The Journal, by Karin Bishop

Part 1: Discovering

October 11

I don’t know where to begin. I’ve never kept a diary or journal before, but something tells me I should start this one because it’ll be important. I spent a couple of hours wandering around the mall today; I had to do something while I was thinking about last night. I passed a stationery store and saw some cute notebooks and that gave me the idea, so I’m starting this thing blindly, but at least I’ve got a new pen and new journal and I’ll do my darndest to put everything down. I don’t know who will read this, except for me. And—perhaps later—my child ...

If, by chance, somebody else must read this, I suppose I should start by introducing myself. My name is Catherine Hartelius, with the accent on the second syllable ‘tel’. I live with my son Randy in a typical suburban tract house. My husband Richard is dead, but don’t mourn for me. It’s been four years and besides, he wasn’t a very nice man. We worked together at the insurance company my father owned, marriage seemed like a good idea—or at least the proper thing—and then seemed inevitable. And after Dad died, Richard took over the company and ran it into the ground, leaving me with the job of laying off long-time employees and friends and paying off what we could of our massive debt. He had the good grace to die in a crash so the settlement helped Randy and I, but did nothing for the ‘secretary’ who died with him. I found work with another agency, and after a struggle to make ends meet, I’m actually doing okay now—my dad really knew the business and I had the benefit of having him teach me insurance from the ground up. And I’ve been able to undo some of the damage of association with Richard. If I seem bitter, I’m not, anymore. It’s just that I’ve been so worried about raising Randy right, without a man around, and I’m afraid that I’ve failed him.

Which leads me to the reason for this journal. If this thing is going to be of any value to me, I’ve got to be completely, brutally honest. Honest in reporting events, and honest in my feelings about events.

So, to business. Last night I found a dress hidden behind Randy’s desk. I wasn’t snooping (no more than a typical mom, I think—I’ve got to be honest here, right?). I noticed he’d left the light on at his desk, and when I reached to turn it off I knocked over a cup with pens and pencils and they fell behind the desk, so I pulled it out from the wall to reach them. There was some dark fabric wedged between the wall and desk, and when I pulled the desk out the fabric fell to the carpet. At first I thought it was a towel; maybe Randy had spilled a drink (just as I’d spilled the pencils) and stuck it there to dry things and forgot about it. But it was a dress. It was purple and black, very short, scoop-necked and cap sleeved, and the label said XOXO and I’m not even sure why I’m describing it in such detail. I was just so shoc

*

Okay, I’m back. Got a bit upset there. Anyway, I thought it was a towel, so I was shocked to see what it was. It was from one of the teen shops at the mall, and something about it made me think that he hadn’t bought it. My first inclination was to think that he had a girlfriend, and this was a souvenir. Maybe they had sex in his room. Thank God! Too young, of course, but thank God! I know I didn’t react to that the way many mothers would, because you’d have to know Randy. I suppose I should describe him. This is hard, because I love him so much and it’s hard to be objective. Randy is fourteen, a darling son, smart, neat, and compassionate. A bit on the quiet, somber side, though. He has the makings of growing up to be a fine man …except that he isn’t growing up like that. Due to family genetics on my side, I guess—mostly Scandinavian genes—Randy is small. I say that instead of ‘short’. Everything about him is small; small bones, small hands, small feet. Well, that’s not entirely true; his eyes are huge. Great blue pools with lashes that little old ladies would comment about when I pushed him around in his stroller. ‘What a darling little girl!’ they’d say. ‘She’ll break men’s hearts!’ they’d say. I’d tell them he was a boy and they’d just go on with, ‘Too pretty for a boy’, ‘Those pretty eyes are wasted on a boy’, that sort of thing.

*

I had to sit back and think here for a minute. I guess that when I found the dress I was actually hoping it was from a girl that he’d had sex with, because that would mean that he was developing normally as a male. Fourteen’s too young, of course, but—I’ve got to be honest; because of the way Randy looked, I’d always had it in the back of my mind that he might be gay. Of course, as they said on Seinfeld, ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that.’ But it would make his life harder, I think. I’m not one of those women who dream longingly of grandchildren, but I want as few obstacles in life as possible for Randy; every mother does for her child.

Because of his hair, too; I forgot to mention. It’s blond—that Norwegian thing from my side. Richard’s was kind of reddish, a Scots-Irish thing, and come to think of it, he wasn’t tall compared to other men. Only when I stood next to him—I’m barely 5'2"—did he seem tall. So I guess Randy gets small genes from both sides. But Randy’s hair is, well, stunning. It’s blond and shiny and just flows from him. It’s the kind where he can just run his fingers straight back from his forehead and it all falls into place. And, yes, I envy him that beautiful hair. But it’s too long; we’ve had some arguments about that. I know that it’s the style, and to kids in his class the length doesn’t seem to matter. Marge Rasmussen, who I play bridge with, has a big and brawny son with hair down to the middle of his back, and Ruth Carvalho at my hairdresser has a very pretty daughter with a buzz cut. But Randy’s hair is so marvelously full, and now that it’s past his shoulders I’m concerned about his safety. I worry that he might be taken for a girl.

Right, that’s it, out in the open.

My son might be taken for a girl.

I’m not being honest. He is often taken for a girl. And not just when he was in a stroller.

He’s not effeminate, not really. I mean, he doesn’t flounce around like RuPaul, but to be perfectly honest, his movements just seem …feminine, not effeminate. Naturally graceful. Just watching him tuck his hair behind his ears, or turn his head sideways, he looks, well, girlish. Maybe anybody would do it like that, with long hair. Okay, mental image: John Wayne with long hair, flicking it over his shoulder as he bends down to a drinking fountain. Doesn’t really work. Well, and the way he sits. Randy, not John Wayne. I’ve noticed that when he curls up on the sofa to watch TV, he often tucks his legs under him like a lot of girls do. I used to do that and sometimes still do, but I’ve never seen a male do it. On the other hand, any male I can think of is bigger than Randy, and he’s the only child I’ve really known, so maybe other young boys tuck their legs like that.

The thing is, Randy’s so small-boned—not frail, I don’t mean that. He’s just ...petite. That feels weird, to be thinking that word in relation to my son—but it’s true; my son is petite.

To the dress. I’m going to talk to Randy when he comes home from school. I have to, especially if it’s what I think it might be.

October 12

Oh, my God; omigod omigod. I talked with Randy about the dress, and my worst fears were confirmed. No, that’s not right. Not ‘worst fears’ about him. Oh, God, I’m so mixed up.

Randy told me he’s a girl.

I know he’s male, for God’s sake, but he said that he’s always been a girl, mentally. Emotionally. Whatever else kind there is.

In his soul, he said.

When I showed him the dress, he blanched. I’ve seen that in cook books, like in boiling, and thought it was a kind of fake word they used in literary books, but, boy, did he blanch! The color went right out of him. He seemed to be struggling with his thoughts, and then surprised me by quietly saying, ‘It’s mine’. His face crumbled then and tears—oh, my God, the tears; the dam just burst. He collapsed in a puddle on his bed. I mean that figuratively, and after he kept crying, literally. He couldn’t talk; I just patted him gently, kept handing him tissues and eventually put a wastepaper basket next to him.

When he got himself together, he told me everything. To sum it up—that doesn’t do justice to everything he told me but my hand is cramping—he has always felt like a girl. Life has been hell for him and I didn’t even know. He told me of some beatings he’s had from other boys that he had told me were from falling off his bike. I knew about the bruises but never dreamed he was being beaten. I was outraged that he’d been beaten but powerless to do anything; the beatings happened over years. I never knew! All this time and I

*
Had to stop and regroup.

The dress belonged to a girl he knew at school named Carla. He’d been talking to her about his feelings and not to me. I guess I can understand that, but it still hurts. Well, Carla apparently suggested that he try the dress on in the privacy of his room to see how he felt. I’m going to have a talk with Carla—no, I don’t mean that the way it sounds; I’m not angry with her. She seems to genuinely care for Randy and might be a pretty good psychologist someday, because she told Randy to wear the dress and see if it was the clothing that had an attraction or something else. I find that very mature and sensible.

Randy hadn’t tried the dress yet; ironically, Carla had given it to him yesterday afternoon and he’d stashed it but had so much homework and then I’d gotten home from work so he hadn’t had a chance to try it on. He felt lousy and I felt lousy. When I started this entry I said ‘my worst fears were confirmed’ but I didn’t mean about him; I mean I felt like I’d failed him. Maybe his life would be easier if there was a man around. Maybe living with me was pushing him into the feminine side of things. I felt really, really guilty and then I guess I lost my mind.

I asked Randy if he’d like to follow through with Carla’s suggestion.

He looked at me like I was crazy—maybe I was—or joking, which I definitely wasn’t. We finally settled on ‘maybe’. That is, I hugged him, kissed the top of his head, and left his room, making a big deal of locking the door before I closed it. Then I went to the kitchen, made a pot of tea, and sat on the sofa in the living room thumbing through magazines. I wasn’t reading them, really; just killing time, which was getting on my nerves. My mind kept conjuring up images of Randy trying on the dress and I just as quickly suppressed them. I didn’t want any preconceived notions. Also, I thought about something Randy said: He said he’d ‘always’ felt this way. Richard died when Randy was ten, so he had ten years with a man in the house—sort of, because the last year or so Richard ‘worked late’. But if it’s true that Randy had always felt that way, then not having a man in the house wasn’t a cause, so I took a little comfort there. And if some of what I’ve read was true, Randy might have been like this from the womb, so I shouldn’t beat myself up.

I decided I needed to learn more, so I went to the internet. Still no Randy, I thought while logging on. I did a search for ‘transsexual’ and my God there was a lot. I learned about the term ‘transgendered’, refined my search, hit a bonanza, and started reading.

I was pulled up from my research by Randy clearing his throat. I thought he hadn’t tried on the dress because he was wearing the same clothes that I’d left him in. But I was wrong; he told me that he’d worked up the courage to try the dress, and it felt good. Not sexually stimulating; it felt ‘right’. That was the word he used, feeling embarrassed, and I directed his attention to some of the websites I’d found. We spent an hour surfing around, looking at other teenagers and information sites, getting a crash-course on his condition, because that’s what the truth was.

My son is a transsexual. Or the newer, more proper term, transgendered.

Of that we have no doubt.

I’ll have to examine my own feelings in depth at some later time, because I was surprised at how un-surprised I was. I would have been shocked if he was an alcoholic. I would have been shocked if he’d stolen the dress. In fact, deep down and being totally honest with myself, I would have been more shocked if he’d been having sex with a girl in his room. In all honesty, I wouldn’t have been shocked if he were gay. And I wasn’t shocked that he was transgendered. It’s going to take a major adjustment in our thinking, but we’ll get by. We love each other and I’ll support him no matter what.

October 14

Skipped a day; I don’t know if that violates some journal protocol. But nothing happened yesterday. Oh, sure, stuff happened, but not about Randy and the dress, not until this evening. And this journal is about Randy and the dress, I guess, at this point. So: Randy announced during dinner—he was pushing peas around his plate so I knew something was on his mind—that he was going to show me the dress. I mean, put it on and show me. I stayed calm, banishing any preconceptions, and told him I’d clean the table (his job, usually) while he did it. I said he could borrow anything of mine if he wanted to, and I found that I was trembling inside. He thanked me and told me that Carla had loaned him some other things.

I was back on the sofa killing time, not really looking at the magazine I held, when Randy gave me the shock of my life. Learning he was transgendered was one shock—sort of—but I was unprepared for how good he looked—more than good; how real! He came out nervously—for some reason I thought of Bambi in the forest—and stood with his feet together, his hands clasped in front of her—him, I mean. Right now it’s already difficult to write this using the masculine pronoun, but I’ll try. Randy was so very, very pretty! Apparently Carla had loaned him the right things. The dress fit him nicely, to my surprise. It had looked so small when I found it, but then, Randy’s small. The hem was high but not shockingly, but what was shocking was how shapely his legs were. I realized that he was wearing stockings or pantyhose, as well, and had black strappy sandals with a small heel.

I realized that the dress fit nicely in part because of the bust. I guessed that Carla had loaned him—this was getting strange to think about—feminine underwear, because I was sure he was padded a little. That was interesting, I noted, because I think the typical male response would be to go overboard in the bust department, but Randy’s ...bust was appropriate for a petite girl of his age. That was strange to think about! Something else I noticed; the dress had a scooped neck, and the flesh at the top of Randy’s chest—what would be the start of his cleavage, so to speak—looked perfectly right. It was milky smooth and girlish. Now that I noticed that, I examined his skin tone where I could see it, and was struck by how clear his complexion and skin was, all over. It’s strange the way you don’t notice such obvious things on someone when you see them daily. Of course I looked at Randy every day, but until now I realized I hadn’t looked at Randy, like I would a stranger.

If I had, I think I would have automatically seen a girl.

Suddenly, with crystal clarity, I realized why he’d been beaten over the years. He had been dressed as a boy and was supposed to be a boy but was so obviously a girl that the—disconnect is the right word, I think—the disconnect disturbed the other boys’ sense of …well, whatever motivates boys to beat up anybody. But even there, my own mind did a disconnect of sorts, thinking about the phrase ‘other boys’, because it just didn’t fit the pretty girl standing before me.

I must have been taking longer than seemed comfortable, because Randy cleared his throat nervously and ran a hand up to his hair. Again, I was struck by how graceful and feminine the gesture was; either I’d been blind to it before or else the dress allowed it to be noticed in its proper setting, in a way. His hair was brushed out, full and shining, and he was lovely. There was no other way to put it; my son was lovely.

‘You ...don’t like it?’ he asked.

I could see a tear forming in one eye, and he swallowed hard. I told him the truth—I told him he was lovely. I opened my arms and he flung himself into them, and we hugged and kissed and cried and laughed and cried and hugged some more. We finally broke the hug, and I pulled back to daub his eyes with a tissue, and I realized to my shock—this was a night of shocks—that he wasn’t wearing any makeup, yet his lips were full and red, and his eyes were luminous. Later he told me that his lips probably got that way because he’d been chewing them in nervousness, but the fact remained that the little old ladies were right—he was too pretty to be a boy. And very pretty as a girl.

We worked our way through a pot of tea while we set up some order in our newly disordered lives. And amazingly, Randy swept his dress behind him properly when he sat, as if he’d worn skirts and dresses for years. His knees were primly together and his ankles crossed and it didn’t look forced or a pose; it was just the proper way a girl sits.

Then I had one of those ‘disconnects’ because in my mind the dress and his revelation vanished; I visualized him in his regular jeans and shirt and realized to my shock that he’d always sat that way! Even in jeans, he usually sat with his knees and ankles together. I’d always been grateful he wasn’t the kind of boy who sprawls everywhere, throwing out arms and legs or sticking his feet up on furniture. Randy always sat properly, usually toward the front of the chair or seat cushion. He seemed relaxed but never sprawled. In my first entry in this journal, I wrote that Randy is small, but I also used words like ‘neat’, ‘quiet’ and he is but it’s more than that.

Earlier I wrote how Randy tucks his legs under him on the couch, but I never thought of that as girlish, just …flexible, maybe? I guess I had Randy so firmly catalogued in my brain as a boy and I wasn’t looking for any girlish tendencies. And any that I saw, I let my brain talk me out of, so to speak. I’d seen Randy tuck his legs and catalogued it as an odd thing for a boy to do, never recognizing that it was a normal thing for a girl to do. And now, with Randy quite literally ‘sitting pretty’, I recognized the disconnect. My brain had never looked at the way my son sat, and made the connection that it was, in fact, the way a young girl sat.

And then my brain made the connection; I think in some ways I saw my son as a stranger would, seeing him objectively over the years. I realized that my son had not only looked like a girl all these years; he’d also moved like a girl as well. Not forced; not posed. Randy’s natural movements were feminine—are feminine—and I’d never noticed.

I’d never noticed that I have a son that is, in so many, many ways, actually a girl. It was a revelation so bizarre and alien but also solid and pure and right that it completely overthrew my perception of my child. Growing up, my family joked about ‘killing the Easter Bunny’, referring to when a child learns that the Bunny, or Santa Claus, isn’t real. We used it when someone learned the reality of a situation, learned the truth. What I’ve always thought interesting—and so, so sad—was the concept of killing. The Bunny was alive, and full of Spring and promise—and eggs and candy!—in the child’s mind. Their world had an actual living Easter Bunny in it, but then the child learns the truth and the Bunny doesn’t drop dead but vanishes, dissolves, ceases to be, and is no longer part of that child’s world. Any attempt to correct the damage, to try to ease the pain of loss for the child, will fail, because the child has heard the truth—and recognized it as truth. And after that, it’s impossible to resurrect the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus.

Or the belief that my child is male.

I have absolutely no doubt that Randy should begin transitioning to girlhood; I support him fully although I feel dizzy just contemplating that. I told him to report to Carla, and maybe she’d want to get involved with his changeover. I asked him if he’d thought of a name, and he blushed so I knew he had. He told me that when he prayed at night—every night—to be turned into a girl, his name for himself was ‘Amy’. I’ve always loved that name, and I told him.

So now I have a daughter named Amy.

Reluctantly, Randy went upstairs to get ready for bed, and I told him that since tomorrow was a Friday, we’d begin after school, but until then, to take Carla’s things off, leave them for me to wash, and we’d return them tomorrow. On our way to buy some clothes for Amy ...?

October 15

Wow, I’m exhausted. So much happened, so much. I don’t know if I’ll be able to write it all in one sitting!

Randy came home from school with bad news and good news. The bad news was that he’d been chased by a pack of boys screaming ‘fag!’—exactly what I feared for him. I began thinking seriously of changing schools. But the sad truth is that boys at any new school would scream ‘fag!’, too. It was because he was clearly so feminine—clearly a girl pretending to be a boy, in my new ‘connected’ view. Suddenly I realized that if Randy entered another school, it should be as Amy.

The good news was that he had a long talk with Carla during lunch, and she was excited for him and definitely wanted to help him. They set everything up so we’d pick her up on the way to the mall. Huh? Yes, it seemed that plans were already made. I’d thought that Randy and I would start with a quiet evening of discussing clothing and styles, ‘feminine deportment’, whatever, to avoid the Friday traffic.

Of course, Randy and Carla had other plans, and it dawned on me that what else would two teen girls do on a Friday night but hit the mall? It is so obvious that I have to realign my thinking …

Okay; the mall it is, then, I thought. I whipped out a measuring tape and notepad to write down Randy’s sizes. He stripped down to his boxers and I had a small shock (I was getting plenty used to shocks) when I saw that his waist nipped in and his bottom was pretty round already. When did that happen? There were no breasts, of course, but other than that, Randy looked like an underdeveloped girl. Shouldn’t his doctor have mentioned something to me at his last physical? It was …and I realized that it had been several years since we’d seen Dr. Kirby, because Randy was very healthy and wasn’t going out for any sports so there was no need for the annual checkup. And Randy’s body had begun changing since his last physical—and not changing. I mean, the curviness was certainly since his last checkup but that was several years ago, when he was a small boy. Now he would be classified as very small; almost underdeveloped. I was willing to bet that his genitals were underdeveloped, too, but I didn’t want to ask and embarrass him any more than he was already.

Checking his measurements against the dimensions on the chart in an old Penney’s catalog I still have, I saw that he was right in the normal girl sizes, except for bust, of course. That would change, because of the phone call I’d made earlier to my OB-GYN. She’s an old friend as well as my doctor, and I got right to the point about Randy. She recommended a specialist and said she’d call him for me.

We left the house for Carla’s; it turned out that I had met her a year ago at one of those class-night, Open House things. Randy had pulled her over and made the introduction, but the name didn’t register. Now I knew her to be a good friend of his, so I took stock. She was as dark as he was fair, and as bubbly as he was somber. Interesting mix. Carla was wearing a denim skirt and blue tank top, with a white sweater for later. In just a few minutes, I had warmed to her immensely. She obviously cares for Randy as a friend—as a girlfriend, I wondered? Girl to girl, I mean—and strikes me as very mature about the situation. I had already decided that we would go to a mall in another town, so we stopped for some snacks on the way while we talked.

Apparently, Carla knew before Randy did. About his condition, I mean. Actually, I don’t like that word, ‘condition’, now that I look at it. It’s Randy’s truth, and Carla knew it. She supports him 100% and, yes, wants him—her—as a girlfriend, but she’s most concerned that he is happy.

Correction—that should be ‘she is happy’, because after our introduction, Carla only used the feminine forms when talking about Randy.

‘I bet Amy looked real cute in that dress,’ Carla had said. ‘Did she have any trouble with the sandals?’ and ‘God, I wish my hair was as gorgeous as hers!’

It was a crash-course for me, hearing those words and realizing that this is how our new life is going to be, and I’ll have to train myself to follow Carla’s example. Of course, it’s not so hard to say ‘she’ and ‘her’ after seeing Amy in that dress!

But at Carla’s, I had to think clearly in ‘Randy-he-his’ terms, because he was still in ‘Randy-mode’, I guess I’ll call it, even though it was plain that Carla considered him to be a girl named Amy.

I thought he was so lucky to have so caring a friend right when he needed her most. I laid out my tentative game plan: We’d pick up a few essentials in a big chain store—bra, panty, shorts and a top, and sneakers. We’re lucky it’s still warm in mid-October, so shorts are fine. Both kids looked dismayed until I told them that it wouldn’t end there, but I was so convinced of Randy’s ability to pass as a girl—especially accompanied by ‘her mother’ and Carla—that it would be easier and less suspicious if a mom and two girls went shopping. Randy’s face lit up when I told him that once he was casually dressed as Amy, we’d go the mall proper and ‘stock up’, starting with a large department store and ending at the boutiques.

Carla asked about getting Randy’s ears pierced. I worried that it would be too much too soon, but she reassured me that several boys at school had both ears pierced (as did many of the male stars on MTV and sports stars on ESPN), and besides, whoever already thought Randy was gay already either hated him or ignored him, so the piercings wouldn’t matter. I had to admit she was right, but said we’d keep it to a low priority. First thing was to get some decent clothes for my daughter.

My daughter! Just the sound of it—just writing it—thrills me! I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted a daughter until I was presented with this fait accompli. Now, I was excited but fearful, hoping that I wasn’t making a huge mistake for Randy. But he came through, or rather, she did ...

And thank you, Carla, for easing me into using feminine forms of speech!

The chain store made me itch. I didn’t get hives or anything, but it just felt so cheap, and I felt cruddy subjecting my child to it, but I knew that basics like underwear were their stock in trade; I knew that their best garments were cheaper than anywhere else, and we could purchase a decent quality anonymously. During the day I’d stopped at the ATM for cash. I just wanted the mall to be a ‘girls’ night out’ for Amy, and I knew that pretending to be the brother or boyfriend of Carla, tagging along while we shopped, would be depressing. This way, Randy would only have to do it once before changing into Amy. It’s funny—even writing ‘Amy’ thrills me ...

I picked up three-packs of teen bras and panties, while Carla picked out a peach camp-shirt over a white camisole and khaki shorts. On the way to the register she found a pair of Adidas sandals that were unisex, but worn mostly by girls. I paid for everything, and then we were faced with the tricky job of Randy changing. Carla came through again with the suggestion of a gas station restroom. I parked to the side, Carla got the ladies’ room key and Randy went in with her and the bags.

And out came Amy! It was both as earthshaking and as simple as that. I couldn’t believe my eyes; waiting for Carla to come back with the key, my son was slightly hunched with nervousness, clutching the bags to him and scanning around to make sure they weren’t seen. Carla unlocked the door and Randy scooted in. They must have been in there for ten minutes or more, but it felt like seconds. The door opened, and two giggling girls came out. Carla still had her blue tank top but was wearing the shorts we’d just bought, and Randy was wearing the cami, camp-shirt and Carla’s denim skirt! Of course, I could tell in an instant that it wasn’t Randy, it was Amy. She walked with confidence, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder and laughing with her girlfriend. I think I was just starting to breathe again when they reached the car and climbed in the backseat.

Before they even started to explain, I realized how important it was that we’d brought Carla. She’d reasoned—correctly—that we shouldn’t go half-way with Randy. I’d been thinking to have him dress just enough over the girlish line that we wouldn’t have problems at the mall. Once they’d gotten in the bathroom—and their description of putting on the underwear with all the cold tile was funny—Carla realized that the skirt would definitely let Amy be seen as a girl. That way, if ‘he’ lapsed at all and did something masculine, she would be chalked up as a tomboy, but would never be thought of as a male. Smart cookie, that Carla.

Before I started the car, Carla amazed me yet again by producing a variety of items from her purse. First, she pulled out some nail polish and did Amy’s toes and started on her fingers while they were explaining their clothing change. Her judgment was right again; the pretty blue nail polish was just what Amy would wear, and was shown off nicely by the Adidas sandals. I started for the mall while Carla pulled out a necklace, bracelets, and rings, as she explained that no real girl would be caught dead without her accessories.

With each addition to the wardrobe, Amy became more real to us, including herself. I noticed that her speech patterns were subtly changing; if I hadn’t known Randy’s voice intimately, I couldn’t have detected the change. Now her sentences took on the lilt and syntax of Carla’s and I wondered aloud if they’d been practicing. They blushed and admitted that during lunch periods, they’d go off by themselves and they’d practice talking like two girls, hoping for the day when Amy would come out. Well, she was definitely out now and I found myself loving my daughter as much as I loved my son, but I did ask that she not use so many rising inflections—the upswing at the end of every sentence that was a carryover from ‘Valley Girl’ speech—and maybe watch the overuse of words like ‘precious’ and ‘divine’ as being more drag-queen than real-girl speech. I think she’d been overcompensating for my benefit. Neither those words or the inflection were heard again, and her personality began coming through the more she spoke. Her true personality; my daughter’s personality.

We had three hours at the mall and decided not to waste time eating, but we did have smoothies while walking. And I’ve got to note here that I wasn’t obsessively examining Amy, but I couldn’t help but notice things like how she held her smoothie straw, with two straight fingers and a thumb—but gracefully. Femininely. No boy holds a straw quite so delicately.

True to the plan, we went to the department store and out of guilt I bought Amy much better bras and panties. Also slips and nighties, slippers and a robe. We brought those to the car and set off in another direction and to make a long story short—too late, I know!—we made four trips back to the car before the mall closed. I made it a point to not buy too many things at any one store, lest they wonder why my daughter didn’t have these things already or think we were up to something nefarious. I took advantage of every sale, and when Amy worried about where the money was coming from—bless her!—I reassured her that we still had some of my husband’s death benefits. To give birth to my daughter ...

The mall was getting near to closing when we dragged ourselves into an accessories boutique. I bought a package plan that got Amy’s ears pierced—yes, they wore me down—and a set of hoops to go with the starter studs, along with a little disinfectant kit, and at a discount! The girls—really only the truth to use that word; but still, it’s so much fun to say that and write that!—the girls bought necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, the items Carla had said girls didn’t do without. I rewarded Carla by letting her get what she wanted and I picked up the tab.

We were exhausted and were walking back through the department store to the car, when we saw that the store had a makeup special. There was no one to do a makeover, since they’d already clocked out, so the clerk gave us a discount on the already discounted special, so Amy got a complete makeup kit with brushes and case for a fifth of the regular cost! Why am I never so lucky? We got in the car and I realized that there were some basic toiletries we’d forgotten at the chain store, and I went back and forth in my head until I saw a 24-hour drug store and pulled over. The girls came in, too, and I bought Noxzema and shampoo, nail polish remover (there were polishes and lipsticks in the makeup kit), a nail care kit, and brushes. Carla threw in bubble bath and two teen magazines, Seventeen and CosmoGirl. She looked at me inquiringly, wondering if she’d overstepped things; I just nodded and then, impulsively, hugged her.

Finally, we could head home. The girls—I really love saying that!—dozed in the back while I worried again about doing the right thing. But all night long, Amy had been happy and bubbly and so much more alive, so much more ...real than Randy ever seemed. I was finally seeing my true child after all these years, and my child is a girl named Amy.

We pulled up at Carla’s house; she gave us both a sleepy hug and headed in. I turned around and got us home before sleep overtook me. We carried everything in, and I told Amy not to worry about putting things away until tomorrow. I handed her the Noxzema products, a hair band, and a nightie, and told her how to wash up. I stuck my head in the bathroom just as she was pulling the towel away from her face, and I was struck again by how pretty she was, even without makeup, and on her first day as a girl. She obviously loved how the nightie felt, and I tucked her in for the first time in years. I smoothed her hair, kissed her brow, and left my pretty girl; I got ready for bed and then sat down to write this.

End of Part 1