Five #3
This is what Efraín looks like caught off guard: lips parted, brows scrunched, and shoulders pulled back, roiling with tension.
This, too, is Pyrrhic.
“No, you’re right,” I admit. The quieter his voice gets, the louder mine rises. Higher, too, because my body never misses
an opportunity to misgender itself. “There will be a next time; there’s always a next time. Because no one is ever going to
look at me and think boy.”
I get it. I’m lucky to live in a liberal place like Northern California, and because Egan’s Creek has the population of a snow globe, everyone knows I’m trans. But the diner gets tourists, and the first day of school is a wild card. People forget.
I really wish I could forget, but if I showed up at work tomorrow with pink hair, would anyone gender me correctly?
Just like that, Efraín deflates. Drops his shoulders and ducks his head. “I’m sorry.”
There. The rare Efraín Juarez Reyna apology spotted in the wild. I’d call it an endangered species, except I thought it was
a cryptid until now. Ironically, he’s apologizing for the one thing he can’t control. “It’s not your fault I don’t pass.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Isn’t it? Tell me you’re not trying to offer your condolences that the world doesn’t see me the way I want to be seen.”
He clenches his jaw. “They should.”
“Yeah. But I understand why they don’t.”
“You know that I do, right?” The question comes fast and fervent. He leans in closer, until I catch a whiff of coconut, sunshine,
and God knows what other fair-trade, vegan, cruelty-free body care essentials he uses, which probably cost more than we make
in a day. When I meet his eyes, they’re bright enough to make me blink, shining with some emotion I can’t name. “You have
to know that I see you as a guy.”
Do I really know that, though? That’s what cis allies have to say.
They use the right name and pronouns and agree in polite conversation that trans people should be allowed to play sports, access medical care, and use public restrooms. But there’s always this itching fear beneath my skin that they’re just indulging me, like they indulge a child’s imaginary friend.
They’ll set a place at the table for Mr. Grizz Lee Bear, your invisible bow-tie-wearing, ursine bestie, but they can’t actually
see him, because they don’t understand that he’s as real as they are. Most people haven’t done the work to decouple the signs
and signifiers of gender in their minds and see others through a gender-expansive lens.
Has Efraín done that work? I don’t know; he’s known me since kindergarten. Efraín spent a decade calling me by another name.
That’s deep programming, the base code underwriting every memory he has of me. Can that ever really be overwritten?
I believe that Efraín believes he sees the real me. I believe that he needs to believe that. I believe that he can convince
himself to believe whatever he needs to believe. He’d ask Mr. Grizz Lee Bear to work a phone bank, if it served his cause.
Is that kind of belief better or worse? Is it more or less real?
Efraín doesn’t want my honest answer; the only acceptable response is the one that soothes his conscience. “Yeah. I know.”
He nods, quick and curt, like we’ve settled something crucial. Found common ground, signed an armistice, and laid down our arms. “So you know I just want to help where I can.”
“I do know that about you, yes.”
After all, that’s why we’re here, debating the price of hair dye.
“Then you know I’m not trying to be patronizing.”
Impact over intent, I don’t say because I’m trying not to poke the imaginary bear.
“Yep,” I say instead.
It doesn’t matter what I tell Efraín. He corrected Anya because I froze. I gave him the opportunity. If I’d said something immediately, Efraín wouldn’t have had time to saddle up his white horse,
and I wouldn’t be trapped in this tragicomedy of errors.
If I just take care of future misgendering incidents by myself, then I won’t have to deal with the Efraín of it all.
So I think about times I’m most frequently misgendered. My solution at the diner has always been to avoid interacting with
customers, but at school? I’m proactive. The first week of every school year, I wear a pronoun button. “He/him” in a bold
font. Impossible to miss.
I’ve never needed the button after Labor Day.
Because I can take care of myself. Really. I can solve my own problems. Honestly? I’m the only one who can.
And Efraín just gave me an idea how to solve this one.
“Elisha?”
I glance up at him. “It’s fine. You have my permission for next time. And the time after that.”
I’m going to make sure there are as few next times as possible, but none of that matters if I don’t have a job.
Efraín claims this hair dye rebellion is about self-expression—that they’re fighting for Naomi’s right to express herself
in the workplace. I just want to exist in the workplace—except I can’t exist in the workplace and fight it at the same time.
I need to keep this job.
Once more, I peek up at the mirror, where Lola and Naomi are now trying on sunglasses, and then put down the box of Vivid
Violet I don’t remember picking up.
I can’t make myself look at Efraín when I tell him, “I can’t do this,” and walk away without explanation—ignoring him when
he calls after me, as well as the treacherous pounding in my chest.
I can only fight one battle at once, and I have to do it myself.