Page 66 of TJ Powar Has Something to Prove

So she answers. “Hey, Mom.”

She thinks she sounds fairly casual, but not according to her mother. “What’s wrong? You sound different. Are you okay?”

TJ opens her mouth to say yes, but instead, she just grips the phone harder. Hearing her mom’s voice makes her heart ache suddenly. It’s only been a few days away from home and yet TJ suddenly wants to run into her arms and never leave. God. She’s going to be a wreck when she leaves for university.

“What are you doing right now?” her mom asks worriedly.

“Oh.” TJ looks around, and then settles on a half-truth. “Getting ready for a swim.”

“A swim?” Her mom is dead silent for a second. “Did you have a waxing appointment before you left?”

TJ holds it together for about one second and then, to her absolute mortification, bursts into tears.

It’s just—once again, her fears are confirmed. Being rejected by her ownmother...the jokes write themselves.

Instantly, her mom is practically shouting on the phone: “Oh no, putt, don’t cry!” TJ sinks to the floor, her shoulders shaking so hard from crying she almost drops the phone. Her mom makes soothing sounds, the same she used to make when TJ was a little kid and inconsolable over a minor inconvenience. “It’s just—it doesn’t look good. I don’t understand why you suddenly stopped waxing. You used to beg me to let you do it.”

That pulls TJ out of it. With a hiccup, she sits up straight and tries to keep her voice firm. “Because I want to show people it exists. ThatIexist and it’s okay, and normal.” Her mom is silent again, and TJ’s certainty wavers. “Itisnormal, isn’t it?”

She hates how pathetic she sounds, but she has to ask. Her mom’s a doctor; she’ll know.

“Itisnormal. There are hormonal disorders that can cause more hair, too, of course. I don’t think you have one, but even if you did... it would be okay. It’s very common. More people than you think have hormonal differences they can’t do much about. We just don’t talk about it because we find it embarrassing.”

Well, colour TJ shocked.

“Body hair is normal. Especially for us.” TJ can practically hear her wry smile. “We’ve been removing it since ancienttimes. In medical literature, they call our hairiness idiopathic hirsutism.”

“Gesundheit.”

As usual, her mom misses the joke. “It means it’s inherited. With no known cause or other symptoms. That’s all.”

“If it’s not a problem, why does it have a medical name?”

“Some white doctor probably made it up so they could call us something.” TJ can practically hear her shrug over the phone. “They are clueless. When I was in medical school, we were taught hirsutism in cisgender girls is if they have to tweeze facial hair more than twice a month.”

TJ scoffs. She knows for a fact Chandani does her eyebrows weekly. So did TJ, when she was doing them. That was their normal. Their hair grows back quicker, thicker, longer. She thinks back to Dr. Chen’s words:What’s really a disease, and what’s just diversity? Who gets to decide?

White people, apparently. “If that’s true, and it’s normal, why do you want me to get rid of it?”

“Oh, TJ.” She sighs. “I just don’t want people to say nasty things about you.”

TJ angrily wipes tears from her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have to change my body for that to happen.”

“I know. But the world is harsh.”

The worldisharsh. TJ doesn’t have to subject herself to it. But if she’s going to prove her resolution, then she does. She can’t stop living her life because of this.

She glances at the door and takes a deep breath. “Mom, I have to go.”

It’s time to do this.

NINETEEN

***

No one notices her at first.

When she arrives poolside in her terry-cloth robe, most of her classmates are wading in the pool, or splashing and shrieking from the waterslide. Some are in the hot tub. Including Liam, with Alexa Fisher tucked in at his side. TJ’s stomach curdles.