Page 158 came into my life methodically. 

I found it on the bedside table that used to be mine: a book that my mom had been telling me about for weeks on the phone. This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel. After two absentee ballots had failed in their delivery to my Brooklyn apartment, I had no choice but to travel to New Hampshire to cast my ballot. I began to feel passionate about participating in a system of democracy that doesn’t care if I live or die, all due to the fact that I had Battleground State Responsibilities. So, after layering two masks, getting tested, and holding my breath on the Amtrak, I found myself in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire, looking at the cover of This is How it Always Is. 

In a stunning act of relationship-nurturing after a period of silence between us, my mom began to voraciously read about The Trans Experience. Our once daily phone calls had become biweekly, then weekly. She would give reports on trans books she liked, terms she didn’t understand (do not get her started on “deadname”), and stumble around the pronouns of an author despite reading over 200 pages of their work. Her self-imposed syllabus was grueling. But after weeks of book reports, I finally heard her say, “You need to read this one.” I tuned out as she talked about a fictional family raising four boys and a little trans girl with such awe and reverence that by the time I tuned back in, I thought she knew them personally. Turning down this recommendation could take on additional meaning for my mom that I wasn’t ready to navigate. I relented, and my copy was ordered. 

In the following anxiety-ridden days of election results trickling in, I opened the book. And I enjoyed it. I read about an idealistic trans upbringing as I combed through my own childhood for any semblance of meaning and support. My mom and I fumbled toward a new relationship together while our little protagonist was having sleepovers with other little girls who had nice parents. For the most part, I enjoyed reading the book besides occasionally stopping to remind myself not to project envy onto a seven-year-old girl. 

Everything was going well and, even as a “bad reader,” I was flying through its pages. Until page 158. 

“We have to stop Poppy’s puberty before it starts. If we wait until Poppy’s no longer a minor, she’ll be six feet tall with whiskers and a broad, hairy chest and big hands and men’s size-twelve feet, and those never go away. She’d still have to order all her heels online. She’d have to get electrolysis... She’d have to have surgery to shave down her Adam’s apple.” 

I held my breath to finish the paragraph. I closed my eyes. And the hot sting of estrogen tears came through. 

There, in Baskerville font, were the words that perfectly encapsulated my deepest, darkest fears and anxieties. The type that, as a trans infant, I couldn’t begin to verbalize as well as Laurie Frankel did on page 158. This idea of it being too late, this idea of what could have been, of what I could have avoided. Of the money and energy and self-loathing and dysphoria. And, as my therapist would say, the idea of being the perfect, well-mannered, grateful, effortless trans woman flew out the door. The poise I had maintained during the first 157 pages was quickly snuffed out by the envy and resentment I had for a seven-year-old girl who would never have to endure the pain of laser hair removal. I could suddenly picture my red, tear-stained, post-page-158 face on a propaganda poster with the words “TRANSITION EARLY” written underneath.

Aside from using my adult trans experience as a negative contrasting point to a prepubescent trans experience, Laurie Frankel managed to write a very touching story. I gather that, as the mother of a trans child, Frankel felt as though she could research and speak on the subject. The result is the perfect guidebook on the apparently impossible task of raising a trans child. No wonder my own mother raved. 

We better give our kids hormone blockers, or else they just might turn into a six-foot-two yeti of a transsexual who needs surgeries so that going out to dinner isn’t such a hassle. So that old men don’t take pictures of her on the J train when she wears a low-cut shirt. So she doesn’t have to pay the electrolysis bill. It’s a financial decision at the end of the day. But most of all, so that she won’t end up as a tall trans girl with big feet, sobbing upon reading a short paragraph in Baskerville font.

I certainly don’t blame my mother, who had no way of knowing how this paragraph would affect me. And I was touched by her gesture nonetheless. When I told her over the phone about the dreaded page 158, she apologized and assured me that my journey is probably more common than the pitch-perfect one laid out in the book. I don’t know how Ms. Frankel’s daughter feels about the bestselling novel her mom wrote, but I will not be attending my mom’s book signing if she takes a similar route. 

It can be stupidly hard not to feel envy as a trans woman. It’s hard not to feel angry for an entire week at a time. And the only thing that cis people hate more than a trans person is an angry trans person. The guilt and pity are too intense, they back away. I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, it happens. And as much as I want to tell myself that everybody is beautiful, especially women with facial hair and big feet and broad shoulders, that doesn’t get rid of the fact that people implicitly favor trans women without those things. 

Page 158 came to me during trans infancy, the first chapters of my life as an out trans girl. If page 158 had come to me during what I call “B.C.”, that passage would have lodged in my psyche somewhere and made coming out nearly impossible.

On bad days, I look at my shoulders or big feet or big hands and I feel a heat behind my ears. I start hearing page 158, seeing the nightmare of my body through the eyes of a prepubescent trans girl’s mother. Other days, I feel dangerous and proud and rare. My shoulders slope nicely, and my pronounced brow bone makes me a cool girl who could do editorial modeling if she really wanted. 

I never ended up finishing This is How it Always Is despite telling my mom that I did. I hope our little protagonist turned out okay.