Born That Way

by Susan Ketchen

  Hanging on the door is a black sign with gold letters which say “Appointments Always Required.” A bell on the top of the door tinkles as Mom pushes it open and I’m hit with a wave of warm air scented with chemicals that remind me of the embalming fluid I smelled at the science fair. I look back at Mom to make sure it’s okay to go in because she’s always concerned about air quality, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed and she nudges me through the doorway. Right in front of us is the tallest reception desk I have ever seen in my life. It looks like the hull of a ship. From the top deck I hear a man’s voice say, “Oh hello, Evelyn, how nice to see you,” but I can’t see anyone until an alien creature leans out over the edge and peers down at me. He has a tattooed forehead, pierced nostril, pierced lip, and ears which are more metal than flesh. His hair is raven black and stands up in a plume over his head. At least I think it’s a man. The voice sounded like a man’s, but I’m not sure now because he’s wearing eye-shadow and lipstick. “You must be Sylvia,” he says, and I add tongue-piercing to the list.

  This is someone who needs a better hobby.

  “Hi, Bernard,” says Mom, solving the gender mystery but creating another one because I can’t understand why she would talk to him as though he was normal. She’s always warning me about people like this and how the last thing she would want would be for me to hang around with any of the Goth kids at school because they’re into black magic and spiritualism.

  Bernard sashays out from around the edge of the desk and pats me gently on the head. “Come along, we can take you right down, follow me. Are you staying, Evelyn? Will you be wanting a coffee? That’s black with no sugar?”

  We follow Bernard obediently past a row of chairs filled with caped customers. I smell hairspray on top of everything else. My nose is stuffing up.

  “Sylvia—that means Goddess of Nature, does it not?” says Bernard, which is news to me. He doesn’t wait for a response, but continues walking and chattering like an exotic jungle bird until we arrive at an empty chair near the back of the room. He takes another long look at me then slides an armful of towels off a shelf and arranges them like a cushion on the chair before he swivels it around for me to sit in. “These chairs aren’t very comfortable if you’re not as well padded as some of the older ones,” he whispers in my ear. His eyes move to a large lady in the next chair and then back to me again. Bernard is nice.

  Madeleine is nice too. I like her right away because she doesn’t look like the other hairdressers—she looks more like she could use a good hairdresser, as though she doesn’t care how she looks, as though she thinks other things are more important. She has snapshots of dogs and cats stuck all around the edges of her mirror. No horses, but she’s obviously an animal person so I know I can relax. Maybe I can escape with a trim, maybe she’ll see that I’m not the sort of person who needs to dye her hair and draw attention to herself.

  She runs her fingers firmly across my scalp. “Lovely head of hair. Look at that shine. All you need is a better cut. You’d have more body and volume if we added some texture. Unless you prefer it simple like this? I could still leave it long enough so you could tie it back if you want to.”

  I see Mom in the mirror behind me looking like she’s about to answer for me. But before she can say anything Madeleine slides her hand up the back of my neck. “Oh my. Look at this.” She holds my hair to expose my neck. “Look how low your hairline goes here. Isn’t this wonderful?” She drops my hair and fluffs it out. “It’s like the mane of a lion.”

  “How about the mane of a horse?” I ask her.

  “Oh, Honey,” says Mom kind of sadly.

  “Well sure,” says Madeleine. “I like horses better than lions any day. So how did you manage to get a horse’s mane? Your mom doesn’t have one.”

  Mom pats her hair, then tucks it behind her ear. “Oh she was born that way. She always had a tremendous head of hair. We were thinking streaks or hi-lights today.”

  I sink into my cushion of towels and close my eyes and try to accept my fate. I feel Madeleine’s hand on my shoulder and she says, “This is going to take a while, Evelyn. I think Marci is free—why don’t you see about treating yourself to a manicure?”

  After Mom leaves, Madeleine offers me all sorts of colour choices; she says I can put in streaks of pink or white or purple, but I say no thanks. I tell Madeleine I want to look as natural as possible, and she says she completely understands. So she puts in some faint auburn hi-lights on top and then because she’s so nice and enthusiastic, I let her cut my hair. She promises to make it a bit more stylish without being outrageous. She’s blowing it dry when Mom comes back and makes a big fuss about how great I look and wasn’t this a fun thing for the two of us to do together.

  Back at home I go straight to the bathroom to check myself in the mirror. I use a wet brush to take out some of the volume and end up looking more or less like myself. Thank goodness the streaks aren’t obvious and I’m thinking maybe no one at school will notice, but then at dinner Dad says my hair is great and I look like a twenty-year-old and I try to show him I’m happy about this but really I am experiencing a hopeless feeling, like I’m trapped in the wrong life. I try to do what I usually do when this happens and think of something in the future that I can look forward to and I can only come up with two things (other than growing to Grandpa’s shoulder)—one is seeing Nickers, and the other is having more riding dreams, and actually the riding dreams are even better than seeing Nickers because at least I can’t hurt myself, there’s no falling off, all there is is fun.

  So after we’ve cleared up from dinner I tell Mom and Dad I want to go to bed early and boy is that a mistake.

  They take my pulse and my temperature. I get the “puberty is a difficult stage” talk again and something about hormones and do I have any abdominal cramps. They review everything I ate during the day, looking for possible allergic reactions.

  “Maybe it’s the hair dye?” I suggest.

  “Well I suppose . . . ” says Dad.

  “That would be a shame,” says Mom. “You look so pretty with hi-lights.”

  “Oh well,” I say.

  “Look, I rented a movie for us to watch together tonight,” says Dad.

  It is too much to hope that it is The Black Stallion or The Silver Stallion or even Pride and Prejudice, all great horse movies, but even so I’m a little bit excited until Mom says, “We thought you might like to see the Star Wars series. We rented part one for tonight. There are some great archetypal characters I think you’ll enjoy.”

  “Plus the special effects are great. Well, considering when it was made,” says Dad.

  I know there won’t be any horses.

  “I think I’ll go to bed and read,” I say. “But thanks.”

  I go to my room and climb into bed but I don’t exactly read. I skim a few pages of the Greenhawk Equestrian Supplies catalogue but only because I’m hoping this will help me dream about horses. I tuck it back under the Archie comics and try to fall asleep. I try so hard that it backfires on me and I lie there with my eyes wide open watching the light from the streetlamp leak in around the edges of my curtains. My hair smells funny. Actually, it stinks.

  Mom and Dad finish watching their movie and head off to bed.

  And I lie there.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I’m on a bay horse. The mane is black in my fingers and the coat is a glossy red-brown. We’re only walking, nothing dramatic or exciting, except that just being on a horse is exciting. And it’s dark out, so that makes it dangerous. But it’s not dangerous, because I’m riding and therefore it must be a dream. On my right is another horse, and riding the horse is a woman I don’t know. She has thick, wavy ash-blonde hair and she kind of glows so I can see her even though it’s night time.

  “Nice hi-lights,” she says, which is a little alarming, but funny too.

  I l
augh.

  “The smell goes away,” she says, which is too much. I stop laughing.

  “You’re being very patient,” she says. “And the stretching is a good idea, but we think it’s time you did more. They’re not catching on—your parents, I mean.”

  This is totally freaky. I’m not used to someone talking to me in my dreams about my real life.

  She looks at me closely and says, “It’s okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Stay in the dream. Notice the horse.”

  “Okay,” I say. I gaze down at my horse, the black mane, the pointy brown ears with black tips, there must be a moon for me to notice all this. There’s so much light that I can see how similar this dream horse is to Nickers, she’s the same colour, and I seem to be the same distance off the ground, and she feels the same under my bum, I can barely feel the ridge of her spine underneath me, and then she turns her head and sniffs my naked toes and I see it is Nickers. I am riding Nickers, in the night, in my bare feet and I am so excited that I wake up, but even when I’m awake I can hear the woman saying again, “Notice the horse.” And my toes feel the warmth from Nickers’s breath.

  After breakfast, while Dad plays a round of golf, Mom drives me to her sister’s house. She thinks it will be fun for me to have a visit with my cousins. My cousins don’t like me. Well, that’s a bit strong. It’s more that we don’t have anything in common so they hardly notice me. Plus they are all taller than me so even when they do notice me they treat me like a baby. Even Erika, and she is only ten. Taylor is fifteen and Stephanie is way older, she must be nineteen. Luckily, she is away at university so I’ll only have the two younger ones to deal with. They do highland dancing and ballet, and they like wearing makeup. The only way they’d enjoy my visit is if I let them do a makeover on me. I hope that isn’t in the plans.

  Still, the drive over provides a good opportunity to quiz Mom.

  “Mom, do you ever have dreams where you know you’re dreaming?”

  “No, but that sounds like fun, Pumpkin.”

  “It doesn’t mean I’m crazy?”

  “Oh no. It’s called lucid dreaming. I’ve read about it but never been able to do it.”

  “You mean you tried?”

  “Oh, a couple of times, when I was younger. Have you been able to do it?”

  “I think so. Sort of.”

  “Good for you, Honey.”

  “And last night someone I didn’t know was talking to me.”

  Mom smiles at me. “That would be your subconscious, Sweetie. One part of your brain talks to another part of your brain at night to sort things out.”

  “Even in a lucid dream?”

  Mom nods. “Oh yes. Definitely.”

  I’m not so sure about this, but we’ve pulled into the driveway at Auntie Sally’s and their dog Bunga is jumping on the car door and Mom is saying thank goodness we’re not in your father’s car, so that is the end of the discussion for now.

  Auntie Sally tells me the girls are in Taylor’s room and I can go play with them there.

  “Play?” I say, but no one’s listening—Auntie Sally wants to show Mom her new tattoo and is dragging her into the bathroom. Auntie Sally never seems to understand that just because I’m shorter than Erika and wearing her hand-me-downs, doesn’t mean that I’m still a child. “I don’t play,” I tell their departing backs. “I hang.”

  I tap on Taylor’s door but there’s so much laughing and giggling and screaming going on inside no one hears me. I wouldn’t have thought that two girls could make so much noise, but I also hope they haven’t invited any friends over—I feel left out enough without any extra competition. I knock harder, then open the door and poke my head in. Erika takes one look down at the top of my head, yanks open the door and runs out yelling, “Mom, it’s not fair, Sylvie got hi-lights why can’t I?” So I guess it’s not as subtle as I’d hoped.

  Taylor’s bedroom is a masterpiece of pink on pink on pink. Who would have known that pink came in so many shades? The only relief comes from the splashes of white from all the unicorns. Taylor is a unicorn freak. Even her bedspread has a huge white unicorn prancing across the middle of it. Her lamp is a unicorn. She has four unicorn posters on the wall and unicorns on her curtains.

  “Wow,” says Taylor. Since she’s the middle child Mom says she’ll be the best listener and the peace-maker, probably because Mom was the middle child in her own family. Auntie Sally is the baby. Uncle Brian was the oldest. Taylor picks up a strand of my hair in her fingertips. “How did you manage that?”

  “It wasn’t my idea. Mom wanted a female bonding thing and took me to her hairdresser.”

  “Oh poor you,” says Stephanie from where she’s lounging on the bed. University seems to have made her even more sarcastic than she used to be. “It must be tough there at the center of the universe in Only-Childsville.”

  “Well think about it, Stephanie,” says Taylor. “How would you like having all of Mom’s attention all the time? With no dilution?”

  Stephanie shrugs. She is reading a fashion magazine which is open beside her and obscuring the horn of the unicorn on the bedspread. The unicorn ends up looking instead like a fairly reasonable horse, which as far as I’m concerned is a huge improvement.

  “I thought you were away at university,” I say.

  Stephanie turns a glossy page. “Reading week.”

  “And you can read anything you want?”

  She gives me her disgusted look. “Sylvie, you are so naïve.”

  Taylor says, “Stephanie, she’s fourteen.” She makes it sound like it was an ice-age ago that she was fourteen herself, but I know it’s been less than a year. I don’t want to say anything though, because Taylor is the only one who stands up for me. She turns to me and says, “Don’t worry about her, Sylvie. Stephanie’s upset because her boyfriend broke up with her.”

  “Oh right, tell everyone,” says Stephanie.

  “He wasn’t good enough for her anyway,” says Taylor, which puts Stephanie on mute. “Show her the hickey he gave you, Steph.”

  Stephanie crosses her eyes.

  “Plus she’s embarrassed because Mom went to Stephanie’s tattoo studio.”

  “She is such a wannabe,” moans Stephanie.

  “She wants to be one of us—she wants to be a teenager,” explains Taylor.

  “Unlike your mother, Sylvie,” says Stephanie, “who is so desperate for you to become one of them. Hi-lights,” she sniggers.

  Taylor butts in before I can leap to my mother’s defense. “So how is life anyways, Sylvie? What’s new with you?”

  My life disappears before my eyes. Other than the ridiculous hi-lights, there’s nothing new. There’s not even anything old to report that would be of interest to the socially sophisticated glamour sisters.

  “I’ve started a new ballet class,” says Taylor. She lifts an elegant slender leg and points a toe to the ceiling. “I’ve grown an inch in the last month.”

  That catches my attention big-time. “Ballet makes you grow faster?”

  “Of course. It helps lengthen and strengthen the spine.”

  Stephanie stretches and yawns. “You’re not the ballet type though, are you. You’re more the peewee hockey kind of athlete.”

  “Stephanie, you are so mean,” says Taylor. “Are you doing any sports, Sylvie?”

  I shake my head. There is only one sport for me, and I’m not doing it. “I tried gymnastics.” Taylor looks at me with such interest that I can’t help myself. “I didn’t like it though. I want to ride horses. That’s all.”

  “Ha!” says Stephanie. “Like Uncle Tightwad is going to pay for that.”

  “Stephanie!” says Taylor.

  Stephanie says, “I looked into it when I was younger. I wanted to ride then too. But it’s so expensive—lessons, tack, vet bi
lls. Cool clothes though—I love the tall black leather boots.” She bounces her eyebrows meaningfully a couple of times; Taylor laughs and I pretend to, but really I don’t get it.

  “Grandpa will buy me a horse,” I say. I have no idea why I’m telling them my special secret.

  “Holy bananarama,” says Taylor.

  It’s too late, but I say, “It’s a secret. And not until I’m taller.”

  “That means not until you’re post-puberty, have discovered boys, and don’t want a horse any more,” pronounces Stephanie.

  Taylor glares at her. “Stephanie, just because you’re disappointed with your life . . . ”

  “I am not disappointed with my life. I’m being realistic. You know how cheap Mom says Uncle Tony is, and how Auntie Evelyn has to drive around in that old car. You think he’s going to fund equestrian sports for his daughter? Unlikely.”

  “But she’s an Only. It might be different for her than it is for us. And remember Grandpa paid for my ballet lessons. And your plastic surgery.”

  “Which is private and personal, Taylor. Just because he won’t buy you breast implants is no excuse for blabbing.”

  “I don’t want breast implants,” says Taylor.

  Stephanie turns her attention back to her magazine. “Well you should,” she says.

  I know all about Stephanie’s surgery anyway so she didn’t need to get mean about it. Mom told me. It wasn’t as if the new nose could go unnoticed, but Mom made me promise not to say anything. I try to look like I don’t know what they’re talking about. Fortunately, it is a familiar expression for me.

  Taylor sits at her desk, where she’s started a drawing of a unicorn. It’s not very good, she hasn’t put in the fetlock joints. I would have thought someone who was fifteen would know better.

  Stephanie finishes the magazine and fixes me in her sights. I feel like hiding under the bed. “If you want to get a horse you’ll need to mount a campaign,” she says.

  I’m stunned that my problem has caught Stephanie’s attention and that, after fourteen years I have suddenly become worthy of her interest.