* * *
“This place doesn’t have character,” Hannah replied, snapping me back from my thoughts. “I need to get rid of some of this junk around here.”
“Just don’t get rid of your Cabbage Patch dolls, the Snoopy Sno-Cones machine, or those Moxi roller skates.”
She laughed. “Sometimes I forget how young you are.” She sighed. “Speaking of which, I’m still trying to figure out a way to get you registered for school in the spring.”
“Who needs school? I can get a job and help out around here.”
“A job doing what? I can’t even get a decent-ass job and I have my high school diploma. I started boosting to make ends meet, and now I’m all caught up.”
“You get a rush from it, don’t you?” I asked, recalling the enthusiasm she always seemed to have when she unloaded her “take” for the day on the worn sofa.
“It’s partly that, but it is also mostly because I don’t have to deal with the bullshit that would come about from a regular job. Sure, I could get some fast-food work or maybe even get into a call center, but people are so judgmental about my choices. I don’t have the tolerance to have to defend myself from ridicule day after day. Being a booster allows me to stay off the radar.” She smirked. “But I am good. I haven’t been arrested in going on three years, and that’s a record.”
“What happens when they arrest you?”
“A bunch of nonsense, purely for show, then I post a little bail, and walk. They have serious crimes to worry about here. Up until about five years ago, The Bronx was the murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and arson capital of America.”
I was stunned. “Really? I mean, I can see that it’s rough here, but everyone I’ve met seems so nice.”
“Most people around here are nice, but that has nothing to do with the crazies who had a total disregard for human life. That’s why you need to get your ass back in school. So you can make something of yourself.”
I looked down at the floor. “I can’t go back to school. Not yet. Are you forgetting what my classmates in Georgia did to me the night we met?”
Hannah grabbed my shoulders and forced me to make eye contact. “Listen to me, nature has a way of weeding out the thorns. Let karma take care of them, and I understand how you feel, but they are more than a thousand miles away and can’t hurt you now.”
“That doesn’t mean kids here won’t make fun of my scar.” I was on the brink of tears. “It’s not like I can cover up my face. My mother should’ve just killed me that day and gotten it over with.”
Hannah pulled me close to her and hugged me tightly. “You’re special. Believe me when I say that. You are going to turn your test into your testimony and your mess into your message one day. Don’t give up on life, and fuck anyone who thinks they’re better than you. They’re not. There are not any Big I’s and Little U’s in this world. We are all unique in our own way.”
I continued to fight back the tears. “I want to believe you, I do. It’s just that . . .”
“Just that nothing.” Hannah let me go and got up off the bed. “Now go get ready for dinner. All those clothes I’ve jacked for you and you’re sporting sweat pants and my old Beatles T-shirt. Go put on a nice dress.”
“Who all is coming?” I asked.
“Sebastian, Crispin, Nigel, and Shayne.”
“Oh boy,” I said, thinking of the individuals she had just named. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Hannah chuckled. “Yeah, but a fun one. Bet you’ve never had a Thanksgiving like the one you’re about to have.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
* * *
Less than four hours later, we were all sprawled across the living room with stuffed stomachs and chilling to “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House. Sebastian started belting out the words, and the next thing you know, everyone else had joined in, including me.
I was a bit tipsy because Hannah had allowed me a little bit of wine at dinner. I ended up getting up off the sofa and started doing an impromptu dance to the slow song before breaking out into the second verse. It took a few seconds before I realized that everyone else had stopped singing. They were all staring at me.
“Get it, girl!” Crispin yelled out.
“Work it now!” Nigel added.
Everyone in the house was transgender except for me. Nigel and Sebastian were female to male and Hannah, Shayne, and Crispin were all male to female. I loved, loved, loved their confidence and wished that I had it myself.
I started singing louder and dancing even more. Being around them made me feel comfortable. They all got up on their feet and started dancing with me until the song ended. Crispin gave me her white satin scarf from around her neck and I waved it around in the air as I landed in a split on the psychedelic carpet on the last note.
“Damn, Caprice, I didn’t know you could sing!” Hannah yelled out.
“That’s because I can’t sing,” I replied. “At least not better than the next person.”
“The Devil is a liar,” Nigel added. “You can blow.”
“Amazing chops!” Shayne chimed in. “You need to go to some Broadway auditions.”
“Yessir-ree! It’s worth a shot!” Crispin confirmed Shayne’s thought.
“Stop kidding with me!” I lashed out, hurt from them teasing me. “I’m not talented!”
“Says who? You?” Hannah walked over and rubbed me across the cheek. “Baby girl, a lot of people don’t recognize their own gifts. You can sing great and . . .” She paused and looked around the room. “My buddies and I might be a lot of things, but liars we are not. We don’t sugarcoat shit.”
“Never have, never will,” Shayne cosigned. “Now me, I sound like a sick frog when I sing, but I own it. You need to own up to the fact that you have a natural talent. Embrace that bitch.”
“Have you ever had any voice lessons?” Nigel asked. “You sound like a pro.”
I smirked. “I was barely allowed to go out the house. Besides, Grandma couldn’t afford anything like that for me.”
Sebastian had been fairly quiet up to that point, but that brought him back into the fold. “Grandma? Is that who raised you? Is she still alive?”
I looked at him in horror, and didn’t say a word. I had no idea what Hannah had told her friends about me, but I knew that she was a master of mixing fact with fiction and making it sound plausible.
He looked at Hannah. “I thought you said this child didn’t have any living relatives. Are you sure you need to be involved in all of this, Hannah?”
Crispin started in then. “What’s really going on here?” She looked at me. “How exactly did you and Hannah meet, Caprice? And how old are you again?”
I still didn’t say a word.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” Hannah finally said. “My name’s not Babe or Dustin Hoffman, none of you are dentists, and this is not going to turn into the interrogation scene from Marathon Man.”
I cringed when Hannah said that. We had watched that 1976 flick on VHS a few nights earlier and that scene where a dentist tortured the main character by digging into his cavity had unnerved me to my core.
“Let’s just chill and listen to some more music,” Hannah continued.
All the rest of them looked at one another. I could tell it would not be the end of it but hoped it would end for that night.
Sebastian couldn’t drop the subject. “All I’m saying is you don’t need no more felony charges and if, for some reason, Caprice isn’t legally in your care, anything can happen.”
“Why are you all up in my business?” Hannah asked, getting angry. “Have I asked you for shit, to do shit, or for any shitty-ass advice?” She paused and waited for Sebastian to answer. He seemed offended. “That’s what I thought. We’re cool and all but that’s only because you hang with Nigel. He’s my fam. But don’t get it twisted. I don’t need your validation or cosignature on a damn thing I do with my life.”
“Damn, Hannah, chill,” Nigel sta
ted with disdain. “Sebastian didn’t mean any harm.”
Hannah glared at Nigel. “I don’t know if you two are fucking or what, but he needs to leave me alone. And he damn sure better leave Caprice alone.”
Nigel gathered up his coat and scarf off the armchair. “Maybe we should go.”
“Maybe you should,” Shayne said. “This is getting out of hand.”
Hannah and Sebastian stared at each other as Nigel got Sebastian’s things as well. Then Sebastian said one word that set me off: “Bitch!”
Now the word “bitch” was acceptable in some instances, and I had grown to understand that, even at my age. Sometimes it was used as a term of endearment or an acknowledgment of being fierce. But when Sebastian straight up called Hannah a bitch and then followed it up with a sneer on his face, something within me snapped in two.
I had had “outbursts” before but this time was different. I leaped over the coffee table and landed on Sebastian’s chest as I knocked him backward onto the floor. I started scratching at his face and was determined to rip one of his eyeballs out if I could.
I heard Hannah scream and Nigel and Crispin pulled me off Sebastian, who was flailing around on the floor like a fish out of water. I tried to kick him in the privates—I was not sure what stage of transition he was in, but I was kicking at whatever was there—and the adrenaline in my body upticked a notch as I screamed, “I’ve got your bitch! Don’t you talk to Hannah like that, you fucking wildebeest!”
Sebastian still seemed shocked as he stood with some help from Shayne, and was noticeably shaken. Even though he was now a man, he was scared like the female he used to be. I didn’t give a fuck what he was or was not; no one was going to talk to Hannah like that.
“Something is seriously wrong with you,” Sebastian said to me as Nigel and Crispin let me go. “I can’t believe you attacked me.”
“You better be glad they pulled me off you!” I lashed out. “You say some more shit about Hannah and you’ll be taking a dirt nap!”
Hannah came over to me and tried to console me. “It’s okay. They’re leaving. They are all leaving,” she said, making her point clear.
“I should call the police on you, press charges,” Sebastian said, still ashamed about getting his ass kicked. “See how you like that.”
“No, find your center,” Nigel said to Sebastian as he took him by the elbow. “You know good and damn well you can’t call no police up in here.”
Sebastian sighed, yanking away from Nigel. “Says who?”
“Says common damn sense.” Nigel started toward the front door. “Let’s just go.”
Everyone said their quick good-byes, except for Sebastian, who stomped out without another word, and Hannah put on the five dead bolts behind them. She turned to me. “What was that all about? You could’ve ripped his eyes out.”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to do,” I admitted. Then I slumped down onto the floor. “I’m not sure what came over me. I’m sorry. Sometimes I lose control. I hope I didn’t inherit my mother’s mental issues. I often wonder about it, but no one would ever take me to see a therapist.”
Hannah sat down in front of me, Indian-style. “They never got you any therapy after . . .”
I glanced into her eyes and ran my index finger over my scar. “After my mother cut up my face? No, not really. Other than DEFACS asking a bunch of questions before making Grandma my legal guardian. My mother got locked up in a cuckoo house obviously, so they considered it case closed. Gave me some stitches and that was that.”
“Don’t you want to call her? Let her know you’re all right?”
“If I do that, she’ll try to convince me to come back. I can’t go back. Not after what happened at homecoming.”
Hannah took a deep breath. “About that. I’ve been thinking. You shouldn’t let that go. You should go back—I’ll go with you—and make them pay for what they did to you. Don’t let them just get away with it. Don’t let them go on with their lives, like nothing happened. They need to pay.”
“I can’t,” I replied. “It’s too much to deal with. But . . .”
“But what?”
“I was thinking about writing my grandmother a letter, letting her know that I’m alive but that I need space. I need to think all this through. As for them, it’s all their words against mine. No one is going to believe me. No one is going to believe that any of those boys would even want to be with me, rather less take it from me.”
Even at fifteen, I was aware that most rapes went unreported for a reason. Growing up, I had seen females who accused men of raping them end up being shunned and ridiculed, mostly by other women. I had seen celebrity men on the news get away with mistreating women like they were nothing. I had seen the most beautiful women destroyed after making such statements. And then there was me: a young, poor, deformed girl who had been fucked over her entire life. What was a gang rape or two added into the mix?
Hannah kissed me on the forehead. “Just think about it, but the letter to your grandmother sounds like a good idea. I have some stamps, so let me know. And please consider going back to school.”
“You can’t even register me for school, remember?” I stood up. “Not that I want to go back. I’ll figure out something.”
I wanted to go take a shower and try to calm down. I was still upset about the entire scene with Sebastian. I paused at the doorway to the bathroom. “Why couldn’t Sebastian call the police?”
Hannah had stood and was clearing away wineglasses and snack dishes. “Huh?”
“Why did Nigel say that it was common sense that Sebastian couldn’t call the police over here?”
“Oh . . .” She glanced at me. “Sebastian isn’t exactly walking on the right side of the law.”
“How so?”
“He’s a big-time drug addict.”
“Sebastian?” I couldn’t fathom it.
“Yes, Sebastian. You won’t see him offering to suck dick on the corner for a vial of crack or anything, but he is a serious cokehead. He’s a functional addict. Works full-time in his dad’s construction office and helps himself to extra cash out of the safe to feed his habit. Nigel probably knew Sebastian had some drugs on him tonight. That’s why he said calling the police was foolish. Popping one can of worms generally leads to popping several. Know what I mean?”
I nodded. “I guess you never know about people. He seems normal to me.”
“There’s no such thing as normal today. It’s the eighties, not the twenties. There is a sense of normalcy that people have accepted but nothing and no one is actually normal in the true definition of the word.”
I didn’t respond. I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower so the hot water could start making its slow trek up the pipes from the hot water heater in the basement of our dilapidated building, and stripped down to nothingness.
I gazed into the mirror covering the medicine cabinet and whispered, “I’m that chick,” even though I didn’t believe that.
After I was in the shower, I thought about what Hannah had said about nothing being normal but there only being each individual’s sense of normalcy. That was so true because all I had ever known was madness in my life. I was quite sure that most other children didn’t have to endure my pain. Then again, I was also sure that some had likely endured much worse. Some were no longer alive, taken away from here by one sick maniac after another.
Since arriving in New York, I had definitely seen and witnessed my share of “questionable things.” I hadn’t seen all the murders, rapes, arsons, and assaults that Hannah had referred to, but I had seen the hookers lining the corners beside the drug dealers, selling sex and crack or a combination if it was the order of the day. Some of the girls selling pussy looked even younger than me, and that truly made me sad. I understood them, though. They felt like what they were doing was better than the alternative—at least the ones who were not being forced into doing it. I couldn’t do anything to save them. Hell, I couldn’t do anything to sav
e myself.
The Bronx had gone through a “white flight” phase where most of the white people in the area moved out once things turned ugly. That happened in a lot of cities. But Hannah was white and still there and her family was still somewhere around. I smirked as the water cascaded down my back and into the crack of my ass. Hannah wanted me to contact my grandmother but she refused to contact her own mother. I planned to challenge her: if she would contact her mother, I would contact my grandmother. Fair was fair.
By the time I got finished bathing, Hannah was knocked out over her bed—likely from a combination of wine, laboring in the kitchen, and being emotionally drained by her friends and me. I was exhausted as well so I made my little pallet on the sofa and entered my dream state of the same nightmares that I had endured since I was very young.
Thursday, December 24, 1987
Christmas Eve
7:13 PM
Manhattan, New York City
So much had changed since Thanksgiving Day, less than a month earlier. Now I understood what they meant about life moving faster up north, because mine had become a whirlwind of activity. I was working in Manhattan with Shayne. She owned a day spa and was employing me under the table since I was underage and nowhere near my legal guardian. She had come by the week after that violent after-dinner event and I had come clean with her. Hannah was out boosting at the time, but something about Shayne made me feel comfortable enough to sing like a canary. I even told her about what happened after homecoming. She broke down in tears and admitted that she had been molested by her older male cousin from age five to thirteen, when her family moved away to another state. She said that a lot of her family members believed that was what made her want to trans from William to Shayne. She disagreed and said the same that thing that Hannah always said: she had always known that she was a woman born into a man’s body.