For God So Loved the World:

A Conversation with Mom

This is part one of a collection of short stories about Rachel Evans' life after the events detailed in For God So Loved the World.... Each one is based on a real conversation the author has had with family and friends relating to her transition, her faith, and her life before and after becoming the woman God meant her to be.

Copyright © 2021 Roberta Elder All rights reserved.

4,732 words

Story 1 - Breaking the Ice

Pulling up to the curb in front of her mother's house, Rachel Evans sighed as she turned off the engine and looked to the passenger seat. She watched as her mother, Laura Richard, breathed deeply through her nose, taking in the pure oxygen from the tank that sat between her legs. The emphysema was being treated, and she was doing better than she had been, but she would likely need the oxygen for the rest of her life.

"Here we are, then!" Rachel sang out. Having spent most of the afternoon with her mother, and after a good dinner with her and Rachel's family, she was sad that so much still stood between the two, making conversations awkward.

"Thank you, baby." Laura smiled as she opened her door. "Sorry to cut the evening short. I just get tired so easy."

"It's alright, Mom." Rachel lied to herself as she opened her own door and got out. "It was still good just spending the time." Grabbing the leftovers from the back seat, she knew her mother would enjoy the steelhead trout and chicken parmesan. More than that, she would enjoy having a few meals that neither required preparation nor the expense she could scarcely afford.

Carrying the food into her mother's tiny home, she put them in the frige before returning to the living room where Laura had settled into her favorite chair. Taking the one next to her, Rachel groaned as the pain shot up her legs from her swollen knees. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the one that's going to turn seventy next year!"

Laughing, Laura settled back after switching from the oxygen tank to the oxygen generator sitting next to her chair. Breathing deeply, she turned and looked at her youngest child. "Thank you for getting me to my doctor's appointment on time, baby... and for picking up my prescriptions... and for dinner! I was glad Leslie and Traci got off work on time and could join us."

Nodding, Rachel smiled in pride thinking of Leslie, older of her two boys. Having graduated with an Advanced Diploma, instead of going to college, he'd landed a job with a major software company making more money than she ever had before she retired to become a stay-at-home mom. At twenty he still lived at home with her and Traci, Rachel's wife of twenty-two years, but already had almost thirty thousand dollars saved for a house of his own.

"I was glad of that, too." Rachel mused. "Sometimes he works well past midnight, and Traci had to work on Sunday this week. At least Regina keeps a steady schedule. Well, she does now anyway!"

Laura winced a little at the mention of Rachel and Traci's partner. She tried to hide it, but too late she saw the look in her daughter's eyes that proved she'd utterly failed to.

"Speaking of Regina," Rachel sighed, "she was telling me the other day that she still resents what you said to her when we first told you about her. She tries not to let it get to her, but it does anyway."

Honestly confused, Laura furrowed her brow. "Said what, baby?"

Grimacing, Rachel couldn't help herself. "Um... well, you said she could do better... than me."

With a shake of her head, Laura dismissed the suggestion. "What? Baby, I would never say anything like that! Now what I might have said was that she should never settle, the way I did with your dad or Todd."

"Do you really think she was settling for being partners with Traci and I, Mom? Honestly?"

Pausing to consider what she knew of the woman who had become part of her daughter's life for the last fourteen years, Laura shook her head. "No. I know she loves you just as much as I loved Mick."

Seeing her mother so sad even two years after the loss of her stepfather George to the ravages of cancer made Rachel nearly cry along with her. Instead she just reached out a hand to her mother and held on as the older woman took it for strength.

Regaining her composure, Laura smiled weakly at her daughter. "Thanks, baby. It's just so hard sometimes. I miss him so much!"

"I miss him too." she replied kindly. "He's still here, though!" Rachel said with a smile of total faith and belief. In truth, Rachel hadn't cried over a single death in her large extended family. Not even when her grandfather passed away right in front of her eyes in the hospital bed. She just couldn't be sad over the transition from one life to the next that she knew for certain await us all.

"I know he is." Laura answered with a sad smile. "I just miss being able to hold his hand and listen to the sound of his voice. God, he could be so soothing!"

Giggling at the memory, Rachel tried to repress it. "You mean like the time he kept you from killing me when I wrecked my car in Placerville and you had to come rescue me?"

"Oh, God!" Laura laughed. "As a matter of fact, yes! Mick just shrugged and told me, 'Well, let's go.' He convinced me that these things just happen and boys will be boys!"

Her turn to wince, Rachel couldn't even hide the fact, but she said nothing.

With a sigh, Laura knew what she'd said. "I know! But that was before!"

"No, Mom! It really wasn't!" Rachel retorted. "I was always Rachel! Since that first day I remember watching Alice at Disneyland when I was three! It was always me!" Her voice softening, Rachel looked down at the floor. "I... I guess it's my own fault. I... I just got so good at lying to you about it and hiding myself that you thought... thought it was real."

"Oh, baby!" Laura sighed. "I know... to you, you were always a girl, but to me, I remember my sweet chubby little baby boy!" Looking away, she sighed. "Sometimes I feel it's really my fault. I never prayed for a healthy baby, I only ever prayed for a boy so I could name you after Uncle Ray for your great aunt Vera! She was so sad when he died, I wanted to make her happy again with you."

"I know." Rachel weakly smiled back. "That's why I kept the name you would have given me if you'd have known I was a girl... Rachel Michelle."

"I know, baby." her mother smiled back. "Thank you! I truly do understand I have two daughters, not a daughter and a son, but you have to understand baby, when I think back, I remember having a son. Now I have to accept that he's gone... like he died. It's a loss, but that death brought with it a new life! A new creation that I love just as much, if not more, because it's... our relationship is honest."

Looking away again, Laura took another deep breath of oxygen. "It's just that sons and mothers have a special relationship, not like mothers and daughters. I just... I miss that! I miss having a daughter and a son." With a laugh she added, "Heck! I wouldn't have minded two daughters and a son!"

Laughing with her a moment, Rachel shook her head at her mother's inability to see. "Like I said, it's probably my fault. You saw a son because I was too afraid to let you see your daughter... and then later I was really trying to be your son and like it. I... I just never could. I just faked it because I thought I'd burn in Hell if I didn't."

Gasping, Laura looked at her daughter in shock. "Who ever told you that!"

"Daddy." she shrugged. "It was while you were gone... in Boston."

Hearing of the time she'd spent at the burn ward nearly three thousand miles away from her children as she took care of her burned step-children made Laura relive the entire experience all over again. "Oh." was all she could say.

Nodding, Rachel swallowed hard and explained. "He... um... he caught me in Marie's clothes. Then he showed me First Corinthians six-nine. You know, 'Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?' Then it lists people like idolaters and such, and one of them is 'the effeminate'. After reading that I wanted to just be a boy, until I found out that it was all wrong."

Writing down the scripture line as a note to look up later, Laura pursed her lips. "What makes you think it was wrong?"

With a shrug, Rachel looked away absently. "It's not wrong per se, it's just mistranslated. After learning Hebrew when I was engaged to Kathy... you remember her, right?"

Seeing her mother nod, she continued. "Anyway, after that I wanted to learn Greek, because it was nice being able to read the Old Testament in the original language. I wanted to do the same with the New and it was mostly written in Greek, the scholar's language at that time. Anyway, when I read that line in Greek, I found out for myself that Paul wasn't talking about being effeminate, he was talking about people who are weak willed! People with no strength of character! The word he used was malakós. It's where we get the word malleable... as in easily swayed?"

Taking it all in, Laura nodded. "OK. That makes sense. Well, I'm glad you didn't think you were going to Hell for it anymore, but I'm concerned that you were afraid to tell me before that. Why?"

Embarrassed, Rachel looked away again. This was something that had been eating at her for forty-four years and now she finally had a chance to get it off her chest. The problem was that she didn't want to hurt her mother doing it.

Seeing her daughter's reaction, Laura shook her head. "Baby, you can tell me anything! You don't need to be embarrassed about it!"

Hearing those particular words didn't help. They were the same words Laura had said when she was thirteen and had been caught once more taking her sister's clothes... and Rachel knew they weren't any more true now than they were then. Shaking off the instinct to lie to her mother the way she'd done back then, she took a breath and looked back at her. "I was afraid ever since I was four and you caught me in Marie's Blue Birds uniform. Do you remember that?"

Squinting hard, Laura tried to roll her memory back over four decades. Nodding gently she looked away in recollection. "What did I do that made you afraid? I spanked you, but that was for taking something that wasn't yours, not for..." Even after so much time and acceptance, she had trouble saying the words.

"It wasn't what you did, Mom. It was what you said. I remember it vividly." Rachel retorted calmly. "You said, 'No one will like you if you try to be a girl!' Those words exactly."

Taken aback, Laura had to reconcile the statement with her own memories. She knew she'd said something to Rae about it, but she couldn't remember exactly what, so she couldn't refute the claim. "Are you sure those are the words, baby?"

"Positive." Rachel sighed. "I've been wanting to talk to you about that for a long time. That's when I started hiding... pretending to be a boy so no one would know. In the end though it just ensured that I'd always be alone and have no friends. I was a phony and everyone knew it... they just didn't know what I was being phony about. You know what it's like? You meet someone and you can just tell that they're being fake? That was me. All the boys could tell I was being a phony, so none of them ever liked me. Most of the girls, too... except one." Her smile grew slowly in fond remembrance.

"One?" Laura asked curiously. "Who?"

Shyly looking at the floor, Rachel sighed wistfully. "Do you remember Harmony?" Seeing her mother shake her head, she recounted the two-year friendship that culminated in two broken hearts. "When... when she called that last time, she told me she couldn't be happy being away from me and not even being able to talk, so she broke up with me. You were in the kitchen, so I had to just put on a brave face until I hung up and went to my room to do my homework. I barely started toward my room before the tears began to fall anyway."

Recalling the time, Laura looked at her daughter with understanding eyes. "I know you had a crush on her. I never knew that she..."

"It was more than a crush, Mom. I... I fell in love with her. I still love her! I probably always will. She knew about me. I told her, and she liked me even more for it! That's why it hurt so much. I didn't even want another girlfriend after that. I didn't even try for three years, and when you're ten, three years is a really long time!" Rachel laughed, happy to see her mother laugh with her. As the laughter died, she continued more somberly. "By then though, I was trying to be a boy, so no one actually liked me until I met Traci, but that was sixteen years later."

"That's a long time to be alone." Laura said achingly. "But you had girlfriends... like Kathy."

"Kathy hated the real me, Mom." Rachel confessed. "She... that's why she left me. That's why she... abused me." Tears welled up in her eyes at the memory still so vividly real in her mind's eye as though it were yesterday.

"She abused you?" Laura asked incredulously. "Why did you stay? I mean, Momma taught all us girls, and your uncle Darryl, not to put up with that! I... I thought I taught that to you and your sister, too!" Guilt washed over her like waves threatening to drown her at the revelation.

Taking a breath, Rachel composed herself and looked up at her mother. "I... I thought I deserved it. I... it was before I found out being myself wasn't a sin. After we moved in together, Kathy found a box of my old things that I thought I threw out. My old... um... girl things. She... she hit me. I'd told her that was a part of me, but that it was a part of my past. Seeing it made her think I lied to her and she hit me... and I let her."

"Oh, baby!" Laura cried with her. "I should have told you never to let anyone do that! I thought I did! I know I told your sister... but... I... I guess I just assumed that..."

"...that because you thought I was a boy that I didn't ever need to worry about it. Yeah." Rachel sighed. "It wouldn't have mattered. I would have stayed anyway because I thought I deserved to get beaten. That maybe it would make me stronger and make the feelings go away. Instead it just hurt more. Crying in front of her made it worse."

After an awkward moment, the two looked at one another. Rachel could see the pain in her mother's eyes, but she couldn't tell if it was because she felt guilty for treating Rachel like a boy or because she felt guilty that she'd failed to instill enough strength in her 'boy' to walk out on a bad situation. Looking away, she almost asked, but then realized she didn't want to know the answer.

"Anyway," Rachel segued back into the thing she did want to talk about, "I was saying about when I was four. You told me no one would like me if I tried to be a girl. I... I thought that included you, so I was always afraid to tell you. Besides, I figured you knew. I mean, you had to know, right?"

Shaking her head to get back to the original conversation, Laura furrowed her brow once more. "No! Actually I didn't know! I mean, how could I? You wouldn't tell me!"

"But I did tell you, Mom." Rachel snapped back. "When I was four!"

"That was a long time ago, baby!" Laura retorted just as firmly.

"I told you again when I was six when you saw me when we were living in Fallon! Remember Halloween? You caught me again when I was seven too, and then again when I was thirteen going on fourteen. How could you not have known? How could you still think it was a phase I was going through?"

Thinking back, Laura sighed and tried to explain. "I... I was told by people that I trusted that little boys like to experiment. They like the feel of the soft material of women's clothes... that..."

"It was never about the clothes, Mom!" Rachel interrupted. "They were just a way for me to see on the outside what I felt on the inside!" Taking a breath and calming herself, Rachel lowered her voice back down to a normal tone. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have interrupted you or shouted."

"It's OK, baby." Laura replied in a chastised tone. "I understand. I... I was afraid for you. People can be so cruel about any differences! I... I didn't want you to be a target."

"I was a target anyway and you made me lie to you." Rachel said with more venom in her voice than she'd intended. Taking another breath, she calmed herself more. "Remember when I was thirteen and you caught me with your and Marie's things in my drawers? You spanked me until you made me tell you why I took them?"

Shaking her head, Laura looked away ashamedly. "No."

"I lied to you then. I told you the only thing I could think of that would explain them other than the truth... that I was using them to... um... using them to masturbate. That was a lie. Do you remember now?"

Recalling part of the conversation brought the rest back. In her desperation to reach the truth that her stubborn thirteen-year-old child refused to divulge after an hour of spanking with her bare hand, she'd resorted to using her belt, which brought a rapid confession. "Oh."

"Yeah." Rachel replied simply.

"Why didn't you just tell me the truth?"

As a tear slipped down her cheek, Rachel picked up a tissue and dabbed it away, careful not to ruin her makeup. "I... I was afraid you'd hate me. By that time, I'd found some books about it and they were terrible. They called it a sickness and told about families that literally threw their children into the streets after hearing it." Taking a ragged breath, she looked up into her mother's wide eyes. "Really, given the era and everything else, you took it a lot better than most. You did the best that you could have."

Stunned, Laura could only believe what Rachel was telling her because she'd seen first hand how cruel some parents could be. "Well... you did better than I did. You found books that at least talked about it."

"They weren't nice books." Rachel explained. "More like warnings than anything else. Believe me, the Standards of Care back then were awful! Transgenderism was just not very well understood and condemned as a kind of psychosis to be treated with aversion therapy using shock treatments, sometimes even having people committed!"

"Committed?" Laura asked incredulously. "You mean as in..."

"...as in committed to an asylum. Yeah." Rachel sighed. "Some parents did that to their own kids. For their own good, of course!"

Shaking her head to get the idea out of her mind, Laura looked back at her. "I... I was told it was just a passing thing. That you'd get over it and... and just be normal after that." Laughing gently, she shook her head in disbelief of her own willful ignorance. "I didn't want to see it. I guess I was lying to myself, too." Looking back up at Rachel, she took a breath. "Your aunts, especially your aunt Cathy, she told me there was more to it than just a passing thing, but I didn't listen. I didn't want to. You should ask her."

Hearing that was a shock to Rachel. She knew that her aunt Cathy was a very conservative Christian, and that even so after the accident that nearly killed her youngest son Bryant, Cathy had been the strongest supporter of her on that side of her family, but she had no idea that her aunt had known for such a long time. "I... I guess I will, the next chance I get."

"You should. She and your aunt Jane tried to tell me, but I just wouldn't see it. They knew when you were wearing a bra under your clothes."

"Oh!" Rachel finally understood. "That was later, after Traci and I were married." Embarrassed slightly, she blushed. "I... I did that for Traci. She wanted me to come out way sooner than I did. After Bryant was born, actually. Wearing normal women's clothes under the men's clothes was a compromise we settled on, so she knew I was still me under it all."

Laura thought back to that time now thirteen years past. "A lot of things were happening for me back then, too. Momma passed in September, then Daddy the next July, then we were selling the house, the place I always called home, the following April..."

"...and then that August I came out and told you about Regina." Rachel finished for her.

"It... it was just too much... all at once." Laura admitted sadly.

"I thought a year after grandpa died was enough." Taking a cleansing breath, Rachel shook her head. "I don't think I could have waited any longer though. I'd already given up the first half of my life for all of you, and finally being able to be myself only when I was too old to enjoy it would have been worse than never doing it all." Pausing a moment, she let a sly grin creep onto her lips. "Besides, by then I was on hormones and there were going to be visible changes!" she gestured to her now C-cup chest, prompting a giggle from both of them.

After an awkward moment, Laura saw a chance to get something off her own chest that had been bothering her for some time as well. "One thing's for certain, all that was a true test of my faith! I swear, that Christmas day I came over to your house really put me to the test of not being judgmental!"

"What Christmas was that?" Rachel asked confusedly. "The first one after I transitioned in oh-eight?"

"No." Laura sighed. "Later... after you moved?"

"Oh." Rachel finally understood, looking away ashamedly. "About that..."

"I know." Laura took her turn to interrupt. "You were hurt after the way it went. I called on Bryant's birthday in May, and by the time I called to wish you a happy birthday in July, the number was disconnected. I went over to your apartment, but of course you were gone, and I had no way of finding you."

Looking up at her again, Rachel's eyes were wet with tears. "I'm so sorry, Mom! I... I just... yes! It hurt that you could go months without ever coming to see the boys! Or me! Or even calling! When... when I found out that you'd canceled that one time that you were coming over for dinner and that the next weekend you were at Marie's house for dinner, it hurt." Drying her eyes, Rachel took a breath before continuing. "Still, I shouldn't have just cut off ties like that. Admittedly, I was four years into hormone therapy and a little nuts at the time!" she giggled. "I mean, have you ever heard of a girl going through puberty that didn't go crazy? Try it at thirty-five!"

The two laughed together at that for a moment before Laura resumed. "Well, it was a year after that when your aunt Darla found the tax notice for your new home with all three of your names on it."

"Oh." Rachel finally understood. "Let's see, that would have made it about July of twenty-thirteen." Looking at her mother again, she cocked her head curiously. "You knew where we lived that long?"

"Uh huh." Laura smiled slyly. "God bless him, Mick was so understanding that year! I used to drive up and down streets looking for you before that. I went crazy thinking I'd lost you. And then when Darla found your address, I... I would park at the corner near your house and just watch your driveway. I'd see you leave for work, I'd see Leslie heading off for school, and then Bryant. I'd follow them sometimes, staying far enough back that they didn't notice. After four months of that, I came to your door."

Drying her eyes, Rachel looked at her mother with regret. "I'm sorry, Mom!"

"It is what it is, baby." Laura sighed. "I guess we needed that time apart... so I could bury my son and be happy with the daughter that took his place."

Frustrated that she still could not see that the son was an illusion, she chastised herself. It's your own fault! You made her see the boy! You hid too well! That's not her fault! It's yours! Letting it go for the time being, Rachel smiled at her mother. "I... I'm glad we can have this now. That I can be your daughter and know that you still love me."

"Of course I still love you, baby!" she chided gently. "Don't ever think I don't, or ever didn't! You're my child! My youngest!"

"Like I said, Mom. That was never a guarantee for me. I've heard too many horror stories about women like me that end up losing everything... their jobs, their families, their children. Believe me when I say that's what I prepared for when I came out... losing all of you. If it hadn't been for the accident bringing us all together again, you might still be the only family I had contact with. They all turned their backs on us from the day I did. Dad didn't see me or the boys for seven years because of it!"

"I know." Laura admitted. "We could have reacted better."

"But you also could have reacted so much worse." Rachel comforted. "But you didn't. OK, so it wasn't great, but given circumstances and the way you were raised, you did the best you could. I understand that now and I wouldn't change a thing that got us here!" Getting up, the two hugged one another tightly. "I love you, Mom! So much!"

"I love you too, baby!" Laura sniffed as she held her daughter as tightly as she could.

Separating after a long embrace, Rachel looked up at the clock. "Oh jeez! It's after ten! I need to get home and get to bed!"

Nodding, Laura put her hand on Rachel's cheek. "I know. Give me a ring when you get in? So I know you're home safe?"

With a smile, Rachel nodded back. "I will! Enjoy the leftovers! Call me tomorrow?"

"I will baby." she answered as her youngest daughter made her way down the wheelchair ramp and to her car. "Drive careful! Precious cargo!"

As Rachel slid into the driver's seat, she opened her flip phone and called home while the car warmed up.

"Evans' residence!" Traci answered out of habit. "Hi, love! Have a good talk with your mom?"

Smiling, Rachel looked at herself in the mirror on the back of the visor, seeing her ruined mascara and eyeliner. With a sobbing giggle, she nodded. "Yes! I think it was good for both of us. I... I think Mom and I are going to be OK now. At least the ice is broken and we can talk. I'll tell you all about it when I get home. Should be there in about forty minutes, OK?"

"OK, love! I look forward to it! Love you!"

"I love you too, sweetheart!" Rachel nearly sobbed with joy. "So very much!"