Changeling
by Lianne Simon
Christmas 1974
Smoke rises from the chimney of the house in front of me, only to be driven away by the relentless wind. Though my family calls Winston-Salem home, the brick two-story remains a stranger—just one more dwelling in the affluent neighborhood adjoining Wake Forest University.
As I walk up the drive, gusts threaten to send my hat scurrying across the withered grass. I pull up the collar of my woolen coat and stamp my feet against the cold. North Carolina might not be as brutal in winter as the Midwest of my childhood, but four years in Miami have thinned my blood.
Another wisp of smoke promises warmth inside. I imagine my father waiting for me, his flannel shirt smelling of pine needles and holly. Something deep inside still cherishes an insane hope that he’ll be proud of his little girl for gathering the fragments of her life long enough to finish college.
Yet he isn’t here.
“Mom and Dad are getting a divorce,” Becca said. “You need to come home.”
On the porch, I hesitate, reluctant to add to my mother’s pain at a time when she most needs my support. The portal swings open though, ending all thought of flight.
My sister grins a wild welcome, urges me inside, and slams the door against the cold. “I’m so glad you’re here.” After a quick hug, she runs a fingertip down the front of my jacket. “Nice. Where’d you get that?”
“Burdines.” I always wanted a princess pea coat—a mod style with rounded collars and oversized buttons. The deep green brings out the Miami sunshine in my hair and freckles.
When I pull off my hat, curls spill down over my cheeks. A rare genetic condition gave me a cute pixie face. As a child I fancied myself an elfin princess—such was the effect on my imagination. Only recently have I embraced a hairstyle that so well suits my features.
My sister’s grin twitches up on one side as she brushes a stray lock from my eyes. “Pretty. Though you know what Dad will say.”
You look like a girl—his standard assertion whenever I object to cutting my hair.
“Yeah. Guess so.”
My doctor said much the same. Without body hair or muscles, I seemed to him a flat-chested young woman with the privates of a little boy. The endocrinologist offered testosterone, but implied that—with my face and demeanor—I’d be better off living as a girl than trying to force a male puberty on a reluctant body.
My sister grabs my hand and leads me to a guest bedroom. “You’re in here,” she says.
“Thanks.” I drop my overnight bag and wander about the room. On the dresser stands a photo of my brother Michael with some pretty girl, both of them dressed for the prom. I so hoped Ron would take me to ours, but what straight boy asks someone only half girl? Instead, I danced alone under moonlight blue and silver stars—an elfin maiden blithe in her own realm.
After I finish unpacking, my eyes search the room for some artifact of my childhood. I never owned a truck. Or a football. But one spring I begged my mother for a tea set of my very own, and she left an awesome surprise in my Easter basket. All that remains of the miniature china pieces are a chipped saucer and a cup with no handle. They perch on a shelf near my precious books.
Maybe I’m still part of the family.
I make my way down the hall to greet my mother.
Mom hugs me longer than is her wont. The same genetic variation that blessed me with a girl’s face caused heart and kidney malformations. When I was young, my parents feared losing me. Today it’s my mother who seems frail. “I need to tell you something, Mom.”
Her eyes read my soul—how can a mother’s not? Distress knits her tired brow. “What is it, Lee?”
A thousand times I’ve tried to share my heart with her. “I’m taking ethinyl estradiol. Okay? For my...” Words fail me—they always do.
Fear—or perhaps grief—spreads across my mother’s face, and I panic. Mom’s a nurse. She’ll figure it out. Unable to face her any longer, I flee to the guest room and curl up in darkness.
Sometime later, Becca urges me to my feet. “What did you say to Mom? She thinks you’re dying of some inoperable cancer.
“What? Where is she?”
“On her bed. Crying.”
My mother sits up as we rush into the master suite. The tears on her cheeks rend my heart.
“I don’t have cancer, Mom. That’s not why I’m taking estrogen.”
But how do I explain this without causing more pain?
While I struggle to collect my words, my sister’s face blossoms in a slow-motion unfolding of awareness. “Cool,” she says.
My mother’s eyes flick between me and my sister. “Okay, what did I miss?”
No option remains but simple honesty. “The hormones are for my puberty, Mom. I’m gonna be a girl.”
My mother’s eyes smolder—a deep sadness overpowering sudden anger. “We should never have let you go to college so far from home.”
What is wrong with you?
My brother Ryan is six inches taller than me. I once ached to be like him—strong, agile, and virile. But I’m not. And I’m content with my body now.
Some of my cells are XY; others are just X—Turner Syndrome female. I inherited her timid disposition, alright. And ovatestes—a dysgenetic mix of ovary and testis that left me without a puberty.
“I’m not a boy, Mom. You know that.”
Becca’s warm hand closes over mine.
Love hides as well in the worry on my mother’s face—at least until it hardens with decision. “Your father will never—”
But he’s not here anymore, Mom. I bite my lip to keep from speaking it aloud.
Another tear rolls down my mother’s cheek. Her mournful face whispers resignation. “You’re set on this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
In truth, I must press forward or perish. “I need your help to correct my birth certificate. And I was hoping you and Dad would loan me the money for surgery. I’m not sure how much longer I can hide my breast development at work, and I can’t get another job without proper ID.”
My mother hesitates a moment before tender resolve sweeps away the bitter ashes. “As soon as the divorce is final, I’m moving back to Joliet. When the house sells, I’ll loan you whatever you need.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Miami caresses my cheeks with sunshine, nourishing the freckles scattered across my face. The healing rays banish the last shadow of winter and leave me comfortably warm.
“I made it home safe, Mom.” If she knew how suicidal I’ve been on motorcycles, she wouldn’t worry about a commercial plane flight.
“Sweetheart, are you sure about this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right. When you’re ready, I’ll file the paperwork. By the way, your father forbid surgery and demanded I not loan you any money. I reminded him of our pending divorce and my habit of keeping the promises I make.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
After a long shower, I change into pajamas and settle down with a good book.
Until my housemate arrives. And the phone rings.
“Got it!” Sarah yells. A minute later she taps on my door. “It’s for you.”
I slide out of bed, pad across the carpet to the kitchen, and grab the handset. “Hello?”
“Lee? You sound like your sister.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You’re living with a girl?”
“Yeah. I met Sarah in college.”
“Is she petite?”
“Um. Not exactly. She’s a couple inches taller than me. Curvier. And more athletic.”
“Then you need to sleep with someone more feminine before even thinking about surgery.”
Can’t you see I’m a girl? The hunger for my father’s love—all the desperate longing of my childhood—will never be satisfied.
“I already have,” I say—a lie as absurd as Dad thinking me functionally male. I cannot father a child, nor even a woman penetrate, but I lack the courage to share that truth with a father already ashamed of me.
Swollen gray clouds scud low across an April morning, their dark faces threatening more than a casual sprinkling. Nearby palms dance a slow ballet to the approaching storm. Great drops spatter against my windscreen. I dash across the parking lot toward the institute—and into the deluge.
Inside, I brave the restroom long enough to grab paper towels, then rush up the staircase. Back pressed against my office door, I blot my clothes dry until I’m no longer an entrant in a wet T-shirt contest. Until I’m safe again. At my desk.
An hour later, Julie pokes her head through my doorway. “I’ve got the paperwork for your trip.”
“I’m going?” The military exercise is no secret, but why me?
“Your name’s on my list.” Julie passes me an envelope. “Airline tickets, cash advance… And the classified visit authorization to get you on base.”
“I didn’t think they needed me.” I lose my clearance—and maybe Dad his—if someone finds out I’m on hormones.
Julie eases into the chair across the desk from me. “Tom, Matt, and Cooper are all sleeping in the barracks. You’ll stay by yourself in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. One of the guys will escort you wherever else you need to go.”
“I can find my own way around the base, Julie.”
“No, Lee. You can’t. Consider that official company policy. If you wander off by yourself, the commanding officer may figure you deserve whatever happens to you.”
“But—” Too late. She’s gone.
Emily stands in the doorway now. Em, who called me one night after washing down a bottle of Valium tablets with a fifth of Johnnie Walker. Em, who asked if I was jealous of her dating Matt. “You know why, don’t you?” she says.
“Yeah. Guess I do.”
“You never were the most masculine guy. And you’ve gotten more feminine since your accident.”
My lovely British bike floated across a clear sky one afternoon, and we both tumbled down the road. In a fleeting dream, Folly wrote my epitaph in blood along the street. Mercy intervened—kept me from harm—but Patience would brook no more of my reckless ways. Fleeing the specter of death, I sought refuge with a doctor who treated halflings like me.
Outside, ragged sunbeams fight through the overhead sea of gray.
“I’m a girl, Em. The boy died that day.”
A hint of pain mars the acceptance on her face. “You’re leaving?”
“In August.”
“I’ll miss you,” she says. Then departs in heavy silence.
After six hours of fair skies, we land without incident in San Francisco. Eventually I make my way to a townhouse on 31st Avenue, off the N Judah line. The cost of surgery includes a place to stay, shared with a half dozen other patients.
Monday is Labor Day, so I see the doctor Tuesday. His assistant schedules an interview with a psychologist—to verify my sanity. Deborah frowns at my jeans, though, and tells me to wear a dress to the appointment. Then she talks me into letting the surgeon fix my nose—the one feature I got from my father.
After taking photographs, the doctor explains that the surgeries will be performed as three outpatient procedures. I’ll recover in the townhouse—even if something goes wrong—because the local hospitals won’t take his patients.
Does the risk of surgery matter? I have no other option. So at the times appointed, I lie on a gurney in a supply room the doctor calls his operating theater and place my life in God’s hands.
Afterward, pain shadows my every move. Whenever I stop, the dull ache in my tailbone grows until it consumes each waking thought and pursues me into my dreams. I walk as far as my strength allows, then sit until I can bear the torment no longer. Thus in ragged spasms do I tour the City by the Bay.
So long as I keep moving, a smile flickers through my pain. Riding back from Chinatown, though, I shift my weight from one hip to the other to secure a moment of comfort.
The woman who’s been staring for the past three blocks moves to the seat beside me. “How can you let him do that?”
The rhinoplasty left me looking like a deranged raccoon. The bruising faded somewhat as the discoloration spread to my cheeks, but it’s still too much for makeup to hide.
“You should leave him,” she says.
Living in a boys’ dorm, I learned that a man can do whatever he wants to me; I don’t have the strength to resist. Shame kept me silent then. Would I have the courage to walk away from an abusive relationship? I squirm in my seat once again and turn my face away.
“Call me if you change your mind.” She hands me her card, sighs aloud, and gets off at the next stop.
Six weeks after my final surgery only a bit of tenderness remains, so I pack my few belongings and board a jet for Chicago.
Mom said someone would pick me up, but I find only strangers when I scan the crowd. Some cute hunk of a guy in a letter jacket saunters right up to me, slides his hands inside my open coat and draws me close. The way a lover might.
I gawk at his winsome face while trying to assemble enough fragments of my sanity to make sense of the world. His hair falls past his brow into dark brown eyes that shine with laughter. A walrus mustache guards a smile that speaks of an impudent love.
Brodie! An insane squeal bursts from my lips. I stretch up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “It’s been—what—five years?”
“Yeah.” He picks up my bag and cozies an arm around my shoulder. “I’m not surprised, you know.”
“Really? About what?”
“You bein’ a girl.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
“You had a crush on me when we were kids, didn’t you?”
Of all my cousins, Brodie’s the only boy. A year younger than me, he was always bigger and stronger and faster than his half-girl playmate. He learned soon enough how fragile I was. And protected me. “Yeah. Guess I did.”
We spend the hour drive to Joliet recounting stories of our youth—more honest now than we’ve ever been. I cry when he drops me off at Mom’s and heads back to work.
My mother hugs me a warm welcome. “You look great.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Her tender smile borders on mischievous as she hands me a folded sheet of paper—my new birth certificate. I clap my hands together, bounce up and down, then hug her tight.
We chatter on like I’m nine again, and it’s okay for me to be her little girl. We fill the days with ordinary mother-daughter things, catching up a bit, reminiscing more. But after a week, I’m itching to get back to work and return her money.
She gives me a ride to the airport herself. When the attendant calls my flight, Mom takes me by the shoulders and kisses me on the forehead, “I always worried about you, sweetheart. But now I know you’ll be all right.”
“Thanks Mom.” I hug her one more time and stroll down the ramp to my plane.
Behind the Miami Shipyards building a majestic rainbow soars heavenward. Somewhere nearby, gardenias add their sweet fragrance to the salt air and diesel fumes.
I stop to check my reflection in the glass doors. Since the day I quit work and left for California, no one has questioned my gender. But a couple of engineers at the institute will make certain the world knows I’m a freak.
A shadow creeps along the sidewalk toward me. For the first time in months, darkness infects my heart. I lean against the stucco wall and close my eyes.
The same men who ridiculed me as a boy will no doubt mock me as a girl.
A drop splashes my cheek. Then a second. I swing the heavy door open and move inside to a bench in the lobby. However brutal the environment, this job is the fastest way to pay back my mother.
I climb the grand staircase to the second floor to find my old boss. When I poke my head through his doorway, Tom glances at his watch and waves me toward a chair. “I’ve only got a minute, Lee. What can I do for you?”
“My name’s Lianne now, sir. I’d like my old job back.”
“I’d love to have you. But our budget got cut.”
He’s always been nice to me, but his no means no. “Thanks anyway.”
Tom stands when I do and accompanies me down the stairs. “I’d be happy to write a recommendation in your new name.”
“Thanks.”
At the front door he pauses. “See Julie before you leave. Okay? She’s got some paperwork for you.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I really don’t feel like signing anything, but the divorced mother of three is a friend.
Surprise flickers across Julie’s face before she stands and greets me. “Welcome back. What should I call you now?”
“Lianne.”
“Everything went well?”
“Yeah. Tom said you had some papers for me?”
She slides open the top drawer of her filing cabinet. “When he found out why you were leaving, Tom put you on extended leave. So your medical coverage wouldn’t lapse.”
Julie smiles—like a shark scenting blood—and hands me a manila envelope. “I persuaded the insurance company to pay for your surgeries. Have your doctor complete these forms, and I’ll handle the rest.”
I hug her in stunned silence—and cry—before strolling out into the Miami sunshine.
by Lianne Simon
Christmas 1974
Smoke rises from the chimney of the house in front of me, only to be driven away by the relentless wind. Though my family calls Winston-Salem home, the brick two-story remains a stranger—just one more dwelling in the affluent neighborhood adjoining Wake Forest University.
As I walk up the drive, gusts threaten to send my hat scurrying across the withered grass. I pull up the collar of my woolen coat and stamp my feet against the cold. North Carolina might not be as brutal in winter as the Midwest of my childhood, but four years in Miami have thinned my blood.
Another wisp of smoke promises warmth inside. I imagine my father waiting for me, his flannel shirt smelling of pine needles and holly. Something deep inside still cherishes an insane hope that he’ll be proud of his little girl for gathering the fragments of her life long enough to finish college.
Yet he isn’t here.
“Mom and Dad are getting a divorce,” Becca said. “You need to come home.”
On the porch, I hesitate, reluctant to add to my mother’s pain at a time when she most needs my support. The portal swings open though, ending all thought of flight.
My sister grins a wild welcome, urges me inside, and slams the door against the cold. “I’m so glad you’re here.” After a quick hug, she runs a fingertip down the front of my jacket. “Nice. Where’d you get that?”
“Burdines.” I always wanted a princess pea coat—a mod style with rounded collars and oversized buttons. The deep green brings out the Miami sunshine in my hair and freckles.
When I pull off my hat, curls spill down over my cheeks. A rare genetic condition gave me a cute pixie face. As a child I fancied myself an elfin princess—such was the effect on my imagination. Only recently have I embraced a hairstyle that so well suits my features.
My sister’s grin twitches up on one side as she brushes a stray lock from my eyes. “Pretty. Though you know what Dad will say.”
You look like a girl—his standard assertion whenever I object to cutting my hair.
“Yeah. Guess so.”
My doctor said much the same. Without body hair or muscles, I seemed to him a flat-chested young woman with the privates of a little boy. The endocrinologist offered testosterone, but implied that—with my face and demeanor—I’d be better off living as a girl than trying to force a male puberty on a reluctant body.
My sister grabs my hand and leads me to a guest bedroom. “You’re in here,” she says.
“Thanks.” I drop my overnight bag and wander about the room. On the dresser stands a photo of my brother Michael with some pretty girl, both of them dressed for the prom. I so hoped Ron would take me to ours, but what straight boy asks someone only half girl? Instead, I danced alone under moonlight blue and silver stars—an elfin maiden blithe in her own realm.
After I finish unpacking, my eyes search the room for some artifact of my childhood. I never owned a truck. Or a football. But one spring I begged my mother for a tea set of my very own, and she left an awesome surprise in my Easter basket. All that remains of the miniature china pieces are a chipped saucer and a cup with no handle. They perch on a shelf near my precious books.
Maybe I’m still part of the family.
I make my way down the hall to greet my mother.
Mom hugs me longer than is her wont. The same genetic variation that blessed me with a girl’s face caused heart and kidney malformations. When I was young, my parents feared losing me. Today it’s my mother who seems frail. “I need to tell you something, Mom.”
Her eyes read my soul—how can a mother’s not? Distress knits her tired brow. “What is it, Lee?”
A thousand times I’ve tried to share my heart with her. “I’m taking ethinyl estradiol. Okay? For my...” Words fail me—they always do.
Fear—or perhaps grief—spreads across my mother’s face, and I panic. Mom’s a nurse. She’ll figure it out. Unable to face her any longer, I flee to the guest room and curl up in darkness.
Sometime later, Becca urges me to my feet. “What did you say to Mom? She thinks you’re dying of some inoperable cancer.
“What? Where is she?”
“On her bed. Crying.”
My mother sits up as we rush into the master suite. The tears on her cheeks rend my heart.
“I don’t have cancer, Mom. That’s not why I’m taking estrogen.”
But how do I explain this without causing more pain?
While I struggle to collect my words, my sister’s face blossoms in a slow-motion unfolding of awareness. “Cool,” she says.
My mother’s eyes flick between me and my sister. “Okay, what did I miss?”
No option remains but simple honesty. “The hormones are for my puberty, Mom. I’m gonna be a girl.”
My mother’s eyes smolder—a deep sadness overpowering sudden anger. “We should never have let you go to college so far from home.”
What is wrong with you?
My brother Ryan is six inches taller than me. I once ached to be like him—strong, agile, and virile. But I’m not. And I’m content with my body now.
Some of my cells are XY; others are just X—Turner Syndrome female. I inherited her timid disposition, alright. And ovatestes—a dysgenetic mix of ovary and testis that left me without a puberty.
“I’m not a boy, Mom. You know that.”
Becca’s warm hand closes over mine.
Love hides as well in the worry on my mother’s face—at least until it hardens with decision. “Your father will never—”
But he’s not here anymore, Mom. I bite my lip to keep from speaking it aloud.
Another tear rolls down my mother’s cheek. Her mournful face whispers resignation. “You’re set on this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
In truth, I must press forward or perish. “I need your help to correct my birth certificate. And I was hoping you and Dad would loan me the money for surgery. I’m not sure how much longer I can hide my breast development at work, and I can’t get another job without proper ID.”
My mother hesitates a moment before tender resolve sweeps away the bitter ashes. “As soon as the divorce is final, I’m moving back to Joliet. When the house sells, I’ll loan you whatever you need.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Miami caresses my cheeks with sunshine, nourishing the freckles scattered across my face. The healing rays banish the last shadow of winter and leave me comfortably warm.
“I made it home safe, Mom.” If she knew how suicidal I’ve been on motorcycles, she wouldn’t worry about a commercial plane flight.
“Sweetheart, are you sure about this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right. When you’re ready, I’ll file the paperwork. By the way, your father forbid surgery and demanded I not loan you any money. I reminded him of our pending divorce and my habit of keeping the promises I make.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
After a long shower, I change into pajamas and settle down with a good book.
Until my housemate arrives. And the phone rings.
“Got it!” Sarah yells. A minute later she taps on my door. “It’s for you.”
I slide out of bed, pad across the carpet to the kitchen, and grab the handset. “Hello?”
“Lee? You sound like your sister.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You’re living with a girl?”
“Yeah. I met Sarah in college.”
“Is she petite?”
“Um. Not exactly. She’s a couple inches taller than me. Curvier. And more athletic.”
“Then you need to sleep with someone more feminine before even thinking about surgery.”
Can’t you see I’m a girl? The hunger for my father’s love—all the desperate longing of my childhood—will never be satisfied.
“I already have,” I say—a lie as absurd as Dad thinking me functionally male. I cannot father a child, nor even a woman penetrate, but I lack the courage to share that truth with a father already ashamed of me.
Swollen gray clouds scud low across an April morning, their dark faces threatening more than a casual sprinkling. Nearby palms dance a slow ballet to the approaching storm. Great drops spatter against my windscreen. I dash across the parking lot toward the institute—and into the deluge.
Inside, I brave the restroom long enough to grab paper towels, then rush up the staircase. Back pressed against my office door, I blot my clothes dry until I’m no longer an entrant in a wet T-shirt contest. Until I’m safe again. At my desk.
An hour later, Julie pokes her head through my doorway. “I’ve got the paperwork for your trip.”
“I’m going?” The military exercise is no secret, but why me?
“Your name’s on my list.” Julie passes me an envelope. “Airline tickets, cash advance… And the classified visit authorization to get you on base.”
“I didn’t think they needed me.” I lose my clearance—and maybe Dad his—if someone finds out I’m on hormones.
Julie eases into the chair across the desk from me. “Tom, Matt, and Cooper are all sleeping in the barracks. You’ll stay by yourself in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. One of the guys will escort you wherever else you need to go.”
“I can find my own way around the base, Julie.”
“No, Lee. You can’t. Consider that official company policy. If you wander off by yourself, the commanding officer may figure you deserve whatever happens to you.”
“But—” Too late. She’s gone.
Emily stands in the doorway now. Em, who called me one night after washing down a bottle of Valium tablets with a fifth of Johnnie Walker. Em, who asked if I was jealous of her dating Matt. “You know why, don’t you?” she says.
“Yeah. Guess I do.”
“You never were the most masculine guy. And you’ve gotten more feminine since your accident.”
My lovely British bike floated across a clear sky one afternoon, and we both tumbled down the road. In a fleeting dream, Folly wrote my epitaph in blood along the street. Mercy intervened—kept me from harm—but Patience would brook no more of my reckless ways. Fleeing the specter of death, I sought refuge with a doctor who treated halflings like me.
Outside, ragged sunbeams fight through the overhead sea of gray.
“I’m a girl, Em. The boy died that day.”
A hint of pain mars the acceptance on her face. “You’re leaving?”
“In August.”
“I’ll miss you,” she says. Then departs in heavy silence.
After six hours of fair skies, we land without incident in San Francisco. Eventually I make my way to a townhouse on 31st Avenue, off the N Judah line. The cost of surgery includes a place to stay, shared with a half dozen other patients.
Monday is Labor Day, so I see the doctor Tuesday. His assistant schedules an interview with a psychologist—to verify my sanity. Deborah frowns at my jeans, though, and tells me to wear a dress to the appointment. Then she talks me into letting the surgeon fix my nose—the one feature I got from my father.
After taking photographs, the doctor explains that the surgeries will be performed as three outpatient procedures. I’ll recover in the townhouse—even if something goes wrong—because the local hospitals won’t take his patients.
Does the risk of surgery matter? I have no other option. So at the times appointed, I lie on a gurney in a supply room the doctor calls his operating theater and place my life in God’s hands.
Afterward, pain shadows my every move. Whenever I stop, the dull ache in my tailbone grows until it consumes each waking thought and pursues me into my dreams. I walk as far as my strength allows, then sit until I can bear the torment no longer. Thus in ragged spasms do I tour the City by the Bay.
So long as I keep moving, a smile flickers through my pain. Riding back from Chinatown, though, I shift my weight from one hip to the other to secure a moment of comfort.
The woman who’s been staring for the past three blocks moves to the seat beside me. “How can you let him do that?”
The rhinoplasty left me looking like a deranged raccoon. The bruising faded somewhat as the discoloration spread to my cheeks, but it’s still too much for makeup to hide.
“You should leave him,” she says.
Living in a boys’ dorm, I learned that a man can do whatever he wants to me; I don’t have the strength to resist. Shame kept me silent then. Would I have the courage to walk away from an abusive relationship? I squirm in my seat once again and turn my face away.
“Call me if you change your mind.” She hands me her card, sighs aloud, and gets off at the next stop.
Six weeks after my final surgery only a bit of tenderness remains, so I pack my few belongings and board a jet for Chicago.
Mom said someone would pick me up, but I find only strangers when I scan the crowd. Some cute hunk of a guy in a letter jacket saunters right up to me, slides his hands inside my open coat and draws me close. The way a lover might.
I gawk at his winsome face while trying to assemble enough fragments of my sanity to make sense of the world. His hair falls past his brow into dark brown eyes that shine with laughter. A walrus mustache guards a smile that speaks of an impudent love.
Brodie! An insane squeal bursts from my lips. I stretch up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. “It’s been—what—five years?”
“Yeah.” He picks up my bag and cozies an arm around my shoulder. “I’m not surprised, you know.”
“Really? About what?”
“You bein’ a girl.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
“You had a crush on me when we were kids, didn’t you?”
Of all my cousins, Brodie’s the only boy. A year younger than me, he was always bigger and stronger and faster than his half-girl playmate. He learned soon enough how fragile I was. And protected me. “Yeah. Guess I did.”
We spend the hour drive to Joliet recounting stories of our youth—more honest now than we’ve ever been. I cry when he drops me off at Mom’s and heads back to work.
My mother hugs me a warm welcome. “You look great.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Her tender smile borders on mischievous as she hands me a folded sheet of paper—my new birth certificate. I clap my hands together, bounce up and down, then hug her tight.
We chatter on like I’m nine again, and it’s okay for me to be her little girl. We fill the days with ordinary mother-daughter things, catching up a bit, reminiscing more. But after a week, I’m itching to get back to work and return her money.
She gives me a ride to the airport herself. When the attendant calls my flight, Mom takes me by the shoulders and kisses me on the forehead, “I always worried about you, sweetheart. But now I know you’ll be all right.”
“Thanks Mom.” I hug her one more time and stroll down the ramp to my plane.
Behind the Miami Shipyards building a majestic rainbow soars heavenward. Somewhere nearby, gardenias add their sweet fragrance to the salt air and diesel fumes.
I stop to check my reflection in the glass doors. Since the day I quit work and left for California, no one has questioned my gender. But a couple of engineers at the institute will make certain the world knows I’m a freak.
A shadow creeps along the sidewalk toward me. For the first time in months, darkness infects my heart. I lean against the stucco wall and close my eyes.
The same men who ridiculed me as a boy will no doubt mock me as a girl.
A drop splashes my cheek. Then a second. I swing the heavy door open and move inside to a bench in the lobby. However brutal the environment, this job is the fastest way to pay back my mother.
I climb the grand staircase to the second floor to find my old boss. When I poke my head through his doorway, Tom glances at his watch and waves me toward a chair. “I’ve only got a minute, Lee. What can I do for you?”
“My name’s Lianne now, sir. I’d like my old job back.”
“I’d love to have you. But our budget got cut.”
He’s always been nice to me, but his no means no. “Thanks anyway.”
Tom stands when I do and accompanies me down the stairs. “I’d be happy to write a recommendation in your new name.”
“Thanks.”
At the front door he pauses. “See Julie before you leave. Okay? She’s got some paperwork for you.”
“Yeah. Sure.” I really don’t feel like signing anything, but the divorced mother of three is a friend.
Surprise flickers across Julie’s face before she stands and greets me. “Welcome back. What should I call you now?”
“Lianne.”
“Everything went well?”
“Yeah. Tom said you had some papers for me?”
She slides open the top drawer of her filing cabinet. “When he found out why you were leaving, Tom put you on extended leave. So your medical coverage wouldn’t lapse.”
Julie smiles—like a shark scenting blood—and hands me a manila envelope. “I persuaded the insurance company to pay for your surgeries. Have your doctor complete these forms, and I’ll handle the rest.”
I hug her in stunned silence—and cry—before strolling out into the Miami sunshine.
