Come back soon…Part six

I’m so in this daze but I a good one as mom has me in the chair first and my head leaning over it and into the sink. I’ve never dared going to a salon or a hair dresser it had always been a barber because honestly I didn’t trust my resolve in anything else.

Breaking down crying in one wouldn’t likely be the best thing.

But this is a Cinderella daze.

Like imagine if someone came in with you being poor as dirt and cleaning you up, making you look pretty and sending you off to have the same as all the other girls did.

It’d feel like a spell or magic right?

It feels like that now.

Fingers in my hair washing my scalp, that great scratchy feeling and the smells. I mean it really you know you’re deprived when something as simple as Pantene smells like heaven.

Mom gets me all set and conditioned and wow…I’ve never actually waited the entire time it says on the bottle before. I mean does anyone?

While we’re waiting mom uses the electric razor on me and then the No-No thing and then it’s this face mask stuff to un-do the guy damage on my pores.

Seriously it’s not like guys do stuff to clean their pores and stuff…ever.

She even has these pads to go over my eyes with some stuff on them and that’s when
I hover between falling asleep and crying. I can feel her rinsing my hair then toweling it before going onto my eyebrows and tweezing them. She doesn’t do too much or it doesn’t seem like it which is good.

I don’t want a unibrow but I don’t want drawn on eyebrows either.

Those, those are nasty.

Then she gets me up and turned around in the chair and I have the things off my eyes which doesn’t look like they’re changed but like I can sort of feel the stress dark under them like cleaned up some?

Even with the mask stuff on just the brows and my eyes it seems different. Like I’m wearing a different expression? Mom takes the towel off and starts to comb and brush my hair going in different angles and stuff like she’s trying to see what way she wants to do this?

The scissors and comb come out and she starts doing her thing.

“Mom?”

“Yes Honey?”

“What has Mar said?”

“She freaked out; she was the one who found you Jennifer. She moved out.”

My stomach drops out. “Oh…”

“She said she kept seeing your body there and was having nightmares.”

(Sniffle.) “Dammit…I really screwed up right.”

“Yes Honey, you definitely did that. Though she’s been by to visit.”

“But not since I’ve woken up.”

“No, she’s been busy she’s said. Closing the apartment you too had, packing Michael’s things. Working, your dad said she’s doing a lot of overtime.”

(Sniffle.) “Dad? They’re talking?”

“Yes, actually of all things.”

See the story behind that is dad well he’s one of those kind of old school stoic guys and he likes things as he likes things. Well he likes things unchanging, the way that they should be. Marlene’s always been outspoken and she’s always been a best foot forward kind of girl but challenging too.

We met when I was working a catering job as a waiter during the G20 thing and she was protesting.

No her and her friends weren’t the vandals, there was more to it than that and I thought as soon as I saw her. “Wow…” and even as messed up as I had been then on the inside it was very much a breathless wow.

So I “spilled” a few trays of stuff for the big wigs and I got fired pretty fast for it but as I left I had ten or so catering trays and fed her and her friends.

Her and dad butted heads sometimes.

A lot of sometimes actually.
The fact that they are talking means that things have gone from the normal stuff to serious stuff and the fact the mom said that they’re talking and not fighting. Well that means…well I’m not sure what that means.

I take a breath as she starts to dry my hair with the hair dryer and doing this whole comb and brush stuff. I mean I think I know what she’s doing she’s adding a wave by using the brush as a curler but without ever actually having done it I really can’t be sure.

Which kind of sums up a lot of what I’ve gone through my entire life living through other women while never actually getting there myself.

(Tired, so tired sigh.) “Mom…? So what does that mean for me…I mean after here and stuff where am I going to stay?”

“Your Dad’s moved your things back into the house. But don’t worry about that Jennifer it’s actually a good thing.”

“How? I’m back in the house. I mean no offense mom but I’m too old to be living at home.”

“Well it won’t be forever Jen it’ll just be until you get back up on your feet.”

“Okay…” (Sigh.) I don’t mean for it to sound like I’m not grateful and stuff but Dad was one of the reasons why I left. I love him to death but he was always going on about the whole his generation and that whole meme-without-a-meme thing they have of ‘Get a haircut and get a real job.’ We butted heads on that a lot and I was never into the stuff that he saw as things that I should know like shop and sports and stuff. Though with dad it actually wasn’t about jockdom as him admitting that it looked good for college and resumes with me being a team player and stuff. That and even if I was on a team with someone that made good in life then that’s a sort of contact that would be good later in life.

He was much more a shop guy because everyone should be good with his hands.

Me going and taking arts as my degree wasn’t really a choice he remotely approved of.

Dad… “Unless you’re going to be a teacher an arts degree is right next to useless in the real world.”

So me with my string of jobs and losses like the catering one and waiting tables and stuff to make ends meet never really went over well.

The thing is that… how can you be successful when you’ve never been yourself?

Unless you’re really good at faking it.

I guess I was reasonably good at doing that.

I was able to keep employed most of the time. I was working at the Green Bean coffee house and it was actually working out okay. It was just a few days a week but it had been by far one of the better places that I had worked. It was very hip and college student friendly and stuff.

And I had a great girlfriend living with me.

Until all of this.

“Mom…I’m scared, what if Marlene and I…”

“Jennifer you have to give yourself and her time to recover. Her finding you and about all of this is a huge shock to her. Not only did she nearly lose you she didn’t even have a clue as to why until that same time and it has to be a real shocker that she’s been in a same gender relationship.”

“I know…god I know.”

“It will work out honey; you just have to have some faith and some patience.”

“I’ll try, just being Mike for so long has sort of shredded stuff like that mom.”

“Well that’s why you’re getting help kiddo.”

She gets done and then she gets the stuff off my face and okay I know I had a lot of guy years there but the stuff she had used it really did pull the stuff out of my pores and all I can really think of is Ick…but…it feels like an inside part of me is cleaner.

The she does my face with a liquid to powder foundation from my bag and some eye pencil and just a light shade of lipstick. It’s really more of a colored peach balm but it’s still….so much this.

I have snuck make up on before, just doing or trying to do my face sometimes was a fast way for me to try and see and feel myself and this, this actually feels good, it feels like it’s right just as much as every time I’ve touched my face between shavings and felt the stubble there as being wrong.

It’s a really visceral feeling but actually a good one.

Then it’s getting dressed and Mom has a set of these really nice fluffy almost plush pajamas and they’re pink with poinsettias on them and candy canes and teddy bears too.

When I finally get a look at myself it’s a good thing that I’m sitting down because it’s stunning. It’s not the me from my dreams, she’s a genetic girl and she’s a lot prettier than I am and stuff but right now, right now is as close as I have ever gotten in actually reality with me matching both inside and out.

Mom grins and she does the face to face side by side and she’s redone hers likely while I had my eyes closed at some point and we do look like we’re related, like a female related way.

“Kinda awesome huh?”

I nod. “More than awesome if I could get rid of the facial hair and stuff.”

“And stuff?”

“Oh mom there’s a big list of stuff that…it’s not really that important.”

“Yes, yes it is.”

“Mom…”

“Jen whatever it is going to be that you need to be you we’re right with you okay? Getting rid of the facial hair, that trachea shave voice thing, the whole nine yards.”

“Mom…that’s too expensive…”

“Pfft it’s our money; we can spend it how we want to.”

“Yeah and I can chip in too.” …………………….!?” I look over and I see Peter the oldest brother and he looks…well he looks like he’s been better.

“Pete?”

“Yeah, Jen it’s me.”

“Jen?”

“Well yeah I might have been in Brazil but I did have a Sat phone at the job site.”

Peter’s actually a construction guy but more than that he’s like an engineer he works on jobs like building those huge radio telescopes and stuff and observatories. That’s what he was doing this time building a telescope.

I blush.

I mean it’s the first time anyone other than mom has seen me and Pete looks at me and I can’t help but to sort of hunch.

He sets down this really big hockey bag that he uses all the time to travel and stuff and he opens his arms up.

I’m a bit scared and sort of shy and I don’t really know why Peter and I never had an adversarial sibling thing we’re all actually pretty far apart that it’s never been an issue with the three of us.

But with Pete and like dad, I’m scared because of the hurt I caused and what he’s feeling about me. He does the big brother thing and meets me more than halfway he comes in the rest of the way for the hug.

Oh god that feels good.

“I’m sorry.”

“Good, you’re going to get help, get to be you?’

I lean back and look at him. “Pete?”

“Two people that work for me down there are transgendered Jen, I’m not a stranger to it.”

“Okay…”

“But I guess this explains why you were always such the quiet loner in school and just seemed so sad sometimes huh?”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…”

“But now you’re feeling more you? The real you?”

(Smiley-sniffle.) “Yeah…”

He tweaks my nose a little. “That should be Yes, young ladies don’t go around saying yeah all the time.”

I blush.

He hugs me tighter and laughs as he holds me. “Right on I can still tease you only over all sorts of new stuff.”

I groan but it’s a sort of happy one. “Pee…teeerrr…”

He lets me go and I sit on the edge of my bed and he has a really big smile.

“What?”

His face breaks out into a grin. “I had some time between all the flights getting here and stuff so I got my assistants to find me this as a sort of pre-Christmas present.”

“Peter you didn’t have to, you just being okay with me being me is more than I deserve.”

“So you don’t want it then?”

“I didn’t say that.” (Sniffle.)

He laughs. “You are such a girl. Well it really does fit then. Here jenny you’re first birthday present from me.”

He passes me this pretty big box and it’s wrapped pretty nicely and I do open it like a girl. I want to save the paper, and the bow. It really is my first birthday present from Peter to Jennifer.

It’s a doll, I go really carefully since I can tell it’s a vintage toy from the look of the cardboard and stuff and my breath catches in my chest.

It’s not one of those vintage porcelain dolls I’m not really into those but this…this is like he could look back and read my mind.

It’s a Kid Sister doll…like from the 90’s when I was little, like really little and that was just one of those things at the time that was just…

And I look at Peter as he sits down beside me and he pulls me into a hug and starts holding me tight and singing the song from the commercial to me.

‘Cause I’m his kid sister.