The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

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content warning for violence against trans people, gun violence, murder

Jayne Thompson, 33, Mesa County, CO, May 9, 2020:
Misgendered for a Month

“Since she came out, life was very different,” Leopardi said. “Everything changed. A lot of things started weighing on her mentally.”

Being a cis-gender male, she said, was easy,
then, transitioning, people didn’t trust her as much.
Her children’s mother didn’t accept her change.
At the bar in Bisbee, Arizona, tourists were rude,
men would bump into her hoping for a fight.

No one knows what she was doing in Orchard Mesa
that day. Clearly, she was lost. Standing by the road
for over an hour with a stick across her arms
like a mannequin. She just stood there, doing nothing
illegal. But someone called 911 anyway. Worried, maybe.

Clearly, she was troubled. To the officer’s questions,
she was unresponsive, then aggressive, wielding a knife.

The cop who shot her took her for a man with a shaggy beard.
He said she lunged with the knife, so he shot her.
Multiple times, it turns out, even after she was down.
It was a month before they corrected her gender and name.

Jayne.

Her co-worker Liz said she doesn’t even know
where she’s buried. She said:

     Every night when I would
     drop her off at home, she would say,
     ‘Goodnight, I love you, Liz.’
     That would be the last thing
     we would say to each other.

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