Raccoon Story

The story was supposed to be clever because the raccoon was somehow a symbol for a trans woman, but it didn’t make sense to me. If they wanted to write about a trans woman, why did she have to be a raccoon. A raccoon doesn’t seem like a trans woman at all. For starters, they’re nocturnal. 

I hate when grandma reads anything to me. I know I’m supposed to respect my elders, but how can you respect someone when you can’t find anything to respect. Respect her for telling me “I love” then not being able to finish the sentence? I can’t respect that. Fine if she doesn’t love me, you can’t force that, but why attempt to say a false sentence when you know it’s not true. My brother says it’s better than lying, but it’s not. That’s such a brother thing to say. Brothers always defend their grandma but don’t give a damn about their sister. Or that turtle. He killed Loretta when we were 13 because he “thought the shell was indestructible.”

“I love….”

She could have at least finished the sentence. “I love…fish & chips.” Then I could have responded. I could have said “wow, good for you granny.” And we could have moved on from there and talked about the humidity, and how I was drenched sitting on that splintery chair on her Arizona porch.  But instead, I had to sit there for half an hour wondering if she was having a stroke. I had to tell my mom “Either granny is having a stroke, or she doesn’t love me.” A terrible thing to tell your mother. Because she assumes the worst - stroke, and once that is quickly eliminated, then she feels bad for me. But she loves me. It’s granny who should feel bad.

She never finishes the raccoon story. She gets to the part where the raccoon enters a beauty pageant and then tells us it’s time for bed. I’m 29, but in granny’s house I’m eternally 7.

She never finishes anything. She came out as a lesbian in 1980 then 2 weeks later said “just kidding” and tried to get back with my grandpa. 2 weeks, 2 families ruined. The woman she was sleeping with was named Bíle and moved to Chile because she ‘felt a connection to the warm climate over there.’ I highly doubt that was true, but I had no way to prove her wrong. I nearly dropped out of college trying to. 10 years after that, she shot my grandpa because she said he forced her to stay together. She shot him in the head, and he survived, now living in a hospital unable to speak. She can’t finish anything.

My friend Laurie laughed when I first told her I hate my grandma. “Nobody hates grandmas.” When I heard those words I nearly fainted. I faint when I get angry, which my mom says is because I'm emotionally intelligent, but my doctor says I should get an MRI of my brain. My mom’s a doctor so it cancels out, and I just try to exercise a few times a week.

“Do you want to get Salami or not.”

My brother was glaring at me from the hallway. He has the worst posture I’ve ever seen. When people meet him for the first time, they think it’s a joke. But then they feel bad because they realize he must have a serious medical condition, but the reality is he just slouches way way too much. He’s also the only blond-haired person in our entire family, and by far the ugliest.

“I’d rather drown.”

I don’t know if I really would, but I said it anyway. It shut him up. The fact that the most popular restaurant in our town is called “Salami” makes me feel like the world has given up. 

“Your grandma wants to talk to you.”

My mom was calling out from who knows where. I had talked to granny on my own damn phone earlier today, but apparently she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even have dimentia, she’s just fucking forgetful.

“I’m on the other line” I screamed back. I couldn’t bear to talk to granny again. I couldn’t bear talking to anyone. It’s exhausting speaking to people who don’t really know you.

I have these urges to kill when I get angry, which not enough people relate to. I’ve stopped bringing it up. 

I will never understand how my mom forgave her mom. She’s technically both a murderer and a bad lesbian. I don’t know which is worse.

“We’re not going to Salami.”  My brother was back in my room.

“Salmon on rye?”

“Can you get the garlic?” He called me by my old name and slammed the door.

I walk outside to head to the grocery store, and I throw the first rock I find at someone's front door. Someone inside screams. 

People say anger is just a shield for sadness.  I suppose I'm sad. I'm sad that the only person who loves me is broken and repressed. And I'm worried that I will be the same. I don’t think my mom was always repressed. She seemed to have a good life before me. I worry that my existence is tied too much together with my dad leaving us. I’m worried that’s a single memory, and that’s the memory she clings onto above anything else. Even when I wear lipstick and beautiful 14 karat-gold earrings I think she still looks at me and sees Dad.

But I don’t think that’s why I throw rocks at people's windows. That feels personal.

Maybe it’s because I'm part of a family in the first place - and I want out. I feel trapped when I’m around them because I try to connect and show up as myself, but it never lasts. I say my mom loves me because she tells me that, but she’s not being honest. She says she enjoys being around me, but I’ve never seen her smile. I can’t connect with people who have perfect teeth, yet still find a way to lie through the gums.

My friends’ friend is an orphan and always tells me I’m so lucky to have a mom and should never forget that. I stopped seeing her because I don’t talk to people who repeat themselves. If I die today, hopefully someone remembers that about me. 

26. Dead. Didn’t put up with repetition.

I always think of my obituary as a headline. It’s more honest than a paragraph. A paragraph creates a story, a fairy tale, so people think they knew the dead person or relatives can think they remember them. But a headline is a statement, of what actually was. 

35. Dead. Couldn’t jump far enough. 

“Excuse me, I can’t reach the jelly.”

Before I could gag at the word jelly, the man sneezed on my arm. I was only six inches taller, but reached for the jelly and went to hand it to him. 

He didn’t say thank you, not that I care. I actually did care because I did want to stop saying thank you and it felt like he beat me to it. I thank everything that happens in the day. I thank people for opening doors for me, I thank friends for calling me. I thank strangers for giving me wrong directions. But I’m hardly thankful for anything. 

A few years ago, I told my mom something that I didn’t expect I would ever share with anyone. She listened. She really listened. That was the only time I was thankful.

Everything at the grocery store catches my eye. 

The brightness of the yellow bananas, the stemlike aura around the fresh vegetables, the hard, ugly light that hits the 20 different cheeses, the clunky texture of the large loaves of bread, the lies on the cracker boxes, the liars who read them. 
I grabbed a box of crackers that said “best crackers in Kentucky.” I couldn’t even picture Kentucky on a map. Maybe I’m dumber than I think.

I put 3 cartons of eggs in my basket - 2 for my family, 1 for me to throw at someone. I got bell peppers so I could eat them, tomatoes so I could step on them, and carrots so I could play with them.

Beep…beep…beep…

The grocery scanner sounded like a dying robot who just won’t die. I placed every item on the treadmill and felt a shock in my chest as I put down a jar of jelly. Maybe that’s why he didn’t say thank you. 

Right as the cashier was about to tell me the amount of money I didn't have, I yelled

“Garlic!”

I always remember what I need when it counts. I ran back to the aisle by the peppers and grabbed some garlic. 

That’s when I found the letter. 

It was a small envelope and extremely damaged - probably due to a fire because it smelled burnt. Stunned, my heart skipped a beat in the literal sense. There were 5 stamps on the envelope, and through the burns I could make out that it was addressed to me. 

Goulda Sheraton

33 Pen Lane

I looked to the left, which made me wonder if I was actually supposed to be left handed. People were walking up and down the aisles, but I felt alone.

I touched the letter and felt another shock in my heart. Was I being electrocuted? Or was it heartburn? Or a collapsed lung? That must be more painful than this. When I picked up the letter, I saw 2 neon-red eyes looking at me. I jumped back and hit my head on a head of lettuce. The red eyes were gone. I knew I was seeing things, but we’re always seeing things. Who’s to say what’s really there.

I walked out the grocery store clutching the letter in one hand, the garlic in the other. 

I could feel my whole body trembling as I walked, vibrating like a bumble bee. I thought the world might take me to the clouds and I’d float away. What was up there above the clouds? Squinting really hard, I could smell space despite never getting anywhere close to leaving the atmosphere. I could smell the stars and smell the planets, and it smelled refreshing yet claustrophobic. Promising, yet daunting. I took the fast way home, which I never do.

“You get the garlic? My girlfriend’s coming over in a minute.”

I chucked him the garlic and went straight to my room. I put the letter under my pillow and lie down on the floor. The hardwood floor cooled my burning body. The fire that burned the letter was now burning me. I imagined my room flooding, the bed rising to the ceiling, now a bunk bed. My heart was beating like a cartoon. 

I kept seeing those scarlet, red eyes. Did I really see them? They were a mix between shiny marbles and Rudolph’s glowing nose, and yet they felt familiar, the way you can look at a cat or a dog and it can remind you of a friend. They were wise, kind eyes. Not intimidating, but eyes that wanted to speak to me before it was too late.

My mom came in to tell me something but I couldn’t hear her. She then yelled to my brother about getting the mail. She walked out, annoyed with my unresponsiveness and 30 seconds later my brother threw a National Geographic magazine on my flat chest. 

“What the HELL”

“I bet you get turned on by animals.”

What a mature thing to say. I recall I had ordered this magazine as a gift for someone, but I couldn’t remember who.

I never told my mom or brother that I was transitioning. Every time I tell myself  “now is the time,” the next thing I know it’s the 4th of July, and the fireworks are so loud everyone forgets about gay people. And they act like trans people never existed. Not that they care in June but at least it's a discussion.

“Lotta gay people at dinner tonight.”  That’s always nice.

I’ve been taking estrogen for two months and can already see my skin getting thinner. I’ve always acted and dressed feminine, but I feel like they would notice a bigger change by now. But nobody in my town notices anything. The second they meet you, they’ve cataloged their assumptions for life. Nobody I meet really wants to get to know me either because they’re scared that the assumptions will break apart. And no one, not even my mom, can bare being wrong.

It’s like my grandma’s story. The raccoon isn’t a symbol for trans people. It’s a symbol for this town. In the story, the raccoon enters the beauty pageant because the raccoons’ friends (which are all chickens btw) tell the raccoon the only way for it to be happy is to win the beauty pageant. The raccoon wins the beauty pageant and has a surge of confidence, then starts judging all the chickens because they’ve never won a beauty contest.

My town is the raccoon. Everyone loves awards and LinkedIn profiles. That’s all anyone sees. That is all they can fathom. People still talk about Dr. Jose Cuervo and what an incredible man he was - He was not a doctor, nor a person, but a fake LinkedIn profile I made when I was 12 to prove a point to myself. A decade later I told everyone that it was me and I had the login to prove it, but nobody believed me. They won’t get to know their own friends, but they’ll boast about the raccoon who won a pageant.

—

The burn marks on the letter were so fresh I was afraid my pillow might light on fire. I wanted to keep lying on the floor but there’s no water in my room, so it felt risky. I make a mental note to keep water in my room at all times. The handwriting on the letter looked so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It reminded me of my own. I carefully opened the envelope and found a business card inside. It was white and glossy and in black font said check the mail, gouda. I hate when people call me a cheese. 

I flipped through the National Geographic and another business card dropped out. I wondered why a woman with a paint brush was on the cover. It was supposed to be about nature. 

The new business card just said story time.

Shaking again, I grabbed both my legs to calm them down. I looked to my left again, and no one was there. A squirrel was there, but animals don’t count. It wasn’t in my room I mean, it was beyond my window in the yard. It started walking towards me and then its dark eyes turned bright red, then before I knew it, it shot up into the sky. 

I lunged towards the patch of grass where the squirrel stood just moments before, forgetting that I had to pass through a panel of glass.

“My girlfriend’s here!”

Writhing in pain, I watched the blond 18-year-old stare down at me, while he called my mom to take me to the hospital.

The hospital is always a blur. People who say they can describe a hospital are mentally ill or currently still in a hospital. Or both. 

The second you leave a hospital, parts of your memory fail. It’s like the hospital doesn’t want you to tell your story. Everything about these places urge you not to remember.  When I got my tonsils taken out when I was 7, all I remember is them putting a mask on my face to breathe in something that would make me forget everything. I remember breathing into that mask then feeling my brain power off. 

The next time I went to the hospital was two years later when my uncle died. I loved my uncle, and I loved his hospital room, but I can’t picture it at all. There was a painting on the wall that my mom says I was obsessed with, but I can’t even recall what color paints were used. It might've been a bright green horse or maybe it was a sunset. I really don’t know.   When I was 15, I broke both of my legs after I told Jeremy Honkwin that if he pushed me down the stairs he wouldn’t get in trouble. It took me 6 weeks before I could walk again. Jeremy got expelled. I don’t even remember what hospital that was. 

This time, I really tried to soak everything in so that I could remember. And by trying to remember the current moment, I remembered other things. I remembered that I stole a scratch off ticket when I was little and still have that in my bedroom, unscratched. I remembered that every time I was in a hospital I thought it would be my last.

Shards of glass were in every part of my body. On my hands, I couldn’t tell what my fingernails were and what was glass. Little clear scraps invaded my entire body. I was bleeding everywhere and I could feel the squirrel with the red eyes watching me. In my head I kept hearing the squirrel say “I told you so, I told you so.”

The squirrel sounded like my dad, but I didn’t know what my dad sounded like. But it definitely was. 

The nurse looked me in the eyes and told me that I would be okay.

Whispering filled the room with stories of me trying to end my life, and I knew I would never bother explaining the truth of what I saw and the urge that led me to it.

Someone put a mask around my head, and I tried to fight it mentally, but not physically. Before anything else happened I requested the nurse give me the pills from my pocket, and she helped me swallow despite not asking any questions. I wasn’t fishing for a question, but my whole body was changing and no one was asking me anything.

I looked at the tv in the corner of the room and saw a headline read “idiot 20-something, still living with parents, crashes out of window in search of me.”  It felt like my obituary but it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t the truth. And just as I was about to die, they showed the replay of me jumping through the window, and the red-eyed squirrel flying through the sky. 

*
*

*

When I awoke, I was not dead. It took about 90 seconds to confirm.  I always need 5 seconds after waking up to confirm I’m alive. But this one required more evidence. It was dead silent and the room was empty when I woke, so I thought maybe I'm alive, but there’s zombies now. Then 30 seconds later I heard a doctor’s voice, which I thought could be an angel. Then I saw my ugly brother walk in and knew the universe wouldn’t torture me with him if I had gone. 

“Looking good,” he said. 

“Have you ever seen a squirrel jump up to the sky?”

“Um, no. But I have heard a boy jump through glass.”

I closed my eyes hoping maybe I could die in that moment and transport elsewhere. Ideally where there’s unicorns or even just corn on the cob. 

I heard my grandma laughing at me, and I kept seeing giant stop signs when I closed my eyes. Hundreds of stop signs planted on the streets and lawns and everywhere in between. 

Laughing and stop signs. 

It felt like the whole world wanted me to stop transitioning. Even though I knew it was just three people, those people feel like the world when they’re all you have.

The nurse came back to my room to tell me she had good news. I prayed she wouldn’t say something stupid like “if your nose was 3 inches bigger you would’ve died. Thank god you don’t have a big nose,”  and then took my temperature. 

She didn’t.

“Both your arms are fractured, and you have a mild concussion, but other than that you’re going to be just fine.”

I wondered if that’s how she spoke to all her patients. 

“You’re paralyzed from the waist down, but other than that you’re going to be just fine.”

I held out my hand and she shook it, and I started sweating thinking I just sold away my family in a shady business deal.

Three weeks later I stood in the backyard trying to throw a baseball at my brother while he picked out the weeds in our yard.

He said something about how if I keep this up, I’ll spend my life alternating between hospitals and jails. Sounds like an adventure to me. As he bent over pulling as hard as he could on a leafy green, I wondered if I could tell him who I really was. If I could share who I am and what I think and what I dream, and If I could really explain what I saw at the grocery store and have him listen to me like mom did that one time. I wondered if there was anyone in the world who knew how to listen with both ears or if people only have it in them to listen once in a lifetime. I wondered if I had already used my one listen, or if it was still to come. Who would I listen to? Would it be my mom because she listened to me? Would I be like her and betray the person I listen to by blabbing about what I heard with everyone I know? Would I meet someone who loves me and I try hard to understand them? Would it be wasted on my ugly brother?

My brother always had ear infections which maybe affected his listening. Maybe not, but it couldn’t have helped. He's been with this girlfriend for 3 years now and I don’t know her name. It’s like Shiela or Mary Anne or something but I really don’t know. She comes over for dinner once a week and I don’t think I’ve heard a word she’s said. She’s like a doll in my mind. Anyone outside of my family looks like a doll. They don’t feel real. I know I can be selfish, but I don’t want to think that the world revolves around my family. I started volunteering at a soup kitchen in college, but that made me feel like an even worse person. Because part of my intent was to help people, but not only for the sake of helping them, but also because it was good. Not that I know what ‘good’ means, and that’s part of the problem. Because I let someone else define good for me, and I let the world define soup kitchens, and I didn’t listen to anyone who’s actually coming for the soup. I've never stood in line for soup. Everyone hates butternut squash, but that’s the one soup I'd stand in line for. I’d wait a good 3 hours in the summer sun to get that soup. Only if it was good, and guaranteed good. Ice cream is guaranteed good. I've never had a bad ice cream. I suppose there’s no such thing as a guarantee, only a lucky pattern, so far. There’s a lot of lucky patterns. Like how there’s always 7 days in a week. So far. Money is used to buy things. So far. I always wake up in the morning. So far.

But there’s no guarantees about my family. How family equals good. Which maybe is why I want to get away. Someone promised me that family was a guarantee. A guarantee positive. Maybe it was the universe, or a doctor, or a god, or those glowing red eyes. Someone told me, and they glued it inside the back of my brain so I can never let it go. But I live with my family, and there’s never a guarantee. I don’t feel loved half the time. I don’t feel anything most the time. I don’t know who these people even are sometimes. I start to judge them - my mom and my brother, but then I try to remember if I’m angry, I'm probably just sad. It’s probably just my own personal problem. I want love on specific terms, and those terms aren’t being met. But why does my life always have to be a contract. Why should anyone love on terms? Because we all love differently blah blah bla. But I was promised that love is the same. That’s what family is right? The same kind of love? Family is a group of 2 or more people who share the same love? That’s what family is right?

Right as my brother yanked out the weed, I heard my mother drop the phone and scream.

***

At the funeral, a 7-year-old boy gave a sort of mini- eulogy. Nobody questioned it, and I was part of nobody. We all listened intently. Those of us who hadn’t before.

“I called her granny. Because she was a granny. I don’t know her real name, that’s just what she told me to call her. My mom told me it’s because she’s wise. I would go over to um see her. Every Friday. Er. Thursday - after school. She would read to me. But not really. She did. But it was stories that um…she made. She wrote. Um she called it story time. There was no book, she just told me the story. She talked about how she didn’t really like stories about animals because she preferred people. I thought that was nice even though I love Sonya…my cat….but it made me think I think. Er….I like the way she told stories about people. But on the day that she…died, um….She. She told me a story about an animal. An how it had big red eyes that glowed, and that were kind of unsettling. And I didn’t like this story and I asked her to stop, but she said it had a good ending. And the ending was that the animal with the red eyes um flew up into the sky and was never seen again. But it still lived somewhere. Just not somewhere people could find….a few minutes later I thought she was asleep. But she wasn’t snoring like usual. So I called my mom. And when my mom came to see us, she cried. I cried too and um I don’t or I didn’t know why. But I think she wanted to go to the sky.... But she didn’t fly. 

The boy looked like he had more to say, and he opened his mouth to say more, but got distracted by something in the distance. He walked away and stood by his mom who hugged him so tightly I started to cry.

No one was sure what the next step was so for a few moments, we all faced granny and no one said a word. A bird made a noise in the distance and a skittish raccoon trotted across my grandmother's grave. It had a sash around its back. 

I couldn’t see its eyes, but I saw it smile.