Sveta walked up the gravel drive to see what she came to see: a blind Shetland pony limping out the back of a Washington County school bus. Sveta’s father, a tow-truck driver, couldn’t afford a stable, but he could afford to move a junked bus to the back of his property. As a kid, Sveta helped him rip out the seats, the subfloor, and the back door. Sveta’s father couldn’t afford a horse, either, but that didn’t stop him. 

That’s him, Sveta cried. That’s Po Po! He was the last thing tying her to this place, she said. After this, she would sever all ties to her old life. She would never want to come back here, and so she could disappear into her happy ending: a nannying job in Boston and a man she believed could love her. 

It’s time now, I said. There comes a time when things must end. You must end it. 

Sveta slouched, tears in her eyes. I can’t, she said. She looked quite stupid with the rifle in her arms. For the first time, I saw what her father hated in her: not just her beauty, not just her femininity, but her reluctance to do what had to be done. She pawed at the polyester faux fur of my sleeve. Will you do it, Mom? I used to love it when she called me that. But I was not her mother. Wait in the car, I said. She told me to hurry. Her father would be home soon. I hopped the fence. Po Po struggled to come near. His legs buckled. He was beautiful once. A forelock of blond hair covered his gray eyes. His mane reminded me of Troye Sivan’s wig that one time he did drag. Fuck her drag, Sveta said once. I’m prettier. She could say that about Troye Sivan because it was true. Po Po could not see me with his gray eyes, but he knew someone stood in front of him. This is men’s work, I thought. That’s why she expects me to do it for her.

Po Po was thirty-eight now: my age. Too old. There comes a time when things must end. There comes a time when you must end it. Sveta said her father hitched a red wheelbarrow to Po Po and put her inside. She pretended it was a carriage. Her father called it her chariot. Then she grew, and that stopped.

Po Po could not see, but he knew Sveta on my coat sleeve. He could smell gunpowder and the past. I pointed the barrel flush with his forehead. The blast rose in the air like a balloon. When I reached the car, Sveta was crying. 

We dropped off the rental in Albany and took the Greyhound back to South Station.

Sveta returned to the townhouse off arborway and the six-year-old she nannied. The six-year-old’s parents gave Sveta food, a room, and all the affection she could need. Christmas would come soon. With Po Po dead, Sveta could lie on the chaise lounge reading Snow White with nothing to instigate her guilt. Nothing could enchant her back to her childhood home. Now she would pretend that the six-year-old was hers. She would pretend that she was not a transsexual. The family didn’t know. Sveta had a slight body, narrow face, and a voice like chimes. She did not hit her head on the tops of doorframes. But if they saw me with Sveta, they would have found her out. The time will come when I tell them, Sveta said. Then I can have you over, Mom. 

That time didn’t come. Sveta did not tell them. She wanted to go stealth. She couldn’t have an older trans woman like me darkening the future with her shadow. It could cost her job, her romance, her future. I could not break the truce Sveta had made with her life. 

I taught Sveta everything she knew. Here’s how to do eyeliner without clocking yourself. Here’s how to scam your endo. Here’s how to sleep with a man. Here’s how to leave him. Here’s how to take four right turns out of the T to shake the one who follows you. 

When Sveta said I shouldn’t visit her, I balked. Just get prettier! It’s so easy. But when I went to do my makeup, Po Po’s eyes stared out from between the fingerprints on the mirror. When I searched my closet, I found his blood on the sleeves of my faux fur coat. Po Po’s blood appeared in odd places: diluted in my bottle of toner, spun about the shower drain, pooled at the bottom of my Yankee candles. I could not yank the bullet from the split of the pony’s skull. There comes a time when you must admit it: I did not look better than Troye Sivan in drag.  

After Christmas, Sveta texted me. The family’s oldest son—a tall, handsome mountain ranger—bought Sveta a gift for Christmas: a little glass bracelet. He likes me, Mom, he really does! So I had to stay away. This would take Sveta longer than she thought, but it would end with a husband, a family, a future. She would shy from the eyes of her chosen mother. She would mewl this new man’s name. 

That’s fine, I thought. A woman belongs with her family, not the nurse who delivered her screaming into the world. But where was my husband, my family, my future? I transitioned back when you couldn’t. When I transitioned, Pluto was a planet. There comes a time when things must end. There comes a time when you must end it. 

Po Po’s blood dripped down my bookshelf. It poured out a book I bought during my feminist phase—The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton. I had meant to give it to Sveta. This will teach you about solidarity, I would have said. But in the end, Anne Sexton monstered more than she mothered. I turned and read a line from a page soaked red: Beauty is a simple pleasure, but in the end you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.

So when I took an Uber to a house off arborway, when I climbed the gate and walked past the decorative well, past the string lights and ceramic gnomes and up to the open door where a tall, handsome mountain ranger stood, what could I tell him but the truth?