I always believed that a male child was the only correct way to continue the family name.
That’s how I was raised: respect first, emotions later. When my wife placed the baby boy in my arms, I felt that something was finally going right. A son. Someone I could teach to be strong.
The first years were exactly as I had imagined. Ball, tools, dry scoldings. Andrew learned to stay quiet and look people in the eye. I was proud.
Then the signs began.
The long hair. The tighter clothes. The way of walking. When the boyfriend appeared — thin, soft-voiced — I felt an exact coldness in my stomach. It wasn’t only disappointment. It was fear. Fear of not recognizing my own son.
At night, while I took the Parkinson’s pills, I looked at my hands. Sometimes they trembled without permission. Control was slipping from my body the same way Andrew was slipping away from me.
Two fears grew at the same time:
the fear of my body
and the fear of my son.
I didn’t know which one scared me more.
The distance settled in without shouting.
I gave him tools, a gym membership, work boots. Every object was a mute way of saying come back. Every object ended up ignored.
Dinners became short sentences.
—Did you eat already?
—Yes.
One afternoon I saw him on the sidewalk with the boyfriend. Andrew was laughing in a way I had never seen at home. When the other one tucked the hair behind his ear, I closed the curtain with too much force.
That night I took the pill earlier.
I tried to talk about it only once. I told him I was worried, that I didn’t like how he dressed, that that friend didn’t seem like a good influence. Andrew listened in silence and only answered:
—I’m fine, Dad.
He went to his room.
I stayed counting the pills I had left. Each time I needed more to feel that I still commanded my body. Each time Andrew escaped me further.
That day I left work earlier. The tremor was worse.
I opened the door and heard noises. Breathing. The rustle of clothes. I walked down the hallway. The bedroom door was ajar.
Andrew was on the bed, half-naked, long hair falling over his back. Beneath him, the boyfriend.
I pushed the door open.
—Get out.
The boyfriend left almost running. The silence that remained was worse.
—Is this what you are?
Andrew covered himself as best he could. His eyes were wet.
—Dad…
—No. Don’t call me Dad now.
You’re a fucking disappointment.
—Don’t leave. Please.
I shook my head. I took the keys and went down the stairs without looking back. I heard his voice shouting after me from the door, but I didn’t stop. I got into the car and drove off.
The tremor climbed up my arm. I gripped the steering wheel. I accelerated. The rage clouded my vision.
The light came head-on, too white, too close.
I didn’t manage to turn in time.
I woke up with a dull pain in my head and a voice calling me.
I blinked. White room. Smell of disinfectant. In front of me, at the foot of the bed, a figure: long hair, slumped shoulders, the same face I had seen in the room.
For a second I thought it was Andrew.
Then I noticed the silver frame. The reflection. The way the figure moved exactly when I moved.
It wasn’t Andrew.
It was a mirror.
And the person looking back at me… was me.
Everything I had been telling — the rage, the tremor, the disappointment, the car, the light — were not my father’s memories.
They were mine.
Filtered. Distorted. Told from his eyes because I could never bear to look at them from my own.
I was not the father.
I had always been the daughter.
I was born a woman. He wanted a son so badly that he raised me as one and called me Andrew. For years I tried to hold up that lie. I cut my hair, lowered my voice, took whatever I could to look more masculine. I lived with the terror of breaking his heart.
Until I couldn’t anymore.
I fell in love. I stopped the pills. I grew my hair out. One day he opened the door and found me with my boyfriend. The disappointment on his face was exactly as I remembered it. The words too:
“You’re a fucking disappointment.”
Then the car. The tremor. The Parkinson’s. The truck.
He died in that accident.
And I stayed telling myself the story over and over from his gaze, as if by repeating it I could understand the rejection… or deserve it less.
In front of the hospital mirror I touched my face.
My name had always been Andrea.
Years later, the house was different.
More light. Less silence. I was on the sofa with my hair loose. On the television, the Power Rangers were fighting at low volume.
The boy, five years old, was on the carpet. He turned and pointed at the Pink Ranger.
—Mom… can I be like her?
For a second I felt the old voice of my father, the disappointment, the weight of having been Andrew for so long.
Then I looked at the child. Open eyes, no judgment, only curiosity.
I smiled.
—You can be whatever you want. Anything. And I will always be proud of you.
He nodded and turned back to the television.
I looked up at the screen. Between the reflection and the colors of the cartoon, for an instant I thought I saw my father’s bloodied face, looking at me with the same contempt from that afternoon.
I blinked.
The image dissolved.
Only the Power Rangers and my son’s laughter remained.
I stroked his hair and thought, almost under my breath:
“Sometimes the greatest terror is found in the mind…
but the one you never get rid of is in the heart.”
The End.
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