Fiction by Alli Seamans
A blank stare into the driver mirror as Elisa applied ChapStick. Her mascara was in desperate need of a do-over, but she knew that she had to keep the makeup minimal as her grandparents didn’t know yet. She kept the clothes neutral; a T-shirt and high waisted jeans did the trick. Her ID was still not to her liking, so she never speeds, and never even tried to look at her phone if her vehicle wasn’t parked. She’d been on estrogen and Spironolactone for six months now, and it had been that, if not longer, since she last saw Grandma and Grandpa.
Elisa rolled down the windows and took an American Spirit Blue from her purse. The lighter took a second, but after a few clicks she took a long draw. She knew she shouldn’t be smoking as she actively quit to start hormones, however, she was out of hydroxyzine for the month. One cigarette wouldn’t kill her, even if she suddenly felt her heart pounding. The buzz she missed trickled down her body, the best she felt all week. It was something. She told herself that if they rejected her, she was allowed one more, then the pack was in the garbage. If they accepted her, the pack would be in the garbage. Each puff lowered her anxiety, and each puff was ever sweeter as she prayed it was her final time feeling that artificial relief. Maybe a homecooked meal would ease these nerves.
Suburbia felt endless, driving at 25 miles per hour down a newly paved road, passing each cookie-cutter house with perfect grass and a fleet of minivans through American unity and conformity. Various houses had crosses and other symbols demonstrating devotion to Catholicism, which gave Elisa the uncanny feeling of being a child. Two more turns, down the same two roads, and she would arrive at the same beige house. The stop signs screamed at her to cease, but alas, every five seconds she decided to keep driving forward. The only differences between the houses she passed were children’s toys and signs of political affiliation. Elisa never understood the baseball-game mentality of elections, as the answer was always obvious to her: the candidate that didn’t want her community dead.
The car came to a polite stop. Her grandparents’s new house only had one floor with a basement, but from the outside it looked much bigger. She’d only been to this address once, but it felt like she’d been here one-hundred times. It was still going to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and it was still Grandma’s cooking, and it was still Grandpa complaining. It was all still the same, even if different at first.
Five deep breaths and a text to her roommate to roll a blunt when she got back. It was days like these that kept her smoking, as her grandpa put it, the devil’s lettuce. Although in this neighborhood her car would never even be looked at, she turned the key and locked the door. One more deep breath, then only a few steps to the porch.
At her Grandparents’s old place, she would just type in the garage code and not even worry about knocking. They always just let people enter as they please. It used to be a welcoming environment. This time it wasn’t that simple. One, she didn’t know the garage code, and two, she was viscerally uncomfortable saying or doing anything knowing it may be the last time she’d ever see them. She had to keep every move calculated. One ring.
“Come in.” The high pitched, loving voice only a grandma could use echoed through the door. The glass door that reflected Elisa allowed her to see her growing breasts through her shirt. She tried loosening her shirt, hoping they wouldn’t notice, even if she did look fabulous. It didn’t help that her heartbeat shook her shirt, feeling even the slightest muscle movements.
“Andrew!” Elisa shuttered as she saw Grandma slaving away at the stove. It didn’t help that she never once saw Grandpa touch the oven or stove, so the grief she felt was not only for Grandma deadnaming her, but also a void of what straight womanhood could look like.
“Hi, Grandma.” Every time she referred to family using their preferred name, a piece of herself disappeared in the immense confusion of intimate rejection. She wondered how they would feel if she used their legal names rather than call them Grandma and Grandpa, but she realized that would make her a hypocrite, creating problems where there didn’t need to be any. She kept going through the prayers in her head that she knew meant nothing, but her church days as a child stuck on her, no matter how hard she tried to gnaw them off.
“Shoes on or off?” Grandma didn’t hear her. She took her boots off to be polite.
“Dinner should be just a couple more minutes. You can go tell Grandpa, he’s downstairs.
Your skin looks great!”
“Oh, thank you!” Elisa was happy that changes were apparent. Grandma raised her head, smelling the air.
“Are you still smoking?”
“I actually quit a few months ago, that was just my roommate,” Elisa was quick with the white lie.
“That’s great sweetie. Go tell Grandpa dinner is ready!’’ Elisa was not used to traveling downstairs to see Grandpa. Carpeted stairs bled into the chilly basement with a priceless, leather couch right in front of a TV set that cost too much. The walls were a boring beige that Elisa would paint pink if she could.
And there was the man she felt uncomfortable around her entire life, with every year being something new, and this year only exemplifying this. It was some old, dumb Western on TV, and she stood there, watching Grandpa’s eyes glued to the screen.
“Hi Grandpa,” her voice cracked.
“Oh, Andrew.” The screeching of that name made her cringe.
“Um, Grandma wanted me to let you know dinner is just about ready…”
“Oh, OK.” He continued to stare at the TV. Elisa snuck out of the basement and returned to the table. She asked Grandma if she needed any help and was told to just sit down. She rimmed her finger around her water glass, focusing on the hexagonal ridges carved throughout the cylinder design. Grandma set the bowl of noodles, then sauce, down on the table and called for Grandpa. He came up after a couple of long minutes and dinner was finally ready.
The dinner table could have been bigger. The sunset blinded everyone through the sliding glass door, and everything was blurred except for the dust particles in Elisa’s face. She felt trapped sitting at the end of it, and beads of sweat rolled down her forehead. Grandma sat on the other end while Grandpa sat to the left of her. She knew that she had to do this now, as her breasts would not stop growing anytime soon, which would make things needlessly more complicated if she waited.
“Could you pass the salt?” Elisa asked, keeping her eyes away from Grandpa.
“Sure,” Grandma replied as she reached over Grandpa. Elisa heard Grandpa let out a grunt and cough, as he over-peppered his food, wondering if she too would have zero sense of taste someday.
“So, Andrew, how have your classes been?” Grandma was twirling her spaghetti noodles as Elisa shuddered, knowing that this would hopefully be the last time she ever heard that awful name.
“Yeah, they’ve been good.” Elisa was sick of talking about school. Every person in her life had asked her, and if it wasn’t about school, it was about surgery. Nothing productive ever came out of conversation, so she gave the same answer. “I’m doing well in my classes, struggling a bit with history, but my professor just lectures at us. He doesn’t seem to be a fan of class participation.”
“Are they still teaching about Vietnam?” Grandpa wiped his mouth with a napkin and got up to get another beer.
“Dear, let’s not discuss this at the table.” Elisa took a deep breath as a “thank you” to Grandma for shutting Grandpa up before he got confused about his ideologies, which Elisa knew wasn’t his fault for being a Vietnam vet and a parent in the Reagan era. Elisa knew she just had to do it, like ripping a Band-Aid off, revealing, hopefully, a small scar below.
“Um. There’s something else I wanted to talk to you two about.” She took a deep breath knowing that these next five minutes could be the last five minutes with her grandparents.
“I…” Her dry mouth did not let the words come out. She took a sip of water. She wished for blissful ignorance; she wished not to worry.
“I am a woman.” A deafening silence, as a long five seconds passed. A bird chirped outside.
“Could you please start calling me Elisa, or El?”
“Hmm.” Grandpa immediately felt a heaviness in his temple that he hadn’t felt since he saw the woman who took his virginity killed in the war. “Are you gay?”
“I am a bisexual woman,” Andrew claimed. Grandpa only saw a confused grandson. He had never knowingly met a trans person in his life, so to have the first one be his only grandchild did not sit well with him. He took an unreasonable chug from his beer can.
“Dear, would you pass the salt?” He was suddenly aware of his own breathing, and stopped because it was the only thing he could hear. He looked into his wife’s eyes only to see the look he got when he knew he did something he wasn’t supposed to. He began to internally panic, his mind racing, wondering if this was God’s plan all along after the horrific acts he committed in the war. He had just lost his grandson, and by that matter his grandchild.
“Why didn’t your dad let us know?” He asked. He was curious, however, he honestly didn’t care. He refused to come to terms with his grandchild’s claims, so his mind was looking for both all the questions and none of them.
“He thought I should tell you guys myself.”
“So, Andr…El…is…drew, what, why, um.” His wife was at a loss for words.
“Just please, I know it may be difficult at first, considering you guys called me… that for my whole life, but please. I am happier now. I have more friends. I feel good about my body.” His grandchild pleaded as he looked into her eyes, denying the outline of pre-pubescent breasts through her shirt. He took another chug of beer. Andrew looked away. And another, numbing the complexities he sought to avoid. He grabbed his fork and his hand shook, jittering as his eye twitched.
“The spaghetti tastes different,” Grandpa complained, desperately trying to ignore the last few minutes. He remembered those moments where he was proud to earn his manhood. He was the first person in his family to graduate and the first man to see combat and not die. He was proud for the man he was, and he loved the woman he married. But he felt betrayed.
“It’s the same as always!” Grandma was happy that the conversation switched. “I mean, it could be that you’re drinking beer with it. I’ve never seen you drink beer with your spaghetti.”
“I like it.” Grandma ignored Elisa’s fragile voice; she felt a presence in the room that faded. Elisa put her fork and napkin down and paced through the dining room.
“Does he know where the bathroom is?” Grandpa asked. He wasn’t sure how to address his grandchild, but he knew however he did it, it would feel wrong. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Dear, let’s move on. Sh-he can do what he wants,” Grandma wanted to please her husband but didn’t know if her grandchild was more important. Elisa returned from the bathroom. “So, Elisa, is there a surgery soon or, how does…”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ve been on estrogen for a while, but even if I wanted surgery, it would be a long time. It’s a whole thing with a waitlist.” Grandma felt better after the crash course. Her values suddenly felt backwards, as she was at a loss for what God’s plan was.
“But why? All those years of church, and they didn’t mean anything to you?” her husband asked.
“I can’t be part of something that rejects who I am. I like looking at myself in the mirror now. I feel fuller of who I am.” The brightness in Elisa’s eyes sent a wave of relief. Grandma knew she had to go against her husband on this one, even if briefly. Being with her husband since high school removed her from womanhood. To her, being a woman only meant taking care of her house and family, so to choose this life perplexed her. She didn’t understand and wanted to teach Elisa how to cook, sew, and clean. Do the things a man needed. But she also knew that times were different, and it sounded like a man was not even what Elisa necessarily wanted, so she kept quiet as she starred at her plate, hoping the conflict would fizzle.
“Well, come back when you decide to quit, we will support your decision. God will guide you.” Grandma could tell Grandpa was trying to be smart and did not want to let this one slide. “We love you, but this won’t work.”
“Hold on, you are always welcome here, we have questions, but you are our grandchild.”
Grandma tried to mend Grandpa’s claims.
“We love you.”
“We love Andrew,” her spouse answered. Grandma saw Elisa clench her fist and jaw.
“Well, thank you for the food, Grandma. It was good to see you Grandpa.” Elisa nodded and stood up. She grabbed her boots and left through the front door. Grandma hurried into the kitchen and grabbed a container of cookies, then rushed out the door.
“Andr-Elisa!”
Elisa was already in her car when Grandma opened the door and motioned that she wanted to talk, “I have some cookies for you!”
“Oh, thank you…”
“You still like my almond cookies, right?”
“I do.”
“Well, if you ever need anything, just text me. You’re welcome to stop by anytime, maybe sometime when he isn’t here,” Grandma explained, praying to see her granddaughter again. “Maybe I can take you shopping sometime.”
“Thank you. Hopefully, I can make Thanksgiving. I would love that,” A smile on Elisa’s face eased Grandma. She watched as Elisa drove off, happy to know she finally had a granddaughter. A pack of cigarettes now lay on the street.
