Zora

Chapter Three

The house remained silent until they heard the bedroom door shut upstairs. Turning to face her son, Helen crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Terrance. "I never want to hear you say anything like that again."

"What-"

"Zora told me who she was. I would not have addressed her as my daughter if she told me she was a boy who liked to wear women's clothes. If you ever meet someone who does cross dress or is transgender, never, ever tell them who they are. They know who they are, you don't."

"Well, I didn't know.You said you were bringing your son to live with us, and I saw a man," he argued. "You are born the gender you are, that's it. That's what I was told. So, when you called him your daughter, I fought back. People can wear whatever the hell they want, but just because a guy wears a dress, that doesn't automatically make him a woman. I was trying to be nice."

"Well, you kind of came off as a jerk," Spencer said.

He quickly spun around to face his friend. Seeing Spencer with his arms crossed over his chest with his sister mirroring him caused his heart to sink. "Not you too."

"Zora's right, you know," Denise stated. "There are more than two genders. Gender is a spectrum, and she falls on the female side. You should be accepting her for who she is. I admire that woman for coming out and embracing who she is, but it's because of transphobic people like yourself that she probably hates herself and will live in the worst house imaginable. Think about what you are doing to her."

"Okay, everyone needs to back off me for a second," Terrance snapped. "I was taught that you are either born male or female, and that's it. No one ever told me about this whole gender spectrum you're talking about. How the hell was I supposed to know any of that when I was never told about it? It's not like I'm going to disrespect her and call her a boy to her face if she's not a boy. But I don't understand what any of this is, because you're all saying words that are confusing me, and I don't know what to make of it.

"I'm sorry for being confused, but can you can honestly blame me? It's not like school is teaching us any of this, and if I don't know about it, how am I supposed to go out and educate myself? All I know is that you can be gay, straught, or bisexual, so do not yell at me for being ignorant. I'd be ignorant if I knew and refused to accept it. I'm merely clueless, alright?" he snapped.

"Okay," Denise calmly said as she led him to the couch, "first, your gender identity is completely different than your sexual orientation. You can be transgender and be straight. Zora might like men, so she'd be considered straight if she only like men. Or she may only like women and be a lesbian. Who don't know who she likes, but that does not have anything to do with the fact that she is a woman."

Rather than yelling and blaming her friend for his lack of knowledge, as so many people did, Denise knew it was better to remain calm as she explained it to him. She knew that if she were to get riled up and yell at someone about their lack of knowledge, they wouldn't want to learn anything new. No one was going to want to learn if people weren't kind when explaining it. She knew that in order for Terrance to understand Zora, she would need to explain as much as possible.

Upon receiving a glare from his sister, Spencer nodded. "Also, I can't really blame you," he sighed as he sat next to them. "It's not like teachers are just going to suddenly start teaching kids what it means to be trans. We're taught that you are born a boy or a girl. Health class doesn't even teach you how to have sex if you are gay. We're not being educated unless we go out and search for the facts ourselves. We can't search for the facts if we don't know what exactly we are supposed to be searching for."

"Then what do I do?" Terrance asked.

"You can either look up the information yourself," Denise responded.