and then the blessed weekend would be here and Minneapolis and Natalie. I really wanted Claire to come with me.

  Chapter Six

  Claire

  Claire paced across the living room and into her bedroom and back to the living room again. She tried to stop. Then she paced again. Chris had gone to the shrink today, and she needed to know how it went. Was there some psychological way to fix Chris’s problem? If so, she hoped he’d listen to it. Chris could be stubborn when he made up his mind on something, but that was surprisingly rare.

  When the phone on the end table rang, it was Chris’s number on caller ID. She darted into her bedroom and answered the phone by her bed.

  “How was Dr. No?” she asked, recasting the psychologist as the villain from the first James Bond movie.

  Chris’s laugh had a sharp edge. “As well as you’d expect.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Lousy. He’s no good. There’s no way he’s going to help.” His voice was a low monotone.

  “Come on, you don’t know until you try,” she suggested. She hoped her disappointment didn’t show in her voice. But life would be so much simpler if this was something Chris could solve in therapy.

  “He just wanted me to talk about how angry I am and if Dad ever beat me. He thinks I’m an abused kid with a bunch of pent-up rage.”

  “You are kind of angry,” Claire ventured. He didn’t show it often, but there were times she felt Chris’s body vibrate with tightly held frustration.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But now you know why.”

  “True.” She sighed.

  Could she get her mom to send her to a therapist? Maybe Claire could find one who did know what to do about a teen who thought they were transgender. Even having someone to talk to confidentially felt like a good idea, but then she’d have to talk about her own life too and her feelings about her father leaving and all of that. She didn’t want to go digging around in there until it was time to write her memoir.

  “Hey.” Chris’s voice brightened. “Want to go to a movie in Minneapolis on Saturday?”

  “Why not go to one out here?” Claire loved going into the Cities for any reason, but she didn’t want to show her excitement too soon. Since she was always the one pushing for a field trip, the fact that Chris brought it up meant that he had something planned. She wanted to know what that was before she got her hopes up.

  “We’re meeting a friend. From my support group online,” he said.

  “A real transgender person?”

  “Claire!”

  “What?” She tried to sound innocent, despite being embarrassed by her own outburst. As far as she knew, she’d never met a transgender person before—well, other than Chris—and she was curious.

  “That’s kind of…reductive,” Chris said. “We’re more than a label, you know, and I think Natalie would rather be called a girl.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry.” Claire paused and wondered if she should apologize more, or if that was enough. “Okay, movie on Saturday.”

  They hung up and she stared at the phone as if it was going to
ring again and answer all the questions chasing each other around her brain.

  Chris talked about everything so naturally: feeling like a girl, meeting a transgender girl in the Cities, but it felt alien to Claire and vaguely disgusting. Every time she tried to imagine Chris with long hair and breasts, it seemed so wrong.

  While Claire had been on the phone in her room, her mom had settled on the living room couch and put on the TV. Claire dropped onto the couch next to her. She’d learned long ago that if she maintained a certain amount of Mom-time every week, she could get away with just about anything. Her mom acted younger than Chris’s parents, even though she was a bit older. Often Claire felt that she had more of a big sister than a parent. That had bugged her in junior high when life was tougher and she’d wanted a parent she could go to for help, but now she loved that she had way more freedom than other kids at her school.

  “I’m going to the city with Chris on Saturday,” she said.

  Muting the volume from the TV, Mom asked, “Are you having sex with him?”

  “Whoa, where’d that come from? No,” she protested.

  “Honestly, Claire, I want you to tell me if you are.”

  For a moment she wondered what would happen if she said “Mom, he thinks he’s a girl” but Chris would kill her.

  “No, Mom, we’re not having sex. We fool around and stuff, but I don’t want to get pregnant or anything, that would be a real mess. Besides, I might turn out to be a lesbian.”

  Mom rolled her eyes and put the TV volume back on. “I swear, Claire, you make this stuff up to torment me.”

  “I thought that was my job,” Claire replied automatically. Her mom had no idea what a person could be tormented with.

  Claire wanted to be supportive of Chris, but she couldn’t shake the nagging concern that he wasn’t right, that all this stuff about being transgender was wrong.

  “Oh, I’ve seen this one before,” Mom said as she switched the channel from Law & Order to Law & Order: SVU.

  Either of them could turn on the TV at any time and there would be some Law & Order show on. Mom could go for months sitting on the couch every evening watching crime shows. Then without warning she’d decide she was ready to date again and be out almost every night of the week socializing with the women from work and trying to meet a decent man. Claire’s money was on that happening in April this year.