Future Perfect (13 page)

“Jolene,” I say. “Jolene, I need to get my bag.”

She spins. Her face does not look right. Her face does not look anything like her. “Your
bag
?” she says. “Sure, yes, please do get your bag. I'll walk home. I didn't mean to bother you in the middle of chatting with
Morgan
.”

She turns again and is walking away from me.

I fly inside. When I run back out of the classroom with my bag under my arm, she's gone.

S
he's not picking up her phone and she's not reading her texts and she is not appearing by the side of the road as I creep down every street that leads away from the school, leaning over the steering wheel as if that will help me see better. Jolene never has outbursts. Jolene never disappears. We're supposed to protect her, but she's vanished.

I leave Laura voice mails. I drive downtown and walk up and down Main Street. I look in the coffee shop. I head down to the jetty but she is not on the public beaches. I wade into the water to look down the shore to see if there are any small figures on the private beaches. It is too cold for anyone to be out. I get back into my car with sandy feet and make wide circles through the neighborhood, looking for her bright hair and her khaki shorts, until school is over and I've been driving forever and I still can't find her.

I have to pull over when I think,
Should I be looking for a pile
of cloth by the side of the road?
I have to get out of the Volvo and rest my head against the hood for a moment. I shut my eyes and listen to the ping of the engine as it cools down, smell the familiar sun-warmed metal and rust. I think about calling Hector. He'll reassure me. Tell me this isn't my fault and I am a good friend. And then I remember him walking away at lunch.

I straighten up and look at my phone. Laura picks up on the first ring. “God. There you are. Have you heard from Jolene?” I say. I lean against the side of the car and look up at the sky, which is a blue that does not look real.

“She called me,” Laura says. “But she didn't pick up when I called her back.” She stops. “She okay?”

“No,” I say, and I hear Laura draw a breath.

“What's going on?” she says. “Oh god I should have called her back right away. Why am I such a shitty friend?”

“You're not,” I say.

“Omar's stupid studio time is pointless,” she says. “I could have just picked up the phone it wouldn't have even mattered she's more important than modeling, oh shit Ashley.”

“I thought you were in drama club. Or did you drive all the way to San Francisco?”

“I didn't feel like going to drama club,” she says. I can hear voices in the background, Laura responding.

“Laura,” I say. “Where would she go if she were upset?”

She comes back. “Home?” she says.

“She
wouldn't
go home,” I say. “She would
never
go home when she was upset.”

Laura is silent. We both know that Jolene's parents treat her very gingerly. They are friendly to her—I'm reminded of someone being polite to a stranger on a bus. They ask after her well-being. They tell her that they would like her to be happy, Jolene says, but they don't know what that means. And they don't care about finding out.

When she was seven and said that she was not a boy, she was not David, they took her very seriously. They thought that there was something wrong with her. That she was broken and delusional and that they had done something to her. Had twisted her somehow. They said, “Is it because we are divorcing?” but that was the first time she had heard about that. They pretended they had never said it and they might have been relieved.

Her parents made appointments with the counselors at school, and they got another copy of the
Humanism Handbook
. I remember running to find her after that appointment, and stopping short when I saw her father tearing it in half in the parking lot, Jolene just watching him.

Her parents made appointments for her at psychiatrist offices, and took her to a new one every time a doctor said that there was nothing wrong with her. They would not listen to a doctor speak about transition strategies, or support groups, or anything that suggested she was normal but struggling. They wanted to
hear that she was damaged, that “sex is a biological reality not subordinate to subjective impressions,” etcetera, etcetera.

At school, she changed every morning into a dress in a bathroom lounge near the counselor's office because she felt she had to convince everyone she really meant it.

She told me about all of this only in bits and pieces and during quiet moments.

What I really remember was that one day, she was not in school and then after that she wasn't there any other day for a month. When I rode my bike over to her house her parents told me that she was sick. They wouldn't say with what. I remember my grandmother leaving the house with a plastic container of chicken soup. She was gone for hours and when she came home, Jolene was in the car with her. She had her pillow and her blue denim duffel bag.

My grandmother had said, “She just needs to rest for a while.”

Jolene stayed with us for a week. She slept in my trundle bed. After we turned out the lights, if I looked over the side I could see her lying on her back with her hands folded at her waist. Her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling. She would never say anything. I never knew what to say and I did not know how to help and I called her Jolene like she asked because she was still the same person I knew. Sometimes I wished she wouldn't keep doing it. She didn't have to let anyone else see, I thought. I didn't understand.

Her parents didn't call her at all that week, or come to see her, or demand that she come home. When I was seven I did not think about that.

When we met Laura in fifth grade, Laura told Jolene she liked her dress. She was outraged that Jolene couldn't wear it after school. But with Laura there, Jolene felt safe. Laura, flashing braces and a head full of perfect tiny braids, strange to the upper-middle-class white teachers who couldn't figure out how to treat her like a student instead of an opportunity to demonstrate their open-mindedness. My temper; Laura's quiet force, standing straight and looking them in the eye and telling them exactly what she thought. Jolene always there between us, the tiny figure with the serene face, twisting her hands in her skirt, safe. Our job.

I pull the phone away from my ear and check the time. “It's been hours,” I tell Laura. “Come over. Maybe we can figure out where to go.”

“I can't yet,” she says. “Wait, maybe. Hang on.” I hear her talking to Omar in the background and I hang up and get back into the car. I sit there for a minute. I stare through the windshield and then start the car because I am not sure what else to do.

I think about that as I drive down the back road to Jolene's house. They live in a development with an iron gate all around it. Every house is the same as the one next to it. The lawns are
very green and the stucco of each house is one of three shades of brown.

That week Jolene stayed with us we ran down the beach every morning and went swimming and climbed the trees in the yard and we told each other an ongoing story, about an undercover princess who travels the world righting wrongs and unleashing justice and we ate a lot of Otter Pops. That is my strongest memory, the taste of salt on my lips, sweet, slushy ice pops, how hot it got that summer. Plunging into the water together, holding hands. The shock of cold.

Jolene had not slept at night. But when she went back home, she was wearing the clothes my grandmother had taken her shopping for. We dropped her back at her house and watched her carry her duffel bag inside, her narrow shoulders squared and skirt swinging.

My grandmother's mouth was grim. She said, “The world can be a cruel place, Ashley.”

Now at Jolene's house, there are no cars in the driveway. I stab at my phone keypad. Jolene still doesn't pick up. Laura doesn't pick up. My grandmother picks up. I didn't mean to call her but her number is in my head whenever I am lost.

She says, “Ashley, are you on your way home?”

“No,” I say. “Jolene is missing.”

“She's here,” my grandmother says.

“Oh god,” I say, my breath coming out with a whoosh like I've been punched. “Oh, okay yes.”

“Come home now,” she says. I hang up the phone but she calls back immediately. “Bring sugar,” she says. “She likes her tea sweet.”

“I know,” I say.

“Then bring it home,” my grandmother says. She hangs up on me this time instead.

When I get home I find Grandmother and Jolene in the parlor off the kitchen. My grandmother has set out the formal tea service. Four cups and the serving bowls. She must know Laura is on her way too. Jolene is a ball tucked in the corner of the couch. She looks like she is the size of one of my grandmother's scratchy, musty embroidered throw pillows that my mother used to hide.

“Jolene,” I say. I have the bag in my arms. I hold it up. “I brought sugar.”

She looks at me. She's been crying. She looks at the sugar in my hands and her face contorts and she starts crying again. My grandmother sips her tea.

I rush over to sit next to Jolene. The couch dips down, bouncing her so her sob hiccups slightly. I put the bag of sugar in her lap. She looks at it and looks at me and she laughs. It's a short laugh that sounds like the rest of her crying. She does not stop crying. She puts her face down on top of the bag.

My grandmother catches my eye and nods at the sugar bowl
on the coffee table. Jolene has her arms around the bag of sugar now. Holding it like you would hold a teddy bear.

“Darling,” my grandmother says, leaning forward and putting her fingertips on Jolene's knee. “Won't you let Ashley make you a cup of tea?” Jolene looks at each of us, and then down at the sugar on her lap.

“Right,” she says.

I pick up the sugar bowl. “I'll just. I'll fill this.”

“I'll go with you,” Jolene says. My grandmother raises her eyebrow, just one, at us. She sips her tea again.

“Cookies,” my grandmother says to me. “Cookies are quite good for this sort of thing.” She adds, “Not too many, Ashley.” I turn abruptly away.

Jolene is still holding the bag of sugar. She hauls herself off the couch and starts for the kitchen ahead of me. She seems so small. Why does she always seem so small to me? Things that are small are breakable, I think. They're delicate. They're precious.

“I'm sorry,” Jolene says when we are standing in the kitchen and I am tipping the sugar into the bowl. She won't meet my eyes.

“What are you sorry for?” I ask. “You shouldn't have run off like that. You scared the shit out of me. But you don't have to be sorry for it.”

“I'm sorry!” she says. Her face is doing that thing where it falls apart again and I cannot stand it.

“Stop that,” I say. “Please, just stop.”

She looks up at me and I have to drop the sugar bag and put my arms around her shoulders. I have to hug her even if my hugs are awkward and unhelpful. Even if I am unhelpful.

“I'm sorry,” she says again and then, “I'm sorry I didn't mean to be sorry!”

“Okay,” I say. “It's okay.”

She lets me hug her for few moments before extracting herself. I finish filling the sugar bowl, and then hand it to her.

“What happened?” I say. “What's going on?”

She looks at the sugar bowl and then sets it down on the counter. The front door opens and I know Laura is making her way directly to the kitchen. Jolene tilts her head and I nod. She turns when Laura walks in, lets Laura hug her for a long time.

“I was scared,” Laura says simply.

“I was too,” Jolene says.

We're all silent. Jolene picks up the lid of the sugar bowl, spins it around in her hands. “Simons stopped me in the hallway when I was on the way to class.” She is biting her lip and her foot is tapping fast. “She stopped me and she said she was worried about my happiness.”

“She did that to me too today,” I say.

“How is that her business?” Laura says.

I turn on the water in the sink and hold the kettle under the faucet, flip the burner on, and set the kettle down.

Jolene shrugs, and her face is on the edge of falling inward
again. She grips the edge of the counter. She says, “She said my parents called.”

“Why would they call?” Laura says. “Why now?”

I inspect the excessive number of tea varieties in the cabinet. My father collects teas with pretty boxes or weird names or strange flavors. No one needs to drink chocolate tea. I am trying not to look at Jolene, to just let her talk, but I sneak a glance. She's clenching her jaw and bouncing just the tiniest bit on the balls of her feet. Laura is sitting cross-legged on the counter, looking at her hands.

Jolene says, “My parents asked me my plans. My plans for—for my life. For everything . . .” She trails off.

Laura and I are silent. When Jolene looks up, her eyes are huge. She opens her mouth, and closes it again.

“What did you say?” I can't stop from asking. She is fierce about her desire never to talk about the “Next Steps,” that section every website and flyer and pamphlet includes at the end.
You are transgender. What do you do next? What do you do about this body you have?
And I have gotten loud, furious at the curious people who want to talk about what's under her clothes. I realize I have always assumed that she'd take Next Steps. That it's what you're supposed to do.

Jolene shrugs.

“I hope you told them it was none of their business,” Laura says.

“You're the only one who can get away with that,” Jolene says quietly.

“Fuck,” Laura says. I glance over at the door to the parlor, where grandmother is sitting. I don't know if she can hear us.

“What did—what did your parents say?” I ask.

Jolene's face twitches and she is on the verge of tears again. “My decisions are ‘unacceptable,' they said. And they called the school to tell them—to tell them that their policy is unacceptable. That I am David. And if the school doesn't comply—” She takes a deep breath. “I won't be going back to school. And if I don't comply, I won't be going back home.”