by Tanya Allan
“She walks dogs as an after school cash earner. She asked if I wanted Baz walked. I told her I couldn’t afford it, so she said she’d do it for nothing if I helped her set up her computer.”
Linda frowned.
How does she know you’re good with computers?”
“She knows Connie, so I guess she told her.”
“Ah!” said Linda, things were becoming clearer now.
“Was Baz all right with her?”
“She never said he wasn’t. She said she met those two from next door with their Labrador, Ben.”
“Who; David and Ruth?”
“Yeah, that’s them. Apparently, they wanted to know if we were related.”
“Why?”
“I dunno, perhaps we look a little alike, I’m not sure.”
“I’d like to meet her; when is she coming around again?”
Kenneth shrugged, pretending to be intent of the TV show.
“Kenneth?”
“Sorry, I’m not sure.”
Linda gave up the interrogation, heading into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.
The kitchen was tidy, as it always was after Kenneth had been there. This was another reason she suspected he might be gay, as he always tidied up and even made his bed every morning. All her friends with teenaged sons complained that they were slovenly, scruffy and unkempt; they never tidied up and left crumbs everywhere. Hell, even Graham, her husband, was like that and he was in his mid-forties.
She and Graham did not communicate as much as they ought to, but they had had a few conversations regarding their son’s possible sexuality. Graham wouldn’t have it that Kenneth might be gay. Despite Linda feeling that it was a distinct probability, her husband denied all the evidence that she listed
“He’s just a sensible boy who’s probably a late developer,” Graham said, repeatedly. He conveniently forgot that by the time he was a year younger than Kenneth, he was avidly attempting to get into Tessa Bryant’s knickers behind the bike sheds.
Linda was still anxious, as to have a gay son would be the kiss of death in the tennis club. She could imagine Amanda bloody Perkins smirking behind her back. Oh, and the indignity of it all if he brought some horrible boyfriend home and had an expectation that they’d accept such a disgusting relationship. She conveniently forgot about her ‘unnatural’ relationship with Yvonne.
She carried her cup into the sitting room and sat on the sofa next to her son. The dog came over to get some love from her.
“Ken?” she started.
Kenneth groaned inwardly. Here it comes again, he thought.
“Mmm?”
“I don’t want to sound naggy or like a typical silly mother, but if there was anything wrong, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably not,” he said.
She hadn’t listened.
“You see, we do love you and want the best for you, but we’d like to know if there’s anything bothering you.”
“Yup, I know, that’s why you’ve consistently ignored me whenever I do share stuff.”
“You see, there are times when a mother knows that something might not be quite right, and, well, if we can help in any way, please let us know.”
Kenneth turned to his mother, who looked embarrassed.
“You want to know if I’m gay, right?”
Linda blushed a bright red.
“Not especially, just anything that might be, you know, not right.”
“So, you’re saying that being gay is not right?”
That silenced her for a moment, but she quickly denied that she didn’t mean not right as in wrong, but not right as in, well, as in ill or something, and managed to dig a deeper hole for herself.
“If it’s any consolation, I’m not gay, in that I am not a boy that is attracted to other boys, okay?”
Relief flooded from her almost tangibly.
“Oh, thank God for that. You have no idea how relieved that makes me feel!” she said.
“Do you remember when I was about five, I told you that I should have been a girl?” he asked, deflating her euphoric moment.
“No, should I remember?” she said.
Linda at first denied, it, but then admitted that she did recall the conversation. She began to experience a feeling of dread; as if she knew what was coming next. She hoped she was wrong. Having one of them would be worse than having a queer as a son. Oh my God, what would they say?
“But that was just silly talk, you were too young to know about such things,” she said.
“I am sixteen; do you think I’m still too young?”
“No dear, I’m not suggesting anything like that.”
“I have, ever since I was about four, been convinced that I should have been female. I told you then, and a couple of times since, and each time you told me I was mistaken and to get those silly notions out of my head. Well, the notions are still there, and, as I’m seventeen next year, I fully intend to explore the possibility of finishing my life as a girl. Every waking moment of every single day I know that I am a girl inside. It even invades my dreams when I’m asleep. Every night when I go to bed, I pray to wake up a girl, and every morning I wake up disappointed. Now, is that what you wanted to know when you asked if anything was wrong?”
Linda was silent, as she just couldn’t think of what to say.
“So, when I say I am not a boy attracted to other boys, you have to believe me. You see, I think that inside, I am a girl, with normal girl feelings that I cannot express or experience because of what’s on the outside and what society demands of me.”
Linda started to say something, but couldn’t find the words.
“I’m sorry if my attempting to find some degree of happiness or fulfilment interferes with your plans for me, but there you go. This is my life, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow anyone to make my decisions for me. If I make mistakes, then that’s fine; they’ll be my mistakes, but you can forget whatever you have planned for me, as I’m going to go my own way, come what may.”
“But, your father and I know what’s best for you, dear!” she said.
Kenneth looked at her.
“Does Dad know you and Yvonne Marchart are having an affair?”
Linda went deathly pale.
“If that got out at the Tennis club, it might be worse than having a transgender child. I suggest you get your own house in order before you start organising mine. If there’s nothing else; I’m going to my room. Good night.”
“No, Kenneth, wait; we need to talk!”
Kenneth said nothing, but carried on up the stairs.
Linda stood at the bottom of the stairs and shrieked his name.
“Kenneth!”
He stopped and turned to look at her. She was shocked at the contempt and disgust in his expression.
“Oh, what will we talk about? Getting some psychiatrists who can talk me out of these silly notions perhaps? I don’t think so. How about the fact you demand of me while you carry on a lesbian relationship behind Dad’s back, thinking nobody knows, and claiming it’s only because he’s been shagging his secretary for months?”
She stared at him.
“No? I didn’t think so. Unless you’re prepared to talk sensibly about what steps I can take to become female, then I think this conversation is over. Every time I have mentioned it, you belittle my feelings and tell me I’m mistaken. Well, I know what I want, and as I’m an adult soon, it seems that I shall prevail, whether you accept it or not. As for whether I’m attracted to boys or girls, I think I’m screwed up enough to bother about such trivialities. I have to get my body in line with my brain before I worry whether I’m a dyke like my mother or like boys.”
Linda still couldn’t think of anything to say. The bottom was in the process of dropping out of her world. She was more concerned over what they would say at the tennis club and of her husband’s reaction, than she was of her hurting son.
Kenneth went up to his room, shutting and locki
ng the door.
With enormous relief, he placed the torc around his neck once more, and became the person she knew she should always have been.
Feeling amazingly calm, she sat and quietly read. Her mother knocked on the door for a few minutes, bleating about having to talk. Keira didn’t answer her. She went from pleading to threatening to crying and shouting. Eventually she went away.
She’d discovered her parents’ indiscretions through her time on the computer and through simple observation. What her parents thought was secure wasn’t, not from someone who was an amateur hacker of some skill. Emails were not the best place to manage an affair, or affairs in her parents’ cases. Okay, they weren’t exactly specific, but even a child of six could read between the lines and figure out what was going on. It was so obvious when one examined the fact that Linda and Yvonne were both the wives of busy men. And yet they seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time together. When Linda had claimed to have been at the tennis club, Kenneth had seen her going into Yvonne’s home and the greeting they had was not just a friendly peck.
Graham never went anywhere without Stephanie, his secretary. She was, admittedly, gorgeous and intelligent. One email said everything, except the fact they’d be fucking, as she had booked them a double room at the hotel in Frankfurt.
In a way, she regretted coming out with it all, but now she knew. Linda’s reaction simply confirmed her suspicions as fact, so she felt a surge of power and she now had a degree of control over them both at a sensitive time in her life.
Still, she did not feel particularly close to her parents, either of them, as neither of them seemed to actually give a damn about their one and only child. If they did, they had a very strange way of showing it.
At around ten, she set her alarm and slid into bed, naked, and went to sleep immediately, at peace and with a smile on her face.
Seven
The alarm buzzed at her bossily for a little while. It was pitch black and the clock’s illuminated digits were the only light.
03:00 it said.
“Shit!” said Keira, but then remembered who she was, and grinned.
She got up, relished for a moment, the feeling of the cool air on her naked body. She felt the excitement and wonderful feeling of completeness bubble up, threatening to break out into joyous laughter. Instead, she controlled it, slipping into a black tee shirt and black jeans. She desperately wanted to get some proper girl’s underwear, and a bra.
That thought stopped her.
A bra.
Such a simple piece of clothing, but the fact that she required one was a huge thing in her life.
The only shoes she had were Kenneth’s school shoes, which were definitely boy’s shoes, and a pair of trainers. The latter would have to do.
She opened the bedroom window and looked down the garden. Carefully, she climbed out of the window and sat precariously on the sill for a moment.
“Okay, this is it!” she said, and mentally prepared to fall into the flowerbed below.
She didn’t fall, but she didn’t exactly soar, either. She floated gently, staying at the same height and not moving much at all.
She looked down and saw the ground about twelve feet below. She was flying, just not like Superman. Actually, it was more like just not falling. It took almost an hour of fiddling about for her to master moving around. It required great concentration to work on altitude, velocity and direction all at the same time. She had to push off something in order to attain any velocity. Altering direction was difficult, and would take practice. Also, stopping was interesting. Just as she worked out how to get some considerable speed up, she realised she had no idea how to stop. One just couldn’t stop dead, and she almost hit several trees in the process of controlling her stopping procedure.
It dawned on her that the device simply counter-acted gravity rather than provided an ability to fly. Suddenly she was weightless in a heavy world, so mass and inertia still had bearing, while things like air friction complicated the factors. It was all down to her, as she had to think herself heavier and lighter to time the jumps. So, by setting off, she could become so light as to soar, but then gradually increase gravity to drop to a given point to take the next jump.
It was nearly four-thirty when she managed to fly in a series of very long jumps to Maidenhead, a bigger town a little way to the West on the Thames.
She worked out that she could mentally increase gravity so as to fall slowly to get a chance to use her legs to initiate another jump, altering course at the point of jump.
It took a great deal of practice, and she got it wrong frequently, ending up with her feet in people’s fishponds, and at one jump, almost crashing through a greenhouse.
She found it fun, if a little knackering. Once at the town, she set about trying to find criminals to apprehend in the act of their crimes.
Superman and the other fictional superheroes never seemed to have a problem finding criminals to deal with. She immediately thought of the animated movie, The Incredibles. Mr Incredible listened to police scanners to find out what was happening. She mentally started a shopping list.
Then, to confound the situation, it began to rain. She then discovered the hard way what police officers found out through experience, that criminals don’t like the rain either. Depressed and somewhat deflated, Keira made her way home, without one crime-fighting escapade to her credit and getting completely drenched in the process. It was only as she was getting close to Cookham did she mentally attempt to stop the rain from hitting her.
To her amazement, she realised that it worked. She was surrounded but a sort of opaque shield that prevented any moisture getting through.
Then she had another thought. If it stopped rain drops, was it stopping all air, too?
She stopped – stationary at an altitude of a couple of hundred feet. She breathed normally, watching the rain run down the invisible shield that surrounded her. Because she was already wet, the water ran down her and pooled at the bottom of the cocoon-like form. Entranced, she watched the little puddle as it grew. A single thought released it through a tiny hole that she created.
“Cool!” she said, grinning broadly once more. She had discovered something else about the torc.
If it worked with water, then perhaps it would work with bullets and sharp pointy things, or even fists!
She returned to her room in the same way that she had left, leaving her with the problem of soaked clothes to try to explain.
She towelled herself dry, using the hair dryer on her long hair. It seemed a little longer now, but perhaps that was her imagination. She thought of going to the kitchen to use the tumble dryer, but that would wake the dog. Instead, she decided that her mother wouldn’t be interested in searching her room, so she could tumble dry it at her leisure after washing the clothes.
As she got back into bed, she was a little disappointed, but pleased she had discovered something new. As she touched the torc, she wished she could leave it on and be Keira all day and every day from now on. However, that would mean facing some real problems at school, not least with the school system.
She could at least be Keira until she had to get up.
It was perhaps fortunate that she had locked the door when she had gone to her room on the previous evening, because she forgot to re-set her alarm for school time.
“Kenneth! Are you still asleep?” said Linda, banging on her son’s door at seven thirty.
Keira awoke, bleary-eyes and confused. As she sat up in her bed, her duvet fell away, revealing her ample bosom.
“Shit!” she said, grabbing the torc in a panic. Within moments, Kenneth was back.
“I’m awake, Mum; I’ll be down in a mo.”
Linda was doubly worried now. Having had a sleepless might, thinking on that bombshell that Kenneth had dropped on her, she now had to deal with something that had never happened before. Kenneth had never slept in before.
“Are you all right?” she asked, through the door.
&n
bsp; “As much as I’ll ever be,” he said, morosely, as he really didn’t want to be Kenneth.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
There’s a thought.
Could I call in sick today, and spend it as Keira?
No, homework has to be returned, and besides, French might be interesting.
Ah, no, it won’t, as I can’t wear the torc – bummer!
“I’m fine,” he said, and reluctantly got dressed.
Breakfast was quiet. Linda had a million things she planned to say, but when faced with a miserable son, it all dissipated somehow.
Eventually she drew breath and said, “I’ll speak to your father about what we spoke about.”
Kenneth looked at her and gave a half smile.
“Yeah, as if that’ll make a difference. We both know what he’ll say.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic,” she admonished.
“I’m just saying it how I see it. He will never be convinced that I’m transgendered, as he just doesn’t accept it’s a genuine condition. I’ve heard what he says about all those reports we get in the papers and TV. He just thinks transgendered people needed firm handling when they were young and a decent psychiatrist can cure anyone of the silly notions of being the wrong gender.”
Linda was silent, for she, too, had a similar attitude, if the truth be told.
Kenneth looked at her and smiled again. It was a sad smile.
“See?”
He washed up his cereal bowl and collected his bag.
“I suppose you’ll be late again?” he said, as he headed for the door.
“What do you mean by that?” she snapped.
He stopped and slowly turned.
“My God, you’re touchy today. I simply mean, I suppose you’ll be late today, as you have tennis club; don’t you?”
“What are you inferring? That I’m never here?” she asked, defensively.
“No, I don’t have to infer anything. You never are here.”