Free Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin Page B

that’s one of the guys who attacked my daughter.
I just walked between them and said, “I want to know who attacked my daughter. Be a man and come out.”
    One man was looking down, and I had a feeling it was him. I told him off. I said, “What is it your business that my daughter is who she is? My daughter goes to college. My daughter works. My daughter goes to an internship. My daughter isn’t bothering anybody. Have you ever seen her bother anybody here? Why is this your business?”
    He finally looked up and said, “I was the one.”
    “How dare you! How dare you attack my child! What has she done to you?” And I started criticizing him. I said, “Look at you! Are you jealous of my child? My child as a man
and
as a woman is handsome and beautiful.”
    I think he was a foreigner. I said, “You’re not from here, right? In America people are used to this. There are gays, there are lesbians, there’s transgender. There are all kinds.”
    The other guys said, “Don’t worry, ma’am. From now on, we’re going to have respect for her. We’re going to watch out for her.”
    And yet there’s always one issue or another that can pop up at any moment and spoil the day.
    When Christina got her breast implants, I was relieved because she looked more like a woman. But when I’m in the train with her, I still hear little kids say, “Mom, is that a man or a woman?” I don’t want to hear that. I sometimes have to remind her not to show her Adam’s apple, and that’s so sad. I don’t want to have to remind her to keep her chin down.
    Christina’s very intelligent; she can understand difficult things. But something simple? She can’t do it. I tried to teach Christina how to wash her clothes. I tried to teach her how to cook. “I don’t want to, Mom.” I think she’s a little lazy about things like that. But as for makeup, she teaches me. She’ll do my hair. Being that she’s into fashion, it comes natural.
    I go to her and say, “Christina, how does this look? Should I do this? Should I do that?” And she tells me.
    It’s different having a daughter. The other day I bought dye to color my hair. When I went to look for the dye, it was not there. I said to myself,
I know I’m not going crazy. I know I bought the dye.
Well, guess who took my dye?
    She dyes her hair all the time. I got angry with her. I said, “Baby — I call her
baby
— you can’t be doing this to me. I was getting ready to dye my hair, and you took my dye.” She takes my mousse. Everything is in her room.
    But then she takes off her weave and leaves it on my bed. That part I don’t like about having a daughter. She’s very messy. She wasn’t messy as a boy. You should see her room. No, it’s too embarrassing.

    I took Jonathan’s situation a lot harder than Christina’s because it was new to me. Jonathan’s situation helped me with Christina. Jonathan was only thirteen years old when he came out of the closet. I feel bad to this day that the first words that came out of my mouth were “That’s disgusting!”
    I insulted him so bad. That was a horrible thing to do. I have apologized to him. I hope he knows how sorry I am.
    When Jonathan started making his little gay moves, we had a problem. We went to counseling and we used to argue right there. My issues were he was doing the hand movements and talking like gay people. I said, “You know what? The day before you told me you were gay, you sounded like a normal teenage boy. All of a sudden, one day later, you’re sounding like gay people. You’re moving like gay people. I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want it because you’ll be in danger. You’ll get attacked.”
    He argued with me. “No, this is who I am and this is how I move.” I fought so much with him about that.
    Jonathan was at Mount Saint Michael’s too, but he couldn’t take it. He purposefully failed his classes to get thrown out. So I moved him to a school for gay, lesbian, and transgender