My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover (17 page)

“I always had this kind of waking nightmare,” she tells me. “In this

scenario I’m walking down the sidewalk at a local shopping center as a

woman with her little daughter passes me, going in the opposite direc-

tion. And as I walk by, the little girl turns to her mom and says,

‘Mommy, why is that man dressed up like a woman?’ For years before

I transitioned, this was always the waking nightmare. When even little

children read you— which they sometimes do better than adults.”

The movie
Transamerica
has recently come out. Felicity Huffman

is terrific as a man in her year of presenting as a woman— awkward

but convincing, and with a desperate need for reassurance. I under-

stand the agonizing scene when her character is “read.” She’s at a diner somewhere midcountry (transsexuals in movies never stay put in like-minded communities, nor do they ever
fly
over flyover country but on some pretext must invariably plough through indigenous hives of big-otry). She’s ordering lunch and in the next booth are a mother and

daughter. The little girl peers over the top of her seat and, after a good stare, turns and asks her mother, “Is that a man or a woman?” whereupon a traumatized Huffman rushes to the pay phone and tearfully

calls her therapist.

This is a lost year, we agree, but what about when she’s out and

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My Sister

about? I ask what might happen if she “meets someone.” And the pos-

sibility of danger. I’ll always be up front about it, she says. If a man seems interested, I’ll tell him. This I entirely approve of, and is totally in character, my honorable and “straight” brother now sister. Despite

Hilary Swank’s virtuoso performance as Teena Brandon/Brandon

Teena in
Boys Don’t Cry
, I hated the duplicity. Yes, the yahoos were uptight and murderous, but she in some sense invited the violence by

taunting their manhood, pulling the wool over their eyes, and acting

in bad faith. The fact is that a large number of transsexuals are mur-

dered every year by those who feel duped and threatened.

It’s now July, and Ellen has already made plans to come up and see

us next March. In June Andrew and I attend a wedding in Dallas. My

friend Jeanne’s second son, Will, is marrying the enchanting Heather,

whom he met at Duke. We’re all going to stay at the Four Seasons,

where the wedding and reception will take place, the chance for a

luxury getaway and reunion with friends. It’s a Jewish wedding, some-

thing my Richmond friends have never seen, and I love the sight of

Jeanne, red- faced and laughing aloft on the huppah, and even more

the wide- eyed looks on the Richmonders’ faces. At the same time, I’m

on guard, alert to any meaningful exchange of glances, signs of being

in the know. It seems pretty clear that the disclosure to intimates on

May 11 hasn’t gotten out. I’m amazed, and speculate it has something

to do with my family’s self- protective wall of silence. Apparently gossip this toxic travels slowly in Richmond.

Also in attendance are a couple, Patricia and Jim, old friends of

Chevey and Beth, and for the last twenty years, friends of Eleanor as

well. I’ve been chatting with them (as briefly as possible) all weekend, deflecting questions about Chevey and Eleanor, but suddenly I feel I

can’t maintain the fiction any longer. I call Ellen on my cell and sug-

gest I tell them. She’s delighted (easier for me than for her!), but wor-

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ries about how difficult it will be for me. It is, yet it’s something I can do for her and also test the waters. Still baffled that no one has found out (and it’s quite clear they haven’t), I ask them to sit down and brace themselves, while I go through the whole story. They’re in utter shock, but grateful and concerned, and I’m relieved. Sort of. I report to Ellen.

Will you call him “sister,” Eleanor asks. I say I don’t think so, can’t quite. She agrees, a sister is someone you grew up with as a sister. Yes, but then, marriage is something that was entered into by a man and a

woman and has now come to encompass gay unions.

Ellen does discuss hair, as Beth had feared, but not ad nauseam,

considering how crucial a role it plays. She can’t control it, wants to keep her own so she can eventually get rid of the wig. We discuss different kinds of hair dryers and gel. She tells me that when she looks in the mirror, she sometimes sees Mother and sometimes me. Then she

helps me with computer questions.

July 24, 2006. Eleanor’s first glimpse. Ellen will come to visit next

week, and Eleanor will see her for the first time in full female regalia.

Eleanor wants to do it, though she isn’t really ready, so she can realize that it’s truly “over” and get on with her life. Otherwise there’s always some hope in the back of her mind, or even just the image of him as he

was, which she’ll want to keep. When dying loved ones shrink and

decay, we hope we can retain the image of them as they were, but here

it’s the opposite: we must try to forget.

Then The Visit occurs and Eleanor calls, disobeying the gag order.

She told Ellen she refused to keep silent, was going to tell me and her children her impressions. To her horror and against all expectation,

she burst into tears. It was an enormous shock. First, Ellen did re-

semble Mother. Then, she wore jeans and a tunic- type top, beads and

earrings, and fingernail polish. That doesn’t sound like Mother, but

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Chevey was so much more like Mother than I was, both in tempera-

ment (she always said so) and looks. He and Mother both had the same

narrow face, blue eyes (his aqua- blue, hers blue- gray), regular, aquiline features as opposed to my rounder ones. Mother had been a beauty.

What would Chevey be?

The two worst features, says Eleanor, were the hands, which are

male and ropey, and the wig— too much hair for her thin face.

When I get off the phone I feel equally shocked and disturbed, as

if I’ve seen her myself. It’s real to me for the first time. I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. Now I’ll have to think about how she looks, those hippie- ish clothes, the blond hair, the too muchness. As a man he

didn’t have to have “taste,” just wear slacks and a blazer, or suit and tie.

I begin having dreams about my mother. She’s back among us; we

have buried her alive.

I tell Andrew my fears. We begin talking of his brother, George,

three years younger, the daredevil to Andrew’s cautious old- man-

before- his- time. They loved each other, but Andrew, their mother’s

favorite, felt that he’d never shown George his love, never paid enough attention.

“If I could have my brother back, alive, I’d take him on any terms,”

Andrew says. “Male or female!”

With trepidation and a little prepared speech, and request for secrecy, Eleanor tells her church group. Up till now she’s just told them he and she are separated, and she feels hypocritical when the solicitous friends keep asking if there’s any chance they’ll get back together.

I understand her chagrin: as uncomfortable as we are discussing

the subject, we’re more distressed by our deception and bad faith in

keeping silent.

Andrew and I are having dinner at the home of Billy and Annette

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Cobbs, old friends of ours and of my cousin Preston’s. Preston has told Billy the news, and Billy, a charming, good ole Alabama boy, is wild

with amazement and shock. And a subversive streak. “What will Su-

zanne think?” he asks with a mischievous smile when I arrive, refer-

ring to a mutual friend and distant relative, a Belle- of- the- Confederacy turned New York doyenne to whom I’m distantly related. Billy imagines the horror of gene- proud cousins, the look on their faces. “Su-

zanne’s the last person I care about,” I say honestly, with some

annoyance. “She’ll probably find she was mistaken about the family

connection!”

While enjoying the food and good cheer of another of Annette’s

gastronomic feats, I’m seated across from a woman, a writer, I’ve come

to know and admire in recent years. We start talking about our pasts,

as one does in a deepening relationship, and she tells the extraordi-

nary story of how the death of a brother shaped her life. She was only

three, he a few years older, and the family was shattered. In reaction to the tragedy, she became the child who would make it up to her parents, would do everything he would have done, excel in everything.

She did, even dressing as a boy, and it explains her astonishing work

ethic and achievement, but imagine the lifetime pressure of trying to

meet some standard of perfection that by its very nature is both vague

and unattainable. Then she asks me about siblings and whether I still

have any family in Richmond. I mumble something about a brother

and quickly change the subject. This is not the time or place to spill

the beans, but I inwardly recoil from the evasion.

And if Billy knows, it’s time to tell some more of my friends. I’m

still in a quandary about going public. Because I am a talker, part of

me wants desperately to tell a few more friends, get some reactions, lift the burden. But I dread the questions, hundreds of them, the very

ones I’d posed. I want them to know, all at once, without my having to

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My Sister

tell them. Ethel had said, “You don’t have to tell people.” But I do. The idea of keeping it a secret hadn’t even occurred to me. As little as I

want to talk about it, I’m equally averse to (and possibly incapable of) maintaining a wall of silence. Something in me needs to have it
out
there
, to exorcise the secret so it’s no longer shameful. And if someone asks me if I have siblings, or even for news of my brother? Am I supposed to lie, or crudely change the subject?

“They may write or say very supportive things,” Ethel had said,

“but what they’re thinking and saying away from you is another mat-

ter.” I have a blind spot where reactions are concerned, and was taken

aback when the title of my first book,
From Reverence to Rape,
created something of a scandal, particularly in my hometown. This denial is

what allows me to plunge ahead, ignoring the consequences, yet I can’t

help but believe that shame and secrecy are harder to bear than expo-

sure and ridicule. One is held prisoner by shame, which simply rein-

forces the stigma. The way cancer was once unmentionable, or a child’s

mental disability, or homosexuality— as if their exposure would not

only taint the sufferer but reflect on the family as well— so transsexualism now occupies the role of Unspeakable.

I wish it could be suddenly known without my having to do the

disclosing. It’s not just the endless questions, but how could I ever explain what a wonderful person my brother was? And then, “It’s such a

juicy tidbit,” I tell a friend. “It’s too anguished a subject for gossip,” she replies.

Another old friend comes to New York and we have lunch. I

want to explain why Andrew and I didn’t accept her invitation the

previous summer, one that would have involved getting a ride from

Ellen to the Virginia mountain retreat where she was hosting the

weekend. After making the disclosure, I confessed I simply couldn’t

have faced it. She’s very quiet, and unlike the other recipients of the

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information, doesn’t question me further. (After all, she’s a Virgin-

ian.) Is she uncomfortable or simply discreet? I can understand dis-

comfort, even recoil— one is forced to visualize, at least for a moment until repression comes to the rescue, and that visualization makes us

uncomfortable.

“Everything will be natural,” Chevey had said on that fateful day in

October, at the beginning of the transition. “Nothing artificial . . . I don’t want to look like Marilyn Monroe, just a normal woman.” He

intended not to have breast implants and his hair would be his own.

,But what a lot of other alterations there would be. I get up the nerve to ask him exactly what the facial reconstruction surgery involved.

“First, some things were taken away, but none were added. Unlike

cosmetic surgery, this has nothing to do with beauty, or trying to look younger or like a certain person. It’s only about subtraction, removing obvious masculine characteristics. The first thing Ousterhout did was

pull out a ruler and measure everything. The man’s forehead is higher

than the woman’s, so he shortened the forehead. He takes out part of

the skin, pulls the hairline further forward, and raises the eyebrows

slightly. [This is all under general anesthetic, of course.] Second, the male forehead protrudes further out relative to the rest of the face (it’s less now, but think of Neanderthal man). You can’t just saw away part

of the forehead, because it would break through to open nasal cavities, so he has to break the forehead into pieces and remake it, putting together the pieces in a way that is less protruding. The result is very