Mama Williams carefully opened the door to her tiny, one room apartment. What she saw horrified her.
"Oh child, someone messed you up bad."
The person standing in the doorway was one of Mama's "daughters,' the transgender prostitutes that she, transgendered herself, took care of and tried to look after as much as possible. Sharonda was bleeding from a bad cut on her face, and her clothes were torn and what Mama Williams could see of the rest of her body looked like she had just had a severe beating.
"Oh, Mama..."
"Come in child, and let me get you a doctor."
Sharonda stepped in. "No, no doctor!"
Mama Williams sighed. She knew Sharonda hated doctors. She was terrified that a doctor would report her to her family, who had never accepted their daughter and would try to make her into a boy. Sharonda collapsed on Mama's futon.
"Don't let them, don't let them." she began.
"Don't let them what, honey?"
"Don't let them bury me in boy clothes. I don't want to go into my grave in boy clothes."
"Child, you're not going to die."
Sharonda gave a half-hearted smile. "Oh, Mama, that's sweet of you. But I think this is it. My insides are messed up bad." She closed her eyes and passed out.
Mama Williams didn't know what to do. She could call the EMS, but the EMS tended to treat transgendered people and sex workers with complete contempt, redoubled for transgender sex workers like Sharonda. But she couldn't just let Sharonda die.
Just then she heard the crash of breaking glass. All I need right now, she thought.
Mama Williams looked around to see that what had broken her window was a crystal, a beautiful crystal of blue and pink. Wondering, she picked it up.
++++++++++
Mama Williams looked down at Sharonda. "I wanted to use this for myself first" she told the unhearing girl. "But the Lord sent it to me here now for a reason." She placed the crystal in Sharonda's hand, and arranged her fingers around it. She remembered that Sharonda had first run away from home at the age of fifteen. "Female, fourteen." Mama Williams whispered.
Sharonda had already feminized her body as much as she could afford too, so her basic outlines didn't change that much. Mama Williams couldn't see what was happening to Sharonda's genitals or inside her body. What she could see was that her daughter lost a few inches in height, but the most dramatic changes were those that erased the marks of years of hard living on the street. Sharonda's cut and her bruises vanished, as did her scars and the tracks from years of injecting illegally obtained "street" female hormones. The lines that years of fear, hatred and rejection had marked on her face disappeared, and what was left was angelic.
The crystal went black. Sharonda's eyes opened. "Oh, Mama Williams, I had the most beautiful dream."
"No dream, child." Mama Williams smiled.