None of the Above (15 page)

When I first met the therapist Dr. Cheng had recommended, I was struck by how put-together she was. I had expected someone with frizzled hair and frumpy clothes; Dr. LaForte reminded me more of Martha Stewart, her shirt so perfectly ironed it looked like it had come fresh off the rack, the smile on her face professional and photogenic, but not exactly warm.

“Hello,” she said, shaking my hand. “I'm Susan LaForte. So very nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” I said. Her office was on the sunny side of the street and looked out into a backyard garden. She had a small desk facing the window, three wooden chairs with armrests, and—I almost laughed out loud at the cliché—a couch with an embroidered throw pillow.

I sat on the couch and clutched the pillow against my chest.

Dr. LaForte pulled over a wooden chair and sat across
from me. She was tall, and the sharp angles of her body made her seem stiff rather than sleek.

“So, what would you like me to call you?” she asked.

The smile drained off my face. I felt the muscles in my shoulders clench. A defensive posture. “What do you mean?” My name was Kristin Lattimer. Not Kristopher. Didn't she understand that I was a girl?

“Oh, sometimes my clients are very picky about their nicknames. Do you prefer Kristin, or Krissy? Or should I just call you Miss Lattimer?”

I forced my shoulder muscles to relax. “Kristin is fine, Dr. LaForte. Krissy, too.”

“All right, Kristin. Feel free to call me Susan if you so desire. Now that we've introduced ourselves, how may I help you today?”

God, I was so sick of open-ended questions. “Did Dr. Cheng not tell you why I was coming?”

“She gave me some of the medical details, yes, but I'm more interested in hearing from you what you hope to gain from therapy.”

I shrugged. What did people normally want from therapy? “To figure things out,” I said. “So I can be happy again.” Or, at least, feel less crappy.

“Both very valid goals. Can you tell me a bit about what's making you unhappy?”

“I don't even know where to start.”

“How about whatever comes to mind?”

For several moments I didn't speak. I stared at the intricate pattern embroidered on the pillow I clutched. It looked hand-stitched—there were slightly crooked stitches here and there—and I wondered idly how many hours its maker had spent hunched over it with a needle and thread.

“Did you make this?” I asked Dr. LaForte, holding up the pillow.

She didn't seem surprised by my question, but I guess therapists are trained that way. “Not me. A very dear friend gave it to me as a wedding gift. When she passed away a few years ago I brought it here to my office to remind me of her.”

Had she brought the pillow in as a conversation starter? Was anything in a therapist's office ever put there without deliberation? A little voice in my head told me not to trust her, that she would use the information to . . . do what? What could she possibly do to me that would make things worse?

Then I looked up, met Dr. LaForte's gaze. Her eyes were green, like my mother's.

I told her about Homecoming. How it led to one doctor, and then more doctors. Then I told her about Vee and Sam, and before I realized it I'd told her about my locker and Facebook, too. Two things I didn't tell her about: Nearly stepping in front of the SUV. Making out with Josh. Before I knew it, half an hour had passed. I hadn't known that my story took so long to tell.

“That must have been so hard for you,” Dr. LaForte said
when I was done. “To have your whole world turned upside down.”

It was such an understatement that I didn't bother to answer.

“What concerns you the most about your intersex diagnosis?”

“It's hard to pick just one thing. But . . .”
Stay Away
. “I hate it that people don't understand what intersex is. That they think that I'm some sort of transsexual,” I blurted. Even as I said it out loud, I realized how petulant and closed-minded I must sound.

“I mean, it's not like there's anything wrong with being a transsexual . . . ,” I backpedaled, then sighed. Who was I kidding? “I know that getting upset about their calling me a tranny makes me just as judgmental as the people making fun of me. But it hurts anyway. It's so ignorant.”

“Of course it is,” Dr. LaForte said. “There are whole swaths of the country that don't understand what it means to be transgender, let alone know what intersex is. So it's not surprising that your classmates' transphobia came out.”

“Their trans what?”

“Transphobia. Fear and hostility toward transgender people. And anyone who doesn't fit into the typical gender binary, really.”

Dr. LaForte shifted in her chair, and leaned in closer to me. “So, Kristin, tell me about your support system. Have you
talked to anyone about what you're going through?”

I shook my head.

“May I ask why?”

“I just didn't think anyone would understand.”

There was silence. Dr. LaForte's office was in such a quiet part of town that I could hear the ticking of the old-fashioned cuckoo clock on the wall.

Finally she spoke. “It's hard feeling different, Kristin. I know it's a cliché, but only you could ever truly understand what you're going through. At the same time, there are people who care about you. And you are truly not alone. Have you tried reaching out to any other people with your condition?”

“Once.”

“I'm so glad. Because no one is going to relate to you better than someone who has lived through your diagnosis.”

I liked that she used the phrase
lived through
. As if AIS was some sort of passing storm. I took a deep breath, and let it out through pursed lips. “So, what's the verdict?”

“Excuse me?”

“Am I crazy?”

Dr. LaForte smiled. A real one this time, with a touch of mischief. “We're all crazy, Kristin. There's no such thing as normal. That said, I do think you may be depressed.”

When she said it, I felt kind of stupid that I hadn't realized it before. Suddenly, I was relieved, because they could treat depression. I looked up at Dr. LaForte hopefully. “Does that
mean I have to go on Prozac or something?”

“It's certainly an option, and it's a discussion that you should have with Dr. Cheng or your primary doctor, but I think that you'll do well with therapy. For now, we can focus on the lifestyle changes you can make to improve your mood. Healthy eating and exercise, for example. I can give you literature with some of the basics.”

As Dr. LaForte walked to her filing cabinet to rustle up a handout, I took a deep breath and looked out into the next-door garden. There were still some tomato cages standing up in broken rows, protecting nothing but air. An empty birdbath.

We sat quietly for a little while as I read the brochure she gave me, until Dr. LaForte glanced at the clock. “Well, our time is almost up,” she said. “For our next session, I have some homework for you. First, I really encourage you to contact the support group again. You won't regret it, truly. Second, I want you to ask yourself: Who are you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Like what I want to be known for? Or what I identify myself as? Or are you talking about what my hopes and dreams are, or something like that?”

“I don't know,” Dr. LaForte said, smiling. “All of the above.”

When I straggled into the kitchen for breakfast the next morning, my dad surprised me with freshly made blueberry whole wheat pancakes. Back when she was alive, my mom spent most Sunday mornings volunteering at some church event or another, so brunch was always Dad's chance to shine. He'd make pancakes from scratch and top them with fresh fruit or stuff them with ricotta. He became the king of the perfect crepe flip. And his omelets were works of art.

After Mom died, we didn't need to cook for months—Aunt Carla and the other members of Mom's women's group saw to that. But even after we'd worked through all the casseroles, and thawed the last frozen lasagna, Dad's brunches never came back. I missed that Mr. Mom part of my dad, which was a side of him that few people saw.

I pulled the pancakes out of the oven, where he'd put them to keep them warm. “Thanks, Dad. But you didn't have to do that. Cereal's fine.”

“Oh, it's Thanksgiving week, so I just wanted to do something special for my girl.”

The roughness of his voice made me suspicious. After my therapy session, I'd told my dad about Dr. LaForte's theory that I was depressed and he'd jumped on the “eat healthy and exercise” bandwagon.

My suspicion grew when my dad said a little too casually, “It's a beautiful day. Why don't we go for a run together?”

I took a bite of a pancake, and a blueberry exploded in my mouth. “Are you sure?” I wasn't even certain my dad owned a pair of sneakers, but he nodded. “Okay, but you'll have to tell me if I'm going too fast,” I said, slurping down a glass of orange juice. If my dad thought that I wouldn't back down from a challenge, he was right.

The moment we stepped outside into the crisp, sunny November air, my heart beat faster in anticipation of the run. “Where do you want to go?” I asked, jogging in place as my dad stretched.

“Let's just stay around here.”

I frowned. “Can't we go to the park?” I could see some of our neighbors already out raking leaves or walking their dogs. The elliptical sounded good right now, all private in our basement.

“I don't want to cut through the meadow. It'll be all wet from the dew. Come on.” He started running. His stance was so bad I almost laughed. He held his wrists super loose and they flopped around like clappers.

“Dad! You run like a girl!” I shouted after him, because it had always been a point of pride for me that I didn't, a fact that made me want to both laugh and cry.

Bracing myself for the stares, I started to run, and caught up with my dad in just a few strides. I kept my eyes on the pavement a few feet ahead, focusing on my breathing. Even though my hands wanted to clench into fists, I willed them to relax. Coach Auerbach would've been proud of my karate chops.

I saw one of our neighbor's kids riding his bike toward us, and I sprinted out ahead of my father and crossed the street. But before we reached the end of the block, old Mr. Mullen came out dragging his garbage can. “Ahoy, Lattimers!” He waved, not fazed at all. He probably hadn't heard the news.

There were four more blocks before the main intersection, and I avoided the one with the most kids. Along my alternate route, though, a few boys were playing street hockey with a ratty orange tennis ball. They took up the entire street, and both sidewalks. I slowed down and was about to turn back when my father puffed up from behind me and kept on straight.

I kept my eyes on the pavement.

“Hey, Krissy!” one of the boys shouted. It was Evan Constantino. I'd been his camp counselor a few summers ago. Taught him how to swim. He raised his hockey stick in the air in greeting. His friends looked at me for a second and decided that I wasn't interesting enough and went back to bickering about a penalty shot.

I was too flustered to do anything but wave back.

After a mile, I entered the zone. My teammates used to call me the Junkie because I got my runner's high really early during a run. You know that old cliché, it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey? That's what it was like with me and running. My body loved action. It craved it.

Halfway through the run, I felt the muscles in my face start to feel funny. They stung, almost. It wasn't until we ran past the evergreens fencing Mrs. Nicholson's yard that I figured out what the sensation was.

I was smiling.

The only thing better was to run with my teammates, maybe doing a single-line pursuit where we'd run in a column and have the person at the end sprint to the front, or Coach Auerbach's crazy fruitcake drill where we'd pass a watermelon back and forth while we were running. We'd get to eat the watermelon at the end of practice.

I wondered if Coach Auerbach knew that the NCAA
allowed girls with AIS to compete. Would she let me back on the team, at least to practice, if I showed her my father's research?

When we got back home, my dad was red-faced and hunched over, but I was barely breathing heavily. I felt taller. Looser. After showering I even put on jeans instead of slipping into pajamas again.

I opened my laptop to try to find the NCAA site my dad had told me about. I copied the paragraph I needed and pasted it into a new email to Coach Auerbach:

A female recognized in law should be eligible to compete in female competitions if she has an androgen resistance such that she derives no competitive advantage from such levels.

But as I was about to hit Send, I remembered Rashonda's look when she walked in on me crying in Coach's office. Rashonda, who had been my Little Sister. Whose hair I had decorated with barrettes in our school colors before each meet.

I thought about how all the other girls would look at me if I ever went back. Would they think that I was a cheat? Even if it was technically within the rules, would I ever win a race again without someone grumbling about my being a man?

I deleted the message, and went back to my browser to find the one page my dad had bookmarked that made me feel less alone: a list on the support-group home page with links to famous people with AIS. One of them was María José Martínez-Patiño, a Spanish national champion. She was a hurdler like me. Back in the old days, they used to do sex tests on female athletes, because of countries that were so crazy about the Olympics that they'd cheat by sending men to compete in women's events. Women had had to get official Certificates of Femininity.

María had failed her sex test. She had AIS, like me. And people had outed her, like me:

I was expelled from our athletes' residence, my sports scholarship was revoked, and my running times were erased from my country's athletics records. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I lost friends, my fiancé, hope, and energy.

I tried to tell myself that things were different now. They didn't make girl athletes parade naked in front of doctors anymore. The NCAA had rules specifically about AIS. María's and Caster Semenya's cases had led to increased awareness; everything was different.

Except the part about losing friends. The rules may have changed, but people were still afraid of the Other.

How naive I had been to tell Vee. How desperate, how stupid.

Only now, after the damage had been done, did I see the answer staring me in the face.

I needed Another Other.