Is it hard to be a boy? Or harder to be a girl?

 
After rinsing out his mouth with water and mouthwash, Les lay on one of the beds in the room he had been told he would share with his “new sister,” Priscilla. The other bed looked more recently used.

This is a mistake, he thought. I can’t do this. Better to go to juvie and get beat senseless. I’m going to puke myself to death trying to pretend to be a girl.

Jessie had left him alone in the room after being very solicitous. I can’t believe how trusting she is, he thought. If I were like some of my parents’ friends’ kids, I could totally rip this family off.

In the quiet, he heard voices. After listening a moment, he realized that they came from downstairs. A fluke in the ducting meant that the floor vent right beside this bed connected with a ceiling vent almost over the dining table below. He could hear Maddy and Jessie talking. About him.

Naturally, he listened.

“She’s so thin,” Jessie said. “Perhaps she’s bulimic?”

Les didn’t know that word. As far as he knew, his family was English, French and Dutch.

“I think it’s mostly bad nutrition,” said Maddy.

“I don’t know,” said Jessie. “Her skin is beautiful and that lovely hair. My experience with animals suggests that the hair is the first part of the body to suffer in malnutrition cases.”

“That would apply to bulimia, too,” Maddy pointed out.

“I know,” Jessie agreed. “She seems very resilient. Maybe it’s just fright and natural thinness.”

“Mmm. Can you sign this one, too?”

They were quiet for a time, then Maddy announced. “I’ve got to get back to the office. She’s yours for now, and from the look of this case, it may be weeks before her parents can come for her.”

“No other kids?” Jessie asked. Maddy must have shaken her head. “That’s a blessing, I guess. But the kid must be lonely.” Jessie continued. “Does she have any relatives at all nearby?”

“Not in this state,” said Maddy. “The father says he has an ex-wife, Elle’s real mom, in Texas, and she, the mother, has a brother somewhere. That’s it.”

Elle. That’s me, thought Les. They keep saying her and she, and they mean me. The taste of acid bubbled at the back of his throat. If this family finds out I’m a boy, they will send me straight to juvie, dressed like I am, and I’ll get killed.

He felt a pang at the thought of Mom-Mom, his real mom, and his Uncle Billy, neither of whom he had seen in years. Yes, he had been lonely.

He put an arm over his face. He heard Maddy murmur, but she had moved away from the acoustically unique spot that carried her voice upstairs, and then he heard a door close.

She’s gone, Les thought. He considered leaping off the bed to run downstairs and try to follow her, but he knew he was stuck now. Why did she do this to me? How am I going to survive? I don’t know how to be a girl.

A few minutes later he heard steps coming closer, pausing outside the door of the bedroom. He tried to go limp, preparing to fake being asleep. A sound might have been a door opening; another might be it closing. He didn’t think it was the door to Pris’s room, but it might have been.

Was someone in the room? He kept his eyes closed, breathing slowly, not forcing it. Without realizing, he fell asleep.

*

He drifted through dreamscapes filled with fragments of unpleasant memories. Most of them involved his parents and having to move, time and again. Always being the new kid in class, always being behind in his schoolwork, dealing with bullies, and teachers who couldn’t be bothered to even try with a kid they knew would only be a transient.

He sat a kitchen table, eating generic oat cereal with Dr. Pepper on it; they were out of milk. His stepmom sat across from him, smoking a cigarette and drinking the rest of the bottle of soda, poured over ice with a jolt of rum in it.

His father’s snores came from another room and Corrie, his stepmom’s name, sneered in that direction. “Be glad you’re not a girl, kid.” She took a sip of the concoction in front of her. “Even if you got a girly name you get beat up for, being a real girl is worse.”

Aware of the cuts and bruises on his face and arms, Les felt the sting of the soda on his busted lips.

Corrie smiled a huge, drunken leer at him, showing two missing teeth on the left side where she had “fallen.” “When they call roll for you at school, do they say, ‘Love, Les’?”

*

He woke up, disturbed by some dream he didn’t remember. The light against his eyelids seemed wrong, and when he opened them, he saw the pale green of the ceiling and the pink of the walls without recognizing them.

But the room smelled nothing like a motel or any of the other dumps where he had lived—none of the dust of a Colorado feedlot next door, or the road tar odor of a hot day beside an L.A. Freeway, or the sewer-like smell of a Louisiana swamp.

The memory of where he was and what he was wearing came back suddenly, and he sat up all at once. Someone gasped, and he turned his head. A blond girl about his age sat on the other bed looking at him. “You scared the freak out of me!” she protested.

“Sorry,” he whispered. His heart had leaped into his throat when she had spoken.

“I’m Pris, really Priscilla, but never call me Prissy,” she showed a set of dimples that went well with her short pixie-cut hair. “You’re the new girl.”

Les winced but nodded, realizing he was supposed to introduce himself. “Uh-,” he stammered. His mouth felt as dry as two Mojaves stuck together. Contrariwise, he felt the need to pee. “Excuse me,” he said, getting off the bed awkwardly and heading for the bathroom.

Pris followed. “Is it Elle or Ellie?” she asked.

Les rinsed his mouth first, getting a miniature cup from a dispenser above the sink, then drank two cupfuls. “Either, I guess. Uh, my real name is Leslie.” Well, that was the truth.

“Lesley,” Pris repeated, and Les winced because he knew she was mentally spelling it wrong. “I think I like Elle better, too.” She laughed.

Les nodded. “It doesn’t sound like a boy’s name,” he added and then wondered why in the world he had said that.

Pris laughed again. “Elle means she, in French, so no, it doesn’t sound like a boy’s name. I guess Lesley does…. Did that bother you?”

He shrugged, unsure of what to say. Yes, being named Leslie had bothered him for exactly the opposite reason.

“Maybe your parents wanted a boy?”

“No,” said Les. “I don’t think they wanted me at all.” Why did I say that and why did I say it out loud? He worked his mouth like someone trying to determine which tooth needed a root canal. Tears came to his eyes.

Suddenly, Pris was there, her arms around him. He stepped away, and she let go immediately. Les stared at her. Pris was actually an inch or so taller.

He wanted to pull her in close again; he wanted to push her farther away. “I have to use the bathroom,” he said, nodding at the toilet.

She stepped out of the way but did not leave the room, still smiling at him.

“No, I mean,” he said, looking at the doorway.

Pris nodded, leaving. “You want the door closed?”

“Please,” he said.

When she had closed the door, Les did his business sitting down because he knew the sound would be different if he stood to pee. Not that he had much to do; vomiting earlier had dehydrated him somewhat.

He could hear Pris moving around in the bedroom and eventually, the sound of a TV being turned on. Perhaps an after-school special about poor kids in Appalachia. Les had seen one like that once and had felt envy for kids who had parents who stayed in one place.

He carefully rearranged things inside his two pair of panties, then pulled up the seashell jeans. Washing his hands in the sink, he stared at his reflection. His hair was long enough, and with the clothing, he did look much more girlish than he had. So far, no one seemed even to suspect he might be a boy.

He shook his head and drank another cup of water before reaching for the door.

I guess I’m going to find out if it’s really harder to be a girl, he thought.