I should have been a girl - Chapter 3

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The next day, it’s school as usual although my body’s still smarting from the slaps and a couple of bruises have appeared. I thought about reporting it, going to see the counselor, Mrs. Edwards, who’s a good sort, but if I reported the beating, then I could be dumped in a County children’s home and be even worse off. At least remaining in the family for now, I’m somewhat my own master or as I think of myself, mistress. Miss Alyssa Cantrell.

I will change that too, take an entirely unrelated name and I think Lindsay, borrowed from the star Lindsay Lohan, so I’ll become Alyssa Lindsay. First, when I say it, it seems a bit of a mouthful but after about the tenth time, it seems to trip off my tongue and I think, sounds pretty classy. It’s very feminine too, no mistake about that. No boy would be called Alyssa and I have to thank my dear friend Jenny for that. The rest of the week I’m good as gold. Friday night I tell Mom I’m spending the day with Jenny and she phones Jenny’s mom to confirm that I’m speaking the truth and welcome.

I work hard at my homework Friday and get that all done and show Dad that I’ve done it. He tests me on the French verbs I’ve had to learn and then, being a clever clog, checks my algebra. I have one of the ten equations wrong but get it the second time around. So there I am, model son, and allowed to meet up with Jenny to go to the Mall. Dad drops me off at Jenny’s at ten and Jenn’s Mom takes us to the Mall.

When we get there, Jenny takes me to the coffee stall in the concourse, which is cheaper than Starbucks and all those chains and just as good. We get our coffees and then Jenn starts in on my plan and I see it’s full of pitfalls. ‘Where are you going to keep these clothes?’ ‘I hoped at yours.’ ‘I can’t go home with bags of clothes; Mom would think I’d gone mad and smell a rat. There’s only one solution and I have the answer. Payton is picking us up and your clothes will stay in his car boot. He’s agreed, after

a little sisterly blackmail, to take you to Washington. On the way, you can change into girl mode, clothes, and makeup, so you look older. Can you do makeup on your own?’ ‘Sure, I’ve practiced since I was about ten when the parents and my brother were out of the way and you’ve taught me a lot, Jenn.’ ‘What about your hair then?’ ‘That’s been my parent's one concession, allowing it to grow but they make me have it in this bun. Even so, Dad hates it and keeps nagging. We have an uneasy truce; I keep the hair if I agree I’m a boy. It’s easy to say, ‘Yes Dad, you’re right, I’m a boy.

I think Mom likes my long hair, she said it was so pretty once and then got embarrassed.’ ‘God your mixed up life! I mean your hair is long enough but it could be slightly girlier and needs a good cut. ‘Snippers’ here do a walk in and I’ve seen Andrea a few times. If we talk to her, I’m sure she can do a cut that can be either boy or girl. She’s a good sort.’ ‘That will be quite embarrassing, asking for a girl cut, but I guess it has to be done. You have been thinking Jenny. You’re absolutely the very best.’ ‘Look girlfriend, I hate what you’re doing, not that you want to be a girl but running away.

I fear for you and I’ll want to know you’re safe. You can phone Payton or message him, phoning me would be too risky, they will check with me as soon as you disappear. So hair, check; makeup, check. Clothes, we’ll do them as soon as we’ve done our hair. Let’s go.’ We head to ‘Snippers’ the walk-in Unisex salon and Jenn talks to this girl Andrea who is way out, a stud in her lip and a tattoo on her neck, and another on the top of her left boob. They seem to talk for a long time and then they look at their watches and we have an hour to wait. Andrea smiles at me before Jenn takes my hand and leads me out of the shop.

‘So, let’s buy you some girl stuff.’ We go to Forever 21 and then H&M and buy undies; bras although I have no breasts of course, A cup and I’ll stuff them to make myself more girly and panties, some pretty and some practical. We buy some makeup, the basics, mascara, liner, and eyebrow pencils for my golden, disappeared brows. The foundation that will disguise the freckles that I wish I didn’t have, and a lipstick, well three that Jenny says is the minimum a girl needs. That done it’s back to Snippers and the happy scissors of Andrea.

I just hope it will not be too radical for I have to live as a boy for the next three days without further beatings from the beastly Brethren. It’s always the same with hairdressers, they have this way of making you feel the thatch that covers the head is a bad exhibit from a horror movie, the way they pick it up and let it fall. Rosalind a young apprentice washes me and wraps the towel in a turban about my damp locks and I’m turned to the mirror.

Andrea appears and suggests different things, none of which I fully understand and Jenn finally says, ‘Yeah, that will be good.’ Anyway, Lisa cuts and I can’t see too much falling onto the cape, so that’s a relief in about ten minutes it’s on with the drier, and slowly a girl appears and I haven’t even any makeup. ‘Ow wow,’ I say, ‘that’s so brilliant.’ ‘You gotta do them eyebrows sister,’ Andrea says, gangsta style, and she calls over this girl and instructs her to take out the really wild ones that seem to be self-seeding down towards my lids.

They come out as pretty straightforward and not too girly-arched. So, then she whisks me into a back room and does my makeup, the first time ever anyone other than me has seen me in full makeup, though in the past Jenny has done bits, like in play. After fifteen embarrassing minutes, I can look in the mirror and see a girl and oh my God, I really like what I see and I want my face to stay like that forever. I mean it’s not over the top, just nice and my pale lashes, now dark with mascara, frame my eyes and my eyes look so huge they will pop out of my head. Many of the freckles have disappeared too. It’s brill. Andrea just charges for the hairdo.

Even in my boy jeans and top with no breasts, I reckon I look like a girl. I love the feel of my lips with the lipstick. I just hope no neighbors or Brethren or Sisters from our Meetinghouse will see me. We are out of there and into H&M again and half a dozen more teen girl stores and I use my money carefully, buying four tops, two skirts, and some girl jeans that have embroidery and sequins on one bum cheek, some shoes, pumps and some Mary Jane’s with a spiky three-inch heel and a pair of ballets. I’ve spent ninety dollars and while wisely, I think, and got real bargains, it’s more than I’ve ever spent in one go on clothes in my life.

I feel so naughty and so excited and I think, it’s revenge on Mom and Dad and the Brethren. I hate those bastards. In the last changing room, I tried on this little dress and it’s so beautiful, I just have to have that too, total now one hundred and eighty-nine dollars, the dress had been reduced from thirty-five. Jesus, haha Brethren, I have just been profane, but I have spent so much on forbidden clothing. If you only knew Brethren, and Mom and Dad.

You have made me more determined. ‘I agree on the dress,’ Jenn says, ‘it’s a must-have. I think you are now complete except for some traveling luggage and a handbag, those you gotta have too, my best girlfriend.’ ‘I thought a backpack.’ ‘No, you’re a lady, traveling in your dress. No backpack!’ So, we go to this new place, Luggage-4-U and I buy this wheelie bag and they have a nice line of handbags, black patent with a black and gold handle.

‘Oh, wow Alyssa, that’s really good, you must.’ Of course, I do, not merely because my girl mentor says I must but because it’s an object of desire for me. My first handbag and a total spend of over two seventy. I’m beginning to lose count. I add some nice but cheap perfume, some hankies, and a scarf. Lastly, I buy a smart, nice parka as winter is on the way. It’s a lot. Christ. In the drugstore, I buy makeup remover and cotton pads; nail varnish in three colors and remover; nail scissors, and a file. That’s it, I have done for now.

I know there’s a ton of other stuff a girl needs, like fashion jewelry, hair clips and barrettes, nice soap, and other essentials, but Mom has a cupboard full and I’ll raid that to make up for what I was put through at the Pastorium. At the moment, I hate my parents, both but Mom more than Dad, because she should have the maternal instinct and love for her child, to nurture and protect, and instead, she escorted me to a humiliating beating, almost as bad as rape.

Jenny phones her bro to say that we are ready to be picked up. He tells us thirty minutes, so we sit and have a coffee and I pack all my clothes in my new case so there is only one item to put safely in the trunk of his old Ford Taurus. ‘OK kids,’ the voice says and we find Payton behind us. He’d given me a real fright. ‘Ready to go? Crikey, you really look like a girl Craig.’ ‘Alyssa,’ Jenn corrects him. ‘She’ll take the makeup off in the car.’ ‘Well I guess we’re ready,’ I say. I wheel my new case full of girl stuff to the massive but only half-full car park. Payton places the precious case in the trunk. ‘OK plotters, when am I taking you to Union, Washington?’ ‘Wednesday. If you can pick me up from school Payton please?’ I say.

‘Not at the school. You walk around onto College Road and down onto Eisenhower. I’ll wait there. Then I guess, you’ll want to change and do makeup if you really want to pass as a girl? Right! Then I guess we can go to a friend’s flat. I’ll ask Sienna if I can borrow it, no dammit. We can’t involve anyone else.

You’ll have to change and do makeup in the car. If we let others in on this, someone is going to blab.’ ‘OK Payton, I’m just grateful for whatever, but yes we shouldn’t involve anyone else. I’ll bring a mirror from home. I can paint my nails on the train.’ ‘Look you are sure? You’re going to be safe? I don’t want your face plastered all over the TV with a caption, found dead, or some such.’ Payton says. ‘I have Uncle Jem’s number. When I get to Lawrence, I’ll give him a call.

I’m sure he’ll pick me up.’ I reply. ‘What town are you going to?’ ‘Winshipton, but Lawrence is the nearest train station.’ ‘Then I better get the ticket kid or they will trace you. Must you do this? Heck, I know if you were my kid and ran away, I don’t know how I’d cope. It would be such a worry.’ ‘I have to before puberty takes me. I need the drugs to stop me being a man and they won’t get them for me.’ ‘But you are a boy and boys become men, that’s how it is, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, but some boys have girls' brains, and some girls have boys' brains. If I stay a boy, I’ll kill myself, I’d rather be dead.’ ‘Nothing I can say or do will change your plan?’ ‘Nothing. Please help me?’

‘You have to help her,’ Jenny says after being silent in this exchange. ‘Payton, she is so girl, and what her parents have done to her.’ ‘Yeah, I was forgetting that. I understand. No, you can’t stay there. OK. I’ll buy the ticket at the travel shop, my present to you, and Wednesday next, I’ll be around the corner on Eisenhower Drive from nine. You change in the car while I drive, then I’ll stop for you to do makeup and take you to the station.’ Payton outlines the plan perfectly. ‘I want to see you off and onto the train.’ Jenn says. ‘No Jenn, you go missing and they’ll smell a rat.

What you can do is phone her Mom in the evening and ask whether she’s unwell, just as a friend would. You gotta play this carefully. If they cotton to you being involved, it will blow the whole thing and Mom and Dad will be on your back. In fact, I think you need to wait a few weeks, then you will get a Facebook account in your new name and make contact on Messenger. Otherwise, they sure will track you down.’ ‘Yes, Jenn. I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.’ ‘This Uncle Jem?

Will he really play ball? Is he really trustworthy?’ Payton asks, still concerned for my future. ‘I think so. He hates their type of religion and says it’s not Christian. He once said, if I ever needed to get away, then I could go to him.’ ‘I bet he didn’t mean permanent.’ ‘We’ll see. I have no plan B. I’m going to leave a note saying I’ve gone to Los Angeles and I’ll mention a Facebook friend there, I hope that will throw them off the scent completely. You do understand Payton, I can’t stay there after what they did?’ ‘Oh yeah, I get that. That really is unforgivable.’

The rest of the week I’m just silent. I only speak to Mom and Dad if they ask a direct question and then my answer is as short as possible. I stay in my room, do my homework and read books. I communicate on Facebook and Snapchat a lot with this guy David in California and ask lots of questions about what it’s like and where he lives and say I wish I lived there. He answers I should go stay and feel the California sun. I write back and ask about the California smog and the fault line and the dangers of an earthquake.

Bro came into my room, barged in, and asks why I’m being a hermit and staying out of the family? ‘After what they did to me?’ I retort. ‘I’ll never forgive them, never and if they think they are holy, they’re not. They will surely go to hell. They are just as bad as the mad people of Islam, who stone women or kill people of other religions. I can’t wait to get out of here when I’m eighteen and go to college. They will never see me again.’ ‘The path you were on, they had to do what they did, to save you. Don’t you see that?’ ‘You don’t know anything and don’t want to know, just like them.

You’ll grow up to be like Dad. I pity your kids when you get them. You would think Mom and Dad would read about cross-gender people and try to understand, but they just follow their version of the ‘Truth’, the Bible as they see it, as they with their limited intelligence understand primitive writings of over two thousand years ago.’ ‘Oh wow, you really are a little heretic, aren’t you? You’ll be struck down, punished in some way for thinking like that.’ He laughs cruelly. I know he doesn’t believe what he says but is repeating what we hear from the Pastor, just to hurt me.

‘Why don’t they believe in Jesus and the way he loved everyone, rich and poor, sinners, even loose women, tax collectors, and such? The only people Jesus despised were the Pharisees who pointed a finger and condemned people purely on the grounds of their belief, that they were right and the judges of other people. I’m just a kid, and I know that such people who resort to religion to support a belief and not science, they are the heretics.’ ‘I think you better start to toe the line or get another whopping.’ ‘One day Robert, you’ll see I’m right. Jesus would not have done what those horrible unholy men did to me, stripping me stark naked and slapping me all over to get a devil out of me.

It was no better than witchcraft. Now run off and tell Mom and Dad I’m still an unrepentant sinner.’ ‘You’re a stupid little fuck of a girly boy, that’s what you are and if you carry on like this, you’ll end up a prostitute on the streets of Washington. You were wearing panties for Christ's sake. No wonder you got whopping.’ ‘I have a girl brain and girls wear panties, Robert. I wish you could get it. Being a prostitute might be better than this hell.

When I’m eighteen and off to college, I’ll never look back, never see them or you again Robert, and that’s a promise.’ ‘You’ll not make eighteen if you don’t mend your ways and get these ideas out of your head.’ He clouts me across the top of my head, not enough to really hurt, but as I’m so emotional anyway, tears fill my eyes. He leaves my room and my stapler follows him, hitting him on the derriere. I get up from my desk, pick up the stapler and close the door. I throw myself on the bed and shed silent tears.

After a few minutes, I’m filled with inner strength. I don’t care what they say, or what they do. Somehow, I have more belief in myself than ever and I have my plan. I wonder whether this is a test of me, that Jesus is putting me through this to make me stronger, and although, since they tried to exorcise the supposed devil within me, I have actually become a stronger person with more belief in the path I’m taking than before. A week ago, I would not have contemplated running away to be the person I believe myself to be. Now I have made a plan, bought clothes, a whole outfit, and had a hairdo that will convert to a girl style. I have gone in the exact opposite direction than the ‘exorcism’ intended me to go.

I sit up at my desk and work on my books, more resolved than ever, after my homily-type lecture from Brother Robert. Twenty minutes later and I’m called down to dinner. After Dad’s given thanks, I receive stares from both him and Mother, as though they are looking for signs of the devil reappearing. Obviously, my brother has been dishing the dirt. ‘What?’ I ask, looking Dad in the eye, my head up, my nose in the air. ‘I’m behaving, aren’t I? Being a boy which is what you want, isn’t it?

I hate what you did of you but I understand why? So, can we forget it?’ ‘He’s up to something.’ Robert says. ‘Yeah, you’d like to think so, so I get in trouble again. I don’t know Robert, perhaps you have a devil in you and that’s why you are such an unloving brat.’ ‘That’s enough. Apologize to your brother.’ ‘Never Dad. I despise him. He may be good at charging senselessly into the chest of a quarterback, but he left his brain behind somewhere. Look at his school reports, at best mediocre except for football.’ ‘And baseball,’ Robert says, ‘egg-headed little shrimp, girly boy.’ ‘Quiet the pair of you.

You Craig could do with more sport in your life and you Robert, apply yourself to your books as well as sport. Now no more out of either of you. Eat the dinner the Lord has provided and your mother cooked.’ ‘Nice dinner Mom, thank you,’ I say and I mean it. After that, I feel the tension sort of diminished, and the air lightened in the house. I feel slightly as though I am more secure, back in the fold and the sheepdogs, Mom, Dad, and Robert have laid down, not so alert to me as they have been since my girl clothes were discovered.

I wanted them to relax and they have. I still hate them. Jesus said to turn the other cheek but I can’t. That would mean burying the real me, to become the unhappy creature I know I would be. They will not realize that it’s what’s inside me which is important and not my body. The soul goes to heaven, and this body, this vehicle that carries around my soul, my essence, will remain on earth, rotting in a coffin or burned in a fiery furnace. If I’m a good person, my soul will go to heaven. I can’t see that being trans, becoming the person that matches my soul can be a sin.

I know that had I had a squint or a clubfoot or extra finger, surgery would have been performed to make me ‘normal.’ Those are all physical things. My problem is that I think like a girl and therefore want girl things, pretty clothes, makeup, a career, the company of other women, and maybe sometimes, a lover boy or girl as maybe. It won’t make me a bad person. Having hormones and surgery to make me outwardly female will not hurt the rest of humanity. It’s just making my body, this vehicle, this old Ford motor car that carries around my soul, my inner being, fit the person inside by giving it like a coat of paint.