This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

  “It was me all along!” Mr. Tongo wiggled his plastic Godzilla as if they might need proof. “A monstrous welcome to us all.”

  They smiled at him weakly. “How are you, Mr. Tongo?”

  “Me? I’m wonderful. Delighted to be with you. Thrilled to see you both. So! Back to school. Such an exciting time. Quelles felicitations! Mazel tov!”

  Penn found it remarkable that a dozen or so years of school was sufficient to keep everyone on an academic calendar for life so that even people like Mr. Tongo, who had no children, wished him a happy new year every September. It was as if those school years bred a nostalgia so deep into the cells that the body woke to it each fall as naturally as the squirrels in the park began their frenzied harvest, never mind the weather was still fine, the sun still gracing them all. “It’s very exciting,” he acknowledged, then added awkwardly, “thank you.”

  “Most welcome, most welcome. So my friends, in honor of the new year, today I think it’s time we do a little after-school special: ‘Puberty Versus Blockers. A Love Story.’”

  Rosie watched her eyebrows rise in the miniature window in the corner of her screen. “Oh, Mr. Tongo. Poppy’s only nine.” Had he lost count? “We’re years away yet. Years away.”

  “Time flies like a banana, my dear.” His eyes actually twinkled. “When was the last time you two talked seriously about hormone blockers?”

  Rosie recalled the Dueling Dinner with Marginny and Frank. They’d had squash soup to start, which meant it had been fall which meant it had been a year already. “It’s been a while,” Rosie admitted.

  “Well, let’s do it!” Mr. Tongo clapped his hands together. “This is going to be fun!” Over the years, Penn’s brain had come to play, under Mr. Tongo’s promise of fun, the theme music from Jaws.

  Rosie shook her head. “Puberty is later for natal males than natal females. It’s not time yet. It’s too early to be thinking about hormone blockers.”

  “It’s too early to be taking them,” Mr. Tongo corrected gently. He was methodically bricking Puberty Godzilla into a prison of hormone blocks. “It’s exactly the right time to be thinking about them. You all have some tough decisions just ahead. Blockers, and for how long? Cross-sex hormones, and when? Surgeries, and which ones? All/some/none of the above? Hard stuff. Is Poppy worried about all this, do you think?”

  “Not at all,” Rosie assured him.

  But Mr. Tongo was not assured. “That’s what worries me. You know, it used to be there were no transgender kids. Your son would come to you in a dress, and you’d say, ‘No son of mine!’ or ‘Boys don’t wear dresses!’ and that would be the end of it. That kid would grow up, and if he made it through childhood and if he made it through puberty and if he made it through young adulthood, maybe, if he were lucky, he’d eventually find his way to a community of people who understood what no one ever had, and he would slowly change his clothes and hair, and he would slowly change his name and pronouns, and he would slowly test the waters of being female, and over years and decades, he might become a she. Or he might kill himself long before he got there. The rate of suicide for these kids is over forty percent, you know.”

  Penn closed his eyes. He did know.

  “Now, it’s so much better in so many ways. Claude was lucky. He came to you and said he wanted to wear a dress and said he wanted to be a girl, and you said okay, and you said you’d help, and you said it didn’t matter to you because you’d love him no matter what. So you grew out his hair and bought him a dress and moved across the country to a city on a sound: add water, instant girl. And that’s so wonderful for all of you. Except puberty is going to blindside Poppy. She doesn’t think of herself as a boy. You don’t think of her as a boy. Because she didn’t grow up hating it, because it’s never stood in the way of her being who she felt and you accepted she was, she’s totally normalized her penis. It doesn’t connote maleness for her. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just how she pees. But that’s about to change. And soon, long hair and a dress aren’t going to be enough to keep her a girl. You have to prepare her for that.”

  “You’re saying we’ve done too good a job?” Rosie laughed, half joking.

  But Mr. Tongo nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Rude, I know. It’s irritating when people tell you that you’re such good parents you’re failing your kid.”

  Penn and Rosie looked at themselves looking overwhelmed and guilty, but Godzilla broke into a little dance.

  “Cheer up, you two! Poppy’s not going to turn into a man overnight. Just start planting the seeds. Think about how you’ll talk to her about the changes—the beautiful, miraculous, to-be-celebrated changes—that come for all boys and girls as they get just a little older than she is now. You’d have to help your little girl turn into a woman under any circumstances. These are just a little more fun!”

  * * *

  At nine, fourteen, fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen, Penn’s brood wasn’t finished growing up, but they were finished with childhood—finishing anyway. They were getting ready to go off into the world, but it wasn’t therefore true that they didn’t listen to stories before bed anymore. They did. Some nights. Especially if they were camping or on vacation. Especially in the summer, when they were all likely to be out in the backyard around the fire pit after dark. But Poppy’s bedtime was earlier than the boys’, who had their own stories to tell to which their parents and their sister were not privy. So Penn and Poppy were often on their own for storytime.

  Grumwald didn’t have a lot of friends anymore. He’d had to leave the ones he grew up with behind when he went Away, and he hadn’t made new ones. Princess Stephanie, on the other hand, had lots of girlfriends, but only Grumwald knew her secrets. For instance, her girlfriends didn’t know she became a fairy every night. They didn’t know she could fly and light stars. They thought her hair was neon green only because she was just that cool. She felt bad about lying to them, but she didn’t want to risk losing them by telling the truth. And it was easy. If she wore a T-shirt when they went swimming, if she always changed in the bathroom, they never saw her without a top on so her wings were hidden. If they went out for brunch instead of dinner and had book club during the day, no one thought it was strange she could never do anything in the evenings.

  “She was in a book club?” said Poppy.

  “Everyone’s in a book club.”

  “Like with wine?” Poppy was intrigued.

  “It’s not a book club if there isn’t wine.”

  But then a scary thing started happening. Princess Stephanie started transforming into a night fairy without warning. She was at the mall shopping for shorts when one of her wings popped out suddenly, right in the middle of the day. She was in the dressing room at the time, luckily, but it made her nervous. Then, just when she’d convinced herself it was a weird one-time thing, she was at the coffee shop getting breakfast one morning when she realized the barista was staring at her in amazement, and no wonder—she was levitating. Not only had her wings unfolded at not yet eight thirty in the morning, she hadn’t even noticed. She spilled her latte, found her footing, and ran home crying. She was so scared she went to see the witch.

  “Which witch?” Poppy giggled. “The one who was making Grumwald capture the night fairies?”

  “The very same, which is why Grumwald was wary of her, but Princess Stephanie could tell that the witch wasn’t always friendly maybe (she was a witch after all) but she was smart. Stephanie could see that the witch had a lot to be cranky about—she was very old and had trouble getting around and most of her teeth were rotten, which must have made it hard to eat—but that didn’t mean she was unkind. Stephanie knew people didn’t usually ask witches for help, but she couldn’t think who better to turn to.”

  “But the witch hated the night fairies,” said Poppy. “That’s why she was making Grumwald capture them.”

  “Who better then,” Penn wondered, “to help her corral the night fairy within?”

  And indeed, when
she went to her, the witch was unfazed. “It happens to everyone,” she assured Princess Stephanie.

  “It does?” Stephanie doubted it.

  “Sure. Everyone’s someone else sometimes. Everyone transforms. Maybe not in quite the same way as you, but that’s sort of the point, the curse if you will. It happens to everyone but not to any two people in the same way, and no one likes it, no matter who’s waiting inside. The good news is I have beans.”

  “I don’t cook,” said Stephanie.

  “Not soup beans.” The witch thought damsels in distress should be quicker on the uptake. “Magic beans. I’ve got beans that will keep you from turning into a night fairy ever again.”

  “Who will light the stars?”

  “Who cares?” The witch shrugged. “Someone else’s problem.”

  “What will I be at night then?”

  “Just Princess Stephanie.” The witch grinned her awful brown witch teeth.

  “But if I’m not a night fairy, who am I the princess of?”

  “‘Of whom am I the princess?’” The witch was a bitch about grammar, but then she considered. “Huh. I guess if you’re not a night fairy, you can’t be a princess either. You’ll be Just Stephanie.”

  Stephanie thought about this. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be Just Stephanie. On the one hand, it would certainly be simpler. On the other, what would the stars do without her? And besides, it was nice to be a princess. “Do you have beans that will control my wings just in the daytime? I’ll still be a night fairy and do the stars as long as I can keep my secret from my friends during the day.”

  The witch sighed and rolled her eyes. Princesses were so demanding. But yes, she had those beans. And she felt for Princess Stephanie—it was different for her—so she handed them over. Stephanie went home, soaked them overnight, then turned them into hummus and ate it with carrot sticks for lunch the next day.

  “Did it work?” said Poppy.

  “It worked like a charm,” said Penn.

  * * *

  As soon as her parents’ lights went off, Aggie deployed her yardstick umbrella. Despite great advances in technology over the course of their childhoods, it would remain their communication device of choice. “Your brother’s in love with my sister.” She was talking before Poppy even had her window all the way open. “It’s gross.”

  “Which one?”

  “Do I have another sister? Cayenne. Duh.”

  “Which brother?”

  “Who knows? One of them. All of them. Her phone pings every five seconds, and she’s in there laughing her head off. Which one of your brothers is still up?”

  “All of them probably. No one showed up for storytime but me.”

  “What happened tonight?” Aggie followed the adventures of Grumwald and Princess Stephanie like a soap opera.

  “Steph’s wings were popping out all over, but she didn’t want anyone to know, so she went to the witch and got some magic beans. She made hummus, ate it, and felt better.”

  “Weird,” said Aggie. “What do you think it means?”

  “I dunno.” Poppy shrugged. “Something. There’s always some kind of secret message.”

  Aggie considered the matter. “I think your dad wants us to know it’s okay to do drugs. And not tell anyone about it.” Improbable though it seemed, Agatha Granderson grew up and eventually became a professor of literary studies at the University of California at Berkeley. She had a gift for textual metaphor. “Fourth grade is going to be so great!”

  Red Roo Rising

  That January, as his grandmother had predicted they would, Roo’s needs arose. Roo needed understanding. Roo needed comforting. Roo needed his parents to realize what he was fighting and why, to see his hurt and confusion, to sort his legitimate anger from the other kind, or, if you prefer, his ordinary teenage angst from his more particular teenage angst. He needed them to take deep breaths and look at the big picture, but all Rosie and Penn could look at was the gash weeping blood from his forehead. Mostly what Roo needed was stitches.

  It was a cold, wet Monday morning, and Rosie was running Howie-late as usual. She preferred Seattle January’s rainy forty degrees to Madison’s snowy four, but she also thought her toes might be growing mold from walking through the constant damp. Yvonne didn’t even look up from her computer when she arrived, red-nosed and sodden. “Fourteen minutes late.”

  “I had to stop at the top of the hill to catch my breath.”

  “For fourteen minutes?”

  “Getting out of the house is hard.”

  “Maybe you should drive.”

  “Think of the environment. Did they wait for me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yup.”

  Howie ostentatiously stopped Monday Morning Meeting mid-sentence when she opened the door to the break room. “Ah, Rosie, thank you so much for joining us.” His opening move was the same every week as if passive-aggression were his own invention. “We can’t tell you how honored we are you could make it.”

  Rosie didn’t even look at him. “What’d I miss?” she said to James.

  “Nada.”

  “Quite a bit actually.” Howie glared back and forth between them. Elizabeth pretended to look at her (blank) notebook. “We’re almost done. Since you weren’t here, we decided in your absence to put you in charge of the staff-appreciation breakfast again this year.”

  “It shouldn’t be me,” said Rosie.

  “Why not?”

  “It won’t get started until lunchtime.” She grinned at James.

  “The rest of us have families too, you know,” said Howie.

  “I was kidding.”

  “The rest of us manage to balance work and family.” He wasn’t yelling; he was scolding, which was worse. “It’s not fair that we should suffer because you are incapable of doing so.”

  Rosie rolled her eyes. “How are you suffering, Howie?”

  “I have to recap Monday Morning Meeting before I’ve even gotten through it. And I have to take shit if you’re asked to do one thing outside seeing patients.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m the one taking shit, but I’ll be in charge of breakfast again.”

  “Attagirl.”

  “I’m not a girl.”

  “Come on time.”

  “By which you mean early.”

  After her first patient of the morning, she found James in the break room.

  “Why do we persist in pretending we work for Howie when we’re all equal partners and he’s basically a grass stain?”

  “Grass stain?”

  “Annoying, probably permanent, essentially harmless. Kind of ugly.”

  “You’ve been doing too much laundry, Ro.”

  “Penn’s in charge of laundry.”

  “He’s equal, but he’s senior. He hired you.” James stirred more sugar into his coffee than it seemed like it could absorb and still remain in liquid form. “Myself, I was skeptical after your interview.”

  “You were?”

  “Five is a lot of children. I thought you were probably some kind of fanatic or in a cult or something.”

  “James! You can’t make hiring decisions based on how many kids an applicant has.”

  “The whole time you were talking I was humming, ‘There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.…’ Point is, Howie fought for you. You owe him your job.”

  “Maybe, but he’s not my mother. He doesn’t get to scold me for being late. I’m an adult. And not his employee.”

  “No, but it’s worth keeping him happy, or at least not pissing him off, especially when it’s easy.”

  “Taking his condescending shit is easy? Taking on the jobs no one else wants because I was fifteen minutes late to a meeting I said I’d be fifteen minutes late to? That’s not easy.”

  “Sure it is. Pick your battles. Don’t you do this all the time at home?” James and his husband no longer went to the opera. Instead they had one-year-old twins. “I feel like that should be the
subtitle. Parenting: Pick Your Battles.”

  “That’s why I shouldn’t have to do it here.”

  “Think of it as a power grab. Pick your battles rather than having them thrust upon you. He’s antsy. You know he gets this way every few years, so he’s overdue. He wants to start an office blog. He wants to chart a fifteen-year plan. He wants to put together a humanitarian mission to Thailand.”

  “I can’t go to Thailand. I have a job and a life.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, kid. Buy some doughnuts for the staff and come even earlier for Monday Meeting, and you won’t have to.”

  The door opened. Howie poked his head in and heaved a huge sigh in Rosie’s direction though clearly he had been looking for her and clearly he had found her. “Rosie. We need to talk.”

  “Sure,” she said lightly. “But I’ve got a patient in ten minutes.”

  “It won’t take long,” said Howie, “but we have to—”

  Rosie’s cell phone rang. The high school. “Mrs. Adams?”

  “Dr. Walsh. Yes, this is she.”

  “Roo’s mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Franny Plumber up at school. I’m afraid Roo’s been suspended. You’ll have to come get him.”

  Christ. “Kid emergency,” Rosie half-apologized to Howie. “I have to go pick up Roo, but I’ll be back this afternoon. Tell Yvonne to reschedule my appointments until after lunch.”

  * * *

  If it weren’t for the gash in his head, he’d have kept getting away with it. In fact, Roo and Derek McGuiness had been fighting during recess on and off for years. It felt more like an ancient feud than a tussle at this point. Ben knew this and left Roo to it. Ben saw where his strengths lay, and it wasn’t hand-to-hand combat. If Roo had asked for his help, he’d have provided it (strategically if not muscularly), but Roo did not ask, and Ben knew to respect that too. Rigel and Orion knew it but couldn’t do anything about it. For one thing, they were only fourteen. For another, ninth grade was on a different schedule. They had English every day while Roo was getting his ass kicked. Even Cayenne knew it, and maybe she even found it sexy, and that might even have played a part in why Roo was still doing it. But, well trained in the art of secret keeping, Roo had managed to keep it from his parents for a year and a half and counting.