Of course I wasn’t fired because I was trans. No, it was for completely unrelated reasons, as anyone at South Taine Elementary or the Taine County school board would tell you. Besides, Georgia is an at-will employment state, so even if they did fire me for being trans, it would be perfectly legal.

My completely legal and unprejudiced firing aside, I had to find a new job, and I didn’t have the money to move to a less transphobic area right now. I started applying for jobs at schools in the more liberal cities like Athens and Atlanta, despite how long the commute would be until I could afford to move, and considered changing careers, at least temporarily, until I could save enough money to move somewhere more accepting.

Not surprisingly, not many schools were hiring in the middle of the school year. A month went by, and another, and another, and I still didn’t have anything. I was going to have to choose between rent and a full load of groceries — or giving up and moving in with my parents, which might be worse.

And then I got a letter from a lawyer’s office. For a moment I was terrified that someone was suing me, maybe a parent of a child I’d taught in the short time between getting outed and getting fired. Then I daydreamed that I was being informed of an inheritance — not that I knew of any rich relatives, but who does know all the people they’re related to? Not me.

Then I opened the envelope.

Dear Ms. Brand,

I am writing to inform you of a job offer from my clients. They wish to hire a full-time teacher for their disabled eight-year-old child. They happen to have heard that you are recently out of work, through no fault of your own, and suggested that I offer you the job before posting it publicly.

My client is prepared to offer a competitive salary, plus room and board and a budget for teaching materials...

I was on the phone with the lawyer, Leon McKay, a minute later, and on my way to his office for an interview an hour later.

Dietrich & McKay was across the street from the Taine County courthouse. I was pleasantly surprised at the friendly reception I got; their secretary didn’t misgender me once during the fifteen minutes I spent waiting, nor did Leon McKay once I was ushered into his office. He spent half an hour asking questions about my experience and job history (four years teaching third grade), the subjects I was most enthusiastic about teaching, (math and science), whether I’d ever taught any disabled children (several), and so forth. Then he pulled out a thick folder and started explaining the NDA.

“You may not discuss the child you are teaching, their family, or their home at any time, during the job application process or employment period or at any time afterward, whether in person, in writing, by phone, on the Internet, or any other means of communication,” he said. “The family cares deeply about their privacy and the privacy of their child, and you will not be allowed to breach it in any way.”

That seemed a little extreme, but I could readily imagine circumstances that would make it make sense. If one of the parents had a stalker, they’d want to avoid anyone finding out where they lived, or if the child was a former actor or musician before they got disabled, they’d want to avoid reporters descending on their new home like locusts. But odds were they were just rich and eccentric. “Rich” went without saying if they could afford to pay a full-time salary for a live-in teacher; I wondered how many other servants they had.

“What can I say to my friends and family? Can I tell them I have a job as a tutor for a disabled child, without specifying their disability, name, age or gender?”

“Or where they live. Yes, you may.”

“That’s acceptable, then.”

I read through the NDA carefully, and it was basically the same as he’d outlined but in more detail with a bit more legalese. I bit my lip, thinking. Signing the NDA didn’t oblige me to take the job, I decided. It just enabled me to find out more about it. I could always turn it down if the situation gave me bad vibes. I initialed and signed.

After I was sworn to secrecy, McKay gave me the address of the place, along with a photocopy of a hand-drawn map, and told me he would call me shortly to let me know what time my second interview would be. I got that call fifteen minutes after I got home: tomorrow at ten.

I was encouraged. I hadn’t expected to find anyone local who would hire a trans woman, but here I’d actually been sought out based on someone hearing about my unjust firing. Well, “local” — it was up in the north end of Taine County, almost forty minutes’ drive away. Taine County was long and narrow, with its southern end in what could generously be called the remote outskirts of metro Atlanta, and its northern end well into the Appalachians.

I plugged the address into Google Maps and ran into my first problem; it wasn’t there. The road the address was on wasn’t even there. Back when I lived in the Atlanta suburbs, I used to have that problem sometimes with new-built subdivisions, but I didn’t get the impression that was the case here; there weren’t many new subdivisions in Taine County, and none, I thought, in the northern part of the county.

I tried searching for the other roads on the hand-drawn map, and found them, then compared the Google Maps view with the map to figure out where the house was. It seemed straightforward enough seen that way, and I was able to pick a spot near the house and get an estimate of travel time that way.

So the next morning, I put on my best blouse and skirt, left my apartment at nine-fifteen, found my way to the neighborhood on the map... and promptly got lost. It didn’t help that, despite the forecast, the weather got bad right around the time I reached the area on the map; the rain was pouring down hard enough that it was hard to read the road signs or recognize landmarks, and I’m sure I missed some turns. When it was five minutes to ten and I still hadn’t found the road the house was on, I pulled over and tried to call ahead and let them know I’d be late, and maybe ask for help. No reception, not surprising given the storm. So I got back on the road and kept trying to find the place, and fifteen minutes later, finally found the road the house was supposed to be on.

It was a dirt road, winding up the side of a mountain, muddy with the sudden heavy rain, and I drove about five miles an hour, peering through the downpour at the house numbers on the mailboxes. I found my destination a few minutes later and pulled into the driveway, which wound through dense woods to a wide clearing around a big, rambling house with a long porch, a single SUV in the driveway, and a tire swing. I parked as close to the house as I could get, picked up my briefcase, and dashed through the rain to the porch steps, getting instantly soaked to the skin.

When I rang the bell, the door was opened almost immediately by a white woman a few years older than me in an old-fashioned ankle-length dress with puffed sleeves.

“Miss Brand? Come in, the bathroom is this way, I’ll get you some dry clothes. I’m so sorry, I should have scheduled the interview for later, I should have known... Goodness, where are my manners? I’m Patience Oldcroft.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shivering as I followed her to the bathroom. I closed the door behind me, found some fluffy towels in the closet, and started undressing and drying off. Patience knocked on the door a couple of minutes later and passed me a dress similar to her own, as well as fresh undergarments, while I held the door slightly ajar.

I was wondering what she’d meant by “I should have known.” The forecast had been sunny with 5% chance of rain through most of the day, and a slightly greater chance toward evening. I dismissed it, though, being occupied with drying off and getting dressed, and nervously psyching myself up for the interview. I’d only had a brief glimpse of the dimly-lit front parlor as I rushed through to the bathroom, trying not to drip on the hardwood floors too much, but it had looked like the furniture was old and sturdy, with a lot of interesting books and bric-a-brac on various surfaces.

Once I was dressed, I stepped out of the bathroom and looked around for Patience. “In here,” she called, and I followed her voice to the front room, where she was sitting on a kind of narrow sofa. “You can sit anywhere.”

I sat in one of the straighter wooden chairs across from her, and tried to look as professional as possible in my borrowed dress and sock feet. It helped a little that Patience was in sock feet as well.

“Well,” she said, “Mr. McKay told me you seem to be just what we’re looking for. I apologize again about the weather — this place is hard enough to find when the weather cooperates.” She laughed nervously. “But you’ve made a good impression so far. I just have a few questions, and then you can meet Essie, and if she takes to you, you’ve got the job.”

“Okay. I look forward to meeting her.”

“Some of these questions may seem odd,” she began, “and, I don’t know, possibly not legal for an employer to ask? Mr. McKay advised me not to ask you certain personal questions, but believe me, my motives for doing so are not hostile. I just want what’s best for Essie.”

That set off alarm bells, but I really needed the job, so I nodded encouragingly and said, “Of course.”

“How long had you known you were transgender before you... came out?”

“That’s a complicated question,” I said. “I’d suspected years earlier, when I was in high school, but I dismissed those suspicions because I didn’t fit the media’s usual portrayal of a trans woman. Actually knew for sure...? It was less than a year ago. And then I didn’t exactly come out; I was outed. Someone who knew me saw me when I was going shopping down in Gainesville, in girl mode, and took photos that they sent to the PTA and the school board.”

She nodded sympathetically. “Have you ever worked with transgender children?”

Was Essie trans? Was that why she’d reached out to hire me? “Not that I know of. There were one or two kids I had vague suspicions about, but I knew better than to say anything, given the local political climate, and anyway it can be hard to tell at that age if the child doesn’t come right out and tell you ‘I’m a girl’ or ‘I’m a boy.’”

She asked me a few more questions about children I’d taught, and how I’d figured out I was trans, without ever coming out and saying whether Essie was trans, or what her disability was. The rain was continuing to pound down hard on the roof and the windows. At last, she said, “Well, I think you’re what I’m looking for. Now the third interview.” She smiled. “This way.”

She led me up the stairs to a hallway and down to the farthest door on the left, where she knocked. “Essie? The new teacher is here.”

The door was opened almost immediately by a girl in a miniature version of Patience’s old-fashioned dress. Her brown hair was loose and shoulder-length, her eyes hazel; I couldn’t see any signs of disability, but I knew most disabilities weren’t obvious at a glance. No signs she was trans, either, but most kids her age can pass for either gender with the right hairstyle and clothes, especially ones that covered as much as that dress.

She had a nice bedroom, with a big south-facing window and several shelves full of books and toys, an intriguing mix of old and new stuff; the toys were a mix of traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine toys, soldier action figures rubbing shoulders with ballerina dolls. On her queen-sized bed there was a small crowd of plushies, some of them old and well-loved and some fairly new.

“Hi, Essie? I’m Ms. Brand. I’ll be your new teacher, if you’ll have me.”

“Are you going to go away like the other teacher?” she demanded.

Patience said, “We had another teacher who quit after a short time. Essie was very upset about it.”

“I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon,” I said. “I hope I’ll be your teacher for the rest of the school year, and probably for another year or two after that. Maybe until you’re old enough to need a different teacher, someone with experience teaching middle school or high school. But let me tell you a secret: grown-ups can’t always do what they want. When I was your age, I thought grown-ups could do anything they wanted — stay up late, watch any TV show they liked, eat desserts instead of vegetables. Now I know there are all kinds of pressures on me, making me do things I might not want to. But as far as I can, I’ll be your teacher for as long as you need me.”

Essie nodded. “Like Great-Grandpa hassles us and makes Mommy do stuff she doesn’t want to.”

“Essie!” Patience exclaimed, looking mortified. “We don’t talk about family business with strangers.”

“When will she not be a stranger?” Essie asked. “I like her.”

“Maybe in a few weeks,” Patience said. “I’ll let you know.”

“Okay.” Essie turned to me. “Can we start learning now?”

“If it suits with your mother, we can start right away. I have a few more questions for her, though, so we’ll need to allow time for that after our lesson?” I looked questioningly at Patience, and she said:

“Yes, of course. Let me show you to the schoolroom.”

The schoolroom was right down the hall; it had a low table with a child-size chair and an adult chair, and a couple of bookshelves filled with children’s books (many of them quite old), a microscope, and a globe. The other walls were covered with maps, charts, diagrams, and a blackboard. A large window looked out into the backyard; it seemed like the rain had slowed to a drizzle in the last few minutes. After looking around for a few moments, I set down my briefcase on the table and sat in the larger chair; Essie sat down in the smaller one and looked expectantly at me.

“I’ll let you know when lunch is ready,” Patience said. “We usually eat around one; is that okay?”

“Of course.”

“No, uh, dietary restrictions?”

“No, ma’am.”

Patience left, and I opened my briefcase. I hadn’t been sure if they’d want me to start right away, but I’d brought enough materials for a first day’s lessons just in case. “This is a placement test,” I said. “Don’t worry, you won’t be graded on it. It’s just to let me know what you already know and what you still need to learn...”

This story first appeared as part of the Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology bundle.

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