Member-only story
Born a Coen Brothers Movie
A story of tragicomic omens, stolen identity, and finding where you belong
The bank teller glanced up from her computer screen and laughed nervously, “You don’t look like a man.” I felt the blood drain from my face, my heart pulsing in my ears.
“Does it say,” I drew in a breath and whispered my father’s name. Her smile dropped. In my rush to deposit a check before a chemistry class, I had forgotten my bank card at the youth homeless shelter where I slept the night before. The teller reassured me that she could easily look up my account with my social security number and photo ID. But my SSN had pulled up accounts linked to my dad’s name in the bank’s database.
She cradled the phone to her ear, “Let me just call my manager. Can you take a seat over there? A banker will be right over to speak with you.”
I watched the spinning glass door and the security guard watched me. I didn’t know what I should say to the banker. Hello, I am not a man. Hello, I am not my father. Or should I be more specific and say something like: My father stole my identity from age 5 to age 12 and committed tax fraud with my social security number, a debt for which I am on a payment plan with the IRS because despite faxing copies of my birth certificate and ID from a homeless youth shelter, I can’t…
