Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 32.1: 1994, Ruiz

My hands lifted the cover of the box carefully, slowly. My Mama's eyes watched eagerly.

My heart started crying as I stared down at the blue and yellow mountain jacket in the box. Men's colors. Men's lines. Nothing pretty about it at all. My Christmas wish wasn't granted, but of course not. Of course not.

"Do you like it? I took a couple of hours more for a while at work to get it. Susan bought it for me in November when it was thirty percent off, and I paid her back. I saw it when I was shopping for your sneakers but it was too expensive. I bet you could wear it for a long time. Doesn't it look classic? You like it?" she asked in a gush of words, so excited, her eyes bright.

"Its very nice," I said, touching its rough wet resistant outer shell fabric with my fingertips. 

She didn't respond, and a split second later I realized how my voice had sounded. My heart fell into my gut as her face turned crestfallen. Her stupid son did not like her gift, the one she had tried so hard to save for, busting her ass for. Immediately I felt awful, horrible.

Silence followed, neither of us knowing what to say. Then without a word, she got up and went to the stove. "What do you want for breakfast? I can make you a bacon and egg sandwich. I have to go to work in two hours, but I can make it for you." She was turned away from me, already getting a pan out of the cupboard with clanging.

"Mama," I said quietly, staring at the blue and yellow jacket, still folded with such love in the box. It was now how I noticed her clumsy folds, how it was true it wasn't directly from a store. How one of the box's sides was exposed white, old. She tried so hard and I was such an awful person.

The pots and pans still clanged, then the pan fell on the burner with such a loud slam I jumped.

She was angry.

"Mama, I'm sorry," I whispered, feeling the fear of her coming out from its hiding spots in my body, always there. My hands folded on my lap, twisting on themselves.

The burner whooshed on and the smell of heating oil filled the kitchen. She was at the fridge now, taking out the eggs and the bacon. I could sense her feeling, boring into me. How she was just doing this out of her obligation as my Mama, just her ungrateful spoiled child still at twenty-one.

"Mama, I'm transgender, I'm sorry," I blurted, bursting into tears, tear drops silently falling down my cheeks, "that's why I don't want to wear that coat."

She made no moves to show she had heard me, still moving things around to get to the bacon at the back of the fridge, the coldest place.

"Mama, did you-"

"I know that," she said harshly, slamming the fridge closed. The bottles on the door banged together so violently I thought they would shatter.

...What did she say?

"What do you mean?" I asked carefully, in shock.

"I think you'd better get out of here," she said calmly, turning off the burner.

"Mama...?" I whispered, my voice shaking, the fear taking over my shocked state. What was she saying?

"Ruiz, get out of here."

"Why? Mama, I'm sor-"

"Don't make me yell at you."

My breath came in gasps as I tried to get up from the table, getting the chair to slide in my body's confusion. My knees buckled, my hands slammed onto the table to steady myself. Mama turned and looked at me at this noise, her expression betraying nothing, but her message to me was clear: she didn't like that I was transgender, and she wanted me out of her house.