Dunham - A Year Without a Name: A Memoir

I COULD TRY to tell a story that ends with resolution, but the only way to succeed would be to lie. If I lied, I would be whole at the end of the story. Wholeness would be possible. I might superimpose alienation onto every moment of my life leading up to self-acceptance, as if denial and repression are not so powerful that they create their own truths. Then, upon narrative completion, I would correct the condition of never having felt at home in my body. I would find personhood, once and for all, hospitable and harmonious. I would be an individual, an adult, a man.

But I have, at many moments, believed I was a woman. And in that belief, which did not leave any space for doubt, I was a woman. What is womanhood, anyway, beyond a belief that constitutes itself?

I will never have been born a man. I do not propose this as a universal truth. Some other people I love feel differently. I may pass as a man someday, but I will know in my gut that I had to convince myself I was allowed to have that passing, that I sacrificed for that passing, that passing feels like a betrayal of everyone who ever loved me as a woman, for being a woman. And maybe I will always wonder if that passing is just a trick, a lie. The trick might be a deeper truth than the girl, the woman, or the man. The trick itself might be who I am.

My name was Grace. The first thing I remember is a purple morning glory out a window. The second thing I remember is slugs on the wall of a shed. My mom had me when she was forty-two. She tried hard to have me. She had a green piece of paper with all the names my parents almost named me. My mom wanted to name me Esther and my dad wanted to name me Kay. They agreed on Grace. They only put one boy name on the list, Cyrus, which sounded like Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of rebirth.

My moms ancestors were Jewish and my dads ancestors were Puritans who I imagined wore only black and lived in wooden houses where there was nothing soft to sit on. Puritans had names like Hope, Mercy, and Patience, which were similar to my name. They were ideas, not things you could touch. This distinction became important to me: Grace was an abstract noun; bird was a concrete noun.

My mom went to a psychic when she was having trouble getting pregnant with me. The psychic told her there was a baby boy waiting to enter their family. The psychic said the baby boy had chosen them because he had things he wanted to teach them. My mom told me that story often. It made my face get hot. I wondered if the baby boy was me.

My mom is a photographer and my dad is a painter. My dad and I drew together every night. When we finished a drawing, we each signed it on the bottom right corner. His signature started with the letter C, which looked like a mouth opening up and spitting out the rest of the letters. I couldnt spell so I copied his signature, except I started mine with a G, which I wrote like a C with a tongue. I liked to draw Gs walking across the page with their tongues getting smaller and smaller until they became Cs. I liked imagining myself as my dad when he was a little boy. I looked at old pictures of him standing on the beach and pretended I was inside his body.

My sister is six years older than me. She had wavy blond hair and she liked the things I hated, like makeup, dresses, and jewelry. She kept a pile of dolls and I kept a box of superheroes. She gave me her old dolls and I used my grandpas old tools to saw their arms and legs off, unscrew their heads, and drill holes in their torsos. I did the same things with my superheroes, then put the different limbs back together to make creatures that were part doll and part superhero.

My sister liked to paint my face with eye shadow, blush, and lipstick, dress me up, and take photos of me. She put red glitter on my eyelids. The glitter was in the shape of lips, stars, and hearts. I parted my lips and held my breath while she snapped through Kodak disposable cameras my parents had bought for her at the drugstore.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every Saturday morning. I liked the arms and armor section, with its rows of metal men and horses. I liked how the armor was big and heavy, but there were little drawings of flowers scratched into the surface. I pictured myself running through a forest, with armor for skin.

When we drove through other parts of the city, I hoped for red lights so that our car would stop and I could see into the windows on the lower floors of apartment buildings. Later, I fantasized about the rooms Id seen and imagined I was part of another family, but a son instead of a daughter. It scared me that I only got to be one person the whole time I was alive. Even if I had been reincarnated, I couldnt remember who else Id been.

At school, I was only friends with boys. Kids made fun of the boys who only played with girls, and those boys parents were embarrassed by them. My parents were proud of me because I was a special, tough kind of girl.

I had short hair I slicked back in the bathroom with water, and a heavy leather jacket my mom bought for me at a thrift store. I sat with my legs spread wide and picked the scabs on my knees until they bled. At home I stood in front of the mirror with my shirt off and my arms crossed, lifting my chin up like men in magazines. For a while I told my sister and my parents that I wanted to be called Jimmy, which was the nickname of the actor James Dean and of my moms best friend, whom I never met because before I was born he died of AIDS. No one agreed to call me Jimmy, but I still liked to say it out loud to myself in the mirror. Hi, my name is Jimmy, I would say, then repeat it three more times, to make it even. Hi, my name is Jimmy. Hi, my name is Jimmy. Hi, my name is Jimmy.

During the summer, we left the city and went to a house across from a lake, which was connected to another lake. The lakes were called Twin Lakes. I loved the summer because we left the windows open. I could hear crickets at night and birds in the morning. When I could hear the outside through the window I didnt feel like I was trapped or like I was going to die, even though I knew everything would die eventually, including the sun. My dad had told me that someday the sun was going to explode and get so big that it would swallow up the earth. Then it would shrink and turn red. After that the sun would get cold and dark, then disappear. But by then everything I knew and loved would already have been destroyed.