Your mother used to call you zaftig.
Yiddish for: a full figured woman. Used mostly for women, though occasionally for men if they are a little chubby. You had long, beautiful brown wavy locks. Gorgeous hair, the women used to say, in their nasally Long Island Italian accents. Hairdressers would pose you for pictures like a mannequin while their long plastic fingernails combed through it, made the curls so big you could hide behind them as if they were the coveted walls of an attic. After you come out as gay during the pandemic, the first thing you do is buy a brand new masculine wardrobe.
When you were zaftig, you took all the Jew jokes at your new southern public high school with a smile. You made yourself laugh each time a boy did the Hitler salute or suggested you should be in an oven. You didn’t call out your friends for laughing. And you didn’t punch that Q-anon looking asshole, with his ugly toothbrush mustache in the mouth before first period, even though you wanted to when he asked if you had horns, since he heard all Jews have horns, and even though you debate giving him an uppercut, putting a childhood filled with sweaty Tae Kwon Do lessons to good use, you don’t, because you are a nice Jewish girl, and even if you did have horns, you’d keep them rinsed and shampooed, hidden beneath your Nice Jewish hair.
You keep a list on your phone of all the times you have been called sir in public. You stop counting after five. You enjoy the game of it, the agency you get when men think you’re one of them. Your hair is boy-short. Your clothes are from the men’s section, but even on feminine days, they don’t see your body and think your shape checks the box of a woman. This should bother you, but it doesn’t. You learn how to be a man: how to walk like one, how to talk, how to do a proper handshake, lift weights at the gym without being anxious, how to win instead of lose.
On Yom Kippur, the security guard gives you a firmer handshake than usual, compliments your haircut. When you walk into the synagogue, dressed in beige trousers, purple Nike Jordan basketball shoes, and a boy’s collared t-shirt that’s way too big on you, the rabbi offers you a blue yarmulke to put on your head and the chance to give an aliyah blessing at the bimah before the congregation, to sit in the men’s section, says without saying it that now you are a mensch. You have dreamed of this moment your whole life. But when you look up at the closeted Arc of the Torah, folded in on itself, you think of G-d watching you, of all the sins you are about to repent for, and sit back down in the women’s side of the mechitza.
The first time it happens, you are in a restaurant with your mom. A waiter arrives and after he goes through the usual spiel about specials in his southern accent, he asks your mother for her order. What can I get for you today, ma’am? She tells him what she wants. He turns to you, stands up a bit straighter. And for you, sir? It rolls off his tongue with more purpose, more power. Your whole face lights up. She’ll have the Caesar salad. Your mom corrects him. He steps back, his eyes wide. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I- It’s okay, you say, basking in the compliment. I don’t mind. Later that same day, you tell a butch friend about your new ability. Welcome to the first of many, my friend. She says.
How can I help you, sir? The men ask you. What can I get for you, sir? Nobody holds the door for you anymore, you hold the door open for them. Uber rides are no longer plagued by uncomfortable, unwarranted questions, but comfortable silences, the driver’s eyes remain on the road as rap music plays instead of bubblegum pop. When you ask for the restroom, you are given directions to the men’s bathroom. When you order food, the waiters write it down as you speak, not afterwards. There are pluses to the patriarchy that you never observed before in a lifetime of minuses. When you say you are a writer, you no longer hear things like what your cousin once said, nobody reads books written by women. What job are you going to get with that degree? They ask what you write about, if you’re working on a novel. When you say you are autistic, you are not given anecdotes about how you’re nothing like two year old autistic family members or a list of solutions to cure your puzzle piece: yoga, gluten free diets, essential oils, walking, meditation. When your autism speaks, you no longer have to worry about your voice shaking.
At the airport, your mother is asked if you are her son. You are referred to with he/him/his pronouns, go from a pretty lady to a young man. Sometimes even she slips up, uses your brother’s name for you by accident. You take any spare coats or shirts he doesn’t want, mold your gender from pink to blue like a clay Golem. You asked to cut your hair short in seventh grade, yet didn’t know how to say what you meant, so you ended with a bob—continued to maneuver your hair in the mirror until it resembled a guy’s cut. Each time strangers address you, you can see the multiple choice survey appear instantly before them right above your undecipherable body. Is this person A. Male B. Female or C.Neither? You come out as nonbinary twice, hoping this will give people the explanation they need, then end up at your starting point.
In your senior year of college, once lockdowns end, you try to be zaftig again.
You grow out your hair, contemplate getting a wig, wonder if lesbians can wear sheitels after marriage. You replace suits with dresses, buy the frilliest pink dress you can. It hugs your shoulders and has a lacey bow on the front. Your mother says you look mousey. The fabric clings to your skin too tightly. A friend sees a picture of you and says you look uncomfortable. You feel like you have gone back into the closet. Your shoulders hunch over, your eyes are downcast. You sit with your legs together instead of apart, keep your hands on your lap, speak quieter, apologize more. Men go back to talking to you in Uber rides and seeing phone-tapping silence as an invitation for questions. As hard as you try to be one, a zaftig is just not who you are anymore. You are a mensch. The tally proves it. The next time you wear a suit to synagogue, the sides of your head buzzed off, you feel like the Torah as the arc opens; your scrolls of truth unfolding. You stand up and down three on your tip toes during Kedushah, repeating Hebrew praises in a chorus of the body’s movement, returning to a place where you finally feel: holy, holy, holy.