American Girls (23 page)

I asked Janie how her experience with cyberbullying had affected her.

“Well, I couldn't trust anybody anymore,” she said in her measured tone. “It changed how I acted toward people. I wasn't as friendly as I used to be. I didn't care if I had friends. It just ruined everything, ruined all my friendships. I lost basically everybody—even friends I've known since I was one year old. I lost even my best friend.”

Her mother, Betty, had been just sitting listening, letting Janie talk, but now she said quietly, “I think Janie is being very calm in how she tells you this. Her reaction was actually much bigger than she's letting on. She would be strong at school and then come home and curl up on the bed and cry for hours. She didn't want to leave the house, to do anything, didn't eat a whole lot.

“She would not make eye contact with anyone,” Betty said. “She completely distanced herself from everyone. This is a child who was the star of the field hockey team and can play any sport without fear. But she was rolled up on the bed wanting to be held and reassured. I didn't want to leave her alone because she was so upset.”

Betty showed me pictures of Janie taken at the time; she looked thin and drawn, depressed.

Betty didn't know what to do, she said; and so she did nothing. She'd always thought, even hoped, that Janie's being gay was “just a phase,” and she saw the problems Janie was having with her ex-girlfriend in much the same way.

And for a long time, Betty didn't really know what was happening to Janie on social media because Janie didn't show it to her. Betty couldn't really understand at first why Janie was so upset about it anyway. She didn't see how anyone could get so upset about some silly stuff that was being said on “some online thing.” She only knew that Janie's life was being disrupted and their family life was being disrupted, and it had been going on all year. All through the eighth grade.

“Janie didn't feel like at first I was understanding enough,” Betty said with chagrin.

And then one day Janie sent her this text, which Betty allowed me to see: “This is why kids that get bullied kill thereselves because no one helps them and no one deals with the situation and they make them go be around their bullier that's why they kill thereselves because this is all the people that are supposed to help do…How would you feel mom if I didnt tell anybody about those messages and you found me one day dead and I did kill myself and you looked on my phone and saw those how would you feel!”

After receiving this, Betty sat down and read over some of the correspondence that had gone on between Janie and the other kids. “I was horrified,” she said. “These were things no one should ever hear anyone say about anybody. It wasn't just girls. It was boys and girls. It was kids I have known since they were little babies.”

She went to the school administration, but, she said, “they were resistant to deal with it because it was quote-unquote ‘a relationship' and they didn't want to be involved in that. I let them read the correspondence that had gone back and forth. The resource officer”—meaning the local police officer assigned to the school—“was brought in and his feeling was more should be done than what the school wanted to do. The school wanted it to be our responsibility to take care of it. I went to the school superintendent as well, and he did not want to deal with it. So, schools will say they have a ‘zero tolerance' for bullying, but they really don't want to deal with anything.”

Now that Betty was keyed in to what was happening in Janie's life, she began noticing some things on her own. She started attending the sports practices where Janie still interacted with her ex-girlfriend; they were still on the same field hockey team. And she could see that the father of Janie's ex, who was assistant coaching, “was glaring at Janie. Oh, I called it down when it got out of control.”

There was resentment, Betty said, because “the girls were playing horribly, they weren't working together. It became Janie's fault because she would turn around and cry or the girl would cry.” And then Betty noticed some of the other mothers whispering about
her.
“My parenting was called into question,” she said, tight-lipped.

She said that one of the other coaches at the school took her aside one day and told her she should “really look into what Janie had said” to the other girl online—“which of course I had,” said Betty. “It just outraged me that, no matter what Janie had said or the other girl said, this woman was taking sides in a fight between two students. It just wasn't the comment of a responsible adult.

“They had a graduation ceremony and I witnessed the staring, the glaring, the getting together with hands over mouths”—Betty put her hand over her mouth, as if to whisper behind it—“the commenting as we went by. It was in the school gymnasium. They all sat around us and made comments and snickered. We all clapped for Janie and there were comments made as she went up on the stage.”

Betty decided that Janie could not return to the school. “I couldn't have her there for four more years. I knew she would never be able to become the person she could be. So we changed her school.”

In order to do that, Janie had to move out of her home and go live with her grandmother in a nearby town. She no longer lived with her mother and stepfather. She saw her mother almost every day. Betty said, “It's a lot of driving.”

During all of this, had they ever considered going to the police? I asked. “I made the decision not to contact the police,” Janie said. “I didn't want one mistake that she,” meaning her ex, “had made and everybody else has made to ruin their whole life.”

“She wanted them almost protected,” said Betty. She began to cry.

Janie stared ahead.

“But the good that's come out of all this,” Betty said, wiping her eyes, “is our relationship is one hundred and ten percent stronger than what it was.” She had realized, she said, “you need to be accepting of your child for the way she is. It's not my business what she likes or doesn't like as far as that preference. What matters is she's a bright child. She is a wonderful person.”

I asked Janie what her goal was moving forward.

She said she wanted to join the navy. “I need to get away,” she said. “I just want to help the country and join something bigger than myself.”

Montana was sitting in the makeup chair in the apartment of a man she knew, a makeup artist she'd met at a summer theater program. He was a gay man in his fifties with a companionable way about him; he was black and burly and wore a woolly sweater. His apartment was full of arty knickknacks and his desk strewn with beauty products—eye shadows, lipsticks, foundations, concealers, and brushes. Let's call him Robert.

Montana was telling me about when she first started realizing she was a girl, and how that felt.

“One time we got a new air conditioner and it came in this great big box,” she said. “And my brother put me in it and shut me up and wouldn't let me out. That's kinda how it felt. Like you're stuck in a box.

“And then when I was seven I told my brother, ‘I'm a girl,' and he said he was gonna murder me.”

“When you were seven years old?” Robert said, aghast.

Montana said, “Yeah. My brother always wanted me to play boy games with him, like throw the ball around, and play video games, and I'd say, I don't wanna do that, I'm a girl. And he got really mad and he said, Stop saying you're a girl. If you keep saying you're a girl, then I'm gonna kill you. You shouldn't live.”

Robert made a sympathetic sound. “Gender roles,” he murmured. “
They
don't seem in any danger of dying.”

Montana's head was covered with the end of a nylon stocking and her eyes were closed. Robert was contouring her face. “She's got such nice high cheekbones,” he told me, passing a brush down the side of Montana's nose. “This isn't really that much of a challenge. And those pretty eyes and long lashes.”

Montana said softly, “Thanks.”

It was clear that Robert was just a friend to her, and Montana had told me as much. “He helps me,” she said. “We talk about stuff.” He was the one person she knew who accepted her for who she was.

“See, my family is Puerto Rican and Italian,” Montana went on. “And they're both very macho cultures. Especially uptown. Like downtown, you walk around down here and nobody says nothing to you.”

“Oh, believe me, they
say
things,” Robert said. “You just gotta catch them on the right night, when they've been out to the bars!” He laughed his hearty laugh.

Montana opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Really? They say things to you?” Clearly she thought Robert was invincible.

“Oh, I can relate to the bullying,” Robert said. “Growing up gay in the South in the sixties they didn't even call it ‘bullying.' It was just what you did to gay people because they were
sinners.
” Again he laughed his big laugh, which was beginning to seem like a kind of social ointment he had developed in a world in which he'd had to have many difficult conversations.

“But we've come a long way, we've come a long way,” Robert added, dabbing concealer under Montana's eyes. “Now they're letting us get married. God help us!” He laughed again.

“And now you have people realizing you have to respect the rights of transgender people—respect everybody,” Robert said. He was being encouraging. “I remember Bruce Jenner on the Wheaties box. Who would have thought you'd see him on the cover of
Vanity Fair
looking like Ava Gardner!”

Montana shifted. “I get so judged all the time,” she said hesitantly, “I don't have the right to judge anybody. And I don't
judge
Caitlyn—I think what she did was brave. But, like, I read some of the things online about, like, why did she have to come out dressed like that?”

“Dressed like what?” said Robert.

“Like in her underwear.”

“You slut-shaming?” Robert laughed again.

Montana said, “No, I just think putting a woman in a sexualized outfit is like saying all that matters about her is her sexuality. I don't think being a woman has anything to do with the way you dress—and if anybody should know that it's me.”

“Well, maybe Caitlyn likes dressing like that,” Robert said. “I thought she looked good!”

“Yeah, she looked good,” Montana said. “But she looked like
society's idea
of good. Like that's how a woman should be. She looked like her family looks—like the Kardashians. Was it her choice? Or was it society's choice? Like, why does a girl have to be girlie?”

“Girl,” Robert said, laughing, “you're a feminist.”

“I am a feminist,” Montana said. “I am definitely a feminist. Every girl has to be a feminist, and if she's not, she's against her own kind.”

Robert said, “Mmmm-hmmm.” Now he was applying blush. “But you know,” he said, “I think it's different when it's Caitlyn wearing her unmentionables on the cover of a magazine—she's a grown woman, she can do what she wants; and isn't feminism supposed to be about women doing what they want? I think it's different when it's a sixty-five-year-old woman than when it's some thirteen-year-old girl. We have some girls coming in the store”—Robert worked in retail—“and they are no older than my coffeepot and they are dressed like straight-up Las Vegas showgirls. Now I know
that
sounds like slut-shaming, but I just think about what my grandmother would say. And I wonder what their parents are thinking. And the way they talk to each other! It's like they have no home training whatsoever. They talk like little gangsters.” He laughed again, shaking his head.

“It all goes together,” Montana said. “Society wants to sell them things, so it makes them grow up faster. Sexism serves capitalism.”

Robert said, “Oh, my!”

“And then it treats them like sexual objects so they have no power and they don't have to pay them as much or give them their equal rights,” said Montana. “That's why I can't understand these girls that bully each other on social media, 'cause the society is bullying girls all the time.”

“That's very true,” Robert agreed.

“Like they bully transgender people for wanting to be girls because they look down on girls!” Montana exclaimed, opening her eyes. “It's like the Madonna song, ‘What It Feels Like for a Girl—' ”

“Oh, I knew Madonna was gonna come into this conversation!” Robert said. “At least I hoped!” He laughed.

“It says,
‘For a boy to look like a girl is degrading 'cause you think that being a girl is degrading,' 
” Montana said. It sounded as if she had repeated the lyric over and over again.

“Mmm-hmm,” Robert murmured. “But people weren't degrading Caitlyn Jenner, were they? I thought they were celebrating her.”

“They were celebrating her because she fit into the box!” said Montana, making the shape of a box with her hands and holding the shape tightly in the air. “ 'Cause she got dressed up like Kim Kardashian! It's like, okay, if you can fit in this box, we will let you in!”

“This girl is too much,” Robert said, chuckling, gently applying mascara to Montana's lashes. “Sitting in my makeup chair railing against the establishment.”

Montana laughed.

As he continued doing her eyes, Robert started singing, in his enviable basso profundo:
“ ‘Do you know what it feels like for a girl?…' ”

“You know what I think?” Robert said after a while. “I think you're a very lovely young lady.”

Montana said, “I am?”

Robert had given her a long, silky button-down blouse to wear over her jeans. Now he took the nylon off her head and carefully brushed out her hair. He stood her up and took her over to a full-length mirror.

“Well, what do you think?”

Montana smiled. “I think I look like me.”

Robert put on some Madonna and Montana spent the afternoon chatting with her friend.