“I hope you guys don’t mind sharing a room,” Catherine says, leading Sam and me upstairs. She insisted on carrying my suitcase, so all I have is my tennis bag slung over my shoulder. “Normally we’d have plenty of extra space, but we’ve got more volunteers here than usual right now because of the new arrivals.”
I glance behind me in time to see Sam’s eyebrows knit together. He’s thinking about last night again, I know it. What may have happened on that big bed if I hadn’t gotten sick.
I turn back around. “Not a problem at all,” I tell her. “We’ve been sharing hotel rooms the whole trip.”
“Are you two a couple?” she asks.
Some spittle gets caught in my throat and I cough. “No, no, just friends.”
Sam mutters something but I don’t catch it.
Catherine opens a door at the end of a long hall, and we go in, dropping our bags on the baby-blue carpet. The room is nice, with a big bed in the center covered by a patchwork quilt, and an en suite bathroom. The window overlooks the horse stable, beyond which the sun is starting to set, causing the land to take on a golden glow.
“This is great. Thanks,” Sam says. He grabs some clean clothes from his duffel. “I think I’ll go take a shower. It’s been a long day.”
“I’ll go after you,” I say.
We’re both filthy, but he’s a lot dirtier than I am. The pig adventure ended up being far less exciting than I’d expected—and that was just fine with me. Up close, the pigs kind of freaked me out. They’re really, really big, and they have gnarly teeth and tiny little eyes. I decided to help construct the new fence instead of doing any of the jobs that involved more direct pig-to-human contact.
Sam got right in there and helped bathe them.
He disappears into the bathroom, and I decide to unpack. But when I unzip the front pouch of my suitcase, the papers and pictures from Mellie’s secret box stare up at me. “Catherine!” I catch her just as she turns to go. “I almost forgot.” I leave the birth certificate and other documents in the pocket, but I hold up the photos.
She gasps and scurries to my side. We sit on the edge of the bed and flip through the stack together. With each picture, she looks from it to me and back again, as if trying to find hints of me in that baby and vice versa. “Until today,” she says softly, “any time I thought of you or wondered where you were or what you might be doing, this was the image that came to mind. This baby. That was all I knew you as. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with a clear picture of what you might look like today.”
I nod. “I understand that. This”—I gesture with a photo of Celeste—“is all I can picture Celeste as. I didn’t know her before this moment in time, and I’ll never know her after.”
Tears fill Catherine’s eyes. “It’s not fair, is it?”
“No. It’s really not.” I gaze down at a picture of Celeste holding me.
“You look just like her, you know,” Catherine says, putting an arm around me.
“You think?”
“I do.”
We silently sift through a few more photos. “Catherine?” I say, needing to give voice to the question in my mind.
“Yes?”
“Was Celeste happy? Was she glad she had me?”
“Dara.” She grabs my shoulders and rotates me so we’re facing each other. “She adored you. You were the light of her life. You were the light of all our lives.”
I nod. “Okay. Thanks.” But the nerves are creeping in again.
All I want are people in my life who will support me and be proud of me and won’t lie to me. People who I can always count on to be on my side, no matter what. I think the Pembrokes are as close to perfect as I could ever hope to find. They’re kind and generous, and they clearly love each other. And they’ve been searching for me. But, like Catherine said, they only ever knew me as that little baby. A lot has changed since then. I come with a lot of baggage.
What if I don’t live up to their expectations?
After Catherine leaves to go get some more work done, I open my email. One more letter from Mellie.
From: [email protected]
June 22 (11:20 AM)
Subject: “I am.”
Dear Dara,
I often think I should write to Stephen King and suggest he write a book about a transgender kid going through puberty. Because, at that point in my life, I couldn’t imagine anything scarier.
The body that I already had such a complicated relationship with was betraying me, propelling me forward into something I desperately did not want. Something irreversible.
Things were happening all over me, all at once. My voice was changing, my body was becoming taller and broader, and the hair growth kept on coming. The mirror told me “man” more and more each day. And, in direct response, my brain screamed, No.
I watched the girls at school turning into women. They were experiencing things I wished I could. They were turning into someone I’d never be, while I was turning into something I hated.
My mustache seemed to grow in overnight. I don’t know why it was the mustache that did it; maybe because it was unhideable. I could choose to not speak, and no one would hear my voice. I could keep my body covered under clothing, and no one would see what was happening there. But facial hair was plain as day, on display for the whole world. I couldn’t go through life wearing a mask, though in many ways it did feel like I already was. Regardless of the reason, it was that morning, when I looked into the mirror and saw that dusting of dark hair above my lip, that the sentence passed my lips for the first time. “I am a girl.” Not “I want to be a girl,” or “I wish I were a girl.” I am a girl.
I didn’t know how I knew it. All the evidence was to the contrary. But I was certain. And I was the only one who knew.
Another stepping-stone.
You’re probably thinking how ironic it is that it took me until that moment, when I looked the least like a woman than I ever had, to define it. But it was like a door in my brain had finally been unlocked, and all the feelings and ideas that for years had been leaking out piecemeal through the crack under the door came rushing out in their glorious, honest entirety. It made me understand why people have faith—I now knew what it was like to be so sure of something you can’t see, something that should make no sense at all.
I slid to the bathroom floor and whispered it to myself over and over. “I am a girl, I am a girl, I am a girl.” I tried a variation: “I am a woman.”
I’d known it for a long, long time. When I was three and telling my mother something had gone wrong while I was being baked and I needed to go back into the oven to be fixed, this was what I’d been trying to say. Ten years later, I was even surer of it. It had just taken me a while to put the words together in the right order.
The relief was immense and indescribable.
But it barely lasted a minute.
Panicked, I grabbed my father’s razor and shaving cream, and got rid of the new, soft hair on my lip as quickly as possible.
I wiped my face with a towel and stared at my reflection. The hair was gone, but a shadow remained, a sure sign it would be back. There was no stopping what was happening to me.
As long as I live, I will never forget that moment.
It was the first time I considered suicide.
It wasn’t the last.
I’m so sorry if this is hard for you to read, Dara. I can’t tell you how hard it is to write. I’d always hoped that, even when you learned my whole story, I could shelter you from the darkest parts. But like you said, knowing the whats is not enough. You need to know the whys behind them. And my wavering mental health is a very big part of it all.
Speaking of which, you should know that I’ve decided to take some time off work. Just a few days, hopefully. But I can’t be there right now, floating around the corridors, distracted, checking my phone a thousand times a day, waiting for you to call or email or text. It’s not fair to the patients or the other nurses, and it’s not fair to me. I’m not in a great place right now, and I need to focus on getting better. But I promise I’m working on it.
I’m here if you want to talk. I miss you.
Love,
Mom
Suicide? Not in a great place? What is she talking about? My mother is the strongest person I know. Often to a fault. How could she even consider …?
My chest tightens and my throat starts to burn, that horrible thing your body does when sadness comes on too quickly and it needs time before it can produce a cry.
And the puberty stuff. How she was jealous of the other girls. Did she feel that way when I went through puberty too? Did I make these feelings worse for her then?
Did my leaving make it worse for her now?
Sam comes out of the bathroom, all clean and good-smelling and escorted by a puff of steam.
I stare at him, stricken.
He halts. “Now what?”
I hold the phone out. “Mellie’s emails.”
“She’s been sending them?” He takes the phone and starts scrolling.
“Start at the beginning,” I say. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Shaken? Numb? I’m still pre-cry, and I’m not really sure if tears are going to come at all.
I can’t tell if these emails are a good thing or a bad thing. I’m glad she’s finally opening up, trusting me—respecting me—enough to tell me the whole truth, but they’re just making things even more confusing and upsetting. One minute I’m mad as hell that Mellie took me from this family, the next minute I’m sick to my stomach over the development that my mother has periodically considered killing herself.
Why does everything have to be so hard?
Leaving Sam with the phone, I go into the bathroom to change into a sports bra, then manage to duck out of the house without seeing anyone. They’re all still working out back.
I head straight for the gravel road, push every last thought out of my mind, and force my tired body into a run.
Without my phone, I don’t have music, but that’s okay. When you really focus, even the most quiet of places becomes filled with sound. Wind zipping past your ears. Trees rustling. Cows mooing. Birds singing. Fallen leaves crunching. Planes flying high above. Add to all that my sneakers beating a steady rhythm as the gravel turns to pavement, and I’ve got more of a soundtrack than I’ll ever need.
As the miles pass, my muscles begin to groan. The groans turn to screams, and eventually I have to give in. I stop. Lean forward with my hands braced on my thighs. Breathe. Look around.
I’ve made it to a town. There’s not much in the way of pedestrian traffic, but a supermarket is up ahead to the left, and a small post office is to my right. I have no idea what this place is called, but in getting here, I’ve managed to return to myself.
Dusk will be setting in soon. I straighten up, redo my ponytail, and turn back the way I came.