"Incriminating," Excerpt II

Questions of identity.

I’m still puttering away on the new QUILTBAG, giving some extra attention to “Incriminating,” the story based loosely on Kimberly Zeiselman’s intersex experience. I’ve discussed the unusual writing rule guiding the project here.

In this drafted passage, Izzie deals with a key revelation that leaves her feeling more like a “fake” woman than ever. :

"Isabelle, we found something interesting in your records. From the surgery you had when you were sixteen."

My heart dances for a small, anxious interlude. I remember the recovery as interminable, the shame as indescribable. Most of all, I remember the fear: that I would always be incomplete, never be the woman I was supposed to become.

"They removed some tissue," he is saying, "which pathology identified as gonadal. Specifically, testicular."

I stare at Gil. His words are incomprehensible. They bounce around my skull like loose change, refusing to settle into any kind of identifiable currency.

"You have a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. AIS. It's why you've never produced any in vivo eggs, why your hormone levels are what they are. In essence, Isabelle, you’re genetically male. It says this was explained to you and your parents in detail. Is this your signature?"

It is. But I have no recollection of signing this document. Is this another gap in my memory? Or is it just that the experience was so overwhelming, so immeasurably intimidating, that my teenage self couldn’t even interpret it all?

Gil’s discussion of the implications dissolves into a background hum. In half an hour, I’m walking to my car in a daze, sitting in the driver's seat and gripping the wheel as if it can anchor me into this new, irreal reality.

Genetically male. The phrase is detached, as if it’s a diagnosis from a biology text. Yet it carries the weight of an injunction, a revelation that topples the fragile edifice of my identity.

In essence. What is the essence of a person? Of a woman? These are questions I grappled with in college, in late-night bull sessions with philosophy majors. We dissected the id like prospectors drilling for iron ore, cutting through existential strata to get into the interbedded treasures of the thing. But I’m no longer in an academic institution, and the questions are no longer intellectual.

I think of my parents, of how they interacted with me just after my operation. We were in the living room: I was installed on a throne of pillows, inebriated on painkillers. Tina seemed to be in awe; Dad had turned inward; Mom was in tears. Did they know this, too? That the daughter who was their issue was not a daughter at all, but a son in disguise?

The anger comes in slowly, like a winter sunrise, first a sullen glow inching up and then a full, inflamed fury. How could they have kept this from me? How could the doctors deny it? I was sixteen, I was an adult—or so I believed.

I slam the steering wheel with the flat of my palm. I repeat the impact and then collapse against the seat, spent. My ire has nowhere to go, no one to land on. I’m furious and powerless, a child in a snit at the gods.

The drive home was slow, as if the world had been dipped in molasses. I think about the adoption agency, about the application that now seems like an inhumane joke. Could we provide a stable, loving home? How can I offer anything but instability when my own foundation is crumbling? How can I give love when I no longer know who—what—I am?

Rick is still at work when I get back to the apartment. I open a bottle of IPA, then put it back in the fridge after a single, guilty sip. The pain in my abdomen is returning, sharper now, more insistent. I take one of the prescription tablets Gil has given me and lie on the couch, staring at the ceiling fan as it wobbles through its lazy orbit.

The testicles were removed, but in my mind, their ghostly presence mocks me. I imagine them in a jar, floating in formaldehyde, a boy’s future preserved against his will. Had I known, I might have claimed them, not as a mother claims a child, but in the same tender spirit.

Sleep takes me in jagged, uneven chunks. I dream of a Thanksgiving dinner of ivory phalli and ingestible testicles.

When I wake, Rick is home. He stands in the doorway, loosening his tie, cautious concern etched into his face.

"Izzie," he says. "Are you okay?"

I sit up slowly, the room tilting on its axis. The painkillers have taken the edge off more than I realized.

"They found something," I say. "In my records."

Rick comes over and sits next to me, not touching but in close enough proximity that I can feel the heat of his body. He waits.

I tell him everything. Or rather, I let the words tell him, let them issue from my mouth with a life of their own. He listens in silence, with no desire to interrupt.

"So," he says when I finish. "What does this mean? What do we do?"

I have no answer. I’m grateful even now that he’s framed it in those terms—in terms of we, not of he and I. I’d like to return that gesture, but…

"I don't know," I said. "I just don't know."

Rick stands and walks into the kitchen, his hand in his hair. He pours himself a whiskey on ice, then looks at me and holds up the bottle, raising an eyebrow. I nod, and he pours another.

He brings the glass over and hands it to me. The chill of the ice seeps into my fingers, a playful nip from tiny incisors. I take a deep inhalation of the fumes and let them fill my lungs, my head, my whole inner self.

"We'll figure it out," Rick said. "One thing at a time. It’ll work itself out."

I sip the whiskey, letting it burn its incisive clarity into my throat. Rick interlaces his fingers with mine, then bends to kiss the top of my head. I close my eyes and lean into him, into the momentary comfort of his touch.

For now, it’ll have to be enough.