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Then the results came up, and my mind boggled. I’d overheard scornful comments by bigoted customers at work about there being ‘ninety-two genders’, but now I realised this number might not be so far off the mark.
Growing up, there had been two clear, ring-marked genders in society: male and female. Now, as I clicked on an alphabetical list of genders and sexualities, each with their own page on the website, I realised that that perception was way off. Gender was more like a very intricate multi-faceted Venn diagram (within a Venn diagram, within a Venn diagram, repeat ad infinitum). It was the bits in between that I was focusing on today.
My mind flitted to the child Petra had told me about. The Year Six who’d told her they were non-binary. ‘Anonymity Smith.’ Seeing how accepting she had been, it was a comfort to know that she wasn’t virulently gender-phobic, if that was the right word. Not that I’d expected she would be, but I’d latch onto any small mercies at this point.
Non-binary. Gender non-binary. An umbrella term meaning ‘something other than exclusively male or female’. That sounded like a good enough place to start.
A couple of hours later, I’d made copious notes. My mind didn’t take in information through just reading: I needed to regurgitate the information myself to make it stick. My hand was cramping and the pages of my notebook were curling, but I’d learnt about lots of genders within the non-binary spectrum. There was agender, gender non-conforming, gender non-binary, two-spirit, pangender… my mind was well and truly blown, and I couldn’t even begin to think which one applied to myself. Or whether it was a combination of them, as one article had helpfully suggested.
But I couldn’t deal with that right now. Not today. I was feeling pretty frazzled, my eyes were turning square, and I really just wanted to take a walk along the beach to clear my head, then cook something nice for dinner and chill.
The thought of the deliberations to come should have daunted me, but instead, as I donned my trainers and locked up the house, the majority of what I felt was positive. Just making a start on the research, taking that first step forward into the unknown, had made a difference. On top of that, knowing that there were so many options for me to consider lightened the load. One article had said ‘Biology doesn’t get to decide your gender. Nobody does. Only you do.’ This was such a stark contrast from the way I’d been raised – not my parents’ fault, just a reflection of society at the time – that it had temporarily burst the little bubble of anxiety that had been hovering over me.
Descending the steps on the beach, I saw Cass and Felicia again. This time, whichever alter was present was helping Cass, in a role reversal from yesterday. They gave me a little smile but didn’t take their arms away from Cass as they helped her up the steps. I wondered whether Cass had a problem with heights, and whether I should offer to help, but it seemed like they had got it covered.
The beach, when I got to the bottom of the steps, was packed. It was officially tourist season now we were in the summer holidays, and while many of the locals grumbled each summer about the influx of visitors, I didn’t mind in the slightest. They kept our local businesses going – Felicia had told me once that it was tourist money that had provided the cushion for her bakery to fall back upon during the pandemic. Plus, they livened the place up a bit. I smiled to see the throngs of people on the beach. A distinct scent of fish and chips laced the air, from the mobile hut I had passed just now. A little way ahead was a donut stand – another pop-up that had appeared since the pandemic. A little paper bag of hot, freshly fried, sugary donuts (not doughnuts, according to the sign) seemed the perfect way to celebrate taking that first step into investigating who I was.
As expected, the donuts were wonderful. I ate them sitting on a rock near the stand, then deposited the greasy little paper bag in the bin they provided. Returning to my rock, I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, not because I was cold but purely because it was comfortable. Hope bubbled in my chest as I gazed out into the ocean – an unfamiliar feeling, but I didn’t fight it. I was going to figure this out, and go back to Petra as a whole woman again.
Well… perhaps not ‘woman’. Inaccurate phrasing.
That was just a glimpse of how hard it was going to be, I thought ruefully. If I did come out as something other than female, the whole world’s perception of me was going to change drastically. Not everyone was going to be supportive or accepting.
But Petra’s support and acceptance was the most important, I knew. If I could convince her to keep this marriage going, and not to give up on me. Another daunting thought, but I pushed it away. Right now, this exact moment, was just about enjoying the beach.
Chapter Fifty-Two
If I’d had any notions about sailing effortlessly through the next however-long until Petra got back in touch, they were all burst like a bubble the next day. It was grey and drizzling when I woke up, despite a rather spectacular sunset the night before. In the cold light of day, the copious notes I’d made daunted me. I didn’t even dare move the paperclip – even glancing at the first page as I sipped my coffee at the dining table sent a shot of cortisol through my veins. The mug began to tremble in my hands as – I think for the first time – the gravity of my situation hit me.
My marriage was teetering on the edge of a cliff. My wife didn’t love me, I was doubting every feeling I’d ever had about her, and I hadn’t even told her about the biggest thing eating me up from the inside. Mostly because I still didn’t know what it was. I knew the nature of it, but not the exact identity.
And my identity is the whole question here, isn’t it?
And even if I did figure out what gender I was… what then? My whole life would change forever. Everyone would know that I was insecure, emotional, after I’d spent so long trying to squash the image of me as poor bereaved Jean Taylor, grieving the loss of her sister.
Because discovering one’s true gender often came with inner turmoil. I knew that from experience, and my research from yesterday had shown me that I wasn’t alone in it. These days, I liked to adopt a stiff-upper-lip attitude. In public, and now with Petra too, it seemed. Except for when we’d both lashed out at the choir last month, I don’t think I’d ever allowed a single crack to appear in my outward armour. The image I liked to give off was of an impenetrable, unflappable person, immune to pain or emotional unrest.
If I came out, they’d all know that I’d been hurting. They would surely see my pain. And I’d be treated with pity. The condescending ‘I’m-so-glad-it’s-you-and-not-me’ gaze that oozed from their sympathetic faces as they bore down on me in the street. The pats on the arm or touches to the shoulder from veritable strangers if I allowed even the briefest cloud to pass over my expression. All things I’d hated when Lyndsey died, and all things I would hate even more now.
And then there would be the transphobes. Or non-binary-phobes. The bigots. Not everyone supported the existence of people who came under the trans umbrella. It seemed that every day brought new ways for society to demean people like me – from microaggressions to murders. My mouth went dry at the thought of the potential hostility. I’d faced my fair share of it just by coming out as a lesbian thirty-odd years ago, but how could I face it now? Without my sister and parents having my back? Without my wife at my side?
The coffee was giving me the jitters, so I poured the rest of it down the sink, rinsed the mug and set it carefully upside-down on the draining board. I stared at it, then picked it up and turned it over in my hands. It was a generic white porcelain mug that we’d picked up in a sale soon after we got married. And it summed me up: a cast-off, rescued off the shelf by someone with far higher aspirations, and now unloved, simply used for its function rather than being loved and cherished just for being itself.
How dare Petra abandon me like this? How dare she walk away without even trying to fix this?
The sound of the mug smashing made me jump. I’d thrown it before I even registered I was going to. The shards went everywhere, making a tremendous mess on the kitchen tiles. For one brief, awful moment I wondered if a ghost had come into the kitchen and snatched the mug off of me, but then I registered a slight reduction in the intensity of my rancour. I eyed the other three mugs, sitting placidly on the shelf above the kettle, and a surge of adrenaline sent me striding over to them, heedless of the shards underneath the hard sole of my slippers. I picked up all three, and one by one, hurled them to the floor.
Crash!
Crash!
Crash!
It wasn’t enough. The kettle went next. Ripped out of the wall and launched southwards, hot water sloshing out of the broken lid. Then the tea jar. Then the coffee jar, sending a puff of crappy powdery instant through the air. Each missile caused a crash that simply added to the cacophony of unidentifiable noise crowding my head, until I finally sank to the floor where I stood next to the pile of debris, sobbing with enormous, heaving gasps.
This pile of rubbish was my life now: in a million pieces. With absolutely no hope of ever being pieced back together.
Chapter Fifty-Three
