Alex as Well

by Alyssa Brugman

  Imagine if Uluru is absolute serenity and the ocean is homicidally mental, then my mother has been driving up and down the Pacific Highway for as long as I can remember.

  Sometimes she might get as far inland as, say, Mudgee, but then she kind of shakes herself out of it and heads back to the coast.

  My mother drops on the ground and she’s rolling there on the kitchen floor moaning, ‘You’re killing me.’

  So we’re back to that again.

  Twenty minutes later the pizza guy arrives. I take twenty bucks out of my mother’s wallet and pay him. I tear off two wedges for each of us and put them on a plate and we watch Bargain Hunt. The vegetarian is really good. It has feta on it. Salty. It’s as if nothing bad has happened, except my mother has hiccups. We’re good at pretending stuff wasn’t said. We do that all the time.

  But I’m still a girl.

  6

  IN THE MORNING Alex puts on the shirt with the peter pan collar, the tartan box-pleat tunic, and the knee-high socks. I dab on the shimmery pink eye shadow and the lip gloss. I looked up all these do-it-yourself hairstyles on the net. I’ve pinched my mother’s ceramic straightener to make some soft curls. Then when I’m finished General Wood abuses himself again.

  (Whatcha gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk?)

  Ok, here it is: everything you need to know on the noodle front.

  It’s really small.

  Or alternatively, it’s really, really big.

  Either way, since there will probably only ever be one owner-occupier, if you get my drift, it functions quite economically. Got the picture? I’m not going to mention it again.

  Alex and I are nervous and excited about going to the new school. We steal down the stairs smoothing the pleats and tweaking the seams between my fingers. My mother is standing at the window cupping a coffee in her hand.

  She glances at me, blanches, and then closes her eyes. She is counting to ten. I can tell what’s going on in there. If she scrunches her eyes up and wishes, maybe I will disappear.

  I oblige, but I have a lump wedged in my throat, bitter and lemony.

  Secretly, when I walked down the stairs, I wanted her to think I was pretty. I wanted her to touch my hair, and be proud of me, and wish me good luck today. Because this is the girl I want to be. Not slutty, or dumpy, but feminine and confident. I like this me.

  I enjoy being a girl on the train. I flick my hair out of my face and cross my legs. I inspect my nails. Nobody seems to be questioning my gender. One man even says, ‘Excuse me, young lady,’ as he moves past, which is a total trip. This young guy up the back is checking me out. He slouches and stares. I look demurely into my lap, but when I look back he is still staring. He holds up his phone and I’m pretty sure he is taking a photo of me.

  Which reminds me. I pull out my moby and look at it, just in case. No messages from my dad.

  I tap compose and then I sit there for ages. Eventually I type hey you, really quick and press send. I dump it in my pocket. It will buzz if he answers.

  As I look out the window I can’t help thinking about the pizza incident.

  What the hell was that?

  My mother does try to love me. They both do. Why is it so difficult for them? Am I so unlovable that they have to work that hard? I don’t know what it’s like to be the child of other parents, but I don’t think loving your kid should be such a chore.

  No new messages.

  You might be wondering about all my friends from my other school. Truth is I’m a loner. I have always been a little bit ashamed, because it’s been clear, as long as I can remember, that there is something really wrong with me. Kind of like the seagull with the fishing line wrapped around its leg. You know you can’t do anything about it so you try not to look at it.

  Also, this very bad thing happened, and I can’t go back there.

  Very bad.

  But I’m not going to tell you any more about that because you’re already feeling sorry for me, and I don’t want that to tip over into something else…like irritation. Instead I am going to tell you something good about me.

  I can clap really fast.

  Imagine the fastest clapping ever: well, I can do that. I can do six or seven claps in a second. I’m like a hummingbird. My hands are a total blur. You’re trying it right now, aren’t you?

  Ok, so maybe you can do five claps in one second, but can you do six or seven claps a second every second for a whole minute? No, you can’t, because that takes a special aptitude and a dogged commitment to fostering it.

  I’m not going to do it right now, because there are other kids who have hopped off the train at the same station, wearing the same uniform as me. I follow them through the big sandstone gates, smiling my head off at the giant girl on the billboard out the front, because she could be me. I could be her.

  There are good things about me. There are probably as many goods things as there are bad things. I am pretty as a girl. I’m really tall as a girl. I bet I could arm-wrestle any chick here, and half the guys too.

  They’re having an assembly. There’s a sea of kids sitting in the quad. The seniors are in seats up the back. I stand at the side hugging myself because I’m not really sure where I’m supposed to go. A few kids stare at me, but mostly they don’t, because I look normal, and since I’m in uniform, they don’t know that I’m new.

  Someone touches my elbow. She’s my buddy, she tells me. Her name is Amina. She’s eye level with me. I’m five nine, so she’s really tall for a girl too. She has a deep, melodic voice and a mild accent. She’s Somali. She’s House Leader and Sports Captain, according to two little pins on the lapel of her blazer. Amina is the most beautiful Earthling there has ever been.

  The teacher at the front talks about zone athletics, the library fashion parade, and then makes a long speech about how we’re not supposed to bully by Facebook.

  After assembly and on the way to class Amina looks through my timetable. She frowns, draws her hair back from her face and tucks it behind her ear.

  We stop outside a room. Amina slouches against the wall. She tells me a story, which I can’t remember, because I am too busy watching her lips. They are really pink on the inside. Sometimes I get little glimpses of tongue, and when she’s finished she shrugs and says, ‘and that’s the way the cookie is crumbling.’

  Isn’t that adorable?

  She tells me where to meet her at recess.

  You can see what’s going to happen, can’t you? I’m going to fall in love with Amina (who are we kidding? I’m already in love with Amina) and it’s going to be really, really complicated and totally unrequited, and I’ll probably end up with a broken heart—worse, because Amina won’t just reject me, she will be repulsed by me. She will tell everybody about my noodle, and then I’ll have to top myself in a really brutal man-way.

  I can see it too.

  Maybe it will end up a different way. Maybe I have happened on the only other one of whatever it is that I am. We will be hooking up and I will discover that she has a noodle.

  And we will laugh and laugh!

  7

  www.motherhoodshared.com

  David is staying at his brother’s place for a few more days.

  I had a good long look at myself yesterday. When Alex came home I was waiting for him. He had some makeup on, but I let it slide. He does wear makeup sometimes, even as a boy. It’s the emu craze.

  We had a really nice long hug. You don’t get to do that often when you have a teenage child. It was so good, as though we had a real connection for the first time in a long time, and then we came inside and I suggested we get pizza as a treat. I’ve always been very strict about diet, because as a little one Alex had a lot of problems with his bowels, and we found if we were quite strict on the vegetables he was a lot better in that department.

  Anyway, we came inside and he picked up the phone and orderered vegetarian! The few times we have had pizza over the years Alex has always, always ordered chicken an
d bacon deluxe. He announced it, just like that, that he was vegetarian.

  I started to cry because yesterday we had a teenage son who liked chicken and bacon pizza, and today we have a vegetarian corss dresser. I don’t know what happened.

  I don’t care if he wants to be vegetarian. I’m happy to support that, it was just the way he came out and said it without any discussion. He didn’t come to me and talk about how he was feeling about being a meat eater and talk it through with me, no, he just made the decision and told me afterwards.

  It’s the same thing as suddenly deciding on being a girl. I was prepared for that in a way. I have been his whole life, but it still came as a shock to me when it happened. I thought there would be some warning signs and that he would come to us to ask more questions. I have been dreading the questions, but in a way the questions would be better than this.

  I feel like an outsider. Alex is becoming this person that I don’t know. I always dreamed of having a little girl, and going clothes shopping with her, and this is some creepy perversion of that dream. It’s horrifying, and I know I’m not dealing with it well at all.

  I’m sorry for him, but I am also angry that he feels like he can’t come to me to talk. I have always been there for him. I have been so attentive. I have given up the last fifteen years of my life to be attentive to him.

  In the back of my head I wonder if we should have made him a girl to start with. Should we have had whatever surgery was needed to make him a girl in the first place?

  Heather

  COMMENTS:

  * * *

  Dee Dee wrote:

  If you’d made him a girl she would have wanted to be a boy. He’s a teenager. This is what they do.

  * * *

  Cheryl wrote:

  Oh Heather, you are going though hell, aren’t you? We are here for you darlen.

  * * *

  Vic wrote:

  Have you ever thought Alex doesn’t want to actually be a boy but feels unsafe as a boy, and being a girl would make him feel safer? Could it be he’s trying to tell you that something in his environment is threatening for him? Maybe bullying issues at school? Have you talked at all to his teachers? What is his relationship like with his father?

  * * *

  Earthboy wrote:

  You should be proud of your son for having a conscience about the planet. Do you know the relative carbon footprints of vegetarians to meat eaters?

  * * *

  Georgeous wrote:

  I felt this way for a long time and just thought I was a tomboy. I was really depressed because I was a freak without a name. Someone said I was ‘bigendered’ and it really seemed to be right. I’d rather have a boy’s body. I switch back and forth from feeling like I should be a boy one day and feeling like I should be a girl the next. It’s like having a dual personality only the other one is a boy. Until I figure out what I am I’m going to keep telling myself that I’m both. Lately I’ve been pretty down.

  8

  IN ART METAL I’m drawing a picture of our house. Amina does general wood, so I’m on my own.

  I told you that we should have done general wood, Alex says.

  I have to draw because I haven’t got the right shoes on to bang bits of metal with a hammer. I’m supposed to have steel-capped boots in case I go into a frenzy and metal and hammers fly everywhere.

  The other students are hitting bits of metal with hammers. A few of them stare at me every now and then. Mostly they ignore me.

  You know when you arrive late to a thing, you’ve missed the instructions, and everybody has already started doing whatever they’re doing? They know each other’s names. They’ve already formed little groups. I’ve always felt like that, but this time it’s warranted.

  There’s music playing. Sometimes everyone hits their hammers in time with the beat. It sounds like Tapdogs.

  The teacher’s name is Susannah. She has long blonde hair that falls in ringlets. She has a nose ring. She doesn’t wear tie-dye exactly, but she wears clothes in layers with beads hanging off them and she smells like sandalwood. Sounds all arty and casual, right? Sounds like she’s got rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and goes tinkling around the classroom sprinkling encouragement like a big nurturing teacher fairy.

  You can imagine that Susannah is going to be all supportive and I am going to blossom under her tutelage. I will make an art-metal cage and find my inner spirit, and open the door to the cage and set my soul free. There will be butterflies, or white doves, or attractive people smiling and blowing bubbles, which will catch on the breeze and float away over some green grassy hillside with unicorns grazing on it.

  The reason we don’t use her surname is because it’s Eastern European, so it’s about ten syllables entirely composed of consonants. She plays music loud because that way we don’t talk and we concentrate on our work instead. Susannah is actually an art-metal dictator.

  At the beginning of class this guy threw his hammer in the air and caught it. Susannah dragged him over to the seat next to me by the ear. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. He has to draw too.

  I am nonchalantly drawing my house and the guy next to me kicks my leg. He has one of those pencil cases where you can slip the letters in that spell your name and his says ‘Ty’. That’s it. Two letters. He does a chopping action across his throat.

  ‘What?’ I mime.

  He draws a square on the table and then he rubs it out with his thumb.

  Ty glances furtively around. ‘Is this your house?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I answer.

  ‘Can’t you do a different one? Something simple,’ he tells me.

  I look around at other kids banging and crashing with Beyoncé.

  (If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it.)

  I turn the page over and chew on the end of my pencil.

  Susannah jingles up and leans over our desk. She picks up Ty’s drawing and harrumphs. She drops it and picks up mine. She chuckles.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You are going to make this,’ she tells me. She outlines how I am going to make an exact replica of our house and then put a hinge on the roof to make it a letterbox. ‘This part will be tricky,’ she says, pointing at the page.

  I shake my fist. ‘Damn you, turret!’

  Ty laughs. He looks at me and there is genuine appreciation in his face. I think we might be friends, Ty and I. Imagine that.

  I went to see a Sidney Nolan exhibition one time, because…It sounds like I am arty and intellectual, but the truth was it was raining, I needed a slash, the art gallery was right there, and the Sidney Nolan paintings were on the way to the loos. It wasn’t the Ned Kellys, it was just rocks. Canvas after canvas of red rocks, and I was like, ‘meh,’ and then I looked up close at the tiny, little brushstrokes that looked like nothing, but then when I stood back they were rocks. It occurred to me that it would be really hard to do, and then my meh turned to wow.

  Ty is looking at me like that.

  It takes my breath away, because forever and ever people have looked at me like you’d look at a car crash. You pretend you’re not looking, but you can’t stop looking, and it’s like, ‘oh Jesus!’ That’s how people look at me.

  ‘You have the most amazing face I’ve ever seen,’ he says. He doesn’t see a car crash. He’s getting a crush on me.

  9

  AMINA TAKES ME through the quad to the canteen at recess. When we arrive there is an altercation between two boys.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Amina asks.

  ‘Damen pushed in!’ exclaims one red-faced, little boy.

  ‘Did not! Morgan held my place when I went for a wazz!’ Damen protests.

  ‘Right, Damen, go to the back.’ Amina points to the end of the queue.

  ‘But Morgan—’ he begins to complain.

  Amina interrupts him. ‘No brabble!’

  Brabble! I just love that.

  ‘Morgan is not a bookmark,’ she continues. ‘If you
go to the toilet you forfeit your place in the line. Go.’

  ‘Aw,’ Damen whines, but he goes.

  I stare at Amina.

  ‘Three younger brothers,’ she explains. ‘You?’

  ‘Only child.’

  ‘How sad for you!’ she says, genuinely sympathetic. ‘Why is that? Is there something wrong with your mother?’

  ‘So many things, it’s hard to know where to begin.’

  Amina nods solemnly. Beautiful, but not much of a sense of humour.

  I buy a bag of soy chips and a juice and we head back across the playground.

  Amina’s friends meet at a bench under a big fig tree. There is a girl called Julia, except she pronounces it ‘Whoolia’. She is an exchange student from Brazil. And Sierra. The mountain. She has green eyes like a cat. I am with the exotic chicks, so I guess I’m in the right place.

  Sierra bumps me with her elbow. ‘My mum wanted to make sure we were buddies.’

  ‘The lady in the front office,’ I clarify, and Sierra nods.

  They ask me where I am from and what school I used to go to, and I wish I had thought about what I was going to say, because I don’t know how much to lie.

  I tell them we just moved here from South Australia. Then I remember I told Ty that my house was the only house I’ve ever lived in, and I blush.

  What are the chances of these girls talking to Ty about what houses I have ever lived in, really? Zero! Or maybe zero point zero, zero, zero one per cent. I hope.

  I change the subject and ask Sierra what it’s like to have her mum at school.

  ‘It’s ok, I s’pose.’ She pulls a face. ‘She knows every single thing that is happening in my life every single second. She kind of stalks me.’