Alex as Well

by Alyssa Brugman

  Her name is Lien, and she used to be a model. Miss Angela is obviously very impressed, because she goes all gushy when she talks about her.

  There will be a dress rehearsal on the weekend before the show. We will get our hair and makeup done, and there will be a photo shoot for the catalogue. Then there’s the show itself, which will be held in the library. They want our parents to come along.

  ‘Cool!’ says Sierra, flushing slightly.

  ‘We can only have three from your year level,’ Miss Angela says, handing the permission forms to me, Julia and Amina. ‘It’s to do with the risk assessment.’

  But what she means is that Sierra is too short to look good in clothes. Sierra knows it. I’ve been picked because I’m tall.

  You’ve been picked because you could be a supermodel, Alex says.

  Sierra glances at me sidelong, all slitty and hateful, as if it’s my fault. She could be a bigger person about it, and be happy that her friends have been chosen, but she’s jealous.

  Amina bites her lip. She thinks this selection process is unjust. She thinks fashion is stupid and arbitrary. She should be fighting for it to be inclusive, but she is looking forward to dressing up.

  ‘Oh, and when you drop this form back at the front office, bring your birth certificate. You haven’t completed your enrolment,’ Miss Angela adds.

  I nod. ‘Sorry, I forgot.’

  I could nip it in the bud. I could say I’m not interested in participating, and then Amina would say that too. Julia might do the fashion show by herself, but it wouldn’t be a schism. We could go to the show and support her. We would make up banners and cheer.

  This fashion show thing is a schism, and it is my fault because if I said I didn’t want to do it, Amina would too. It is stupid and arbitrary.

  Alex is looking at me and shaking his head.

  What? I challenge him.

  This is a bad idea.

  I can see where this is going, too. Of course I can, because I am Alex as well. But I want to dress up in gorgeous clothes and strut up and down the runway like they do in the magazines, swishing my tail. I want to dress up with Amina and Julia and giggle and be girlfriends, arm in arm. I want to be beautiful. I want other people to think I am beautiful. I want them all to look at me the way that Ty does.

  It makes me more real now that Sierra is jealous of me. Jealousy is a million times more potent than pity.

  It’s just clothes, I shrug.

  But it’s not, is it? Fashion makes the rules about what women should look like. If anyone should be against such a narrow definition of what is an acceptable way of being, it should be me.

  What do you think they’re going to do if…when they find out you’re a boy? Alex asks. Why are you giving people reasons to hate us?

  But I’m not a boy, I counter.

  I beg to differ, Alex says.

  You just keep on begging, I reply.

  16

  AT HOME MY mother serves me a tiny individual vegetarian cannelloni for dinner. I inspect it. There is no meat in it. ‘Thanks!’ I say, smiling at her.

  ‘You eat it all up now,’ she says, patting my hand.

  She and Dad are having a meat one, but that’s ok with me. We sit at the dining table together. The telly is on in the lounge room, and we all look towards it. Dad is being fussy with the condiments, grinding the pepper and sprinkling parmesan. I push the cannelloni around my plate. It’s nice, but I’m working my way up to telling them about my day.

  ‘You can use the side of the fork first, and then you should push the fork into it, like this.’ My mother demonstrates.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’re using your fork like a shovel.’ She scoops the air.

  ‘What’s the diff?’ Alex asks.

  ‘You should hold your fingers softly, and point your index finger. You should—’

  I interrupt her. ‘Can we just eat? Please?’

  ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. The tines of the fork should face down. If I don’t tell you these things, then who is going to?’

  ‘There’s a fashion parade on at school,’ I tell them.

  They look at me.

  ‘And I’m going to…umm, be a model,’ I say.

  ‘As a girl?’ my dad asks, still holding a pinch of parmesan above his plate—frozen in time.

  I shrug. ‘I haven’t seen the clothes yet, but I guess. Since I am enrolled…going there as a girl.’

  You need to bring up the thing about the enrolment. About the birth certificate. Alex whispers in my ear. Do it now.

  I know, but it has taken all my courage to tell them about the fashion parade. I push the crumpled permission slip across the table. ‘One of you will need to sign this,’ I say, as if I don’t care.

  They trade a look. The form is closer to Dad. He picks it up and reads it. ‘Dear Parent, please give permission for your son slash daughter to participate in yada, outside school hours, yada, images will remain the property of the boutique, yada, collect your child from the school grounds…’ He quotes on one exhaled breath. He pulls a pen out of his breast pocket, ready to sign.

  My mother places her fork on the edge of the plate and stares at him. ‘Shouldn’t we discuss this?’

  ‘What are your objections?’ he asks.

  She opens her mouth and glances at me. I study my meal.

  I am afraid of her the way you would be if you were in the path of a demented grandmother swinging her shopping bag. It’s not her power—it’s her unpredictability.

  ‘It’s just clothes, Heather,’ he says softly.

  ‘It’s NOT just clothes!’ she shrills.

  ‘Honey, there is no one right way to eat cannelloni,’ he says.

  ‘Of course there is!’ she says, thumping the table. ‘How do children learn not to be pigs at the table if their mother doesn’t teach them? This is not about now. When he is older he is going to want to know how to eat at the dinner table in polite company. He doesn’t understand that now.’

  They glare at each other in silence.

  ‘You said we were going to support each other,’ she adds.

  Without looking at her he signs the form. I slip it back into my pocket.

  About the birth certificate, Alex reminds me.

  Shut up already. There’s always .

  17

  www.motherhoodshared.com

  I can’t tell you how relieved I am! I have made a discovery, and it explainms everything! Ever since he was little, Alex has been on hormone therapy. Well, I was in his room and I found a little stash of his medication in his bedsidetable drawer. He hasn’t been taking them! That’s why this has happened. We’ve been through all of this nightmare for the last few weeks. He just needs to start taking his medication again and things can go back to the way they were.

  It really is quite good luck that he has decided to be vegetarian, because I can make him a separate meal and slip his medication in. So much of vegetarian food is just sloppy mushed up stuff anyway. It’s not ideal, but hopefully we should see it take effect in the next couple of days.

  I understand now why he must have been feeling so crazy and mixed up. Hormones are such powerful things, and being a teenager on top of that. I am sure his moods will stabilise after this.

  I can’t tell you what a weight this is off my shoulders!

  The only thing is that now he’s decided he wants to be a model! Yes, a female model! Modelling clothes. It’s got to be one of the only careers that requires that you actually are a girl. It’s typical. Still I expect he will stop all of this very soon once the medication has kicked in.

  Heather

  COMMENTS:

  * * *

  Dee Dee wrote:

  That explains so much of what you’ve been going through!

  * * *

  Vic wrote:

  Heather, I understand this is a really confusing time for you, but don’t you think dosing up your child with testosterone without telling her is wrong? Is it just me? That’s
wrong, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you sit down and talk to Alex about what she wants?

  * * *

  Dee Dee wrote:

  If my three-year-old twins refuse to eat vegetables, I don’t sit down and talk about it, I bribe, cheat, cajole and browbeat until the vegetables get eaten. That’s what good parents do. They don’t let their kids decide what’s good for them. Parents decide what’s right. That’s what parenting is. That’s how you make good, law-abiding adults.

  * * *

  Vic wrote:

  Alex isn’t three.

  * * *

  Dee Dee wrote:

  Ok, what if Alex had ADHD and decided to stopped taking his medication? Would you advocate sitting down and talking about it? What if it was cancer? Or diabetes? What if it was schizophrenia? No, you would make sure the kid took his damn pills!

  * * *

  Vic wrote:

  Alex doesn’t have cancer. She doesn’t have a disease, and it’s not up to Heather to decide Alex’s identity. It’s up to Alex, and right now Alex is not being allowed to make an informed decision about her own body and wellbeing. This is really serious. Some of the changes her body is going through during puberty will not be reversible. She will have to live in that body for the rest of her life. I’m sorry, but in my opinion this is abuse.

  * * *

  Cheryl wrote:

  I understand you feel very strongly about this Vic, but with respect, you haven’t met Alex. It really is up to Heather to decide what’s best for him until he turns sixteen.

  * * *

  Vic wrote:

  *Her. Alex is a girl.

  * * *

  Heather wrote:

  I appreciate your concern, Vic, but the doctors have examined Alex thoroughly all of his life, and they have made a determination that Alex is actually male. It’s not a disease, but he does have a medical condition. He just needs hormonal support to help him develop into a male as much as he can.

  * * *

  Vic wrote:

  Isn’t it time someone told Alex?

  18

  WE CATCH THE school minibus to the first rehearsal. There are ten of us. Amina, Julia and I are the youngest. There are three girls from year ten and four from year eleven. Miss Angela is at the front, and another teacher—a balding man that I haven’t met before—drives the bus. When we arrive he pulls out a newspaper and tilts the seat back a little more.

  Will we go bald? Alex asks. Because Dad is balding and Poppy—our mother’s dad—was bald too. I put my hand on the crown of my head. Plenty of hair there now. But. Something else to worry about.

  I assumed the shop doing the clothes for the fashion parade would be a normal shop in a mall somewhere, but it’s a warehouse with shiny insulation lining the ceiling and spinning whirligigs that chop up the light. There are clothes on wheelie racks lined up higgledy-piggledy everywhere. In the middle there is a stage. I’ve seen this before in a bridal shop. You stand on the little dais and somebody fixes your hem. It’s not a normal shop—they must do mostly online orders.

  The stylist arrives and stands in the background while Miss Angela talks to us.

  ‘Let me make this clear,’ she begins. ‘I don’t want you to be sexy. It’s not appropriate. When you walk, you need to walk as though you’re late for class. There is to be no cleavage, or upper thigh. The principal is coming to the dress rehearsal, and if he doesn’t like the tone, then he will cancel the show, and we won’t be allowed to do it again. So let’s see your walk.’

  We line up and walk up and down the shop. ‘No, no, no. Less hips,’ Miss Angela counsels us. ‘More like this,’ she says, pointing to me.

  ‘She walks like a guy,’ somebody mutters.

  In the background, the stylist, Lien, starts putting together outfits.

  ‘This is about making money,’ she explains. ‘The audience will be given order forms and they can tick off clothes in the sizes they want, and hand them in as they leave. This means we’re doing clothes your mother would wear and school-formal dresses.’

  Then Lien asks us to strip to bras and knickers, and she will hand out the outfits.

  The girls look around.

  ‘Well, come on then, get busy. We’re all girls here.’

  And then they start undressing. Amina is undressing. She kicks her shoes off. She reaches back to unzip her tunic. She turns to Julia. Julia slides Amina’s zip down. Amina slips the material off her shoulder. The tunic crumples to the floor. Even with the shirt on I can see the curve of her buttocks.

  One of the year eleven girls has enormous breasts in a pink lace balconette bra. Everywhere I look there are breasts and buttocks. I spin around.

  Now Amina is coming towards me, in her underwear. She has a hot, smooth, athletic body.

  She reaches towards my zip. She has mistaken my turning away as a request for help. She is close enough to me that I can feel her breath on my skin and the warmth from her body.

  Alex is shouting in my head. They’re going to see! They’re going to see!

  ‘No!’ I shrink back from her.

  It’s like some hideous porn cliché. It’s a nightmare. I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can still smell their perfume, and something else. A girl smell. It goes up my nose and straight to my groin. I cross my hands in front of the noodle.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Miss Angela asks.

  They’re going to see! Alex is hysterical. He’s sweating. He’s going to cry.

  Shut up!

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ I whisper.

  I’m so ashamed.

  She stares at me, and then she draws me away from the other girls. ‘What is it?’ she asks.

  I swallow. ‘I’m not wearing a bra,’ I confess. ‘I didn’t realise we’d have to get changed in front of other people.’ I fan my sweaty face. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just…I’m embarrassed.’

  She scans my eyes and then she sighs. ‘Ok, I have an idea.’

  Miss Angela draws the wheelie clothes racks into a triangle around me. It’s like a change room. ‘Better?’ she asks.

  I nod at her over the coat hangers.

  ‘Anyone else like to make themselves a change room?’ she asks.

  Nobody did. Most of them didn’t even look up. They were folding their clothes into piles by their feet, or on a nearby chair.

  Julia looks at Amina and rolls her eyes.

  Lien leans towards Miss Angela and murmurs, ‘Is this one going to be a problem?’

  Miss Angela shrugs.

  I pretend I didn’t hear.

  Lien throws a red tartan suit over the clothes rack at me. ‘Here you go, princess.’

  The other girls are pulling their outfits on, and finally everyone is dressed again. Think of road kill. Stinking dead carcasses, half mooshed with flies on. There. That’s done the trick.

  I smooth the front of my skirt. Smooth, smooth, like the Clinique girl. Then I move the rack aside and I stride out in my red tartan suit and my steel-capped boots, and stop, with my hand on my hip.

  Lien and Miss Angela exchange a glance. Miss Angela shakes her head.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing it’s just that—’

  ‘You look like the real thing,’ Lien finishes.

  19

  I’M GOING TO see Crockett today. I shave my legs in the shower. I’m not really sure where you’re supposed to stop, so I keep going. It takes ages. I’m definitely going to have to find a better way to do this.

  I sing, ‘Hey, honey, take a walk on the wild side.’

  I pull on some knee-high socks with my steel-capped boots. I drag out my old grey school shorts and the butterfly T-shirt. I pull my hair up into two cute piggies on the top of my head. I tie a football jersey around my waist by the sleeves.

  In the mirror I look like a boy wearing his sister’s T-shirt. I put on really thick eyeliner and draw a star on my cheek with a pink texta. Then I draw little geisha lips. It’s weird. It’s a bit Gaga, and I love it. Gaga has given girls permission
to be drag queens.

  I wait until I hear the shower start in my parents’ en suite and then I run down the stairs. I pinch a twenty from my mother’s wallet and leave a note on the kitchen table.

  Running late.

  Cya. A xx

  My mother has left a bracelet on the kitchen bench. It’s silver with shiny, black flowers and a butterfly in diamantes. It’s just junk jewellery from Target, but it’s eyecatching, and it goes with my shirt. I undo the clasp and slip it around my upper arm. It looks hot. I can do this high-street chic. I’m like Gok.

  I catch a bus into the city and check out the food hall, where our shop would be if we were dairy farmers from South Australia selling our boutique cheese in the city. Although, no one has asked me about my backstory for ages.

  There are so many beautiful clothes. I go into Cue and try on a few dresses. The shop assistant is all excited. She thinks I’m going to buy something. She keeps throwing dresses at me over the change-room door. But I don’t have enough money on me, and when I leave without buying anything she is shitty.

  I find a bedazzler for four dollars in one of those junk shops. I can’t believe it. Well, it’s a copy. It’s called a ‘Ka Jinker’. Onomatopoeia. Marketing genius. It comes with little coloured butterflies and glass buttons.

  There is a busker doing the statue thing.

  There’s an income for someone with zero skills, Alex says.

  I snigger. Yeah, because he didn’t even come up with the idea of being a statue.