Rhonda Died
A Short Story by Jen Ives
Rhonda died.
She didn’t go in quite the way she thought she would - on her own terms, preferably before 40, filled to the gills with pills. Instead, it was totally unexpected.
She had actually been having a great day - the sun was out (but with a slight cool breeze), the copy of Ways of Seeing by John Berger she’d asked the library to order in had finally arrived, and she’d remembered to take her hormones on time that morning. A rare occurrence.
As Rhonda made her way across the street from the library, she couldn’t help start the book as she walked - fascinated by the ideas it threw out at her - about the nature of art, and context, and symbolism. She didn’t understand it all yet, but she knew she would, eventually.
Then a bus hit her. The number 185 to Tottenham Court Road, going approximately 35 miles an hour. Smashed right into her left side, turning off her lights almost immediately - and sending her, and the borrowed copy of Ways of Seeing high up into the air.
How could she have not seen it? This irony was all Rhonda could think about, as she sat on the oddly uncomfortable sky-blue velvet upholstered chair, in what appeared to be - Heaven’s waiting room.
Technically, it was more of a waiting area than a room, just sort of off to the side a bit to the actual Pearly Gates. It surprised Rhonda to find out that most of the cliches were actually true - heaven was in the clouds. There really was a faint sound of angels singing, just beyond the gates. The only part that didn’t quite live up to Rhonda’s expectations was the gate itself. Sure, it was pearly alright, but it wasn’t as big as she’d imagined it to be back in RE lessons. If anything, it was more of a ‘Pearly Fence’. She reckoned she could probably clear it if she needed to.
Rhonda looked around at the miles and miles of endless white cloud. Other than the gates, there wasn’t all that much to look at. There was no one else in front (or behind) of her, and she wondered how long she’d have to wait there…
Rhonda didn’t want to be dead. Most people didn’t, she figured, but for her it was more irritating than anything else. After all, she’d only just gotten done recovering from an extremely invasive facial feminisation surgery. The healing process was brutal, and the surgery profoundly expensive. And she barely even had a week to enjoy it. To serve high femme realness. To give her new, snatched face any mileage at all.
Plus, she’d never get her designer vagina now. She’d been on the waiting list for nearly 10 painful years. She felt as though, by dying before getting it, she’d failed. As she sat there, trying not to have a heavenly panic attack, a song repeated over and over in her head.
‘If you don’t stay alert, you could end up getting hurt…’ - it had been from an early 2000s road safety advert starring two animated hedgehogs. She used to think it was cute. The song felt sarcastic now. Those fucking hedgehogs.
Eventually, Rhonda got up, and made her way over to the gate. Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t even a gate at all. It actually was a fence - painted to look like a pearly gate. Its height was just above her eye level. She tried to stand on her toes to get a look over, but before she could properly see anything, an angry voice called out from behind the fence.
“Who’s that?! Don’t you even think about climbing over, I’ve got a dog back here! Woof woof. Down boy!”
Rhonda stepped back. She knew there was no real dog, but the last thing she wanted to do was overstep, and lose her chance of getting into Heaven.
“I’m not going to climb over… hi, I’m Rhonda. I… well… I’m dead aren’t I?”
There was a pregnant pause from the man who Rhonda had yet to lay eyes on. Then, in a much calmer tone, he replied.
“Dead? Yes, I’ll say you’re dead. You wouldn’t very well be up here if you weren’t, would you? What do you want?”
Rhonda hadn’t expected a question like this. She had assumed the process would be a bit more organised. Less ambiguous.
“What do I want?”
“Yes yes - what do you want, woman?”
“I don’t know, really. I’ve never been dead before”.
“Of course you have!” The voice was getting irritable again.
“Look, can I just see you? Do you work here? You must know more about all this than I do…”
The man began grumbling incoherently, and Rhonda could hear him moving things about behind there. It sounded like he was trying to undo a padlock - jingling some keys, and - after a bit - the ‘gate’ began to inch open, revealing the cautious glare of an old, short, bearded man.
As he exited what Rhonda assumed was Heaven, he quickly closed the gates behind himself and reattached the padlock. Although he was out there with her now, the man’s body language suggested he didn’t want to be - his back pressed right up against the gate. Rhonda inched forwards.
“I must be here for a reason? This is Heaven, right? So, that must mean you’re Saint Peter?”
“Pete. Everyone calls me Pete.”
“See, I knew it! Okay, so aren’t you supposed to like… go over the book of my life? And then, if I was good, let me into Heaven?”
Pete rolled his eyes.
“I thought you’d never been here before?”
“I haven’t”.
“For someone who hasn’t been here before, it certainly sounds like you know it all!”
Rhonda stopped talking. Something was telling her that she was annoying this man. And she didn’t want to do that. What she wanted was to get into Heaven.
Once again, the two stood at odds - each daring the other to speak. Pete broke first.
“Alright, alright! I’ll do it, if it’ll make you happy. But it won’t! You know that, don’t you? You’re going to end up unhappy, just like everyone else does. They all ask the same thing, and all end up in tears. Alright, name?”
“Rhonda Carp”
Pete didn’t open a huge, golden paged tome - or unfurl a biblical scroll of any kind. Instead, he took out a small, cheap looking ring-binded notebook from a back pocket that Rhonda was sure he didn’t have in his robe.
“Any middle names?
“Tracy. Rhonda Tracy Clarke”.
He skimmed through the pages, and frowned. Pete skimmed through one more time, before looking up annoyedly at Rhonda.
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not lying”.
“There is no such person as Rhonda Tracy Clarke. There is a Rhonda Stacy Clarke in Southern Canada - and a Rhodina Tracy Clerk. But you do not exist. I can’t let you in if you don’t exist, can I?”
Pete closed his cheap notebook and turned to unlock the gate.
“Wait! Don’t go! There must be some sort of mix-up? Obviously, I’m here. I exist. Why would I lie?”
“To get one over on me!”
“Look, I just died. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I? Think about it - if I died, then I must have existed”.
Pete thought about this for a moment.
“Sorry. Nothing I can do. You can go down there if you like…”
Pete pointed towards a long pathway, which led down into a storm of grey, flashing lightning clouds. Rhonda was surprised she hadn’t seen it until just then.
“... I don’t know what’s down there, but a lot of you lot walk down there after I don’t let you in. You could try it?”
Rhonda had hoped she’d have been able to convince Pete without going into her medical history, but she was starting to realise that it wasn’t going to play out that way. She was going to have to come clean - tell him that she’d changed her name via deed-poll. That she had undergone hormone replacement therapy, and had facial feminisation surgery. That it was more than likely her dead name in his cheap little notebook.
Rhonda had been painfully aware that trans life, as it was before she left it, was a never ending series of ‘coming outs’. She never could have imagined that death would feature them too.
“Look… I’m trans. Is that what I have to say? I wasn’t born as Rhonda, I chose it. I was born a little baby boy, but I didn’t want to be one so I transitioned. That’s a simplified version, but I thought you’d know…”
“Oh no…”
“... I had surgery and changed my name and that’s probably why my name isn’t in your silly little book”.
“Oh dear, he won’t like this. Not one bit…”
“Who won’t like it? God?”
Pete looked uncomfortable. Scared, even. The angelic singing behind the gates had long stopped, and in its place - the sound of distant thunder.
“It’s not ideal, you see. Making changes to oneself and such. Changing your name. Changing your face. Not ideal at all. I’m sorry, you’ll simply have to go…”
Rhonda had feared this might be his reaction. From the very moment she saw the clouds and heard the angelic singing, she had an anxious feeling deep down inside her gut that she probably wasn’t going to get in. She was scared, sure. Who wants to go to Hell? But above anything, she was woefully disappointed. It was depressing to think that God’s ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ could be so unenlightened. So unimaginative. That it simply was just as the bigots had said it would be.
Inexplicably though, a miracle. Rhonda, who was never a particularly good school student, suddenly remembered something from her RE classes.
“Hey!”
Pete turned his head as he fiddled with the padlock.
“Your name is Pete is it?”
“Yes yes, we’ve been through this - Saint Peter, at your service”.
“Except it isn’t, is it? See, I happen to know that your real name is… oh what was it? Oh right - Simon!”
Pete became flustered and began to stutter.
“Now now now now, you listen here! Don’t you dare call me that. I hate that name. I reject it. I am not that person anymore. Do you know who gave me the name Peter, hmmm? Well, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Jesus!”
“That’s what I was going to say. Well, now you know how it feels don’t you?”
Pete thought about this for a moment, scratching his head. Rhonda though, had had enough.
“Alright, well - if you’re not going to let me in, then just tell me. If I’m going to Hell, I’ll just go now. I can’t deal with this bureaucracy anymore”.
Pete unlocked the gate, and swung it open. Looking over his shoulders, as if to make sure no infinitely omnipresent creators were secretly watching him, Pete ushered Rhonda over. As she approached, he whispered to her:
“Look, if you promise to keep the Simon thing to yourself, then… I suppose no one needs to know about your past. Deal?”
“Yes, of course. Not a word to anyone, I promise”.
Rhonda couldn’t believe it had worked. For the first time, she could see properly what was behind the gate. Heaven. Like a city, except shinier.
She walked through, past Peter. Buildings made of pearl towered over her, and perfect weather - warm (with a slight breeze). Pizza shops as far as the eye could see, and other Heavenly people - going about their day, laughing and eating pizza. Rhonda loved pizza. She wanted to get a slice, but before she could even begin walking, a slice had appeared in her hands.
Rhonda noticed that all the people in Heaven were trans. All happy, and comfortable, and free.
This world of Heaven felt entirely catered to her. As if everybody had their own Heaven, based on their own personality. Rhonda wondered how this all worked, practically. If she wanted to see her mum, for example, should she get a cab to her heaven, or will she be in this one, too?
Rhonda ate some pizza as she thought about this potential paradox. It was incredible. It tasted exactly like the one she’d had in Little Italy. Exactly like it.
For the first time in Rhonda’s existence, she felt comfortable. Not just emotionally, but physically. There was no discordance. No agonising pinch and rubbing down below from a worn out tuck job.
Could it be? She wondered. Was her body now complete?
Rhonda threw the pizza slice into a street bin and rushed into the nearest pizza parlour. She passed the heavenly being behind the counter, and made her way to the restrooms. Rather than ‘men’ or ‘women’ - each door instead portrayed the little round symbol of an angel. Rhonda could use any toilet she liked.
Rhonda entered a cubicle. It was spacious, and perfumed. Toilet paper in abundance. Praise be! She hoisted up her cunty little robe, and pulled down her underwear.
Bending over to get as good a look as she could, Rhonda found herself - face to face, not with a penis - or a vagina - but a Barbie Doll like mound. An overgrown, completely useless patch. She poked at it, and felt no sensation.
Rhonda sat down on the toilet, which - upon closer inspection was completely decorative. No water plumbed in. The flush, loose and disconnected. The same was true of the taps and sink.
Rhonda wandered the streets for hours - asking its many trans citizens if they were okay with all this? At the genital situation. Inexplicably, they all were - seemingly lobotomised by Heavenly Vibez. Rhonda couldn’t relate. She had liked sex - when she was alive. She enjoyed being naughty sometimes. As far as she could tell, that wasn’t an option here.
She thought again about the bureaucracy. The strange man claiming to be Saint Peter. The shonky looking ‘pearly gates’. The fact that the pizza she’d been given wasn’t ham and mushroom (her favourite) but was, instead, pepperoni (her second favourite). Now that she really thought about it, the temperature wasn’t as perfect as she’d once thought. The breeze had gone, and she suddenly felt uncomfortable in her little robe.
Rhonda started to wonder if, perhaps, she was actually in Hell?
That’s when Pete put his hand on her shoulder, and whispered into her ear:
“It’s all a matter of perspective, Rhonda my Dear. It’s all contextual”.
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I am currently on the look out for a literary agent, and have many other short stories, and the first draft of a novel completed. If you are a literary agent, and would like to read more of my work, please email me at jeniveswriter@gmail.com