Page 76 of All That Has Flown Beyond
“What’s wrong?” she asked when he sat down to join her.
Kaiyo wrapped his hands around the warm mug. He looked at Isla’s open, worried eyes. Wondered what protecting her would look like in this moment.
Honesty, he thought.
“I get sad sometimes. It makes it hard to get out of bed or do things. It’s like something doesn’t quite work inside,” he explained, tapping his head. “I’m okay. I know how to deal with it better now.”
“Oh. You’re sad?”
“Sometimes.”
“Oh. Was it…did we do something?”
“No. A lot of the time it doesn’t work that way. It’s inside. It’s like…you know when you peek through a window? And the window can be clean or it can be dirty or it can have water streaming down. And depending on the window, the world outside looks one way or it looks another. Like, it can be the sunniest day outside, but if that window is all warped and dirty, you’re not going to see the sunlight. Sometimes, my window gets like that, and it’s hard to clean it, but I know how to now.”
“Oh. You didn’t know how to before?”
“No. Not really. I kind of expected it to clean itself with time or something. And it just got dirtier and dirtier until I couldn’t see through it.”
“How, like…how did you, like, learn?”
“I went to someone. A professional window cleaner, in a way. A therapist. She couldn’t clean the window for me, but she could teach me how. And it’s still hard to do it, sometimes, but it gets easier with practice.”
“Oh.” Isla chewed on her lip. Kaiyo watched her carefully.
“Does that ever happen to you? Do you ever feel like your window is dirty, and you don’t know how to clean it?” Kaiyo asked gently. Isla stared at her drink, the steam curling from its surface.
“I don’t know. I think…there’s something wrong with my house. Like…inside the window,” she said quietly.
“In what way?”
“I think there’s something wrong with me,” she said, and Kaiyo felt his throat squeeze for a moment, because he knew that feeling. But not when he had been ten years old.
Kaiyo simply looked at her, waiting for her to find her voice.
“I don’t…I don’t know what it is. It’s like…I don’t want people to look at me. I’m scared of growing up.”
Kaiyo didn’t reply, ‘That’s normal’. “What part of growing up don’t you want to happen?”
A long silence fell. Kaiyo let it be.
“My body. I, like…I don’t want it to change.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Isla struggled to find the words to continue. “I. It sounds crazy, okay? But, like, I wish nobody could see what I was. I don’t like it when…I don’t know. When people call me a girl it’s like. You know when someone stands too close to you? And you don’t like it, it’s all weird and they smell like coffee or something? It’s kind of like that but worse. Like when someone you don’t know and isn’t pack, like a teacher or something, puts a hand on your back to tell you where to go and it’s like, get off! Like…like when someone says I’m a girl it’s like their hands are on me and trying to tell me, ‘Go there’ or ‘Be that’ and it’s not…it’s not where I should be. They’re too close and I just want them to go away.”
Isla took a deep, gulping breath when she was finished. Kaiyo opened his mouth but wanted to choose his words carefully. He thought of Mori, of his Kimonos and lip gloss, of the way it was obvious he’d had to fight to fit in his skin in ways other people simply hadn’t.
“What if people started referring to you with male pronouns?” Kaiyo asked. At Isla’s confused expression, he clarified. “Like, if people called you by ‘he’ and ‘him’. If they thought of you as a boy.”
Isla scrunched up her face. “I dunno,” she said quietly. “Maybe. I just…” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Hey. Come here,” Kaiyo said, getting off his chair and kneeling next to Isla. She collapsed onto him, burying her face in his neck and wrapping her arms around him.
“Isla. Here’s the thing. You don’t have to know. I know it’s confusing, not knowing. But…think of it as getting to know yourself. It’s a process, yeah? You ask questions. Sometimes you know the answer. Sometimes you need to get a little more information. But…maybe what’s hurting you the most is being forced into a box. Do you know what a spectrum is?”
“Yeah. Like with colours,” Isla said, still wrapped around Kaiyo.
