Supposedly

Today was the day I was supposed to get married. My mother was so proud, her only daughter finally biting the bullet and being a responsible adult by legitimizing her unborn child. I didn’t mind, if I’m honest; it was nice for my mother to see me in a positive light for once. Our relationship had always been volatile since, well, that period in my life. It was all water under the bridge, a part of my life she could pretend didn’t embarrass or shame her. We shopped for dresses, planned centerpieces over lunch, and it felt normal.

It also felt wrong, incorrect. Because, in truth, I was lying to my family. The lie I was perpetrating was easy to cover at first, but became very complicated when my parents insisted that they help pay for the wedding (a power grab), that the wedding be in the spring (a power move), and that it be held at their church (a power play); all of these things we refused, of course. The wedding was a farce, the first lie in this series of lies that I found myself drowning in. It became obvious that I was pregnant when I couldn’t keep down Thanksgiving stuffing and my mother became overwhelmed, overjoyed that her daughter had abandoned her heathen ways (partially, mind you) and enraged that I wasn’t married first. You see, the man I was set to marry, the man that they had met and liked and was so surprised I nabbed, wasn’t actually what my parents would have called an ideal match. He was technically not my child’s biological father. That’s not to say that he didn’t want me to be pregnant; he’s the one who surprised me with the resources from the clinic and the donor. We had been officially together for a few years at this point and he always wanted children of his own, which I was more than happy to oblige…It’s just that we couldn’t make it happen ourselves.

So…I lied, a lot. Said we were already engaged. Said we were waiting to get married until the fall after the baby was born. Said we hadn’t been together very long. Said he was a nice man that they had never met before. That last one was technically not a lie, except that that they had met him…before his transition. You see, the phase my mother thought had passed was as much as a part of me as my DNA. When I was a little girl in grade school, I had a crush on a boy and a girl. All of them, if I am being honest. All through high school, I dated who I was attracted to, which meant that I dated hockey player jock boys and quiet, poetic nerd girls. Sometimes, at the same time; I was so happy to love and be loved by the people who inspired my creativity, allowing me to find the beauty in the hard of men and the soft of women. God, women are so soft. All of my dating was a secret though, held hands in the hallways at school and hidden in the journals stacked behind a piece of molding in my closet. My parents were so strict; no dating until 16 and my mother needed to come along. This guaranteed that all my romantic maneuverings were behind closed doors: at sleepovers I was barely allowed to go to, and dances I was mostly prohibited from attending.

There was one, though. One person from junior and senior high that stitched themselves into my heart so tight I could never let them go. My mother thought, incorrectly, that they were just a very good friend of mine from my sophomore year and ‘of course, they can stay the night, but you need to get to bed soon! Don’t stay up all night!’; this always resulted in late nights of bodily exploration, whispered gasps, and murmurs of intimate love. It wasn’t until senior year that my father walked in on us “studying” that I was outed. They were brilliant, quietly holding my hand while my parents berated our disgusting, sinful, God-hating behavior. My mother frothed at the mouth, calling us all kinds of names and throwing me out. They just nodded, led me to my room to grab a bag of clothes, my backpack and my toothbrush, and walked me to their house. Their mom was always really kind to me and was really understanding about the whole thing. We all had a long talk and I fully came out as bisexual to their mom, who held me and thanked me for sharing. I remember breaking down, surrounded by the love and acceptance I knew my parents would never find in their hearts for me.

I stayed there until graduation; my family had refused to attend, naturally. I didn’t have a lot, but I had a full ride to a visual arts school in New York and I was putting this all behind me. They and I never really grew apart; they were attending MSU for veterinary science, but we talked online or over the phone everyday. It was so hard being apart, but knowing I had their support the whole time was a life-saving rope into the pitfalls I risked diving on a day-to-day basis. I made friends, had lovers, and grew into what I defined for myself as a successful person. I was happy, I thought; but I knew something was missing.

Then one day, I had a visitor. They had come to see me, or so I thought. What I got was the most wonderful introduction I never thought I would be blessed to have. Philip, he told me his name was. I was the first person, after his mother, he wanted to talk to when he realized his truth, so he bought a plane ticket and rushed out to see me. We had talked in the past about identities; in fact, I remember how often he told me how wrong it was that he was born the way he was. But, with time and experience, he grew to understand his own truth and wanted to share it with me. Philip told me he understood ‘if you don’t want me anymore. Things will be different when I finish going through this whole process.’

I know this is probably a rare thing, but I was still in love with Philip and wanted to be with him. There may have been an off-handed joke regarding the convenience of my sexuality considering his transition and we ended up spending the weekend making love and getting to know each other all over again. What a blessing!, I thought, I get the joy of falling in love with my best friend twice! He went back and finished school, and I found myself a job in the city as an animator. I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that things got, well, hairy for a little bit. His treatments were a huge boost to his sense of self and, over the next few years, I watched my best friend change into his happiest, most handsome self.

I am so off track, I apologize. The wedding! The pregnancy! How did your parents even come to know?! Well, I never exactly cut my family out completely. My older sister, Veronica, and I had never had a bad relationship and I’m not the kind of person to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. Veronica had gone to Ohio State and met her husband there freshman year at the Student Christian Fellowship organization. He’s a really sweet guy and has always been very kind and supportive of me, even though I didn’t go to school to be a doctor or a lawyer or a husband seeker (my sister’s self-proclaimed major). My sister and her husband would come out to visit me around the holidays to catch up and enjoy some of New York City’s finer offerings. The year before last, my sister said that she had been talking to our parents and, apparently, our mother really missed me and wanted to make amends. Philip and I weren’t convinced it was a great idea, but I did want to give them one chance to see if they really had it in their hearts to accept me for who I was. Philip and I were already working toward our goal of living together in the city, having a small family, and getting married after his legal name change was completed. But, because of Philip’s job, an inheritance issue with his grandfather and other issues back home, Philip wasn’t ready to move to New York with me and get married quite yet. He wanted the name on the marriage license to be his, not the name his deadbeat father picked out before abandoning him and his mother.

So, I had asked my mother to wait until the fall; I argued, “it will be less expensive in autumn”, and “the fall colors are perfect in Michigan!”, and “it will be so much cheaper in the fall”. Alas, my mother insisted that we were to have this big, elaborate wedding like my sister’s, and this elaborate wedding had to be in April, because reasons, of course. This was decided only two months from the wedding date my mother had selected, mind you; from November to February, wedding planning was a slow, casual thing. My mother, overbearing as she is, insisted that the wedding just must be in the spring and it must be in April and our church is the only one with a slot for a ceremony on that day; the day of her choosing, mind you. I couldn’t figure out why. Why the rush all of a sudden?
Philip was very concerned. The court date for his legal name change hadn’t been scheduled at that time; but, fortunately, he volunteered to be the one to get the marriage license. There was still the problem of the church wedding that my parents insisted upon. A requirement was that all couples needed to go through marriage counseling in order to use the church’s facilities for the ceremony and reception, all of which my mother had planned and paid for at this point. We walked into the first session hand-in-hand, the pastor shaking Philip’s hand and not mine, talking to Philip the whole time and not me. I had always hated this particular church and this particular pastor; he had a bad temper and grabby hands. He knew better with me, though; he got bit the last time he tried to put his hands on me. A story for another day, of course.

After our first therapy session, Philip’s nerves eased and mine worsened. This was supposed to be our wedding, our celebration, our love on display. Everything about this was a lie; from my mother’s enthusiasm to my “new relationship”. I hated it and it all felt so wrong. Philip tried to ease my mind and assure me everything was going to be fine, but I knew: calamity lay on the horizon. The cracks began to show when I started to show; the dress my mother had picked out was no longer fitting well. She nearly blew a gasket when the seamstress she asked to alter the dress remarked that I was with child and that the dress would only be able to be altered out a couple of inches at max. After the fitting, my mother accused me of deliberately trying to sabotage the event and demanded that I go on a diet.

At this point, Philip decided that this was not how our marriage was going to happen; he didn’t care about the money that they had spent. Their treatment was proof that they hadn’t changed as people and would never accept the marriage if they knew the truth. We were never meant to fit into their tiny box. I’ll admit, I cried; I didn’t want to believe that the family I was born into was this cruel. It was the truth, however. My sister still didn’t know who Philip used to be, and his convenient transition backed up a lie my family had been telling themselves; a lie I let them believe.

The day of the rehearsal came. I tried many times to tell my mother that we weren’t going through with it, but the manipulation and intimidation continued. I was practically a hostage in my old childhood home, working remotely on odd jobs to keep up on the rent payments for the flat in the city. Oddly enough, Philip had regained calmness, even helping my mother with planning, organizing and all the other tasks I would have been helping with if the guilt didn’t drive me to hide the day of the rehearsal. Philip picked me up to drive me to the rehearsal, a sinister smile across his normally kind face. Something was afoot and, though I wanted to be in on it, I thought it best to keep the questions to myself when Philip motioned for my silence with a single digit across his lips.

We arrived at the church, plastic ribbons and decorations carried in and placed by the door. Philip had an envelope in his hand and walked over to my parents to greet them. I’ll never forget the exchange…

“Mr. And Mrs. Scarsdale! How are you? Excited? Good! I have the marriage license here; Marge, would you be a dear and check your name under witness and make sure I spelled it right? I got it from the clerk’s office today.”

“Of course, son! Look, dear! He’s all clean-shaven for us today!” my mother replied, smiling greedily at his face while she opened the envelope, withdrawing the document. She nodded when she found her name but then her face fell in dramatic fashion into what I could only described as chaotic rage. “What is this? The name under groom is wrong! THIS IS A WOMAN’S NAME! HOW COULD…” She stared long and close at Philip, who, without his beard, looked oddly familiar to people from our hometown. She gasped, howling obscenities and diving at Philip, whose smirk deepened as he stepped back to dodge the flurry of claws from his soon-to-be mother-in-law.

At this point, my father could only hold her back as the license drifted to the ground, an autumn leaf to the chaotic swirl of the near-psychotic tree overhead. My sister grabbed the license, reviewed the document and, when she figured out what caused my mother’s frenzy, looked Philip in the eye and sadly shook her head. You see, she never knew Philip was this friend from the past until that very moment; the look of betrayal that crossed her face as she slammed the license into his chest was bitter and cold. Philip simply wished them well, turned with the license in his hands, and led me by my hand back to the car.

It turned out, Philip had been cornered after the dress incident by my mother who, drunkenly, told him all about my salacious past and hoped that he could look past that and “make an honest woman of me”. After that, he knew that they weren’t good enough for us and had decided it was time to seal the deal and burn the tiny wooden bridge between us. He was right, of course. They were hurtful, toxic people who didn’t deserve us. Philip, unbeknownst to me at the time, had bought us tickets to Paris to get away from all of this and avoid the wedding by “running away to elope”. We boarded that night and the next day we spent our time crying, sleeping, and loving each other. It felt a very Parisian thing to do.

We want to name our daughter Independence, since she is due on the Fourth of July; I can’t think of a more fun way to celebrate a child’s birthday than with sparklers and popsicles. Fortunately, Philip’s legal name and gender change was finished a few days ago and we will actually get legally married before our daughter’s birth, a simple court house wedding with a small cocktail reception in the city with our friends, our chosen family. Today, actually. You see, today was the day I was supposed to get married, after all.

–V. Raylean; AUG 2020