“Adam
Birch? I ain’t seen you since you
were in the ninth grade! You must
be graduated by now. That right?”
Mrs. Jameson asked, walking up to the glass counter of the butcher’s shop.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Jameson. Yeah, two years ago.” Adam added quietly, “First in my class.”
“I always knew you’d do well! You got a good head on your
shoulders. You goin’ to school? A smart boy like you oughta get himself
a college education.”
“No, ma’am. Can I help you
pick anything out today? We got a
real nice special on this smoked turkey and we—“
“Last I remember, you had a pretty little
girlfriend. What was her name?” She
struggled to remember, Adam offering no help. Finally, it came to her, “Eva Jane! Eva Jane Wilson. That was it. Whatever happened to little Eva Jane? You were absolutely head over heels for
her.”
“I never knew a girl named Eva Jane, ma’am,”
Adam replied coolly as he bent down to reposition a large ham in the
display.
“What do you mean you didn’t know her? I was sure you two would have tied the
knot by now!” the old woman cried, obviously befuddled.
“I mean just what I said, ma’am. I do not know any girl by the name of
Eva Jane, and as of now, it doesn’t seem that marriage is for me.”
“I remember driving you to her dance recital when
your mama wouldn’t take you. You
had the look of a man in love about you; you couldn’t have been but fourteen,” she
recalled, a bit defensive of her memory.
“Look, Mrs. Jameson, it’s real nice seeing you
again, and I really appreciate you stopping by, but I’m afraid I’m gonna have
to go on in the back now and check on some tenderloin we just got in.” And with that he vanished behind a
metal door in the back of the shop.
***
When Adam Birch was fifteen years old, his
father went to the store for cigarettes and never came back. The day that Adam’s father disappeared
was a sad one, but the day that Eva Jane Wilson turned him down hurt him much
worse. They were both fourteen
when they met in Mrs. Hutchinson’s biology class. It was December.
Mrs. Hutchinson explained how Eva Jane’s family had just moved to
Littleton from Houston, and she would be joining their class. She was tall for her age and very thin,
with a sly smile and hair the color of vanilla icing. She always dressed in pink; on this specific occasion she
wore a rose-colored sweater and matching ribbon in her hair.
After taking a seat at the desk behind Adam,
Eva Jane tapped on his shoulder and whispered, “What’s your name?”
“I-it’s
Ad-Adam.” An arrogant smile spread over her glossy bubble-gum lips when he
stuttered.
It took him two weeks to work up the courage to speak to her again after that. It was a simple plan. He was just going to turn to her and say, “Eva Jane, I would like to take you to the movies on Friday.” But when he turned around he caught the gaze of her green eyes, and all that he could get out was “Uh, um, c-can I borrow a pencil?”
It took him two weeks to work up the courage to speak to her again after that. It was a simple plan. He was just going to turn to her and say, “Eva Jane, I would like to take you to the movies on Friday.” But when he turned around he caught the gaze of her green eyes, and all that he could get out was “Uh, um, c-can I borrow a pencil?”
“But you have a pencil in your hand,” she
responded, giggling.
After several more of these failed attempts at
talking to Eva Jane, Adam became frustrated. By February, he was determined to tell her how he felt, even
if it meant risking humiliation. Walking
to Mrs. Hutchinson’s class on Valentine’s Day, Adam found Eva Jane and
nervously shoved a bouquet of pink daisies in her direction.
“Oh, Adam, these are beautiful. And they’re my favorite color. Thank you so much.” She looked at the
flowers with remorse and then said the words that would give Adam his first
heartbreak. “But I can’t accept them.
I have a boyfriend back in Houston. I’m really sorry.”
She tried to hand the flowers back to Adam, but he
wouldn’t take them. “Keep
them. They’re yours.” He hoped
that some over-sized senior would come by and shove him into a locker so that
he wouldn’t have to face the rest of the day.
After the rejection, Adam spent biology class trying
to will his body to disintegrate one cell at a time and disappear slowly into
the cracks in the floor. It wasn’t until a gut-wrenching week later that Eva
Jane slipped him the life-altering note after biology saying that she had broken
up with the boy from Houston.
***
“Don’t act like this is my fault, Eva Jane,”
Adam yelled as his wife slammed the door to the bathroom and locked herself
in. “Evie! Please don’t do
this. Not again. Please open the
door, honey.”
“I told you it’d be negative, Adam. I told you, and you made me take it,
anyway. I just don’t understand
why you wouldn’t believe me,” she said through broken sobs. “I can’t do this anymore, Adam, I just
can’t. I’m going back to my
parents’ house.” She burst through
the bathroom door, and Adam gently caught her arm. She turned toward him, her eyes as pink as her sundress, and
stared bitterly into his face as if she were ready to spit in it.
“Evie, please don’t leave. This isn’t my fault, baby. Maybe you should have Dr. McGill check
you out just to make sure you’re okay. Maybe you should just go see,” Adam
said, trying hard not to cry as he caught her seething expression.
“There’s nothing wrong with me, goddamnit!” she
wailed, breaking away from his grasp and storming down the hall. “Why do we need kids now, anyway? We have our whole lives ahead of us to
have kids! Why can’t now just be about us?”
“Is it so hard to believe that there’s a chance
you’re not perfect, Eva Jane?” Adam cried after her. He took a deep breath, realizing that he was losing his temper. “If you care about the future of this
family, you’ll go to the doctor.
You’ll do it for us.”
Eva Jane turned back to her husband, eyes full
of tears, and said, “I’m sorry, baby.
I’ll go. You know how bad I
want us to have a baby. I don’t
know why it’s so hard for us.”
Adam hugged her and let her sob into the sleeve
of his sweatshirt as he whispered, “It’ll be okay, honey. We’ll be okay.”
***
After his encounter with Mrs. Jameson, Adam
closed up shop early and began walking home. He hoped his mama wouldn’t find out, if she did, he would
never heard the end of it, but Adam had too much on his mind to continue
working. When he got home, he
flopped down on his bed. For a
second, he considered turning on the T.V. but instead resolved to lay in silence. The image of Mrs. Jameson’s wrinkled
face, asking, “What happened to little Eva Jane?” haunted him. Everyone in Littleton had heard about
Eva Jane leaving, and, of course, they had all heard about it when the state of
Texas declared that Adam’s marriage to her was not legal. But still, small town living being what
it was, everyone asked Adam questions about her as if they had no idea that
anything had ever gone wrong.
Adam was never fond of social situations,
especially when people he barely knew pried into his personal life just for a
bit of town gossip. Eva Jane never
had a problem with these kinds of things.
She could pirouette around the most difficult personal questions with the
same grace that she showed off in her ballet recitals. Adam remembered the rumor going around senior
year that Eva Jane was carrying his child.
One day in the lunchroom, Sheena Darby, a mousy
junior with braces came over to their table. “Eva Jane, you were picked as the ‘Star of the Week’ for
this week, so I was just wondering if it would be okay if I interviewed you for
the ‘Star of the Week’ section in the Blue
and Gold?” she asked, trying to sound professional. Eva Jane motioned for Sheena to sit
down while biting into an apple. Sheena
asked a lot of routine questions:
favorite class, favorite teacher, hobbies, favorite band. The interview was going well until
Sheena slipped in what she thought was a cute joke, “And I guess I have to ask
about your views on parenthood.”
Unfazed, Eva Jane responded, “My parents are great.”
“Oh, no, I was kind of talking about how you feel
about becoming a parent yourself?”
“Well, after I finish high school, I might like to
settle down and have a few kids, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Sheena.” Eva Jane started giggling to herself, “Why?
Do you need some advice? Are you planning on popping out a
couple of babies by this time next year?
Are you and Joey gonna start a family now that he’s making the big bucks
up at McDonald’s?” Sheena walked away, her cheeks a telling shade of scarlet.
***
Eva Jane and Adam were still in bed when the
phone call came. Neither had any
intentions of getting up to answer it.
Adam’s mother made a habit of calling often and early in the
morning. Knowing that she had a
hard time being alone, the couple tolerated her calls but didn’t always answer
them.
“Baby, what if it’s the doctor? Maybe you should answer it,” Adam
suggested, nudging his wife.
“You answer it,” she said, groggily putting her
pillow over her head to save her ears from the incessant ringing.
It was nearly a week after Eva Jane had been to
the doctor, and she hadn’t mentioned anything to her husband about the outcome
of her appointment. He was starting
to suspect that she was infertile, but if this was the case, he thought it best
to let her break it to him in her own time rather than bringing it up. However, Adam was forced to hear the
news of Eva Jane’s infertility long before she intended for him to, once he
picked up the phone.
“Hello?” he said into the receiver, trying to
suppress a yawn.
“Adam, honey? It’s me.” He
was somewhat disappointed at the unmistakable drawl of his mother in his ear.
“Good morning, Mama. What d’ya need?”
“Well, sugar, I was just wondering why you been
keepin’ secrets from your Mama.”
“What secrets, Mama?” Adam asked through a
yawn.
“Don’t you play stupid with me, boy. A very close friend of mine from my
Thursday prayer group, just so happens to be the receptionist up at Dr. McGill’s
office, and she told me that Miss Eva Jane Birch came up and paid a visit to
the doctor last week and left the office crying. Do you wanna explain to me why she would leave the doctor
crying?”
Adam looks in Eva Jane’s direction and then
said quietly as he got up and went into the other room, “Mama, I swear, I don’t
know anything about that. Whatever
happened, she must be real upset about it. She hasn’t even told me yet.”
“Well, in my day, families didn’t keep secrets
from each other! Especially—“
He started getting defensive. “Mama, shush! Eva Jane will tell us about it when she’s ready. It’s not your business, anyway”
“Oh really? I think it is my business if my son’s wife isn’t even a
woman.”
“What are you talking about, Mama? Of course she’s a woman.” He laughed at
his mother’s absurdity. “I think I would have noticed by now if she wasn’t.”
“No, Adam. Dr. McGill says she’s not. There’s something not right about her. Hell, the whole thing doesn’t even
sound Christian to me. I’m sorry
to be the one to break it to you, hun.
Look, the girls from book club are here, now, I’m going to have to call
you back.” And then just a dial
tone was left in Adam’s ear.
***
Even now, lying on the bed alone, Adam could
not wrap his head around his lover’s supposed sex. He had looked at least a thousand times at the pamphlets and
print-outs that the doctor had given Eva Jane and had made countless trips to
the library to research her genetic disorder. He picked a familiar pamphlet off of the nightstand and
looked over it. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS): If
you or your loved one is afflicted by AIS, understanding the disorder is an
important part of dealing with it.
A person with AIS has the genetic makeup of a male, but his body is
resistant to male hormones. As a
result, the person will have most physical traits of a female, including
breasts and a vagina, but will be infertile and may possess undescended testes
in the abdomen or other abnormal places within the body. Sometimes these develop into hernias…
Adam shivered picturing testes in Eva Jane’s abdomen, where they’d hoped a baby
would grow. He didn’t understand
how it was possible for the woman that he loved to be considered male. Adam wondered how long his wife had
known that something was amiss with her body and how long she had chosen not to
tell him.
Regardless, Eva Jane was the most beautiful
woman he had ever known. He could
still picture her at that ballet recital that Mrs. Jameson had mentioned. Adam was not at all interested in
ballet, but when she came out on stage in her pink leotard, he knew he wouldn’t
be able to look away from her for a second. When she took her bow, he recognized the same sly smile
spreading over her face as the first time they’d met.
Eva Jane went straight to Angelina’s Dance
Studio every day after school, and she never came home until after dark. After high school, she worked there
full-time giving ballet classes and still practiced on her own when she
could. Dancing kept her very
thin. She was always conscious of
what she ate, but she danced so much that it almost didn’t matter. Adam had thought at first that perhaps
this was the reason that she couldn’t get pregnant. He was never really clear as to whether or not she was able
to menstruate. Adam had heard, “Not
tonight, baby,” enough times to chalk up at least a few of them to monthly
female biology, though it had never been explicitly mentioned. Adam thought hard and remembered how
things were before she left. She
kept a box of sanitary napkins under the sink in the bathroom, but they seemed
to remain untouched. He wanted to
believe that she didn’t know, but it seemed impossible. Even if Eva Jane’s secret had cost them
their marriage and their pride, there was still part of Adam that wanted her to
come back.
***
Within two weeks of the phone call from Adam’s
mother, all of Littleton knew about Eva Jane’s disorder. Most people didn’t know anything about
AIS and took the gossip to mean that she was hiding a penis under her
skirt. The fact that her genetic
coding said that she was male was enough for most people to give her dirty
looks when she went out in public.
Parents started forcing their daughters to withdraw from her dance
classes. Eva Jane and Adam’s house
became the target of acts of vandalism.
One morning, Adam went out to get the mail, only to find that the
mailbox had been smashed in. A few
weeks later, someone egged their house.
Adam finally went to the sheriff when someone spray-painted “FREAKS” on
their front door in red. Unfortunately,
the police didn’t provide the help that the Birches had hoped.
“Mr. Adam Birch? It’s a lucky thing that you came in here. I was gonna have to track you down
myself.” Adam looked slightly confused as the sheriff extended his hand for
Adam to shake. “I’m Sheriff Buck
Stevens. I don’t know that we’ve
officially met.”
“Good to meet you, sir. I’m actually here about some vandalism
on my property. In the past few
weeks there’ve been quite a few instances—“
“We’ll get to that in a minute, Mr. Birch, but
first, I need to let you know about something that has been brought to my
attention as Sheriff.” Adam
nodded. “Well, back in ’99 down in
San Antonio there was a case where a man had a sex-change operation.” He
stumbled with pronouns before continuing, “She…It…He? He married a man just outside of San
Antonio. Man died, and the ‘wife’
tried to file a claim against the doctor who has treated her ‘husband.’” The Sheriff paused for a second,
searching for the correct way to phrase the next part of his story. “He, the man who had the sex-change
operation, lost the case because the court ruled that in the state of Texas ain’t
legal for a person with male DNA to marry another person with male DNA. Doesn’t matter what their…you know…looks
like.”
“I think I can guess where you’re headed with
this, Sheriff.” Adam sighed.
“Well, some concerned citizens of Littleton
have brought your wife, Miss—would she be a ‘miss’?” he mused, half to himself.
“Of course she’s a Miss!” Adam snapped.
“Well, like I was saying, Eva Jane Wilson’s
disorder has been brought to my attention, Mr. Birch, and I’m sorry to have to
tell you this, but the state of Texas ain’t going to legally recognize your
marriage.”
“Me and Eva Jane have been together for years, and
now you’re just gonna tell me our marriage doesn’t count?” He tried not to yell
but found it difficult to restrain himself.
“Well, Sir, I’m sorry. Y’all can keep living together if you want to, but your
marriage isn’t gonna be recognized.
It’s something to keep in mind while you’re doing your taxes, I guess.” With that, Adam stormed out of the
Sheriff’s office.
***
“We’ll move. We’ll just move somewhere else. Louisiana’s not too far away…right? I have family in Oklahoma. What about Florida? I always wanted to live on the
beach. We could live right on the
beach, baby. It’ll be okay, right,
baby? Right?” she said, failing to
hold back tears.
“Evie, you know I can’t leave Littleton. My pa’s shop is here. Mama will lose it if I don’t stay and
help out. And what would I do for
work? I been here my whole life.”
“Adam, I been in Texas my whole life, too, but
this marriage matters more to me than that.”
“Baby, I don’t care if the state says that we’re
married. I just care about
you. I love you more than
anything, and they’re not taking you away from me. We’ll just keep on living here together, and everything will
be alright,” Adam said as he held her.
“No, nothing is right, Adam. I don’t even know who I am. I’m not married! Half the town thinks I’m a freak! Maybe I am a freak. I’m not even a woman! I have no idea who the hell I am
anymore!” she cried hysterically.
“You’re my Evie.”
“That’s not enough, Adam. I’m nothing! I’m no one!”
All he could do was let her collapse into his
arms as she continued to sob.
***
Adam rolled over in the lonely bed that he had
once shared with his wife, wishing that he’d meet her glowing green eyes as he
turned, but instead he just met the gaze of his digital clock. It was just past two in the
morning. Adam thought about all of
the places that Eva Jane could have run to. She had mentioned family in Oklahoma, but Adam doubted that
she would have chosen a place where people knew her. He tried picturing her on a beach in a pink bathing suit,
smiling that familiar smile, but he couldn’t shake the thought that she could
just as easily be at the bottom of a lake somewhere. He tried to picture her laughing and collecting shells or
building a sand castle. Once his
thoughts became too much for him, Adam shuffled through the drawer of his
nightstand for the Tylenol P.M., took four capsules, and got back in bed.
***
Adam awoke to the sound of his telephone
ringing. After looking at the
clock, he realized that it could only be his mother calling to complain at him
for being four hours late to work.
He elected not to answer it.
Instead, he grabbed his duffel bag out of the closet and started
throwing clothes inside. Adam
grabbed his toothbrush and a few other essentials and tossed them in the
bag. Before zipping it, he remembered
the wedding picture on his dresser and placed it in the duffel bag, as
well. He locked up the house and
put his bag in his truck. Taking a
deep breath, he climbed inside. He
didn’t quite know how to get to Florida or how many beaches he was going to
have to comb looking for his wife, but it didn’t matter. The hope that he was somehow closer to
falling asleep next to her again would be enough to lull him to sleep every
night and to pull him out of bed every morning.
As Adam started his truck, he realized that there
was something that he needed to do before he left town. He looked around for a pen and some paper,
but had to settle for an old paper grocery bag and a Sharpie. He wrote, “Thank you for reminding me
what matters.” He drove about six
miles down the gravel road and placed the bag in Mrs. Jameson’s mailbox.
Adam bought a map at a gas station twenty miles
outside of Littleton, fully aware that the journey ahead would be a long
one. As he began to make his way
out of Texas, he realized that whether or not he found Eva Jane, Littleton wasn’t
where he belonged anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Don't be afraid to ask.