Is finding out who you are like winning a prize?

Who would have thought we could spend more than an hour shopping in Kmart? We got some other stuff I hadn’t mentioned yet, like a pair of cheap slippers to wear instead of my sneakers for when we go shoe shopping later and also some socks and hand cream, bath soap, sunscreen and stuff like that.

And a purse. A big straw bag with handles and a fake leather strap and two pockets inside it. There was a stylized sun on one side of the bag and a cartoony-looking giraffe on the other. A giraffe? Oh well. The colors were in the African-inspired reds, yellows, purples, and greens that were stylish right then.

I picked the purse out because I thought the giraffe looked really funny and I wanted to be able to pretend that people might be laughing at the cartoon instead of at me for carrying a purse. But I needed it. The jeans I was wearing with the heart-shaped patches on the rear pockets turned out to not have pockets at all — just decorations, front and back, that looked like pockets!

So I put the tubes of sunscreen and hand cream and the strawberry flavored lip balm along with a cheap brush and comb set into the purse. I also put in the Tiger Beat magazine, and two books. One called Ramona and Her Father, about a little girl and her dad, I picked because Ramona was a town two valleys over from where we lived. The other was about a girl starting high school and dealing with her mentally-challenged older brother. I could relate.

Mom had also picked out for me a little pocketbook made of blue gingham cloth, and she gave me five dollars and some coins to put inside. Five dollars! “That’s for you to spend on anything you want,” she told me. Well, I tried to remember if I had ever had five dollars just to spend myself before, and I remembered going to the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar last year.

The fair is huge, one of the biggest in the country. We go every year, partly because of the livestock show and mostly because it is just a lot of fun with all kinds of shows and concerts and exhibits and races and carnival rides. I had to miss it this year because it started the week that I got so sick.

Two years ago Junior had won at the carnival baseball toss the gigantic plush duck he and Morgan had in their room. He had tried to give it to me, and I had refused because what nine-year-old boy has a green and yellow plush animal as big as he is? Now I kind of regretted turning it down because —heck!— girls are expected to have that kind of stuff and it would look so neat sitting on my bed.

I remember Junior tried to give it to his girlfriend at the time, Wanda, and she was all, “You wanna give me a duck? What are you trying to say?” I laughed so hard at that I got the hiccups, and I couldn’t even figure out why it was funny. So Morgan and Lee ended up keeping it in their room. I wondered if I could ask for it?

I thought about this after we got in the car and started for Riverside. Mom didn’t like anyone talking much while she drove so I had time to read some and think about things. I had the two books and the magazine in my big straw bag, and the other printed stuff was on the backseat. Everything else went in the trunk.

Tiger Beat was kind of interesting, but I hardly knew who any of these people were. And frankly, I didn’t care too much to know them, either. I guess the girl cooties hadn’t completely corrupted my brain yet.

We headed west across the highland valleys then turned north when we got to the freeway, just south of Temecula. The sign said 45 miles to Riverside so still almost an hour to get to the mall. There wasn’t a Nordstrom’s closer, and they were Mom’s favorite department store.

Reading in a moving car makes me sleepy, and after a bit, I asked Mom if I could recline the seat and maybe take a nap.

“Sure, honey,” she said. “Though if you want to talk a bit the freeway is pretty empty and it’s not like a mountain road anyway. Anything you’d like to ask me?”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Uh…. I—I—”

Mom laughed. “You don’t know where to start.”

“Yeah, like that,” I agreed. I straightened up in the seat and put my book in my bag. “Um. Am I going…am I going to…uh—”

“Like boys?” she guessed. A little too accurately for my comfort.

I nodded, turned red, and squeaked a quiet, “Yeah?”

She didn’t laugh. “Who knows?” she said. “It’s okay if you do and okay if you don’t.”

“What —uh— what if I like girls?” I asked.

“That’s okay, too, I guess,” she said. “It’s a hard thing to figure out, and it’s not something you can plan. You’re still a bit too young to really make up your mind.”

I fidgeted for a bit. Mom watched me without losing concentration on the road. I finally got up the nerve to ask another question. “If I get —uh— things fixed…” I made a vague gesture nowhere near my groin, “will I be able to have babies?”

“The doctors say probably, but they admit they don’t really know. Would you like to have babies someday?” she asked me one back.

“I don’t know. It’s such a weird idea. I mean for me. I still don’t think I’ve had enough time to think about it.”

She nodded. “Take all the time you need to think,” she said. “Seven or eight years, at least.” She laughed, and I made embarrassed squeaking noises.

I didn’t say anything for a while, then I asked, “Having a baby hurts, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. “It hurts a lot. You weren’t so big a deal, six pounds fourteen ounces but Morgan got called Moose before he was even born.” She laughed again. “I was big as a house with him, and he was half-an-ounce shy of ten pounds when he was born. His head was the size of a cantaloupe. But Lee Junior was my first and I thought he was going to split me in two even though he weighed only a pound more than you did.”

She paused for a moment. “Of course,” she said after a bit, “it was your father who fainted.” And she laughed some more. “With both boys. But he stayed awake for you and was the first one to hold you after you were born.” She smiled, remembering.

I tried to imagine something that would grow up to be as big as one of my brothers coming out of a tiny hole between my legs. Yikes! Why would girls let that happen to themselves? “You must have liked Daddy a lot,” I said.

I thought we were going to have to pull off the freeway before Mom stopped laughing.

*

We pulled into the mall parking lot at about 10:45 and discovered that the mall itself didn’t open until eleven on Sundays. Luckily, several of the restaurants were open, either in the parking lot of with openings there.

“Pancakes?” Mom suggested, and my stomach made an audible reply. I was embarrassed but also hungry. The Perky’s Coffee Shop was right next to the entrance to Nordstrom’s, so we went in and got shown to a table. Mom had made me bring my bag with me —okay, my purse— and after we were seated told me to take off my Angels sun visor and put it away. I’d forgotten I had it on.

“Is my hair okay?” I asked Mom.

“We got you a mirror, isn’t it in your purse?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I dug around in the straw bag and came up with the purple-backed four-inch hand mirror that came with my comb and brush set. I checked what my hair looked like (it was fine) while Mom gave me a mysterious smile. “What?” I asked as I put the mirror back.

“Nothing,” she said, still smiling.

The waitress in her red-striped mini-dress came over and greeted us. “Good morning!” she said; her nametag read Barbara. “Hello, Ma’am,” to Mom and “Hello, young lady,” to me. I’d never been called that before, and I think I reacted by turning red.

Barbara had menus and handed one to each of us, then asked me, “Are you under twelve, honey?” I nodded. She gave me another smaller menu, “If you order off the kids’ menu, you get a toy!”

My face still red, I didn’t look up. Mom made it worse by laughing, and asking, “The way she eats, can she get two toys for eating two kid’s meals?” I tried to stare a hole in the table.

Barbara laughed. “She’s shy,” she commented but then added, “I think your hair is so cute,” to me.

I looked the kids’ menu over to avoid talking. The portions did look small, like one pancake, two bacon, and a scrambled egg. Or a small burger with a few Perky’s chips, which are French fries made like fat, crinkled potato chips. I would have to order two of them. I was that hungry.

Mom ordered coffee for herself and lemonade for me. I can’t drink orange juice. After Barbara left to fetch stuff, Mom said to me, “You don’t have to order off the kids’ menu.”

“Good,” I said. The toys are probably cheap junk, anyway, I told myself. But the last time we ate at Perky’s —there isn’t one near us, so it was probably in San Diego or Escondido— I got a neat miniature fireman with hat, boots, and coat that could be removed.

I had decided on a cheese and veggie omelet with a pancake and a fruit cup by the time Barbara came back. It was twice the price of a kid’s meal, but I figured it would probably fill me up. If not, I could probably cadge a few of the chips Mom was getting with her eggs and toast.

Barbara was tickled about me ordering a large omelet when she took our order. “You’re going to be a big girl sooner than later, huh?” she teased me.

I giggled a bit nervously.

“You should see her teenage brothers, Moose and Leviathan,” Mom commented. “But Lord help you if you ever need to feed them.”

Barbara’s peal of laughter attracted attention from all over the room. She covered her mouth and fled back to the server’s station, where I heard giggling among the waitresses for the rest of the meal.

I sighed and rolled my eyes at Mom. She grinned and did our patented non-wink back at me.

“We need a plan,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Well,” she continued, “I figure you need two nice dresses for wearing to church and special occasions like parties. And a pair of shoes to go with them, oh, and a small leather purse.”

I stared at her.

“You’ve got jeans, tops, and sneakers for Friday, but we might want to get you some shorts for the hot days in the rest of the month.”

“This is a plan?” I squeaked.

“If we get four school-worthy tops and two or three skirts, you could go weeks without wearing the same thing. But maybe a more casual, summery dress or two, as well, to break things up. And two pair of school shoes with another bag.”

“Mom!”

“Punkin,” she said seriously, “you need all this stuff, and more. It will start getting cold in the mountains in less than six weeks. We can make another shopping trip in October, but a jacket or a sweater for cold nights right now would be smart.”

I put my head down on my hands, contemplating the girliness looming in front of me. “What if I decide not to do this, to go back to being, —uh— who I was before?” I didn’t want to say it out loud in public.

“Lift your head, Audrey Jane,” Mom ordered.

I did, sitting back in the seat properly, too. “Sorry,” I squeaked. In our family, talking to adults while hiding your face was not allowed. I suppressed my inclination to kick a chair leg, which would be a more serious violation.

Mom shook her head the tiniest bit. “Not to worry, honey. You have a lot on your plate. But tell me, do you think it likely that you will decide to go back to being —uh— Audie? Because tomorrow, we need to go see the school administration.”

I froze. I honestly had not considered that. While students would not have class until Tuesday, teachers, and staff would be at work on Monday, getting ready. And obviously, the school needed to know my situation.

“I’ve got letters from your doctors explaining your medical condition, but the school is going to want to know if this is a permanent change.” She looked and sounded sympathetic, but she was putting me on the spot, so I wanted to suspect her of secret gloating.

And I wanted to kick something more than ever. “I can’t answer that right now,” I said.

Mom nodded and smiled, and our food arrived just then to cut off that line of conversation. Barbara offered a wager. “If you can finish the omelet,” she said, “I’ll bring you the tray of toys so you can choose one.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Mom said laughing and Barbara joined in before refilling our water glasses.

Mom and I switched to water for drinking and got down to the serious business of eating, or at least I did. I knew I had to eat the fruit cup, Mom would scold me if I didn’t, and I wanted to eat all the omelet. It wasn’t that I needed a cheap toy. I just wanted to see what was on the tray. Okay, I did want the toy. Anyway, the pancake was extra, and I didn’t have to eat any of it.

When it came down to it, I left more than half the pancake and maybe two bites of the omelet. I just couldn’t finish it. I blamed the butter on the pancake; I hadn’t used any syrup. But I was full. I sighed.

Barbara, the waitress, showed up carrying a tray full of toys. She smiled at me, “You did good, I’m going to count that as having finished.” She laughed, holding the tray out where I could see. The first thing I noticed was a sleeping baby doll, only four or five inches long, wearing a pink onesie and wrapped in a yellow blanket. I don’t know why my eyes went immediately to that.

“Mom,” I said, but I didn’t ask for advice or comment.

I got one anyway. “She loves dolls and telling stories with them,” Mom said, and Barbara laughed.

I may have broken some record for the reddest face on an eleven-year-old.

All the toys were in little cellophane envelopes. The tray was divided into two sections, one for boys and one for girls, but Barbara had presented it with the girls’ side closest to me.

The boys’ toys included a dump truck, a fireman, a plush dog, a whistle, and a bag of plastic blocks in bright colors. The girls’ section had the baby doll, a card with a set of summer clothes for a Barbie-type, another bag of blocks but in pastel colors, a collection of plastic bracelets, and the same plush dog as the boys’ side had.

I picked the baby doll, partly because Mom had said I didn’t have one. “She can sleep on my dresser,” I said, “and when I see her there, I’ll remember coming here and trying to eat an omelet bigger than my head.”

The grown-ups laughed a lot at that.

“What’s her name?” Barbara asked.

I glanced at Mom. “Madeline,” I said, the name that Mom had suggested would have been mine if everyone had known I was a girl when I was born.

“That’s cute,” said Barbara, then she had to leave to put the tray away and wait on other tables.

Mom sniffed and wiped an eye while I took Madeline out of her envelope and examined her carefully. She had bright yellow painted-on curls and a rosebud mouth. Her little fleece onesie was decorated with lambs, kittens, and baby chicks. She was so darn cute. I wanted to hug her, but instead, I wrapped her in her blanket and stowed her away in one of the pockets in my purse.

We got up to go, and Mom left an enormous tip on the table. Barbara and the other waitresses waved and called out bye to us, and we waved back, thanking them. The restaurant had an exit into the mall, and we came out into the wide hallway right next to the Nordstrom’s entrance. They were just opening, actually.

Directly across from us, though, a collectible doll shop display window held a dozen two-foot-tall dolls in back-to-school clothes. I wanted one, suddenly and felt very much a girl right then except something reminded me that I wasn’t completely female—yet. “Mom,” I said. “I need a restroom.”