Groundwork

The person who caused Rose McConnell the most grief in high school had to be Marissa Guarino. Rose was transitioning at the time, and all by itself that was hard. When Marissa was added to the mix it sometimes became intolerable. Marissa was always putting her down, hitting her when she could get away with it, and urging her buddies to do the same. She had no tolerance for people like Rose. They were icky, and just…wrong. She never even called her Rose; it was either some unpleasant epithet, or else her dead name, Russell.

Rose developed the habit of forcing herself to be hyper-aware of her surroundings, so she couldn’t be surprised. She would use the handicapped restrooms, which had a locking door. It had only taken one time of being trapped in the girls’ restroom with Marissa to teach Rose to stay away from there. The bruises from that encounter lasted a week, as Marissa was taller and more powerfully built, and there were no witnesses.

For the most part Rose would ignore the hurtful comments, and even some of the hitting. She didn’t report the abuse, because she had no faith she would be believed, or that it would make a difference. But on one occasion a teacher witnessed Marissa landing a punch on Rose’s back, and she was suspended for a week.

As far as Marissa was concerned that was all on Russell. Why should she be punished when it was the pervert’s fault for being at the school? When she returned she tried even harder to harass Rose.

School was not entirely terrible for Rose. She had two friends, a boy and a girl, Freddy and Gina, who had known her since they were kids, and had stuck with her. Both did what they could to protect her, and stand up for her. She was grateful for their support, but sad that it was necessary.

-o0o-

Dispersal

Fortunately very few things last forever, and high school was no exception. Rose got away from the city and went on to have a decent college experience. After graduation she found a satisfactory job several states over from her own.

Marissa married right out of high school. She ended up with Jack Farley, whom she had had her eye on all during school. Within eight months she was pregnant, and gave birth to a small baby boy, who they named Jake. He wasn’t premature, but only weighed five pounds and two ounces, and as he grew he was always one of the smaller kids in his classes. Jack tried to guide him into manly things and sports, but he was not built for it and never showed any interest. He made friends with Penny, the girl next door and the two spent a lot of time together. When Marissa observed them playing, it always seemed like they played girl games, and his way of expressing himself seemed feminine. She felt some revulsion when she saw that, but he was her son, so she thought she could correct this.

Like Jack, she tried to get Jake interested in boy games, but he said playing with Penny was more fun. Marissa began to think that spending all this time with Penny was turning him into a sissy, and she started limiting the time they could play together, which made Jake very unhappy. And this did not stop his feminine ways and gestures.

-o0o-

By the time Jake turned thirteen he had known that he was a girl inside for some time. He also knew that his mother would not tolerate that. She was worse than his dad, who had just given up on spending time with him. Jake overheard him telling Marissa that he “couldn’t deal with the kid.”

When the day came that Jake thought he couldn’t delay any longer explaining to his parents that he wasn’t really a boy, it did not go well.

“What are you talking about, Jake,” asked his mother. “You. Are. A. BOY. PERIOD!”

“But—” he started to say, when she slapped him across the mouth.

“There are no Buts, Jake. I don’t want to hear you mention this again!!” Marissa yelled. “Do you understand?!”

Jake slowly nodded his head, while tears he couldn’t stop trailed down his cheeks.

Jack looked disgusted, and decided to let Marissa handle the whole mess.

Marissa was under the mistaken impression that this whole phase was now over. She had made it clear that he was a boy, and he would have to start acting like one. She wasn’t going to tolerate her kid being like that freak, Rose, in high school. No.

Over the next two years she started correcting ways Jake was acting. Day after day he was told he was gesturing wrong, using limp-wristed motions, or standing like a girl. He had to stop using words that usually were only heard from girls. Boys weren’t supposed to see a flower and call it pretty or lovely. There would be no more giggling. She kept hammering away at him, until he decided he couldn’t take it anymore.

-o0o-

It was Marissa who discovered the body, hanging in the basement. Her shriek could be heard a half a county away. And once she read the suicide note, which placed the blame squarely on her shoulders, she broke down completely. She didn’t see how she could ever get over this; it just hurt too much.

To her surprise Jack did not even seem to care much that his only child was dead. It was as if once Jake had said those fateful words, “I’m really a girl,” he had died then. She couldn’t believe Jack could be so callous. She sat alone night after night, while he went to bars or hung out who-knew-where. He didn’t want to sit around with someone who was such a downer.

All this time alone forced her to think about her words and actions, and what they had led to. She reread the suicide note again and again, trying to find something she could latch onto to understand what would cause someone to go to such drastic measures. Jake considered himself a girl inside, but she only judged him by his male body, he had written. She ignored the pain he was constantly in trying to be something he was not. She didn’t care about his feelings, only about her own.

She was truly devastated, and finally she understood that her own intolerance had cost the life of her child; it was a hard truth to live with. Then her thoughts turned to Rose, and the guilt descended on her for the way she had treated Rose, who, she now understood, had gone through something similar to Jake.

Marissa’s marriage quickly deteriorated after this. Jack didn’t enjoy being with someone so depressed, and quietly blamed her for their son killing himself, choosing to totally forget about his own attitude and its effects.

-o0o-

All alone now, Marissa found a job, and strove to understand what had happened to her life. She started reading about transgender people, and so much of what she read sounded similar to what she had experienced with Jake. She was appalled at the suicide rate, especially when the trans person had no support from his or her family. In her head she started to deliberately refer to Jake as her, and a daughter. She was sad she had never discovered what his female name would have been.

Three years after this she got an invitation to the Twentieth reunion of her high school class. She didn’t see how she could face them with the shambles her life had become. And she knew she now looked much older than her thirty-eight years. But a few months later, when she received the second notice, it occurred to her that if Rose was going to be in attendance, she could apologize. At least Rose, unlike Jake, was alive—probably—for her to apologize to. She decided she would attend.

-o0o-

Rose had had a rather lonely twenty years, and when she got the reunion invitation, had no intention of going back to that hell hole of a school. True, she hadn’t seen Freddy and Gina for all that time, and wondered how their lives were going. But what if Marissa was there? That was one person she did not want to see again. Although she was a lot more self-assured than she had been twenty years ago, she was still insecure about her personal safety, and hardly ever went anywhere alone at night.

She had held a number of jobs, and made a decent living, but had never found love. She wasn’t home enough to take care of a dog or cat. Instead she had two fat goldfish, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, so that she wasn’t the only living thing in her apartment. Sometimes she would spend all evening gazing at them, swimming back and forth in their tank. There were a couple of casual acquaintances from work she saw from time to time, but they weren’t like best friends. She tried a number of hobbies, but decided she had no talent for any of them, especially the arts or crafts ones.

By the time she got the second notice about the reunion, she was surprised to find she had started to think about going. It would be nice to see Freddy and Gina again, and she figured she would be able to keep an eye out for Marissa and stay away from her.

-o0o-

Paths converge

There was, of course, a dinner at the reunion, and, thank goodness, it was at a hotel, and not at the high school. Rose was able to find Freddy and Gina and their spouses there, and the five of them had a table together. It had been worth it just to see them and get to know them again. They seemed thrilled to see Rose and reconnect, and she was happy to see them too. This time they promised to stay in touch. She didn’t see Marissa, so either she was at a table on the other side of the big room, or had decided not to attend.

There were the usual announcements and bantering addresses by some of the class, some of it amusing, but most of it not. There was dancing afterward, which Rose didn’t join in on. As she sat at the table she saw someone heading toward her. It took a minute, but she finally realized that it was Marissa. Her first impression was that she didn’t look like she’d had an easy time of it. Rose stood up quickly and tried to blend in to some of the clusters of people standing around watching the dancing.

After a while she was pretty sure she had lost Marissa, and then it occurred to her she needed the Ladies Room, so she left the ballroom and headed down the hall. Once she had finished inside, she opened the door, only to find Marissa coming down the hall toward her. She stopped and tremblingly fumbled in her purse and pulled out her pepper spray. Her hand was shaking as she held it out like a gun.

“S-stop right there,” she said, when Marissa was about fifteen feet away.

Marissa’s heart broke a little more, seeing how afraid of her Rose still was. She halted where she was and said, “Rose, I—I just want to apologize to you.”

Rose wondered if she heard that correctly. For one thing Marissa had never called her Rose. And, apologize to her?

“Why?” Rose asked, still afraid.

Her voice breaking, Marissa said, “Rose, my own child chose death because of my attitude. She was like you, but thanks to my intolerance I didn’t allow her to be who she said she was. So I just wanted to apologize to you while I still have the chance. I’ll never be able to apologize to my daughter.”

Rose saw how affected Marissa was, tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Rose’s natural compassion came out. She put the pepper spray back in her purse, and the two went to sit on a bench in the hall. Marissa told her the whole story. How Jake liked playing with Penny, how her husband basically ignored Jake, how she tried to train him to be more like a boy, finding his body, her husband leaving her.

“I’m sorry, Marissa. Life sure doesn’t always turn out the way we think it’s supposed to. I admit there were times when I thought it just seemed too hard to go on, but at least my parents weren’t against me.”

There was a silence then, while Rose thought, ‘here I am sitting together with my enemy, and she apologized. I really wasn’t kidding that things don’t turn out like we expect. I guess it was worth coming after all.’

Marissa was thinking about Rose’s last statement, about her parents, which made her ashamed for the role she had played with Jake. But she was also grateful that Rose had allowed her to apologize and talk. It had been worth coming, and she felt a little better.

They turned to each other and both said, at the same time, “Thank you.” This caused them both to smile small smiles.

They didn’t part that evening as friends, but at least not as enemies.

The End.