My Transgender Thanksgiving

by Donna Schoenkopf

I am on Highway 59, lost again.

This is the third time I’ve gotten lost here, trying to get to Dallas. There must be some kind of vortex that makes for disorientation in this part of the world. It’s pretty here, though, so being lost isn’t so bad. The countryside rolls past. Nothing but country music and evangelical Christian programs on the radio. I decide on country music.

Nice.

I am on my way to my sister’s house in Dallas for Thanksgiving. I’ve invited myself. Too many Thanksgivings have passed without her.

Thanksgiving is my holiday, staked out and held onto in the big blended family that we had become. Now, without my children, all the way out here in Oklahoma, I have cobbled together my Thanksgivings with people I love. But I miss Annie.

I am thinking about her as I drive. I am thinking about her when she was a little boy of three and someone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“A mommy,” he said.

It was one of the cute, little stories that all families have about their small children but it turned out to be more than that. My sister used to be my brother. But was always my sister and I didn’t know it.

My thoughts switch to the phone call from her a few years ago.

(Have you noticed the change of pronouns? Pronouns are the most difficult to tame when someone you’ve known all of your life changes genders.)

She had already gone through a couple of years of official identity change when I got that call. A change of apparel, hair, makeup, name. She wasn’t Johnny anymore. She was now Annemarie. She had a different voice. And she had gone through the final surgery in Thailand. She wasn’t my brother any more. She was my sister. My only sister.

She was sobbing on the phone and told me that she couldn’t stop crying, that she had been crying for, was it a couple of weeks? I can’t remember. But I do remember that she was in complete upheaval.

I told her I wanted her to come live with me. And she did.

I can’t remember the year or exactly how long she actually lived with me. Was it one or two years or something in between?

And this is the part of the memory that makes me feel guilty every time I think of it. When she moved in I told her that I liked everything in its place. Where I put it. I was in a tizzy about being overwhelmed and my home not being my home anymore and how my treasured space wouldn’t be entirely mine anymore.

How could she have felt welcome with a stipulation like that?

Guilt.

But we had a honeymoon period in the first months together. I got to know my sister. She was a stranger to me. Not only did she look completely different but her mannerisms were different, her voice was different, everything was different. I was now looking at, speaking to, living with someone I had never known.

I confessed to her that I felt horrible loss with Johnny being gone. It was as though he had died and now this stranger had taken his place. I grieved at losing him.

And this is what she told me:

“Johnny is here, inside me. Johnny will always be inside me. You didn’t lose Johnny.” But, unbeknownst to me, Johnny was a little girl.

Our time together under the same roof was up and down. We are sisters, and sisters fight, have hurt feelings, get territorial. When I asked her if she was mad at me she would say she wasn’t. But I knew she was and one day I saw her journal lying on her bed and I picked it up and read what she’d written. It was about me and how angry she was with me. Hah! I wasn’t crazy!

When she got home from work I told her I had read her journal about me. She was stunned that I had invaded her privacy. That was the beginning of the end of our lives under the same roof.

As I drive, I think about brain science revealing that male and female brains differ and that a difference between men’s and women’s brains in the frontal lobe and the limbic cortex are switched in people who think they have been born into a body of the wrong gender.

I think about the pain she’s endured. I think about the courage she had to make her outside match her inside. I think about how genuine she is. I think about how beautiful she is.

These days I rarely think of Johnny. Annemarie—Annie—a name she came up with, a name that sounds like Johnny—is who she is. Completely.

She is my tall, blonde, classically styled, sweet, gentle, smart, scholarly, quiet, pun-loving, completely feminine sister. And I’m on my way to Thanksgiving dinner with her and her two best girlfriends. Her transgendered girlfriends.

I am so happy with this thought that I crank up the country music. Oh, yeah.

I arrive at Annie’s condo, find myself locked out because of the security gate, try repeatedly to call her on my broken phone, and finally she figures out why she’s getting calls from me that she can’t hear.

She comes down, pretty as ever—perfect, really—and we hug and laugh and climb the stairs to her lovely home, every wall covered with photograph after photograph, all her work, framed beautifully.

Her home, with the rooms painted the colors of the seasons, is full of her inventions. She is a woodworker. Her large L-shaped desk is in her office, complete with conveniences she’s designed for her own personal comfort. Her puzzle table, slanted for easy puzzling, stands on her dining room table. The headboard of her bed with the swing-out coffee cup table/writing desk. Even the gizmo she’s devised, a little thing that holds a pen that attaches to the book she’s reading, so handy for making notes. She’s always reading. Like Edna St. Vincent Millay, she sits propped in bed, in her pink chenille robe, all her accoutrements around her, making notes, writing down her dreams, thinking about metaphors, discovering herself and the world ever more deeply.

We settle in. We have a couple of hours until we’re due at Barbara’s who is making the feast. She is a person with many talents, I am told. I’ve never met her or our fourth guest, Shelly. But I’ve heard about their exploits and some of their life stories.

Talk, talk, talk. We’ve never had a problem, Annie and I, in having long and interesting discussions about things. We talk about deep stuff. Very little gossip and who’s who. Mostly we talk about ideas and discoveries and what we’re made of. It’s always stimulating and evocative.

But time has slipped by quickly and we must be going. I slap some lipstick on, Annie doesn’t need any because she really knows how to do make up, and off we go.

Annie has a GPS system, of course. We get to Barbara’s in no time, climb out of the car, and knock on the door.

Barbara opens the door and I am immediately smitten.

She stands before us, tall, slender, long gray hair over her shoulder, no make up. She is a beautiful—dare I even think it?—man.

Her voice is deep and melodious. She is sexy as hell, at least to me. She does not look like a woman. But she is very good looking.

I immediately get my pronouns mixed up because of the attraction I’m feeling. I feel awful about calling her “he.” She laughs it off and says, “It’s the voice.”

She’s right. But it’s not only the voice. It’s her face and everything else. And because I am who I am, I apologize for calling her “him” and explain that it’s because I felt an immediate attraction to her because, to me, she was just my type.

I can tell that she likes that. What the hell. Attractiveness is attractiveness.

I walk in and see a beautifully set table. Red table cloth with china and crystal sparkling. Lovely linen napkins. Everything is exquisite. The dining room has family photos on the wall. We’re asked if we’d like a glass of wine, red or white? She has a bottle of Montrechet merlot which is smooth and full-bodied. Perfect.

She brings us into the kitchen which shows a whirlwind of activity—activity that has been going on since Tuesday, it turns out. The turkey is already carved, the whipped potatoes are in their comfy bowl, topped with chives, the gravy is ready, the stuffing is nestled in its large bowl, several pumpkin pies, the green bean cassarole is ready to go, the cranberry sauce is already on the table.

Barbara tells us that she’s basted the turkey in pineapple juice for hours and hours, a recipe from a 1990 Better Homes and Gardens magazine. She even woke up several times in the middle of the night to do it. She tells me to take a piece to taste it. I pick a piece of dark meat, put it in my mouth, and immediately taste the pineapple. Or is it a fragrance? The meat is incredibly juicy and flavorful. It just may be the best turkey I’ve ever eaten.

Lots of talking and conversation and then Annie asks Barbara, with a little smile, if we can see her collection. I know something is going to blow my mind.

“Of course!” Barbara says.

We walk to a darkened room. Annie goes in and fools around looking for the light switch. I can’t really see what’s in the room, but things are hanging from the ceiling and there are shelves on all the walls, holding something.

Then the light explodes on and I gasp.

The room is full, I mean full, of dolls. Hundreds of them. At first I think of Ken dolls, Barbie’s boyfriend. But I am told they are G.I. Joe dolls. They are in authentic military uniforms. The soldiers represent the USA, Japan, England, France, Spain, yesteryear. There are firemen and medics and army guys and navy men and everything you can imagine. Some are in huge helicopters hanging from the ceiling. There are the Queen of England’s guards. There is even a soldier in a huge army parka and snowglasses who served in the Arctic. Barbara has been collecting them since childhood and made her collecting into a business at one time, helping other folks repair and find those dolls.

There is even a little space for a small collection of female military, including an evil spy woman with a Japanese fan.

I am stunned. I can’t stop looking at them. I realize I could stand there all day and still not see everything.

Wow.

I gather my senses eventually and we join Barbara in the dining room with our glasses of wine. Shelly still hasn’t arrived but the phone rings and it is she and she says she is lost. Barbara gives her detailed directions and hangs up. We continue our conversation and Barbara says we may as well start eating because no telling how long it will take Shelly to get here. Annie and Barbara joke about Shelly’s usual lateness and the fact that there was a chance she might not get here at all. I am hoping they’re wrong. I’ve been wanting to meet Shelly for a long time.

We load our plates, sit down and start devouring. The conversation is lively. The phone rings again. It’s Shelly who continues to be lost. Annie volunteers to go out and lead her in. Barbara and I continue our conversation and in their own good time Shelly and Annie arrive. Not only was Shelly lost, but she had run out of gas.

Lah dee dah!

Shelly is adorable. She’s short, has long blonde hair, beautifully done nails painted a pearly pink, long sexy earrings. She is cute and flirty, tossing her hair. She fills her plate and now we are four altogether.

We talk about Barbara’s job, she’s a mechanic, a respected one. She’s got a night shift. The people at work don’t know what to make of her because she doesn’t make her appearance girly. Her outward appearance is of a good looking man with long hair and boobs. She is who she is. Defiantly, uniquely Barbara. She is a renaissance person, having been a captain in the Army, a chef, a husband and father, has advanced degrees in many things, a person who is intense and smart. Eventually we begin looking at the photographs on the mantle. There is one of Barbara in full makeup and a beautiful gown. She is gorgeous. Well, well, well.

Shelly talks about her job in her former life. She was a captain, too, in the police department in New Orleans and was there when Hurricane Katrina struck. She talks about the long hours, the horror, and how the Texans were the first to help with food and water. I wonder if that is why she eventually moved to Dallas.

She tells us how she began her transgender activities early on, as a teenager, stealing her mother’s bra and hanging out at bars. She loves bars. Everybody knows her name, and when she walks through the door the party begins. Tinkerbell. Little sparkling Tinkerbell.

I look at my sister across the table. She is serene and pretty. She listens and smiles. She adds her pithy comments here and there. I am so proud of her. She is a classy, cool woman.

We talk about their gender identification. Not gay. Not male. All three agree on who they are. They are female. They have always been female. They could deny themselves no longer. They are all happy, fulfilled, whole as the women they were born to be.

I think about how the world sees them. I know how hard it is to buck convention, having bucked convention myself, but I have never stepped out of conventionality the way they have.

We laugh and talk and eat and drink. We have a wonderful time. Hours go by and finally, exhausted from eating and drinking and talking it is time to go.

We say our goodbyes to Barbara. We will lead Shelly to a junction where she will be able to find her way home.

After we’ve sent Shelly on her way, Annie and I talk about our evening and how much fun we had and how glad I was to be there.

Home. Bed on Annie’s comfortable leather couch. And then it’s morning.

We have a couple of delicious cups of coffee, I dress and brush my teeth and pack up. I walk into Annie’s bedroom to say goodbye. She’s sitting up in bed in her pink chenille robe. Her coffee is on her little swing out table. She’s reading a book on how to write poetry with her pen gizmo attached to the book. She’s happy. She’s Edna St. Vincent Millay, personified.

We talk for a bit, and I say goodbye, don’t get up, that I want to remember her the way she is. She smiles her sweet smile.

I climb into my car, get lost, find my way, and begin the trip on the long road home.

As I cross into Oklahoma, Laura Ingraham on the radio, I begin to relax into the drive. Eventually I get to Pauls Valley and Highway 19. The radio is now playing a country song about the windshield wipers keeping time to the music . The skinny road rolls up and down over the gentle hills.

And then, off to my right, I see a woman in a jacket buttoned tight, wearing a red knit cap, riding a buckskin horse across a golden field.

It’s so beautiful that I cry.

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