May you have the hindsight to know where you’ve been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.

“Soith”

It’s an insult to some people. To me, it’s a badge of honor. I’ll have it inscribed on my tombstone with a more colorful display of words done with an acrostic. If you never meet me in life, you will not forget me in death. My plot will be like freaking Mr. Mojo Risin’ in visitors.

Anyway, my name is Rose Ingram O’Ceallaigh—Dad calls me “Rosheen”, his little rose. Yes, the same family that owns a vast number of companies. We just let Steve Jobs think he owned Apple. It makes it so much easier to deal with. Let’s see, when I was thirteen, I calmly, and by calmly, I mean I raised holy hell to have hormone blockers. I saw what body hair and secondary puberty characteristics did to you and I wanted nothing of that. Sure, I wore dresses all the time and yeah, I had my hair styled however I wanted it to be. This necklace? I got it to commemorate the day I walked into society as someone who I felt comfortable as.

Have you ever had that experimental laser hair removal? Where it helps to kill the follicles estrogen fails to stop? It works. Believe me.

So, I had some work done, out of the country, of course and I made it a point to be noticed by anyone who cared to ask. I avoided being a social whore, I mean, why go there, right? I didn’t have a publicist to keep a tight schedule so I could never have a television show. Twitter, that’s for twats, sorry, because I can’t think that I could ever just blurt out: “hey, you’re all great, my brothers and sisters trans-hood and I’m so proud of you!” I could do that, yeah, but I’d also have to call out to the ones who call us friends. You say you’re an ally but then treat us like we’re some sort of disease. I got two words for those people: caic tarbh.”

Kind of wished I said that loud and clear a few times in life, but I had everyone around me who listened to every word my daddy’s money told them to do. If the little princess wanted to fly to Singapore and try some experimental procedure, then I had people who would oblige, and I would come back with little or nothing to declare except some new clothes and a few extra pills.

Nothing illegal, it’s just that time was always against me to not turn out like others before me. I saw how it hurt them and I didn’t want to be like that, suffering my way through trying to convince some doctor about who I am so they can diagnose that I’m crazy. So, it’s like, you have to have a doctor’s note saying she’s off her rocker before you can do anything. Oh, and then you have to have your parents sign this paper and that waiver and talk about things that I wouldn’t even tell my pet dog. I figured I’m a strong young woman and I can do what I want.

So, I did.

And, after top surgery I replaced my entire fricking wardrobe with the works. The kind of clothes that hug at the curves, you know? So, when school started back up in the fall, I enrolled as Rose and signed my name with a flower at the end. So, yeah, she’s got everything: money, parents who let her do what she wants, a car, and the body to match up with the brain. But the question everyone wants to think: “Yeah, but did you have any friends, little Rosie?”

Let me tell you about friends. The ones I had, past tense, were not even fair-weather. No, they were friends of the family name. The wealth. Did they like me? I’m sure they tolerated my hormone-driven angst. I believe they understood my body dysphoria. I’m very sure they thought it was some sort of hobby, a hobby that had been going on since I was five, but one, nonetheless. One of those, oh, so it’s a Cher infatuation, a fetish, line of thinking. I told all of them, in plain, straight language that they could go to Hell.

My new friends were about the same, they didn’t know me, but they knew money. So, they were like all yes-men and women.

Yeah, I know, poor little rich girl. Sounds like I should have given all of my money to people who needed it, right? I tried to do that. I reached out as me, as Rose, not as a daughter of the O’Ceallaigh name but as the person sitting here with you. I wanted to start small, have groups created and meeting centers erected in towns where those places were lacking. No one wants to come to a library or a community center where you can’t speak your mind. I had this two story building set-up near the center of the theatre district in town.

No one wanted to know the reason at first. I had hired my own architect with a few, well, let’s just say that it was a good thing my parents never ran political office, offshore accounts. However, it eventually came out and my Dad called me in front of the carpet.

He acknowledged that I was looking well, but he didn’t approve of the multi-streaks of green in my hair. We went over his recent business trip to South Korea and how one day we’ll vacation there.

I politely agreed.

He then pointed at a stack of paperwork, invoices and letters. He almost spat out THE word: the one I had hated for so long but then stopped and then calmly stated “Rosheen, I have the FBI asking questions about the construction of this building. What is it for?”

“My people.”

“Your people.”

“The people like me.”

“Why?”

“There are girls out there without anyone to tell them they’re not crazy. To be there for them when they’re down. I wanted to bring a resource to them.”

“Ah, so this is a philanthropic cause?”

“In several ways, yes.”

“At twenty-two million dollars?”

I only nodded.

“Good. It’s a tax write-off.”

“I don’t want the company involved, Dad.”

“Why not?”

“It needs to be grassroots. It needs the heart. It can't be that way with a corporate sponsorship. It’s not a football stadium.”

“I get, Rose,” he replied and put his hands in the air in defeat. “I can set up a few sub-contractors, off the record, to assist in the opening.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Now, as caring as my business-minded father was, my mother tolerated me. We never went places together when I was younger and we seldom went out when I was older until Mom learned I was a magnet for the media—I assumed she loved the attention we got in the press, be it negative or positive—whenever she went out for a social event or something. I’d be there for the photo-op but would then go back to the car and leave—I wasn’t interested in a lot of her causes and she wasn’t interested in mine.

Our causes collided on a cold night in November when we arrived at the dedication of some memorial to a rich, old guy. Mom and her social crew had forced me to wear a long wig of my original hair color due to the “stoic-ness” of the event. I came to the event and, true to form, I stayed civil, quiet and kept away from the media, lest they ask me a question they didn’t want the answer to.

So, my mother’s talking gammy with every person there and my eyes turn to something going on across the street: Two men and a woman, from what I can see, talking—but something seemed off. I couldn’t hear them, but the conversation appeared to be going downhill. She turned around and one of the men grabbed her from behind.

It was like those accident videos on the internet, right? You can’t look but you can’t turn away from it.

The second man darted in front of her and slapped her across the face.

The woman then went down to the sidewalk and they started kicking her.

I ran to where my mom was—surrounded by cameras—and grabbed her by the arm.

“Mom, someone’s being assaulted!”

I looked back and could barely see through the darkness and the crowd surrounding us but the two continued to kick and hit her and everyone stood by like it was beneath them.

“We have to help her.”

“No, we are staying right here. The paparazzi will have a field day,” she hissed under her breath.

I threw my purse at mother’s feet, jumped over the concrete barricade and ran across the street in what could be a frenzy mixed with a dream. I think I should have been struck by five or six cars as I darted across the road in bare feet—I had taken my shoes off after my superhero-ish leap from the barrier and held them in my hands.

I was the soith that mothers warned their sons about as I ran up to one of the attackers, screamed and slammed the heels into his back. Yeah, I mean, literally into his back. I pulled one of the shoes out of the guy and made my way to the other one. I guess I looked like a freaking demon as he backed away and fell to the ground. At that moment, I could have taken the high road: street justice had been satisfied ad they were no longer beating up on her but, who was I kidding, it was worth overdoing as I wailed on the guy so much that anyone who stumbled on the scene would have assumed, I was the aggressor. That I was the one who started it all.

I’m not sure how much time had passed before several arms grabbed me and pulled me off of him.

“Are you alright, miss?” The disembodied voice asked.

I could feel the burning in my chest and and I saw fire: flames of blue and red flickered in and out of my peripheral vision; but it turned out to the face of the guy I had pummeled, streaked by the tears of hate and fear that had melted the make-up on my face.

“Never mind me, is she okay?”

“We’re having the EMT’s look at her. You should be seen too.”

“M’fine. Just do something with this trash and it’s all good in my book,” I replied as I looked to the other side of the street—everyone had their cell phone out. The ones who didn’t had cameras—specifically, video cameras.

Recall earlier when I said I didn’t have a publicist or a television show? Less than two hours later I had a team of lawyers and people once again “looking out for me” and my face, in various years of life, was all over television and 95% of images used was when…and what they said…the feckers…they decided to use m’first name. Someone thought it was great to look into m’past and put that one damn under the picture of my face: Richard. So much for a no good deed goes unpunished, right?

I was the attacker, at least in the eyes of whoever ran the news in town. Dad was mad at the attention given to the company and the family but he was furious on how quickly they, the scum, acquired some hot lawyers who knew where to stick the knife and twist it. They were the victims, not the girl and not me.

Speaking of the girl, yeah, I went to see her, to see how she was doing. She was out of it the first few times I went. No one knew her name and her face wasn’t really recognizable under the bruising. Her real hair was cut short and brown, as it was long and red the night of the beating. I’d stand in her room for a few minutes and allow the night to replay in my head. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten involved. I didn’t know this person at all, but I felt a connection, perhaps a kindred spirit kind of thing. I couldn’t have just turned my head because then we’d never meet. She would have been possibly killed and since I never watched the news I would have never known. Just a statistic on a screen.

I know, you’re thinking, “Hey, Rosheen, so if you’re not up with the struggle of it all why ya’ buildin’ your big ego project then, eh?”

Yeah, I thought that too as I looked out the suite window. I could build something and say it would be for the people who are overlooked, discarded. It was because I lived in a poor little rich girl bubble with no one really giving me a hard time. I could turn my back and forget about it all. But I didn’t know if she could.

As I said, I kept coming there until one day when I saw an older couple standing in the room. They didn’t look like attorneys or officials.

“Her parents,” I whispered as I continued to walk to the room. I was close enough to see a change to her face—the bruises were down a bit—there was more of a flesh tone, but her face was still red, like she had been crying. She looked at me, which caused the other two to turn their attention my way.

“Sorry, I just wanted to see if-”

“We’re fine, thank you,” the man scoffed at me and then turned back to the bed. “You see? You see what you did? What did I say about going out trying to be something you’re not.”

“Dean, this is not the right place.”

“Christ, Mary, either here or the morgue.”

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“She? This is my confused ‘son’ that thinks he’s a drag queen or something, ‘son’.”

Even though he looked like he was pushing near seventy and we were the same height my fear factor shot up. If I was hooked up to all of that equipment an alarm would be going off as my heart rate spiked.

“Dean,” his wife muttered, “not here.”

“He’s a bum, miss. A bum that’s going to cost me a fortune to be here. Why did you have them bring you to this place? Why didn’t you call?”

I wanted to say the obvious: That getting pummeled by thugs, kind of makes it tough to whip out a cell phone and say “hey, dad, I’m getting my arse kicked. No big deal.”

“He leaves college, starts going to these clubs, meetings, I don’t know what the Hell they’re called.”

The man marched around the room, pointing and waving his hands wildly. “If you had stayed in school, James and settled down. What was wrong with Lisa? She was the perfect girl for you and you go and pilfer one of her dresses.”

“I’ll leave you be. Sorry.”

“Who are you?”

“Just someone who wanted to help.”

“So, I suppose I owe you for this.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I replied and if he tried to give me any amount of money, I would have ripped the bills in front of his face since I couldn't set them on fire inside a hospital.

“Thank you for bringing James here, miss.” The mother replied,

I nodded to her, it was the best I could do as I wanted to: stamp my foot, point my middle finger in their direction, and scream like a banshee. But I also didn’t want to get thrown out.

I left the room, went down to the lower floor and sat on a bench. I cried a little, only because I felt like I should have said and done so much more but I have two settings: loud and damn loud and I had seen their type before: doesn’t matter what you say. You could have the encyclopedic knowledge of a Rhodes scholar and they would shoot you down, literally, or ignore you into submission. Maybe I could hire a hit squad and make them vanish? It would take a few days, maybe a late car payment, before anyone knew they were gone.

“Hi,”

I stood in the doorway once again. The parents were finally gone--I had observed them arguing with each other as they walked out the front entrance.

She slowly turned to look at me and then closed her eyes.

“Who are you?”

“Rose.”

“You were the one who leaped onto that guy.”

I nodded and took a few steps into the room.

“Why?”

“I saw them attacking you.”

“To be honest, Rose, I kind of wished you didn’t show up.”

I had seen that stare before—the one where you wish for your heart to stop as everything is in shades of a dark grey. I’d seen it countless times on others but never knew how to respond to it: give them “good thoughts”, maybe say a prayer or write a check? And by the time I thought of something I could try to do, they were gone and I never saw them again. This one, however, was a captive audience.

“You’re thinkin’ that ‘cause of your dad. I saw him. I heard ‘em. To Hell with ‘em. What’s your name, girl?”

“Girl?”

“Yeah, what do I call ya? Because I for sure as Hell ain’t calling you James.”

“Erin.”

“Erin. Nice Irish name. You better keep it so we can go clubbing sometime, eh?”

She nodded but then looked down.

“I’m not a girl…I’m just a…freak.”

“I like freaks. They’re honest. We gotta be honest freaks with each other or we get walked all over.”

“I can’t live like this. I don’t want to.”

“What do you want to be?”

“Something I can’t.”

“You can be who you are.”

“I get that you want to make me feel better. But, really, I’m just a confused mess and…”

“And what?”

“I could never be like you.”

“You can,” I replied and then pointed at her. “Oh and believe me, girl, you will. I am going to be your big sister and escort you down that road.”

“Why?”

“Like I said we need to be honest with each other.”

“You mean you’re like me?”

“Like a mirror, Erin. So, I need you to do a few things. First, you take me phone and call me if the doctors say anything to you. Meanwhile, I’m going to make sure ‘they’ can’t come back up here.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure as Hell gonna try.”

The hospital discharged Erin a week later and I put her up in one of the rooms of the as of yet to open and unnamed building. It was a kind of spacious room too with all of the amenities of home except for a working maintenance and hospitality staff. Erin was my Guinea pig for the security technology, and I bored her to tears with every run-through of my “grand-opening” speech. We didn’t talk too much, and when we did, I think I did a lot of the talking. I tried to get her to speak but I was afraid I’d step over that line that my friends tried with me. For the most part, I left her alone to let her find herself. She wasn’t a prisoner; we both knew she was a prisoner to her body so I gave her a wide berth one day when she asked if she could take a walk around the neighborhood. She had a phone with her, and the area was okay in the daytime. Who was I to say no?

I spent a few hours talking with the soon-to-be-doctor-on-staff. We assured ourselves of the mutual trust we had to each other, how serious this was to me, and that we had our first guest. I felt pretty good about everything and you know what they say when you feel good about everything.

That’s when it all falls into shite.

So, come eight o’clock, Erin hadn’t returned, and I had clicked my phone screen hundreds of times debating on whether or not to play the “mom card” and call the phone. I held off until nine fifteen and sixteen seconds before I called the phone and it immediately went to voicemail.

I laid my phone down—lest I throw it against the wall in a fit of anger—and tried to alleviate m’fears. Maybe she had met with friends or maybe was ripping her dad a new one. That made me feel better for a moment or two, but only for that brief moment. I walked down to the lobby and tapped at the the computer that controlled the security cameras. I could see her leave the building and walk down the street, but she soon faded into the theatre district crowd and I could no longer find her.

I contemplated calling the police, but on what grounds? They wouldn’t do anything and calling all of the hospitals would take all night so I did all that I could: I sent a text message and waited for her to respond.

So, at three in the morning, I woke up to hear the door alarm chirping. I ran down the hall back to the lobby and turned on the cameras, in hope to see Erin standing but instead I see three men dressed like they were part of a missionary group.

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Reynolds.”

“Can I have your badge number, please?”

The look on his face stayed the same deadpan look as he rattled off his ID.

I unlocked the front door that led into a vestibule, but there was still another set of locked doors. The men walked in and then stopped at the second set of doors. I walked towards the doors and picked up a phone on the wall.

“How can I help you, gentlemen?”

“Are you Rose O’Ceallaigh?”

“Yes.”

“Can you unlock the door, please?”

“Due to security of the building and the tine, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“Do you know a James Collins?”

“I know an Erin Collins.”

The third man whispered something to the detective.

I hung the phone up, walked back to the desk, felt for the licensed revolver and then unlocked the doors.

The men casually opened the door and walked in.

I stayed in my seat and I could see the other two getting fidgety as the detective took the lead.

“Has…Erin Collins, been staying here?”

“Yes. This is a resource and protection center for human rights.”

“Were you here all day, yesterday?”

“Yes, I’ve been waiting for her to come back. She left in the late afternoon and I didn’t answer a few calls and texts. Has something happened to her?”

“Do you know a Dean Collins?”

“He’s her father, why?”

“Can you come with us to the station, please?”

Like I said, shite.

So, I call my dad, at like, four or so in the morning, lock up the building and leave with the officers to the station up the road. Dad arrives, furious at having to leave a global tele-conference, as we sat in a room together.

The same three men come in and sit down across the table.

Dad had his fingers on his phone, just waiting to call a few attorneys and I’m wondering what had happened to Erin.

“Mr. Collins and his son are dead.”

I cringed a bit as the detective continued to use such adjectives to describe Erin. “How?”

“We’re not sure, we were hoping you could fill in some blanks.”

“No, I don’t know, I-“

“Mrs. Collins said her son came in screaming about something you said: “To show his father a thing or two?”

“I had told, her, Erin, to stand up for herself and to remove the people from her life who would try to harm her.”

“To kill them?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Not another word, Rosheen.” My father said in a low growl. “These gentlemen do not care about your friend’s life. Only in closing this case so they don’t have to worry about it.”

I looked down at my hands—they were red and swollen as I had held them clutched through most of the night. Maybe dad knew I was about to swing them at someone, say, maybe a slightly balding detective.

“Not that I blame them. It’s easy to look past it all, isn’t it? To pretend it doesn’t exist? According to the papers, you let the criminals who attacked my daughter’s friend out on bail. Do you really think they’re going to come back on their own recognizance?”

I looked up at my father and then at the cops.

“Is that true?”

“They were considered a victim in the situation.” The detective replied with an annoyed look on his face.

And at that moment:

I wanted to flip the table over, but it was bolted down.

I needed to hit the wall, but it was made of cinderblocks.

I desired to kick the living shite out of the police, Erin’s father’s corpse and maybe slap some sense into her mama!

But instead, I got up and walked out of the room.

“She leaves,” my father stated calmly. “And we’re going to talk, dear officers of the law.”

I left the police station in a daze and walked back to the building. A building that now had a name: “The Erin Collins Memorial Project”. I couldn’t help Erin like she needed but I’m trying to…I’m trying to help others and myself, to get past the pain of it all. Three hundred of our sisters and brothers died this year—and these are just the ones that were reported. I don’t want anyone to die, by someone else or by their own hand. I want to think that however long the day, the evening will come, and we’ll be accepted and to live as who we are.

I still miss her.