Ella
The first two days of Tucker’s flu, I didn’t worry overmuch; I took my vitamins and hoped I didn’t catch it. By the fourth day, I was worried. It wasn’t her stuffy nose or pasty gray complexion that bothered me so much as the fact that she just wasn’t doing anything—not even reading a fun, not-required-for-class novel. I wasn’t sure if she was eating either.
I’d left the door from the bathroom to my room unlocked so when I wasn’t there she could help herself to my microwave and fridge, but whenever I went into the fridge myself, I could see that nothing was gone.
“Go to the health center,” I told her. I’d pulled her desk chair up to the side of the bed figuring that if I was going to catch something from her, I would have already.
She sat propped up on pillows, the area around her littered with crumpled tissues and books that I had yet to see her open. Each time I visited her, there was another book on her bed, and yet she didn’t seem to be reading any of them. A blue Freytag U mug steamed on the table next to her. At least she was using my electric kettle.
“It’s just the flu,” she said. “I feel a little better today. I can probably go to class in a day or two.”
“Are you working on the new paper for Gender Studies?” I asked. “I can read it over for you if you want.”
Tucker shrugged. “I’m thinking about dropping the class. Maybe I’ll do another major, something useful like Communications.”
“You’re still running a fever, aren’t you?” I asked because that didn’t sound like her at all.
“I’m sick of all the shit with Vivien,” she said. She didn’t add “and Lindy” but I heard it in the silent pause before she went on. “I just want to get my degree and move on.”
Her rounded shoulders and the darkness in the skin under her eyes signaled defeat. Until this week, Tucker had always seemed larger than life to me—so outgoing with her opinions and her affections, and now I was looking at a shadow of her.
I had no idea how to respond, so I said, “Shen’s coming over to watch a movie on the laptop. You’re welcome to join us.”
She shook her head. “I’m going back to sleep.”
Either this was one hell of a flu or something else was going on. I wanted to push the issue, but I knew what it was like to have to give out information before you were ready, so I went back to my room.
Shen showed up with a brown carryout bag that smelled of garlic and peanuts. “There is no good Chinese food here, so I got Thai. It’s not good Thai either, but at least I’m not personally offended by it.”
I laughed. “That’s important.”
We settled onto my bed, sitting against the wall at the head of the bed with my laptop on his shins and our takeout boxes in our laps. I rested my shoulder against his and he leaned over to kiss the side of my face high up on my cheek. I grinned and opened the white cardboard carton in my lap. It was pad thai with tofu.
“Not spicy,” he said. His palate could take a lot more heat than mine and Johnny beat both of us, though I think some of that was bravado and not personal preference.
Shen reached into my lap and picked up my right hand, pulling the chopsticks I was holding forward until my hand was up near the base of them. I wasn’t bad at chopsticks, Mom taught me as a kid, but I’d asked him for help weeks ago because it was a good excuse to touch and now I was in the habit of holding them wrong to get his attention. I snapped the sticks at him and he laughed.
“You’re almost ready to compete in chopstick relay,” he said.
“Is that a real thing?”
“If by ‘real’ you mean a party game Johnny invented to pick up girls, then yes, very real.”
“Does it work?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Have you ever used it to pick up girls?”
His smile was confident and reticent at the same time. “I never needed to,” he said.
“How many girlfriends have you had?”
He paused and looked up at the ceiling, counting under his breath, “…eighteen, nineteen, twenty-two…” Then he chuckled and looked at me. “Four, counting you.”
“Who were they?”
“When I was nine, Meirong brought me a flower and asked if she could tell the older boys that I was her boyfriend. She was very forward. I didn’t disagree so I was her boyfriend for the rest of the year, but I don’t think that meant anything. Then in high school I was with Yanmei for the last two years but we both knew we would go far away from each other for college. And last year I went around with Laura for the second semester, but we weren’t well suited.”
“What happened?”
“She found another boy, less thoughtful.”
“I like that you’re thoughtful,” I said.
He smiled and didn’t say anything, but I knew he was curious and too polite to ask the same question of me.
“I dated Nico for a while,” I told him. “Off and on for over a year. And I kissed some boys. And…um…I kind of hooked up with Tucker over fall break, but then she was with Lindy again.”
The phrase “hooked up” wasn’t at all fair to describe what had happened between me and Tucker, but I thought it was a safe place to start to see if Shen was going to have objections.
“Would you rather date her?” he asked.
Sometimes I thought that if there could be two of me, like me and a clone, then one of me could be with Tucker and the other with Shen. But right now I’d still want to be the one who was with Shen. I felt a lot for Tucker, but some of it was so complicated I didn’t even know where to start thinking about it.
“No,” I snuggled closer into his shoulder, “I really like spending time with you.”
“Good,” he said.
“But I’m worried about Tucker. She’s a really good friend and something’s bothering her and I don’t know how to get her to talk about it. I don’t want to blaze in there with questions because sometimes it’s important to have secrets.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I will never tell you that I’m secretly drawn to Japanese flower arranging. Oh, rats.”
After a moment of silence where we both ate a little, he added, “If she is going to tell anyone, it will be you. And you’ll be the right person for her to tell.”
“Thanks.”
We didn’t say anything more on the topic of Tucker or other people we’d dated, but I felt better. Being around Shen had a calming effect, whether we were watching a movie or studying or playing games.
We’d only kissed a few times, and already I wanted it to go further—but I didn’t want to come across like a tease. It wasn’t like he was pressuring me, it was the opposite, but my mind couldn’t help racing into the future. What would it be like when we’d been together three months or six? The only threats to the relationship that I saw came from my end. First, that part of me was also interested in Tucker, and second, that I was probably the most virgin kind of virgin ever when it came to guys.
Not only had I never had sex with a guy, but I’d only had a vagina for just over a year. How many eighteen-year-old girls could say that? I could tell him, “I’m sorry, it’s new and they didn’t give me instructions,” but actually it did come with instructions. These instructions involved dilating it daily with a series of glass rods so that the newly rearranged tissue would develop adequate depth and width. For that I was really glad I had my own room.
Judging by the size of the glass rods and the size of the bulge I once saw in Shen’s jeans when we were kissing, someday we could have a problem. There could be internal tearing if we had sex, especially if it was too soon after surgery. I kept looking online to see when people said was too soon but it varied from a few months to over a year.
And I was afraid it wouldn’t feel right to him. I was afraid of a million ways of doing it wrong. I think at least a half million of those were shared by all women the first time they seriously considered having sex. Another quarter million had to do with being trans and the last quarter million were just me personally.
I wanted to talk to him about it, but it seemed too early to bring up. And I wanted to talk to Tucker about it, but she was in no shape for that. That left Mom and that was too weird a conversation. Did anyone really want to talk to their mom about sex after the age of six and the “boys have pee-pees, girls have hoo-hoos” conversation? With my mom it was lingams and yonis, but still.
This was really the first time I was dating a guy I actually wanted to be sexual with. I could put it off for a while—wait until I turned nineteen as if that was going to make a difference—I knew he would understand. But at the same time, we’d come to that place in the relationship where I wanted him to know even more about me. Even if sex wasn’t on the table (or the narrow dorm room bed), at what point did I tell him about my unusual life journey just because it was information worth sharing?
It was an important part of my life—like growing up in another country. Shen grew up in China and I grew up in Boy; was it really that different? Well, he could go back to China and he seemed a lot more proud of coming from there than I did about my country of origin.
* * *
Tucker went back to class at the end of that week, but she wasn’t recovered. She walked as if something in her body hurt when she moved, and she spent all her time either at class or in her room. I invited her to the Union, but she declined. I suggested she go to the gym, but she said she didn’t feel strong enough yet. Finally I told her she had to get out and insisted, gently, that she come over to the gaming room. To my surprise, she agreed.
She turned out to be a natural at the racing games and as soon as she learned the courses, she gave the old pros a run for their money. We stayed longer than she planned and I was glad to see her laughing again. Dusk brushed across the campus as we left, turning the buildings into low gray hills with lit windows like distant signal fires.
“Thanks,” she said on the way back. “I needed that.”
“I’m glad you came. You totally smoked Johnny on—” I stopped because she froze and was staring in the direction of our dorm.
“Is that her? That’s her isn’t it?” she said.
I looked in the direction she faced and saw a tall figure with Lindy’s distinctive long, tight stride, walking with another woman.
“Yes,” I said, but Tucker was already moving into the cover of the nearest building. I tried to follow, but I lost her in the shadows. She had too much of a head start and was jogging. I thought she had to be going back to our dorm rooms, so I headed there.
When I opened the connecting door to her room, I found her sitting on her bed, crammed into the corner with the cover wrapped around her.
“Cold,” she said when she saw me. Her teeth clicked against each other, body shaking, her face white as paper.
I went to a high school with a lot of delicate, artsy kids and I knew a panic attack when I saw one. I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Just breathe, you’re okay.”
“It’s stupid,” she said. “It’s stupid.”
“Keep breathing. Is it okay to touch you?”
She nodded, but when I reached for her she jerked back. “No!”
“Okay.” I got up and walked to her desk where I pulled the chair around to face the bed. “I’m just going to sit over here, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m sorry, it’s not you,” she said breathily, nearly panting.
“You don’t have to apologize. Have you had this happen before?”
She shook her head.
“I think you’re having a panic attack,” I told her.
That got a nod, but she repeated the word, “Stupid.”
“What’s stupid? The panic attack?”
“Yes.” A ghost of a smile crossed her lips and then faded. “And me. I was stupid.”
“I doubt that,” I said.
Talking seemed to be having a beneficial effect on the panic. Her hands were relaxing their white-knuckled grip on the blankets and her breathing was slowing down from the effort and distraction of making words.
“I tried to say no,” she said. “I think I said it. I don’t remember. I wanted to say no. I think I said no.”
I didn’t say anything right away because conclusions snapped together in my brain too quickly to express. Trying to say no, coming home in the middle of the night looking a mess after the party at Cal’s, having a panic attack—they all added up in a way I really didn’t like. I tried to remember all the people at the party. Hadn’t she left with Lindy? Was there a man who paid too much attention to her? Could it have been one of the boyfriends of the mean girls?
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked finally because I just couldn’t add it up in my head. If it had been any of the guys at the party or someone’s boyfriend, she’d have reported it days ago.
“I remember,” she said. “I told her to stop. I said I didn’t want it. She didn’t stop.”
“Oh God.” The words slipped out of my mouth.
Tucker bent forward, curling in on herself, and covered her face with her hands. She was crying with deep, gasping breaths and I wanted to go hold her so badly that I had to put my arms around the back of the chair to keep myself in place.
After a while she turned her tear-streaked face up to me and held out her hand. I climbed onto the bed and took her hand in both of mine. I was careful not to touch her more than she wanted me to. She rubbed the back of her other hand across her face but fresh tears started down her damp cheeks after she’d wiped the others away.
“When I got to her apartment, I knew I should leave,” Tucker said. “And she kept pushing herself on me and trying to persuade me to stay and at first I thought I could but then when I realized I couldn’t…” The words choked off.
“She raped you,” I said because someone had to get the word out into the grief-soaked air of the room and it wasn’t going to be Tucker.
“No!” the word came out fast and hard, but then she whispered, “I guess…yes.”
“It’s not your fault,” I told her.
She shook her head. “How can it even happen? I was there and I still don’t understand it. How can a woman rape another woman?”
“You told her to stop and she kept going, that’s how.”
“I told her to stop,” Tucker repeated. “She acted like she didn’t hear me but she had to hear me. She was right on top of me. I pushed against her, but she just acted like that was part of it. She said I wanted it. No, she said I needed it.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
“But can I?”
“Of course.”
Tucker settled herself against the wall a little straighter and looked across the room. Focusing on the stacks of books on her dresser, she spoke haltingly, barely above a whisper.
“She had me pushed into the couch and at first I couldn’t figure out what was going on because I’d told her to stop and she was still moving on top of me. I asked her to stop more than once, but she didn’t. She was touching me and she got my hands pinned under me. I thought I could bite her, but I didn’t want to hurt her. It’s like part of me was freaking out and this other part was thinking she’s someone I cared about, I couldn’t hurt her like that. I kept trying to sit up and just move away, but she had one hand on the back of the couch and her whole weight on me so the only way I could get up would be to hurt her. I kept looking at her ear and thinking I should bite her and hating her, but I couldn’t hurt her. And then she—”
Tucker broke off and lowered her face, covering it with her hand. She cried silently and then started talking again without lifting her head from her hand.
“She put her fingers inside me and it hurt and I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to tell her stop again but all the pain was jammed up in my throat and I couldn’t talk. I think I finally said something and she changed position and pulled my hand out from under me. I was frozen. I couldn’t believe she was doing this. She got herself off using my hand and then she curled up on me and went to sleep like it was all okay.
“I got up after a while and went into the bathroom and when I came out she was still asleep so I took my boots and I left.”
I squeezed hard on Tucker’s hand where it was clasped between mine.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her.
“Thanks.” The word sounded hollow, but she tried to smile. The gesture was more of a grimace, her face splotched with red and her eyes bloodshot.
“Do you think you should talk to a counselor?”
“I don’t know. I just want to forget it but I can’t, and then I saw her and my whole body freaked out. I didn’t even realize it was happening and all of sudden I was freezing cold and shaking and dizzy.”
“Panic attack,” I said.
“That’s just great.”
“It’s normal for what you went through.”
“Maybe I should just drop this semester and try again later, or somewhere else.”
“Tucker! You could report this to student services.”
“And tell them what? They’re going to think I’m crazy after I reported the attack outside the gym. I don’t want to be a victim and I don’t want them to throw her out of school.”
“Are you listening to yourself?”
She paused and the grim, ghostly smile came back. “Go on,” she said.
“Report her,” I said. “Let student services get you help; that’s one of the things your tuition is paying for. Stay here, with me, and I’ll help you get through the rest of the semester. You protected me for the first half of it, now let me take care of you.”
Now the smile on her lips was real. Even if it was small and didn’t take away the lines of pain around her eyes.
* * *
After our conversation, Tucker went to take a long, hot bath and I settled into my room to call Mom.
“I thought you’d be out with that boy,” she said when she picked up her phone.
“Mom, I have a question and I need you to not freak out, okay? This isn’t about me.”
“Go on,” she said and all the humor was gone from her voice.
“If a student reports a rape to student services, they have to keep it confidential, don’t they?”
“That depends on your campus policy and whether the student agrees to have the police involved—assuming the campus is one that regularly gets the police involved. Sweetie, what happened?”
I paused because I never lie to my mom. I figure it’s the best gift I can give her since she trusted me when I came out to her as a girl. However, never lying to your mom can get really tricky, so I decided a year ago that I could obfuscate from time to time.
“A friend, one of the girls in the LGBTQIA student group, was raped about a week ago but she’s afraid to report it.”
Mom let out a long, pained sigh. “I understand that.”
“Really?”
“Some campuses are more advanced than others. Some have a real zero tolerance policy and others just want to sweep it under the rug. I can find out about yours. Does she know the guy who raped her?”
“It was another woman,” I said.
Silence and then, “Oh. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse—in terms of prosecution, that is—I’m sure it was horrible for your friend.”
“She’s pretty freaked out.”
“Can she talk to her parents about it?” Mom asked.
“I don’t think so, but she has some older friends. Maybe if she talked to them that would help.”
I was thinking of Claire and Emily. Tucker talked about them often and seemed to view them with a respect bordering on worship. Surely they’d also tell her to report it and help her through the emotional minefield.
“Do you want me to make some calls?” Mom asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Sweetie, promise me you’ll stay safe.”
“You didn’t raise a fool,” I told her.
I hung up and went into Tucker’s room to check on her and suggest she call Claire and Emily for support. I didn’t give her the details of my conversation with Mom because I didn’t want her to know there were campuses that didn’t do much in the way of reported rape.
Mom called back an hour later, which was shocking since it was getting late on a Saturday night and I figured she couldn’t make her calls until Monday. My mom isn’t the loud-and-in-your-face type. She prefers listening to talking, and takes time to think through problems. Dad says she has a reputation as th e “meeting-breaker” because she can summarize an issue so clearly that it breaks up deadlocked committee meetings.
“I don’t like these statistics,” she said. “Your campus only has a few rapes reported each year of the last five. With ten thousand students that means serious underreporting. Only one went to a criminal proceeding and in that case the rapist wasn’t a student. Your friend might have better leverage if she goes directly to the police.”
“She won’t do that,” I said.
“She could call the Women’s Center in Canton and see if they can send an advocate to go with her.”
“That could work.” And if they didn’t have an advocate to send or if Tucker didn’t want to call them, I could offer to go with her. “What happens after she reports it?”
“They’ll take statements and any evidence and then they convene a student conduct board to look into it. It’s possible they’ll consider this student misconduct and not sexual violence.”
“Will they expel the woman who raped her?”
Breath hissed through her teeth. “Maybe,” she said and I knew even that answer was her effort to make the situation sound better than it was.
“So she could end up having to walk to class every day on the same campus as her rapist.”
“Once she’s reported it, I can talk to your Dean of Students.”
“Let me think about this,” I said. “We might need that.”
“I’ll do anything I can and please tell your friend I’m very sorry.”
“I will,” I said.
We talked about my classes for a while and the latest date Shen and I had, just to lighten the mood. When I hung up, I peeked into the bathroom and saw that Tucker left the door to her room cracked open. I leaned through it. She was asleep, curled on her side in the bed with a pillow clutched to her chest. I wanted to kiss her cheek and tuck the blanket up around her, but I was afraid the touch would startle her, so I just turned off her light and went back to my room.
I picked up Erasmus, the stuffed tortoise, and ran my hand along the soft fabric of his shell over and over. How could Lindy…? How could anyone do that to someone they loved? To anyone? There had to be something wrong with Lindy.
But underneath the metal-edged fear and anger in my chest was a feeling of sick dread. Was it possible that by coming out as trans, even though she wasn’t, Tucker had changed how Lindy saw her? Did it make her seem less human to Lindy? Or did Lindy think that somehow she was reinforcing Tucker’s cisgender womanhood through what she’d done?
Did she see it as the act of violence it was or did she really think she was doing something Tucker needed? The idea made me feel like puking. I curled up with Erasmus between my knees and my chest and pulled the top blanket of my bed over him, up to my shoulders. How could any woman do something that awful to another?