None of the Above(51)

María had failed her sex test. She had AIS, like me. And people had outed her, like me:



I was expelled from our athletes’ residence, my sports scholarship was revoked, and my running times were erased from my country’s athletics records. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I lost friends, my fiancé, hope, and energy.



I tried to tell myself that things were different now. They didn’t make girl athletes parade naked in front of doctors anymore. The NCAA had rules specifically about AIS. María’s and Caster Semenya’s cases had led to increased awareness; everything was different.

Except the part about losing friends. The rules may have changed, but people were still afraid of the Other.

How naive I had been to tell Vee. How desperate, how stupid.

Only now, after the damage had been done, did I see the answer staring me in the face.

I needed Another Other.





CHAPTER 29


Maggie Blankman had introduced me to Gretchen Lawrence by email the day after our conversation, after I was first diagnosed. Gretchen responded with a perfectly friendly message telling me to call her anytime, but the first few times I picked up my phone to call, I chickened out. She was a busy college student. She barely knew me. She couldn’t have meant it.

The person who finally convinced me to call her back wasn’t Dr. LaForte—it was Faith, who sent me a link to an article from Seventeen with the headline I’M A GIRL WITH BOY CHROMOSOMES. An article that happened to be written by Gretchen Lawrence.

OMG she seems super nice, Faith wrote under the link. did U know there is some sort of support group?

After that, I really had no choice. I emailed Gretchen, and she got back to me within hours, suggesting that we meet up at a Friendly’s in Syracuse the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

The day of our get-together, I stressed so much about what to wear that it was almost like a first date. After trying on two outfits, I decided to go simple with a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans.

I got to the restaurant a few minutes early and burned some time looking through the menu, even though I didn’t really need to. Vee, Faith, and I had eaten at the Friendly’s in Utica practically every week during junior year, and I had the menu memorized. Vee always ordered the Asian chicken salad and picked off the fried wonton strips. Faith was a quesadilla girl. And I always had the turkey club without the bacon. Then we’d share a Mint Cookie Crunch sundae. Vee would always have the cherry on top, except when I had a meet the next day, when she’d give it to me.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder, jolting me out of my memories. “Excuse me, are you Kristin?”

I turned around to see a girl about two or three inches shorter than me with shoulder-length black hair. She had big brown eyes and an even bigger smile on her face.

Without even thinking about it, I smiled back.

“Oh my God. I’m so glad to meet you,” Gretchen gushed. “Can I give you a hug? I know we’ve just met, but . . .”

But we were AIS sisters. Gretchen enveloped me in her arms and I pressed my face against the scratchy wool of her coat. It’d been so long since I’d hugged anyone but my aunt Carla, who didn’t count because what she did was more like suffocating someone than hugging them. Gretchen was a good hugger; her arms were strong, and her hair smelled like green apples.

“You order anything yet?” Gretchen asked. “Want to share an appetizer?” The waitress came, and I ordered a pink lemonade and my usual turkey club and we got some mozzarella sticks to share.

While we waited for the food to come I played with the wrapper from my straw, rolling it up into a tight ball. I wondered when I’d gotten so quiet. Then I remembered: I’d always been a little shy. It was my friends who were outgoing.

“So,” Gretchen said finally. “You’re a senior, right? Do you know where you might want to go in the fall?”

I told her about State, and track. It was easy to deflect the conversation from there, and ask Gretchen about Syracuse. She was a psychology major, and was minoring in women’s studies.

“Isn’t that kind of ironic?” I commented.

“What, because we’re not ‘real women’?” She made air quotes. “Why aren’t we real women—because we don’t have uteruses? What about women who have hysterectomies? Or mastectomies? One of my favorite AIS quotes ever is from a woman named María José Martínez-Pati?o: ‘Having had my womanliness tested—literally and figuratively—I suspect I have a surer sense of my femininity than many women.’” I startled in recognition at the name. That was the Spanish hurdler I had read about.

Since I had alluded to AIS, Gretchen seemed to think it was fair game. “Maggie said in her email that you just found out about your diagnosis. How’s it been, knowing?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes I wish I’d been one of those girls whose parents just told them they had a tumor on their uterus.”

“You think so?” Gretchen asked. “You think it’s better being lied to, and not knowing what’s really going on with your body?”

“What difference does it make? I would feel less like a monster. I mean, it’s better than people knowing I had testicles.”


Gretchen looked confused. “Um, how would anyone ever know that?”