Mother
always said she could “no way, never” kill herself Only once in
her life did she even think about suicide, she said.
About
two years after Adam’s death, she realized her period was overdue
by a couple of days. Then a couple more. Then more than a week.
Finally, she called her mother and announced, “If I had a car, I’d
drive it into a brick wall.”
When
I came home from a day when I was supposed to’ve been at school,
Grandma knew I hadn’t been there. Anticipating my question about
mother, she abruptly declared, “She’s tired. She’s resting.”
That same tone mother, the lady whose name I never knew and all the
other adults in the neighborhood would use to pre-empt a probe.
I
could only suppose that I’d had something to do with mother’s
fatigue. She would never deny my suspicion, but years later—not
long ago, during one of the last times we talked—she said that
after seeing what her mother’d gone through and anticipating what I
had yet to go through--not to mention her own struggles—she
couldn’t bear the thought of bringing someone else into this world,
onto this block.
She
was younger, much younger than I am now. Still, even today, I see
her then as old, or at least older and tireder than I’ve ever been.
Or that she was old and tired in ways that I haven’t been, at
least not yet.
But
there’s still the operation, and whatever will come after it.
Mother’d
had an operation. Grandma told me later; then, much later, mother
told me she’d had her tubes tied. She probably couldn’t’ve
explained it to me because she didn’t want to; when she told me,
not long ago, what she’done, she didn’t need to.
As
she recalled that time, I remembered the days, the weeks that led up
to it: Mother crying that she didn’t know what to do with me, she
didn’t know what she would do; she should’ve known this
was coming, that it would be so difficult, that her life and mine
could only get more difficult.
About
the time mother told me this story, I heard about the childhood—if
you can call it that—of someone I’d heard about but met only
once. She died not long after our meeting.
Lucinda—Lucy—‘d
been born in a male body that would get whatever blows her father had
left in his fists after punching and slamming his wife into
unconsciousness. Lucy’s mother, according to her friends, poured
out two glasses of milk laced with rat poison. Before they drank,
Lucy’s mother called the police and told them what she was about to
do.
Two
officers arrived to find Lucy’s mother’s body curled on the
peeling tiles of the kitchen floor. Lucy—then known as
Christopher—sat near her mother’s head, and clutched her stomach
as a grayish-white pool spread around her feet.
After
Lucy’d left her father’s beatings for the sullen streets and
rotting piers near the city’s most (in)famous red-light district,
cops fished the long, dark body of Evangeline, her first lover, from
the water just off the piers she worked.
Lucy
talked long and loud, without rage, until someone mentioned the
coroner’s report on Evangeline. “Fuckin’ bullshit, “ she
hissed. “No-body around me kuh-mits soo-ih-side. Noo-body!”
I’d
been thinking about—no, envisioning—offing myself the day before,
as I had nearly every day back then. I had no place to stay, no
money and, it seemed, no way to make any. I wasn’t so pretty to
begin with, and I was getting older, old—at least for that world.
The hormones had begun to do their work, so I wasn’t getting any
erections. But my penis was still there, and my ass and waist were
still just about the same size.
Still,
I could pass, most of the time—probably because I was fortunate
enough not to have an Adam’s Apple. But I wondered how long I’d
keep that up. Even though women weren’t doing double-takes when I
used their bathrooms, some men did when I walked out the door.
I
realize now that perhaps I didn’t have any friends, that maybe I
never did. But still, it hurts as much—perhaps even more—when
you can’t even hold onto the illusion of friendship. Or of love.
I’d already lost Vivian when she thought I’d become too much of a
girl. Lost Marabeth, too. And ,it seemed, the only ones who
noticed, much less wanted, me were men I’d see at night.
You
know you’re not just a recreational cross-dresser when you need to
come out during the day, as the woman you are. When going to
work—whatever it is—or to the store, to lunch, anyplace as
someone other than the one as whom you identify becomes a crushing,
deadening load. Even the air you inhale doesn’t enter your own
lungs: It disappears down the neck of a cave into a hollow you’ll
never see.