[Note: This is a sequel to "Wrong Bathroom" and "New Home." I decided to write this after comments on both of those stories saying that I should continue them.]
After having her gender changed in the school bathroom, Saige went to her last class, which was Algebra. But when the teacher, Mrs. Gillmore, was taking role, she did not see Saige Johnson on the list. There was a Sage Johnson, yes, but no Saige Johnson. Saige tried to explain to Mrs. Gillmore that she was Sage, that the bathroom had changed her gender, but Mrs. Gillmore didn't believe her.
"Saige, I'm sorry, but you are not in this class. Sage is the one who is supposed to be sitting in that desk," said Mrs. Gillmore.
"I swear, I am Sage!" said Saige.
"No, you are not," said Mrs. Gillmore. "Now get out of my class."
Saige left the classroom and sat down in the hall. She should've known this would happen. She should've known that everyone would think she was just another girl, and Sage was still out there somewhere. But what could she do now?
Halfway through the period, Saige decided there was no point in sticking around. She got her backpack and left the school grounds. She walked the several blocks down the Chicago suburbs to her house. She knew her mom would not be home from work for a few more hours, so that would give Saige some time to figure out how to break the news to her.
Now, Saige's parents had divorced five years ago, and Saige had ended up living with her mother. Her mother worked as a greengrocer at a local supermarket. They lived in a normal-sized house in the suburbs of Chicago.
Saige went into her familiar bedroom, and she was surprised at how...boyish it was. Wait. Did she just think that? This was her room! She'd lived in here for years! And yet the Star Wars posters, football pennants, and Funko Pop superhero figurines didn't instill the same feeling they had before. Now that she was a girl, she just...didn't feel into those things as much as before.
Even worse, Saige still had her boy clothes in her closet and dresser. She was grateful that that magic bathroom (she assumed it was magic) had turned her boy clothes into girl clothes that fit her. If only it had changed the rest of the world around her. That way, she wouldn't have had to worry about whether her mom would believe her. Mrs. Gillmore would've let her in her Algebra class.
Luckily, Saige still had her TV in her room. She turned it on and surfed the channels. She ended up watching Disney Channel for the rest of the afternoon-something she might not have done as a boy. But as a girl, she found herself liking new things.
At 5:00, Saige went to sit at the kitchen table to wait for her mom. She knew she would be home within 15 minutes, and the kitchen table felt like as good a place as any to have a discussion about how Saige was now a girl. When the key turned in the lock, Saige felt her heart speeding up. This was it. This was where her mom would find out the truth.
"Sage, I'm home!" Saige's mom said as she entered her house.
"Hi, Mom," Saige said in a slightly uneasy voice. "It's me."
Saige's mom stared at the girl at her kitchen table. "Who...who are you?"
"I'm Saige. Your son," said Saige. "Or daughter now."
"What-what are you talking about?" Saige's mom asked.
"I went into the girl's bathroom by accident," said Saige. "And it turned me into a girl."
Saige's mom's jaw dropped. "You can't be serious," she said.
"I am," said Saige.
Saige's mom raised an eyebrow. "How long ago did Dad and I split up?"
"Five years ago," said Saige. "Because you and him kept getting in arguments. And because you had different ideas for what you wanted to do with your lives."
Saige's mom thought for a moment. Only her son-er, daughter-would know that. But she wanted further proof. "Okay, where did Dad keep his motorcycle when he lived with us?"
"He didn't even have a motorcycle," said Saige.
Her mom sat down next to her daughter. "Oh, Sage," she said. "Er, can I still call you Sage?"
"Yeah," said Saige. "Sage can be a girl's name, too. But with an 'i.'"
"Wow," said Saige's mom. "I finally have the daughter I never had."
"Don't-don't you like having a son?" Saige asked.
"I mean, I do," said Saige's mom. "But I always wanted a daughter."
"I dunno," Saige said uneasily. "I mean, I really liked being a boy."
"Being a girl isn't all bad," said Saige's mom. "I can teach you about womanhood. We'll get you some new clothes, sell your old ones."
Saige stared at her mother. "You're taking this way better than I thought you would."
"Well, I wouldn't want to freak out, would I?" Saige's mom asked. "I hardly think that would help anything."
"You're right," said Saige. "It wouldn't turn me back into a boy at all."
Saige's mom frowned. "Did you say the bathroom turned you into a girl? At school?"
"Yes," said Saige. "I wish I knew why it did that..."
To be continued...
[credit to jessicac119 and Beverly Taff for giving me the idea to continue those earlier stories]
Comments
Follow-Up
I recognized this as a follow up to "Wrong Bathroom", but also to "New Home"? I haven't read that one yet. Saige was in a pickle with Mrs. Gillmore. Is Miss Johnson her mother? It sounds as if Mom is accepting Sage's change -- but does major conflict occur later?
Looking forward to it.
-- Daphne Xu
Well done.
So glad you chose to follow up the earlier stories. I claim NO credit save that of thinking there was a follow up in this. It's all your own work and whilst I thank you for your acknowledgement let's not be under any illusions; it was - and is- all your own work. Thanks for the read.
Beverly. xx
Saige was lucky her mom believed her
Would've been terrible if she started screaming and called the cops, forcing Saige to take off running with nowhere to go...
I have a heroine in a story going through a similar dilemma, her parents knew she was trans and she and they were starting to discuss how to proceed when she disappeared for a week; but the girl she returned as looked nothing like her old male self and she was very worried. Luckily Suzie had had a dream a few days before she managed to get home:
I was drifting back into consciousness from a very unusual little dream. I'd had several anxiety dreams this week about trying to get back home to my land parents, and almost getting there until something went weirdly wrong; so this one was pretty typical in that respect. But what I'd never ever had was a dream where everything was so hopelessly out-of-focus and blurry.
I was in a place, in a room I supposed, surrounded by shapes that must have been furniture. From out in the blurriness---somewhere in the middle of a big rose colored blob---I heard a woman crying. I knew it was my my mother Shannon; and that she was crying over me being missing. The pink blob was probably my bed that she was sitting on, with that new 'tea rose' bedspread we had bought together. I sensed that I was close to her but some force like magnetic repulsion was keeping me from being able to move any closer. Everything about this dream was vague except the emotions. The grief I felt coming from her was strong and clear and absolutely heartbreaking.
She was talking to someone, some half-crazy rambling, and I realized she was talking to God, telling him all the things she'd never got to see me do. Graduating high school, learning to drive, and then in some kind of weird bargaining she declared: “I'll buy her that damn car! Just send her home!”
[“The car” was still mostly hypothetical---I didn't even have my learner's permit yet---and I wondered why she thought getting it for me would persuade God to deliver me to them...]
I shouted: “Mom!”
She stopped. Started calling out: “Honey... Honey?”
I yelled to her, that I was okay and there was a good chance I'd be coming home soon, but she wouldn't recognize me when I did, because I'd been turned into a girl and I looked totally different now.
I couldn't tell if she'd heard me, because she just kept on going “Honey?”; her cries and sobs fading now as the blurriness lost even the suggestion of shapes and then dissipated like wisps of fog...
It was a short dream and not much had really happened in it, and other than the fact of it all being so blurry it was fairly forgettable. (In fact I did forget I'd had it for the next day or two. Until I got home and learned something that would bump this dream into the realm of the paranormal; casting serious doubt on whether it had been a dream at all!)
And then when she finally does get home after her alien abduction and other bizarre adventures:
I started toward the house, tidying up my hair the best I could with just my fingers, and trying to figure out what the hell I would say to my folks after I rang the doorbell...
...when our front door opened and they both stepped out onto the porch.
Mom was in her bathrobe---the pretty kimono one I liked---and Dad wore shorts and one of the MC Escher t-shirts I'd bought him for his birthday. They both looked horribly groggy and disoriented (Later I would learn that they hadn't woken up until that saucer had been sitting up there for quite a while because they'd only got to sleep an hour or two before. This past week had been every bit as horrible for them as I'd feared...).
“Mom?! Dad?” was all I could say before I started crying really hard- which caught me totally unexpected. Suddenly seeing them again was like a catalytic agent, causing a week's worth of fears that I would never see them again to come bubbling up and pouring out of me in the form of tears and sobs.
“Honey, is that you?!” asked Mom.
I froze in my tracks, nodding and crying. Mom started crying too, looking like she wanted to come flying down here and grab me in her arms, but Dad held her back, whispering something to her.
“It is too! I don’t know how, but that’s our baby. She told me she was coming home-”
“That was just a dream,” said Dad, “You fell asleep on her bed, of course you were going to dream about Susan.”
“No it wasn't! And I don't think I was asleep. This didn't feel like dreaming or being awake or anything else I ever felt. Everything was all blurry, and she told me she was far away, so far away... but she was coming home, and how she'd look completely different when she did!”
“Shannie,” Dad cautioned her, a one-word plea to be the rational woman he knew she was, and to not give in to unreason or freaky blurry dreams. (The very same dream I was having after my trip through the alien's cellular transmogrifier...)
“I know this is crazy, Daddy, b-but that was me,” I keened, and started bawling even harder, “She kept calling me 'Honey! Honey!'”
“This is-” Dad started to say. He looked at her. He looked at me. He didn't know what this was...
“You were praying,” I told her, “Said you'd buy me a car if I'd just come home. But I won't hold you to that.”
“Two against one,” Mom kidded him, and sniffed, “And even if that isn't her, does that little girl look dangerous to you? I don't think there's any need for us to be shouting across the lawn at each other.”
Her dad was a harder sell, but even he was eventually convinced. Unfortunately this happened just as his daughter was being taken away by the FBI because by some freaky coincidence she was now a dead ringer for a dangerous wanted teenage criminal:
"So you believe me now?" I asked him.
“After talking it over with your mom I'm at about 90% there. And that's not because you can rattle off a bunch of facts or tell anecdotes about things we did together; Those can be found out, memorized, practiced. It's more in how you do it. The way you phrase things, your sense of humor, even how you laugh. So I decided it's be better to proceed from the assumption that you are who you claim you are---and wind up embarrassed about how gullible I can be if it turns out I'm wrong---than to assume you couldn't be you and have it turn out that I'd turned my back on my daughter at the time she needed me most. Because-”
“SIR!” shouted Agent Sepulveda.
All right, I'm going now,” he told the law officers, and to me he said, “And remember, don't say anything until we get you a lawyer.”
“Name, rank and serial number,” I promised him, “And tell Mom... tell Mom...”
Before heading off across the street he gave my shoulder a loving, lingering squeeze. “I will, Sweetheart...”
My biggest worry in life---until those pirates came along---had been whether this man would ever be able to accept me as his daughter. And I knew he was trying, but was struggling with the whole concept. But from the ease with which words like my daughter and sweetheart were tripping off his tongue now it seemed like this new body of mine was making his own mental transition a whole lot easier. Since I obviously was no candidate for being anyone's son.
I was crying again. Whatever else might be taken from me---my freedom, even my life---I had that, and it felt wonderful.
But then just as the FBI are about to load her into their car the Men Without Hats (sort of like the Men in Black) show up and abduct her away from the Feds. As you might have guessed this story is highly autobiographical...
Sorry to digress at such length, I do that.
~Hugs, Veronica
And remember...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0
Smart mom
Guess part of turning boys into girls was also having them twist in the wind as they tried to tell others who they had been.
Saige's mom had a good head on her shoulders in knowing that freaking out wouldn't do any good. Next question they'll have to answer is where's Sage and who's Saige. If others react like Gilmore then there's a rough road ahead as others will want to know what happened to Sage.
Others have feelings too.