Chapter 11: Part 11 - Sunday Morning

Part 11: Sunday Morning

It’s funny how two words can make the difference between happiness and misery. As I watched Bobby Brandon cycle off from my party, those two words were, “Get lost!” Maybe with a, “Weirdo!” thrown in for good measure. But, as my mom drove us in silence back from the clinic after my monthly shot of Leuprorelin (that’s my puberty blocker), the two words that kept repeating again and again in my head were, ‘Red tape.’

The morning had started bright and happy. I slept in after I’d stayed up late helping my dad take down the decorations and put back up all the old pictures of me when I was younger. I was still amazed no one had found them. I’d spent the whole of my party with that niggling, back-of-the-head fear that somebody would snoop around, looking for stuff. That somebody would be a Leierna Scott. I even kept looking out for Bobby Brandon, cycling back with a posse of his friends to ride roughshod all over my big day. But those fears, like all fears, blew disproportionally large and then — under the size of their own inflated ridiculousness — blew away on the wind. The real things you have to fear are the things you can’t see coming. 

I got into the car with Mom at 11:17, in plenty of time to make my 12:00 appointment at the clinic. We’d got used to our monthly girls’ drives out together and we banged out tunes by Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion (my mom even snuck in a couple of Beyoncé hits, for old time’s sake). We got on the freeway a little late, at 11:29, after getting stuck in traffic, but I still thought nothing could go wrong.

Mom was driving a little faster to make up time when she looked in the rear view mirror and said, “Ooh, that car is driving like a maniac!”

I tried to turn around in my seat, tried to peer over my shoulder, but it was just out of view. In the end, I leaned forward and looked in the car’s wing mirror to see this white SUV screaming up behind us. It was swerving in and out of traffic like it was a fish swimming from a shark. At first, I couldn’t be sure, but the closer it got the more certain I grew. 

“That’s Jessie’s car!” I cried in realization. 

’What is she doing here?!’ I thought to myself. What if she’s following us? What if I said something or did something yesterday that upset her? What if she sees where I’m going?!

And then another thought occurred to me. I strained in the passenger seat to see who was driving her SUV. It wasn’t clear at first, but then a flash of mustache confirmed it for me. It was her dad driving. It was then that the other thought popped into my head. 

What if her dad is drunk?

The SUV followed us for about 10 minutes or so, weaving in and out of traffic, swapping lanes to try to get the clearest path. But the road gods weren’t with any of us today. No matter what they did, no matter what my mom did, they were always just right behind us. 

Eventually, the turning for the clinic came up and my mom popped on a signal. Imagine my horror when I saw the SUV pop on the same signal! All I could think about was the firm grip of Jessie’s dad’s hand, the way he’d made mine feel small and vulnerable, and the smell of alcohol on his breath. If he was chasing us, things could be about to get bad. Real bad. 

“What does it mean, Mom?” I asked. “Why is he following us?!”

There was something in my voice, something — not quite desperation — but something on the edge of frantic. 

“There’s a whole bunch of places on this turnoff,” my mom declared. But I could hear something in her voice too. Something teetering on a different edge. 

There were other places on this turnoff. An industrial park. A disused quarry about 20 miles out. But the main thing on this road, the thing that 90% of the cars turned off for, was the Palm Heights Medical Center. My medical center. 

Eventually, we hit a red light and the SUV pulled up right beside us. Jessie’s dad lowered the window and called across. 

“Small world, huh?” Mr Marina observed, coolly. 

My mom cracked the window on my side and I looked at her, stricken. 

“It sure is,” she replied, across me. I was right next to Jessie’s dad. I could see Jessie in the other seat. She was quiet, still, looking straight ahead. 

“Yeah,” her dad went on, unprompted, “Jessie stubbed her toe on the couch this morning and — it’s probably nothing, right babygirl? — but we thought we’d get it checked out before state training on Tuesday night. Wouldn’t want to miss any of the games, right honey?” 

Jessie said nothing. She stared forwards. She didn’t even acknowledge that I was there. 

Then he asked it. The question I was dreading. It wasn’t intrusive. It was an innocent, innocuous, just-making-conversation question. 

“Where you guys headed?”

I felt the panic rise in me. I couldn’t lie to him. I’m a terrible liar. People always see right through me. It’s like I’m made out of glass. 

“We’re just following up on some tests for Ella,” my mom lied. “Y’know? Girl stuff,” she deflected. No two words more likely to make any decent man back off than ‘girl stuff’. 

“Alright, well you two have a pleasant day then,” Jessie’s dad replied, putting the car into drive as the light changed to orange. He started to pull away and I began to let the large, dry ball at the back of my throat fall back down again. Then he stopped suddenly. 

“Y’know,” he opened like we might have any idea what was coming out of his mouth next. “Jessie’s having a sleepover next Friday night at the house. You’d love for Ella to come, right sweetie?”

The man looked across at his daughter and she smiled weakly, and hid behind her hair like I did sometimes when I wanted the world to open up and swallow me. She still didn’t look at me. 

“Ooh, that sounds nice,” my mom responded. I thought it was going to choke to death! The she added, “Okay if we get back to you?”

“Sure,” Mr Marina replied, and flashed that same winning smile that Jessie had (only it didn’t quite win me over as much). Then he drove off. 

My mom pulled over to the side of the road and waited for them to get into the distance. 

“Thanks Mom,” I said. 

She knew what for. 

“That’s okay, honey,” she replied. “Do you want to go?” she asked after a moment. Then clarified, “To the sleepover?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, twisting a little in the car. “Did Jessie seem —” I searched for the right word, then settled on the one I was trying to avoid, “—weird to you?”

“She’s probably just worried about her toe,” Mom replied. I wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince with that statement, but I could tell that she clearly hadn’t seen what I had seen, so I left it at that. 

*

The inside of the clinic smelt like lavender. I think it was the cleaning fluid they use. It always made me think of needles. We got there at 12:07 in the end. But they held our slot. 

Dr Shapiro was a short, round woman in her fifties. Her large, square-rimmed glasses gave her a serious look, but her voice — deep and bassy — made her sound like a kind aunt. She was the person who usually gave me my shots. 

“And how are we feeling today?” Dr Shapiro asked. It was always her first question. To try to put me at ease. She knew all too well about my fear of needles. 

“Good,” I lied, and force-flashed a smile into my cheeks. 

“All right then,” she replied, reaching for the swab and the kidney tray the needle was in. 

I lifted up my skirt and pulled my underwear to one side. Leuprorelin works best when it’s injected into the muscle. The bigger the better.  Dr Shapiro swabbed my left buttock and then paused. She ran her fingers inquisitively over a small patch of skin close to my waist. I could feel the prickle of hairs on my skin. I must have missed a spot when I shaved the other day. She picked up the needle and I looked away. 

I felt the tip go in. Sharp and pointy. ‘Just a little prick,’ she’d said the first time. She didn’t say that anymore. I preferred not to know when it was coming. “All done,” she said, putting the needle into the yellow sharps box. Then she said it. The thing that blindsided me like a white SUV. 

“That should last for another month, but after that things will probably start to show again.”

What did she mean? After what? After that I’d come back for another shot, right?

“What do you—?” I asked, before she clarified it for me. 

“The State passed a ban on puberty blockers for teens this week.”

I felt that hard, dry ball rising in my throat again, rising like it might retch out of me and carry my insides with it. Fear. Panic. Absolute terror. 

“The State—?” They were the only two words I could manage. But Dr Shapiro had some of her own. 

“There’s a grandfather clause for patients already registered as actively transitioning. But I’m afraid Ella doesn’t qualify.”

There it was. The nail in the coffin of my short life. Two words hammering down like a fatal blow. Doesn’t qualify. 

“I don’t understand,” Mom broke in, “Ella has been on the blockers for over a year now—”

“Puberty blockers hold off the onset of puberty,” Dr Shapiro explained. “But they don’t manage the transition from biological-male to gendered-female. Hormone therapy does that. If Ella was taking estrogen, then she’d qualify as actively transitioning. But, with her just in this holding pattern. It’s just a stupid piece of red tape—”

Dr Shapiro broke off when she saw the tears well in my eyes. 

“But Daddy said he’d—” 

I couldn’t finish. 

My lip began to wobble and my body began to shake as the sobbing took me. 

“We sent a letter out last week,” Dr Shapiro added, a look of genuine confusion on her face. “And we called too. I left a message on your home voicemail.”

I didn’t get a voice mail. 

I didn’t get a letter. 

Then I remembered something. 

My dad checking the mail a dozen times on Tuesday; the way he shuffled the letters under his cereal bowl a couple of days later; the way he kept referring to ‘red tape’. 

My mother caught the germ of it in my eye. The piecing of a puzzle together in a way that makes an awful kind of sense. 

I didn’t catch all of what the doctor said next to my mom. Just snatches. “Not possible,” “out of state”, “nothing I can do…”

Finally, when I couldn’t take it any more, I broke in with a question. It was such a tiny question, delivered in such a tiny voice, that at first they didn’t hear it. So I asked it again. And again. My voice wasn’t any louder, and — through the sobbing — I couldn’t blame them for not hearing me. But it finally broke in. 

“Did dad do this, Mom?”

My mother was silent. 

“Mom?” I pressed again. 

There were no words for the depth of the betrayal I felt. And I could see it, reflected on her face. The realization of what we both knew. 

“Mommy?”

In that moment I wanted an answer. I wanted her to tell me I was wrong. That my own father hadn’t been secretly waiting, trying to sabotage my chances of transitioning, waiting for a law he must have known was coming. He was a lawyer, after all. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hate him and hit him so much. But all I could manage as I folded into my own grief was the cry of a small child who desperately needed someone to love her.