Something She Can Feel

“I’m moving.”

“Moving? From Tuscaloosa?”

“That’s right. There are no men here, so I have to go where the boys are.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Here you go with your ideas again.”

“No, Journey,” she said. “I’m serious. I already quit my job.”

“What?” I sat up, too.

“I have to leave if I’m going to move on. It’s not just about Clyde. It’s about everything. My life. My youth. I spent my whole twenties chasing behind someone and I didn’t do anything for myself. Now I want to live.”

“Well, where? Where are you going to go?” I felt excited for Billie and I could see in her eyes that she was serious, but I also thought immediately that I didn’t know how I’d be able to live and just be in Tuscaloosa without her.

“Well, at first I thought Atlanta would be a good stop for me ... but then I remembered that Justin has been enjoying a vibrant sex life there,” she said, and I laughed, slapping her hand again. “And I don’t think we should be dating in the same pool of applicants, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I get it,” I said. “Leave my baby brother alone.”

“And then I looked a little farther north to Charlotte and then Virginia and then D.C... . Philly. And then ... I looked at New York City. The Big Apple.”

“No. You’re moving to New York?”

“Kayla already set up my lease to sublet her apartment. If she could find love down here, maybe I could find love up there. Oh, yeah, she and Richard got married at the courthouse last week.”

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” I screamed, using the Lord’s name in vain too many times and I didn’t care who heard me. “I’m so happy for her ... and you! You! New York City? This is huge!” I hugged Billie and every drop of selfishness I’d just felt dissipated. I thought I’d done something bold. Billie was redefining the word.

“I can’t believe you’re really going to leave.”

“Well, as Langston Hughes said, ‘I don’t give a damn/For Alabam/Even if it is my home,’ ” she said, and we both laughed at the old poem we’d memorized in our African American poetry class in college. “No ... really, I’ll always love this place. You don’t grow up weak living in a place like this. It made me who I am ... whoever I’ll become ... But it’s time for me to go.”

“I understand,” I agreed. “Trust me, I do.”

“Now before we talk about anything else, I need more dish on Dame,” she dug. “Man, I know he looked good on that beach.”

I stayed locked up in my parents’ house for the entire weekend before I even thought to leave. When the house began to move on Sunday morning as everyone started getting ready for church, I called my mother into the room and made up some excuse about having eaten too much the night before and said I needed to stay behind. She did the obligatory pat on the head to make sure I didn’t have a fever and pulled some pills and potions from the medicine cabinet, but I could see in her eyes, she knew I was looking for excuses.

“We’ll pray for you, precious,” she said, kissing me on the forehead as she always did whe

n I was sick as a child. She pulled the blinds open in the bedroom. “You need to let some sunlight in here. You can’t keep the outside locked off forever.”

“I know, Mama,” I said. “I know.”

The next morning, my mother and Justin were leaving for Atlanta for a few days to meet with Justin’s doctor. While my father was still unable to even discuss Justin’s decision, I was happy to see my mother had proven to be the less austere of the two. She said she’d rather be in control of who was caring for her son than out of control and risk losing him altogether. A “he” or a “she,” Justin was still hers and she intended to be in his corner whether my father or God himself approved or not.

While she’d expressed all of these ideas to me in private, as my mother and Justin walked out of the house, it was clear she was acting out of pure love for her son. As caring as she was, my mother was still a child of the old South and this presented a new-age situation. Dressed in an immaculate white pants suit with gold buttons up the front, low white heels, and a matching bag with gold stripes, she looked like she was on her way to a baptism or book club tea, not to meet with a doctor in a big city who was about to attempt to change the sex of her son. In her hand, she carried two snack bags of cookies she’d made for the drive and a Bible. Justin, who ambled behind my mother in a beige T-shirt and jeans, snickered at her back, but I could tell that, like me, he was proud that she was at least trying to connect with him.

“Come on, Justin,” she called. “It’s already 7 a.m. These hours aren’t going to drive themselves. I don’t want to be late to meet this Dr. Kas—”

“Kastenpale,” Justin said, nudging me. I was standing beside him on the steps in the same shorts and T-shirt I’d worn for two days.

“Kastenpale,” she repeated, walking toward the car. “That’s it. Kastenpale. He sounded like such a sweet man. I hope he likes my cookies.”

“I thought those were for us, Mama,” Justin said.

“You’ve had enough cookies this week,” she answered, and we laughed. Apparently, Atlanta wasn’t as “big city” as we’d thought. There was less than a handful of doctors who actually did the complete sexual reassignment surgery Justin wanted, and there was a possibility he’d have to leave the state for some procedures after he finished his hormone treatments. Either way, the cost was claiming every dime he made. Needless to say, he was broke, but he was the happiest broke man I’d ever seen. And I was sure my mother was lining his pockets by now—against my father’s wishes.

“She’s a trip,” Justin said to me.