by Nicole Mello
“Charity begins at home,” she said. I would laugh.
“We’re not charity,” I told her. She kissed me on the forehead.
“No, but you certainly eat more than enough to be,” she replied, and my father laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. This was the relationship I had with my parents.
I would never have traded it for anything, not if I had known.
Chapter Three
I was an independent child by nature. I did not need anybody to keep me happy or occupied, so I was pleased to be left alone. Henry never stood for that, though. He loved to give me the pleasure of his company. Even if he was sitting in silence, working in one of his journals or reading one of his fantasy books, he was almost always there. When I said I wanted to be alone, Eliza left me alone. Henry seemed to think he knew better.
Henry always had a wild imagination, too. Wilder than mine, wilder than Eliza’s. He was very inventive, very imaginative. I’m sure that, if you went to my family’s storage unit (if it still exists), there would be tape after tape of home videos directed by Henry, starring him, myself, and Eliza. He loved to make up stories and act them out. We did productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream every day for a month once, I remember. He knew the entire show, word for word. He was very bright, perfectly clever. Very quick. Henry Clerval was a singularly incredible human being.
When I was eight, almost nine, we gained another sibling. This one was my parents’ biological child, the blood sibling of Ernest, but we were all treated the same. Our blood didn’t matter. They loved me and Eliza — and, to be honest, even Henry; their hearts were plenty big enough — as much as they loved Ernest and my new brother. William was born in the tail end of 1995, and he was the delight of everyone in our family. He was a joy to us all, and we loved him dearly. He loved us all in return, of course, with the unabashed, untamable love that a child has for his family. Henry was around so often that he was looked up to as one of his brothers. Will — he preferred Will, as he got older — had four older siblings when he was born; only one was blood, but all four of us loved him like we loved nothing and nobody else.
Will was our pride and joy, like I said. My mother, unfortunately, had a rough pregnancy with him, and he was a colicky baby. He cried all the time. He took the attention off of myself and my siblings, which I was content with, being as independent as I was. Will was agreeable and pleasant when he was content, but this was rare, in the beginning. It gave us time separate from our parents, and we developed into our own personalities. Though we were all raised the same, and never treated differently for our genders, Eliza was nurturing by nature. That was just who she was. She grew into that position among us. She was also very creative, and enjoyed entertaining with Henry. The two of them often put on their own skits and shows for me when my family was occupied.
Henry grew into himself very well. His interest in fantasies and storytelling served him well, and he grew into that position, almost as a leader of the three of us. He thought of himself as a knight, I think. Maybe even a prince, or a king. Brave, chivalrous, heroic. He was right, of course; he always was. I was still introverted, still very independent, but I humored him and Eliza. I was quiet, but I loved to spend time with them. We would explore the city when permitted, never going too far from the building, and we would make up the most incredible stories.
Ernest found themselves during Will’s infancy, as well. By the time I was eleven and Ernest was seventeen, Ernest had grown into who they truly were. Ernest and I were still sharing a room, and Eliza shared a room with the baby, because Eliza, at age eleven, didn’t mind at all. I remember the night Ernest explained everything to me.
“Victor,” they said. “Sit down.”
I sat. We had spent the time after dinner that night working on a science project that Ernest had due soon; they were older, but their interests were mostly in the subjects of English and history, whereas I was more talented with the science and mathematics aspects of our education. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, and they sat beside me, and I remember being afraid.
“Are you okay?” I asked. They nodded, and took my one of my hands in both of theirs.
“Victor, I’m going to tell you something. I understand that you’re going to have questions, and I want you to feel free to ask them. You just have to keep an open mind, okay?”
This wasn’t making me any less afraid. It sounded like they were dying; their voice was shaking. If they were afraid, why wouldn’t I be? Ernest was my role model; I looked up to them like I looked up to no one else. They were much stronger than me, much older than me. I was afraid when they were afraid. But I listened to what they were saying, and I knew it was important, so I nodded. They looked down at my hands, and they explained to me that they weren’t a boy like I was. They felt like a girl, just born in the wrong body.
This is a concept some people still don’t seem to fully understand today, but, at eleven years old, I felt I comprehended it well enough. Ernest wasn’t dying, like I was afraid of. I had studied gender in school and in my textbooks, and I thought I had a fair enough grasp on it. It took getting used to — as anything does — but Ernest stuck with it, explaining it to me, answering questions when I asked them for several weeks afterwards. I told them I loved them, that they were important to me. We had always been very close. They laughed, and hugged me, and cried, so I cried. I loved them very much.
Like I told you earlier, the two of us read a lot. We read books all the time at the library, and we both enjoyed the works of Ernest Hemingway. You might know — or you might not; a lot of people don’t, it’s not a big deal — that Ernest Hemingway’s child, Gregory, changed their name to Gloria. When Ernest asked me for helping choosing a new, more feminine name, and we agreed Ernestine just seemed lazy, we spent some time thinking on it before I suggested Gloria to them. They laughed until they cried, or maybe it was the other way around. Anyways, in the end, Ernest changed their name Gloria. They changed pronouns, ‘he’ and their slowly-integrated ‘they’ to ‘she,’ so I’ll use she now. Gloria was still the same person I had always known; she was just my sister now, instead of my brother.
Gloria needed help to tell our parents. She was nervous about it; our parents were very kind-hearted, but this was still the 1990s, so it made sense to be a little anxious, a little afraid. Eliza was there, and Henry, because he always was. Will was three. Gloria told my parents what she had told me, and she explained everything that she understood, and my mother and my father embraced her. They were very open-minded people, and they loved us all so much, it really didn’t even matter to them. What mattered was that we were happy and loved.
I switched bedrooms with Eliza, so Gloria and Eliza shared a room now, and I was with Will. Gloria put a lot of work into it over the years, and, finally, she got the body she needed. She looked so much like our mother afterwards. Will never even knew her as Ernest; he called her Glo once he could talk, and my sister was thrilled. Once she figured herself out, she was happy. That’s all I wanted. My parents were happy. She was happy. I was happy.
Glo’s revelation and her fearlessness were inspirational to me. I began to inspect myself; I wasn’t transgender, no, but I knew something was different. I think children always know when they’re a little different than the others. It was around this time that I began exploring what I was telling you about earlier — my love for Eliza. Like I said before, I thought, for a little while, that I was supposed to fall in love with Eliza. For some time, I thought I had. I mistook my feelings for her; I was subconsciously normalizing myself for my society, trying to fit into the context of the world I saw around me. After Gloria’s announcement, I realized that the world around me was not all just one way, that there was normal to become. There was, actually, so much more.
My love for Eliza was nothing more than a brother’s love for his sister. I realized that at this point. I was fairly certain of other facts, as well, but I was still eleven years old. I couldn’t be expected to know everyt
hing, or to understand myself completely. Who does, at eleven? But at least I had gotten that far. I was beginning to feel more comfortable with myself, more at home in my own skin. I talked to Glo about more personal topics now, and I did so more frequently. I felt that I was able to. Henry, also, helped me through this time, as did Eliza, but they were my age, and going through their own discoveries of their own selves.
It took time. These things do.
Chapter Four
My childhood was happy and carefree with the Frankensteins, who were the only people I had ever known as family; Linh had only ever been something of a benefactor to me, and a poor one, at that. By this time in my childhood, she was mostly a distant memory. I never received a great deal of affection from her, but, with the Frankensteins, I was home. I was loved, I was safe, I was happy. Even then, I knew that wherever they were was the best place for me.
My interest in science grew exponentially once I entered into science-specific classes in junior high school. Of particular interest to me was the study of biology. After my first discussions with Gloria, I absorbed any information I could on sex and gender, and then further, approaching topics like evolution, disease, ecology, cell biology. I was also fascinated by genetics, by electricity, and by life and death. I was amazed by it. I studied every night, I read every text I could get my hands on. I was hungry for knowledge. Henry understood me. Well, I mean, my family understood me, but Henry got me.
Henry would often stay the night at my apartment. Sometimes he would sleep in my room; sometimes he, Eliza, and I would lay our blankets and our pillows down in the den and watch movies until we fell asleep. It was on one of these nights when the storm happened. I was fourteen; we were watching an animated movie, something with horses. Do you remember a movie like that? I think I only remember these pieces so well because of that night. Anyways, we had fallen asleep watching that movie, and I remember waking up because I felt like I was too warm. Usually, we would get tangled in our blankets, or one of us would roll onto the other, so I woke up prepared to shove Henry or Eliza off of me before just going back to sleep.
What you should probably know about the den in my family’s apartment was that it was just like a bedroom. It had four walls. It had a door to the rest of the apartment. It had a fire escape outside of the window. It was closed off. Our apartment was fairly high in the building, as well. That night, there was a horrible storm, and our building — which was taller than a lot of the buildings around it — got struck by lightning. My interest in lightning and the power of electricity was made more dramatic by this but, at the time, I wasn’t thinking about lightning. I was thinking about fire.
The fire got to the room we were in. My father told me later that they tried to get to the door, but the fire blocked it. My father said he trusted us to be able to get out through the window and down the fire escape, but my mother told us later how terrified he truly was that he couldn’t get to us. The fire had eaten through the apartment, and smoke was already filling the den. Eliza had childhood asthma, and always had weaker lungs than us; she was unconscious in minutes. Between Henry and I, we were able to break the window and get her onto the fire escape. Henry used our blankets to tie Eliza onto my back, since I was the larger of the two of us. We got all the way down to the ground, where the firefighters took Eliza from me and pulled Henry and I over to one of the ambulances to treat us for smoke inhalation.
I remember, at age fourteen, looking at Eliza, rousing from unconsciousness, and at Henry, covered in soot and coughing up smoke, and feeling the sharpest, most horrifying terror I had ever felt before. I realized then that I could never lose either of them. I realized, then, the separate feelings I had for Henry, which I had originally thought were meant to be for Eliza. I was in love with Henry, but how can you explain that to a boy who’s barely a teenager? That he was in love with his only friend? No, I couldn’t risk that. I could barely understand it. I just knew I could never be without him.
That fire, as I said earlier, pushed my interest in electricity into a very sharp light. I researched all I could on it, and it bled over into my studies of biology. I was so conflicted over my feelings for Henry that I threw myself wholly into this new interest, and I dedicated all that confusion and frustration to working through my hobby. Henry stayed my friend, as he always was. The two of us, at fourteen years old, didn’t know anything. Not like I know now.
They rebuilt the building. I only saw Henry at school when they were doing it; he was staying with family, and I was staying with family. I thought I needed the distance from him after what I discovered, but it turned out that that only made my feelings worse. My family commented on it every now and then, how I seemed to be a little sadder lately, a little more withdrawn, a little quieter; I responded by withdrawing further.
It was only when we were able to move back into our apartment building, and Henry was returned to my daily routine, to my daily life, that I was pulled somewhat out of that empty state of being that I had entered into. He came back to me, and he stayed in the corner of my bedroom, like he always did, and he read his books, and he played games with Will, and he wrote poetry, which he read aloud to me, all while I studied and worked on invention after invention, project after project.
I chose to focus on my renewed interest in electricity instead of on Henry, a decision which I regret deeply now. I regret... I suppose I regret not spending as much time with him as I possibly could have. I hurt for every second that I wasted apart from him. I ache for every single moment that I missed by not being with him. I was so frightened then, but if I had known then what I know now, it would have been different. I would have loved him how he deserved to be loved, from the very beginning. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know then what I know now. I regret it. I regret it so much.
Sorry. I’m sorry. Anyways. Around this time, when I started exploring this new facet of myself, and Henry and I were entering high school (Eliza was one year behind us), we started to explore different interests, searching out career paths in the way that high school students will do. It was during this time that my studies in nature, science, and electricity continued in earnest, and I began navigating towards becoming a doctor. I kept studying these topics while Eliza explored herself and began striving towards nursing. Henry investigated the worlds of drama, of writing, of filmmaking, and the like. He was so captivated by storytelling; I wasn’t surprised at all. I thought it was impractical — well, we all thought it was impractical — but you couldn’t stop Henry.
Nobody could stop Henry. He was a force of nature.
Chapter Five
My high school years passed as anyone else’s did. I remember a few stories, which I want preserved. Since I see you clearly plan on using my story for some other purpose, I’ll tell you some of them. I want to preserve my memories of my family and of my dearest, closest friend; I want people to remember them as they were, not as what they became because of me.
My mother, as I told you, did a great deal of charity work. I also told you that, when I first met her, Gloria was working at Mont Blanc with her. This was something my mother did often; she would bring us along with her. Of the four of us, I think I went most often. As Gloria got older, she stopped having the time to spend on this activity, which wasn’t necessary for her. Will was, for a while, too young, and then he never ended up going very much before it was too late. Eliza went most frequently after me, I would say; she was, as I’ve said, naturally maternal and nurturing. I went very often.
Perhaps it was leftover sentiment from my rough beginnings, and the way this affected me. I knew how important the work we were doing was, because I had been on the other side of it, and it wasn’t easy. I wanted to be able to help other people the way my mother helped me and Linh. Plus, you know, I wanted to spend time with my mother. She was usually doing charity work, so the only way to spend extra time with her was to tag along when she volunteered. It was worth every second, though.
I was always interested in people.
It was probably an overlap from my interests in biology, but people fascinated me. The human form, too, fascinated me. I loved to learn all about people, and the people who came through places like Mont Blanc, or wherever else my mother was volunteering that week, were diverse to the extreme. I could observe so many different types of people when I volunteered with her. I had sketchbook after sketchbook filled with drawings of the people that I would meet when I was volunteering. Their stories were incredible to me, but their forms moreso. The range of the human body is truly astounding; no two people, I think, are exactly alike in appearance. Not even twins.
Once, my mother took me back to Mont Blanc. I remember enjoying going there, but, in my childhood, I was constantly afraid that I would see Linh there and that she would make me leave my family and go with her, so I always went to Mont Blanc with a degree of hesitation and anxiety. On this one particular day, I remember, I was drawing a particularly large man; he had tattoos everywhere I could see, and I was so fascinated by them. He noticed me.
“What’re you drawing?” he demanded. He had a very deep voice, and it startled me; I had been very focused on my sketch. I looked down at the drawing, then up at him.
“You,” I answered. There was no point to lying. I was much smaller than him, and he could see the sketch if he leaned towards me just slightly. I turned the sketchbook around to show him. He examined it for a moment before he laughed. I smiled.
