“I want you to think of a story. You’re not some two-dollar performer up there singing along to some song asking for pittance. You are the queen of the stage. Do you have a crush on a cute boy in the audience? Are you on the run from the cops? Do you not fit in anywhere? What is the story?” I press play on another song, this time by SWV, and begin to experiment with feeling heartbroken. Fanny nods her head and does a slow clap. “There you go. You’re helpless around him. You don’t know what to do without him. Yup. Keep going.”
Bahadur tries their hand at shooting, but they aren’t as successful. Tiny clouds of dust explode at random close to the target but not close enough. “Sorry! Maybe I’m not getting this right.” They speak louder than they need to on account of their earmuffs.
“Oh gosh, don’t even worry about it. You’ve got a good stance. So you’re ahead of the game compared to most people,” Beck says to Bahadur, who giggles sheepishly. “Everyone makes mistakes, and as long as we’re safe, we will learn along the way.”
“But what if my wig falls?” I said to Fanny while she rounded my newly shaven head with duct tape.
“Everyone’s wig falls at least once,” Fanny said while pinning my new lace front from the weave of the wig to the tape attached to my head. “That’s called a drag queen baptism. If your wig doesn’t fall off, you don’t get to go to heaven.” She laughed. “Just kidding. But really, everyone experiences it. No harm done. Make it part of your act. Start holding it in your arms like a baby. Make it your ex-boyfriend. Whatever.”
Beck takes a rifle out of the hockey bag. “This is an AR-15.” Bahadur and I take a step back at the size of it. “I will need you to learn this weapon because these will be carried by the Boots.”
I wave at Firuzeh, who is walking towards us, perhaps to watch us train. She does not wave back. Over the last few days her face has been, as expected, motionless and catatonic.
“Here, give it a try.” I cautiously take the rifle. This gun is different. Rather than front and rear sights, it has a scope through which I can see a pin-sized red dot. With the ergonomic butt of the gun against my shoulder, I aim, I exhale, I fire. I hear muffled cheers from Beck and Bahadur.
“Look! I got it again in the head!” I say. Suddenly I feel my grip on the AR-15 loosen as Firuzeh takes it from me. “Shit, no!”
“NO!” Liv screams. We collectively imagine Firuzeh pointing the gun to her own head, pulling the trigger, scattering pieces of herself onto our faces, the reverberation of her last moments echoing among the trees, anything to erase the horrors she has witnessed.
Instead, Firuzeh shoulders the gun, aims and shoots at the target several times until she hears the empty click of a used-up magazine. She screams. She drops the weapon and runs to the target, ripping it to shreds with her bare hands.
“FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK ALL OF YOU!” She collapses on the ground in a solid heap, wisps of cardboard littered around her tiny frame. Long, agonizing sobs. We stand witness to this opening, this tear in her fabric. We witness it until she is silent, her voice hoarse and raw.
9
In the main house’s living room, Liv and I sit on either side of Firuzeh and hold her hands. Hanna sits on the edge of the lumpy recliner and Beck leans on the door frame, both of them uneasy.
“How’s this?” Bahadur tucks a blanket over Firuzeh’s lap, then sits at her feet to listen.
“It’s good. Thank you.”
“Are you sure you feel ready to share? It’s like what you told me when we first met: ‘Feel what you want to feel. Feel when you want to feel,’” Bahadur gently says.
“Yes. I’m ready. I will stop if I need to. Thank you, aziz-am. I need to say all of this out loud. It’s like telling someone your nightmares so that they don’t come true. If I tell you this now, I know it will be in the past, far behind me.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Firuzeh said to Bahadur before giving them a gift bag. “Today is supposed to be the first snowfall. I wanted you to be prepared.” Inside the bag were a striped Blue Jays toque she had found at the corner store and some spare winter gear she had sourced from one of her Facebook friends.
“I look like a marshmallow.”
Firuzeh laughed. “No! No. You don’t look—”
“Yes I do.”
“Okay. Maybe a little.”
“Let’s schedule you in next week, okay? We have to finalize the paperwork for your work permit, and I want to get that done sooner than later.”
She giggled watching Bahadur exit the Transgender Assistance Centre, trying to make sense of the oversized winter boots with each awkward step.
It was Friday again. Firuzeh made her way to the cafeteria and heated up her leftovers from yesterday’s Loving Kindness dinner. According to her research on YouTube, the idea was to craft a Loving Kindness meal meant for herself and no one else as an act of self-care in the wake of her recent breakup. She got to choose the menu, not her ex, who happened to be a critically acclaimed chef at a critically acclaimed restaurant. She did not need her ex to dictate menu choices or remind Firuzeh that her calorie intake was high. She did not need her ex to bicker with at the grocery store over organic or non-organic. The meal was just for her. And, since Firuzeh was not a critically acclaimed chef, the meal she had created tasted horrible. Firuzeh’s mother always said, “When you’re in love, make a feast. When you’re heartbroken, eat out.” But since she had to shoulder the entire rent after her ex moved out, eating out was not an option. She watched the bland quinoa rotate in the microwave and considered her options for yet another evening practising painful autonomy and liberation from co-dependence.
“Hey, are you coming to the party tonight?” asked her co-worker Kyle, holding a Tupperware of cheesy lasagna.
“What party?”
“Drew’s Queer anti-holiday party.”
“Who’s Drew again?”
“Remember Drew who hosted that anti-Valentine’s party?”
“I can’t. Too many past clients in that room.” Kyle nodded his head in agreement, knowing the usual conflicts of interest frontline workers face in the LGBTQ2S community. Firuzeh explained, “I’m facilitating the Trans Elders’ Mindfulness group, then heading home.”
Kyle nodded. “Cool.” He adjusted his suspenders over his unicorn T-shirt and sat himself down to eat.
“Yeah. Just trying to be independent. Know myself. Be with myself. I’m trying to be the person I would want in a partnership, you know?” The microwave dinged. Firuzeh opened the sticky door to the 1980s contraption and looked at the steaming bowl of beige grains and withered cucumbers. She smiled weakly at Kyle.
“Cool.” Kyle took another bite of lasagna and opened a magazine to read. Firuzeh understood his signal and gave up trying to start a conversation.
The recreation room still smelled like cleaning products when Firuzeh entered. She sighed and opened the window to help the smell dissipate. She’d told the custodian again and again to use vinegar and water since several of the participants had scent sensitivities, but he refused to listen. She laid out fifteen yoga mats in perfect lines facing one wall and placed a chair behind each mat, in case of mobility issues. She used to arrange them in a large circle to encourage conversation, but the elders became confused over their right and left depending on where they sat in the circle. She then shuffled the curtain over the mirror to avoid any confusion about directions.