And that’s what I tried to do, even if so, many times it felt like I was failing. For the years between that moment and middle school, I let my hair grow out without arguing with my mom about it. I wore pink and tried to befriend the other girls in my class. Some part of me felt like there was constantly a screaming deep in my belly, but the longer I pushed it down, the easier it became to ignore.
I thought I could go on like that forever, but things changed like a light switch being flipped when I saw the sign hanging on the white painted cinder block walls of my middle school hallway. The sign showed a photo of a cartoon girl with a long ponytail, her hands gripping a narrow podium. The text read: Like to Argue? Want to Win at It? Join the Debate Team and put that Mouth to Use!
I don’t know if it was the silently screaming girl in my belly seeing an opportunity to make herself heard or just the simple fact that I did like to argue, but the minute I saw the sign, I knew I was joining the team. I’d never really done an extracurricular and mine wasn’t really the kind of house where my parents nagged me to start. It had never felt natural to willingly stay at school and socialize when I had a bed and a laptop beckoning me home. I wanted to join this club, though. I could see it: me, in front of an audience, laying out all my opinions in front of people who actually wanted to listen.
Over dinner, I told my parents that I would be staying late for a debate team meeting after school the next day. I didn’t even ask—why would I? —just stated it and expected a simple question about when I should be picked up to be the only answer.
Dad dropped his fork onto his plate. The tines made a clang as they rattled against the china. “Absolutely not,” he said.
I was baffled. His face was flushing a deep red and his mouth had set into such a hard line that you would think I’d announced that I would be shooting up heroin after school rather than joining a club. My mom even shot him a questioning look, something she never did because of their whole stance that they had to always be a united front in front of me.
“Why not?” I asked. It was a weird feeling to ask why I couldn’t do something because I genuinely didn’t get it instead of asking “why not” as a form of beginning an argument.
He stood up from the table and I thought maybe he wasn’t going to answer me. He just stood there. My dad is so tall next to me—he’s 6’5—and just seeing him there by the dining room table, back lurched with his hands on the edge, I felt a ball form in the pit of my stomach.
“Honey?” my mom asked, voice shaking.
He sat back down: head bowed, eyes closed. I thought maybe he was praying, but then he wiped his mouth with his napkin and cleared his throat.
“Haven’t we had enough of this?” he asked me. “You are not a boy. Debate—getting up in front of people and acting like you’re some kind of expert—that’s for men. No daughter of mine, no matter how much she wants to be a boy, is going to argue in front of people.”
Now it was my turn to bow my head, but I was praying. Not the formal kind we had learned in church. There was no structure. It was just a kind of begging for God to help me control the hopelessness I felt. The tears were forming like salty stones in the corners of my eyes. I tried to blink them back, but it just forced them down my cheeks. The hair was falling in thick strands in front of my face, but I just let it hang. I had the craziest thought that if I pushed it from my eyes, if I actually looked at my dad just then, I might punch his ugly red face and show him what his daughter could do.
I would have been good at debate. If I could have joined debate, I’d have learned how to tell my dad how anachronistic his ideas about men and women reallywere. I could use statistics about student success to argue that debate team would make me go farther in life. I could argue that there were women teachers at my school and he didn’t object to them in roles of authority. If I was allowed to debate, I would crush my dad with my words, reduce him to the same level of smallness he’d made me feel.
Instead, I speared a single pea on my fork and bit it off the tinny prong. I sat quietly as I pretend to chew what I could’ve simply swallowed whole.
When the house finally went still that night, much later than most nights, I took the scissors from my desk drawer and tucked them into the waistband of the pink owl pajama pants that I had chosen when my mom took me back-to-school shopping earlier in the year. I shuffled quietly into the bathroom, careful not to trip on the too long legs of my pants. With the door shut, I stood in the dark, listening. I couldn’t be caught in the act or they would stop me, so I had to make sure I hadn’t woken anyone with my footsteps. When a full minute had ticked away without so much as a creak of settling wood to suggest I was alone in my wakefulness, I flipped the light switch up.
The mirror reflected what I already knew to be true. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a boy like my dad said, it was just that I didn’t know how to fit into their idea of the word girl. I wasn’t a doe eyed, pouty lipped kind of girl. My features were sharp and small. There was very little about me that read as traditionally feminine. I couldn’t keep lying to my parents or myself. My face might be framed in long tendrils of honey blonde hair, but that wasn’t going to soften my features. All it did was bring out a trapped look behind my eyes, expose that girl who was hiding in there. It brought out the wildness behind my mask, made me look like I was camouflaged. I wasn’t ever going to be the soft, girlie girl they wanted me to be. With one steady snip, I went to work, letting the hair pile in the drain.
My mom screamed when she saw me the next morning.
I don’t know if it was the length or the jagged, uneven edges that caused her reaction, but whatever it was made her howl like a wounded animal. Or worse—like she was mourning a loss. Like seeing me with my shorn head somehow made everything she and my dad had argued over more real and suddenly she realized the daughter she’d loved didn’t exist. The daughter she’d loved was gone and standing in front of her was a stranger.
Chapter Nine
Hannah
When I got home from my cliff diving excursion that night, Mom already had dinner waiting. The fries were still sloshing around in my stomach, but when I inhaled the smell of the earthy basil and tangy garlic of baked spaghetti, the slosh quickly evolved into a growl.
“Could you set the table?” Mom asked, and I threw her some serious side eye; we pretty much only ate at the table on bank holidays, preferring the cozy, cushioned chairs of the island counter. I didn’t argue, though, and pulled out a stack of plates and some silverware. Afterward, as I went upstairs to get Ari, I fought off a nervous heat that was spreading across my abdomen. Why the formality?
When we were all settled in at the table and our plates were filled with food, I watched mom spin her spaghetti around the tines of her fork. I didn’t take my eyes off her as I waited for her to break some sort of major news. Finally, after about ten minutes of my predatory gaze, Mom sighed loudly and told me to knock it off and eat.
“What do you expect?” I responded, folding my arms like a toddler. “You have us eating at the table. Something is going on.”
Mom sighed and leaned back in her chair, her fingers twisting her paper napkin into sharp points. She nodded slowly before she started talking and I could see she was trying to get her thoughts together. For some reason that made the nervousness worse, like if she had to spend that much time trying to put a positive spin on whatever she was going to tell us, it couldn’t possibly be anything good.