They

Madeline Furlong

Kat is disappearing. It starts on Monday, when they are too quiet—quiet when they wake, quiet when they arrive home, quiet when we brush our teeth at our Jack and Jill sinks.

“Do you see me?” their reflection asks me in the mirror.

“Every bit,” mine responds.

But Tuesday they hunch their shoulders up against the world, and I swear they look smaller, somehow, like they are sinking into themselves. Or the earth.

Kat has changed in other ways, too.

We met three years ago on a women’s over-thirty softball league. It was a year after my divorce. I had done very little since the split, and my coworker Megan had been bullying me for months to join. Megan played shortstop; her wife, also Megan, played left field.

“I’m trying to stay away from activities that bring out my competitive side,” I told her.

“Why? Because your ex-husband didn’t like it? Girl, forget him.”

I had never played before, but Megan put me at first base. Kat played catcher. I noticed her right away—she had short black hair that looked like it had been sprinkled with salt. She was Korean, with freckles across her nose, and circle glasses. The first time we touched was when I stole home during a scrimmage, sliding into the plate as Kat went to tag me out. I never knew, before that, that a twinkle in an eye and the touch of a glove could change a life.

“Was this your plan all along?” I asked Megan, later. “For me to date a woman?”

“Girls are the best,” she said. “You’ll see.”

Falling in love with Kat was the easiest thing I ever did. I had been married to a man like myself, one who moved fast at work and even faster outside of it. Kat was different. She led a simple life, and made me want to lead one, too. She never had a plan, but didn’t mind that I always did. She worked produce at an organic food store but loved that I was on the partner-track at my firm. Kat watched me with that twinkle whenever I went off about a coworker who couldn’t meet a deadline or a client who was getting cold feet. She called me her little lion—beautiful and fierce. I called her my guardian angel—the one who brought me back to life. We moved into a little house in a quiet neighborhood where Kat started an herb garden and cooked gluten-free. We went to softball games at the high school down the road. We drank tea on the porch at night. When I told Megan about our routine she laughed.

“That’s the most lesbian thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

“You’ve lost weight,” I tell Kat. It’s Wednesday morning, and in the locker room of the gym, as we towel off, I can see their ribs.

“Have I?” they ask, and I can tell that they are genuinely surprised. Their glasses are steamed from the shower, slipping on their freckly nose. I think, I could fall in love with you all over again.

I say, “Yes, I’m worried.”

“Don’t be too hard on her,” a woman jokes. “She looks good!”

“They,” I say sternly.

Six months ago, Kat told me they weren’t a woman, not really.

“But I’m not a man either,” they said. “I’m neither. Or maybe a bit of both.”

“Ok,” I replied, “Then we’ll find something neutral to call you.”

I did my research. I read articles and listened to podcasts and googled activists who introduced me to an underworld of gender possibility. I learned so much that I wrote it all up in a report. Then I made a PowerPoint on the history and correct usage of they/them pronouns. I even included a slide on gender duality in nature.

“This is interesting,” I told Kat from the kitchen table one night. “Did you know that earthworms are both male and female?”

Kat was knuckles-deep in her herb garden, coaxing the thyme to make room for the sage. “I wouldn’t lead with that,” they replied with a laugh.

On Thursday Kat’s body begins to go. At first, it’s subtle, just the touch of a hand that meets no resistance or the edges of their arms just a little less defined. But when I bump their shoulder and fall through them, I know something is really wrong. I take off work and drag them to every doctor in town. I spend hours on the phone with specialists. I bully our way into an appointment with a top dermatologist. No one knows what to do.

“I’m going to fix this,” I say to Kat that night. “I have to.”

We told the Megans first, three months ago. Kat was nervous before. They practiced their speech in front of the mirror. I picked them out a new tie. When the Megans arrived, Kat set out the hors d’oeuvres and I opened a bottle of wine. Kat was excited, and clutched my hand as they came out to our friends. I read from my report and played the PowerPoint, too. But the Megans just stared at us.

“Are you really going to abandon your sisters?” Megan said. “What about lesbian solidarity?”

“What about the team?” other Megan said. “We’re women-only. She’ll have to quit. I mean he. It.”

No one else wanted to use Kat’s new pronouns, either.

“I’m just too old to learn something new,” said my grandmother as she sent out a tweet.

“It’s too hard to remember!” cried a friend, who had committed several Shakespearean soliloquies to memory.

“But I’m really into grammar,” said a stranger. “And as an English major, that’s just incorrect.”

Friday night we make love and it is clumsy, Kat’s body flickering in and out. I can barely feel their fingers on my skin, so I get myself there on my own. Afterwards they stroke my hair and whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” I say fiercely. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry for this world.”

I corrected people for months—reminded coworkers, cajoled friends. But in the end, I had to stop inviting my parents over for dinner. Kat had to quit the team. And she followed them like a shadow, from the “ma’am” at grocery checkouts, to the “hello ladies” whenever we went out, to the “check a box: male or female” on every form Kat filled.

“How does it make you feel,” our therapist asked us, “when people get your pronouns wrong?”

“Disrespected!” I spat. “Furious!”

“Like no one can see me,” murmured Kat. “Like I’m small, and slimy. Easy to crush.” 

On Saturday afternoon I take Kat to a high school softball game. We sit in the bleachers and listen to the thwack of bats and the laughter of teenagers. Kat is barely visible—only an outline seen from the corner of your eye, like an angel in the sun.

“You know,” they say, and from what I can see of their face it is turned toward the sky, “maybe earthworms don’t have it so bad. Just to be out in the sun, a simple life. I’d give anything to stay in this moment forever.”

“Kat—” I start.

“Don’t be sorry, little lion,” they interject, and take my hand. “For this world, I mean. Without it, I would never have known you.” 

We told Kat’s parents last Sunday, the night before they began to disappear.

“You’re breaking my heart,” said their mother.

“I just want my little girl back,” said their dad.

Kat shook the whole way home.

Sunday morning it is quiet when I wake. I can feel the early-morning sun on my face. I can feel the empty space beside me on the bed. I know they are gone before I open my eyes, and I let the tears burn hot down my cheeks. But when I turn toward their empty side, I see an earthworm curled on the pillow. I pick it up and examine it closely. Around the eyes are the exact circles of Kat’s glasses. Maybe there are freckles. I swear I see a twinkle.

I carry them outside in a tiny terrarium, the kind my brother kept his hermit crab in as a boy, and walk to the high school down the road. It is a warm, clear day. In the green of the softball diamond, I let Kat go. 

I want to burn the world down. I want to remake it. I want to feel nothing and everything and I want Kat back. So I tend to their herb garden and publish my report and play my PowerPoint at schools and conferences across the country. I stage protests, I go on TV, and I help write laws, laws that protect. I will make them see, I promise the sky. And when I go to softball games now, I always reach down and touch the grass. I like the feel of it—green and lush and life-giving. A frozen moment. A simple home.