Chapter 7 #2
“Because your soul is the only one that matters,” he scoffs. “What does it matter if you throw one plastic bottle in the trash,
right? Drink one bottle of almond milk? Buy one book from ?
In a culture where everyone is taught to think their individual moral trespasses don’t matter, they all matter that much more.
You showed up today with your regular hair knowing damn well that the rest of us were risking everything.
That makes you just as complicit as management. ”
I don’t need Efraín to tell me things I already know. I know complicity. I know this lecture is pissing me off.
This gazebo isn’t big enough for two people to pace, but anger propels me like a wind-up toy. “Don’t make this out to be something
it’s not. You’re not risking anything because you don’t need this job. You’re just taking advantage of Naomi’s problem to stir up controversy. Like you always do. I’m sorry, but I don’t
want any part of your anarchist bad boy shenanigans.”
I thought I’d seen every shade of anger that Efraín can express, but I don’t think the English language has a word for this.
Blood turning his cheeks from burnished gold to copper, reverse-Midas-like. The throbbing vein at his temple. His flared nostrils
and parted lips, huffing and puffing.
His default righteous indignation would be downright comforting right about now.
“Do you have any idea how—” Efraín sucks his teeth, like it’s the only way to stop himself from saying something he’ll regret. “How you sound right now?”
I imagine every expletive he might have swallowed, but even my grade-A imagination can’t conjure up what rhetorical volley
Efraín thinks would be going too far. “No, please, enlighten me. Because I’m pretty sure I’m the only one thinking rationally about this.”
“All we asked was for you to dye your hair for one day.” He takes a step closer. “Are you really this coldhearted? I thought I got you. Some people just don’t show up for strangers.
I know the score: You’re cynical, and apathy’s easy. But it’s supposed to hit different when it’s personal. When it’s family. Do you even care about anything besides your stupid TV show?”
He’s wrong. He’s so wrong, about all of it.
Yes, I do care about Nuclear Seasons, pulpy science fiction, and what other people would call lowbrow guilty pleasures. But I also care about whether my coworkers see me as a guy. I care about saving enough for my top surgery down payment.
I care about Sputnik. I care about Moms and Naomi—
It does hit different with Naomi, and I do care about strangers. I’m not unaffected by any of this. No matter what Efraín
thinks, I’m not coldhearted. I care about a multitude of issues—my cares contradict themselves—but this is a question of survival.
I can’t tell Efraín any of this. If I tell Efraín I need the money for top surgery, he won’t understand because cis people
never understand the true cost of dysphoria. His overactive social justice empathy Spidey sense might tingle, and he’d pretend
to understand while silently begrudging my inability to prioritize.
But I’m pissed, and I don’t know when to shut up. “I need this job. Maybe you don’t, and Lola can fall back on her family’s auto shop, but I need this job. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about things. And people. And places? Which is literally the definition of a noun. I
care about a lot of nouns—and grammar, in general?”
“Well, Elisha, riddle me this: What’s the difference between a common noun and a proper noun?”
I know it’s a rhetorical question, but pedantry is an autonomic reflex. “Capitalization. Technically, specificity. Common nouns
refer to a general person, place, or thing. Proper nouns refer to a specific, named—”
“So your sister, Naomi, is . . .”
“ ‘Sister’ is common, and ‘Naomi’ is proper. I get it, okay?”
“Do you?” He moves closer, gets in my face.
For every step he takes, I stumble two steps back.
I’m not afraid of Efraín. I know his hot air bluster might hurt to breathe, but it won’t blister my lungs.
It’s not even about Efraín so much as the physicality of the scene: his body, all chiseled muscle and masculine angles, looming over my body, just baby fat and irrepressibly feminine curves. It isn’t fear roiling in my gut; it’s—
Suddenly, my back hits the column. I have to tilt my head all the way back to look at him.
“Do you understand, Elisha?” he asks again, so close that I can feel his breath where his words scorch my skin.
I forgot the question. Grammar. Parts of speech. Syntax and diction and, fuck, I’d really rather be diagramming sentences
right now.
I swallow hard, so aware of my lack of Adam’s apple when his eclipses my field of view.
“Naomi matters,” Efraín says. “She should matter to you. Not because she’s your common-noun sister but because she’s Naomi
Goldstein. A person. A human being. A real—”
“Naomi is a proper noun. I know.”
“Then you should give a fuck if your boss is bullying her.”
“I do care about Naomi,” I retort, “and her job. And, believe it or not, yours and Lola’s, too.”
“That’s the thing, Elisha. You should care about the person more than their job.”
“There are those pesky common nouns again. Don’t you mean that I should care about Naomi more than Naomi’s job?”
Efraín leans improbably, impossibly closer.
He’s heat and sweat and overpriced coconut bath products and the bitter aftertaste of yerba mate lingering on his breath.
Sensory overwhelm. Heat and sweat and coconut and mate.
An assemblage of common nouns that don’t come close to translating the human sum to proper-noun Efraín.
Then, just as suddenly as he annexed my personal space, he steps back.
“Fine,” he seethes. His eyes are so dark and glassy, I can almost see my reflection, and I don’t like what I see. “Have it
your way. If you think management is right—that Naomi, Lola, and I deserve to be fired over this and that everything Dagny
said this afternoon was fair—then fine. But it’s not too late to do the right thing.”
Seriously, fuck him for bringing up this afternoon. If he heard everything Dagny said, where was his concern about doing the right thing then?
Then again, doesn’t that cut both ways? What right do I have to lash out at Efraín for his selective silence when my own silence
was deafening? However frustrated I am with Efraín’s persistent recklessness, it’s nothing compared to the silent fury that’s
been simmering all day for Dagny, for the museum, for goddamn institutional messaging. It’s nothing compared to my anger at myself for just standing there and taking it—which is exactly what I told my sister to do.
Efraín tugs his crossbody bag around, unzips it, and pulls out a small box. I fumble when he tosses it to me. My hands shake
around the slick cardboard.
“You can make this right,” he says again, quieter, and all the more dangerous for it. “But if you know this is wrong, and you know you could do something to fix it but choose not to? Well, then, Elisha, I don’t even want to know you.”
It isn’t until he leaves and I’ve run through my panic breathing exercises that I finally look at the box he gave me.
Vivid Violet one-wash temporary hair dye.