Chapter 16: Part 16 - Monday Night

Part 16 — Monday night

I was silent in the car ride home with my mom. All I could think about across the whole hour-long soccer practice were Jessie’s last words to me. I hadn’t exactly said, ‘Yes’ to her. But I had nodded and squeezed her hands back in such a way that it couldn’t possibly mean anything else. 

Jessie had told the other girls it was ‘body issues’ that got me my own changing room. It was a vague enough answer and would probably start the rumor mill a-grinding, but it was better than the truth. My truth wasn’t a pill that most people could stomach. At least I hadn’t had to serve it yet. 

I was kind of waiting for Mom to pick up the conversation she’d started earlier on. About me going on estrogen. I was around the right age for it. And I knew the difference between ‘this is who I am right now’ and ‘this is just a phase’. In the end, though, we never got to have that conversation, because I badly needed to have another one first. 

“Okay Dad, it’s time to finish that talk!” I said as soon as I entered the house. He was in the kitchen. Cooking up another vegan loaf. An apologetic vase of flowers waited on the side with ‘Ella’ written on the card. ‘Not this time, Gerald’ rang in my head. 

My dad threw the kitchen towel on the side and pulled up a stool to the breakfast bar. 

“I’m sorry,” he conceded as soon as I sat down. 

Dammit. He was rolling over before I’d had the chance to get my licks in. 

“You should be!” I replied, seizing on his remorse. 

“No, hear me out, Ella,” he went on. “I’m not sorry about what I felt — what I feel — about your transitioning. I still think of you as my little boy and I have to work hard every time to force your name — your chosen name — and your pronouns into every sentence I speak. I’m not sorry about how I feel. But I am sorry about the way I went about showing you those feelings. And most of all, I’m sorry if you got upset because of the way I went about things.”

Why did I feel like my dad hadn’t really apologized for anything at all?

“But I want this conversation to be about moving forward,” he said, smiling at me from behind his gold-rimmed glasses. “I want this conversation to be about what happens next.”

“You want?” I replied. “You want, Dad? What about what I want?”

“I’m asking you what you want now, Ella,” he confirmed, calmly. I hated that he was taking the calm river. I wanted rapids. I wanted white-water anger and spuming insults. I wanted to vent!

“Well I want you to get rid of that stupid boys’ uniform for a start,” I informed him, forcefully. 

“Done!” he agreed. 

That was easy. A little too easy, perhaps. I proceeded on cautiously. 

“And I want you to email the school and take back all the things you and grandma asked for in that email of yours. I wanna be able to change in the girls’ change room. With the other girls!”

“I can email the school,” Dad replied, “but I’m not sure they’re gonna let you back in the girls’ change rooms any time soon.”

There it was. The cold rock face of reality. There was more to this than he was telling me. I decided to play dumb. 

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Ella,” Dad explained, as my mom moved to sit with him on his side of the breakfast bar, “there are some ways in which you’re like regu—” he corrected himself, “—biological girls. But there are some ways in which you’re not.”

“But with hormones—” I broke in. 

“—Hormones won’t spontaneously make you start having periods,” he cut across me. “Or change the fact that you have the biological equipment to make other girls pregnant.”

“Dad!” I protested, my indignation mixing with my cringe. 

“Dad’s right, Ella,” Mom interjected. “Don’t get me wrong,” she held up both hands, “I’m not taking his side and you’re still our daughter, right Gerald?”

“Our trans daughter,” he confirmed. 

I twitched slightly at the distinction. And it felt kind of like she was taking his side. 

“But to other girls’ parents — well, this is what I’ve been trying to tell you—” my mom went on. “Some women get very frightened by the thought of somebody with your equipment being in the same private spaces as them. Bathrooms. Or change rooms.”

“Mom, I don’t know what you’re—”

“We’re talking about rape, Ella,” my dad laid it down for me. “Or serious sexual assault.”

“Isn’t all sexual assault serious?” I asked him, derisorily. 

“Serious enough for us to keep men out of women’s spaces,” my dad replied, ignoring my baiting. “And while we agree that you’re not a man—”

“—Or a male,” my mom was quick to point out. 

“—You do have male equipment,” my dad explained. “And the school has a right to keep its children safe and its parents happy.”

“But I haven’t— I wouldn’t—” I protested. 

“Oh we know that, honey,” my mom reassured, taking my hands in her own. “But all it takes is for one parent to complain and the school will need to prove what it knew about you and when it knew it and what it did about it.”

“And Dad’s email mean that they know about me now?” I asked. They both nodded. 

It seemed my dad wasn’t content with ruining my transition medically, he’d gone and done it socially too, now. But what was the worst was what he said next. 

“Assigning you a gender-neutral space just means the school is covered if your gender-status ever comes out,” my dad finished. 

He was doing this ‘for me’. To keep me ‘safe’. I could hear it in his tone. He was using his lawyer voice. I heard him use it on the phone sometimes. It was this dispassionate disconnect that I guess helped him deal with the most traumatic parts of his criminal cases. The worst of the worst. And now he was using this filter with me. By turning my transition into work, he could distance himself from it the way he did with criminal cases. That kind of hurt. But I didn’t have time to deal with it right now. Mom was doing her best to undo some of the damage of my father’s words. The trouble is, in order to pull out a knife that is stuck, you have to twist it a little in the wound first. 

“Do you think you want to be out at school?” my mom asked. 

I thought about what that would mean. The trust it would erode. The feelings of betrayal from people who ‘thought they knew me’. Who was I kidding? I barely knew myself right now. 

“I’m not ready yet,” I replied, shaking my head even before I began speaking. 

“Cos people will start asking questions,” my dad prompted. “About the bathroom.”

“I already told them I have body issues,” I explained. They both looked at each other like they’d crunched into a wasp in their salad. 

“What?!” I asked, my hackles finally rising. “It’s not a lie. I do have body issues.”

“Nobody said it was a lie,” my mom placated. 

“Go up and change for dinner,” my mom instructed when it was clear that nothing more was going to be said about what dad had done. 

I stomped my way up the stairs, imagining each one was Ms Pike’s stupid, self-satisfied face. 

“Hey sis,” I heard when I got to the top. It was Anna. Her door was open and she was laying on the bed reading a book. Something was up. She never read books. 

“What’s up?” I asked, coming into her room and sitting down on the end of the bed. 

“I heard about what Dad and Grandma did,” Anna finally admitted. “They had no right to do that,” she said, then added, “I told Dad I thought it was disgusting. Grampa gave him a piece of his mind too. Even started speaking in Welsh to him. I’ve no idea what he said, but it must have been bad.”

“I’m gonna go on the hormones!”

I announced, suddenly. I don’t know where the urge came from. I think my mouth had just decided it wasn’t taking orders from my brain anymore today. 

“You’re—?”

“On estrogen,” I confirmed. 

“And dad’s okay with this?” Anna asked. 

“He doesn’t know about it,” I admitted. 

“Ella, going on HRT is not the same as just popping birth control pills,” Anna pointed out. 

“I didn’t know you were popping birth control pills,” I half-joked, half-sniped. Then followed it up with, “And dad’s okay with this?”

What was the matter with me today?

“He doesn’t know about it,” Anna replied, a wry smile bending into the corner of her mouth and folding me into her truth along with her trust. 

“I just wanna be a proper girl, Anna,” I went on, ignoring the ick that the thought of my sister needing birth control was causing me. 

“I get you,” she replied. But being a girl is so hard, Ella,” she explained. “You have to work twice as hard to get half as far. And the way people look at you. And talk to you. Teachers. Adults. Boys, God, boys! You try being a girl online for 5 minutes and you’ll quickly wanna change back,” she added.

I didn’t tell her, but I had tried being a girl online. Lots of times, when I was younger. It was another rock in my bag of secrets. I’d logged onto those anonymous chat sites. When people found out my name was Ella and I was 13 their demeanor changed instantly. I’d gotten used to the ‘hey baby’ and suggestive ‘so wyd?’ comments. I’d lost track of the number of times I’d been asked to snap or insta or kik.

It was vile. It was horrible. But I’d made my peace with it. If that was the price I had to pay to feel comfortable in my own skin, I’d pay it. You can always delete an app, I figured. It’s a lot harder to delete yourself.

“Girls! Meatloaf!” Mom cried from downstairs. 

“And vegan loaf!” Dad added. 

“You love the vegan loaf,” Anna teased. 

“Apparently not as much as you love the meat—” I left a pause just long enough for the innuendo to make itself plain, before adding, “—loaf.”

“You tell Dad about the pills and you’re dead!” Anna cried. Half of her was joking. The other half had already dug the shallow grave she’d bury me in. 

“You stay quiet on mine and I’ll stay quiet on yours,” I offered. 

“Deal!” she agreed. And we headed on down for dinner.