Once my mother and I had returned to our family home after my surgery—she was not comfortable bringing me back to Harlem, where no one would be looking out for me—I felt that I was dirty and that I needed to take a shower. The anesthesia was wearing off, and so she gave me another Vicodin and another Percocet. Almost as soon as I’d swallowed both pills and stepped into the shower, the soapsuds barely beginning to form on my body, I told her that I needed to get out because I was going to slip and fall. I crash-landed into her king-size bed. Bleeding and blabbering characterized the next forty-eight hours, which passed in an opiate haze. I felt as if someone had unplugged me. Fuses were blown out throughout my entire body. I was never vertical for longer than a few minutes, and I barely spoke because I did not have the ability to do so. As soon as the pills traveled down my throat, I began to slip away. I couldn’t feel a thing, and I hated it. I wanted to feel the pain because it was mine, mine to bear. I was afraid that I might get hooked on the pain meds. I was terrified of the desire to disconnect from reality, the root of much drug abuse—and that was really the last thing I wanted. I had fought so hard to both survive and thrive, and I didn’t want anything to soften or eradicate the intensity of life altogether. After two days, I swore off the Vicodin and Percocet. I wanted to feel the stitches in my body. I wanted to have some kind of sensation to remind myself that I did go through with a labiaplasty procedure, and that I was alive. So I opted for Advil, which was enough.
After the extended weekend was over, my mother begged me to take the rest of the week off work to recuperate, but I adamantly refused. I was still working at my hard-won entry-level job in publishing, and although I’d informed my (male) boss that I was having a procedure, I didn’t go into details; I wasn’t about to stay home for a week and refuse to provide a full explanation. I had to prove myself not only because I was new, but also because I was a black woman in an industry where minorities make up less than 5 percent of the workforce. I dreamed of success, and that started with me being strong and pushing through whatever pain I had. I’d chosen to get this procedure and I had chosen to deal with the consequences. I’d be damned if I presented as weak in front of my coworkers. As a black woman, I knew I had to be twice as good, stitched vulva and all.
Her name was Irie Thomas, and she was an older cousin of one of my former best friends. Six years my senior, she had grown up with her grandmother in an apartment that my real estate agent mother had sold to them. Like many teenagers, she was rebellious, and I never had much to say to her when I was young, partially because I was afraid of her. Her most striking trait was her eyes: intense, dark brown, able to focus without blinking.
By the time I was applying for college, she’d had a child and was starting to frequent my Pentecostal church, initially sitting in the farthest pew and only socializing with a very few people. But her eyes were friendlier, with a more consistent smile balanced between them. She was glad to see me and I her. She wanted to know if I had talked to Ruby lately, and I wanted to know how she was able to squeeze a healthy baby out of her petite body. We exchanged numbers and began to talk regularly.
Despite being a student at one of the worst high schools in South Jersey, I was confident about my college chances. I was in the top 5 percent of my class, I had taken several advanced placement courses, and I had received a competitive score on the SATs. I was extremely private about where I was applying, even with my parents. I had it all planned out. On April 1, I would get my acceptance to an Ivy League school—or to a couple—and drive down to my father’s house with a cake in the passenger seat, iced with the names of the schools where I had been accepted. I wouldn’t even call him. I’d just surprise him, and then afterwards he, my mother, and I would all get dinner and then stroll along the Atlantic City boardwalk in a celebration of my new life’s trajectory. But it did not happen that way. Emerson College: Accepted. Duh, of course. That was my backup school. University of Miami: Accepted, with an academic scholarship. Duh, of course. That was my other backup school. New York University: Rejected. Wait, what? It wasn’t exactly a backup, but then not necessarily a reach. It’s okay. I didn’t want to be in a place with no campus, anyway. Yale: Rejected. Okay, I guess. I loved the campus, but there are still more. Columbia: Rejected. Columbia, too? I . . . Okay. Okay, I guess. Harvard: Waitlist. No. If you are just going to reject me, reject me. By the time Princeton let me know I was on the waitlist, I was completely gutted and in a catatonic state. Tears fell from my eyes, but I could not feel them rolling down my cheeks. My sadness paralyzed me. My mother tried encouraging me, and then she pulled out the phone cord from the jack so I wouldn’t get calls that I didn’t want to answer. She had all sorts of suggestions about how I could run away from the disappointment of this day. My father eventually called her cell phone, wondering why he could not reach the house, and my mother told him what was going on. He wanted to speak to me, but I refused. I could hardly speak to anyone. It’s not that Emerson and Miami weren’t good schools—they were great schools. I could’ve studied writing with the best teachers at Emerson. The University of Miami gave me a merit scholarship, which was going to alleviate the financial burden since my then-sick stepfather, our family’s breadwinner, had stopped working and my mother was his caretaker. But I just thought for sure that I’d get into at least one Ivy League school.
The following week, I discovered that a fellow classmate and friend had been accepted to Harvard, his dream school. Our beloved English teacher, Mrs. C, threw him a party after school at which I mostly remained silent while picking at my pretzels and cheese puffs. My friends understood how sad I was. One of them told me to be patient, that it wasn’t technically over, but that year Harvard had over 700 names on the waitlist; Princeton, 1,400. I had been sending letters with updates of my accomplishments to the Harvard admissions team; Princeton did not even encourage this kind of follow-up, so I painfully stayed silent. There was no way that I would get into either of them unless a miracle happened.
Once Irie heard the news, we began to speak every night, and she would listen to me talking (or, more accurately, blubbering through my tears). Her concluding prayers were always long and intricate, and as she prayed I could feel my chest expanding, my breathing becoming less labored. She prayed for peace, discernment, strength, and, above all, God’s will to be done. I hated the last part. What if God didn’t want what I wanted? But towards the end of a month of consistent prayer and communion, while deep under my covers one night, I prayed for strength, and for God’s will to be done. The words poured out of me like water. I surrendered because I discovered that I had no other choice. That was when He met me where I was.
Soon afterwards, Irie called me up and said, “You are going to hear something on Wednesday at noon. Do you receive it?”
In disbelief, I answered, “What do you mean?”