So much for being civilized about this.
It’s that word. Phase. Is there a crueler word in the English language?
Why do words have so much damn power over me? Over all of us?
“That’s enough,” she says. “I’m sick of the way you always get smart with me.”
I hate that expression, too. Get smart. As if she’d prefer I were stupid.
Maybe she would. A stupid child over a deviant one.
“I’m not the only one who’s this way,” I say. “There are thousands and thousands of people in the world who identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth.”
“You weren’t assigned any gender at birth,” Mom says. “It’s not as though we picked it out of a hat, for heaven’s sake. You were a girl when you were born and you’re a girl now. Thousands of other people may be freaks, but that doesn’t mean you need to be one, too.”
Wow. Maybe there’s a harsher word than phase.
My first instinct is to walk out the front door, find a cab and go back to the airport. Instead I grip the arm of the couch, the Italian silk upholstery wrinkling between my fingers.
“It wasn’t easy for me to come here and tell you this,” I say. “I knew you’d react this way.”
“Believe it or not, I’m trying to cope with this without flying off the handle,” Mom says.
She’s right. I don’t believe it.
“What you have to realize, Antonia,” she continues, “is that no mother dreams her little girl will grow up and decide she wants to be a little boy.”
“It isn’t a decision. It’s—”
“I know, I know, it’s not a choice, et cetera, et cetera. We went through all this back when you were just becoming a lesbian.”
Ah, the good old days.
“The fact is,” she says, “I didn’t see it that way then, and I don’t see it that way now.”
“Then I won’t try to argue with you,” I say. “Look, you don’t have to be happy about this, but you could at least take me seriously. This isn’t a phase. I’m eighteen years old. I’m an adult now, and this is my life.”
She puts out her cigarette and draws another from the pack in her pocket. Her hands are still shaking.
“All right, then. Since you’re such an independent adult now, what is it you want to do, exactly? Have a sex-change operation?” She says the last part with a laugh, as if she’s saying “fly to Neptune.”
“The first step is taking hormones,” I say. “That’s as far as I want to go for now.”
Wait. Where did that come from? When did I decide that?
Well, where did it come from when I told her I was a straight-up guy? When did I figure that out?
Jesus Christ, am I making this all up as I go along?
“Well,” my mother says, “if you expect your father and me to pay for you to take drugs to support this ludicrous idea, you’re—”
“I don’t expect you to do anything,” I say. “You asked me a question, and I answered you.”
“All right. Then give me your credit card.”
“What?” This had definitely not factored into my rehearsals.
She holds out her hand. Oh, my God.
I fumble in my wallet and pull out my Visa card.
“Your ATM card, too,” she says.
“What? How am I supposed to buy food and books and stuff?”
“You have a meal plan. We’ll have your books shipped to you.”
My throat closes. “You’re not serious.”
“It’s time you learned your decisions have consequences. If you’re so determined to do this, we won’t subsidize it. You’ll have to find a way to pay for it yourself.”
She’s giving me an ultimatum.
It isn’t too late to change my mind. I’m still not entirely sure I even made it up yet.
No. Screw this. Screw her. I can borrow money from my friends for a while. Then I’ll...get a job, or something.
But how am I going to get to Oxford this summer? What part-time job will pay my rent and airfare and work around my class schedule and—
I’ll deal with it later. I’ll figure everything out later.
I hand her my ATM card. Blood pulses in my veins. I’m hyperalert of the heat pumping through the ceiling vents, whooshing past my face. It’s hard to breathe. How will I even get back to Boston tonight?
Never mind.
“All right.” I stand up. “I’ve said what I came here for. I’m going home.”
Mom stands up, too. She folds her arms across her chest and turns to stare at the clock over the fireplace. It’s huge, three feet across, with a white-and-gold frame and giant black hands. It’s supposed to look like it’s hundreds of years old, but actually, Mom ordered it from some website when I was in fourth grade.
She stares at the clock, drumming her fingers against her elbows. The cigarette is burning down to nothing in her hand, but she doesn’t put it down. There are no ashtrays in this perfectly manufactured room.
“Toni,” she says, still looking at the clock. Huh. She usually calls me Antonia. “Listen. It doesn’t have to be this way.”