I should have been a girl - Chapter 4

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The weekend comes. Last weekend Jenny and I shopped. Next weekend, I don’t know. I hope to be miles from here. Last week was like The First Battle of Bull Run, I was defeated, beaten, and humiliated by my parents and the Brethren and Pastor. This Wednesday, when I disappear, it will be Gettysburg. I shall win and they will never recover, always wonder what I’m doing, where I have gone. I shall take no comfort in inflicting that pain, it just has to be so, just as President Lincoln was sorrowful about the war; he did and I am doing, what has to be done. I know it will be a terrible shock. I know that not knowing is often worse than knowing.

Like when our cat was killed on the road when she was just missing was actually worse than when we eventually found her poor little fur-covered body curled up under a bush where she had crawled to die. So, it will be for Mom and Dad. Robert, who cares? I don’t. Saturday and we go for a hike, along the Union Mill to Occoquan and back, have a burger, and then home. It was OK. I manage to put on a front of enjoyment and even affection for my parents.

I ignore my brother pretty well. I feel he’s a spy and an agent provocateur. I actually think he’s evil and believe he probably knew about my girl stuff from Eves dropping on my conversations with Jenny. He’s like that, always sneaking about, for all, he’s a great clod of a footballer and defensive lineman, but he’s also a sneak. Saturday evening, I don’t feel well, I mean just a bit what Mom calls off-color and I tell Mom and I go to bed. She comes and puts a towel across the bedspread and a basin by the side of my bed in case I actually want to spew. I don’t.

What I want is not to go to Meeting tomorrow, and face any of those Brethren that believe I’m infested by a devil that can be pummelled out of me like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. It may be that I shall never go to church again. I have yet to think that through but I sure aren’t going to their church ever again. Sunday morning dawns and I stay put and Mom leaves me lying. She asks whether I need anything, like chicken broth or whatever and I say no Mom, just leave me be, I have a headache and nausea. She feels my head and says you feel a bit hot, and I say I feel cold, so she does me a hottie and puts that in my bed. ‘Thanks, Mom.’

‘Stay in bed until we get back from Meeting.’ ‘Yes Mom, I’m not going anywhere. I want to be good for school tomorrow.’ That’s the truth, for whatever they think of me, I’m a good student, around the top five or six in every subject including bible study. It’s just I have a great memory, rather than being Einstein. I know that even if others think me clever. So, I hear Mom shout they are off to Meeting and the house goes silent. I get up and make a note of all I need to take. I make little packages of things that I’ll take out in my school bag and give to Jenn to keep till Wednesday, the day of the death and departure of Craig and the birth of Alyssa.

I always hated the name Craig, I mean it sounds so boy, so harsh and it should apply to some Nitwit boxer who likes getting his face battered, not me, a girl. I shall be Alyssa Lindsay. I find the key to Dad’s desk and remove my birth certificate and the passport obtained the year we went scuba diving in Mexico. I also take the savings book my parents have for me, that’s supposed to pay for my college education. I look in and find thirty-three thousand dollars, some of that from when Grandma Cantrell died. It will come in handy if my parents don’t block it. It’s only then, I feel any guilt at all about my sneakiness and deception but that soon passes.

They have made this situation with their old-fashioned Christian stance and the beating they allowed the Brethren to administer. They just will not recognize that for some in the community, sex change is the better of three scenarios; number one, as many do, commit suicide because life seems so bereft of joy, living in the wrong gender; or two, medicate and face the surgeon’s knife to become as near as one can, to the person one is in their soul or three; scrape along in life, miserable in the wrong body. It’s not an easy choice. No one does so-called sex change easily, readily, without a lot of painful thought.

I know from all I’ve read, it’s a hard road, often a lonely road. One ends up happy but disadvantaged, unable to procreate. It’s merely a means of allowing one’s soul to communicate with the rest of the World. It is not about sex, having sex. It is about communication with the rest of the World. It is about small things: the company one keeps; the thought processes; the way in which one presents to the World; the way in which one reacts to others and the way they react in return.

Oh yes, it may be about clothes; it may be that one doesn’t mind looking in the mirror after one has had surgery; it may be the way one finds it possible to go crazy over babies or furry animals; it is just about everything except having sex. This is the course I’ve had thrust upon me, to allow me to be happy. I haven’t prayed to be trans. I never saw that as my goal. I just want to match my appearance to what is inside me. If I continue as a boy and then a man, I know I shall end in misery and maybe death.

The rest of Sunday is as boring as usual. I get up around eleven thirty and I’m just down when they return from Meeting. ‘You still look peaky,’ Mom says. ‘Can you eat Sunday roast or should I just do chicken soup?’ ‘What is the roast Mom?’ ‘We have beef. I think that may be a bit strong for your stomach. I could do you fish, out of the packet, take twenty minutes or so and you can have that and we eat the beef.

How does that sound Craig?’ That hated name again. It sounds like my soul-shattering. ‘Yes, Mom please, and I can eat the veg same as you guys.’ So we sit down to lunch and Dad gives thanks and I eat my fish and I think to myself, just two more family meals after this and that’s it. Mom is a good cook, oh yes she is and I suppose not a bad Mom. We have nice clothes and the house is spotless and the food while not being luxurious or cordon bleu is pretty fine food and enough without being wasteful. Usually, there is no choice, we all eat the same and usually, it’s all freshly home cooked, only today I have something special that should be easier on my imaginary upset tummy, only, we know it’s not upset at all.

Lunch out of the way, I excuse myself and go up to work on a geography project, and that is true, except I shan’t be around when the due date for submission arrives. I look at Facebook and tell my ‘friend’ in Los Angeles, I’m coming to see him and that can he pick me up if I phone when I get there. He sends back his phone number. Excellent. That’s good. A false trail has been laid if they get permission to search my Facebook account. I’ll take my laptop with me so it’s not left for them to get a clue to my real whereabouts.

Sunday evening and they all go to the Meeting again. I’m excused as I’m still not hundred percent, Mom says. I think no Mom, I never will be a hundred percent for Meeting again. My Meeting days are over. They may not have managed to exorcise the devil but they managed to exorcise the faith. Their vengeful, compelling God is not what I think religion should be. I’m not sure that I shall ever worship again, although there may be a God somewhere at the end of the Universe, billions of light years away. I go to bed early, and soon after they come back from the evening Meeting and say I’m still feeling a bit off but I want to go to school tomorrow.

Monday soon comes around. I dress for school, neat and tidy and I think, there will only be two more times after today when I will follow this routine and Mom will take us both to school. It’s horrible to think that I hate my family and they have no great love for me either. What could have been a loving close-knit family group will be split asunder to use a term from Bible class. Somehow, I think they will miss me even less than I will miss them.

If I look back and really consider my place in this family, I was always the outsider, the misfit, the one that questioned, and the enigma in their midst. School goes OK. Jenn and I sit together whenever we are in the same class and we lunch together. We have a small circle of supporters usually the cleverer girls and Adam Naseby who seems to be fixated with Jenn who on her part, totally ignores him. Poor boy. I say to Jenn, poor Adam. She just shrugs. ’I can’t help how he feels now can I. I give no encouragement but he is still there with his hurt, longing, cow eyes watching me.’ ‘He’s got it bad for you.’ ‘I know, but I’m not ready for some moonstruck boy whose testosterone is boiling over.’

‘I get it Jenn and I’m not criticizing. Just I feel sorry for him. Of course, it’s not your fault. He is rather a nice lad though, well mannered, polite, and sometimes quite funny.’ ‘You fancy him?’ ‘No of course not.’ ‘I think you do a bit.’ ‘If I was a girl, I’d give him a go, see what he’s like outta school.

I do like him yes.’ ‘I’ll tell him for you,’ she says, and I’m immediately on fire because sometimes Jenn gets the devil in her. ‘Hey Adam,’ she says, and I think my best friend has betrayed me. She continues, ‘Craig,’ and I kick her ankle. ‘Don’t!’ I say. ‘Ow,’ Jenn says. ‘You kicked my ankle! That hurt.’ ‘Well then.’ ‘Adam,’ she says totally ignoring anything I do, even a kick on her ankle. ‘Who was that girl we saw you in the Mall?’ ‘That was my cousin Judy.

Dark hair.’ ‘Oh yeah. Is she from round here?’ ‘No, Phillipi, West Virginia. She’s not my girlfriend.’ ‘Have you got one?’ I kick her again because I think she is signaling interest when she said she had none. She reaches for my hand beneath the table, grips it hard, and gives it a shake, as one might a wayward child. ‘No, not at the moment.’

‘Oh, between girls is it.’ ‘No not between, never had a girlfriend. I hoped perhaps we could, you know, see a film or something.’ ‘Oh, you’re asking me out?’ ‘Well yes.’ ‘This weekend?’ ‘If you like.’ ‘No groping or my dad would be mad Adam.’ ‘No like, well, not on a first date.’ ‘Yeah, that would be OK. Give me your phone and I’ll put my number in.’ He hands her his phone. She is fast, into his photos and whizzes through, a cat and a dog, family and views of the Potomac River and the Capitol, and other shots of mountains and a bull.

She puts her number in his phone. ‘Call me tonight and I’ll know whether I’m free.’ ‘Oh gosh. I never thought, I mean you two are always together I thought you were like, an item.’ ‘What me and Craig? No not like that, just besties aren’t we darling,’ she says, and puts an arm around me and kisses my cheek. ‘Yeah, besties. I have to warn you, Adam, she can be a devil, a tease.’ After I say when we are alone, ‘You said you weren’t interested, then you agree to go out with that poor boy.’

‘Well, I need something to do when my protégé has flown the coup.’ She kisses my cheek again. ‘Perhaps it will distract me from worrying about your sister Alyssa.’ We are sat at the same table at lunch today and I’m telling her of my preparations for departure, when who should appear but a big brother. I’m fearful that he will have overheard me and I look up with some misgivings. ‘What do you want?’ I ask aggressively. ‘Just wanted to see what the girly boy is up to.

Mom says to keep an eye on you.’ ‘Do you like playing the spy on someone?’ Jenny asks. ‘Are you a tell-tale Robert, bullying your little brother.’ ‘Yeah well if you knew what he’s been up to, dressing up in girl stuff, you wouldn’t want to sit with it.’ By this time, I’m red in the face because other ears are pricked and I know, kids at the next table are giggling at what Robert has said. ‘Just leave me alone, I hate you, Robert.

I wish I had a proper brother not a tell-tale bully like you.’ ‘You should behave and then I wouldn’t tell tales.’ Frank Olson at the next table turns with a leery grin. ‘He what? Dresses like a girl? I always knew there was something about that kid.’ And the whole table starts to jeer. I have tears in my eyes already and don’t know how to cope with this.

I run from the cafeteria and Jenny is after me like a shot. I go to a corner of the school building that is like a recess and I hunker down, knees bent, and sob. Jenn is soon by my side with a tissue. ‘Take no notice. Head up and be proud. If those guys tease, then just ignore it. If they see you’re bothered it will just get worse.’

`He's such a bastard, doing that to me in public. Now it will be all over the school.'

`All the more reason for you to leave here and start anew. I'm really going to miss you though.'

`I'll really miss you too Jenn,' I say, really tearful again as I think of parting from her. 'I'll email, calling myself Alyssa, once I get a new email address. No one knows that name but us, do they?

No Aly. Oh God, I hope you're gonna be OK out there.'

`I hope so too. Now it's so dose, the dream I've had for years, seems like a nightmare.'

`Then don't go, you haven't burned any bridges so far so you don't have to.'

`I do have to go. I can't stay here and be a boy, a man. It will be like death. I won't want to live.'

`I can't imagine feeling like that. Really? The future as a boy would be that bad?'

`Oh yes. I should have been a girl, then I could have put up with all the Meeting stuff and the elders perhaps, but as I am, I feel bereft of all joy of living.'

Where do you get these phrases from Aly? The joy of living?'

`Musts read it somewhere. I'm always reading. It's an escape.'

The bell goes for afternoon lessons and I'm glad our conversation is interrupted. I feel not even Jenn realizes the terrible aimlessness life seems to be, trapped in this male body, living life as a boy, when every instinct tells me I should be a girl, enjoying life as a girl and being treated as a girl by those around me. I just feel deprived, severely deprived all the time, of the life I should be leading. Even Jenn is a needle in my side because she has, possesses all the things I want, but doesn't realize how fortunate she is to be happy in her body and persona. I read a book by a trans man, Professor Whittle and he said of his life, 'Everything that others feel or expect of you, is not the person you are'. That is so true.

I look at my best friend, nearly my only friend, and see a girl, pretty even with her specs on, with lovely skin, hands, beautiful, full and glossy hair, dressed in pretty clothes, well girl clothes even if not always pretty. She's treated as a girl, responded to as a girl, and the expectations of those around her, are of a girl. Her arms, what wouldn't I give for arms like hers, beautiful, slowly tapering to slim long-fingered hands, with nails that are adorned with subtle polish at school and all sorts of beautiful colors when we are on holiday.

All these negative thoughts about myself are constant, every waking hour. I'm forever comparing myself with girls around me and finding myself wanting, inferior, deprived, and unloved in comparison with how I feel Jenn and the other girls are by parents, other pupils, and teachers. There are expectations of me that not only I cannot fulfill, I don't want to fulfill. I don't want to be a hulking great muscular hairy boy, slapping other boys on the back and playfully punching them. I don't wish to be a he-man with rippling muscles and all the girls going gaga. Every instinct tells me I should be pretty, gentle, making the best of my appearance, and that appearance, the picture I have of myself is, svelte, slim, with flawless skin, smelling pretty, smiling as I brush back my long hair from my face, with those around me admiring how I look and behave and treating me with gentleness.

Monday night. Even though I have only one more night here in this house that no longer feels like home, I have done my homework, as though that still matters. The essay I have written on The Comparative Merits of the American Constitution is done, and ready to be handed in tomorrow.