I put my soda down on the counter, walk past her into the formal living room and sit on the couch. It’s the good couch. The one you aren’t allowed to sit back on because you might mess up the fabric draping.
When we were kids, Audrey and I weren’t allowed in this room at all. Every single piece of furniture in here—this couch, the chaise longue, the armchairs, even the tiny “accent tables” that are scattered everywhere—is white. This room was always reserved strictly for cocktail parties and afternoon teas.
While I’m sitting on this couch, there’s no risk I’ll let my guard down, no matter how far my mother gets under my skin.
“I need to talk to you,” I say. “It’s important.”
Mom sits down on the chaise, as far away from me as she can get.
“I suppose it must be.” She looks me up and down, assessing, the way she always does. I arch my back ramrod straight. “Since you appear to have bought a last-minute plane ticket on my credit card to tell me about it.”
I doubt Mom has ever looked at her credit card bill in her life. She went with her friends to some spa in Bethesda and paid twelve hundred dollars for a microderm facial the day after Thanksgiving because she needed to “decompress” after the trauma of watching Consuela cook our meal.
“Yes, it is.” It would be so easy to snap at her. Instead I launch into the speech I memorized on the plane. “So. I’m sure you’ve noticed some unusual things about me. The way I used to repeat people’s names instead of using pronouns, for example.”
“Of course I’ve noticed the way you talk,” she says. “So has everyone else. You sound like a foreign exchange student. I’ve always told people it’s part of your general obstinacy.”
Why do you hate me?
I don’t ask it out loud, but I want to. I’ve wanted to for years.
Once last year, I asked Gretchen what she thought about it. We were in her basement watching TV. Gretchen was lying with her head on my chest. I was playing with her hair.
“Your mother doesn’t hate you,” Gretchen said. “She doesn’t know how to relate to you. That’s all.”
“My mother doesn’t know how to relate to my sister, either, but Mom doesn’t accuse Audrey of being worthless all the time.”
“She’s never said you’re worthless,” Gretchen said. “Honestly, I think she just finds you intimidating.”
I didn’t believe Gretchen at the time. I still don’t. The idea is really attractive, though.
My mother doesn’t hate me. She just finds me intimidating.
“Well, I talked that way for a reason,” I tell her now. “I didn’t want to use gendered pronouns because I didn’t want to reinforce the binary concept of gender.”
“That’s absurd.”
I’ve got to say, my mother certainly doesn’t sound intimidated.
I shake it off. I close my eyes, throwing out the rest of my speech.
“I’m transgender, Mom.” I swallow. “I’m a guy.”
The words hang in the air between us.
I take a long, uneven breath. There’s no turning back from this.
I open my eyes in time to see Mom jump up off the chaise.
She stands up, staring down at me. She doesn’t blink. I can see the whites around her irises.
For a second I honestly think she’s going to hit me.
Instead she turns around and walks into the kitchen, her footsteps steady, as if she’s going to retrieve a plate of appetizers.
Am I supposed to follow her? I don’t know the rules here. I didn’t get a chance to brush up on any suggested coming-out guidelines. My phone battery died while I was waiting to leave the airport in Boston. Soon after the twentieth text from Derek came in, begging me not to do what I was doing.
So I sit on the couch, growing stiffer and more frantic by the second.
Did I seriously just tell my mother what I think I did?
The clock over the fireplace says three minutes have passed when Mom comes back into the room. Her hand is shaking.
She’s holding a cigarette. I never knew she smoked.
I start to say something, but she holds up her other hand, palm facing out. That was how she used to order Audrey and me to be quiet when we were little. It works now, too.
“You are eighteen years old,” she finally says, after a couple of puffs of smoke. “You don’t know what it means to be a woman yet. You have no idea what it means to be a man.”
“I know how I feel,” I say. “I’ve felt this way for as long as I can remember. The best word to describe me is genderqueer, I think. I’ve tried a few others, but none of them feel quite—”
Mom interrupts me.
“You’re confused,” she says. “This is the sort of phase teenagers go through. It’ll pass as you mature.”
Right.
My mother has honed this skill over the years. She tries to think of the one thing she can say that will hurt me the most. I usually try not to give her the satisfaction of reacting, but I usually fail.
“Oh,” I say. “Okay, then. Thanks. How silly of me to mistake my little phase for a set of complex emotions I’ve been sorting through for my entire life. Now that you put it that way, I see that you’re absolutely right. I’m just ‘confused.’”