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In 1891, Hans Christian Anderson was informed the man he was in love
with was getting married…the next day. The groom was worried Hans
would make a scene but luckily, he only absolutely justified that by reciting
extended passionate poems about the man in front of God
and everyone. The bride didn't even have the decency
to be anything but lovely, so gentle, he couldn't even hate her for being
with someone Hans claimed he loved as a woman, his longing forced to be
secret, that is silent.
In 1989, I see my first movie in theatres: The Little Mermaid. Picture me
holding a Minnie Mouse doll, my legs lost in sequined fin, my 2 year old
frame obscured beneath pink nylon with shiny purple shells, a smile so
broad from a mouth so big
it is the widest gate to barrel an army of insults through, the softest target.
My first conviction, condemned to be labeled repeat offender.
“You talk too much.”
You know the story, right? She doesn't listen. She wants a body she wasn't
born with. Sacrifices speech to be seen without drowning. It's obvious,
when you think about it. I have written so many poems apologizing
for their own noise and others where I pretend to be proud of the volume.
When I cried,
my voice splintered exactly like my mother's, exactly how she earned the
nickname Squeaker, a not-gentle-enough judgment, which never stopped
her from calling me big mouth. We have always loved like oceans.
Which is to say, crushingly.
Hans sent the man a handwritten original draft. The soft femme. The
separated lover. The silencing. In the first version, there is no redemption,
just the fall into the sea, just the foam and oblivion, too bleak to publish so
after, the added promise of heaven, the potential for a more real self
the next go around.
I don't have long straight hair or need to cover my chest with any shell
but what armor I choose, but when my mother asks if “losing my beautiful
voice” is a trans thing, I am on the ocean floor, barely tethered. I am afraid
if I open my mouth, the tidal forces of decades being mocked, dismissed,
indicted for the squared volume of my words will rip all the forced silences
from my secret grottos and spill them across her floor. I want her to stop
apologizing for all the witches who have shown me magic. But the question
is a conch shell curling infinitely with generational history and it has stolen
my voice.
In the story, every step on tender new legs is agony, but the mermaid
dances for the Prince anyway. We are never allowed to complain about the
wreckage of getting what we asked for, no matter who leaves us, no matter
who lets the silences swallow us in the surf.