This Is How It Always Is
Page 8
“What would you bet?”
“You’ll tell me, Penn. Whenever you and Rosie figure it out. Whenever Claude figures it out. Whatever it turns out your boys need, you know you have only to let me know. And maybe everything’s fine. Really. But, well, there are some warning signs. It’s good to start thinking about these things early.”
As far as things that went bump in the night, this was the scariest thing that had ever happened to Penn on Halloween.
Homeworking was suspended for the holiday. Snack was deemed redundant given the number of bat brownies and pumpkin bars consumed. There was halfhearted dinner. There was full-hearted trick-or-treating. There was an even-more-protracted-than-usual-owing-to-the-amount-of-sugar-ingested bedtime. Rosie came home, finally, exhausted. Penn wiped peanut-butter-cup remnants from his lips and handed her a folder.
“What’s this?”
“Claude’s artwork from the last year or so.”
“They gave it to you at school?”
“Some of it. Some of it I found in his room. Some of it was just lying around the house. I’d never really looked at more than one at a time before.”
She held the folder and she held his gaze, and neither said anything. She searched his eyes for something definitive—it’s really bad or we’re in real trouble or it’ll be okay—and finding none of the above, decided maybe it would be good news and took it. “Can I have dinner first?”
He handed the aluminum-foiled pumpkin over to her and went to heat leftovers. She tore apart an irritatingly small bag of M&M’s and opened the folder.
She smiled at what she found inside. Dozens of pictures. In crayon, in washable marker, a few all in green colored pencil. People with no noses but big eyes and big smiles. People whose hair was taller than the rest of them. Dogs with huge, toothy grins. Navy skies that took up no more than the top inch of the page. Penn came in with warmed-up pasta topped with butter and sliced hot dogs. She could think of nothing she’d rather eat.
She smiled at Penn. “I love them.”
“The pictures?”
“I’m so relieved. When you gave them to me, I thought … He’s no great artist maybe, but he has other talents. And he’s only five. I love his whimsy. I love the way he sees the world.”
“How about the way he sees himself?”
“What do you mean?”
Penn nodded at the pile of drawings. “Look.”
She looked through and found Claude in each one. He was wearing a dress. He was wearing a ball gown and four-inch heels. He had long brown hair or long blond hair or long purple hair or long rainbow hair. Sometimes he had a tail like a mermaid. Sometimes he had a silver necklace like his mother’s. That’s not what worried Penn, though, who’d ordered them carefully so Rosie could see the progression. In each picture, Claude seemed to be shrinking. He had a big family, yes, so it was hard to fit everyone on the page, and he was the littlest of them, true, but Claude got smaller and smaller. He was smaller than the smiling dog. He was smaller than the stemless flowers. In one, he had wings and was flying in the sky, and he was smaller than the clouds. In another, he was lying in the garden loomed over by a snail. In some, Rosie couldn’t even find him. She had to play Where’s Waldo until she located tiny Claude, half a centimeter high, behind the chimney of a house or in the corner of the chimp enclosure at the zoo. Or everyone in his giant family—including Jupiter, including the butterflies, including the house itself—had giant smiles, but Claude’s frown was so pronounced it dipped over the edges of his chin like a handlebar mustache. Or everyone else was in full color, and Claude had drawn himself in gray or once, worse, white on white. Or everyone was in clothes—hats, scarfs, sweaters, costumes, bathing suits, party dresses, and Claude was wearing nothing, not naked, just a stick figure, just an outline, just a sketch. And then, soon, Claude was nowhere. Rosie Where’s-Waldo-ed for fifteen minutes and failed to find him at all.
Maybe
“So, gender dysphoria,” Mr. Tongo began. “Congratulations to you both! Mazel tov! How exciting!” Mr. Tongo was the hospital handyman Rosie called late in a shift when she was otherwise out of options for a patient. He wasn’t really a handyman, of course, though he wasn’t a doctor either. Technically, he was some kind of multi-degreed social-working therapist-magician. It wasn’t that he made miracle diagnoses or magic cures. It wasn’t that he could pull secret strings or unglue red tape. It was that he had an entirely different way of looking at things.
And a different way of looking at things was what they needed. Rosie didn’t think there was anything wrong with Claude physically. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with Claude emotionally or psychologically either. He was already worried his teacher and his classmates thought he was weird. The third to last thing Rosie wanted to do was make him think his parents thought so too. The second to last thing she wanted to do was make him self-conscious about what he wanted to wear and who he was. But the last thing she wanted to do was ignore her baby as he slipped away from her and disappeared.
In Mr. Tongo’s office, they all three sat on giant colored balls like they were in some kind of exercise class, Mr. Tongo bouncing up and down on his and rubbing his hands together like a kid who’d been promised ice cream after a dinner of French fries. Penn was prepared to defend Claude against people who thought boys in dresses were sick. He was prepared to defend against people who thought his son was repulsive or deviant. He was prepared to defend Claude’s right to be Claude in any of his many wonderful manifestations. But he was not prepared for congratulations. “Uh … thanks?”
“Yes! Yes! You should both be very proud.”
“We should?” Penn glanced at Rosie for guidance but found her smiling unquestioningly at Mr. Tongo.
“Certainly you should. What an interesting child you’re raising—not that gender dysphoria, if that’s what this turns out to be, is caused by parenting, good or bad. But you must be doing a fine job if he’s come to you and said, ‘Mother, Dad, I must wear a dress,’ instead of hiding in shame—not that there’s anything to be ashamed of, you understand. And you’ve said yes to the dress, as they say, the dress and the heels and the pink bikini. What fun! I’m so pleased for you all.”
Rosie put a hand on Penn’s arm but did not take her eyes off the bouncing social worker. “Thank you, Mr. Tongo.” Penn could not imagine why she wasn’t on a first-name basis with this man. “We’re glad too. But the drawings, the lack of friends, the worry, his changing clothes all the time, his inability to just be himself. Our first concern is his happiness, of course. But not just today.” Because it wasn’t that simple, was it? Raising children was the longest of long games. It would make her kids ecstatically happy if she replaced all meals for the next month with Halloween candy consumed in front of the television and then let them skip showers until Thanksgiving, but in the long run, one imagined they’d miss school, their teeth, and not smelling like feet. “We want him to be happy next week, next year, the years to come too. It’s hard to make out this path, but it’s even harder to see where it leads. We want him to be happy and comfortable of course, but we’re not sure how best to make that happen.”
While Rosie talked, Penn tried to decide what to make of Mr. Tongo and found nothing to hang on to. He imagined writing him into the DN and couldn’t think how he’d describe him. Mr. Tongo might have been sixty-five with good skin or thirty-five and prematurely gray, his smoky hair alternately patted down and sticking out in all directions. He might have had a trace of an accent Penn didn’t recognize or the remnants of an old, overcome speech impediment, or it may have been simply that he spoke with an odd quizzical deliberateness at once welcoming and unsettling. Any race or nationality at all you cared to name, Penn could believe Mr. Tongo was at least half a member of it. He wore scrubs, in case any of his patients had to vomit or bleed, Penn supposed, though on the wall behind him he had a drawing of a bear, also in scrubs, holding up a sign that read REMEMBER: I AM YOUR FRIEND, BUT I AM NOT A DOCTOR.
“But we haven’t made a big deal about the dresses or the barrettes or anything,” said Penn. “We don’t made a big deal about any of the weird stuff any of our boys wear. We’ve barely mentioned it.”
“And that’s very enlightened and generous, I’m sure.” Mr. Tongo’s hands waved in all directions. “Wonderful! Brilliant! But the rest of the world won’t agree, I’m afraid. It may be okay with you if he wears a dress, but it will be less okay with the kids at school. Or their parents. It may be okay with you if he wears earrings and heels, but it’s not always going to be okay at camp or soccer or the park. You’re not raising this child in isolation. Perhaps you’ve been approving, but it’s been hard at school?”
“He hasn’t been engaging in this behavior at school,” said Rosie.
“He hasn’t been dressing up at school,” Mr. Tongo corrected. “Maybe during free choice, though, he’s playing with dolls when the other boys are playing with trucks. Maybe during lunch he sits with the girls instead of the boys. Maybe when the teacher says boys line up on the right, girls on the left, he stands in the middle looking confused. Perhaps his desire to disappear or his sense that he is disappearing has to do not with you but with everyone else in his world telling him to stop acting like a girl.”
Penn was holding his head with his hands and his elbows with his knees. He did not look up. “What does that mean—acting like a girl?”
“Oooh, good question. Well, it means any number of things, doesn’t it? Cultural expectations and proscriptions touch nearly every aspect of our lives but vary, also, for each individual, not to mention the usual social determinates such as—”
“I understand that,” Penn interrupted, “but if it’s so culturally determined and individually experienced, what do you mean when you say ‘dysphoric’? We’ve never said to him that he can’t play with his dolls or bake or wear a dress because only girls do those things. Absent any other influences, it’s obvious to me that any five-year-old faced with the choice of toe-colored toes or rainbow-colored toes would choose the latter. That’s normal. That’s not dysphoric. That doesn’t make him a girl. That makes him a kid.”
“Hear, hear!” The man was starting to bounce again. “Bravo!”
“Isn’t it also,” Rosie added, “what we’re all striving for? Or should be? A wider range of normal and acceptable? Kids who can wear what’s comfortable and play however they like?”
“Yes, oh yes!” Mr. Tongo cheered.
“Then what’s going on here?” The bees behind Penn’s ribs were back. “What’s making this kid feel so … lost?”
“He wore a pink bikini all summer long,” Rosie added, “with great enthusiasm. But now suddenly—”
“Out in public?” Mr. Tongo interrupted. “Or just at home with his family?”
“Mostly at home,” Rosie admitted, “but he wore it to the end-of-summer pool party. The whole neighborhood was there. People were pointing and laughing and whispering, and he didn’t even seem to notice. He was so proud. What’s changed?”
“What has changed?” Mr. Tongo asked quietly.
“School,” Rosie and Penn knew together.
Mr. Tongo nodded. “Children learn many wonderful things in kindergarten. How to line up for lunch. How to use inside voices. How to not push people. Important life skills for sure. I use them every day myself. But they learn other things too: you have to conform, or people might not like you; you have to be the same because different doesn’t feel good. At home, Claude’s loved no matter what. At school, it sometimes feels the opposite: you are not loved no matter what.”
“So we should homeschool.” Rosie was already rearranging her work schedule in her mind. Penn could teach reading and writing. She could do biology and anatomy. Surely, those were mainstays of the kindergarten curriculum? Maybe her mother could—
“Of course not.” Mr. Tongo laughed. “These are not bad things for Claude to understand. These are things we all have grapple with. A five-year-old has much to learn. When people are annoying, it feels good to push them but we mustn’t. Even though it’s often pleasant to shout, others are trying to concentrate. Though we’d always like to be first, sometimes it’s someone else’s turn. And when we behave in a manner other people don’t expect, there will be consequences.”
“How do we teach him that?” said Penn’s bees.
“You don’t!” Mr. Tongo clapped his hands, delighted. “He’s already learned that. You have to help him unlearn it. You have to help him see that if he’s disappearing from the world, that’s too high a price to pay for fitting in. He has to see how ‘You shouldn’t push even though you want to’ isn’t the same as ‘You shouldn’t wear a dress even though you want to.’ None of that’s any different for Claude than for anybody else. It’s all part of growing up.”
Rosie nodded and tried to believe this and ventured to ask, since he’d brought it up, “What will he be? When he grows up?”
“Who knows?” Mr. Tongo smiled. And though Rosie had to admit that of course that was the right answer, the only honest answer there was, the only answer there could be, the question itself was starting to take over her sleepless middle-of-the-night ruminations.
“We’ll have to wait and see.” Mr. Tongo shrugged but not unhappily. “Exciting! But wherever it goes from here, the best thing about gender dysphoria is this. Ready? Claude’s not sick! Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Yes, but—”
“We don’t have to worry yet about who he’ll be when he grows up. He’s only five! But since he’s only five, he can’t fight the entire weight of his culture alone. You know who has to do that?”
“Who?” Penn asked, though he knew.
“You must pave his way in his world. And that’s very hard, I’m afraid.”
“It’s not hard,” said Penn. “It’s parenting.”
“Or it is hard,” Rosie clarified. “But so is all parenting.”
“At which you’re more experienced than most”—they felt worse than when they arrived, but Mr. Tongo seemed overjoyed—“so you’re perfect for the job. Let’s start with journaling. Oh, this is going to be so much fun!”
* * *
Penn did not imagine it was going to be fun. But of the directives with which one left a child’s doctor’s appointment, journaling was more palatable—and more firmly in his skill set—than most. Every day, they were to write down Claude’s boy behaviors and his girl behaviors. That’s all they had to do for now, Mr. Tongo promised. Step one was gather information. Step one was waiting and seeing but with an emphasis on the seeing. Since in this case, seeing looked a lot like writing and waiting looked a lot like parenting, gender journaling was something Penn felt equipped to do.
&nb
sp; But he was wrong. When Claude came down to breakfast that Saturday in a dress made from a belted nightgown of Rosie’s, Penn understood that this went in the girl column. When he spent the hour following breakfast driving trains around the track in the opposite direction Rigel and Orion were driving trains around the track so that they crashed into each other and both trains exploded off the track and all three children collapsed in giggles then did it again, he understood that this was meant for the boy column. But then they moved on to LEGOs. Then Rigel and Orion’s friend—girl friend—Frieda came over wearing jeans and a T-shirt to help crash trains for an hour. Penn was not prepared to say that LEGOs were male or female. Penn was not prepared to say that playing with a friend was male or female. Penn was gratified to see a little girl in pants crashing trains whom no one, so far as he knew, was accusing of gender dysphoria. Penn made a third column …
Other
Both
Unsure
Unclear
Unfair
None of Your Fucking Business
Ways in Which This Exercise Is Asinine
… before he finally landed on:
Maybe.
Maybe what, he could not say. But that was the beauty of it.
After dinner, after storytime and bedtime, Rosie and Penn opened a bottle of wine and compared lists. Penn had kept his only halfheartedly. The list of maybes was long. The list of maybes was nearly everything. Rosie’s list was more revealing, broken into two columns, not three, and seeing much of what Penn missed. Nearly everything fell into her girl column. While Rigel and Orion built LEGO cars and LEGO trucks and used LEGO Batman to smash LEGO police stations, Claude built LEGO vacation homes and pony ranches and populated them with LEGO mamas and babies. While Rigel and Orion set the trains back up for their recurring race toward inevitable doom, Claude tended to the victims.
“I don’t understand your list,” said Penn.
“I understand yours,” said Rosie.
“What does that mean?”
“Same thing. You don’t understand my list because you don’t see how someone like me could have made it.”