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The summer I turned thirty-one, a newspaper reporter asked why everyone called me Eddie. We were standing beside Court Four at Manhattan Beach, close enough to the pier that its shadow cut a dark stripe across the sand. The morning fog had not burned off yet. Players warmed up in
sweatshirts, old men argued about hand sets, and somebody’s radio played music that sounded as though it had been trapped inside 1987 and refused to leave.
“Eddie was the name my father gave me,” I said.
The reporter looked down at her notes. “But you identify as a woman?”
“I don’t identify as one. I am one.”
Her pen stopped.
I knew the pause. I had been living inside it most of my life.
My name was Edward Jackson. My body was male. The world had spent thirty-one years treating
those two facts like a complete biography. But I was a Black woman, an adaptive athlete, a daughter,
a coach, a stubborn defender, and – on the right day – a dangerous server into the wind.
The reporter tried again. “So should I call you Edwina?”
“No.”
“Eddie?”
“Yes.”
She smiled carefully, relieved to have found a box that closed. “And this is your first major
tournament?”
“First one they’ll print my name in.”
That answer made her look up.
Behind us, my prosthetic foot sank into the sand until the ankle disappeared. I shifted my weight
to free it. The reporter watched, and I watched her watch.
I had lost my left leg below the knee in 1984, when I was thirteen. A delivery truck ran a red light
in Inglewood while my cousin and I were riding our bikes home. He escaped with a broken wrist. I
woke in a hospital and discovered that adults could say “lucky to be alive” in the same sentence that
ended your old life.
The first prosthesis they gave me was heavy and stiff, better for standing in a school hallway than
chasing a ball on sand. The first time I wore it to the beach, the joint filled with grit before lunch. It
squeaked every third step. By sunset, my skin was bleeding.
I came back the next morning.
That was the beginning of everything.

3
In the 1980s, the Southern California beach scene felt like a country with no official government.
Courts belonged to whoever won. Arguments were settled by memory, volume, or the oldest player
present. Professionals and construction workers sometimes shared the same stretch of sand.
Spectators sat close enough to hear the insults. Prize money was growing, but the culture still carried
the roughness of pickup games.
The men drew the biggest crowds and most of the money. Women fought for court space,
sponsors, and respect. Black players fought to be seen in a sport whose popular image rarely looked
like us. Disabled players were barely imagined at all.
So I learned to enter sideways.
At seventeen, I played under my father’s name and everyone assumed I was his son. I let them.
Correcting people felt more dangerous than competing against them.
My first regular partner was a woman named Rochelle Price. She was twenty-eight, six feet tall,
and capable of ending an argument with one look. She worked nights at a hospital and played
mornings at Dockweiler before sleeping.
The day we met, she watched me lose three straight games.
“You keep waiting for permission,” she said.
“To do what?”
“Everything.”
She pointed at the court. “You wait for the hitter to show you where the ball is going. You wait
for your leg to settle before you move. You wait for fools to decide whether you belong.”
“I can’t move before I know.”
“Then learn sooner.”
She taught me to read shoulders, hips, wind, and fear.
A hitter’s hand could lie. The body usually told the truth.
The wind could turn a perfect serve into a mistake or a weak serve into an ace. You did not defeat
the wind. You listened and adjusted.
Fear was the same. Mine rarely shouted. It whispered practical things: Do not make trouble. Do
not ask for too much. Do not give them another reason to send you home.
Rochelle heard it anyway.
“Decide before your feet hit the sand,” she said. “The ball doesn’t wait for you to become brave.”
We entered local coed events because nobody had created a place for an athlete like me.
Depending on the director, I was registered as male, placed in a men’s bracket, or treated like a
novelty. Rochelle never let me become anybody’s sideshow.
At a tournament in 1989, an opponent complained that my prosthesis might be dangerous.
I looked at the smooth rubber foot. Then I looked at his metal watch, his hard sunglasses, and the
ring he had forgotten to remove.
Rochelle said, “Funny how danger always looks like the person nobody planned for.”
The director allowed me to play after wrapping the prosthetic ankle in athletic tape.
We lost the first game 15-2.
I wanted to disappear.
Rochelle handed me the ball. “You think belonging means winning?”

4
“It helps.”
“Belonging means you get to lose like everybody else.”
That sentence saved me more times than any inspirational speech.
Girls are often taught that they must be exceptional before they deserve space. Be twice as good.
Be easy to manage. Be grateful. Never waste an opportunity. Never fail where anyone can see.
But adulthood is built through visible mistakes.
You learn to apologize without collapsing. You learn to accept correction without mistaking it for
rejection. You learn that failing at something does not make you fraudulent.
By 1993, women’s professional beach volleyball was gaining more visibility, though equality
remained unfinished business. I watched women play with the force and confidence I had searched
for as a teenager. They were not guests on the beach. They were the event.
I wanted that certainty.
Instead, I lived in between.
At work, people called me Mr. Jackson. At home, my mother called me Eddie and avoided
pronouns. On the beach, Rochelle called me “girl” when no one else was close enough to hear.
I told myself that private recognition should be enough.
Then came Atlanta in 1996.
Beach volleyball entered the Olympic Games as a medal sport. I watched the broadcasts in my
mother’s apartment, sitting close to the television because the picture flickered. Sand, flags, crowds,
women under Olympic lights – the sport that had raised me was no longer a California secret.
My mother watched quietly.
During a women’s match, she said, “You move like that one.”
The player had just chased a ball beyond the boundary and returned it with one arm.
I laughed. “She has two knees.”
“You have more stubbornness.”
It was the closest my mother had come to naming my gift instead of my difference.
After the final, I told her I was tired of being introduced as her son.
She stared at the blank television.
“I don’t understand it,” she said.
“I know.”
“I might never understand all of it.”
“I know.”
She reached for my hand. “But I don’t want misunderstanding you to become the same thing as
losing you.”
Growing up, I thought adulthood meant knowing exactly what to say. My mother taught me that
sometimes it means telling the truth before you have perfect language.
The years after Atlanta changed the sport quickly. More sponsors arrived. Television demanded
schedules. Rally scoring began replacing the long side-out battles in which teams could trade serves
for what felt like an hour without the score moving.

5
Older players complained.
“They’re ruining the game,” one man said.
Rochelle, who had heard that sentence whenever women or new players entered a court, raised an
eyebrow.
“People call it tradition when they liked the old advantage,” she said.
Not every change was good. Not every tradition was bad. The lesson was to ask who a rule
protected, who it excluded, and whether the reason still made sense.
In 2001, Rochelle and I started a Saturday clinic called Open Sand.
We welcomed girls who could not afford club fees, athletes with limb differences, beginners,
older players, and anyone willing to respect the court. We had six volleyballs, two patched nets, and a
folding table that leaned left.
The first morning, nine girls arrived.
By the end of summer, there were forty-three.
One of them was a sixteen-year-old named Nia. She had been born without most of her right
forearm. She could pass well, serve better, and apologize faster than anyone I had met.
“Sorry,” she said after every missed ball.
“Stop saying that,” I told her.
“Sorry.”
The other girls laughed.
I drew a square in the sand with my foot.
“Stand inside.”
She did.
“This is your space. You do not apologize for being in it. You can say, ‘My platform was late.’
You can say, ‘Next ball, I move sooner.’ But you do not say sorry because learning is visible.”
“What if I mess up the whole game?”
“Then you become a volleyball player.”
Nia eventually became my partner for a community exhibition near Manhattan Beach. The
organizers liked our story more than they respected our game. Posters called us “inspirational.”
I hated the word when it meant people could admire us without changing anything.
Before the match, I told Nia, “We are not here to make anybody feel lucky.”
“What are we here to do?”
“Serve short and win.”
We did not win.
The other team targeted Nia, then me. They used deep serves to pull me backward and short shots
to force my prosthetic foot into soft sand. Smart volleyball is not cruelty. They saw weaknesses and
tested them.
At 13-13, my socket began to slip.
The crowd grew impatient while I sat and adjusted it.
A man near the barrier yelled, “Come on, Eddie!”

6
For years, that name had felt like evidence against me.
That day, it sounded like mine.
Not a man’s name. Not a mistake. Mine.
I stood, brushed sand from my hands, and looked at Nia.
“Two good points,” I said.
She nodded.
We sided out on a high roll shot. Then Nia served an ace off the tape.
Match point.
The rally lasted longer than any rally had a right to. I dug a hard-driven ball. Nia set with one
hand. I swung crosscourt. The defender chased it down. They attacked short. I dove, but my fingers
arrived beneath the ball a fraction late.
Sand jumped.
The whistle blew.
We lost 15-14.
Nia stayed face down for a moment.
Then she sat up. “I should’ve set higher.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m sorry.”
I waited.
She took a breath. “No. Next time, I set higher.”
“That’s my girl.”
The reporter beside Court Four asked whether that loss had been heartbreaking.
“No,” I said. “Heartbreak is believing the score is the only record that matters.”
The Open Sand clinic continued. Nia became a coach. Girls who once hid their bodies learned to
call seams loudly. Parents learned that protecting a child did not mean shrinking her world. I learned
that leadership was not proving I had every answer. It was creating room for better questions.
The reporter closed her notebook.
“One last thing,” she said. “The title of the article. I was thinking, ‘The Man Who Became
Herself.’”
“No.”
She flushed. “I thought it sounded powerful.”
“It sounds like my life began when you understood it.”
The fog had lifted. Sunlight flashed across the water. Around us, players called scores, argued
touches, and laughed between rallies.
“What should the title be?” she asked.
I looked at the court lines.
Every line has two meanings. It says where the ball is out. It also says where the game is alive.

7
I thought about the hospital, my mother’s hand, Rochelle’s voice, Nia’s higher set, and every girl
waiting for someone else to decide whether she belonged.
“Call it ‘That’s All She Wrote,’” I said.
The reporter smiled. “Because you’re finished explaining?”
“Because everybody else kept trying to write me.”
She wrote the title down.
Then a ball rolled against my prosthetic foot.
A group of teenage girls stood on the empty court. One raised her hand.
“We need one more,” she called. “You play?”
I stepped over the rope.
The sand accepted my weight, then shifted beneath it.
It had never promised stability.
That was why it taught the truth.
You do not wait for the ground to become certain.
You learn how to move while it changes.
You protect your body without being ashamed of its needs.
You let people help you without handing them the pen.
You lose without disappearing.
You win without believing victory makes you worthy.
You decide which lines deserve respect and which ones were drawn to keep you small.
The girl tossed me the ball.
I walked behind the service line.
The wind came off the water, strong from my right. I turned my shoulders, lowered the toss, and
aimed deep.
Before I served, one of the girls called, “What’s your name?”
“Eddie,” I said.
She nodded as though that settled everything.
For once, it did.
I struck the ball.
It crossed the net, floated against the wind, and dropped untouched inside the back line.
Ace.
I smiled