“I’m your daughter,” I whispered. “Nothing to say about that, either.”
A semi drove by on the highway outside, the dull whoosh of its passing loud in the silence. “Sorry for worrying you. It won’t happen again.” I moved past him toward my room, closing the door.
NOVEMBER, THREE YEARS AGO
The counselor’s office was a converted study in an old mansion in one of the Atlanta neighborhoods rebuilt soonest after the Civil War. It smelled like old wood, and the floors creaked with a century of traffic. An old CRT television sat on a rolling stand in the mouth of a fireplace large enough to swallow it whole. Embellished shelves meant for leather-bound books were lined with titles like, I’m OK, You’re OK and Coping with PTSD. A grandfather clock echoed persistently outside the door.
The counselor tapped his pen against his notepad, maddeningly out of sync with the rhythm of the clock. I pulled my knees up to my chest and tried to disappear into the overstuffed leather chair.
“How are you, Andrew?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I pulled mechanically at a loose thread in my jeans.
“What would you like to talk about?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Could I ask you a question?”
“If you want.”
He uncrossed his legs and rested his hands in his lap. He was using his body language to tell me I could trust him, because it was his job to seem trustworthy. When he spoke his tone was calm and even. “Will you tell me about the note you gave me when you were in the hospital?” I closed my eyes and shrugged. “Could you tell me what the note meant?”
“I like puzzles,” I said after a moment. My knuckles blocked my mouth, muffling my words. He leaned closer to hear. “And math. I like things that fit together neatly. I don’t like it when things don’t make sense.” I put my hands on the back of my neck and pushed my head down, speaking into my lap. “So I don’t know what the note meant. It means I’m crazy, I guess, because it doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense, Andrew?”
“My birth certificate says I’m a boy.” My chest felt tight. The room, despite its high ceilings, felt suddenly cramped. “I have a … I have boy parts. I have boy chromosomes. God doesn’t make mistakes. So I’m a boy. Scientifically, logically, spiritually, I’m a boy.”
He steepled his fingers and leaned even farther forward. “It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself. Something tells me you aren’t like other boys.”
“I know I like boys,” I said. I stared up at the ceiling and jiggled my foot rapidly. “You don’t have to be a girl to like boys, though.”
“Is there anything specific to being a boy that bothers you?”
“Clothes,” I said quickly. I had never said these things out loud. My ears were ringing. My skin felt too tight. “I’ve wanted to wear girl clothes for as long as I can remember.”
“Have you ever done it?”
“When I was in first grade, the girl next door let me. Her parents caught us and I wasn’t allowed to go back.”
He made an ambiguous sound in his throat and I heard him jot something on his pad.
“So when you wrote ‘I should have been a girl,’ did you mean that you’re afraid to come out as gay, or embarrassed that you want to wear women’s clothes? Your mother said you’re Baptists; do you think the way you feel is wrong from a religious perspective?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think God actually cares about that kind of thing, and I think I could deal with just being gay or whatever. It feels wrong that I’m a boy, though. When my hair gets long and people mistake me for a girl, I feel happy. I try to imagine what kind of man I’ll grow up to be, and nothing comes. I think about being a husband or a father and even if it’s with a man I feel like I’m being sucked into a black hole. The only time I feel like I have a future at all is if I imagine I’m a girl in it.”
“I see,” he said. I heard more scratches as he wrote more notes. “Gender identity disorder is in the most current diagnostic manual,” he said. “It’s a real thing that lots of people experience.”
I forced myself to make eye contact with him. He was no longer leaning forward. He was sitting back, feet together, hands in his lap again.
“I have it?”
“I’m not really prepared to diagnose anything at this point,” he said. “And I have to wait until I’ve taken a look at your questionnaires, but if you don’t have major depressive disorder and panic disorder I’ll eat my hat.”
“You don’t wear a hat,” I said. He winked, and I smiled despite myself. “What happens next?”
“I’m going to refer you to a psychiatrist to see about some medicine for your anxiety and depression. I also want you to do something this Saturday, if you aren’t busy.”
“I don’t really have friends,” I said.
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” he replied. “There’s a small support group that meets here at six on the first Saturday of the month. I think you should come.”