8. Passages

 

When I saw those women again, I’d thought they were the only ones who survived this block. As far as I know, none was still living there, at least physically, when we came to see my mother for the last time. Of course I knew Mrs. Littington had gone years before. But the others, I’d just assumed they’d left.

And, at least for a time, it confirmed what I’d always suspected: only women survive. And that, in the end, mothers don’t have much more than their daughters and females—no matter how bitterly one may fight the other—have only each other. Nobody and nothing else—including this block—survives. Or so I came to conclude.

Later I believed, briefly, that there were exceptions, contradictions—including me. Sometimes it’s said that the exception proves the rule, or more precisely, that the contradiction confirms the theory.

My own experiences, though, led me to revise what I thought was a truism. Most of, if not all, of the survivors are female. They’ve got the Y chromosome, or some equivalent to it, somewhere in their bones. The bones—the only part of the universe you can’t escape. The scientists may unravel the helix, the spiral that twines the uterus, the intestines, all the visceral matter, together. But the things that can’t be changed are still woven and bound, still bred, in the bones.

Even when you’re really young, your bones ache when you’re trying to do something they just weren’t made to do. Sometimes those tasks can even break that latticework—Just ask any tiny, skinny boy whose father, uncle or older brother prodded him into playing football.

So yes, there are two genders on this block, just as there are anywhere else. But, just as important as the biophysical division of the species is the divide between those two zones of life on this block. I suppose that it exists in other places, too, but I first noticed it on this block: It seems that you’re either in the kitchen or on the streets.

Most of the boys end up on the streets. They live long enough to leave another boy behind for another boy to take in or mold. One day, when you’re a boy, someone teaches you how to raise and swing your fists, if you haven’t learned it on your own. Someone else shows you (again, if you didn’t pick it up) the walk: head slightly back, chest ahead, arms firmly at sides. Somehow it seems to take up the width of the sidewalk and others step aside—or challenge you. There’re other things, too, that they teach you in the name of “becoming a man.” And—oh yeah—there’s always the first drink, the first smoke, the first rape. Nobody calls it that, of course. It’s not a violation if you do it in some other neighborhood, to someone who’s not the sister of anybody you know.

But my mother, my grandmother and their friends—they knew my nature. They always started to cook meals right about when some uncle or cousin wanted to take me outside. Garlic had to be pressed, onions chopped, tomatoes sliced. Later there would be soups to simmer and pasta to boil.

I didn’t mind doing those culinary basics—I was going to say “grunt work,” but in a kitchen all tasks, from peeling carrots to baking soufflés, are equally important. Anyone who’s not in the kitchen sees only the complete meal and has the idea that the chef, or whoever conceived of the repast, is the most important person.

Anyone who’s spent any time in a kitchen knows that all of the work is important because it’s all necessary. No one who’s ever fed, burped, changed or bedded a baby will tell you that one of those tasks is more important than the others. And so it is with cooking: One step leads to another, which is precisely the reason why one step isn’t more important than another.

That lesson wouldn’t become clear to me until much later. But spending time in the kitchen—it’s probably the reason I made it to my mother’s funeral. Sometimes, when I was growing up, I wondered whether I’d “make it”—whatever that meant—without learning those secrets the males of the species reveal to each other during their brief lives that still sometimes seem too long.

At some point—somewhere just after my puberty, I think—the uncles, family friends and other males who passed through gave up on me. Before that, one of my uncles wanted to take me on a fishing boat. He convinced my mother to let me go, for one day, even though I didn’t want to. All I can remember was feeling nauseous I wasn’t sure whether it was the rocking of the boat or the smell of the rotting bluefish carcasses that got to me. After that, I was always grateful that my mother would never, ever allow anything that had ever swum to end up on her counter!

Anyway—I know I’m wandering again—but once there weren’t any males older than me trying to toughen, or roughen, me up, there just weren’t any more males. Except for school—and that’s the main reason I didn’t stay long enough to get any certification that I’d stayed. Once I passed through that summer when voices deepen and boys’ bodies bulk up, nobody saw much of me on this block—or, rather, I didn’t see much of anybody else. So getting to school wasn’t difficult, until I got near it: after Adam died, there just didn’t seem to be any men or boys left between my house and school.

But once I got to school, my troubles began. Most of the kids, I suppose, had they been left to themselves, would’ve simply talked among themselves about me if they’d noticed me at all. Sure, I’d’ve been body-slammed into my locker—What kid isn’t?—and I’d’ve probably heard “faggot” or “N (as in Nancy) boy.” But even the most macho boy, at some time, has his status challenged. He deals with it (in one way or another) and the taunters move on.

It seemed, though, that the teachers egged the adolescents on. Promoting, prolonging, their adolescence—the kids’, and their own—that’s what those teachers seemed hired to do. Young people call each other “faggots,” “he-shes” and so on because they have no idea what those words mean. (The same, by the way, for “nigger” and any other racial epithet.) They’ve heard the names; they echo them and think someone will answer.

The one thing I learned for certain when I was in school is this: Those who don’t graduate, teach. The ones who can’t deal with grown-ups—that is to say, people who do what they need to do and not simply what they’re “supposed” or expected to do—spend their lives among adolescents, among people who’ve learned no more than they have. And they do everything they can to make sure their students turn out no better than they did.

I’m not thinking only about the “fag” or “sissy boy” jokes one of my teachers told. Or the one some really puerile pedagogue—I can’t remember his name—uttered. (It goes like this: Two women are in a room. One says, “I want to be frank with you.” The other says, “No, let me be Frank!”) Or even the one who divided the class this way: Boys, Girls and my former name.

In a way, public school was even worse than Catholic school. Even though my speech and body mannerisms bore more resemblance to those of girls than boys (People have always told me this.), the fact that I wore the St. Thomas School’s maroon and gray plaid in a tie rather than a skirt at least identified me with the gender the nuns hated less, or at least didn’t know enough about to hate as much as their own. They hated all the boys equally and all the girls equally, but there was a particular rage they could direct only at the ones in Mary Janes and round collars.

And I do feel fortunate for this: that I was never subject, from a nun, to the beating one girl got when, after writhing in her seat with one hand raised and the other curled around her stomach, her blood ran over the edge of the wooden slat she sat on, to the floor. It never occurred to me, before or since, that women could inflict such violence on each other—mainly because, back then, I didn’t think nuns were really women. Their habits hid their hair and everything else that identified their gender. I guess even today, as I’m almost at the end of my transition, I still hold that image.

But the public-school teachers were far more capricious and unpredictable. No nun ever said, “You can talk to me,” or even pretended to want to hear what you were feeling. Which meant, of course, that they couldn’t use what I said against me. Some public-school teachers didn’t, either, and I had respect for the ones who didn’t try to gain my confidence. But the ones who cooed their concern for you were the ones who told the other kids whatever you talked about. They had to be—I wouldn’t have told any of the other kids, boys or girls, that I helped my mother in the kitchen, much less that I enjoyed it. Or anything else about my life that they couldn’t see: I knew I’d never hear the end of it.

And no nun ever did what the teacher in the last class I ever attended—I don’t remember what subject it was—did. I sat, my face in my hand, pretending not to hear a question. He walked over to me, rapped his knuckles on my desk, then on my head. “Knock knock? Who’s there? A guy or a girl?”

Finally—and I have to admit again that Catholic school could’ve been much worse had I been a girl—no one, anywhere, before or since, has done anything like what the football coach and two of his players did on the last day I spent inside the walls of that public school.

In those days, at least in that school, coaches had to teach something besides football or basketball. Mr. Tigler was given a class in art—actually, it was more like diagram-drawing—to instruct. Now, he knew about as much about lines and proportion as I know about wide-outs. So he tried to teach the way he saw teachers in other subjects doing it: by reading from the textbook and giving the class an assignment.

All right, so there’re lots of teachers in the world. But they, even the most hateful ones, don’t do, or tell their students to do, or even allow, what Tigler got Jack and Moon, two of the tackles, to do

I could see some sort of cue in Tigler’s eyes. Moon whined, “Aww, I thought we were gonna draw nudes in this class.” On cue, Jack’s eyes lit up: “Yeah, naked girls.” They turned to me, and Moon, who was sitting right behind me, spun me around and started to unbutton my shirt. Tigler chuckled.

No wonder the girls—who thought they were signing up for a real art class—dropped the class within the first week. Two that I know of actually signed up for sewing classes simply to get away from those boys.

After that class, as I walked down the long hallway that led from the class to the athletic field, Jack and Moon took turns body-slamming me against the lockers. Someone else yelled, “Be careful! We don’t want to mark her up!” Then they laughed and ran down to the doors.

Much as I hated those guys—and because of them and others like them, sports—I used to walk by the field, even when they were there, because it was the quickest way to Featherstone Boulevard, which I could take back to my block or to the movie theatres. Sometimes the players would blow kisses, held their hands up in a limp-wristed salute or yell, “Nancy Boy!” as I walked by. But I always thought none would attack me, because even if they weren’t arrested, they’d get kicked off the football team.

As I walked out the door, I thought I’d heard someone under the grandstand, about a hundred yards to my right. Someone grabbed my right arm, someone else my left, and they dragged me.

Underneath the steel girders, they threw me onto the sand. Someone rolled me around-- I was in a daze so I couldn’t tell who--and other hands pressed mine to the ground. I pushed, they pushed harder, and someone kicked the crown of my head.

“Today we’re going to draw the female nude!” That gruff drawl: Tigler! “But first we need a female.”

“Yes, coach,” Moon droned.

“Are you sure we’ve got one?” –that drawl again.

“There’s only one way to tell, coach,” Jack intoned.

Moon tugged at my belt. “Must be a female, coach. She kicks.” But not enough to get him or the others away. They couldn’t open my belt; Moon pulled it so hard the buckle felt like it would pierce my abdomen before it snapped off the leather.

“Come on. This is taking too long,” someone else yelled.

Then Moon and Jack each tugged one side of my waistband. The button flew off, the zipper unraveled and my pants split in two. Then, as Jack started to pull down my white cotton under-briefs, Tigler drawled, “Let’s go boys.” They nearly broke my arms pulling me up off the ground and pushing me out from under the bleaches when they saw the principal walking through the parking lot on the opposite side of the field.