Emil Krystad

The woman who checked us in was named Alvina, my grandma’s name. Mom told her she’d never met someone with her mother’s name before and almost started crying. Grandma died six years ago. When Mom got her ears pierced at sixteen, she did it without Alvina’s permission and faced her rage.

“If God wanted there to be holes in your ears, He would have put them there,” she had said.

When I was seventeen, my mother accompanied me to the plastic surgeon’s office. The only splash of color in the sleek, modern waiting room was a fish tank filled with exotic fish. I passed the time by flipping through the binder on the coffee table. It was filled with before and after pictures of women who got Botox, boob jobs, and tummy tucks. My mother looked over my shoulder. She was fifty-seven with a wrinkled and sun-spotted face that aged early from coating herself in oil as a teenager in an attempt to tan.

“God, they look good. Maybe I should get Botox.”

I wondered what Alvina would think if she heard her daughter say that. Or if she knew what I was about to do.

            I was getting chest masculinization surgery. I was called out of the waiting room to change into scrubs. Mom followed when I was finished, then sat facing the wall as we waited for the doctor. When Dr. Meghan arrived, Mom faced her as she talked us through the surgery. I watched her watering eyes and sniffling nose.

            It took three years to convince my mother to let me do this. She thought I would change my mind, or wake up and regret it, or wake up to a botched result, or not wake up at all, and it would be her fault because it was non-essential, and she let me do it anyway.

I followed Dr. Meghan into the operating room, and Mom returned to the lobby. I took my scrubs off and lay down on the table. Someone put a needle in my arm and a tube up my nose. I don’t remember the next part.

            Dr. Meghan removed my nipples and then made two incisions above and below my breasts. She removed the fatty tissue, which went into a biowaste bag. The two lips of flesh were drawn and sewed together. She grafted my nipples into a new location, now smaller and more masculine. She sewed dressings to them and put drains in the incisions.

            Mom came into the room for Dr. Meghan to explain the post-operative care routine. I sat in a wheelchair, so deep into anesthesia and painkillers that I didn’t hear a word she said and couldn’t hold my head up. It bobbled around and dropped back in free fall like it was disconnected from my body. Mom jumped behind me and put her hands around my neck, supporting my head like she did when I was a baby. I felt her cool rings against my skin and the wet tips of her fingers where she wiped her eyes.

When she helped me into the car, she rubbed my cheeks and smoothed back my hair. “My poor baby.”

Conor was born two years before me and got surgery two years after me.

When he came out of my mother, his lack of a left ear was the most noticeable part of his appearance. There was just a nub of cartilage on that side of his face, with no ear canal to expose the eardrum hiding somewhere deep in his skull. After his teeth came in, his back molars would only touch on the right side when he bit down.

Just a few weeks after his birth, the doctors showed my parents the plan of surgery and dental work he would face. They were informed that there was a small risk of death with these procedures. My parents looked at Conor’s deformed face and agreed to everything.

He got his first surgery at six, with minor adjustments to improve his bite. At ten, when his head was full-sized, he got a customized silicone ear to wear on the flat side of his face, complete with painted freckles. Conor never wore the ear, hated the braces and retainers, and kept chewing on one side of his mouth. The final step came at twenty-one when he had major facial reconstruction surgery to normalize his appearance.

My mother sat in the waiting room as Dr. Browd made incisions at the back of the jawbone, right behind the molars. He cut through the bone in four places, then adjusted it so the mandible ran parallel to the skull. Using screws and plates, he secured it in place for healing. In time, those screws would become part of the jaw.

His jaw and neck puffed up and morphed together when the surgery was done. His whole face turned yellow and purple with bruising.

Mom joined me at the dining room table when she returned home from the hospital. She took my hands and started crying openly. “My poor baby, my poor baby,” she kept calling him.

I stared at the wall behind her, with a picture of me and Conor in a bathtub. I am less than a year old and sitting in front of my brother, whose arms are wrapped around my flat chest. His head is angled so his missing ear faces the camera, and his smile shows off his misaligned baby teeth. My legs are open, with my sex clearly visible—her poor babies.

Emil Krystad is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing an English degree at Southern Oregon University. You can find him on Instagram @emil.kay.