What it Feels Like to Transition

Uncle T shows up in the dirt yard with his battered leather bags. The girls are drying plates, stacking them on the shelf above the woodstove, and they see him out the smudgy kitchen window. Sister Estrogen is in the pantry, wiping jars of peaches. Sister Estrogen! Say the girls. There’s a strange man in the yard. He’s covered all over in dust and he doesn’t have a hat.

Uncle T takes the bedroom at the top of the stairs. There’s always been a bedroom at the top of the stairs. The girls share the room at the end of the hall, the one that faces the orchard. Sister Estrogen said the empty room was for company, but they never had any.

Uncle T puts his battered leather bags in the empty room at the top of the stairs and he doesn’t say anything. Sister Estrogen tells the girls to kill miss maddy, their oldest chicken, and they make chicken stew and biscuits, and slice cucumbers form the garden in a bowl with white vinegar and onions. They put the checkered picnic cloth on the formica table, and the cow salt and pepper shakers, and the wooden napkin holder with its bleached paper napkins.

Uncle T eats without saying anything. His face looks windburned or sunburned or both, and he gets chicken grease on his jaw. His hands are like steaks, the fingernails dull and grey, and they pinch threads of chicken from the chickenbones. Uncle T’s sleeves are rolled up, and his forearms are covered all over in coarse black hair. The girls eat a little of their stew, trying not to stare, and then they forget, and put down their spoons to watch.

Do you like the stew, says Sister Estrogen. Uncle T does not respond. Sister Estrogen looks down at the tablecloth, and then tears open a biscuit and covers it in butter. She eats every part of the biscuit, and then sighs. Do you like the stew, she says.

It’s fine, says Uncle T. Sister Estrogen gets up from the table and drops her bowl in the sink. She leaves the room, mounts the stairs, and the girls hear the door to her room close quietly. The girls are stunned. Uncle T continues to eat. Then he stops, and pushes his bowl toward them. Is there more stew, he says.

The girls cannot move. Uncle T’s voice is like a sea monster who has swallowed a lot of gravel. It is not like the dog’s voice, or the chickens or the pigs, or Sister Estrogen. It is like rocks grinding together, deep in the ground.

Is there more stew, Uncle T says again. The girls stand up, and fill his bowl from the pot on the stove.

In the morning, when the girls wake, there is cold breakfast in the kitchen. Sister Estrogen is in front of the house, working in the garden. Uncle T comes through the doorway and grabs a stack of stiff pancakes in his fist. In his other hand is a hammer. He stuffs the pancakes into a pocket of his overalls, opens the fridge, takes out the glass bowl of eggs, and cracks six raw eggs into his mouth. The kitchen door slams open as he leaves, bringing in a breath of air that smells of dry straw and clover. The girls stand on the stoop and watch as he leans an aluminum ladder against the old wooden barn, climbs up onto the roof, pulls nails from his pocket, and begins to hammer. His hammering echoes over the quiet fields like the lake cracking in the wintertime.

The girls can hear Sister Estrogen and Uncle T shouting in the kitchen. The girls have been kneeling in the dirt, playing with a black and white kitten, and now, as they listen, Sister Estrogen begins to cry. It’s hot mid-afternoon, and the heat wafts off the wooden boards of the house. Uncle T stops shouting for a moment and Sister Estrogen’s cries grow into wails, and the wails unfurl into the empty space around the house, settling down upon the girls like snow. Then the door skrees open and Uncle T steps out into the yard, looking over the girls, at the fields and the line of poplar trees and the dull blue sky.

How long have these fields been fallow? Says Uncle T.

What? Say the girls. They cannot remember a time when there has been anything but wild asparagus and clover in the fields beyond the house.

We ought to grow alfalfa in these fields, says Uncle T. A waste of good land.

The girls are hungry, but Sister Estrogen will not cook. She is laid out on the sofa beneath the big picture window that faces the road, the brown and yellow crocheted afghan bunched up around her face. What can we eat? Ask the girls. Make yourselves some toast, says Sister Estrogen. We’re out of bread, say the girls. Will you make us more bread?

I’m too tired to cook, says Sister Estrogen. She looks at them. Her eyes are like watery marbles and she smells bad, like rubber and yeast.

The girls find raw potatoes in the pantry and a box of saltines, and in the freezer is a tub of cream puffs. They eat the cream puffs until the feel sick, sitting at the formica table, rubbing their fingertips along its glassy surface. The rose-colored light outside the window dims to black, and then Sister Estrogen is standing in the doorway, the afghan wrapped around her like a coat. Her hair is bunched up at the back of her head, and she is barefoot.

“I’m going away for awhile,” says Sister Estrogen. The girls do not know what to say. Their fingers are sticky and their hearts are pounding with sugar. The bright overhead light of the kitchen glares off Sister Estrogen’s sallow skin.

Where will you sleep? say the girls, at last.

In thickets next to the lake, says Sister Estrogen. In poplar trees.

What will you eat?

Rabbits. Wild asparagus.

Sister Estrogen once taught the girls to catch crayfish in the ditches along the road by waggling their fingers in the water. She showed them how to make a fire in a pit of earth and roast the crayfish with the shoots of young cattails. Another time, when the girls had fallen from a tree and then hidden their injuries out of shame until the cuts had turned to festering, poisonous wounds, Sister Estrogen had drawn out the poison with a poultice of chewed-up plantain leaves.

The stairs creak as Uncle T lumbers towards the kitchen. The door shuts quietly, and Sister Estrogen is gone.

It’s hot, and the girls want to swim, but the pool is all covered in leaves. They pull aside some of the leaves, and find that the water beneath them is murky and brown. The girls look closer, lying flat on their stomachs, leaning their bodies over the edge of the pool. Beneath the surface they can see tiny, clear worms, writhing through the water as though it were gelatin. The water smells stagnant and sour.

Uncle T is in the clover, flinging up shovelfuls of earth. Every now and then he hefts a stone from the ground, and adds it to the wall that has begun to meander along the edge of the field. The girls stand next to him, watching.

What happened to the pool, they say.

What? Says Uncle T.

We wanted to swim in the pool, say the girls. Uncle T leans on his shovel and squints at them, as though he is trying to decipher what they are saying. There was a little man who came once a week, and fished the leaves from the pool with a long-handled net. Sister Estrogen paid him with coins knotted up in the fold of her apron. The money she made selling eggs at the market.

We don’t need a pool, says Uncle T.

We LIKED that pool, say the girls. We liked to SWIM in it. Uncle T grunts as he plunges the blade of the shovel into the ground. The pool is useless, he says. What we need is to turn this field into alfalfa. Goddam rocks. Uncle T picks up a rock and shows it to the girls. You girls help me pull these stones out of the ground. The girls bend over and claw at the ground, looking for stones. They find a few small ones, and add them to the wall at the edge of the field.

One day Uncle T is gone. The room at the top of the stairs is empty, only bits of straw on the hardwood floor where his boots would sit. The sisters are gripped with fear. They run through the woods to the lake and circle its edge, calling Sister Estrogen’s name. At noon they have not found her, and hunger drives them back the house, where they eat cold boiled eggs and leftover Halloween candy. Then the kitchen door bangs, and Uncle T sets his bags against the wall. At the sink, he fixes himself a tall glass of tap water. He drinks it down, looking out the kitchen window at the clover fields, where tiny alfalfa sprouts shoot from the raw black earth. I was thirsty, he says.

 

Ruby

The day that Jules’ dog died, he drove his truck down to the Oconee river and parked it in the poplar trees along to the bank. It was springtime, and the grass was dotted with white daises and small yellow flowers whose names he did not know. The vet had given Jules a small plastic box of ashes and he held it in his hand as he squatted on his heels next to the water, looking at the way the current moved over the soft grey mud. His dog had hated the cold, had hated the water. He’d had thin, short hair and a bony, whippet-like carriage, and he’d spent most of his life shivering.

Jules drove to the bar on county road 15 and parked his truck in the lot. He fixed his hair in the rear-view mirror and patted his front pockets before stepping out and slamming the door of the truck.

In the bar was smoke, and warmth, and Jules sat at a booth and set his cigarettes on the table, and then the plastic box of ashes. He got a beer from the bar, and set that on the table too. He looked out at the dance floor, a square of linoleum in the corner. A woman stood alone there, her arms down at her sides. She wore a white ruffled blouse that fell off one shoulder. Her eyes were closed and she was swaying. She had lipstick on.

Jules drank his beer, and got a second. He held the heavy bottle in his hands. He ran his finger through the wet ring his beer left on the wood of the table. He pulled a pencil from his pocket and a little sharpener. He sharpened the pencil on the table, watching the little wood curls pile up.

The woman in the ruffled blouse stood next to his booth. She had bottle-red hair and her hands were curled. Jules brushed his shavings away.

“Are you gonna dance,” said the woman, “or WHAT.”

Jules followed the woman to the linoleum. He put a hand on her waist and felt her skin, where it was soft beneath the fabric of her blouse. The mirror along the wall showed him their heads together, his tousled hair and her lipstick. Then her head was on his shoulder. She smelled like cigarettes and car-fresheners. He moved slowly on the dance floor, back and forth. She was taller than he was, and he held her there, as though she had fallen asleep.

The song on the jukebox changed, and the woman lifted her head and laughed. “You know,” she said, “my husband would HATE you. You are just SO CUTE.” The woman pushed him away. “I need another DRINK.” She walked to the bar, her hips moving in her high-waisted jeans. Jules took his beer from the booth, and swallowed what was left of it.

In the men’s room he shut himself into a booth. The walls of the booth were painted black, and marked up. He dropped his wranglers and peed. A few men came in and stood outside the booth. He could see the laces of their boots, and the bottoms of their jeans. Jules left the booth and passed in front of the men, to the sink. The men followed him out of the restroom.

“Hey what’s your name?” said one of the men, as they walked the darkened hallway back to the bar.

“Jules,” he said.

The man laughed. Then he slapped his hands against the legs of his work jeans.

“Hey where’s your tits, Jules? I mean where’s your jewels, tits?” He said. The narrow hallway echoed with their laughter. Jules’ hands trembled, and then he turned the corner and was back in the noise and clamor of the bar. Jules sat down at his booth and clutched his beer, and when he finally looked up, the men were gone.

Jules went through the heavy door into the rush of outside air, and stood against the wall of the building. There was a little rain falling, and he watched the water bead on the wet cars in the lot. He took out his pack of cigarettes and pulled one free. His hands shook, and he had a hard time with the lighter. Jules sucked on his cigarette, and closed his eyes.

For a moment Jules had no thoughts, and then the smell of the rain reminded him of springtime two years ago, when he’d first gotten his dog. He’d lived on a piece of land near the highway and the earth there had been black-brown and wet. Little green things grew everywhere. He’d named the dog Ruby, even though he was a boy. He’d told his dad about the dog and his dad said, What kind of a name is that for a boy. Ruby had come from the pound in West Virginia where there had been a whole litter of Rubies, all crowded together in a cell. Jules had put his fingers around the metal bars and his Ruby had looked up at him with weepy brown eyes, his narrow tail trembling in the damp air. Jules paid the woman at the front desk fifty dollars and she put the half-grown puppy in his arms. The dog had smelled like corn chips and piss and when the woman wasn’t looking Jules had picked up one of Ruby’s big, loose ears and rubbed it against his cheek.

Hinges popped as a couple stepped out of their truck and slammed the doors. They crossed the lot towards Jules. The man was wearing a canvas jacket and work jeans and he wrenched open the door of the bar, giving Jules some sort of look he couldn’t decipher. Jules smiled at the woman and she smiled back awkwardly, touching her pockets as if she had forgotten something.

Jules finished his cigarette and followed the couple inside. At the bar, the bartender took the top off his beer and set it down without looking at Jules. Jules arranged his plastic box and cigarettes on the bar and sat on a stool and watched the smoke gather in the room. The jukebox sang at him, the too-loud music bouncing strangely off the dark walls. Down the bar an old man sat smoking. His face was craggy like the desert and he blew cigarette smoke out through his ruddy lips, filling up the air around him.

“Hey,” Jules said to the man. “can I bum a cigarette?”

The man at the bar turned. His eyebrows were white and flared at the edges. The irises of his eyes were dark little stones, and they watered as he looked through the smoke at Jules.

“Cigarette.” he said.

“Can I bum a cigarette.” said Jules, again. He patted the chest pocket of his shirt to show that it was empty. The man pulled a cigarette from his pack, and tossed it down the bar to Jules.

“You new here.” he said, and then he coughed into his hand. He pulled a white handkerchief from his back pocket and roughly wiped his mouth.

“It’s not my usual bar.” said Jules.

The man folded his handkerchief slowly. “I been coming here fifteen years. I seen a lot of new people come through.

“Yeah?” said Jules.

“Back when the mines were good, a lot of people came through this bar. You work in the mines?”

“No.” said Jules. He took a drink of his beer and then wiped his damp palm on the legs of his jeans.

“Those mines are hard places,” said the man. “I worked there ten years, and I’m lucky I’ve still got my lungs.”

“My dog died,” said Jules.

“Pardon?” said the man. Jules picked up the little box, and shook it.

“My dog died. He’s in here. I wanted to throw him in the river but I couldn’t.”

The man nodded.

“That’s good.” he said. “River’s no place for a dog. You know what happens to the souls of dogs?”

“No.” said Jules. “What happens.”

“When you own a dog and then it dies, its soul becomes part of your own.” The man coughed, and smushed the handkerchief against his mouth. “However happy or sad or fearful or mistreated that dog was, that becomes a little piece of you.” The man rubbed his chest with his fist and then leaned towards Jules, lowering his voice so that Jules had to lean a little, too. “Animals are a part of us.” Jules could smell the man’s breath, vodka and cigarettes and syrupy flat Pepsi. “Animals are a part of us,” The man said again. “The river’s part of us too. Even the mines are part of us.” The man coughed, slow and deep, and the loose skin of his throat trembled with the effort. Jules turned away, and pressed his hands against the underside of the bar. The room was more crowded now, and a few people danced on the dance floor, their bodies moving slowly.

“Hey.” Jules reached his arm down the bar and touched the edge of the man’s ashtray. “Hey thanks for that. The stuff about the animals.” The man coughed and nodded stiffly, and rattled the ice in his empty glass.

Jules got up from the barstool and straightened his shirt where it tucked into his wranglers. He walked across the room to where the woman with the lipstick sat, on the other side of the dance floor, at a table with some men. The jukebox had paused between songs and he could hear the knock of his boots on the wood of the floor. Jules was almost to the woman’s table when he heard a voice call out. He turned and saw a booth of people that had turned to look at him. A woman at the end of the booth was waving her hand in his direction, the red-painted nails shining like small, bright flags.

“Hey,” she shouted. “Hey come here.”

Jules looked across the dance floor, and then back at the woman with the nails. She beckoned him again. Jules clutched his beer bottle, feeling the heavy dampness of the glass, and walked towards her.

The woman who had beckoned him had limp brown hair and her red fingernails were wrapped around her drink glass. The man who sat next to her had a tangled yellow beard on his face, and there was another woman, her pregnant belly tight beneath a camouflage t-shirt, her hair a mess of grown-out blonde. The table was clustered with empty bottles and another man stood against the wall with his leg cocked, his dark eyes looking out at Jules.

“We just wanna know.” said the woman with the red painted nails. “We just wanna know,” she said again, shouting a little to be heard above the music, “if you’re a boy or a girl.”

Jules laughed, and leaned his arm against the leather of the booth.

“Now y’all can’t all have my number, now,” he said. There was a pause, and Jules felt the cold glass of his beer bottle where he gripped it in his hand.

“No, really.” said the woman with the red-painted nails. Her eyes were heavy and she leaned over at him, her hair greasy where it touched her face. “It’s a simple question. Are you a boy, or are you a girl?”

Jules laughed again, and tipped his head. The air in the bar felt thick, like steam.

“I mean, come on-” said Jules. “does it really matter? I mean, you respect me, and I’ll respect you.” The group stared at him, their faces blank. A sour taste had crept into Jules’ mouth. He lifted the bottle to his face, but it was empty.

“Just tell us,” said the woman who was pregnant. Her voice was deep, and it crept below the smoke of the crowded bar, enveloping Jules like an anaconda. “Are you a boy, or are you a girl?”

“I’m bisexual.” Said Jules. “Ok?” He set his beer bottle on the table with a clank. The pregnant woman laughed. The man at the end of the booth stepped forward, his dark eyes focused on Jules.

“You better tell us what you are,” said the man, “or I’ll just have to find out for myself.” The man reached his hand out in the direction of the crotch of Jules’ wranglers.

Jules tried to breathe but his lungs had turned to helium, and he felt himself lifted, balloon like, from the bar. Jules was flying over the middle part of the country; Jules was falling off the edge of the continent. Jules was a ship, way out at sea. Jules’ heart was the waves that pounded the hull of the ship. Jules was alone.

Jules was in the bar, the wooden floor warped like a diving board beneath his boots. Loretta Lynn was playing on the jukebox. Jules raised his arms up and then he shoved the man as hard as he could, right in the middle of his chest.

“You fucking touch me,” said Jules, his voice cracking, “and I’ll fucking punch you in your fucking face.”

The man hit the wall behind him, thud, and then he sat down at the end of the booth. The people looked up at them, their mouths frozen in place. Jules turned and walked across the floor, his arms long at his sides. He felt a hand on his waist and he spun around, but it was only the woman with the lipstick and the ruffled blouse, her green eyes heavy, her smell like pine and a hundred wilted flower gardens.

“Dance with me again, handsome,” she said, her words slurred like oatmeal. She took Jules’ hand and he followed her onto the linoleum. Dolly Parton was singing about a river of happiness and the woman wrapped her arms around him, leaning her soft hair against the side of his face. Jules closed his eyes. He’d lost track of the time, and Ruby, his dog, would be waiting in the truck. But no, Ruby was dead. Jules looked back towards his barstool, where the little box of ashes sat. The woman was singing softly into his shoulder, and then, with thick sobs as though from the bottom of a tar pit, Jules began to cry.

The woman squeezed him tighter, didn’t try to stop his crying. She held him on the dance floor. “I know.” she said. “I know.”