Becoming Nicole

by Amy Ellis Nutt

  “My name is Paul Melanson. The story I’m about to tell happened in the past few months. On or about the twenty-seventh of September, I was told we had a young boy—”

  “I’m going to ask you not to discuss individual students,” the chairman of the school committee interrupted.

  Melanson didn’t look up.

  “At this kid’s request, this little boy is being treated as a little girl. I asked my grandson ‘What restroom is this kid using?’ I called the superintendent and was told this wasn’t happening. I gave my grandson permission to use the little girls’ restroom. On October fourth he did, when this little boy was there. He was taken to the principal’s office and given the riot act. The next day I was visited by the Orono Police Department and was told if the behavior didn’t stop we’d have a bad year….On or about the fifth of December I was informed by my grandson it was still going on—”

  “I’m told the individual is not using the bathroom in question, but the appropriate bathroom,” a board member interjected. “The Orono School Department is complying with all the laws. The situation is not occurring at this time.”

  “Which restroom is the student using now?” Melanson wanted to know.

  The committee chairman said he would not discuss the matter further.

  “The individual is using the appropriate bathroom. Thank you for your comments.”

  Melanson wasn’t quite through.

  “My attorney will follow up.”

  The incident made the local news that night and the papers the next day. The Bangor Daily News had been alerted to Melanson’s appearance before the board and interviewed him after he gave his three-minute presentation.

  “I’m going to keep fighting it,” he told the paper. “It’s going to continue. I want the law straightened out.”

  Melanson, who had previously lobbied to repeal the 2003 Maine law creating domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, said he was being supported by the Maine Christian Civic League. Michael Heath, the league’s director, had been unable to attend the meeting, but his written comments were entered into the committee’s minutes by someone else: “Support for the privacy of the student and the family is leading public officials, including the police, to make some profound errors. The reign of tyrannical political correctness is making us mad.”

  None of the news outlets mentioned Nicole, her parents, or Jonas by name, but the story was being discussed everywhere in the state. Wayne scoured the online forums and blogs, wanting to know what people were saying. Some of the things they wrote were downright vile. Others were simply crude. Most were just ignorant.

  The fifth grade boy needs counseling. Anyone who helps him persist in the mental illness…should be arrested for child abuse.

  Who are the people encouraging this kid? Probably mom and dad.

  Mom wanted a little girl instead of a boy?

  A letter addressed to the office of the principal arrived at Asa Adams the second week of February 2008. It was from the Portland attorney representing Paul Melanson.

  Mr. Melanson tells me that you are letting another boy use the girls’ bathroom because he thinks he is a girl. However, you are not allowing Jacob to use the girls’ bathroom because he thinks he is a boy.

  Under the circumstances, you are discriminating against Jacob because of his “sexual orientation,” which is a violation of the Maine Human Rights Act.

  It is my considered legal opinion that Jacob has an absolute right to use the girls’ bathroom too, and any attempt to stop him or punish him will result in legal action.

  Melanson was a student of the law, especially of an individual’s rights, having sworn to protect those rights as a member of the military. He’d served overseas as a second-class machinist’s mate in the navy and had been involved in the fringes of several conflicts, from the Iran hostage crisis to Bosnia to Desert Storm. In 1984 his ship, the USS Hector, steamed across thirty-five thousand miles of ocean to rescue more than two dozen Vietnamese refugees from rickety wooden boats. He was also aboard the Hector when it delivered disaster aid to storm-battered residents of Madagascar, including a leper colony, where volunteers from the ship did everything from pulling teeth to amputating limbs. Melanson had certainly gotten to see the world, and the world, he often said, was not a nice place. He’d visited countries where homosexuals were executed. Things were too soft in America, too easy, he said, and political correctness was a slippery slope. For whatever reason, this fight over the use of a bathroom by a nine-year-old girl felt personal. It was as if his rights were being infringed upon every time his country invented new ones for special interest groups.

  Melanson also didn’t feel any sympathy for the hardships of gays or transgender people, he told his friends, so he certainly didn’t think his country should go out of its way to give them special privileges. He’d seen, up close, the terror of people who had no privileges at all. “I’m off fighting for the rights of other people,” he’d say about his time in the military, “and people over here are trying to take mine away.”

  CHAPTER 23

  May I Have This Dance?

  Every school day now threatened drama, not just for Nicole, but for the school—indeed, the community. The funny thing was, Nicole wasn’t really bothered at first about having to use the teachers’ restroom. It was a nice single-stall bathroom and it was very private, which she liked. One thing she didn’t like: The mirror over the sink was too high for her to fix her hair or adjust her outfit. It was clearly hung at the height of an adult.

  At home, though, Nicole would overhear her parents talking about how unjust it was that the school was making her use a different bathroom than the one that matched her gender identity. She kept hearing the words “separate but equal,” and she was beginning to understand what those words meant. She was also beginning to notice that having to use the staff bathroom felt more and more like a kind of punishment. Why should she have to change because of something Jacob did? By the beginning of the second half of the school year, and without official permission, Nicole simply started using the girls’ restroom again. Her friends didn’t say anything, and she wasn’t sure if any of the teachers noticed, but she soon realized that one student had.

  One day, as Nicole walked into the girls’ bathroom, she glanced across the hall into another classroom. There was Jacob, staring her down. She knew exactly what was about to happen. The moment the door of the girls’ restroom closed behind her, it opened again and there he was. Later, in the principal’s office, Nicole was told she shouldn’t have been using the girls’ bathroom in the first place, which only made her feel like the school was pointing out: Here are all the normal kids, and here are you.

  Kelly still believed she and Wayne could turn the school administrators around, that maybe it was just a matter of educating them about transgender issues. Kelly, after all, had been doing it on her own for years, on the playground, at school, in the supermarket. She hadn’t shied away from the task; she’d embraced it.

  “There’s nothing wrong with him,” she would tell someone, often a stranger. “He just likes girl things more than boy things.”

  Eventually, Kelly acquired the vocabulary to fill out the story and became better equipped to tell others what it meant to be transgender, but she felt she’d run out of words. When she volunteered to head up a diversity club, Bob Lucy nixed the idea. “What can we do to help you understand?” she often asked the staff. She had brainstormed many times with Lisa Erhardt, who was always supportive. It was during one of those meetings that Kelly suggested inviting an outside expert to the school. Erhardt thought it was a great idea. So in February 2008, Jean Vermette, founder of the Maine Gender Resource and Support Service, held a workshop on transgender issues for the teachers and staff at Orono Middle School. Most of the educators actively participated, but some of the administrators, including Bob Lucy, seemed reluctant to do more than just politely listen.

  It was slowly becoming evident to Kelly and Wayne that perhaps
it wasn’t simply ignorance about the issues that accounted for Lucy’s intransigence. Part of it could have been fear—of the subject, of lawsuits. But no matter when or where one of the Maineses brought up the issue of harassment or bullying, Lucy’s response was always the same: “We have a fair, safe, and responsive school.”

  In March, Jacob followed Nicole into the girls’ bathroom for a third time. And again, both students were punished. Enough was enough. Kelly told Wayne she wanted to file a lawsuit.

  “I don’t think we should do it,” he said.

  He said Nicole was too young for all this, and maybe they should just wait and see how it all played out. If it was made public, it could be devastating.

  Kelly wondered if by “devastating” Wayne meant devastating to Nicole or him. She hoped Wayne would support her, but if it came down to it, she’d go it alone and for one reason only.

  “I have to, Wayne. For her protection.”

  On April 10, 2008, Kelly filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission alleging that Orono School Department administrator Kelly Clenchy, as the senior official in the school district, and others, had violated the Maine Human Rights Act by excluding Nicole from the girls’ restroom based on her gender identity. The legal wheels were set in motion, and without Wayne.

  The following month, at the community pool, Nicole suffered yet another humiliation when she was teased about her feminine swimsuit by girls who were friends of Jacob.

  “You look so pretty,” they said, in a mocking tone.

  Kelly quickly walked over to them.

  “Is there something going on here?” she asked. “Just move along.”

  Nicole was embarrassed, not the least because she was increasingly self-conscious about her body. She told Dr. Spack in March that she was worried about a bit of fuzz on her upper lip. She was petrified of growing a mustache, she said. When could she begin taking puberty suppressants?

  “Nothing needs to be done at this point,” Spack said.

  He explained her genitals hadn’t enlarged and her testicular volume hadn’t increased. Only when it doubled would it be appropriate for her to start the puberty-suppressing drugs. There was plenty of time. He did urge Nicole to try to gain some weight—she was four feet eight inches tall and just 69 pounds—and said she should also try to stop pulling at her eyelashes. Spack was open and frank with Nicole and talked to her sometimes more like a father than a physician, so she usually felt relieved after her visits. If he wasn’t worried about her beginning male puberty, then she’d try not to worry, either.

  —

  A FEW MONTHS EARLIER, as the family was cooking dinner one night, Nicole made an announcement: There was going to be a father-daughter Valentine’s Day dance on Saturday at the Orono recreation hall. Wayne’s head jerked up from whatever he was doing. He couldn’t believe it. He’d just been told about the dance at work that day, and he’d been mulling it over ever since.

  “That’s great!” he blurted out.

  Nicole smiled and hugged her father.

  The dance was a family affair. Nicole and her mother wore new dresses along with wrist corsages, courtesy of Wayne. Jonas wore a shirt and tie and Wayne his one good suit. He was more nervous than anyone, and it surprised him that the nervousness had less to do with dancing in public with his daughter, than just dancing. He was no good at it, he told people, and had avoided it his whole life. But this was important. Maybe even more important than his own wedding, where it had taken everything he had inside him to fulfill his promise to dance at least once with his new wife.

  Wayne had been on a longer journey than anyone else in the family. He knew it had been Kelly, not he, who had been there for Nicole since day one. Even Jonas had always accepted Nicole as his sister, never mourning the loss of a brother the way Wayne mourned the loss of a son. When Wayne looked in the mirror at himself he saw a man, a husband, a hunter, a fisherman. He saw a father. All of them were just names. They were categories. Wasn’t he more than a name or a category, just like Nicole? He was the sum of all the elements of his life. He wasn’t a category. He wasn’t even just Wayne. He was the story of Wayne. He was who he felt himself to be. It had taken him years, but he’d slowly come to realize the problem wasn’t Nicole, and it certainly wasn’t Kelly. He had been the problem all along.

  The rec hall smelled faintly of sweat and pine tar. A disc jockey played both old and contemporary tunes, and a disco ball spilled colored lights across the makeshift dance floor. Wayne was nervous, of course, about whether he might trip over his own feet, but he also worried that others might mistake his nervousness for embarrassment about his being there with his transgender daughter. Actually, it felt surprisingly natural to him, which is why, when the DJ announced the father-daughter dance, Wayne knew exactly what to do.

  He turned to Nicole, bowed from the waist, and smiled.

  “May I have this dance?”

  “Yes, you may.”

  Nicole floated across the floor, oblivious to her father’s many glances down at his feet. (Wayne had to keep telling himself to breathe.) They glided and twirled, Nicole’s head close to Wayne’s chest, her right hand in his left. Out of the corner of his eye, Wayne saw Kelly watching them. She was smiling. He breathed more easily, finding his rhythm. Nicole felt beautiful.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she said, looking up at her father.

  Wayne answered, “I love you, Nicole.”

  CHAPTER 24

  She’s All Girl

  In early June 2008, Wayne received a call from a friend tipping him off that Paul Melanson was going to hold a press conference with the Christian Civic League in front of the Orono Town Hall that night. Wayne showed up, but hung back, not wanting to be identified by the press or recognized by anyone he knew. Melanson, his grandson Jacob, and a couple of other students were there. It was all Wayne could do to keep his mouth shut. One of the girls, a seventh grader, said she’d seen the transgender fifth grader, meaning Nicole, use the girls’ bathroom at the middle school after normal school hours, and that it was “an invasion of privacy.”

  It was clear to Wayne that the girl had been coached. She was being used by Melanson or the Christian Civic League or both.

  “If a person has to be eighteen to undergo a sex change,” Melanson told the crowd, “then that person should have to be eighteen to use a bathroom for the opposite sex.”

  The following day there was local voting all across Maine for a variety of referendums. As Wayne and Kelly walked up to the township office building to vote, they were forced to pass the petition table of the Christian Civic League. Wayne grit his teeth; Kelly looked the other way.

  Melanson didn’t exactly have an easy time of it, either. After checking off his ballot inside city hall he came out of the voting booth only to have a woman tell him, “Mr. Melanson, do you know the heartache you’ve put on the school and the community?”

  The navy veteran was quick to answer. “You know, if me exercising my freedom of speech causes you heartburn, I have no problem with that. I have no problem with people hating me. The last thing you’re going to do is stop me from speaking my mind.”

  For their part, Kelly and Wayne had already reached out to a few liberal-minded state legislators who were supportive of their efforts. One of them was Representative Emily Ann Cain, who told the Maineses she’d shared some harsh words and debate with Paul Melanson outside the polling station where he was asking residents to sign his petition. She noted that many other citizens did as well.

  The following day, the Bangor Daily News released the results of its Election Day poll question: Should a twelve-year-old boy who identifies as a girl be allowed to use the girls’ bathroom at school? An appallingly high number of people seemed to agree with Melanson.

  Yes: 17.2 percent

  No: 82.8 percent

  Although he’d received a few death threats and his wife experienced some harassment at her healthcare job—colleagues said her husband was nasty and that she should
make him shut up—Melanson received many messages of goodwill from those who agreed with him. Probably 80 percent of the phone calls were positive. They called not only from Maine, but from South Carolina and Texas and California. Some calls came from individuals, others from religious organizations, many of them extolling Melanson for his guts.

  “No,” he’d say to callers. “It’s just standing up for what’s right and wrong.”

  The Maineses, too, received many messages, including dozens by way of the LISTSERV Friends of Orono Schools. The majority of theirs were, likewise, sympathetic, such as the one from Susanne and Jonathan White, dated June 11, 2008:

  As a family, we have sat quietly furious for some time now about the absolutely disgusting show of ignorance, intolerance and bullying that has been taking place in Orono….In trying to look for the silver lining here, the only positive thing all the protesting, harassment, and bullying have accomplished is to serve as the most PERFECT example for our children, and in fact all children, of how NOT to conduct themselves. It has spurred many discussions in our home about basic human kindness, how to treat others, that all people have value, and what to say to bullies. We have talked frankly with our children about diversity and tolerance, and standing up for others who are being mistreated instead of looking the other way. Our children have learned a lot—but not the message Mr. Melanson and the C.C.L are looking to spread.

  Best of all, though, were the responses from young people, including those who knew Nicole from afar.

  I think the entire thing is ridiculous….When my friends and I were still at Asa, we used to think that it was wrong for that little boy to be like he is, but we’ve learned. There’s nothing wrong with it, and if he thinks that inside he is a girl, then he is and no grandfather should make a big fuss over a GIRL using the GIRLS BATHROOM. Just because he has “non girly parts” doesn’t mean anything. Gender has nothing to do with “privates,” it’s more a state of mind, and I’ve realized that as I’ve gotten older.