Realistic or Modern My Flesh and Blood

[PunkPrince]

Eva flinched as her father grabbed her roughly by the arm. The bracelet she was wearing snapped, and the beads fell and clattered as they rolled across the wooden floorboards. Eva shrank away and held her hands up over her face.

But just as swiftly as her father had grabbed her, he let go again and stepped back from her.

“Move your hands, Eric.”

Eva lowered her hands and gazed pleadingly at her father.

Please don’t hate me.

And then he struck her across the face, Eva falling to the floor as she scrambled backwards. She sat up again and stared at him, tears brimming in her brown eyes. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry if this didn’t go well, but here she was. Failing. She stared up at her father, trembling.

He couldn’t hate her this much. He had raised her. Sure, he’d been disappointed with his son’s softness, but surely he could still somehow love her? But her father’s gaze was cold and empty, any emotion hidden away behind a thick shield Eva couldn’t pierce.

“Leave. If this is truly the life you choose for yourself, I can’t stop you. But I never want to see you again.”

Eva scrambled to her feet and darted back down the hallway. She stopped for a moment, outside her father’s bedroom before ducking inside. She knelt, fumbling blindly under the bed until her hand found a wooden box. Her mother’s jewelry box. All that was left of Halle Robins. Eva tucked it under her arm and headed into her own bedroom to pack her things, clenching her jaw as she tried not to burst into tears.

—

Eva crouched in front of a dress form. Her dark eyes were focused on meticulously placing the rhinestones on the dress, ignoring the mess of unorganized drag that filled the surrounding basement.

She’d been working on the dress for weeks, having made the whole thing herself. It was red, with a slit in the side running up to the hip, and long sleeves that Eva had carefully embellished with a pattern in ruby red rhinestones. A few more adorned the collar of the dress, and Eva leaned back for a moment, debating on where to place more of them—if anywhere at all.

She thumped against the couch as she leaned back for a better look. Behind her, her wife sprawled out on the couch, watching over her shoulder, and Eva might have forgotten Kennedy was even there had it not been for her periodically reaching out to play with Eva’s hair as she worked.The smaller woman leaned forward, resting her chin on Eva's shoulder as she examined the dress.

"Maybe add a few more around the collar," she suggested. "But I think it's gorgeous how it is." She paused for a moment and then added, "It'll look even more gorgeous on you."
Eva smiled and turned to kiss Kennedy on the forehead. "Oh, stop it, you," Eva said, blushing slightly at her wife's comment. She stood up and settled onto the couch, Kennedy resting her head on Eva's chest.

"I'll figure it out," Eva said. "I just have to finish it in time for tomorrow's show. I really need something new to wear for our Rent number. I must've worn the green one a thousand times by now."

The house was quieter than normal, with only the pair of them being at home. Eva had sent the kids to a costume store down the street to pick up some of the makeup and other things they were out of. The silence, even for a short while, felt strange, and the constant chatter of her children was something she needed today are than ever.

It was the anniversary of the day her father had abandoned her, and as much as Eva would like to forget it, the date was forever stamped into her mind. Eva had mixed feelings about it. She was silent for a minute or two, and Kennedy shifted slightly beside her. "You all right?"

Eva sat up. How was she meant to answer that? "Of course not," she answered curtly. Her gaze travelled across the messy basement and came to rest on a stack of folded fabrics at the other side of the room, Eva focusing on them as though they might hold the key to eternal happiness. She didn't turn to look at Kennedy, even as the smaller woman slipped her arm around Eva's waist and pulled her closer.
"I know," Kennedy said softly, her voice tinged with regret. "Stupid question."

Eva sighed. This year was slightly better than the last few. She'd managed to do something other than sleep, for starters. But being awake gave her time to think, and her thoughts had bounced back to her father more than once. Had she really disappointed him so thoroughly that he didn't want to face her anymore? He hadn't reached out to her even once in the past ten years, so that was a pretty good indication that yes, she had.

What would her mother have said? Halle had been dead for fifteen years. Eva had never gotten the chance to come out to her. The woman who had let her try on her jewelry and taught her piano, and held her when she had cried for the first fifteen years of her life had become a distant memory now, and the last time Eva had seen her there had been very little of Halle Robins left to remember at all, the once vibrant woman had wilted away into almost nothing, slowly eaten away by an illness with no name. The images plagued Eva's nightmares.

"She shouldn't have died," Eva murmured, and even without a name, Kennedy knew what she meant.
"I'm sorry, Eve."
"She would have loved you. The kids, too."

Kennedy rested her chin on Eva's shoulder. A long silence permeated the air, and then Kennedy spoke again.

"She would have loved you too, Eve."

Another long silence. Eva tore her gaze away from the pile of fabrics and her fingers began to fumble absently with a rhinestone she had neglected to put down. She said nothing.

"I love you, Eve." Kennedy said.
"I know."

Kennedy reached out to stroke Eva's cheek before tucking a strand of brown hair behind her wife's ear. Eva still hadn't turned to look at her, but the rhinestone she had been toying with had dropped to the floor, the other woman's expression remaining stony and rigid. Kennedy wrapped her arms around her wife, and while Eva's face betrayed no emotion, her body had begun to tremble slightly.

The pair remained curled together on the couch for some time, silence filling the room once more until a light knocking arose from upstairs. Eva pulled herself to her feet, shaking herself as though doing so would throw her grief clear across the room and make it cease to bother her. Kennedy rose behind her and took a few steps forward, following Eva up the staircase.

"Who could that be?" Kennedy asked, more speaking to the empty air than to her wife ahead of her. "Did the kids leave their keys again?"
"All three of them?" Eva said. "No. Besides, they locked the door behind them as they left. And even if they had, they wouldn't knock. They'd just call one of us to ask to be let in."

Eva stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, and Kennedy floated past her to the front door. Upon opening it, Eva's words were confirmed. The teenager before her was not one of their own, nor did the face belong to anyone else she knew.

"Hello," Kennedy greeted. "Do you need something?"

 

[JurassicParkour]

Solomon Pike. Solomon Pike. Solomon Pike.

The more Solomon repeated the name in his head, the more it felt right. He wasn’t Sarah Jane, he was Solomon. Solomon, Solomon, Solomon. He’d been playing with pronouns for awhile now, trying to figure out why she didn’t feel right. Why he hated when his father made him put on dresses, hated when his father introduced him to people as his daughter, Sarah Jane. There was so much about himself that he hated, so much about him that felt stilted and awkward and wrong, that got just a little bit better when he called himself Solomon. It didn’t fix everything like hating the way he looked and hating the way other people saw him, hating the way his father treated him, but it made him feel better because putting on Solomon felt like putting on a warm old sweater. It felt right.

What didn’t feel right was the lengths he went to to hide it. It had taken a bit of thinking and doing to get his routine down, but he managed it. His binder stayed safely tucked away in one of his school binders, an aptly named place. It wasn’t a professional one, just something he’d slapped together with the aid of a few tank tops. It didn’t flatten as well as he wanted it to, but it worked because he couldn’t risk ordering a real one. His father would ask too many questions, questions that Solomon didn’t think he could answer at the moment. His tank tops stayed folded in his binder until he got to school, at which time he would slip inside the bathroom, change into them, and slip out like nothing had happened. They didn’t do much but make him feel better, but that was enough. Anything more was enough.

Before he left school, he’d change out and shove the tank tops back in his binder. The good thing about them was that he could throw them in the wash with little suspicion. They were Just tank tops. There was nothing wrong about them except what Solomon used them for.

Sometimes he walked around the city after school. He told people he met that asked that his name was Solomon and whenever a store clerk called him sir, he felt something shoot up his spine. Validation, most likely. It felt good that other people saw what he saw. Others saw who he was. But it didn’t last forever because eventually he would go home, go home to Sarah Jane, why are you late, Sarah Jane, why’d you cut your hair short you look like a boy, Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane.

Solomon hated being at home. He hated his father, hated who he pretended to be. He hated everything about that house.

But he didn’t hate Sarah Jane. She was important to him, even if he didn’t want to be her, because she was part of him.

But God, how he wanted to get out of that house.

—-

It had taken Solomon hours to find his sister. He didn’t have much to go on in his search. He knew their father called him Eric. He knew she still lived in their town. But that was about it, that and their father’s last name Robins. He spent his study halls on Facebook and scouring the yellow pages. He went through their newspaper’s online archives for wedding announcements or maybe an article that happened to mention a female with the last name of Robins.

Eventually, he found her. Her name was Eva Robins. He had found her on Facebook but he’d found her in an announcement for a drag performance. It made sense, and Eva sounded a little like Eric. So there was that hurdle jumped over. But what he needed to do now was find a way to contact her.

He didn’t do anything illegal, he made sure of that, but it took him hours longer to find an address. When he finally did, his lengthy quest at an end, he didn’t know what to do.

She was like him. She was born in the wrong body to the same father. She would know better than anyone what he was going through. He needed to talk to her. She could help him sort out how he was feeling. She could help him sort out what to do with his father. She had a partner, she lived with a few queer kids, the Facebook page about her performance had said. She could help him and he really, really needed someone to help him.

He finally decided to go after her one day after school. Solomon didn’t change out of his makeshift binder, wearing his tank tops over a t-shirt and baggy jeans. He found the best way to feel more like Solomon instead of Sarah Jane was to hide the things that made him feel like a girl.

As soon as he slipped out of the building, he started his trek. She lived fairly far away, so it was going to take a bit of a hike. To make his trek even more difficult, it started raining. At least he was close, he thought, hugging his backpack to his chest as he made his way a little quicker down the street. He was almost there, and maybe she could help him. She could make his life better. She could explain things to him, teach him how to get through being called the wrong name constantly.

When Eva’s door was staring Solomon in the face, he balked. What did he do now? Maybe she wouldn’t want to see him. Maybe she wouldn’t want anything to do with her father. He had cast her out after all. But he steeled himself and he knocked on the door anyway.

The woman who answered the door was dark skinned so she couldn’t be Eva. Maybe he was in the wrong house. But maybe he was in the right place. He couldn’t chicken out now. He had practiced his words over and over on the walk here, good because he didn’t talk to people normally. He knew if he didn’t have a script, he’d freeze. “My name is Solomon Pike but my father calls me Sarah Jane and I need to talk to my sister, Eva,” he said in a rush.

 

[PunkPrince]

Kennedy blinked in surprise when the boy on the porch finally did speak. He had been drenched by the rain, now only shielded from the weather by the covered front porch. For several seconds, all she could manage to do was stare at him. The sound of Eva moving about the kitchen had suddenly become deafeningly loud.

"My father calls me Sarah Jane and I need to talk to my sister, Eva.”

Skepticism told her to dismiss the boy as lying. But how could he be? Besides, she could see in his face that he was being truthful. Even if he hadn't outright told her, she could pick out a trans kid with just a glance. Even the ones who buried it deep within themselves, the ones who were sure nobody could figure them out. They were the most obvious. Always were. It was something in the way they carried themselves; a subtlety she couldn't quite explain, but could pick up on within seconds.

Eva doesn't need this now, Not today, of all the days.

But he does.

Kennedy stared at the boy for a moment longer, and then without speaking to him, turned back toward the kitchen to call for her wife. Eva appeared in the kitchen door frame without Kennedy having to say anything, and she too, spent several seconds just staring at the boy on the porch.

Not again. Her father could not possibly have another child like her. Eva would rather the boy at the door be lying to her face. She would rather this be a cruel prank, a joke meant to kick her while she was already at her lowest, then have her own childhood be slowly unraveling itself again, this time belonging to someone else. Her father had damaged her. He had spent her entire life struggling to force her into a mold she could never fit. He would do it again. He would hurt the boy on the front porch the same way he had hurt her. Maybe worse.

Eva felt like she was going to be sick. She gripped the edge of the door frame tightly, worried that if she let go she might faint. The color had drained from her face, and her voice was nowhere to be found. She opened her mouth to speak, and at first, nothing came. And then, finally, she managed to squeak out, "Please tell me you're fucking with me."

She knew it wasn't what he needed to hear. She knew it was probably an awful thing to say. She hadn't really meant to say it. It was just the first thought that had managed to force its way out of her mouth. Eva sighed, and her gaze softened into something vaguely resemblant of defeat. "I'm sorry," she apologized quietly. "I..." she trailed off. "Would you like to come in? It's cold. You'll get sick if you stay out in the rain much longer."

 

[JurassicParkour]

Solomon was shivering while he stood on the porch, drenched in rain and hugging his backpack. He didn’t have anything else with him. Even though he was 5’8”, he looked small, his shoulders hunched. His journey had been a lengthy one and he was glad it was over, for better or for worse, if only that he was out of the rain for a bit. He still had to walk home since he’d forgotten his bus pass that morning.

Solomon tried to be small. If he hid himself in the background, maybe his father wouldn’t notice how different he was. If he hid in the background, maybe he wouldn’t be laughed at. If he hid in the background, maybe no one would notice when Sarah Jane began to turn into Solomon. But as much as he hunched over, tried to hide his trans identity, hide himself, he couldn’t hide. He was bared to everything and everyone on the front porch of his half-sister’s house, especially to the woman in front of him. Kennedy, he assumed. The other woman from the article. She didn’t look happy to see him, which he hadn’t expected. She looked concerned. He had half a thought to just run while he still good because the dark skinned woman didn’t speak.

(He was like her, he thought. He was trans person of color. And she seemed happy. Maybe he could be, too.)

Eventually, another woman appeared in the background. Tall with white skin and long hair. She looked just a little like him, enough for him to determine that she was his sister. This was the Eva he’d been warned against his entire life. This was his sister, the woman who had gotten away from their father. The woman who could give him answers he so desperately craved.

Solomon was already hurting, shivering in the cold with healing bruises under his baggy clothes and deep in his psyche. He felt another pang, another sharp hurt, deep in his chest when his sister spoke. She wanted him gone, clearly. He started to throw one of the straps of his bag over his shoulder, taking a step back. “I’m sorry,” he did. He was a compulsive apologizer, apologizing for anything and everything. “I’m sorry, sorry, i’ll... I’ll go.” He took another step back, pausing when Eva spoke.

“Um... Okay,” he said. He swallowed again, stepping just inside the doorway. “I’ll, um... I’ll go. If you want. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come, I just...” He trailed off again, bowing his head and not quite making eye contact with either of the women. He just needed to talk to them but his voice suddenly failed him.

 

[PunkPrince]

When Eva spoke, Solomon flinched as though he had been hit. He was much taller than Kennedy was, but hunched and nervous, his demeanor made him look tiny before her. Eva's heart sank. She hadn't meant to hurt him. She wasn't angry at him. She wasn't angry at all, not really. She was more terrified than anything else. Terrified of what she knew would happen to him if their father found out. Found out that he was like her, found out he had gone looking for her at all. Eva slowly let go of the door frame and took a small step forward.

She wanted to reach out and grab him, to throw him behind her and keep him there, to protect him from what she knew he was bound to face, and yet at the same time she wanted to shove him away, to build a wall around herself before she could get attached to him, or he attached to her.

But then he took a step back, apologizing and offering to leave, and Eva had to hold herself back, keeping herself from springing forward and crying out. Wait! Don't go! I'm sorry!

He took a small, timid step into the doorway when she offered him entry, but he continued to apologize, still offering to leave. Eva's voice had vacated her again, and she swallowed and took another step toward the boy. "That's not what I meant!" she blurted. It came out louder than she had meant for it to, and she flinched at the sudden sound of her own voice.

She had reached the doorway by now, and she reached out to gently tug the boy out of the rain. She felt Kennedy reach up and gently grip her arm, and Eva's voice softened again. "I'm sorry," she repeated quietly. She paused and looked down at him. "I'm not mad at you. I'm not even mad. Don't be sorry. I just...I wasn't expecting you. I didn't know he..." She stopped, unsure of where her train of thought was even heading at this point. "I just didn't think it would happen twice."

 

[JurassicParkour]

When people raised their voices at Solomon, he tended to flee. He had bad experiences with loud tones and raised hands and being hated by people who were supposed to love him. He didn't want this to happen with Eva, too, but his first impression was that she didn't want him in her house. That was understandable. He was a reminder of terrible things that had happened in her youth, terrible things that had seemingly followed her into adulthood - those things being himself. He shared her father's blood and he wasn't who he was born as, either. He understood why she wouldn't want to see him, really, he did. He'd just hoped that maybe he could at least talk to her before he never saw her again.

He cautiously looked up at her when he was safe in the confines of a house that wasn't his own, safe from the rain and, for a moment, his father. Solomon did flinch when she called out to him again but he forced himself to relax his muscles. She wasn't going to hurt him. She was his sister and she understood what it was like to be transgender. She would only want to help him, right? She would want to help him.

"S'okay," Solomon said, his words running together a bit. "Um, I get it. Pro'lly didn't know he remarried." Solomon chewed on the bottom of his lip, still not quite making eye contact with her yet or the other woman shorter than him. "I guess... We're really not in charge of it happening. It just does."

 

[PunkPrince]

Eva sighed as Solomon spoke up again. "No," she said. "No, I didn't know that." How could she have? Her father had cut her out of his life years ago. What he did now was his own business, but she hadn't expected him to marry again. He'd never brought any women home after her mother had died, so if he ever had had another girlfriend, Eva wouldn't have known about it. Her father had hardly spoken to her at all after that, and they spent most of their time living in opposite corners of the house, behaving more like strained roommates than a parent and child.

"I need to sit down," Eva said quietly, turning back towards the living room, Kennedy still gently gripping her arm.
"Come on, honey," Kennedy prompted gently, leading her wife toward the living room couch. She turned to look back at Solomon. "You too." Her tone was gentle, though she was still confused, her attention more focused on her wife than the boy behind her.

Eva sat down on the couch, and Kennedy darted off back towards the kitchen, returning after a moment with two glasses of water, passing one to Eva and one to Solomon before settling on the couch beside her wife. Eva took a deep breath and looked back at Solomon again.

"I...I don't suppose he treated you any better than he ever treated me, huh?"

 

[JurassicParkour]

Solomon chewed his lip nervously, still hugging his backpack. He was possessive of his backpack because it was one of the only thing that was really his. His room was never off limits for his father. The older man believed he was entitled to look at anything. But the backpack stayed with him almost all the time and as such, he could keep things in it he didn’t want to leave laying around.

“Sorry,” he said again. He chewed on the inside of the cheek, a nervous habit he’d picked up as a kid. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, pulled his hair, and bit his nails. He had a lot of nervous habits because he was a very nervous person. He hoped this would end well enough, but he was still anxious. When the other woman lead his sister to their living room, he lingered nearby, not sure if he was allowed to follow. But she sounded gentle enough when beckoned him.

He trailed after him, lingering near the arm of the couch. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. He slung his bag on one arm, his hands shaking slightly as he took a sip.

“No, ma’am,” he said, his eyes still down. “He, uh... He doesn’t know about me. He calls me Sarah Jane. But he doesn’t like me much anyway.”

 

[PunkPrince]

"Stop apologizing," Kennedy said, looking directly toward the boy for the first time since he'd entered the house. "You don't have anything to be sorry for." Solomon reminded her a bit of Hugo, who apologized so often that a frequent joke in the house was that instead of a swear jar, they needed a 'saying sorry unnecessarily' jar. She offered the boy a gentle smile and moved over on the couch. "You can sit down," she told him.

Eva looked back toward Solomon as the boy spoke again. "I didn't think so," she said when he told her that their father didn't know. "He didn't know about me either until I told him. I doubt he's ever used my name once in my life." She leaned back against the couch as she spoke. " He was never particularly fond of me either. He always fought with my mother and told her she was making me soft. And then she got sick and died and he liked me even less after that." She paused. "And you don't have to call me ma'am."

If Solomon's upbringing had been anything like hers, he'd probably had calling people ma'am and sir drilled into him at a young age. Often times, if Eva had failed to respectfully address her father he would ignore her entirely. Eva stopped doing it immediately after her father had kicked her out.

 

[JurassicParkour]

Solomon glances up at Kennedy quickly when she started to speak, just enough for her to understand that he was listening and not completely ignoring her. He just didn’t often look people in the eyes when they spoke. It was intimidating and he was afraid to be intimidating. He never looked his father in the eyes. “I’m s-“ he made himself stop before he finished his sentence, swallowing. “Okay,” He said. Okay wasn’t sorry. That should work well enough.

He sat cautiously on the edge of the sofa, looking a bit like a bird about to take flight or a person who wasn’t sure they belonged. But eh listened anyway, his head tilted as his sister spoke.

“My mom died, too,” he said eventually, his voice soft. “She got... She got breast cancer when I was young. I think... I think I look like her. And that’s why he’s so against me... Being Solomon,” he finished feebly. If he looked too masculine, his father would chastise him, so he was careful eith what he wore around the house.

He blinked, a little unsure now. “What do I call you?” he asked.