Chapter 21
Twenty-One
I can have my Apfelkuchen and eat it, too.
That’s the moral of the story I’m chewing on hours later.
We headed straight for the apartment above Lou’s for our union meeting, and now Ma’s hideous, beloved Formica table is strewn
with fried pickles, onion rings, and tofu nuggets. Naomi swiped a whole aquafaba Apfelkuchen, while I asked Ma if she could
whip up a batch of kettle corn.
With everyone punch-drunk, sugar-high, overcaffeinated—strung out on the rush of winning—tonight is more party than union meeting.
I’m the most comfortable I’ve ever been here. I’ve got one leg folded up under the other, sipping bitter diner coffee, surrounded
by friends. Yes, not only fellow workers, but also friends.
Stanley convinced TJ to tag along. They share one side of the table, Naomi and Lola the other. Across from me, Efraín hoards the popcorn bowl, absentmindedly munching and watching the others swap work stories. He doesn’t bother hiding his lazy smile.
Efraín looks up, and our eyes lock. This is the part where I’m supposed to look away, where I always look away, where I do
anything and everything to evade eye contact like direct sunlight—but I don’t. I don’t avert my gaze or declare a public health
crisis. I just look at him and let him look at me. I let him see—
Well. I suppose it’s up to him what he sees.
I’m not expecting him to declare, moments later, “I know what our next action is.” The chatter dies down instantaneously.
Even at his most placid, Efraín oozes charismatic authority.
My early report cards indicate I’ve always had a minor problem with authority. “You know? You decided, unilaterally? That sounds a little dictatorial. I thought we were supposed to govern by consensus.”
Efraín doesn’t parry. “You’re right. I have a proposal for our next action.” He clears his throat. He’s stalling, genuinely nervous. “I propose we make pronoun buttons—for everyone.”
It’s like a pin-back straight to the heart. That stab of recognition. The open wound and the prick of blood. Efraín’s looking
at me like he sees me, like he’s calling a bet.
“I know we haven’t discussed them,” Efraín barrels on, “but pronoun buttons are on the grievance list. We had a big win today, and we need to act quickly. With another surefire win, we’ll build momentum and—”
“You think pronoun buttons would be a surefire win?”
“You don’t?”
I feel lightheaded. Untethered. Like I’ve woken up in another timeline and realized no one else remembers how the universe
is supposed to be, for better or for worse. Every sci-fi show has one of those episodes. Nuclear Seasons did it twice. I’ve done this twice before, too. “I tried. You know I tried. I told you, Dagny and Billy shut me down.”
“I know,” Efraín says quietly. “I’m sorry that—”
“I don’t want you to apologize for institutionalized transphobia. Tell me what you think makes this different.”
“We use the same play as the hair dye. When it was just you wearing a button, it was easy for Dagny to ban it. But if it’s
six of us?” He gestures around the table. “Maybe more? They can’t ban that.”
When he says it like that, it sounds eminently reasonable. According to Efraín’s logic, I could’ve solved this a month ago
if, instead of whining to management, I’d recruited my friends.
Except they weren’t my friends then. I barely have the right to call them my friends now.
No matter what Efraín and Lola did for Naomi, I never would’ve asked them to do the same for me—especially not after I sat out the first skirmish.
I may be a selfish schmuck terrified of losing my job, but I’m not self-centered enough to ask anyone else to put their jobs on the line for buttons.
“Well, I think it’s a great idea.” Stanley beams, oblivious.
“I have a button maker,” Lola volunteers, and points to Efraín with a fried pickle spear. “The same one we used to make buttons
to save this or stop that or vote yes-no-maybe-so. Seriously, I don’t know why you don’t just take it to your house.”
“Maybe if you didn’t always complain about my designs—”
“You have the graphic design sensibility of el toro bravo. Scarlet, crimson, carmine, burgundy, and blood—anything to get
people seeing red.”
“Did you know bulls are actually colorblind?” Naomi interjects. “Mythbusters did an episode. Spanish fighting bulls don’t ‘see red’ at all. They charge at the motion of the flag.”
“Sorry, what kind of buttons are we talking about?” TJ asks. “Like clothes buttons? Because sewing on our uniforms seems—”
“Oh, no, a button as in a pin,” Stanley explains.
As everyone else elaborates on the history of the pin-back button, I mash my Apfelkuchen with my fork, making a goddamn mess.
I can admit that I’m not upset because I think it’s too risky; I’m not really upset at all. I just don’t understand.
Efraín asks, “Other questions or concerns? Because you were right, Elisha, that this isn’t up to me. We won’t do this if you’re not okay with it. Either of you,” he amends with a contrite glance at Lola. “I don’t want to open anyone up to harassment. The union is about helping people, not—”
“Taking unnecessary risks?”
“Do you believe this is an unnecessary risk? Because I mean it. If you really think this will do more harm than good—”
“I didn’t say that.” How am I supposed to do a risk analysis when this very proposal upends everything I thought I knew?
I’ve tried so hard to do this right. To follow the rules. To work hard, earn money, and buy acceptance where I can. I’ve tried
so fucking hard to do this alone, only to make things worse, but now when Efraín proposes the same thing on a grander scale,
somehow, it’s a surefire win.
“For what it’s worth,” Lola says, in her reassuring One Hundred Percent Real FDA-Certified Empathy voice, “I’ll take point
on this. If management missed the townwide memo that went out in preschool, I’m fine with them finding out that I’m trans
now.”
“You’re not worried—” I break off, trying to see Lola the way a cis person might. Even if she weren’t my friend, if I hadn’t
known her forever, I’d think she passed flawlessly. But I’m trans; I’ve learned to see gender differently.
To the average Mall of America focus group cis people, though? Where I see flawless and real, would they see cracks in her femininity? Despite early medical intervention, does her body have anomalous tells? I don’t
know; I can’t tell. “Aren’t you worried that if people see you wearing a button, they might—”
“Look twice and decide I don’t pass muster? I don’t care.”
“Efraín’s right. It could be dangerous for you.”
“You know I’m not actually stealth, right? Existing while transfemme and Afro Latina is dangerous. I learned that before my ABCs. Trust I know what I’m doing.”
Lola told me once, after I’d come out, why her parents moved here from the East Bay. Her dad’s older brother was gay, and
despite having lived in Oakland since infancy and wearing his biker jacket like a second skin, Lola’s Tío Ignacio was the
victim of a fatal hate crime, gaybashed outside his own apartment building. So Lola’s dad took a hard look at his burgeoning
family and, much like his parents before him, packed up and moved his wife and child to a safer place: that promised land
known as small-town America.
So, yes, Lola knows risk all too well. If I were her, I would take my genetic lottery winnings, run, never look back. But
this is Lola, who, for reasons I’ll never understand, trusts the universe.
“I know. I just—”
“You don’t trust them,” Efraín finishes.
Lola clucks her tongue. “The two of you should hear yourselves. No one’s asking you to trust them—whoever ‘them’ is, anyway.
We have to trust each other.”
I follow her gaze around the table. Naomi, stone-faced but far from indifferent.
Stanley, beaming, proud. TJ, the portrait of a puzzle.
Efraín, catching my gaze like a trap, just lying in wait for me to look at him, and why does he try to convey so damn much with his eyes, in a language I never learned? I don’t understand any of this.
What I do know is that the six of us are here at this flea market reject table, together, with the bones of a plan to do what
I tried and failed to do . . . together. My carpool buddies turned fellow workers turned union comrades turned friends are offering me a second chance.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
All this time, I’ve been thinking of the union as a collective security agreement, built on fear of a common adversary. But
ride-or-die has never been about mutually assured destruction. It’s about trust, a synonym for solidarity.
All for one and one for all.
Solidarity is a pinky promise, a blood oath, and a suicide pact all in one.
I still don’t understand why this or why now, but the offer is real.
All I have to do is say yes.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s make some buttons.”
One by one, they march out of the room carefree as toy soldiers—oblivious to the dangers of the battle, let alone the perilous
scope of the war—skipping off to simple midsummer evening pleasures.
I’m not jealous. Neither picnicking with strangers nor bowling in black light sounds like my idea of a good time. So I sit
at the table, waiting to be left alone with my thoughts.
But Efraín doesn’t leave. He stays, watching me with that insufferable tilde frown. “I thought you’d be more excited.”
“I’m a very anxious person.”
He snorts. “Yeah, no shit. Pretty sure you’re the most anxious person I’ve ever met.”
I don’t have grounds to object, not as I’m flicking my thigh while surveying the graveyard of dinnerware on the table, calculating
how long it will take before ants descend. “That’s not the worst thing you’ve ever said about me.”
This is an obsessive-compulsive germophobe’s nightmare. I probably should’ve accepted everyone’s offers to help, but I wasn’t
going to let them be late on my account.
“Here, let me.”
I start to protest, but Efraín’s already consolidating food waste. It’s quick, quiet work, between the two of us. As I’m washing