After

Leanna Duncan

Burrowed dark and deep, curled around her memories of the eighth grade formal, directly shielded by her to-do list for the following week, and snuggled up next to the lyrics to the song "The Power of Love," was a fleeting image, a single yellowed sock on a hardwood floor. It always made her uneasy when it flashed into her mind, which is why it inhabited one of her brain's less-traveled regions. She hurriedly picked up the sock from her bedroom floor and stuffed it into the large shoe protruding from underneath her bed.

The afternoon sun shone yellowy through her mangled blinds. It fell onto the carpet in uneven stripes. She touched one gingerly. It looked warmer than it was.

FLUSH.

Sam reentered. Flannel shirt—khaki pants—Toms in a vertical line, up to down. Hands in pockets.

"Hey."

She smiled in response.

"Nice day out there."

She got up to peek out the window, then nodded. It was, in fact, a nice day, with low-hanging clouds that suggested rain, but made no promises. Some kids were skateboarding in the parking lot, dodging the occasional chunks of asphalt, and someone was leaning against her car.

"I made breakfast, if you want it." Sam said anxiously. "I hope you don't mind."

She smiled again and shook her head, then surveyed the room, searching for her pants. She identified one leg of her jeans protruding from underneath the armchair in the corner—God knows how they got under there, or perhaps He hadn't been looking at the time. Sam's white undershirt, which she had donned just before falling into a sticky warm sleep last night, fell almost to her knees.

She and Sam ate in silence for a few minutes, every utensil-clack a jarring surprise. Sam had donned a very practiced cocky grin, one that was intended to make zim look more masculine. Gender, zie said, was all in the performance.

She wasn't fooled. Sam looked nervous as all hell. She stared loudly at zim.

Finally, Sam cracked.

"Was it okay?"

She nodded, patting Sam's hand.

"I'm still trying to get used to the equipment, you know… I'm sorry."

She shook her head violently and went to zim, wrapping her arms around zim from behind the chair.

"I'm not sure exactly how I felt about it. It was… I'm sorry. I just feel like I've been thinking about this for so long. I've been planning and thinking and expecting and hoping…" Sam stared at zir shoes. There was a long silence. She sat on the floor next to Sam's chair, waiting.

"I feel… whole. Also, I'm scared as fuck."

Sam's voice broke. "I mean, I don't know what I'm doing. Who would I ask? What would I say? There's no one here who can tell me what I am."

Zir head jerked up suddenly, and zie rubbed zir short-cropped hair. "I'm sorry. Just because you don't talk doesn't mean you want to listen to me have an identity crisis."

She smiled. It was true; many people assumed that because she didn't talk, she was an exceptionally compassionate listener. It was an odd thing, listening to people who were virtually strangers telling her about their marriages, or arguments with their friends, or their hidden addictions, thinking she was soaking up every word and emanating some mythic glow of holistic and unconditional understanding in return. This was a misguided assumption. While people talked to her about their problems, she mostly sat and thought about sex, or hockey. She liked hockey, in person especially, though she didn't really follow any teams. She enjoyed the sharp THWACK of the sticks against the puck, or one another, and the odd quality that resulted from combining the chill of the ice with the body heat of the surrounding crowd made her feel alive.

She was not thinking about these things now, however. Sam was a higher priority than the policeman in line behind her at the deli or the burnout in her homeroom the year she graduated. Sam was a constant presence, a golden thread of a life running parallel to her own. In the second grade, she and Sam had worn matching friendship bracelets, hers pink and Sam's blue. It was the only jewelry Sam would consent to wear. By ninth grade, Sam sported thick brown boots on zir feet, and baseball caps to hide zir long, parentally-mandated hair, and everyone whispered "Lesbian" to one another when zie passed. It wasn't until after graduation that Sam had discovered gender-neutral pronouns and requested that she use them, though she was the only one who did. In small-town Oklahoma, that was about as far as it could go.

She, meanwhile, had quietly slipped into a perpetual silence. If middle school had seemed full of inane chatter, high school had been even more so. Talking was just a way of categorizing, of defining, of clarifying, of claiming an identity in wanted groups and dismissing the unwanted ones. It all seemed very limiting. She wasn't shy. She just refused to speak until she really had something to say, which resulted in a slow verbal tapering off until her last spoken word, "No," was uttered in tenth grade, during a terrible fight with her mother. Since then, she hadn't found a necessary occasion to speak. A simple gesture usually sufficed, and if more complex interaction was necessary, she could always write it down. The process compelled her to hone in on the most significant aspects to be communicated, and leave what could be left unsaid.

Sam was sitting in a sunbeam, and dust motes played around zir face. The sock image flashed before her eyes again. She banished it with a stern blink.

Sam checked zir watch. "Two o' clock," zie sighed. "How did it get to be so late?" Zie began to clear the dishes off the table, zir hands shaking. She stopped Sam and held zim close. Sam was breathing deeply, rhythmically, and she could tell zie was trying not to cry. She could feel every beloved curve and angle of Sam's queer body—the squared shoulders, the soft, almost imperceptible swell of zir breasts, already bound for the day, the straight waist, hips, thighs, and between them a modest bulge, one of two delivered discreetly by mail to the house Sam still inhabited with zir parents. This one was for everyday wear; the other, erect, was presumably stuffed safely back into Sam's bag.

She stroked Sam's hair, feeling each soft bristle as if it was the first, breathing in zir scent of Old Spice and fabric softener.

"Do you remember," Sam breathed, "that night I met you on your porch?"

It was late in their sophomore year of high school. She was ascending the steps to the front door after an ill-considered first date when she heard the creak of the porch swing. Someone rose from the seat, and as they both stepped into the halo of the porch light, she could see that it was Sam. Sam, hair freshly shorn, clothes pronouncedly butch, and a bulge in zir khakis that she was fairly certain had not been there before.

Sam grinned. "What do you think? I'm getting out tonight. I'm driving up to Tulsa."

Her questions must have shown in her face.

"I want to try this. It's the only thing that makes sense. I have to be able to live the way I want to, figure things out, and I can't do that here. Maybe in a bigger city, maybe then I can find a place…"

She felt her eyes welling up. Her date leaned out the car window.

"Hey, are you okay?" he shouted. "Who is that?"

She waved him on, and he drove away, his grumbling harmonizing with the roar of his engine.

Sam's voice softened. "I could send for you, okay? I will. We'll be best friends in the big city, you and me, okay? Just let me go and find us a place. "

She nodded mutely.

"I'm sorry. I gotta try. I gotta…" Sam backed away from the window, looking toward the curb, where her brother's old truck sat lumpenly.

"Sam," she said, finding her voice, rusty from disuse.

Sam turned back. "Yeah?"

She smiled. "What's in your pants?"

Sam grinned and returned to the window, pulling zir waistband out so that she could peek into them. "It's a tube sock." They both laughed.

Sam, of course, never did make it to Tulsa. The police stopped zir, following up on zir brother's report of a stolen truck and zir mother's report of a missing daughter. When she came to see Sam the next day, Sam's mother curtly informed her that Sam was not to see anyone. Before the door closed, she could see the tube sock, lying on the oak floor of the foyer. Sam showed up at school on Monday with a black eye and a flowery pink blouse.

"What happens now?" Sam asked.

She extracted herself gently from Sam's embrace and pulled out her notepad to write.

Did you like it? Last night?

"I did," Sam replied.

"Well then," she said. "What else is there to say?"