This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  “That’s true.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re a scientist, Rosie. Women aren’t scientists. So that goes in the boy column. You’re a doctor—an ER doctor, not a girly one like pediatrician or gynecology. So that goes in the boy column too. Your so-called husband is a writer, an artist, and not the kind who makes money. The other kind. He cooks dinner—”

  “I cook dinner some nights.”

  “Not that well. He folds laundry—”

  “And puts it away.”

  “And puts it away. He does homework duty. He does bedtime duty.”

  “He is very girly,” Rosie agreed, kissing his neck.

  “It’s very boy-column to be married to such a girly fellow as this.”

  “It’s very girl-column to use the term ‘fellow.’”

  “It’s very boy-column even to be attracted to such a girly fellow as this.”

  “Who says I’m attracted to him?” Rosie asked, sucking his earlobe.

  “You initiate sex”—Penn was unbuttoning her shirt—“which is hardly ladylike.”

  “Who said anything about sex?”

  “Though these,” Penn admitted, undoing her bra, “make a pretty compelling case for your feminine nature.”

  “They are persuasive,” Rosie agreed.

  “You’re willing—nay, eager—to have sex on the sofa while your kids are upstairs sleeping. A more canonically feminine mother would never risk their walking in on us and imperil her children’s emotional equilibrium in this way.”

  “It’s cute you think they’re sleeping.” She slipped off her skirt then her underwear while she half listened to what she guessed was Rigel and Orion pounding what she guessed was modeling clay into what she guessed was the upstairs rug. “Plus, a real woman is always available to her husband to fulfill his sexual urges.”

  “But has no sexual urges of her own.” Penn slid his pants off. “And she only does it in the bed. In the dark.”

  “On the bottom,” Rosie added, climbing on top of him.

  “So you see where I think this list is bullshit.” Though Penn was having some trouble concentrating on his argument, he was still pretty confident he was right. “Even if we’re willing to grant identifiably male behavior and identifiably female behavior—”

  “Well, maybe in some cases—”

  “—we don’t embody it anyway.”

  “Tell me about our embodies.”

  “You are not a traditionally feminine woman—”

  “I will show you how wrong you are.”

  “And I’m not a traditionally masculine man.”

  “Let me see.”

  “He hasn’t learned traditional gender roles at home. He’s not failing to conform—there’s nothing to conform to. He’s not subverting sex-based expectations because we don’t have any sex-based expectations.”

  “I have a few.”

  “We might not be good role models,” Penn breathed.

  “We’re very good role models,” said Rosie.

  “We might not be the right people for this exercise.”

  “We are exactly the right people for this exercise.”

  “We might be thinking of different exercises,” said Penn.

  “We might be speaking of different exercises,” Rosie murmured, “but I bet we’re thinking about the same one.”

  At that point, Penn found he could not disagree.

  * * *

  The waiting part of waiting and seeing looked like it always looks: doing something else, worrying, going on with your life, raising your little boys and bigger boys and boys who might be something else or something more. Rosie and Penn could not imagine a child understanding something as complex as the thing they needed to explain to their youngest son. Wearing a dress did not make him a girl, but neither did bearing a penis indelibly make him a boy if that’s not what he was or wanted to be, though if it was what he was and wanted to be, he was welcome to be it and still wear a dress if he liked. Or to put it another way: wear whatever the hell you want and who cares what anyone else thinks. Though everyone else will have thoughts. And they’re unlikely to keep those thoughts to themselves or be entirely kind. Though that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do whatever you want, just that you should be forewarned that if you do, there will be consequences. Not that that’s not true of everything—all actions have consequences. Not that the consequences in this case suggested he should not do what he wanted to do and be who he was. None of which was to say that all decisions could be made without regard for consequences. If Roo dared him to stuff leftover Halloween candy into the Thanksgiving turkey, as he had dared Orion the year before, Claude would do well to consider the consequences of his actions. If his teacher told him it was inappropriate to talk to his neighbor during Math Trays, that was different than if his teacher told him it was inappropriate to bring his lunch to school in a purse. If his school friends didn’t like his choice of clothes, then maybe they were being mean or maybe they just needed educating or maybe—

  “I don’t have any school friends,” Claude interrupted.

  “You must,” his parents insisted. Claude was funny and bright, loving and lovable. He knew how to share. He didn’t pick his nose. He was potty trained. What more would a kindergartener want in a friend?

  “But I don’t,” Claude said.

  “How is that possible?” They meant it as if Claude had claimed gravity did not exist in his kindergarten classroom. As if he claimed the cafeteria were staffed by trained penguins. It seemed just that impossible that anyone could not like baby Claude.

  “They think I’m weird.”

  “Because you dress like a girl?” said Penn, and Rosie shot him a look. Of course not. He didn’t dress like a girl at school. “Because you bring a purse to lunch?” he amended.

  “I don’t know. They think I talk weird.”

  “How?”

  “It’s enigmatic.” Claude shrugged. “Or I am.” Rosie considered that his youngest-of-five vocabulary must confuse most kindergarteners. Many fifth graders. Lots of high school students.

  “What would make things easier?” Penn got down on his knees so he could meet his son eye to eye.

  “What would make things easier?” Rosie got down on her knees to offer something close to prayer.

  “Should we talk to Miss Appleton?”

  “Could you spend recess with Orion and Rigel?”

  “Should we get you a different lunch tote?”

  “Should we set up lots of playdates?”

  “Should you join a club or a sport or a band?”

  “It’s okay.” Tears crawled out of Claude’s eyes and nose, and besides he was only five, but he tried to comfort his parents anyway. “I just feel a little bit sad. Sad isn’t bleeding. Sad is okay.”

  He was wrong about that though because his happiness was his parents’ first concern. Rosie took a bottomless breath and whispered, “Do you want to be a girl, baby?”

  To which Penn, Tongo-tutored, appended, “Do you think you are a girl?”

  They waited, fathomless breath held, fathomless fear held, just barely, at bay.

  Claude only cried. “I don’t know.”

  And his parents had to admit the question was hard. And his parents had to admit relief that the answer wasn’t yes, at least not yet. And his parents had to admit fear because if he didn’t know, who did, and if the answer wasn’t that, what was it?

  “Do you want to be a boy who wears dresses?” Penn tried.

  “Do you want to be a boy who wears dresses only on some days?” Rosie added.

  “Do you want to go to school naked?” Penn offered to make him laugh.

  But Claude did not laugh, so Rosie pulled him into her lap and cradled his head in the bend of one elbow and his knees in the other and rocked him like she had when he was a baby. He fit better then, but he fit pretty well still. “What would make you happy?” She smiled down at him and shone love deep into his eyes from the depths of her own. “
You can be anyone you want.”

  Claude looked love back at his parents and whispered, “I want to be a night fairy.”

  Invention

  Their meeting at the school was in the melee of the end of fall term. In the absence of a (deemed sufficiently secular) tree, the ceiling in the foyer was crisscrossed with strands of construction paper garlands and Popsicle-stick ornaments. Posters reminding parents about the winter choir concert and the winter band concert and the winter drama club performance of Winter Wonderland Wisconsin covered the windows like an eclipse. Every flat surface seemed to have something sweet to eat piled atop it: a tin of mint green fudge, a Santa mug spilling candy canes, brownies topped with (presumably verboten) red and green Peanut M&M’s.

  “These seem like tough conditions in which to work,” Rosie marveled while they waited.

  “You work in an emergency room,” said Penn.

  “Better than trying to educate amped-up, sugar-high six-year-olds while also getting them to do decorations and rehearse a show.”

  “What makes you think any education is happening here this month?”

  They’d planned their speech the night before, an approximate (for that’s all there was) explanation of what Claude was and what he wasn’t. It involved a lot of words but boiled down to this: Claude’s happiness is our first concern; what can we do to help you to help Claude? They’d been discussing and drafting at the homeworking table when Roo and Ben came downstairs in nothing but boxers and worried expressions hours after their parents had assumed they were asleep.

  “We’re staging an invention,” said Roo.

  “Intervention, you idiot,” said Ben. “We’re staging an intervention.”

  “You can’t let Claude go to school as a girl,” said Roo.

  “He’s not going as a girl per se,” said Penn.

  “And you definitely can’t let him go to school as a night fairy.”

  “Do you know what ‘fairy’ means?” said Ben, very seriously. “Do you know what that’s slang for?”

  Rosie did, for she was a human on the Earth. “He’s five.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” her eldest boys said together. And Roo added, earnestly, “Five-year-olds are mean. Their older brothers and sisters are mean. The kids from other grades are mean.”

  “They’ll make fun of him,” Ben added. “It’s okay for him to wear what he wants at home, but you can’t send him out in the world like that. You don’t understand.”

  “You’re his parents,” Roo pled. “It’s your job to protect him. If we were still there it would be one thing, but now that we’re in middle school, he’s on his own. Rigel and Orion are not up for the job.”

  “He’ll get beat up. No one will pick him for their team in gym. No one will sit with him at lunch or hang with him at recess,” Ben warned. “Why can’t he just play dress-up at home? It’s for his own protection.”

  “Plus it’s so…”

  “What?” said Rosie when Roo trailed off.

  “Gay.”

  “Well, he’s only five,” said Penn, “but if he’s gay, what’s the problem with that?”

  “There’s no problem if he’s gay when he’s older,” said Ben. “He just can’t be gay right now. When he’s older he’ll know what to do if someone teases him.”

  “Maybe he can learn kung fu or something,” Roo added. “But right now, he’s just not equipped to be gay. That’s why kids aren’t gay when they’re in kindergarten.”

  “I’m not sure that’s why,” said Rosie.

  “It’s just weird,” said Roo. “It’s weird that he wants to wear girl clothes and lip gloss and heels and jewelry. It’s not normal. It’s freaky.”

  “So are you.” Penn was met with stares of incredulity from all parties, including the one he was married to. “You’re all freaky. You’re all weird. We’re a weird family. Roo, how many kids in your class besides you play football and flute? Ben, how many kids in your class skipped a grade because they started making their own homework at age four? Claude’s weird, but he’s not just weird, he’s also remarkable. It’s pretty amazing that he knows what he’s supposed to wear and wants to wear something else anyway, that he knows who he’s supposed to be but recognizes that he’s something else instead.”

  “But he’s so little.” Ben looked helpless.

  “Little like he can’t fight back,” said Roo.

  “Little like you could tell him what to do and he’d do it,” said Ben. “Tell him what to wear to school and he will. Tell him he’s a boy and not a night fairy.”

  “You can’t tell people what to be, I’m afraid,” said Rosie. “You can only love and support who they already are. But thank you for coming to talk to us. And thank you for trying to protect him. That’s sweet and brotherly of you.”

  “I am nothing if not brotherly,” said Ben.

  “Not true,” said Roo. “You’re also smelly.”

  “You’re the one who has to leave your shoes outside at night so you don’t slip into a coma in your sleep.”

  “You’re the one even Jupiter can’t stand to smell in the morning. And she likes the smell of dog ass.”

  “Don’t say ‘ass,’ Roo,” said Rosie.

  “Bedtime,” said Penn. “Past bedtime. Thank you for your concern. We’ll take it under advisement.”

  Now Rosie and Penn were sitting in the principal’s office feeling altogether less sure of themselves than they had pretended to the boys the night before. They’d made the meeting with Dwight Harmon only, but the indefatigably perky Miss Appleton was there as well, along with the district representative (representing what or whom was not made clear) Victoria Revels. Victoria Revels sounded like she’d be a lot of fun, but that was only the first of many erroneous assumptions Rosie and Penn made that day.

  “Will Claude be changing his name?” Victoria Revels asked when they came to the end of their carefully prepared speech. Rosie and Penn looked at each other.

  “I don’t think so,” said Penn. “Why?”

  “Then we can table all name and pronoun adjustments for the moment.” She was looking at a checklist that seemed to run on to several pages. “If that should change, please let us know right away.”

  Dwight Harmon looked up from all the printed-in-quadruplicate paperwork to two blank and petrified faces. “Relax, guys. Claude’s not our first child with special needs. And Claude’s not the district’s first transgender child. We’ve got everything under control.”

  Penn felt the bees in his chest turn into something hopping. Crickets, maybe, or frogs. “He just wants to come to school in a dress for the moment,” he fumbled. “That doesn’t make him…”

  He trailed off, and Rosie took the baton. “He’s not … we haven’t settled on the label ‘transgender’ per se.”

  “You may not have,” said Ms. Revels, “but paperwork-wise, that’s what a boy coming to school as a girl is. Transgender. That said, it is not necessary to officially change his name. Many school districts in this country require an official court order or change to the birth certificate. We are not one of those districts, so faculty and staff will be able to call your child whatever you decide, but you have to let us know, and you should be advised that change is not instantaneous.”

  No. As far as Penn’s frogs were concerned, it seemed quite a bit faster than that.

  “Now, Claude will have to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office,” she continued. “He can’t use the staff restroom due to legal considerations. He can’t use the girls’ restroom due to safety considerations. We can’t make him use the boys’ restroom if he is not comfortable doing so.”

  “The nurse’s office is right next to the kindergarten classrooms anyway,” Dwight assured them. “I learned long ago that kindergarten is where you want the nurse to be able to get as quickly as possible. So it shouldn’t be too isolating or inconvenient. If in the future that poses a problem—Claude transitions fully to a girl, say, and feels shut out of the social role the restroom comes
to play in older girls’ lives—you’ll let us know, and we’ll figure out a different arrangement.”

  More blank stares, faces paling to a whiter shade of Wisconsin winter sky.

  “Ah, that’s right!” Dwight grinned. “You guys don’t know anything about the social memes of girls. Aren’t you in for a treat!”

  They had no idea, but they were starting to doubt it.

  “Now, Miss Appleton here”—even the district representative could not call the woman by her first name—“will talk about what this is going to look like at the classroom level.”

  Miss Appleton smiled at them like five-year-olds. “We’re very excited to work with Claude. He’s such a special b … uh, child. But I do think we should all expect that there might be some questions at first.”

  “You think?” Penn was starting to see that Miss Appleton’s default tense was conditional: Now, children, let’s decide whether or not it’s good decision making to feed crayons to the hamster. Boys and girls, should we have a cookie party this afternoon, or would we perhaps prefer to continue talking to our neighbors when I have two fingers clearly raised for quiet and have already sung the listening song?

  “We don’t want to discourage the other little boys and girls from asking questions,” she patiently, so patiently, explained. “We must prepare Claude for how he will answer them. Curiosity is natural. It comes from the children’s desire to help their friend. I know Claude doesn’t want to hurt their feelings by refusing to answer them or by choosing to interpret their innocent questions as being unkind.”

  “You should spend winter break practicing, working with him on answers.” Victoria Revels was much less patient than Miss Appleton.

  “Answers to what?” said Rosie.

  “You can expect elementary schoolchildren to ask questions such as” —Ms. Revels was reading off her paperwork—“‘Why are you wearing a dress? Boys can’t wear skirts. Are you a girl? What happened to your penis? Why are you wearing earrings or other jewelry or makeup if applicable? Why is your hair long and/or in barrettes or other feminine headwear? What happened to your penis?’ Hmm, they’ve listed that one twice.”