Born That Way

by Susan Ketchen

  “And how old is this person?” says Dad.

  I have no idea. Who cares? She likes horses. She owns horses. She treats me like a human being. She could be fifty and I wouldn’t care. “I’ll ask her.”

  “Is she married?” says Mom.

  The two of them are relentless. “No.”

  Dad is looking at Mom with alarm. “You don’t suppose she could be a lesbian? Preying on little girls?”

  I can’t believe he said this. It is so insulting. Placing slow, venomous emphasis on every word, I say, “I am not a little girl.”

  “Oh, Tony, for heaven’s sake,” says Mom. I’m glad to see that she’s angry too. “How many times do we have to go through this? Gay does not mean pedophile. My brother Brian—”

  She stops. Her face is turning red. Is she going to cry?

  “Kansas is not a lesbian,” I say, using my most exasperated tone. Of course, I don’t know if Kansas is a lesbian but at this point I don’t care. And what would it matter anyway? Maybe it would be better if she was a lesbian since I’m probably a bisexual but I don’t know and I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. She likes horses.

  “Does she have family in town?” says Dad.

  Mom sniffs. “Could we meet her at least?”

  “You two are piling on,” I say.

  “We are not,” they say together.

  I fold my arms. I am not going to answer another question.

  “I really think we should meet her,” says Mom.

  I tighten my lips. I don’t want them to meet her. She’s my friend.

  “Okay, that settles it,” says Mom.

  “Fine, but not John,” says Dad.

  “I’ll find someone else. I’ve heard there’s a new therapist in town with a special interest in adolescent sexuality.”

  I groan aloud. My life is ruined. All the limestone fortification in the world couldn’t save me now.

  I am banned from the computer until I get some therapy. I think this goes way beyond punishment, and infringes on my human rights. Computers aren’t toys. The internet is more than a source of mindless passive entertainment like cable TV. My parents are depriving me of an education and they are isolating me from the Googleverse. I think about reporting them to the Helpline for children but I know they will also be monitoring my telephone calls so there’s no point in trying. I am totally at their mercy—it always comes down to this.

  The situation is so hopeless that I shut myself in my room and do something truly desperate. I sit on my bed and cross my legs and close my eyes and try to imagine being surrounded by white light and being protected by a white unicorn with a golden horn, like Taylor does. Nothing happens. I think maybe my position isn’t right so I sit in the chair at my desk and try again, but still nothing happens. Taylor seemed to think this was easy, but she has more experience being spiritual than I do. The only other spiritual position I know is what people do when they pray, so I kneel beside my bed, put my hands together, bow my head and close my eyes. That’s when Dad comes in.

  “Jesus,” he says.

  I open my eyes and look at him but I don’t get off my knees.

  “What are you doing, Munchkin?”

  I’m so mad at him that I say what I know will really bother him. “I’m praying.”

  Dad comes in, shuts the door behind him and sits on my bed. “When did you get religious? Is this something you got from your new friend?” He makes it sound like a disease that I could accidentally catch from somebody. Obviously if there’s to be any possibility of retaining my friendship with Kansas I have to keep her well out of this.

  “Taylor taught me.”

  “Your cousin Taylor? She’s a Christian?”

  Still I’m not sure how far to take things. “I think she’s more of a Druid.”

  He relaxes a little. “Oh. Well, I’m still a bit surprised . . . ”

  “You’re the ones who named me after an ancient nature goddess.”

  “Sylvia? That’s what it means?”

  I am so smitten by hearing my full name roll off his tongue that all I can manage is one brief nod.

  He ruffles my hair, then says he didn’t mean to mess up the hi-lights, which makes me laugh so I get up off my knees and sit beside him on the bed. He puts his arm around me and I start to cry. Again. I hate this so much.

  “I said I was sorry,” says Dad.

  I grab my head in both hands and groan. “I don’t care about the hi-lights,” I yell at him. “I only did it for Mom and because she said you would like it.”

  “Well I do like it, Shorty,” he says and gives me a squeeze.

  And I’m drawing my breath to tell him to stop calling me Shorty when the door opens and Mom pops her head in and says, “You two doing okay?”

  “We’re doing fine, Evelyn. Aren’t we, Munchkin?” He squeezes me again. I feel like a tube of toothpaste. If he squeezes me much more there’s no telling what might come out. I am really really mad at both of them. I close my eyes. I’m trying to control myself. The bed sags as Mom sits down, then she wiggles up against me. She tries to put an arm around me but it’s difficult because Dad is holding me tight under his armpit and there’s no room for Mom’s hand and he’s not giving way. I feel her fingers scrabbling against my ribs. I can’t make space for her because Dad will feel me moving away from him towards Mom, and I can’t stay like this or Mom will think I don’t want her here. I scrunch my eyelids tighter together and try to close my ears too because I really don’t want to hear them if they start going at each other, and that’s when the white light happens. It starts as this tiny white speck and it grows and grows until I’m breathing it in and breathing it out and it must be filling the whole room but I’m not going to take the chance of opening my eyes and ruining anything. There’s a hum in the distance which is probably the voices of my mom and dad but they’re so far away it doesn’t matter. I’m okay. I am really okay.

  And I hear a funny rippling sound, kind of like neighing, kind of like laughing.

  It’s the unicorn.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There are no horses, but somehow I know I’m dreaming. I’m in the middle of a big field of tall grass with flowers growing in it—blue ones and white ones that look like daisies—but I sniff one and it’s stinky. I wonder why there are no horses, and then I figure since it’s a dream and it’s my dream and it’s a lucid dream why don’t I put into it whatever I want? And don’t ask me why, but I try for a unicorn. Maybe I don’t want to take a chance on disappointing Kansas again by saying the wrong thing, and maybe I’m tired of trying to figure out if it’s Nickers or Hambone or Prince Hamlet and I’m not sure about riding him anyway if he’s got dominance issues. But right away there’s a unicorn beside me, not very big, just pony sized which is perfect really because I can put my arm across his back and walk around with him that way. When he turns his head sideways I can see a horn, not a silly long golden one that would get in the way of grazing or self-grooming, but a sensible, short white horn.

  “I’m glad you’re not trying to ride me,” says the unicorn. His lips move when he talks.

  “Well I guess not,” I say. “That would be undignified.”

  “It certainly would. But that doesn’t stop some nitwits from trying.”

  He’s sounding pretty self-assured, maybe even dominant, which gets me wondering if he’s a he or a she, so I stop and I’m about to bend down and have a look up under the unicorn’s belly when he or she says, “Please—don’t even think about it. Those are my private parts. Private,” he or she stresses.

  “Okay.”

  We resume our stroll.

  “I thought you were imaginary,” I say.

  “Whatever.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “Doesn’t make any difference to me what you
believe.”

  This is a surprise. Somehow I’d expected more of an effort to convert me. Everyone else seems to be trying.

  “Good,” I say.

  “It’s not as though I spend any time believing in you or caring what you think.”

  Which is such a twisted thought that of course I wake up.

  I lie in bed thinking about how much I care about what other people think. It’s lots. Obviously I care what my parents think because I want them to be happy with me and not worry about me too much. And I worry about what the kids at school think of me and wonder why they don’t like me, except possibly for Logan Losino. And there are my cousins who think I’m some sort of idiot. And I really, really want Kansas to like me. Maybe my whole life is taken up with thinking about what other people think. I wonder what it would be like to be a unicorn and not think about this stuff at all. What would he do instead—just think about himself? Then it occurs to me that maybe there isn’t much difference between these two options. Whether I thought about myself all the time or thought about what other people were thinking about me, when it comes right down to it, it’s all thinking about me. There has to be more to life than this. I get up, dress and ride down to the beach for a fresh supply of sea water for the barnacles.

  Over breakfast I learn that Dad will be driving me to school and picking me up in the afternoon. Until I’m back on track, Mom says. Meaning until I’ve been to see a therapist and am cured of whatever is wrong with me. Also meaning they don’t want me to see Kansas.

  Of course, Dad forgets to pick me up after school. I sit on the steps and wait for him until four o’clock, which is long enough for everyone in the school to walk past and tease me.

  “Hey, Monkey, did you lose your bike in the jungle?” says Amber.

  “Oops, sorry Pygmy, didn’t see you sitting there, you’re so SMALL,” says Topaz.

  Even after they’re halfway down the sidewalk they’re still talking about me and laughing. “Have you seen her midget fingernails? They look like claws! And then there’s her ears!”

  I drop my head so my hair falls around my ears in a shield; I hope I don’t hear any more but I do.

  “Little monkey ears. Do you think she could actually be part monkey?”

  I want to hide somewhere but can’t leave in case I miss Dad.

  The only one who’s sort of nice to me is Logan Losino. He walks past, then comes back and stands at the bottom of the stairs. He pulls a pack of gum out of his back pocket and offers me a foil-wrapped stick. Then he leaves without saying a word. Now what does that mean?

  Finally Dad pulls up and honks the horn. He’s all flustered and suggests we not tell Mom and he promises he won’t be late tomorrow. He offers to stop at the beach for some sea water but of course I don’t need that, I got it already this morning. But he’s still looking for a way to make it up to me, so he says, “How about we drive home past your friend Dakota’s house?”

  “Her name is Kansas. And I don’t want to.”

  It doesn’t matter, he’s going to do it anyway.

  “Must be this way,” he says, turning off the main road. And somehow he finds the right street, without any help from me. I guess it’s not too difficult, there isn’t that much farmland within biking distance of our house. My plan is to sink down in my seat and not let him know when we’re going by Kansas’s driveway, but I’m also pretty curious about what progress has been made, so I sit up as long as I can. We reach the edge of Kansas’s property and I can see the barn in the distance, and a gravel truck unloading in her ring, when Dad stops the car at the side of the road and says, “Is that her?”

  I look to the back of the field, and there’s Kansas riding Hambone. They’re doing little figure-eights at the canter and on the third one when they cross the center part Hambone bunches up and does a huge buck.

  “Boy, she can really ride,” says Dad.

  I’m not even watching Kansas. My eyes are glued on Hambone who has turned into a bucking bronco. He must buck five more times before Kansas gets him going forward in a big circle.

  I rode that horse—bareback with a skipping rope around his neck, and he did everything that I asked him without the smallest buck. He must really like me. Or I was really lucky.

  Kansas is now trotting Hambone up the fence line away from us.

  Dad puts on the turn signal and pulls back onto the road.

  “Doesn’t look very safe,” he says.

  I peer out my side window, in the opposite direction from Kansas. Maybe I can pretend I didn’t see anything. In any event I’m not going to speak. In particular, I’m not going to say anything critical about Kansas. There’s nothing interesting out this side so I slouch down against the door and stare straight ahead at the glove box. This must be what my barnacles feel like, tucked inside strong walls . . . being taken places they don’t want to go. Dad turns on the radio. It’s tuned to a classical music station that is even more boring than school.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I decide to set my barnacles free. It doesn’t seem fair that I have them in captivity only so I can make a point with my parents. I know I’m taking good care of them, but it won’t be the same for them as living wild in the ocean. And besides, my plan doesn’t seem to be working.

  So when we get home, Dad says he has to make some phone calls and I tell him I’m going to the beach. I’m not sure if he heard me so I also leave a note on the table in case Mom comes home before I return. I wrap my barnacles in a towel, stuff them in my pack and take them back where I got them.

  There’s no one else on the beach and fortunately the tide is out. I prop my bike against a log, then scramble down to the tide pools where the barnacles grow. I can’t remember which exact pool I took my barnacles from and hope it doesn’t matter to them because wherever I put them, they’re stuck there for the rest of their lives. I put them in one pool, then change my mind and put them in another one. I’m still not sure, but then I think anything is going to be better than living in a Pyrex dish in my bedroom in support of a lost cause.

  I sit on a rock and watch them until they start waving their little arms around collecting food, or maybe they’re waving goodbye to me. Goodbye and good riddance they’ll be thinking.

  At least they have their own personal little limestone castles to live in. They have that advantage over me.

  While I’m pedaling home I prepare for the lecture I’m bound to receive about how easily I changed my mind and how pets require a long-term commitment and maybe I should trust my parents’ judgment when they say I’m not ready for something.

  But no one notices—which is good and bad at the same time. It’s good that I won’t be lectured, but bad because they probably never really noticed that I did a responsible job in the first place. So I’m no further ahead.

  At dinner Mom announces that she has good news. She’s found an adolescent psychiatrist with an excellent reputation and normally there’s a six-month waiting list but he will see me soon because Mom is sort of a colleague, or at least she works in the same general field, or maybe because her boss phoned and asked. And I’m thinking that’s great, everyone in her office must know now.

  “A psychiatrist?” says Dad. He looks shocked, and for a second I think I’m saved, that he will say I don’t need to see a psychiatrist, that I’m not crazy, that really there’s nothing wrong with me. But instead he says, “I won’t need to go, will I? We won’t be doing family therapy with a psychiatrist will we?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” says Mom. “Not for the first session, anyway. I’ll take her.” She turns to me. “He’s supposed to be really nice. Everyone likes him.”

  And I’m thinking, Not me. I won’t like him.

  And Dad says, “Well at least a psychiatrist will be covered by our medical insurance. Your friend John was very expensive.”

 
Mom looks a bit stunned. “He charges the same as I do.”

  Dad shrugs. “Still expensive.”

  Mom sighs. “We’ll need a referral from our family doctor before we can see a specialist, so I’ll have to set up an appointment with Dr. Destrie first.”

  “Oh no,” I say. “I don’t like Dr. Destrie.”

  “Hasn’t he retired yet?” says Dad.

  “I hope not,” says Mom. “He’s been my doctor for as long as I can remember.”

  “My point exactly,” says Dad.

  “Which makes him very experienced,” says Mom.

  “More like stuck in his ways,” says Dad.

  And off they go. I excuse myself from the table and go to my room to work on my math. If I re-read it often enough I figure eventually it has to sink in.

  At 7:30 I hear the phone ringing and a minute later Mom is tapping at my door saying it’s for me. No one phones me. What’s even more of a surprise is that Mom hands me the cordless then closes the door so I can talk in privacy.

  But it’s only Taylor.

  “I thought I should warn you that Stephanie is on the warpath,” she says.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say automatically.

  “Your mom told my mom that you said that Stephanie was telling you all about bisexuality. What were you thinking?”

  I feel sick. I don’t need Stephanie against me along with everyone else. She will be merciless. She’s mean enough when she likes you. But how to explain what happened? I hardly know myself.

  “There was a misunderstanding,” I begin.

  “I’ll say,” says Taylor. “Your mom told my mom that she thinks Stephanie was being highly inappropriate in discussing sexuality with someone your age.”

  “But I didn’t say anything about that. And Mom talks to me about sexuality all the time.”

  Taylor is enjoying her reporter role so she doesn’t listen. “So my mom defended Stephanie of course and then my mom and your mom had an argument about parenting skills, but afterwards my mom phoned Stephanie and accused her anyway and of course Stephanie denied everything but then Stephanie always denies everything so Mom didn’t believe her.”