you know the drill, school girl

by Hailey O’Gorman

CW: explicit trans exclusionist language, overt maternal neglect, normalized transphobia and brief mention of alcohol

You know the drill. Stay on the other side of the road. Relatives live too near. You could scare them to death by standing still. Stay on the footpath. Cycle carefully. Avoid eye contact, look at your ugly shoes. They’re like leather socks with no grip and clacky heels. Clack your way home, school girl.
You cycle the long way back today. You know the risk. But, it’s February, the sun is rare here and it feels gorgeous on your blazer. The cold, sunny wind frees you. You are free to the wind, the clouds, and the weekend. Cross the road. Down the side street.
You know the drill. Come off slow and struggle to find your keys. Her car will always be in the driveway. Stop by the front door and look at the cloud formations. You’ve never seen anything like it. Breathe in the purple megaliths. Your cold breath makes a hazy imitation.
You know the drill. Get in, get changed, pretend nothing is different. Shout hello in your deepest voice and smile if you make eye-contact. If she’s in the living room, say you have to pee. If she’s in the kitchen, pretend not to see her. If she’s in her room, lucky.
Through the front door. Let the limbo go. Go stand up for yourself. You know what you’re doing. Through the porch, though, you see her.
She’s on the phone at the top of the stairs. Sitting. Shit. She’s heard the first door open. Move fast. Get to your room. You realise who she’s talking to,
‘Thank you, Mrs. Logan.’
Logan. Of course it’s Logan. Logan, head of sixth form administration and pastoral care. Logan, who, on your first day, gave you a key to your own bathroom. Logan, who gives keys to bathrooms to all of those students.
Rush to your room. Pass your mother a knitted smile. She stares at the window, a pretty view of next door’s wildflower garden. 
She hangs up the call while you unbuckle your shoes and scramble for the zip to your skirt. She’s in a weird way, hovering in her room adjacent to yours. The walls are thin enough to hear her pacing around, or to hear her crying, or to hear her Woman’s Hour. But now, you will hear nothing. She calls you in, pulling you by the tread she’s been holding between her fingers for months now.
Stand in the doorway. It’s always too early for a moment of maternal affection here.
Stand in the doorway. Look stupid, oblivious and cute. You’re never going to forget this, school girl. You know she does not want to see you like this, standing in your grey skirt, black tights, with repressed hips and broken curves. You have the drowning fear that you stole these tights from her.
Stand in the doorway when she speaks,
let her be right. She’ll start by asking why you were late to school today. Tell her you were working.
You know the drill. Don’t lie. You might think about calling for help. She is the only person who would hear you, and you’ve tried that before. 
When she says you’re a group of women stalkers
and pedos
and perverts
who want to kill women —
you’re going to become her zodiac killer. 

You could get confused and think you had murdered her son. More confusing when she’s faced with an unclaimed daughter in front of her, her unclaimed baggage, circling around the conveyor belt. You’ve been circling over for years now.
You know the drill. The guilt is a wax candle caught in the back of your throat. You have an essay due on Monday, but you’re unsure you can write 2000 words about Catherine Linton.
When she says
she doesn’t know who you are, stand tall. you have a fighting chance. She’s lying too, at this point. Truthfully, she knows exactly what you are. But, you’ll take any chance to reintroduce yourself. She does not believe you exist. You do not have a fighting chance.
When she asks
‘who are you?’ say ‘your child’. You want to scream daughter. You want to scream for help. You want to scream. Your brother will come home from school. Watch her hug him. He’s too afraid to understand, you’ll think. Don’t condescend him like that, you’re almost as bad as her. 

Sometime soon, he’ll ask you for advice. You’ll learn to be kind to him. Your brother will always be stuck between arrogance and her self-identifying daughter. Get ready to pay for the therapy. He will stay comically bad at comedic timing for the rest of his life.
When she says
anything, zone out. Learn to spend less time with her, dodging rooms alone, using routine as a shield. The cat will crawl between your legs, asking for food she’s already had. Her eyes are young and big and they are making you shake.
When she opens her mouth,
tighten your melting heart into iron. You know what’s about to happen. You’re too old to be innocent, but not old enough to make your own decisions. 

You can only hold tears for long enough, your eyes bubbling with silver rain and mascara. Let them spill and wet your face. Let them land on your skirt while she explains that you gave no clues, that you do not talk to her, that you don’t tell her how you’re feeling.
‘Internalized’ becomes a regular visitor to your vocabulary. You owe her your life, you owe your ancestors your name, you owe yourself more time before you make all the wrong decisions. Best if you stopped crying. It only makes your face wet, school girl.
You know the drill. Don’t show her your shaking hands. Don’t show her you’re hurting. Make your bed and fold away your clothes.

You zone out for long enough to nod and yes your way through to a hug. You agree on some shambled compromise, like
no more secrets, or,
only my son from now on, or,
promise to talk to me.
You know the drill.
When she spends the weekend
  on a night out, while you babysit your brother, get everything you want together. Wait until she comes home. She will break a window because she forgot her keys. The glass will stay in the carpet for as long as you’re near. She’ll call your name at three in the morning, and you’ll sneak downstairs. You feel like you’re about to die.
Instead she, on the other side of the porch, says you’ll talk about it in the morning. Bring a snack, you won’t sleep for the rest of the night.
When she asks you to call repair men, call and ask them to come.
When she asks you to go find her purse
in a pub that closed three hours ago, take your bike, bag and go the long way.
When you arrive, expect to see the man from last time. He understands you, though you’ll be nervous about the setting. You’re not ready for this world yet, for the lager’d up old men watching horses.
They’ll look at you with a clear, unforgiving confusion. Let them look at you strange. You’ll find their sincerity needed.

Go to the man, the bald one, the bearded one, the one who remembers you from last time. Ask him if he saw your mother.
He’ll say yeah, like he always does. You follow him upstairs into the ballroom. It’ll be strange standing in a place where hours ago they were all dancing, they were all free. It hangs in the air like a poorly filtered cigarette.
You’ll find that freedom, school girl. You’ll know it to your core. You want it, so badly.

 Your body is an empty dancehall, waiting for those people you’re too afraid to find. Too broken as it is, needing something more. There will be a day where you’ll stay out too late. There’ll be a day where you’ll lose your purse.

There’ll be a day where she will forget about you. You are hurting so badly, school girl, but I promise you, you will be free.
You find the purse sitting by a window. Steal a tenner, I dare you. Go home, you’ve got an essay to write.
Go home, not because you want to.
Still, go home by the long way. 

Hailey O'Gorman is an intersex internet lesbian, studying in Creative Writing at Falmouth University, hailing from Ireland. They maintain a personal blog and social media, and remain previously unpublished. They write in the language of the body, trauma and queer lives caught in between. Outside of writing, Hailey hates terfs and loves their partners. Also, they are good at yugioh, the card game.