Eliza Hammond, October 6, 2017

♫ Remember the Rain - Kadhja Bonet ♫

I arrived at the Hammond household a few minutes to one in the morning. The noise of the rain outside went quiet as I shut the door behind me. Everything was reassuringly silent.

Mom tired quickly, those days, and certainly didn’t care enough to stay up until I got home. Whatever. I don’t care. I promptly took off my clothes, gathering them in a ball before putting them gently in the hamper. Even if she wasn’t awake to yell at me, mom would have a conniption if she awoke to find water on her prized linoleum floors.

There was a stained-wood bench in the foyer (aka “fancy hallway”) big enough to seat three people. Not that there were ever that many guests in our house at once. I sat down on it, put my face in my hands, and started to cry.

---

Seven hours earlier, my mother and I ventured into the center of bustling, ostentatious Grand Rapids. Where the streets are made of gold and the sun never sets! The steering wheel bent under the weight of my mom’s veiny, red hands. She stared, unblinking, at the road ahead. There were many names people called my mother, but ‘distracted driver’ was not one of them. Her angular jaw was angrily set, and she spoke in a clipped alto voice: “Dr. Briggs is going to help you through this phase.” Those were the first words she’d said to me during the entire car ride. In fact, they were the first words we’d spoken in nearly a week. “He’ll fix things,” she added quietly, trying to convince herself. I just sighed and looked out the window. Whatever.

The incessant march of time can be quite rude, at times. It moves forward whether you want it to or not, at whatever pace it sees fit. ‘Ah, you just celebrated the birth of your child? Now he’s going off to college! Life is meaningless! Bwahaha!’ I tried to reason with time; begged it to pass faster, at least until this appointment was over. But time doesn’t like to be asked for things, so it felt like days before we arrived at an aging business park across the river from Medical Mile. The building itself–one of four near-identical copies–was a shabby, stout, eighties skyscraper, the kind that’s so bland it makes you want to buy a pager. Slam! Loudly interrupting my exposition, my mom slammed the car door behind her. I struggled to match her pace. Meekly following her coattails, we speed-walked towards my immediate and inevitable doom.

Dr. Briggs’ office wasn’t casual enough to be his place of residence, but not fancy enough to establish him as a real psychologist. The waiting room was only large enough to squeeze in two very thin people (and even then, their legs would be touching). In lieu of a receptionist, there was a small table with magazines three years out of date. The rest was all classic office fare: grey carpet, crown molding, etcetera.

I barely had time to flip through the July 2013 issue of Highlights before the good doctor came out to greet us. He looked like the classic nutty professor: shock-white balding hair, a lab coat three sizes too large, and a pair of prescription glasses that made his eyes look gigantic. But unlike the stereotype, he wore a cold and calculating expression. “Ah, Prudence, it’s so good to see you,” he said, in a voice that tried (and failed) to be welcoming. “And this must be the Emmett I’ve heard so much about.” I shrunk under his wide-eyed gaze.

My mother was far less intimidated. “Yes, yes,” she dismissed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather skip the pleasantries and get on with the therapy.”

Briggs’ eyes narrowed; his mouth a thin line. “Very well. Emmett, would you care to come with me?”

“I’d rather not.” Briggs just laughed in response. The room that functioned as his office was similarly minuscule, made even more cramped by all the clutter. There was a desk buried under a dozen piles of paper, a bookshelf overflowing with binders, and two chairs that could only be described as “very used.” But the standout feature of the room was the posters that lined the walls. Most were terribly innocuous, with captions like ‘Hump Day Again?!’, while others were… oddly political? I’d call them demotivational posters, but they lacked a sense of 2011 self-referential irony. Less “quirky Facebook post” and more “cyberpunk World State propaganda.” One poster had a right-wing podcaster I vaguely recognized from my YouTube recommendations, with the caption, ‘Being born does not entitle you to a good life.’ Another read ’Don’t kill your enemies. Run them out of business.’ But most of the text was blocked, so all I saw at first was ‘KILL YOUR ENEMIES’ in giant Helvetica.

Squeezed in-between two propaganda posters hung a crumpled college diploma. “Your name is Myers Briggs?” I asked, squinting at the paper. “Like, your real name?”

“Yes. I don’t see the problem.”

“It’s plural. And isn’t it the name of a personality t–?”

“Nominative determinism, Emmett. Google it, when you have the chance. Now, are you going to keep asking inane questions, or are you going to let us begin?” I bit back my initial response–‘inane questions, please’–and sat down on the less tattered of the two chairs. I motioned for him to continue.

“Okay. Your mom arranged this meeting because, a week ago, you gave her some bad news.”

“Weird way to call coming out as trans, but okay.”

“‘Trans.’” He rolled it around on his tongue like it was his first time saying it. “That’s a big word.”

“It’s one syllable,” I mumbled.

“I mean, it holds a lot of meaning. Gender can mean a million different things to a million different people. What does it mean to you?”

I was at a crossroads. I could either keep responding to his questions with snarky quips, or I could cooperate. And god, did I want to cooperate. My dysphoria felt like a pile of bricks that I’d shouldered alone for years. All I wanted was someone to share the load with. “I don’t know. My entire life, everything just felt… off. When I was younger, it was the role I was expected to play—the sporty boy, playing little league with his friends. Then I started getting bigger, and–“ I whimpered a little. “Everything just felt wrong. Like an ill-fitting suit; too big in some places, and too small in others.”

He nodded slightly and jotted something on a notepad. “Moving on. How’s high school been going for you? Are you doing well in classes?”

What? That’s it? I start spilling my feelings, and he asks me about my fucking grades? “Um. I’m doing well, I guess.” The next hour took a turn towards the completely inane. Briggs picked my mind on everything from politics (‘I don’t love Hillary, but...’) to music (‘Tame Impala is honestly so underrated’). I was fifteen. Don’t judge me. He didn’t ask another question about my gender. In fact, he seemed persistent to ignore the topic entirely. Eventually, I forgot about the fact that I’d opened my heart to him at all.

Briggs looked down at his notes, then up at me with his piercing gaze. “Did you record your mother without her permission?”

“What?” If this feels like a non-sequitur, that’s because it was. Weren’t we just talking about my favorite bands?

But he pushed on. “Last year, during an altercation with your mother, you recorded her without asking permission.”

“Yeah, but how did you know that? Did you–” I sat up in my seat and leaned towards him. I caught a glimpse of his notes, which had questions that were too personal for comfort. Who would have given him the information needed to–oh, duh. “You talked to my mom before I came in?”

“Obviously,” Doctor Briggs scoffed. “Who do you think made the appointment?”

“No, but… those questions, she told you to ask them.” That couldn’t be allowed, right?

“Yes, she did,” he declared, not chastened in the slightest. “I pride myself on getting as much information out of my clients to help them as much as possible. If you’re going to come into this meeting believing that I have some sort of preconceived bias, then we won’t get anywhere, will we?”

“Whatever.” If he based all his questions on a phone call with my mom, isn’t that the textbook definition of preconceived bias? “Anyway, yeah, I did. I wanted proof that my mom was being, uh, verbally abusive. So, when she went on a thirty-minute rant because I forgot to set the table, I recorded her.”

I shrugged, but the doctor seemed less amused. “Let me see if I have this right. First, you flagrantly disobeyed your mother. Then, you turned her husband against her by recording her inappropriately?”

Yeah. Biased. “That’s a weird way of putting it. She has all the power. Is it really such a bad thing to even the playing field a little?”

“I see.” He wrote something down on his notepad.

“No, wait, don’t write that down! When my mom yells at me over nothing, it’s fine, right? Because she’s my mom. But when I record what she says and play it for my dad, I have to see a fucking psychologist? Don’t think I don’t see you writing ‘invades personal space’ on your little notepad. She’s the one who should be in this chair anyway,” I grumbled. Dr. Briggs looked back up from his notes with a face that said, Now, why do you think that?

“Why?” I responded to his unspoken question. “Because my mom is an asshole! You know what she said in the rant that I was so evil for recording?” I put on my best hoity-toity, suburban Michigander accent. “‘You know, Emmett, sometimes I regret giving birth to such an ungrateful little shithead.’ Don’t worry. If you don’t believe me, I’ve got it on tape. But wait! Don’t forget what happened afterward, when she took away the entire fucking door to my bedroom. ‘If you’re going to invade my privacy,’ she said, ‘then I’ll invade yours.’ And you’re guilting me for doing what I can to fight back?”

“Maybe you wouldn’t have to fight back if you didn’t disobey her in the first place,” Dr. Briggs rebutted, still wholly stone-faced.

“Yeah, and maybe I wouldn’t have to disobey her if she gave me some fucking leniency! If I do anything that’s even slightly unbecoming of the man I’m supposed to be, she stops talking to me until I grovel at her feet. Normally, if she gives me the cold shoulder long enough, I apologize–even when it’s not my fault–and things go back to normal. Or whatever normal means when she has a breakdown every other week. But now I’m trans, which is something no amount of guilt-tripping can undo. Now, the mold she was trying to squeeze me into no longer fits.”

“Ah yes, the trans issue.” Briggs put his notepad down. He took off his coke-bottle glasses and wiped them clean. I couldn’t help but add a cartoon glass wiping sound effect in my head–eee-rrr-eee-rrr. “Here’s how I see it, from my perspective. You are a deeply troubled person. Whether that’s due to–as you put it–a ‘verbally abusive’ mother, or some other pathology, is up for debate.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s say you were a scientist, trying to determine if plants grow faster in red or blue light. When experimenting, you would try to isolate the variables; give each plant the same amount of water, the same type of soil, so that the only difference between them is the color of the light. Psychology is a science, and a diagnosis of gender dysphoria can only be given when the other variables are removed from the equation. There’s no way to be sure if your body dysmorphia results from gender dysphoria or… something else.”

Even at the time, I knew he was spouting bullshit. When I tried to bring up my dysphoria, he changed the subject! But a small, trusting part of me whispered, ‘But he’s a psychologist! A doctor of the mind! Are you really going to dispute someone with a college degree?’ It was enough to get my head in a tizzy. Was I trans? Or just doing all this for attention? “Ah, seems our time is up,” Doctor Briggs noted, checking his watch. He got up from his chair and offered me a handshake. I walked past his outstretched arm, and out of the office, in a daze.

I barely noticed when Doctor Briggs called my mom into his office. As they talked in hushed voices behind the door, I sat, pondering my situation. During arguments, my mother had several words she liked to label me with: delusional, paranoid, sociopath. I told myself that she was projecting. Hitting me where she knew it would hurt. But what if she was right? I needed to hear what they were saying about me. I needed to know if the anger I felt was real.

I tiptoed to the door and put my ear to it. “...it’s clear to me that Emmett has evidence of multiple paraphilias, in addition to his supposed ‘gender dysphoria.’ He seems to have a victim complex that causes him to… believe he’s being emotionally abused at home. I’ve seen this in some of my other patients: Emmett lashes out for attention, disobeying you to send a message, then blames you when you take appropriate disciplinary action. Knowing all this, I believe his self-professed status as a ‘transgender’ ‘person’ might be just another attention-grabbing tactic, as his previous methods are becoming less effective. Now, with a few more meetings, I’m sure we could revert him to his previous behavior. It’s two hundred a session, so that comes out to...”

As the good doctor toyed with his calculator, I sat back in the waiting room chair and stared at his dimpled, fluorescent-lit ceilings. Was I wrong to think my mother was being manipulative, maybe even borderline abusive? Maybe her behavior was normal, just like she said it was. Maybe Dr. Briggs was right. Maybe I was a broken boy, a sociopath.

So I did what sociopaths do best and distracted myself from the indefinable pain of genuine emotion. When my mom came back out after, holy shit has it seriously been an hour and a half?, I was on my phone, probably watching some dumb Minecraft YouTuber. I told you not to judge me! Mom glared at me, so I paused CaptainSparklez’s dulcet tones and returned the look. “Well, I heard what you said about me,” she said, letting the facade crack. “Very hurtful.”

“Uh, aren’t they not allowed to do that? Doctor-patient confidentiality, or whatever?”

“That doesn’t apply to minors, Emmett,” she lied, stressing my deadname and enunciating her T’s. “As my dependent, privacy and trust are privileges you have to earn. And trust me, you have not done jack goddamn shit to earn them. So get back in there and talk to Dr. Briggs!”

“Again?”

“Again. I talked to him, and I think he has some more questions to ask you.”

‘What?’ I thought. “What?!” I yelled. “First, you give him a bunch of loaded questions. Then, he tells you what I said, and now you want me to go back in there and do it again? For old times’ sake? I’m sorry, but fuck that.”

“Emmett Augustus Druckenmiller-Hammond, you do not curse in my presence!”

“Oh, so saying ‘fuck’ is a problem, but this isn’t?” I pointed at a poster reading ‘CASEY ANTHONY WAS INNOCENT.’

She laughed a bitter laugh. “You want to be smart with me, Emmett?” she asked, getting all up in my face. “You want to see how far you can push things?” I could have apologized and brought us down to an acceptable normal, but that was not in the cards. Instead, I stayed silent as my mother the day I came out. “Fine,” she spat. “Be that way. I’m going home.” Then she turned and walked out of Dr. Briggs’ office. After a few seconds of absorbing what the hell had just happened, I rushed out behind her.

We were back in the parking lot outside. My mom got in her car, and I walked around to the passenger’s seat. Click. The door was locked. Knock, knock. I tapped on the window. “Hello? Mom?” Inside, she was staring at me from the driver’s seat, her finger on the door lock. With her other hand, she started up the car. When she rolled the window down just a crack a few seconds later, she wore the evilest smile I had ever seen. “Mom, what’s going on?” I asked, my voice trembling. She’d acted erratically before, but rarely like this.

“I said I’m going home, Emmett,” she hissed. “If you want to act like you don’t need me, I’m not going to be your chauffeur.” Her smile deepened, and her voice turned disturbingly saccharine. “Good luck getting home by yourself!” she sang. And with that, she peeled out of the parking lot, and I was alone.

I checked my phone. It was almost nine, and the sun had already set. The only light came from the moon, the stars, and the incandescent orange lights dotting the edge of the empty business park. How much arable land did they destroy to make a parking lot this huge? It was drizzling, too, and the storm looked like it would get worse before it got better. I pulled open Google Maps. I had no money, no dinner, and a dwindling battery. I let out a noise halfway between a sigh and a sob. This was going to be a long night.

It might have been grounds for criminal endangerment if my mom pulled this stunt in a city like–god forbid–Lansing, with all its sleazy Michigander politicians. It’s not like there wasn’t crime in Grand Rapids, but I wasn’t worried. I would have welcomed a shanking. Sadly, the only obtained pain I sustained was internally ingrained.

This story must have bored you with a million passages about walking. Check out Eliza’s exciting walk to the GSA meeting! Oh boy, now she’s walking to Bushwick! It’s boring, I know, and especially so in a book. At least on television, you get to see the characters move. But that’s all my life was: a slow, sullen trod from point to point, milestone to milestone. I will try to avoid regaling you with every dead, excruciating detail of my walk. But know this, dear reader: from the center of Grand Rapids to the southern edge of Wyoming, I walked nine miles that night.

In retrospect, the most fucked up thing was that, in a small way, it was a relief to be left in that parking lot. No need to worry about self-actualization when you lack the rest of Maslow’s pyramid. No more high expectations, fluctuating moods, and rejection. No more Will Robinson, no more failing algebra, no more waiting years to start hormones. I could just listen to “lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to” for hours and walk.

I followed the Grand River as it took its meandering course southwest. By mile three, the drizzle had turned into a storm. By mile five, the storm became a downpour. I watched the river slowly rise, thrashing violently in its bed, but did so with a sense of separation. I wasn’t being drenched in the rain. The thunder didn’t scare me, nor did the lightning, even when it struck what felt like inches from my face.

Eventually, my phone directed me sharply south, into the woods of Millenium Park. The walking trail, which traversed the forest, was pitch black. The rain sounded muffled and far away as the trees became my umbrella. I heard noises that made me jump–animals scurrying, leaves rustling, ghosts screaming ‘Get out!’ Y’know, forest stuff. I wielded my phone as a torch until it ran out of battery. At some point, I closed my eyes and walked on inertia. I pretended that I was fearless. I pretended that I was dead.

Then, the forest stopped, and the storm returned louder than ever. Everything else returned, too, all at once. my mom doesnt love me im such a fucking fag nobody likes me ill never be a real girl im so ugly im so ugly im so fucking ugly– My breath became shallow. I was half-blinded by tears.

I-196 was a six-lane highway that crisscrossed southern Michigan. This particular section was built on a short hill, the walking trail dipping into a tunnel below it. I stepped off the path and squelched up the hill. My shoes were wet and muddy. So was the rest of me, actually. I stood at the edge of the road. It was covered in mist and smoke. The haze made the faraway headlights of cars look like stars in the distance. I stood there for a long time, watching them go by. Fragments of a thousand thoughts rushed through my mind. faker sociopath idiot tranny being born doesnt entitle you to a good life you dont deserve it you dont deserve it  you need to stop being such a coward and do it just fucking do it! I took a step onto the asphalt, and–

I arrived at the Hammond household a few minutes to one in the morning.

---

January 3, 2022

My mother felt almost anachronistic, sitting there in my dad’s apartment building. She was supposed to be in the past, buried with feudalism and the phonograph and the disco records people burnt in 1979. But there she was, staring at me with her piercing stare. “Hello, mom.” I kept my voice level and businesslike. “Does Olivia know you’re here?” I was worried about her health: she had gained a lot of weight and took huge, heaving breaths. I noticed she leaned on her cane, unable even to sit up by herself.

“No. I took the car,” she murmured, reserved and briefly vulnerable. Her eyes crinkled slightly, and she smiled at me, and for a second, I thought she might have come here to make amends. Maybe the old Prudence was back. The Prudence who lived before the depression and heart disease turned her into someone unrecognizable. But then the vitriol she’d made her foundation for the past seven years returned in full force. “Look at you,” she sneered. “All dolled up for the drag show.”

“What did you just say?”

“I said you should wash that makeup off; it makes you look like a fucking clown.”

Fuck. I forgot how bad talking to her made me feel. “It’s just moisturizer,” I replied, reverting into the submissive tone she used to demand I use.

“Moisturizer,” she echoed disapprovingly. My dear mother gave me another once-over. “You’ve grown into a very... disappointing man. Short and skinny, like your father.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not a man,” I growled, gritting my teeth.

“Not a man. No, you’re not a man. Men don’t abandon their mothers.” She let out a mucous cough, almost doubling over from the exertion. “I don’t understand how you live with yourself, cutting me off the way you did. I’m your mother, Emmett. I brought you into this world!”

“Well, you didn’t do a very good job!”

“Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. ”I did everything a mother had to do. I birthed you. I fed you. I never laid a hand on you–“

“Um, yeah, you did! Remember when you found my hormone stash?”

She gripped her cane tighter. “You bought drugs off the internet, Emmett!”

“Yeah, and then you slapped me! In the face!” I pointed at my cheek, as though she really didn’t remember.

“Don’t make it out to be worse than it was,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “I’m a sixty-year-old woman with a heart condition. Not exactly Ronda fucking Rousey.”

“What about when you abandoned me in that parking lot?” I almost covered my mouth. Even during our worst arguments, I had never mentioned that incident. But the rage I felt had gone unresolved for years, and it was finally forcing its way out.

“Oh my god, you’re whining about that again? That was four years ago!”

“I was fifteen! Why would you do that to a fifteen-year-old?”

“Because you were pissing me off! I just… ugh! I couldn’t stand being around you when you got all belligerent like that!”

“You made me walk nine miles because you were tired of me?”

“Twisting my words, as always. You’ve always had a gift at making yourself the victim.”

“I tried to kill myself, mom!” We both went quiet. In my periphery, I swear I saw the concierge duck under his desk. “If that driver was just a little less observant... if he didn’t honk his horn so loudly, I–”

“Whatever. If I remember correctly, you came home that night completely unharmed. I wouldn’t call that much of a suicide attempt.” She laughed, which quickly turned into another cough. “Meanwhile, I spend all day wasting away in my bed, waiting for my only son to call me. I’m dying while you’re stuck whining about things that happened to you a lifetime ago! Go enjoy your charmed life in New York City. Go live in your fantasy world, prancing around in dresses with all your other transvestite friends! Enjoy yourself, as your mother withers away.”

“Transgender, mom. I’m trans-gen-der. I came out four fucking years ago, and I’m pretty sure you’ve never once said that word nonsarcastically.”

“Wow. Have you really kept this up for four years? I always knew you were stubborn, but this–!”

“Stubborn?” I was dumbfounded for a second. Then, I remembered what Dr. Briggs said to her in our first and only meeting; she still thought I was doing this for attention. “Mom, I’m not transitioning to spite you.”

“Pshaw,” she pshawed. “Surely, you must realize how much this delusion hurts the people who care about you. First, you tear apart my marriage, then you ruin your future, and now you’re demanding other people–normal people–validate your crossdressing fetish. This whole ‘trans’ thing is a burden. You’re abusing the people around you with this delusion, and one day they’ll hit a breaking point. One day, they’ll fucking collapse.” She started to sob, her body heaving and shaking with the effort. I did not attempt to comfort her; I was crying a little bit myself. Maybe more than a little. “Look what you’ve made of me, Emmett,” she yelled, though it came out more like a whisper.

“I wasn’t the one who delighted in her child’s pain. I wasn’t the one who left her in the middle of Grand Rapids with crinkled eyes and a carefree smile. Did you ever love me? Or did you just want someone to love you back?” For a second, I thought I saw something like compassion flash through her eyes, but it was gone in an instant. She had no love in her atrociously gigantic heart left to give.

I hated that I still loved her. I hated that it hurt to see her so broken. I hated the childish part of me that wanted a mother who loved me back. I missed the mother who’d sit down to draw with me, the mother who would quietly sing R&B songs until I fell asleep. Those small moments of reprieve were cruel gifts because they stoked the false fire still burning in my heart. I left her there, crying.

That was the last time I ever saw my mother.