A Rare and Beautiful Thing
By Emery C. Walters
Published by Queerteen Press
Visit queerteen-press.com for more information.
Copyright 2015 Emery C. Walters
ISBN 9781611527865
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
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All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America. Queerteen Press is an imprint of JMS Books LLC.
* * * *
A Rare and Beautiful Thing
By Emery C. Walters
Chapter 1: Meeting Cal
Chapter 2: Prom
Chapter 3: Ghosts
Chapter 1: Meeting Cal
You never know what innocent little thing will start something rolling downhill so fast that your whole life changes. For me, it was asking my mom if I could tell her something about myself, something important. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve known better. I know it didn’t start what happened to my neighbor’s family, but in ours, it wasn’t very pleasant after that either. It opened a rift in our family, between my mother and me that I never would’ve known could be there if I’d kept my mouth shut. But she was my mother, you know? I thought she’d be there for me. Her demeanor turned to ice as soon as I said the letters L-G-B-T and she asked me what they meant. The first thing she said, was, “We will never talk of this again. I’m very disappointed in you.”
Mom went on to say it wasn’t because I was a lesbian or whatever the hell transgender meant; it was because of the tattoo. I knew this was a lie. I only have the one small tattoo of a butterfly, a Richmond Birdwing butterfly to be exact, on my left breast. I never should have mentioned the topic of my sexual orientation or identity. I wasn’t even sure myself yet what or who I was. That had been the idea though, to discuss it with my mother, get her input, reason things out. Isn’t that what parents are for, to be there for you? To help you figure things out? It sure didn’t seem like that to me, though, for as soon as I brought up the subject, my confusion and fears, she sat back.
She set her coffee down carefully and went on, still calm, “Miranda Rose, you’re a perfectly normal young woman with a growing interest in young men. You’re right on track. You should be out dating boys and going to movies, things like that, not spending your allowance mutilating your body with those ugly tattoos. What man will want you looking like that? How will you ever get a job? What will you tell your children? I don’t even want to be seen in public with you anymore.” Here she stopped, sighed dramatically, and then her voice changed as it so often did, to a hiss. “It’s such a shame. You’re such a beautiful young woman. Well, you were,” she sniffed, delicately, as if she were a tender heroine in a Victorian novel. “You were.”
Mom continued, so into her lecture that I was able to drift away, first mentally, then out of the room, and out of the house, but the derogatory remarks had cut deep. They hurt like the thorns on the rose bush outside our kitchen window and followed me like the scent of the roses on it. I shut the kitchen door as quietly as I could, but I could not shut the door on my feelings. Neither, apparently, could I escape the notice of my eleven year old next door neighbor, a boy who looked as sad as I felt.
I needed to be by myself. I felt lost, but not mean. I couldn’t be mean to this little boy. I didn’t see how anyone could, he was so sweet. “Curly,” I said to him, sitting down on the porch swing and calling to him to come over and sit beside me. “What’s wrong?” He’d never looked sad before. He was a happy kid with freckles and brown hair that glowed red in the sunshine. He was into art and karate. He had confidence and could talk the ears off an adult. I have no idea how he got so mature. He had a half-brother, Cal, who was my age—we both had just turned seventeen—who lived with his ‘other parents’ but was here for the summer. I didn’t know him very well, as he seemed to be as shy as I was.
Curly scrunched his chubby self up beside me. I know he felt fat but it was just that age. Once he grew taller, he would thin out. “I had a pet frog. His name was Rowdy Junior. He died. I feel terrible. I guess I’m not a good pet-grower.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“When I told Mom it died, she gave me that look of hers. My dad heard me and was all lectures and stuff; ‘Here’s what you should have done’, and like that. They treated me like it was all my fault. But Cal helped me find a towel and a box to bury it in and said a prayer over it for me.”
That was different. “What did he say?” I asked.
Curly squinched up his eyes. I could hear my mom muttering in the house behind me. The gin bottle clanked. I wished I had some.
Curly began piously, “‘Little Rowdy loved this frog,’” that’s what Cal called me sometimes, after his toy. Rowdy is a puppet but it means, um, happy and active or something.”
I nodded. Okay. Rowdy the toy, Rowdy the boy, Rowdy the frog. Never heard about Rowdy before, or a Rowdy doll, though some of my old Barbies had been a bit, well, precocious. Anyhow, Curly pulled at my arm and went on,
“My darling froggy, wild and free, why’d you go and die on me? You left me here alone and sad, and now I feel like shit, real bad. So God of frogs, I know you’re there, please take Rowdy Junior, um, somewhere.”
I had my mouth shut so tight that my eyes clamped closed to help keep the hysterical laughter from bubbling forth. Curly had tears in his eyes as his ragged little boy’s tenor dribbled to a halt. From beside the porch came a plaintive male voice, “That’s not what I said!”
At that exact moment Curly’s mother called him home. She wanted to ask him about a missing box and a towel. Cal winked at me and dodged around the back of our houses into the trees that lined the creek there. I ran back to join him. My mom’s voice trailed behind me like a cat on Halloween—“Mirandahhhh!” but I outran her.
* * * *
I was out of breath when I caught up to him. My own reddish brown hair was tangled with twigs and apple blossoms from not ducking. I must have looked like shit. My mind flew into overdrive and suddenly I hoped he’d kiss me, you know, all that romantic stuff…though, a boy? Well, like my mom said, how would you know if you didn’t try?
Enough. I caught up to him. At least he didn’t have the redhead affliction. I looked more like his brother than he did. His hair was ashes and earth mixed together, odd, different, but it suited him. His eyes were dark, and I couldn’t even tell you if they were brown or blue. Maybe they changed.
He did reach out and catch me and keep me from falling into the creek though. And he welcomed me with another hymn:
“Cheese is yummy, this I know, cuz the farmer told me so. Squeeze their boobies, out comes milk, it’s so tasty when you’re sick.”
While I caught my breath, he went on to sing, “Cleaning up the heaves…” and then we both were laughing too hard to sing anything at all. I thought, now, kiss me so I’ll know! Maybe I could like boys. But all he did was look at me wistfully. And I knew.
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“You’re wishing I was a guy, aren’t you?” I almost laughed. It figured.
His face turned red.
I said, “Well, I do, too. I think.” I started to cry.
Well, that went well. Comforting his brother over his frog-loss, then running into the woods, then standing here with a guy I barely knew, laughing, and now crying. He took my arm and drew me to the grass with him, not worrying as he should (gay, you know) about grass stains. Damn him. Then I saw he had tears on his face, too.
I wallowed around in my misery until my inner bitch made me stick my face up close to his. Why wouldn’t he kiss…? Oh, yeah. The gay thing. Maybe I shouldn’t think about his problems, but he’d thought enough about Curly’s to provide an entire funeral for his frog. I didn’t need to be selfish. I could be just as nice as he was. Maybe he wanted me to kiss him? One side of my nose started twitching like it did when Mom served me Brussels sprouts. Nope. Ain’t gonna happen. Which made me giggle.
I blurted out, “Doesn’t matter if I’m a boy or a girl, we still aren’t gonna kiss each other, are we?” And I snorted. So of course he had to kiss me, and you know what, we both liked it, I think because we knew it wasn’t going to lead to anything else. Call it ‘practice.’ At least it made us stop crying. Both of us.
Sometimes things lead to other things as surely as kicking a rock can start a landslide. This wasn’t one of those times. Not like you’d expect anyway, roses and romance and best friends all through high school, marriage, and—ugh.
But, yes it was, because as we sat up with our knees touching, looking at each other, I knew something had started with that kiss, even though it wasn’t a romance. “What are you thinking about?” he asked me with a wistful half smile.
“Boobs,” I blurted. “Gym class. All the girls in my class naked in the shower room. All of them innocent and only sneaking glances at each other to measure their own progress or compare how big their busts are getting. No one else is getting…trying…no one is looking back, or doing the old vee thing, you know, checking out the eyes, the chest, the—uh—crotch and then back up again.” I reached out and patted his knee, realizing I’d upset him somehow. “What? What is it? What did I say?”
He looked up at me from under long lashes. Damn. I felt butch all over all of a sudden. This trans thing I may or may not have going (which I wasn’t ready to open up, like a long-awaited Christmas gift that may or may not be your heart’s desire) either way, I was okay because I liked girls. There! Oh my God, I’d almost said it out loud! But I hadn’t, so it wasn’t real yet. Whew!
He said quietly, “You’re so lucky; if you get—hot—nobody can tell. But with me…yeah, the shower room, the guys all totally comfortable, goofing around, and me, praying, I mean, we used to have a swim team in junior high—everyone had to be on it. And…well, I wasn’t the only one who got—something obvious,” he added bitterly, “on the freaking diving board.”
I interrupted, “An erection?” I blinked, trying to make it easy, or a joke.
His eyes rolled. “Duh.”
“But you weren’t the only one.”
“But I was the only one I cared about. I mean, I knew why I did, but I figured everyone else was different, that they were, I mean, it just happens, you know? But for me…”
I had a good thing to say. “But you were comparing your insides with their outsides,” and the look that passed between us was bonding—hysterical, but bonding. “No, I mean…not your ‘outside,’ not the obvious part.”
“Well actually, I was, kind of, I mean, you know, I’m not a size queen or anything,” he stammered, trying to pretend he was joking, but failing.
“I don’t want to ask, but really, was it? I mean, bigger?”
“Well, of course!” he blushed. “Now, can we like, go back to what you were going to say?”
“What I meant was,” I stammered, giggling, “You were—comparing what you knew about yourself and of course you assumed nobody else was…”
“It was a class of thirty. There were probably two other boys like me. But I didn’t know that then.” His face was a mixture of pain and confusion even though still rosy from laughing. It made him even better looking—sort of innocent, in some way I could not define.
He was finally able to laugh normally (and he didn’t snort like I often do, damn it). “Well, I was kind of comparing their outsides with my outsides!”
“Dicks!” I laughed, pointing at his crotch.
“Boobs!” he replied, poking me in the chest.
We both sighed at the same time. More bonding. How sad, but how non-threatening, and how peaceful. The woods around us weren’t silent, while we’d been talking our voices were the only thing I had heard, but now that we quieted I could hear the birds, the squirrels, the wind rustling the leaves, and since it was spring, I thought I could hear the skunk cabbages opening up, the reeds by the pond pushing up out of the ground, the water trickling over the rocks. And I could hear squelching, like someone was walking through the mud, coming toward us. Damn.
Cal heard it, too. “Quick!” he joked, and he threw me to the ground and himself almost on top of me, and proceeded to kiss me. I yanked the top of my blouse to one side, just enough that my tat showed, nothing else, but my sister wouldn’t be able to tell that. We were both semi-enjoying it and semi-grossed out, and I tickled him. I could also feel that he had some ambiguity about me being only a girl…and the kiss did turn into something splendid, something that was rare and beautiful.
For a while. Then I heard my younger sister, Nelly’s, voice. She’s fourteen going on thirty. “Ew, they’re kissing!” she hissed and there were giggles, and then the sound of feet running away. “I’m telling!” her shout trailed behind her. Well, maybe fourteen going on twelve would be more accurate.
We pulled apart. “Was it good for you, too, honey?” Cal said as loudly as he could, smiling, tracing my butterfly with his fingers and with his eyes as well.
So that was the highlight of my week. We walked back to our houses and made a point of drawing away from each other slowly and dramatically. As I went into my house my spirits lifted as I saw my mother slipping away from the window back into her easy chair. She pretended she hadn’t been watching, but I knew my sister had spread the good news. My dad winked at me, but my mom said stiffly, “Don’t you go getting pregnant by that lowlife next door. He’s only here for the summer. There’s only one thing boys want at that age.”
I had to hide my sudden grin. That was Mom, acting as if we’d been discussing me dating boys and wanting birth control for the past six months.
* * * *
That was then; this is now. It’s September and I’m back in school. Here I am, a senior at last, and I couldn’t care less. The summer was great, I’ll give it that, but only because of Cal. We spent every moment together and never ‘did anything’ (Take that, Mom!) If my sister tried to sneak up on us we’d kiss, but it was never the thrill it was the first time when both of us were wondering. By the third and fourth time we both knew. There was no point in ‘exploring’ the straight thing any longer. That was it; we were both what we were. Whatever I was, I still couldn’t get my head around if I were possibly ‘a boy trapped in a girl’s body’ or ‘just’ a lesbian. I didn’t even like the word; gay was bad enough but at least it was easy to say. Unless, or course, the words ‘I am’ came in front of it. Other than to me, I know Cal never said them at all. And in August when he had to go back home, well, we’d had a lovely summer as best friends, no gender involved.
We’d gone swimming in the pond, at the town pool, and hiking through the woods. We took Curly along as often as we could, because our parents thought we needed a chaperone. We went frog hunting (successfully, and I had the glorious fun of having one put down my shirt. Ugh.) We went butterfly hunting after that, at my insistence. No luck there though, but it was a great day anyway because we saw a doe and two fawns, and a skunk, and Curly found a hornet’s nest. The doe and fawns ran away from us, and
we ran away from the skunk and the hornet’s nest. And now I had only memories, and they had to last me until the next time Cal could come to visit.
It was time for school to start again. I was told to start thinking of college or a job. Mom said I’d make a lovely hair dresser with my grades, which weren’t bad but weren’t college material either. Dad said I should get a nontraditional job (sure, instead of a nurse or a teacher, like in the old days?) He meant it as a joke, but it was a badly timed peace offering at the same time. Many times he would say the most awful things, or maybe I just took them wrong, I don’t know; how could I know? I never got to know either of my parents as well as I would have liked, you know, as people. Their roles, self-defined, as parents, always got in the way. And as school progressed, I just grew more and more depressed.
First, my periods were awful. I didn’t know any other girl at school who admitted to having cramps like I did, cramps that would—or should—get you out of gym class and let you stay home in bed with a lovely heating pad. I wondered if it was all in my head because I wasn’t happy with my female condition. They said that could cause problems, but really, I don’t think anyone’s mind power is that strong. If mine were that strong, I’d use it in other ways, like to have a best friend again, or a girlfriend. Either one.
To make things worse I had about the biggest boobs in gym class. And I hated them. Which made me know that keeping the idea of being transgendered from myself was not going to work much longer.
The only good thing that happened that fall was there was this new girl, Ada, who sat beside me in history class. If I had a ‘type’ she wouldn’t have been it, and of course, the odds were overwhelmingly in favor of her being straight anyhow. But I was friendly to her, because I’m that way, and anyway I know how awful it is to feel like you’re different; new, fat, gay, they all make you feel like an outsider; different; flawed. They shouldn’t, but on the inside? Sometimes we are all the same there.
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