"But I guess times have changed. Maybe it's normal to live like this," she said quietly. "I'm not, I mean––I'm open minded. There was this kid on Maui, a friend of Ramani's, her little boy. The mom would let him wear skirts and barrettes in his hair and stuff, you know. But he was, like, three and it probably was because he had older sisters. By the time he was four, he lost interest in all that. And I never really thought about it one way or another. Um…" Her eyes wandered toward one of the far windows and she took another sip of her wine. "This seems different, though, don't you think?"
"Yes. Yes, it is different." Steve agreed.
"Like they're confirming his fantasy that he's a girl."
"You mean Erica?"
"Yeah. Erica, Cuppa… me, I guess." Dora made a face. "He likes it, though, right? Jesse? That's how he wants to go around?"
She was voicing all of his private concerns, which he didn't dare ask because he knew he'd come off as a bigot, someone who had no awareness, no tolerance for anyone out of his own heteronormative, white male, cis-gender role. All the labels. When did things get so complicated? It seemed one minute he was trying to figure out the different pronouns and genders. The next minute, he was expected to be fluent in gender politics and rattle the words off his tongue as if they had always been part of his vocabulary. And he couldn't afford to make a mistake and say the wrong thing. He felt society was ready to pounce on him, call him out for his privilege. How dare he not get it right? Hadn't everyone suffered under white male oppression long enough? At first, Steve had strongly expressed his opinions about the whole Jesse-wants-to-go-around-as-a-girl decision. But the backlash from his family had been fierce. Mostly Steve tried to understand, but sometimes he wanted to scream, “we're not all like that! We're not all racist, queer-hating, macho assholes. Some of us are just white dudes trying to figure it out like everyone else.” He'd broached the subject with Barbara once, but she wouldn’t have any of it.
“For too long,” she’d said, “people of color and the LGBTQIA+ community have been tiptoeing around, making things comfortable for whites. It's okay to be uncomfortable for a little while. No one knows I'm part black, Dad. When people see me, they see a white girl and all the privilege that goes with white skin. There are so many more doors open to me just for being white. And you know what? I'm not going to bitch and moan about looking white and being part black. It's not the responsibility of people who are experiencing oppression every day to comfort me. We're already comfortable, just for looking the way we do.”
He'd let go then. Left it alone. The incident at the store yesterday, though, had revived his misgivings and anger that Dora and Erica were allowing Jesse, encouraging Jesse, to experiment in a lifestyle that Steve didn't feel his son was ready to grapple with, the bullying sure to come his way.
"Are you asking if it was Jesse's decision?" Steve asked.
Dora chewed at her lip, reminding Steve so much of her younger self. "Yeah, like, they didn't push him into dressing like that, did they?"
"Dora, you're talking about yourself, do you know that? You are part of them."
"Yeah. I know. I mean, we."
"I don't know. I wonder sometimes," he told her honestly.
The two fell silent, caught up in their own thoughts. Dora opened her purse and pulled out an old phone.
"I found this," she handed it to him.
He took it and then glanced back up at Dora.
"There's messages on there from Darpan."
"Darpan?" Steve frowned.
Serene took the phone from the palm of his hand and played the messages for him.
"He's calling you from prison," Steve said. Heat flooded his body and his heart began to hammer out a hard rhythm in his chest.
"I know. I think I've been visiting Darpan. Talking to him. But I don't know what about."
Steve played the second message again, the pulse of his heart migrating to his neck.
“Blessings be, Dora. It's not always easy to walk with the light. I trust you will do the right thing and rise to your godly self, confirming your divine essence, and let truth have its voice.”
That fucking hippy, Steve thought. What the hell was he going on about? What did he know? More importantly, what did Dora know? Steve studied her features, but all he saw was puzzled innocence. Yet she did know something. It was why she had this phone; it was meant to be a secret.
"I thought maybe you might know something. Maybe I told you something," her voice trailed off.
Steve's mouth went dry and he swallowed, trying to gather some moisture to talk. "It seems you've been visiting him from what I can gather in these messages."
Dora nodded. "I remember seeing Taylor with Darpan that night," she said, her voice rising.
"I know," Steve cut her off. "And Darpan's semen was found inside Taylor during the autopsy."
"It was?" Dora's breath caught. "I thought they might have been sleeping with each other." She stiffened as if remembering something. "But what happened to the baby?"
"What baby?"
"Ramani's. She was pregnant."
"I… I wasn't in the know about that."
Dora slowly leaned back as a sense of awareness swept over her. "She must have lost it then. No one's brought up the baby since––since all of this amnesia stuff."
Steve took a big gulp of his wine, still feeling jittery over Dora's
