This is …
She’s …
What?
“That’s not funny,” I say, even though it’s clear from the way Mom spoke the word father, like it physically pained her, that she’s deadly serious.
“I would never joke about this.”
I let out a one-note laugh, but it dies and thuds to the ground the moment it’s out of my mouth.
Oh my God.
The bottles in her hands. The hormone medications. That’s what they’re for.
I back up a few inches, to put more space between us on the couch. “Explain,” I whisper.
“I don’t know where to begin …”
I stare at her, trying to find a clue, something I’ve overlooked all these years. She looks like … my mom. She’s taller than I am, but not much. I guess her shoulders are sort of broad, but so are mine—upper body strength doesn’t have to equal masculine. She doesn’t have an Adam’s apple or stubble on her face. Her hands and feet are big, I guess, but I wouldn’t consider them mannish.
Her voice, though … it’s a bit lower than the average woman’s. I never questioned it—plenty of women have deep voices—but there have been a few times when she was mistaken for a man over the phone.
And her mouth is the same mouth as the man in the picture’s. Now I know where I recognized his smile from—I’ve seen it on my mother’s face nearly every day of my life.
“I don’t understand.” It’s a puny phrase for such an overwhelming feeling.
“I was assigned male at birth,” she says quietly. “Marcus.” The name comes out scratchy, as if it’s grown weak with disuse. “I had all the anatomical boy parts, and everyone assumed I was a boy. But even before I fully understood the differences between boys and girls, I knew I wasn’t what everyone wanted me to be. I couldn’t tell anybody what I was feeling, though.”
“Which was what?” I press. I need to hear her say the words.
“That God had made a mistake. My body wasn’t right. People didn’t understand trans issues then the way they’re starting to now. There was no Jazz Jennings or Laverne Cox or Chaz Bono or Transparent. I never even heard the words transgender or transsexual until I was out of high school.”
There they are. Those are the words.
I’ve heard about transgender people, of course. I’ve watched the reality shows and followed the political campaigns to restrict public bathroom access—when two of your childhood idols are Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, it’s pretty much ingrained in you to care deeply about LGBTQ issues.
If it were anyone else, I’d hug them and say, “As long as you’re happy. I support you.” Truly. But how am I supposed to do that now, when I’m finding out my own mother has lied to me—intensely—all these years? Lied about my origin and her past and the baby pictures and who knows what else. She didn’t trust me—respect me—enough to tell me the truth. I’m feeling even more lost now than I did before. Mom’s confession is not an answer; it’s a domino that’s tipped over a thousand other questions.
At least she’s making eye contact with me, not brushing me off. That’s more than I can say for some of our past arguments.
Please, Mom, I beg her silently. Make me understand.
“My parents started to pick up on the fact that I was different early on,” she continues. The circles beneath her eyes seem to darken as I watch. “They assumed I was gay, that I was a boy who liked boys, which was not acceptable to them, either. My father was … not kind.”
“Is that why we don’t speak to them?” I knew her parents weren’t nice people, but she’d always kept the story vague. More lies.
“Yes. I can’t imagine what they would think if they saw me now.”
Because they’d be expecting the man in the picture. And the woman in front of me is most certainly not that man.
It feels like there’s someone screaming in another language inside my brain. I’m able to pick up the tone, the emotion of what’s happening, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t piece out a single identifiable word or phrase. But I keep grasping, listening.
Mom fiddles with the gold ring on her right hand. “I put all my energy into …” She pauses, steeling herself, as if what she’s about to say next is even worse than what she’s already said. “Into … playing tennis to distract myself.”
She looks up at me, waiting.
I meet her eyes. A beat goes by. Then another. Two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle snap into place. The Sports Illustrated article about Marcus Hogan. My mother.
Hot, fat tears spring to my eyes. This is a betrayal of an entirely different kind. Mom knows it.
“You played tennis,” I say feebly.
Her lips bend; her chin tightens in apology. “I did.”
“Professionally.”
“Yes.”
“But …” I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing the tears to spill over, and pinch the bridge of my nose. Nothing makes sense. Nothing. “But you hate tennis! You’ve never shown any interest. All this time you’ve stood there with a straight face and told me going pro isn’t an option and that I shouldn’t try—and you’ve actually done it? I can’t fucking believe this!”
Mom flinches, and I fleetingly wonder if it’s in reaction to my use of the F-word. I don’t swear a lot, and never in front of her.
“I don’t hate tennis. I love it.” The sigh that escapes her is a sound of regret. “That’s why I haven’t always been able to—” She stops, tries again. This is hard for her. Good. “It’s been painful: to watch you achieving so much and finding so much joy in it. It made me miss it that much more.”
It’s a hundred-mile-an-hour serve, right to the chest. “That is so messed up,” I say, with zero sympathy. “That’s why you’ve never supported me? Because it made you feel bad? Guess how that made me feel, Mom.”
“I’m so sorry.” She does sound remorseful, but I don’t know what to believe. “I should have done a better job keeping my own feelings out of it. But … nostalgia wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want you going down this path. It’s a hard life, Dara. It’s a lot of pressure and disappointment. I lived it. I didn’t want that for you.”
“That’s not your choice to make.”
“And I feared that if you did well and became famous … Well, I worried that people would find out—” She stops. Regroups. “That everything we’ve built together would fall apart.” She looks up at me. “I am sorry. I’ve made so many mistakes.”
“Yeah, like not telling me.”
“If I told you, you would have wanted to know more. You would have Googled me, looked for pictures.”
Right. If she told me about her tennis career, she would have had to tell me she played on the men’s circuit. She would have had to tell me the truth—about everything. And it was more important to keep her secret, to keep lying.
The anger crackling inside me catches flame and begins to spread.
“I was never one of the top-ranked players,” she says, throwing me a few crumbs to make up for her years of deceit. “I was never going to be a Novak Djokovic. Or a Serena Williams. But I held my own for a little while. I played in a few big tournaments. Then I met Celeste.”
And just like that we’ve rounded another corner. It’s a struggle to keep up. She’s giving me information, but I don’t know how to delineate it. I don’t know which parts are the keys that will unlock some bigger picture, and which are nothing more than unfocused ramblings of her guilty subconscious. All I know is that I’m no closer to truly understanding why—about any of it.
“So Celeste is why you quit?” I ask, my back pressed against couch cushions that feel far less cozy than they once did. Where is Celeste? What happened to her? Too many questions. Too much fog, and not nearly enough beacons.
Mom shakes her head. “No. She’d never have wanted me to …” Another pause. She slowly reaches out and places the prescription bottles on the table. What is going on in her head? “I loved her, Dara. I want you to know that. We were happy together.”
I don’t know why this stands out as strange, hearing my mother talk about being in love. It’s by far the least strange thing she’s said. But she’s never showed any interest in men—or women. I’ve always wondered why, but whenever the subject came up, she would just shrug and say she was too busy to date. I figured it was because after getting pregnant during a one-night stand, she was pretty done with men. But obviously that wasn’t it—there was no one-night stand; there was no pregnancy. At least, not hers.
My mom is not my mother.
“So you were having sex?” I blurt out. “With your … man parts?” I don’t know why I feel the need for clarification on this. Obviously, they were having sex if I was conceived.
“Yes.”
“Did she know about your … feelings?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“But you weren’t a woman yet.”
“That’s not how it works—I have always been a woman. But you’re right in that I hadn’t started transitioning yet.” She shakes her head. “This is all so strange to say out loud. I don’t know if I’m telling it right.”
“You’re not,” I confirm.
Her face contorts. “I’m sorry. You deserve the truth, all of it.”
Funny how I only deserve that now.
“What happened to Celeste?” I demand.
“When you were six months old, she was out for a run on South Second Street …” Mom takes a breath. “A drunk driver jumped the curb …”
A sob leaps into my chest. This morning, I had no idea Celeste even existed. An hour ago, I knew her name but nothing else. Now I’m mourning her loss.
“She loved you very much,” Mom says. “She would have been so proud of you.”
I had two parents. A mother who looked like me; a father who shared my passion. Two people to love me. Be proud of me.
What the hell happened?
As if reading my mind, Mom says, “After Celeste passed away, I began my transition.” She runs a hand over her hair. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. But I made a few friends in the trans community, and they helped me feel my way through.”
“Like … with what kind of stuff?” I ask.
“With everything, really. The emotional and the physical. I grew my hair out, and started wearing makeup and women’s clothes, gradually at first and then full time. I changed my name. I found a doctor, and began taking hormones.”
“What do the hormones do?”
“They’ve made my skin softer, my body curvier.” A whisper of a smile passes over her lips.
I glance at the bottles on the table. She’s still taking the hormones, clearly.
It must have been exhausting, hiding the pills and the doctor’s appointments and the trips to the pharmacy, all to make sure I never found out. Out of nowhere, a long-dormant memory awakens in my mind. Mom coming to the breakfast table each morning with two pills rolling around on her plate next to her peanut butter–coated English muffin. She’d down them in one go with her first sip of coffee, then munch on the English muffin while she read the paper. I never asked what the pills were for—I barely even noticed them. They were just another part of our morning routine. But by the time I was in middle school, they’d disappeared. She started hiding them when I got old enough to start asking questions.
I glance at her chest. “Did hormones do that too?” She’s a C cup—I know that from years of sharing laundry duties. I’m only a B.
“A little. Surgery did the rest.”
Surgery? The word makes me flinch. But of course there were surgeries. Look at her—she’s a woman. An average, pretty woman. I can’t believe this was all happening while I was alive, and I had no idea. “What other surgeries have you had?”
A shadow crosses her face and she looks away. “I know what you’re asking.”
How? I barely even know what I’m asking. I’m just trying to stay above water here.
“You want to know if I had bottom surgery, don’t you?”
“What is that? Like on your … butt?”
She looks back at me and blinks. Then relaxes. “No, not on my butt. I thought you were asking if I … it’s what everyone always wants to know. They’re completely unconcerned with what you have below the waist until they hear you’re trans, and suddenly, it’s all they can think about.”
“Oh.” Now I get what she’s talking about.
“I did have a few facial feminization surgeries.” Almost absently, she touches her temple, and then her hand moves to her throat, where I’m guessing her Adam’s apple may have once been. “I haven’t had the bottom surgery. Our insurance didn’t cover it, and there were risks associated with it that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take.”
“So you mean …” My gaze involuntarily travels to her lap. The thing she used with Celeste to make me. She still has it.
She nods. “Honestly, I don’t feel like I need that procedure anymore. I’m happy with my body the way it is now. It was more important to me that the general public see me as a cis woman …” She pauses again, clears her throat nervously. “Do you know what cisgender means?”
“Someone who … someone like me, right?”
“Yes, someone who identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth. The world couldn’t know I was trans—for many reasons. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to pass.”
Pass. Another word for lie.
I hang my head in my hands, and after a moment something else she said resonates. Insurance. Of course—all this stuff costs money. “Does insurance cover everything else?” I ask. “The hormones and the other surgeries?”
“Sometimes. It depends,” she says.
“So we’ve been paying out of pocket for some of this?”
She shrugs tiredly. “You’d think working in a hospital would entitle us to better healthcare coverage, but what can you do?”
The back of my throat swells, making it difficult to swallow, to breathe. All this time, she’s been so concerned about money, working overtime, telling me we can’t afford my dreams. I have no idea what hormones and plastic surgery cost, but I do know that when I tore the meniscus in my knee a couple years ago and had to get an MRI to assess what kind of damage had been done, we got a bill for over fifteen hundred dollars, and that was after insurance had covered their part. Mom has been living this way for nearly my entire life—the cumulative medical bill can’t be small.
The realization that this is where our money has been going, that this is another part of why I’m still stuck in this house instead of being able to take the next step in my career like most athletes my age, makes me feel pretty damn insignificant. Embarrassed. Naïve. Like a scraggly old yard bush watching through a picture window as the houseplants inside get lovingly watered and pruned.
“Where was I during all this? The surgeries.”
“You were about two at that point. You stayed with my friend Kelly Ann—she was one of the trans women I’d become close with—while I was in the hospital. But it was only a couple nights at the most. There was a lot of bruising, but you didn’t seem to mind.” She smiles. “Kelly Ann helped me with you for the first week or so after my breast augmentation too, because it was difficult for me to lift you at first.”
I don’t remember anyone named Kelly Ann at all. “Where is Kelly Ann now? And your other trans friends?” I ask.
“We went our separate ways. It’s … a long story.”
I want to know more, but I also can’t let the conversation derail too much. “Who else knows?” I ask. “Like, from our lives now.”
“No one.” Her voice is a whisper.
“Not even Niya?”
“No.”
It should probably make me feel better to know I’m not the only one Mom was lying to, but it doesn’t.
“What about Celeste’s family? Where were they? Why didn’t I stay with them when you had the surgeries?” My history has been shifting with every sentence Mom’s uttered. And if I really did have two parents, then something about my severe lack of extended family isn’t adding up.
She hesitates, and looks away.
“Mom?”
“They’re … not good people.”
I finally manage to swallow. “What does that mean? Were they abusive like your parents were?”
“No, they … they weren’t supportive of my choices.” Her tone is defensive now. “They were from a different world—old money and conservative values …” Old money? She takes another moment, and then meets my eyes. She’s shutting down again. I’m well-versed in Mellie Baker’s art of avoidance. I know her so well and I don’t know her at all.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask.
“We had to leave,” she says simply.
“Leave where?” I don’t understand.
“Philadelphia.”
We lived in another state? In a big city?
“We moved to a few different towns while I completed my transition,” Mom continues, “and then settled here.”
“Did you tell them where we were going?” I ask.
“Celeste’s parents?”
“Yes.”
She grimaces. “No.”
“Did they have any way of getting in touch with us?”
“No.”
“Why not?” I cry, shooting to my feet.
“Dara, you don’t understand …”
No, I think I do.
The fog lifts. It’s like I’ve stepped outside myself and am looking down at my life from behind a magnifying glass. And all I see is one giant, unfair mess.
We could have lived in a city instead of this stupid town. I could have trained at a real tennis center every day with a parent who could have offered me invaluable advice. We could have been far better off, financially. I could have heard stories about the woman who gave birth to me. I could have had family photos, a family tree. I could have had grandparents. Grandparents who had money, apparently, and might have helped me launch my career.
We could have done all these things while Marcus was becoming Mellie. It didn’t have to be one or the other. I could have been her support system, even if Celeste’s parents had turned their backs on her.
But I didn’t get that opportunity. Mom didn’t like whatever my grandparents were saying, so she did the most selfish thing possible: She took me from them, from that life, forever. And she lied to me about it all, every single day. While we were hustling to make ends meet. While we were half laughing, half crying over the Mad Dog 357 hot sauce we poured over our French fries. While we sat at home together watching old Pixar movies while the rest of the second graders were at the father-daughter dance.
She didn’t do me the decency of considering I could have handled it then, so she sure as hell isn’t going to get my sympathy now.
“Why isn’t our last name Hogan? Or Pembroke?” My voice is severe, and my face is growing hot. But I fill in the blank before she can. “Did you change it because you didn’t want to be found?”
She nods, once. Her jaw is clenched.
The lengths she went to, to keep me from my family.
“Mom, why? I don’t understand! Why didn’t you tell me any of this? Is it because you thought I’d react the same way Celeste’s parents did?”
She shakes her head.
“Is it because you didn’t want me to know I had other family because you knew I’d want a relationship with them? And you didn’t want to have to deal with them because they were mean to you?”
She hesitates. Gnaws on her cheek.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s how you justified it.”
“It’s not that simple, Dara.”
I get up and pace the room, tugging on the ends of my hair. As more questions leap into my mind, I spit them out: “Where did the name Baker come from?”
She spins her ring around again, runs her gaze over the items spread out on the table. “I don’t know. I … liked the sound of it.”
Wow. Great reason. “Why did you quit tennis?”
She looks back at me with a tired I’m trying here, okay? expression. You’re not trying nearly hard enough, I want to say. “Because I was transitioning. I didn’t want to have to do it in public. There was a pro trans player before me, and—”
“Stop,” I bite out, before I even really decide to. My mouth knew I’d reached my limit before my brain did. But I cannot listen to another word. “Just stop.”
She does.
My eyes are blurry with a fresh deluge of tears, but I’ve never seen so clearly.
It was always about her choices, her happiness. Every single step of the way. I was just the idiot along for the ride.
Well, guess what? Now I get to make a choice.
I finally let myself do what I’ve wanted to since she first said the words biological father.
I run.