Birthday(56)

“Morgan?”

“I’m transgender,” I say. It just comes out. My mouth snaps shut and my eyes go wide as I watch his eyebrows curl together and his mouth pucker up.

Oh god.

It’s happening.

A jolt of pain shoots up my arm and I realize I’ve drawn blood biting my thumb. The distant sound of the mower stops, and a corner of his Coheed and Cambria poster flaps in the wind from his fan.

Eric doesn’t say anything. He just sits there staring at me, looking mad, or thoughtful, or I don’t know, because my brain won’t slow down for even a second. I scrape my nails along my jeans and clear my throat, unable to stand one more second of the quiet. “Do you know what that means?”

“I. Um. I think so?” he says. His words come out on a drip feed. “You mean you were born a girl but you’ve been living as a boy this whole—”

“No!” I rub my cheek and look around the room, vulnerability crawling across my skin. It’s like one of those dreams where I realize I’m naked at school, only it’s worse than that, much worse.

“Okay,” he says. He forces a smile. It must be forced. “I was gonna say, we used to take baths together and the memories are fuzzy but I would have noticed—”

“Anyway,” I say. I look down at my knees and let out another breath. That’s … an amusing mistake for him to have made. It’s a little funny. Or stupid. Either way it’s enough to pull me back from the brink a few steps. “It’s … the opposite.”

Okay. Okay. Breathe.

Every cell in my body screams for me to shut my mouth and run, but I clench my fists and will the words out. Going back is impossible, all I can do is go forward.

“The doctors said I was a boy when I was born, for obvious reasons, and since then we’ve all gone along with it. But that’s at least partially not true. I’ve known this, in one way or another, for a really long time, and soon how I feel on the inside will match the outside.”

And there it is. My grip loosens and my back slumps.

“Oh,” Eric says. His face softens and now he looks away. There’s a quiet moment. I give him time to process while I watch, a thread of curiosity weaving into the noisy tapestry inside me as he removes his glasses. “So you’re getting a sex change?” he says.

“I guess,” I say, slowly so I don’t panic again, “I can’t really answer that unless I know what you think a sex change is.”

“You know…” he says. His cheeks flush and he makes a snipping motion with his fingers.

I swallow and place my hands over my crotch, almost on instinct. Even if I was a fan of what I have down there, the idea of Eric thinking about my body that way, talking about my body that way, makes me squirm. I’m not a medical problem or a bunch of stitched-together parts, I’m a person. “I don’t know? It’s expensive. And so you know, they don’t…” I mimic his snipping motion and his cheeks darken further. “It’s more complicated than that. But I don’t even know if that’s the important part to me.”

He bites his lip and rubs his knuckles. For some reason his embarrassment emboldens me. He’s in unfamiliar territory too. I scoot a few inches closer to him, bunching his navy comforter between us.

“Listen,” he says, “will you tell me if I cross a line?”

“It means a lot that you even asked that,” I say, and now that I’ve said a few things, the words come easier. I brush my bangs out of my eyes and glance at the crack in his blinds, the huddled black sparrows arrayed on the power lines. The oak tree that’s been here longer than any of us. “To be honest I don’t know where the line is. But,” I say. “Yeah. Don’t worry. It’s … you understand how hard this is for me, right?”

He nods. “I think I’ve been waiting for you to say something for a long time…”

“Longer than you probably know.” I allow myself to breathe. “If you ask something I don’t wanna answer, I’ll tell you. And like I was saying, surgery is expensive and … whatever. For now my plan is to start taking hormones, have the little bit of facial hair I’ve got removed, get my name changed, and see how I feel.”

“What will the hormones do?” he says, and now there’s a naked, innocent curiosity in his eyes.

“It varies,” I say. My face feels hot and I realize I’m mumbling. More talking about my body. I wonder if being trans will mean talking about my body for the rest of my life. “From person to person. Less body hair. Softer skin. My hair won’t fall out like Dad’s. Uh. You know. Fat distribution. Thighs … boobs…” I let my hair fall in front of my eyes again and rub my arm. “Probably I’ll get plastic surgery for my face before I worry about things people can’t see.”

I’m so glad I can’t see him. I can only imagine the look of disgust on his face. Right? I’m disgusted with myself. He must be disgusted with me too.

“I want to be pretty,” I say, in a voice so small I can barely hear it. I clear my throat and say it again. “You don’t have to be pretty to be a girl, but I still want to be.”

“You are pretty though,” he says, matter of fact, as if I’d gotten the weather wrong.

“What?” I part my hair from my eyes and look up, and it feels like the room is suddenly hot and quiet and full of something I can’t quite name. Eric sits at the end of the bed, his legs tucked under him, folding and unfolding his glasses as he stares at me.