My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover (3 page)

from my mind.

After Chevey goes home, I continue to rack my memory for early signs,

sissy behavior, and find none. Andrew is equally shocked. Eleanor and

I call each other every day. She is now my companion in commisera-

tion, in fear. We have long, agonized conversations. She has known for

six months about the change, but remains equally flabbergasted.

I go to my analyst, who seems nonplussed by the news of my

brother. No, that’s not quite right. I go to my analyst and begin by

burying the lead. “I want to come less often.” He nods. Then I say,

“My brother is going to become a woman.” His jaw doesn’t drop, but

his eyebrows rise several millimeters— the shrink equivalent. “Why

didn’t you tell me that first?” he asks.

The wish to cut back on my number of weekly appointments has

been preying on my mind for some time. I haven’t mentioned it— I was

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afraid of “hurting his feelings” (an “issue” that I managed to avoid

discussing for seven years)— and here was an opportunity to get it out

of the way in a hurry.

Andrew goes to his therapist, with whom he has a more conversa-

tional relationship and who expresses real surprise. “Why would he do

it now,” he asks, “at an age when women are losing their desirability?”

Apparently, neither has had any experience, direct or otherwise,

with transsexuals.

“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” Eleanor and I say more than once,

a desperate hope. She, too, is seeing a therapist because, she says,

“there’s so much I can’t discuss with anybody. He doesn’t give me any

ideas about how to move forward, just gives me the free space to vent,

and I mostly sit there and bawl.”

And we worry. What’s going to happen to him living alone in the

mountains? Why won’t he join a support group, meet other transsexu-

als? I ask him. He says he’s “not one of them.” (We can’t call him “she”

yet, even when projecting into the future.) Eleanor’s lawyer knew some-

one, a male- to- female transsexual, and offered to introduce them— she might at least provide information— but Chevey didn’t want to.

Andrew and I make jokes. About Chevey’s refusal to join a support

group, or meet others in the same situation. Andrew says, “That’s all

we need, an uptight transsexual.”

Eleanor and I also make jokes to cover our apprehension, our fears

for him and for ourselves (the snickers and eyeball- rolling). About

what s/he’s going to look like, sound like. Barbara, Eleanor’s daughter, says her mother should have surgery and become a man and they could

stay married. Chevey did suggest that, as Virginia law permitted it,

they might stay married, but Eleanor vetoed that, saying it wouldn’t

work for either of them.

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And now again obscurity descends, and would indeed that it were

deeper! . . . But let other pens treat of sex and sexuality; we quit

such odious subjects as soon as we can.

— Virginia Woolf,
Orlando

W
ould indeed that it were all a dream. Or a jeu d’esprit, like the Virginia Woolf novel
Orlando
, about a time-travelling, gender-

morphing acrobat, whose overnight change is both “painless and com-

plete.” If only we could draw a veil of obscurity over the less poetic

reality. But in the all- too- literal real world, my brother is to become my sister. And in the decidedly unlyrical vocabulary of such things, he is transgender (genus) and transsexual (species), making a complete

“transition,” which includes the rearrangement of those crude body

parts that Virginia Woolf airily transcended.

No, it isn’t illness or death, and thank heaven for that.

But the upside of illness and death is that there are guidelines for

how to behave, even what to feel. Books and movies and even life itself have given us a repertory of words and gestures appropriate to major

crises and events. With death there’s a ritual framework, the formali-

ties of bereavement, according to which friends and relatives gather

round and offer concern and support. Like a mild anesthetic, it doesn’t obliterate the pain but takes the edge off, lifts you out of your solitary self. Here, we’re in uncharted seas. I’m not allowed to summon friends,

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even if I wanted to (and I don’t, not now). And what was an adversity

for me was (however perilous) a liberation for my brother. I suppose

there is, tucked into every strong response, a hidden opposite: mixed

with the intense grief over a loved one’s death is the shadow of relief, the escape from emotional dependency; the happiness of the marital

vows is undercut by the isolation of “forsaking all others”; the whole

world of conventional pain and pleasure disappears in the madness of

l’amour fou
; and the act of sex shudders with the
petit mort
of mortality foretold. But with my brother, the predominant note was “mixed

feelings.” What to do with “gender reassignment”? There is no prece-

dent for my brother’s decision, hence no way to orchestrate my confu-

sion. How can you grieve when the person you love is brimful with

hope for the future? Where does it fit into the taxonomy of life crises when one person’s liberation is another’s loss?

I see it as a changing of identities, like someone on the lam, or going into the witness protection program. He sees it, quite the reverse, as someone who’s been living as a fake, who’s already done time in the witness protection program and can finally come clean, walk out the door, and

face the light of day as his, or rather her, true self. A more extreme version, perhaps, of other kinds of medical miracles— for example, some-

one who’s suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or lifelong

depression and is finally given an effective drug and comes out of the

fog into something like normalcy. Or the clarity of vision that can come after cataract surgery. Or “cosmetic” surgery not for vanity or youth, but to remove scars or a birth defect.

Another thought, selfish but overwhelming: suppose something

happens to Andrew! This fear is never far from my mind. My husband

is extremely infirm, an imbalance of the legs not just from old age (he is approaching eighty) but from nerve damage sustained during a ter-

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rifying, near- fatal illness in 1984. He walks unsteadily on a cane, is hard of hearing. He looks and feels old. He is still teaching, but the

incredible extemporaneous lectures, the broad range of associations,

are becoming a thing of the past as his thinking and speaking slow

down.

I love Andrew so, I think to myself, and I don’t know how I’ll live

without him, but if he dies, the one person I’ll want first— have always assumed will be there to get me through it all, logistically and

emotionally— is my brother. But now he’ll be— Ellen. Could I face a

memorial service for Andrew with everyone gawking at my “sister”?

Could I face friends coming over, having to make introductions? In

such an emergency, who would I lean on? My anxiety on this score is

isolating and shameful, but it turns out Eleanor is also suffering along these lines. Her mother, ailing and at home with caregivers, will probably die in the next year or so. Chevey is very close to Mrs. W, almost a surrogate son. But, unable to confess, Eleanor has simply told her

mother they’ve broken up (shock enough!). Mrs. W is never to know of

Ellen, and Ellen won’t be welcome at the funeral. Eleanor will give out the same story to her sister and friends at church, but she feels uncomfortable skirting the truth. . . . Suppose they ask questions?

I call a friend, the psychoanalyst Ethel Person, the one human be-

ing I’ve been granted permission by Chevey to talk to. Ethel is known

for her referrals— for expertly pairing patients with analysts (she gave me mine back in 1987)— but more important, she’s written about

transsexuals, and has made them something of a subspecialty in her

practice. She takes the news in stride. “Transsexuals are the best, the kindest people I know,” she said, “maybe because they have to learn

compassion the hard way.”

I tell her that Chevey— or John, as Eleanor called him— was hurt

by Eleanor’s refusal to bring her mother in on the secret. “He longs for

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validation,” Ethel says, and spoke of transsexualism as being “a pas-

sion of the soul.” If only I knew what that meant.

I try to get hold of myself, embrace the positive spin. After all, I am losing a brother not to mortality but to sisterhood. And he is gaining

his identity, his “authenticity,” his soul. My instinct— for myself, for Eleanor, for everyone including him— is to think of it as a catastrophe.

Not just for our lives, but for his: how will he, when she, live alone up there on the mountain? Will she be persecuted, shunned, or even in

danger? But he wants it too much for me to think in purely negative

terms.

When we talk on the phone I can hear the excitement in Chevey’s

voice. I know the anxiety is there, but he’s buoyed by the anticipation of moving forward. I ask about his activities and preparations.

“The dilemma was always that on a particular day not far off I’d

become Ellen, but until that time, I had to be Chevey living with Elea-

nor. As Chevey I can’t go around and try on women’s clothes, yet once

I become Ellen I have to have a wardrobe.

Through the recommendation of his endocrinologist, he found

Lisa, a partner in a trendy local salon. He told her his problem (she

was gay as it turned out, and they became friends), and she suggested a woman in Charlottesville who was a clothing designer and had a little

shop there.

That was how Chevey found Janice, and the two of them worked

out a plan. She measured him and assessed his needs, and when he

visited her every week or so, she would have a variety of outfits from

different stores assembled for him. Sneaking into a back room, he

would try them on, buying one or two and discarding the rest, so that

over the course of several months, he gradually accumulated a basic

wardrobe— as well as “lots of excellent advice.”

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“Some of it I already knew from my years of observing women,

studying how they looked and walked, but certain things I didn’t

know, the finer points, like does the shirttail look right in or out, how to tie a sash, things that as a guy you just wouldn’t have any way of

knowing.”

“It was expensive because I had to pay her and buy the clothes,

too. And driving to Charlottesville so often was inconvenient, but I

didn’t want to do it in Richmond; I was trying not to embarrass Elea-

nor. So Janice was a real lifesaver.”

That night I dream that my brother is a beautiful girl, with blond

hair and young skin. I wake up thinking, “I wish!” On the other hand,

if the dream does come true, if Ellen is young and beautiful, will I be jealous? He’s younger than I am, and has always looked extremely

young for his age.

I am happy he’s in such good hands, has done all this to prepare

himself. And yet, I’m ashamed to admit, it makes me cringe. I begin

collecting transgender stories, just in case Chevey’s ban against writing is lifted, and I look at these stories and say “Why must they?” As I clip and file, I also avert my eyes, put off reading. Some religious funda-mentalist in me arises, demanding, Can’t they just accept the bodies

God gave them? Even as I am coming to understand a little of the na-

ture of the urge, how overpowering it is, how little a
choice
— I want to keep my brother. It’s fine, even a bit titillating, for other people’s children or siblings or parents or friends to change sex, but this was too

close to home. I longed, atavistically, for the manly ideal, the “oak

tree” male.

There is also resentment: who does he, or rather
she
, think she is?

Claiming womanhood without having had to go through the trials and

travails (menopause, childbirth, general and especially body insecu-

rity). Trying to have it both ways. (Of course, trying to pass as a woman

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at sixty, she can hardly be said to have escaped body insecurity!) Most of all, why would a man give up his perks, not to mention the Big Ka-huna, to become a woman at precisely the age when women are be-

coming invisible crones? And the reassessment: How will this recast

our childhood? How will it undermine my images of family? Will

memories have to be altered to accommodate the brother— or should

I say “sister”— I never knew?

And then, of course— how can one avoid it— what will people