Being Emily (9 page)

“When’s your mom coming home?” I asked.

“Late,” Claire said. “She has a date and he’s picking her up from work.”

I wrapped the kitchen apron around my waist and tied it. Claire sat on one of two stools set up by the edge of the counter so people could talk to the cook. I put a big pan on to warm and pulled the bread, cheese and butter out of the fridge. The butter was the key ingredient. I believe that like popcorn, grilled cheese is just a fancy butter-delivery system.

“I’ve been freaking out,” Claire said. “And I might freak out more, okay? But I think I’m good for now.”

I took a long breath in. She wouldn’t have asked me to make sandwiches or called me “
Chrissy
” if she was going to just throw me out, right?

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Did you know that the Bible actually talks about transsexuals?” she replied.

The breath I’d taken didn’t seem to want to come out now. “Um,” I managed.

If she was going to get all right-wing Christian on me, I’d leave mid-sandwich. Claire had this kind of weird system of religious belief that I didn’t really understand. My parents took me and
Mikey
to church every now and then, but we didn’t make a fuss about it. Claire’s family had taken her to church a lot when she was young and apparently she really dug it, but then when she hit her teenage years, she started reading
The Gnostic Gospels
and getting really into the early Christians and the formation of the Bible and all that. Then she read the mystics, which included St. John of the Cross and his cloud of unknowing, which she was always going on about.

I had no idea what the mystics thought about
transsexualism
.

“There’s this bit in Isaiah,” she said and hopped off the stool.

I turned the pan down because I wasn’t going to start cooking the sandwiches yet, just in case I had to run for it.

Claire came out with her Bible and read: “For thus says the Lord: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.’”

“Are you calling me a eunuch?
Really?”
I put down the spatula and started to untie the apron.

“No!” she said. “Just listen to me for a minute because this is really cool.”

I stopped untying the apron string and folded my arms. The frying pan was probably getting too hot even at the lower burner setting, but I didn’t care.

“Back when the Bible was written, the Romans didn’t have a word for transsexual. But their word ‘eunuch’ included three categories of people. Only one of those is what we mean by ‘eunuch’ today. And one of the other categories includes men who chose not to procreate with women and those who dressed and acted like women. It includes transsexuals.”

“You stayed up all night reading about this?”

She put the Bible on the edge of the counter and sat back on the stool.

“I was really afraid,” she said. “I’m still afraid, kind of. I read bunches of stuff, about the brain studies and how there’s actually a lot of transsexual people. Well, not a ton, but more than I thought. But, you know, nothing’s more important to me than having a loving relationship with God, and I know people twist the Bible to say all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s not like I’m a literalist, but I think that the Bible is a valid way for God to communicate with us. So when I read that about the translation of ‘eunuch’ and that passage in Isaiah, and there are others too, that’s just the best one…I really got it.”

I put the sandwiches into the pan and listened to them sizzle. “Good,” I told her.

“It’s not like I was looking for God’s permission, like He’s some kind of angry parent,” she said. “The words just cut through my confusion and showed me what was already in my heart.” 

I had to ask. “Is dating me in your heart?”

“Yes,” she said.

I grinned into the pan and flipped the sandwiches. “And you’re never going to call me a eunuch again?” I asked, even though I thought her point about the quote and the translation was awesome.

She threw a dishtowel at me. It bounced off my shoulder and I tried to catch it on my thigh as it fell, but instead I ended up smacking my knee into the oven handle. I hopped on one foot for a second, holding the knee up, but it didn’t hurt that badly and the sandwiches were about to burn.

I quickly slid the sandwiches out of pan and onto plates, then bent down to get the towel. Claire hopped off the stool again and took the towel out of my hand. She reached up and put her palms on either side of my face so she could pull me down to kiss her.

When the kiss was over, she smiled up at me and said, “Besides, I’ve always wanted to give lesbianism a real go.”

I rolled my eyes at her and picked up the sandwich plates.
“Couch?”

“There’s a
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
on the DVR. Let’s do it.”

I slept for about eleven hours, which I’m certain shored up Mom’s hypothesis that I was depressed, but to me it felt great. Then I spent about a year in the shower letting the water run over me. I shaved my arms and legs again, even though the swim season was over. If anyone asked I’d just tell them that the new hair itched and it was easier to keep it shaved. I would not mention that I loved the feel of smooth legs under my jeans.

Mom was cleaning up the kitchen when I made it downstairs, and
Mikey
was in the living room watching TV. He wasn’t old enough to skip cartoons yet. I hoped that lasted another year because I enjoyed my Saturday mornings without him flying around the house like a pinball.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Great,” I said. I poured a glass of milk and grabbed two of the cinnamon rolls she’d made. Mom seemed trapped between being a career woman and being a stay-at-home mom. I thought either one would be great, but she just wavered back and forth between the two, telling us to make our own dinner one night and then taking over the cooking for the next three or four days. “I’ve been up too late studying,” I added around a bite of cinnamon, sugar and dough.

“Is school hard?” she asked, fishing for problems.

“Nah, I just want to do
good
for college aps.”
Which was true.
I had no intention of going to college near Liberty and I knew Mom and Dad couldn’t afford to send me anywhere fancy.

“Chris!” Dad yelled from the garage door. “Chris, come look at this!”

I flashed Mom a grin and grabbed my old jacket from the closet, wishing I hadn’t left the good one at school.

Some fool had driven a
junker
of an old Bronco the fifty-odd miles from the Cities, his girlfriend following in her dilapidated Chevy. The Bronco was in terrible shape and looked about ready to drop parts into the street.

Dad and the scruffy man who’d driven it in were walking around it, looking under the hood, and then exchanging information and money. I was supposed to be in that circle with them, admiring the car and haggling over its value, but I just didn’t feel like it. I could smell the guy from where I was standing and his lanky brown hair hadn’t been washed in about a week. He smelled like burnt rubber and acidic sweat.

In the rusty Chevy, his girlfriend was smoking a cigarette, blowing long streams of light gray smoke through a one-inch opening at the top of her window and leaving enough smoke inside the car to make it hazy. I couldn’t see her clearly, just the dishwater blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. What did she like about her boyfriend? Did she like the way he smelled and those skinny legs inside his faded jeans?

Dad motioned me over. “This is my son Chris,” he said. “He’s going to work on it with me.”

“Chris,” the man said. “You’ll make your dad proud.”

“Sure,” I said, beginning to feel like that was the only useful word in my vocabulary.

Then he was gone in the smoky car with his girlfriend and Dad drove the Bronco into our oversized garage. We may not have had the biggest house on the block, but we definitely had the biggest garage, which was ironic since I always had to park at the curb to make room for the cars Dad fixed up. The garage was two spaces wide and a little over two deep and had enough heaters to keep it at least in the fifties during the worst of winter. Dad had installed four spotlights and there were times when the garage seemed brighter and warmer than the house.

Despite the fact that I was one hundred percent clean, I capitulated and helped Dad with the car. I had the feeling I was going to need a good stash of parental brownie points in the near future, so I pushed up my sleeves and got to work.

At noon I cut out, had a quick lunch, showered again, put on my second favorite sweater and went to pick up Claire. She slipped into the warm car and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Claire, what do you like about having a boyfriend?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I’m not dating you because you’re a guy. I like you because you’re funny and smart and a total geek. And sure, I like that you’re tall and strong and all that.”

“But what is it about guys that girls like?”

“I think strength, for sure, and guys tend to be easier than girls, you know, less complicated…well, except for you. Guys make girls feel safe,” she said and pushed on my shoulder with the palm of her hand. “I wonder if I’m going to miss that,” she added quietly.

“I’ll always be tall,” I offered.

“Who’s this Natalie?” she asked.

“She’s from a forum online, a support site. She knows me by my girl name ‘Emily.’ Is that going to be weird?”

“Girl name?”

“I’ll change my name legally when I can,” I said. It was hard to remember that Claire didn’t know that much about
transsexualism
, despite her long nights of study on the subject. She could sound so cool with it one moment and then completely clueless the next.

“To Emily?” she asked.

“Emily Christine
Hesse
.”

“Is that why your mage in game is
Amalia
?”        

“Someone already took the name Emily, and anyway, I like the game to be a little different from reality. But yes, I wanted a name that was like Emily.”

She turned a little sideways in her seat so she could look at me more fully. “I played a male character for a few months,” she said. “Like a year ago when I was really into player versus player combat. It felt like people listened to me more in the game when I was a seven-foot-tall guy. I thought you just played girl characters so you could look at their butts.”

I laughed. That was what other guys in our guild said who played female characters. I was often surprised at how many of the female characters in the game turned out to be played by men in real life. I had no idea how many were transsexual or gay or really did prefer looking at a female on the screen while they played.

“I love that there’s at least one world where I can just show up and be female,” I told Claire. “It feels like magic to me.”

“Like the
Wizard of Oz
,” she said.

“Yes!” I agreed.

We both fell quiet for a few minutes and then Claire asked, “Am I supposed to call you Emily?”

“If no one’s around, I’d like that.”

“Huh,” she said and went silent again.

We drove past snowy fields and trees decked in white and more and more houses until we came into the western suburbs of the Cities.
Southdale
was in Edina, which was a suburb and not Minneapolis proper, but close enough that my parents didn’t make a distinction. Anytime I wanted to go to the Cities, they figured I was trying to score drugs or drink or something. Of course, Dad did a lot of drinking when he was a kid, so he didn’t exactly disapprove.

This was one of those funny times when it worked out that people saw me as a guy. Mom and Dad didn’t worry about me like Claire’s mom did about her that I was going to get kidnapped or raped or sold into slavery. It must have been the crime shows they watched, because Claire’s mom could fret for days about something catastrophic happening to her daughter but she never seemed to worry about where Claire actually was on any given day.