by Cathy Lamb
“What are you trying to say with your dress, Brianna?” Emmy dutifully asked.
“Free yourself.” my mother declared, and stood. She then started pulling the pages of her book off her dress. “Free yourself from your inhibitions and fears that were drilled into you by your childhood, by your marriage, by your life.”
The audience chuckled.
“Free yourself from a spouse who tells you who to be, who smashes your sexual self, your spiritual self.” There went more pages. “Don’t let him suck you dry.”
The women cheered. Emmy Shandil, who went through a nasty, public divorce when her husband, Brian, had an affair with a twenty-year-old actress, stood up and flung her arms straight out. “He sucked me dry, Brianna!” she announced. “I’m dry!”
The audience laughed.
“Reinvent yourself and your love life, Emmy!”
“Oh, I’ve already reinvented my love life, Brianna. Hellllo, Tony!”
“You decide who you want to be.” My mother walked to the end of the stage to address the audience. “Stop being prey. Stop letting other people, your mother, your in-laws, your annoying neighbor, run your life.” Page, page, page.
“I will not be prey again! I am not prey!” Emmy said, standing beside my mother. “He was a creep! Weak chin, floppy bottom. Pig breath. He wore my panties!”
“Daydream. What do you want for your future?” my mother asked, pages flying. “Write it down. Write down the steps to get to that goal. Follow the steps. Are you frumpy?”
A number of people in the audience shouted, “Yes!”
“Then defrump yourself.” Page, page, page. “How can you be all you want to be if you’re a frump? How can you be good in bed if you feel ugly?”
Page, page, page.
In the end my sixty-plus-year-old mother was standing in one of our company’s leopard-print negligees and her shiny red heels, the audience totally enthralled. The lingerie had a tasteful, black gauzy skirt attached, with tiny crystals. “Join me, Emmy! Let’s vow to never become frumpy!”
Emmy didn’t hesitate. She’s as unrestrained as my mother. She unbuttoned her own blouse and yanked it open with flair. She was wearing one of our designs, a purple lace push-up bra that my mother gave her before the show. “I will never be a frump!”
“Join me, audience!” my mother encouraged. The camera panned. My mouth dropped open. A number of women were unbuttoning their blouses and baring their bras. Three men took off their shirts.
“Say it,” my mother commanded. “I won’t be frumpy any longer!”
“I won’t be frumpy any longer!” they boomed back.
“Take charge of your life,” my mother shouted over the clapping and hooting, an arm around Emmy. “Travel. Have adventures. Be beautiful! This is your life. Don’t you let it end without you in it!”
“I won’t, Brianna,” Emmy said, staring right into the camera. “I am beautiful! And Brian Forrester, my husband who ran off with a twenty-year-old named Tammy Underhill of Oklahoma City, you are ugly! Yes, ugly and frumpy!”
“Say it again, people!” my mother shouted. “I won’t be frumpy any longer!”
“I won’t be frumpy any longer!” The audience bellowed back.
Brianna O’Rourke and Emmy Shandil picked up pages of my mother’s book from the floor and threw them to the audience. The camera showed the audience jumping for the pages, half dressed. Emmy grabbed my mother and they danced across the stage, Emmy in her purple bra and my mother in our leopard-print negligee and red heels.
We talked later by phone. I complimented my mother on her page-throwing performance. She said, “Thank you, dear. Did you receive your hat and scarf? Oh, I’m so glad you love it. The colors are perfect, aren’t they? Are you sleeping better?”
“Straight through.” No. It was worse.
“Are you being a workaholic, as usual?”
“Not at all.” Fifteen hours a day.
“Are you taking time to relax and rejuvenate?”
“Every day. Yoga. Reading. Listening to music during my daily serenity walk in the woods.”
“I wish you would quit lying to me, young lady.”
“I know, Mom. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I woke up to a mouse.
No kidding, a mouse’s nose was inches from mine.
I screeched, scared the mouse, and scared Regan, who let it go accidentally, and the mouse scampered across the bedspread, leaped like a kamikaze pilot off the bed, and skittered down the hallway.
“Help me, help me!” Regan yelled, running after it. “George is loose, Mom! George is loose!”
Lacey hollered from downstairs, “Then show us how fast you can move on the football field and chase that thing down, Regan. Move! Move!”
“Come here, George, come here!” Regan thundered out of the guest bedroom as Hayden came in. I was in one of Lacey’s flannel nightgowns. It had yellow tulips on it. “Hey, Hayden.”
“Hi, Aunt Meggie.” He climbed onto the bed. He was wearing a long, blue nightshirt with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on it. “I’m glad you stayed the night after game and pizza night.”
“Me too. It was fun. Thanks for inviting me.”
“You’re welcome. Mom seems a lot happier since you came home. Not so stressed out, less yelling.”
“I’m happier now that I’m home, too.” That was true. “How are you, honey?”
Those blue eyes showed how he was. He semiwhispered, “I’m scared.”
“Because . . .”
“Because remember when I told you that I’m going to write an article for the school newspaper about being in the wrong body?”
“Yes.” I envisioned him being jumped in the hallways.
“I wrote it.”
“You did?” I envisioned him smashed into a locker.
“Yeah. Doing the video with you helped a lot. It helped me say out loud all that I think in my head. I wrote the article and I’ve edited it, and wrote more, and deleted some stuff, but I already talked to the newspaper teacher and she wants to print it, but she’s waiting for me to be, like, totally ready.”
I felt my skin tingle. As in, tingle with fear. A kid coming out as transgender. When I was in school, kids didn’t even come out when they were gay. The rules were: Open the door to the closet, walk straight in, and lock it up with six dead bolts. Don’t say a word.
Anyone who appeared gay hid it. If they didn’t, they were teased, harassed, beaten up. It was awful. It was wrong. It was sick.
And now Hayden. Transgender. More confusion for people, more rejection, more “he is mentally ill” or “ewwww, gross, that’s so weird” or “perverted and disgusting and dangerous.” Gentle, kind, sweet, lovely Hayden.
I shuddered thinking about what might happen to him. “Hayden, I’m going to say it again: This could get really ugly, really fast.”
“I know, but what’s already ugly is not being myself. It’s hard for people to understand. I get it. The only way I can explain it, Aunt Meggie, is to ask you: Do you feel like a woman?”
“Yes.” A struggling woman. A messed-up woman, but yes. I felt like a woman and I like being a woman.
“If I told you that you had to be a man, cut your hair like a man, dress like a man, take on the personality of a man, and I forced you to do that for years on end, never letting you act like a woman, who you were in your heart and your head, how would that be?”
“I couldn’t do it. I could not act like a man.” I thought about it, knowing there was absolutely no way I could get the full picture here. “It would feel totally unnatural, fake, and like you said, I would feel like a lie.”
“That’s it. Now picture a whole lot of depression and loneliness, hating my own body because it’s the wrong one, seeing a girl trapped in a boy body when I look in the mirror, having people treat me like a boy when I know I’m a girl, or treating me like a gay guy, and not dressing like a girl, and you’d start to get it. I mean, I’m a girl, not a boy.
I know it, I’ve always known it, but I can’t be my full self. Only a part of my full self, and that’s no good. It’s not good enough.”
I hugged him. “Hayden, I’m here for you, and I back you up one hundred and ten per cent. Always have, always will.”
Hayden left to work on a design he had for a pajama line I wanted to launch. “You’ll love the frills,” he said. “Totally darling.”
The second he left, Cassidy skipped on in wearing a white flannel nightgown with pink ribbons and pink tulips. It covered her from neck to toe.
“Aunt Meggie, I think it’s going to be wicked hard for me to get into heaven.” She sat cross legged on the bed.
“I feel that way about myself, sweets. I don’t let it worry me much at this point. But why do you say that?”
“Did Mom talk to you yet?” she whispered.
“No, she didn’t.”
“I snuck out last night after she and Dad went to sleep. I had to sneak-ola because I’m grounded.” She flipped her red curls back. She looks so much like her mom. “I went to one party, came home, hugged Mom good night, then I went back out through my window to meet up with Cody.”
“Did Cody spend the night again?”
She gasped. “Mom told you about that!” She threw her hands in the air, so indignant that her mother told me she was having sleepovers with her boyfriend.
“I’m afraid so.”
“She shouldn’t have! That’s private!”
“Doesn’t sound like it was that private when your mom and dad found you snuggled up with Cody under your pink bedspread like two teddy bears.”
She huffed and puffed as only a teenager can do. “That night was gross. I can hardly get it out of my head. I feel damaged forever. Mom came in to check on me. Cody and I were both asleep and he was going to leave at five in the morning because he had to study for chemistry. Anyhow, she barged on in and she screamed when she saw there were two heads in my bed instead of one. We were so scared, we started screaming, too. I mean, we thought she was an ax murderer! Cody said he almost wet himself!”
More huffing and puffing from Cassidy as I tried not to laugh.
“And it got worse, if you can believe this, Aunt Meggie! Cody tried to get out of bed quick to save me from the ax murderer and he got all tangled up in the sheets and hit the floor on his face, then he stood up with his arms out, ready to karate chop the murderer.”
I pictured that precious, precious scene. My sister in her nightgown, pregnant, bent over screaming, and Cody and Cassidy screaming back on full throttle, the whole room exploding as if, indeed, an ax murderer had wandered in, then Cody struggles out of bed and falls on his face and struggles up to karate chop my sister.
I laughed and laughed, my stomach starting to ache.
“Then Dad ran in because he heard everyone screaming their heads off, and I mean, like, Aunt Meggie”—her eyes widened—“I heard his feet pounding, and all of a sudden he was pushing Mom out of the way like, you know, he was going to do battle or something, and Mom turned on the light and well . . .” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.
“And, well, you and Cody were there naked, not an ax murderer to be found.” I wiped tears from my cheeks.
“Not naked, I’m sure, Aunt Meggie.” She was indignant. “I was wearing this. This is my favorite nightgown. I like the pink tulips, and he was wearing . . .” Her brow wrinkled. “Okay, you’re right. Cody was buck naked . . . standing up . . .” Her brow furrowed.
“Not what your parents wanted to see.”
“What was even worse, Aunt Meggie, is that Dad was naked.” Cassidy slapped both hands to her eyes. “That’s why I feel that I’m damaged. I saw my daddy naked. Gross, oh so gross. That’s not a sight for young eyes. It’s like a scar in me now forever.”
I pictured yet another precious, precious scene and tried to muffle my laughter.
“It’s not that funny.” Cassidy shook her head in bafflement. “They were pissed. I mean, Dad was like, yelling at Cody to get the hell out of the house, and I think he hurt Cody’s feelings ’cause Cody started to cry and said he was sorry a million times, but Dad threw Cody out naked, then he threw his clothes out the window, and Mom was screaming at me that this was her house, I had to follow her rules, I could get pregnant if I skipped a pill, my life would be over, all this stuff . . .”
“Yes, well, you don’t want to be pregnant alongside your mother.” For some reason I found that hilarious, too, and it’s so not funny.
“I know. That would be Disaster City! Poor Mom. Pregnant again. It’s embarrassing and sickening that Mom and Dad still do it.”
“Yeah, that’s embarrassing. And the baby is proof of it. They can’t even deny it.”
Cassidy, my namesake, fingered the collar of her prim and proper nightgown. “I like to think they only did it three times, one for me, one for Hayden, one for Regan. We’ll pretend this is the fourth time only. Anyhow, I was caught sneaking in and I’m grounded for a longer amount of time now. I feel like I’m always grounded.”
“Does seem like you have to be home a lot.”
“I don’t mind being home, but I don’t like being grounded.”
“Yeah, it’s tough. Brutal.”
She nodded, then her face lightened. “So, Hayden and I are making holiday wreaths today. You want to make one with us? We’re making them for your house to welcome you here. Also, after that, Mom and I are making pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. They are the best. Want to help? And since I can’t go out tonight, we’re going to make baklava together and watch Martha Stewart’s cooking shows. Regan is volunteering at the animal shelter, but then he’ll be home to watch Martha with us. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
“Oh, it does, Cassidy, it does.” I don’t like cooking or, as my mother would say, “the domestic arts.”
Later, after the wreath making, Lacey and I sat down to eat pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and have coffee. Lacey muttered to me, “Cassidy can’t help it that she inherited a few cells of the slut gene.”
“But she cooks like a dream,” I said.
“That’s true. A dreamy, slutty cook.”
We clinked our muffins together, as if we were saying cheers.
I bravely tried to take a bath that night.
I turned on the water. I felt my heart rate rise with the steam, my hands freezing, going numb, as visions of black swirled through my mind. I tried to stick my toes in, couldn’t do it. I tried to stick a finger in, no go.
I turned off the bathwater, drained it, wrapped a towel around myself, and stumbled out to my deck, past that thing in my closet I hid from myself. I collapsed into the green Adirondack chair until I could breathe again. I stayed outside until I could no longer see the bathwater of my past. Pop Pop barked at me. I couldn’t bark back.
That night I dreamed of Aaron pushing me into the tub as I struggled and kicked. He covered me with black feathers, then detergent. It was the black feathers that drowned me.
Planning a fashion show or, in our case, a Fashion Story, is like trying to hike up a mountain in impossibly high heels during a rockslide.
Especially since we were doing something special—okay, odd—with it.
I approved the ads for the newspaper for The Fashion Story after we’d been round and round about what the announcement should say and what photo should be displayed. We decided to use a photo of Grandma in a strawberry field. She was wearing a red, flowing, silky dress that blew in the wind, and her rubies.
The words below it: “My name is Regan O’Rourke. You’re invited to the Lace, Satin, and Baubles Fashion Story. Let me tell you how I went from picking strawberries to designing brassieres.”
I hoped people showed up, or all this work in finding the location, building a runway, deciding on the decor, bringing in a gargantuan amount of lighting, paying for some sort of dessert, and readying our “models” and their outfits would be for nothing.
As Grandma said to me a week before, “We’re going for broke. Mig
ht as well make the whole damn thing pretty.”
Broke isn’t pretty. I kept hiking up the mountain with the rockslide in my heels.
“Three days before that bad typhoon, whoosh whoosh, I see it in my dream,” Kalani said, wriggling her fingers at Lacey and me over Skype. “I see palm trees blowing. I see beach and pink dragon on beach and I see water like lake, with fish. I think I . . . what the word . . . Tory know this word . . . ah!” She pointed a finger in the air. “New American word for me: psychic! I think I psychic!”
“Good for you,” I said. “Then you’ll be able to tell me the future. Kalani, did you get the shipment out that we talked about?”
“Ya. Ya. I get boxes and boxes of thongs out. Those hardly no panty at all, not cover nothing on the you know”—she turned around and put her butt up so we could see it on Skype—“the boom boom.”
“You’re right—”
“And I check the lace, like we talk about, Meggie. Those things, mostly lace.”
“Pretty, aren’t they?”
“Ya. Pretty. You could wear them, Meeegie, but not you, Lacey. Not with that big boom boom.” She smiled. “Look see your tummy!” Kalani helpfully pointed at Lacey’s tummy as if Lacey didn’t know how big it was.
“Yes, it’s a healthy baby,” Lacey said, under her breath she said, “You nonstop-talking skinny bird face.”
“Bird face?” I whispered.
“That Tory,” Kalani said. “She know fashion. I talk to her yesterday. She say I need crimson-tide lipstick. She send me some. You know Tory?”
“I think we do remember Tory,” Lacey said. She wasn’t in a good mood. “We’re not that dumb.”
“No, you not dumb, Laceeey. You no talk like that.” Kalani shook her finger at Lacey. “You not dumb. You just fat. Fat lady now.”
“Oh, fuck you very much,” Lacey said, with a teeth-clenched smile. Her morning sickness was particularly bad today. I elbowed her. Kalani did not hear the f word.