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I say, “You can’t tell Mom.”
“I’ve kept secrets for years. What makes you think I’ll start telling them now?”
Right.
“When I get the money and get out,” I say, “the first thing I’m doing is transitioning.”
Dad gets very, very quiet.
“Transitioning,” he says. “To—?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Dad visibly recalibrates, sorting through the available information. Combing through memories of my childhood, comparing them to whatever he’s managed to learn about trans people from his time in politics and whatever shit they let inmates watch on the prison TVs. Looking for proof of boyhood underneath expensive dresses and long hair.
He says, “And your mom doesn’t know this?”
“She does, but if I tell anyone else, the trust gets pushed back again.”
“That bitch.”
A cold laugh splutters its way out of my mouth. “Thought you’d take it worse. Didn’t the Heritage Foundation have you on their payroll there at the end?”
“I don’t believe in politics,” Dad says. “Conservatives pay better.”
He leans forward so he can get a better look at me, and I do everything I can not to shrink under his gaze. He’s studying me. My lipstick and eyeliner, the long strands of red hair pulled out to frame my face. My painted nails and the sweater dress clinging to my chest.
“I don’t think I’m as surprised as I could be” is what he decides on. “Yeah, sure, I can see it. You’ve got your work cut out for you, though, if you actually want to convince anyone. You gonna get all those fancy surgeries? Can a doctor really give you a dick? I think you’d get a kick out of—”
“Is that good enough for you?” I spit. “Trade feel even now?”
Dad snorts. “All right. Yeah. Sure, fine. Lay it on me.”
I hate him for this. I hate that my mother is keeping me in the closet with a hand around my throat, when my father—one of the most disgusting, violent, depraved men on the planet—accepts me for who I am in thirty seconds flat.
I hate that being a boy means I’m proving everyone right about how terrible I am. I hate that being a man means being a man like him.
But I still reach into my shoe and retrieve the folded-up photo of Jane Doe dead on the floor. With the cherry blossom SmarTrip card right next to her. It’s warm from my body heat, crinkled from all the walking.
I hold it up, out of reach of his chains.
“I take it you remember her.”
A small frown tugs at Dad’s lips. His eyes dart to her throat—the killing blow. Her hands—torn and bloody from where she’d tried to fight me, then him. Her hair turned golden in the light coming in through the high-rise window.
“Her,” Dad says, “yes, of course. Her name, no.”
“It wasn’t worth remembering?”
“They never were.”
It’s not like I thought I was getting any other answer. He deleted every digital CV or résumé he ever received and shredded the ones that showed up in paper. He never looked at their driver’s licenses longer than it took to hand them to me. Remembering the names of these girls would be as useful as naming the meat chickens at a factory farm.
He says, “Did they never figure it out?”
“Never. Still Jane Doe.”
“Nobody claimed her? Damn. Bring her closer.”
