Choir Boy

by Unknown Author

  “That’s your way,” Berry said. “Not mine.” He thought The world ends all the time, in secret.

  “It’s yours too. You chose, now you have cold feet. You’re me, seven years ago. I didn’t know what I wanted back then either.”

  “Even if I wanted to, how would I become a girl? Everyone would know.”

  “You could start high school as a girl. Where they don’t know you, or just explain to your classmates this is who you are now. People tolerate us more and more.”

  “And I’d help them learn to tolerate others by being a big public deal and getting sliced,” said Berry.

  “You could go stealth. Like I said, find a school where they don’t know you. Get that M changed to an F on your transcript. Nobody will know.”

  “Except I’d have a dick.”

  “By high school, it could be gone.”

  Berry didn’t know what to say to that. Fie stared down at his crotch for a few moments. He couldn’t imagine being dick-naked, blank between his legs, and thinking of it made him feel like he’d drunk the Bishop’s punch. Finally he said, “My balls would look pretty weird without a dick over them.”

  “They’d be gone too.”

  They passed a fast-food joint that miraculously served customers in the weekend-narcoleptic downtown. Berry suddenly wanted a milkshake. He turned and entered. Maura trailed, examined leaflets about the nutritional content of burgers and fries. “Only 59 percent fat,” she called after Berry.

  Berry got a coffee milkshake. Back on the street he said, “How would I nuke my privates anyway?”

  “I’ve told you before.” Maura borrowed Berry’s shake and slurped some. “Dr. Tamarind would prescribe it. You just need to convince insurance or someone else to pay for it. Or you raise the money somehow.”

  Berry thought he knew how Maura expected him to raise the money.

  “I don’t think I could convince Dr. Tamarind to order that surgery,” Berry said. “He doesn’t even know about all the pills I’ve been taking.”

  Maura dropped Berry’s milkshake on the ground. It spilled, but a few inches remained. She grabbed the messy wax-paper cup and held it out to Berry, who shook his head.

  “Damn! Sorry about your drink, but damn! Girl, what do you talk to him about, anyway?” Maura dumped the milkshake cup in the trash and wiped her hands.

  “Uh ...” Berry thought. “Fish, cars, stuff. The influence of Phoenician traders on classical Greek culture. Books I’ve read. My weird parents. You’ve met them, there’s lots to say. Singing. Vibrato. The right tempo for ‘Beati Quorum Via,’ some people rush it. You know, all that stuff. But I don’t want him to know about everything that’s going on with me.” Maura shook her head. “You don’t want anyone to know you. You’re a bundle of secrets.”

  Berry felt as if he’d been called a bundle of worms. “Berry.” Maura put took Berry’s free hand in both of hers. “Give me a chance to show you. What life is like as a girl. You’ve never even tried it.”

  Berry said he’d think about it.

  When Berry got home the apartment was empty. A big sombrero full of candy sat on the sofa, where Maura had death-gripped Berry’s arm the other night. Berry tried one of the chocolates but it tasted weird and bitter on the inside so he spat it into the trash. Berry read some of The Man

  Without Qualities and then looked over some of the music they were readying for the big fall concert.

  The phone rang. Berry almost let it go, figuring it was one of Marco’s gardening/spiritual clients. Then he grabbed it on the third jangle. “Can I talk to Berry?” Lisa said.

  “Hey,” Berry said. “I’m uh glad you called.”

  “Hey. Like, uh . . . You know I’m . . . sorry I acted all Mariah today and lately. ”

  “Sure.”

  “My friends gave me shit for hanging with you. And my parents have been acting extra amped. Mom keeps having struggle sessions with me. That’s where they pray over you, it can be intense. And Dad ...” Berry heard silence, or not exactly silence. The creeping of telephone circuits, the music of switchboard traffic.

  Berry wondered if the chocolates in the hat were really Mexican jumping beans and whether he’d die from eating one. It hadn’t jumped in his hand. “Berry,” Lisa said. “I really like you. A lot. And I think it’s great you’re so brave and don’t care what people think of you and stuff.”

  Berry sat next to the sombrero. He wasn’t sure what Lisa was talking about.

  “I’m not that brave,” she went on. “I just want to be popular. When people thought you were my boyfriend, it got . . . intense. I was trippin’.”

  “I never told anyone I was your boyfriend.”

  “I know. I really want to be friends. At church and hanging out and stuff.”

  “That’s cool. I really don’t want a girlfriend right now.” Berry felt like he’d sweated out a fever.

  “Cool. Friends?”

  “Friends.”

  “I’m only half grounded now. Can you get to the big mall out near Farming Hill?”

  Berry looked at the clock. It was a little after three. “There’s a bus,” he said. “I don’t know how often it runs. And I gotta be back here for dinner.”

  “I could get my mom to give you a ride home if we met at the mall.”

  “I thought your mom didn’t like me.”

  “She doesn’t like me going with boys period. It helps if I say you’re from church, but ...” Long spell of silence. “What would really help is if you weren’t a boy.”

  “What?”

  “She’d never know. Just don’t hide what you got and you’d be a total girl.”

  “What if I see someone I know?”

  “At the mall out here?”

  “I have a mustache.”

  “You have fuzz. Lots of girls with your coloring have worse.”

  First Maura, now Lisa. Berry felt gangbanged. “What would I wear? I don’t have any girl stuff.”

  “Dunno. T-shirt and jeans. That’s what I’ll wear.”

  “I don’t know.” Berry wondered if they lynched people at malls.

  “Nobody will know. I promise. If you do this, we can hang out all the time. I would be so thrilled.”

  “I thought the whole me having breasts thing was, like, freaky to you.”

  “A boyfriend with breasts would be wack. But all my friend friends have titties.”

  “Do you like being a girl?”

  “I’m not sure. I guess. I don’t really have anything to compare it to. Look, just ride the bus to the mall with your boobies all bandaged, and then you can unwrap in the bathroom when you get there. I totally promise you nothing bad will happen.”

  “Okay. Maybe. I’ll see you there.” They arranged to meet at the food court around four. The whole time on the bus, Berry drummed on his knees. He felt as though he hadn’t blinked in a week, hadn’t swallowed in a month. The bus quivered as it took Berry away from his neighborhood into the suburbs. When he arrived, Berry almost caught the bus home.

  Berry stuffed his bandages in his knapsack then studied himself in the boys room mirror. In his baggy jeans and a tight T-shirt, he could be a wannabe J-Lo dancer. Nothing had changed but the shape of his chest. His neck-length hair, his soft mouth, his small hands, all could play female. But Berry still felt like an imposter waiting to be spotted. Then he realized he was standing in the boys room with his tits loose. He ran out and lost himself in the crowd, circling to erase any connection between the girl he was now and the boy who’d entered the boys room.

  “This is Berry. Like the fruit.”

  Lisa’s mom didn’t recognize Berry from church. Instead she just wrinkled her nose at the party mob T-shirt. She agreed to meet them in an hour and a half back at the food court.

  “The first thing you need is a bra,” Lisa said as soon as they’d left her mom behind.

  “I don’t have any money,” Berry protested once Lisa and he were alone.

  “It’s cool,” Lisa said. “I’ll sp
ot.”

  Lisa led Berry to one of the big department stores and found the junior misses department with rows and rows of denim skirts and skimpy tops that said, Hey, I’ve got a rack. Berry’s huge-seeming chest fit into a B cup bra. After trying a few, he found one that he and Lisa both thought would be okay. Berry sang under his breath. Every second he expected to see someone from church or school. A lot of church people did live near here and the mall attracted people from all over, but nobody seemed to notice two more teen girls shopping.

  “We don’t have to buy a ton of stuff today. But you should wear the bra so my mom doesn’t get a coronary. Just kind of look around and see what else appeals to you.” Lisa kept running from rack to rack in junior misses. Every few moments, she’d whisk hangers aside to make a new gap and show off some discovery. Berry tried to pretend that he wasn’t doing this, but also that he did this all the time.

  Berry found a dark concord skirt that felt churchy, with some white frills around the hem. He also found a slightly frilly white blouse that could almost have been a boy’s shirt. Some of the other stuff he noticed looked just like boys’ clothes.

  Berry didn’t spend every moment in the department store feeling his fingernails itch with the feeling someone would notice a boy in the wrong place. That feeling came and went, but so did excitement. Trying on one dress, Berry twirled and giggled at his reflection.

  Berry and Lisa only bought the one bra at that store. Then Lisa wanted to go to another store and look at jewelry. “We’re just talking a few bangles,” she reassured Berry. He shrugged. She thought he looked really nice with a big pink hoop around his neck and some plastic bands on his wrists. “It’s too bad your ears aren’t pierced.” Berry let her try stuff on him but not buy anything.

  Lisa and Berry held hands and it was okay because they were two girls at the mall. They went to the bookstore and looked at Sixteen and a Half and Teeneurosis magazines together. “Hey look: ‘Eight Great Looks for Winter. Bad girls wear wool too’,” Lisa read.

  Berry asked Lisa what she thought about Canon Moosehead’s absence from church that morning. “He was always a big jerk, but then he got spastic,” Lisa said.

  “I think it was the pills,” Berry said. He flipped through page after perky page of girls whose hair and skirts spilled into text columns.

  “What pills?”

  “Oh, you know. The Bob Dole pills the altar boys spiked his coffee with. I never actually saw his willie rise in church, but he definitely went wiggy after that. He talked about Jung a lot. I mean, I’ve read some of Jung’s works and I’m not sure I get the link between the collective unconscious and the possessed pigs running off a cliff.” Berry stopped, afraid he sounded brainy and dorky. Anyway, Lisa wasn’t listening.

  “What pills, now?”

  Berry explained again.

  “That’s so cruel. Making him think he was a nut or a perv.”

  “I guess. I mean, he was anti-homeless people and hated the choir.”

  “And you knew about this all along?”

  “Well, I knew about the pills. But for a while I thought he was acting weird because this guy my parents made me visit told him to spy on me, and ...” Berry realized it sounded dumb.

  “And you didn’t do anything about it?”

  “Well, not really. But—”

  Lisa dashed the teen magazines back on the racks. “We’ve got to save him! He needs to know what’s been going on! Then he can get his job back and everything will be all right.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, he’ll kill everyone if he finds out.” “He’s a man of God. That means he’s obligated to forgive our trespasses and all that shit. Plus, he’s learned an important lesson from this and he’ll be grateful and all.”

  “What lesson?”

  “Who knows? Pm not a reverend. Come on!”

  Lisa grabbed Berry’s hand again and they sped out of the bookstore. They ran to the food court, only to stand around the Entrailer Park restaurant soaking in the smell of frying intestines.

  “I don’t know why we hurried,” Berry said. “Your mom won’t be back for another half hour.”

  He bought Lisa and himself Cokes and they sat in the food court.

  “We need a plan,” Lisa said after a long silence. “If we just tell the Canon the truth he won’t believe us.”

  “We could tell the Dean,” Berry said.

  They sat a while longer. Eventually Lisa’s mom came and found them. She was in a good mood because she’d bought some scarves. She drove a town car with calfskin leather on its cavernous back seat. Berry and Lisa held hands, so Berry didn’t think Lisa could be too disappointed in him. She said she’d call him and let him know about their project. Berry wasn’t sure which project she meant, but he just nodded.

  Berry got home before his parents. He dashed to his room and resmushed his breasts. Then he called Maura. “I bought a bra today.”

  “Great,” she said. “How’d it feel?”

  “Okay, I guess. Like shopping.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To the mall. With Lisa.”

  “I’m glad you’re friends again. What did you talk about?” “Bob Dole.”

  “The reason the mall thing didn’t rock your world was because you didn’t go all out,” Maura said. “You bought like one bra, right? You could have so much more fun if you’d let me show you.”

  Berry’s parents came home and he had to hang up. Marco and Judy seemed unusually cheerful. They both laughed a lot, and Judy even danced. They’d been to a party and brought food home to Berry.

  “Everything’s going to be different now,” Marco told Berry as he unpacked the doggie bag of General Whoever’s chicken and broccoli. “We got our shit together.”

  Marco and Judy put on music and danced like movie newlyweds or two of the ten most romantic people in Teeneurosis magazine. Berry left them and fell into bed. The moment before he fell asleep, he felt the kind of pain in his crotch and chafed torso that’s comforting instead of disturbing because it means things are healing as you rest.

  12.

  The choir drilled nonstop until the day before the Fall Concert. Then everybody had the day off with orders to rest his voice. Berry didn’t talk for nearly forty-eight hours between the Tuesday evening rehearsal and Thursday’s preconcert warmup. He would just nod and maybe smile if people tried to talk to him. Marco and Judy tried to bond with Berry now that they’d sewn things up with each other. He just blessed their remastered relationship in silence.

  At school, Berry pretended to have laryngitis. He got through a whole morning with Rat and the Swans without making a sound. This wasn’t too hard since Berry seldom spoke in class. Rat wanted to have a lively free-floating discussion on Shakespeare and called on Berry, who mimed his opinion that Rosalind was a cocktease who deserved to be stuck in the woods forever reading dumb tree-poems. It took a while for Rat to decode this input.

  In the afternoon, Berry had a rough moment with Toad, who really wanted Berry to explain some of his answers on a biology quiz. Berry just shook his head when Toad demanded to know why Berry thought all birds photosynthesized except for pigeons. Berry shrugged and pointed to his throat with a karate-chop hand until Toad gave up. Some of the Geese wanted to beat Berry up for his mute act, but Randy and Marc let it be known Berry was extra off limits today. Nobody even chased Berry home after school. He enjoyed walking slowly.

  Berry’s Trappist day broke when Lisa called. “Hey,” she said. “Guess what?”

  “Can’t talk,” Berry whispered.

  “Then listen. My mom really, really liked you. As a girl, of course. I think she thinks of you as a project I’ve taken on—no offense, it’s just the way her brain works. Anyway, she wants me to take you under my wing in a big way and make sure you never lack for training bras.”

  “Um.” Berry managed to convey doubt, confusion, annoyance, and hunger in a syllable.

  “Don’t worry, no struggle sessions for you. She saves that st
uff for me. Probably no bake sales in your honor, either. But she’s very much for us hanging out.”

  “Um.”

  “My dad won’t recognize you even if he does see you. You guys only met once, it was dark, and you wore that robe thing which totally distracts the eye. So anyway, when’s our next girl date?”

  “Dunno. Fall Concert’s tomorrow night.”

  “I know. I’m there. Speaking of which, I figured the solution to the Canon Moosehead sitch. I wrote an anonymous note to him and Dean Jackson saying what happened. I said if they needed proof, they’d find a pill bottle under the wine cabinet in the vestry.”

  “How did you know they’d find it there?”

  “I put it there. Stole my dad’s.”

  “Oh.”

  Lisa talked a while longer, about the cruelty of making Canon Moosehead doubt his own mind. You don’t get to be a minister without spending a lot of time in your own head, and the Canon had probably felt comfy there until somebody had sprayed sewage inside. People could be so cruel, especially in religious contexts where you’d expect otherwise.

  Berry wanted to know exactly what Lisa had written on that note, but didn’t want to use his voice. He tried asking the question in the form of a cough, but didn’t even break through her flood.

  “Sometimes it’s good to be able to live inside your head. I know you know what I’m talking about. In class. Or when I’m stuck in that swimming pool with just my nose above water, sometimes I imagine I’m swimming back to a warm beach or something. I mean, inside your head you’re safe from the mean people, except if they find a way to get past the plastic cover into your airspace. You know, Berry, you are possibly the only person I’ve met with no cruelty in you. That’s one thing you’ll have to learn about real girls, they can be meaner than soldiers. Girls have to cut each other down. You’ll get the hang of it. I mean, I know you don’t want to, but you’ll pick it up either way. But that’s kind of the point. The crudest people are often the ones who live in their own heads the most. I could be deadly mean and not know it. But you’d tell me, right?”

  When Lisa was ready to hang up, Berry whispered, “Bye.” She wished him luck on the big day.