Alex and I go into ‘undergarments’ in DJs. March straight in. It’s all coloured bras at the front, and then the big white spinnakers for the grannies at the back.
There’s a pale blue bra with little tiny orange flowers. It’s delicate and girlie. I get the cup size thing, because it’s common knowledge. I guess I’m an A, but there is a number too. I flick through them. They go from ten to eighteen. We’re going to have to try some on.
Yeah, baby! says Alex, rubbing his hands together.
I grab an eight, a twelve and a sixteen.
I crouch down to the undies. There’re G-strings at the front, and then hipster knickers at the back of the rack. They’re all lace with a little orange ribbon. I slide a pair out from behind the others so I can get a better look.
Woot! Alex loves it.
‘Boo!’ says a voice behind me.
Startled, I turn around. It’s Ty.
I’m holding undies. I try to put them back on the hanger, but I miss and they fall on the floor. I accidentally pull off a G-string, and that hits the floor too, so I drop the bras I’m holding, stand up quickly, and take a big step away from the undies.
‘Wow, you look hot!’ Ty says. He takes hold of my hand and lifts it up, as if he is asking me to dance.
‘Ta,’ I say, shaking him off. I hide my Ka Jinker in its plastic bag behind my back. He’s caught me off guard. I’m having a mild panic attack, wondering if I’ve missed something. I don’t feel right today.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, taking another sidewards step away from the undies.
‘Dentist,’ he says, pulling a face. He introduces me to his mother. His mother! In the undies section! With the undies I was going to try on splayed across the floor! She’s probably forty-something. Voluminous skirt. Flat sandals. No makeup. A spinnaker wearer, for sure.
‘So you’re Alex.’
‘Hi,’ I say, blushing as she appraises me. She has a shirt on a hanger. She waves it in a way that indicates that she intends to try it on, and then she wanders off.
I take another step away from the underwear, but Ty’s eyes slide back to the rack.
‘Do you want to catch a movie or something after?’ he asks. ‘I’m only going to be an hour or so.’
‘I have a thing,’ I say, crooking my neck to the side.
‘Oh?’ His eyes flick towards the knickers on the floor.
I nod, but I don’t elaborate.
‘What about after the thing?’ he asks hopefully.
‘Not sure how long it’s going to take.’
A shop assistant whizzes up behind me and gathers up the undies that I dropped. I think about stopping her, and then I change my mind. I’ll do it another day when I have money.
‘I could wait,’ he offers.
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
He’s disappointed. ‘Maybe another time?’
‘Maybe.’
Ty picks up a bra on the closest hanger. He holds it up in front of me, and then he raises his eyebrows. I know that look. It’s the noodle-tugging look. It makes me feel yuck.
‘Ty, I, umm, I like girls,’ I blurt.
Idiot! Alex says. What did you say that for?
Ty laughs. ‘No! Are you serious?’
I scuff my foot. I don’t know why I said that. I’ve never been asked out by a boy before and I didn’t want to lead him on. I like Ty. He’s funny. I hope we can be mates. I guess I hoped that if I took the possibility of us being together out of the equation he might just like me for me.
‘You are serious!’ Ty’s mouth drops open, and I see the General Wood look cross his face again. He’s not deterred. He’s picturing me with another girl. If anything I’ve made it worse because now I am unattainable, and that makes me hotter. I know because that’s how I feel about Amina.
‘I haven’t exactly told anyone at school,’ I say, peeking at him from under my eyelashes. ‘But I know you like me, and I didn’t want you to think…I want us to be friends. And I’m not just saying, “can we be friends”. I like you. I actually want to be friends.’
Ty doesn’t understand. My words are going into his ears, but he’s not listening. And I’m not surprised because they are stupid, empty words. It was a mistake.
He will tell. I won’t get to go to the sleepover.
‘Can we keep it between us?’ I ask.
Ty slides an imaginary zip across his lips.
But he will tell.
Of course he’ll tell, Alex snorts at me. He will text one of his mates before you’re even out of sight.
‘Well, I better go,’ I say, fleeing.
As I make my way through the lunch shoppers, I put my hand up to my temple. I’m getting a headache.
Ty took me by surprise, that’s all. I was having a day off today. I was having a dress rehearsal at being a girl, and he made me have to think about stuff I didn’t expect to have to think about.
But it will be ok. Won’t it?
20
I HAVEN’T MADE an appointment, but Crockett agrees to squeeze me in. When I go into his office, the desk is deeper in files. There is now a pile on the floor. There’s a dead pot plant on the filing cabinet. His eyebrows look even wilder. There’s a ladder in the corner, and the door to his office has been painted in a fresh coat of exactly what it was before. He has paint on his knuckles. He sees me noticing.
‘Renovating,’ he says, rolling his eyes, or maybe he’s looking at the ceiling or at the rooms upstairs. I can’t tell.
‘I’m glad you came back. It should be fairly straightforward. I will apply to the court to have a new birth certificate issued. The judge may want to talk to you.’
I nod, taking a seat.
‘There is law in this area. It has been successful in the past when the judge felt that denying the application would put the applicant’s life in danger.’
How could their life be in danger? ‘What do you mean?’
He folds his hands. ‘When the judge felt the applicant may self-harm,’ he clarified. ‘The questions from the judge may tend in that direction. You might need to see a psychologist.’
I lean back in my chair. ‘You mean I should tell the judge that if I don’t get a new birth certificate that says I am a girl I will top myself? Isn’t that, like, holding the judge to ransom?’
‘Would you?’ He tilts his head to the side like a bird. ‘Self-harm, I mean?’
‘It hasn’t even crossed my mind.’
It has, though. Just between you and me. You know that expression, ‘dying from embarrassment’? After the thing that happened at the other school, it did cross my mind. I can’t even bear to think about it. Think about something else, quick. Think about Amina.
I try smiling, but my lip twitches.
Crockett feels sorry for me. He pretends to be writing notes, but I think he is doodling. ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ he says. ‘When I looked it up, I saw there have been several cases where applicants needed to have their new sex on their passports because they were going overseas specifically to have their gender reassigned surgically. Do you think you will be pursuing surgery when you’re older?’
I blush, ‘I um, don’t need to.’
‘You what?’ He is surprised. ‘I’m sorry to pry, but I need to know the particulars.’
‘The particulars?’
Crockett is asking about our noodle, Alex explains.
‘I have…’ I’m struggling. ‘Well, I don’t have a scrotum. At all. I have…More of…What I mean is, what I refer to as…’
Crockett waits, biting his lip. He is pulling the yicky face. Weirdly fascinated, the way he would look at road kill.
‘And I have started to grow breasts, I think. Since…’
Since you stopped taking the medication, Alex finishes. I go redder, but not because I am embarrassed. We’re putting two and two together. I think again about my parents and what they told me.
Because she called it my noodle, when I was small. That’s her word. They sat me down and said
I was a bit different to other boys.
You think? Alex drawls.
But don’t worry about it, she said. Everyone has parts that are different. Some people have more hair than others, some people have different-coloured eyes, or harelips, or birthmarks. My noodle was like a birthmark. I have to take the medication because I am a bit different to other boys. Lots of people take pills or tablets for lots of reasons. Daddy takes them for his blood pressure. Most people take some kind of medication, they told me.
I just hadn’t joined the dots before. Medication… and…being…a…boy.
I start again. ‘Let me just say that I have looked up normal parts, and what I have is a…foot in each camp.’
‘Right,’ he says, blankly. ‘But, where do you…’
‘Where do I…’ I wait.
He’s clicking his pen against his teeth. ‘Where do you urinate from, I mean. Because if you wee from an appendage, then you would be male, and if you wee from not your appendage then you would be female, right? I mean, it’s kind of, physiologically, kind of…’ He trails off again.
I sigh. ‘It would probably be easier if I showed you.’ I stand up, putting my hand on the fly of my shorts.
‘No!’ He pushes back from the desk.
‘Want me to draw you a picture?’ I offer.
‘No, please!’ His eyes are wide with panic. His cheeks have gone red.
I peel a post-it note from off his desk. ‘I’m going to draw you a picture.’
‘Alex! Please don’t. It’s not appropriate.’
‘Not appropriate?’ I keep talking while I draw. ‘It’s appropriate, because I’ve always been told not to talk about it, and that’s how things—important things—got missed, like that I am a girl. So it is appropriate, Mr Crockett.’
He is holding up a manila folder in front of his face like a shield.
‘I know I’m a freak,’ I continue. ‘That’s not what this is about. The reason I am here is not because I want to be a girl. I’m here asking for your help because I am a girl.’ I slap the post-it on the desk.
Crockett holds the picture at arm’s length, squinting, his lips turned down. ‘And this is to scale, is it?’
I narrow my eyes. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’
Crockett freezes. ‘No, I…I…’ he stammers.
I laugh. ‘Anyway, like I said, I don’t think I need surgery. I don’t think what’s there really needs changing. I don’t know if it would help my case, but there would probably be medical records or something, because I went to doctors when I was younger. But then there was this one time there were so many people looking, and my mum cracked the shits, and after that I didn’t have to have the examinations anymore.’
Crockett is mortified by this whole conversation, but he’s doing his best. He clears his throat and writes notes.
While we’re going to embarrassing places, ‘I can’t pay you,’ I tell him.
He looks up from his notes to the piles of crap on his desk. ‘Can you paint?’ he asks.
21
I’M SMILING TO myself on the train. I have a job. I’ll be painting Crockett’s place for four hours every Saturday afternoon until it’s done. It’s not glamorous, but it’s a job. My first job.
Rrroxanne.
I can’t wait to tell the girls. I’m wondering if I should ’fess up and say I’m just painting, or whether I could tell them I am doing work experience at a solicitor’s office. Amina would be more impressed by that. She will assume it’s because I want to be a lawyer.
But now I’m going home, and I get an unpleasant rumble in my guts because I think my parents know a lot more about me than they’ve been telling me.
For example, says Alex, if you don’t take your medication you’ll turn into a girl.
Because that would suggest that ‘girl’ is the default setting, wouldn’t it? I mean, what the hell is going on here?
I shift in my seat. I need to prepare myself to ask them.
What are you going to say? Alex says.
Hey, Mum, am I supposed to be a girl? Did you know that all along? So why are you totally freaking out, now that I want to be a girl? Shouldn’t you have been expecting this?
Why are they insisting that I’m a boy? Why can’t they just let me be a girl? I don’t get it.
There is sweat on my upper lip. My heart is beating too fast. I pull my sleeves over my knuckles and curl my fists into a ball. I’m not sure what is happening to me.
I’m frightened, I tell Alex.
Me too, he says.
It’s sprinkling a little. I can see my reflection in the window. I’m pretending to look outside, but I’m actually looking at me, and then I blink because I’m not sure at first, but it looks like there is a hair growing from the end of my chin. It’s thick and sharp. I slap my hand over it.
Has that been there all day? Longer? Shit, man!
Pull it out, Alex suggests.
But I can’t, because what if it doesn’t come out? And people will see me tugging on my chin. Dammit!
Calm down.
Calm down? I look like friggen Gandalf!
Ok, then keep your hand over your chin all the way home.
My phone trills and I pull it out of my pocket. ‘Whoolia!’ I say, plastering on a grin, because I heard somewhere that you sound more confident if you smile when you answer the phone.
I’ll tell her I’m an intern. That’s what I’ll say.
I keep my thumb on my beard.
It’s not a beard, it’s one hair.
It’s a goddamn beard!
‘S’up?’
‘Are you a lesbo?’ she asks.
I breathe in sharply. I put my hand over my chest, willing my heart to slow down, but I can still feel it thumping.
Ty.
I can imagine them sitting around in the playground. Ty would have told one of his mates who would have told another one of his mates and soon everyone would have known. I knew he would. Why did I tell him?
Because you wanted the attention, Alex says. You’re different. You wanted Ty to know you’re different. And it’s like the canary in the coal mine. If he can care about you anyway, even if you’re different, then maybe they can all love you despite the other thing. The ones that matter, anyway.
Amina. Except she won’t. Everything is black and white for her. It’s like she doesn’t even see the Earl and Lady of Grey. Her brain doesn’t work that way.
Amina would say it was none of their business. Julia would say, ‘I’m going to ask her,’ and then she would have pulled out her phone while the others protested. She would have held it out of Sierra’s reach. Sierra would have clawed at her arm, laughing. Amina would have been embarrassed and looked the other way.
‘Well, is she?’ Sierra asks in the background.
From the seat opposite Alex nods at me. Because it will make me sound more honest, he argues. Because the truth is that I am into girls.
‘Yes, I am,’ I say. ‘Is that a problem?’
I’m a lesbo.
There is a pause. ‘I guess not,’ she says.
When Julia hangs up I sit with my eyes closed waiting for my heart to slow into a steady rhythm. I’m still sweating. I feel like I’ve had three double-shot espressos.
I’ve lost Julia. She says she doesn’t care but she does. I don’t know about the others, but Julia cares big time. She’s got the whole Catholic thing going on.
What the hell is this, anyway?
You’re having an anxiety attack, Alex says.
Oh, of course. I’ve had these before. I take deep breaths. In through my nose, out through my mouth. When my heart and my temperature finally come down, I send a text to Ty.
Ur a tool.
Quick as a flash he texts back.
So what? Ur still a rockstar.
Which makes me smile. Lyrics from the Pink song. See? Ty doesn’t care. We could be friends. We are friends. He gets me. Should I write back?
Alex shakes his head slowly. He looks so
sad.
Why?
Because Ty’s not your friend. You asked him to keep a secret—a big secret—and he let you down. That’s not what friends do.
But I knew he wouldn’t keep it.
That’s not the point. He let you down.
I think for a moment. Who hasn’t let me down? Everybody lets you down eventually.
22
AT HOME I don’t want to be with them. I’m not ready to have that conversation yet. I go straight to my room and, inspired by Ty, put on some Pink. I lie on my bed kajinking around the pockets of my jacket. I think about texting Amina, just to find out if we are still friends.
I tap compose about a million times, and then freeze.
What are you going to say? Alex asks.
Not something that could be misunderstood.
My mother knocks at the door at five-minute intervals to tell me my dinner’s ready. I have told her I’m not hungry. Finally, I whisk the door open and she takes a step back. She has a plate of French toast smothered in maple syrup and powdered sugar.
She’s holding the plate to the side and looking at me in this weird way, as if I am kind of amusing and manageable only from a distance, but close up, a bit bigger than she was expecting and with potential to be dangerous, like a zoo animal.
Pink shouts at her from over my shoulder.
(So what? I’m still a rockstar. I got my rock moves. And I don’t need you.)
‘I said I’m not hungry.’
‘Why don’t you just try a little bit?’ she asks, trying to hand me the plate, but I don’t want it.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell her.
‘Take it, or I’m going to drop it,’ she says, holding the plate out at arm’s length.
‘Mum,’ I begin.
‘Quick, I’m going to let it go.’ The plate wavers in the air for a moment, and then she drops it. I watch it as if it’s in slow motion. It flips in the air, and lands facedown on the carpet.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she says, shocked and fretful.
It crosses my mind to say, I told you I didn’t want it. But what’s the point? Instead, I shut the door.
My mother hammers on it. ‘You’ve hurt my feelings!’ she shrieks. ‘Alex? I made that special dinner for you, and you’ve hurt my feelings! And now you can clean up this mess, young…’ There is a pause. ‘Just clean this mess up!’
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