Does everyone know who I really am?

I stood outside in the darkness in a long line of kids that reached all the way up to the moon, which hung low and orange in a purple sky. Overhead, gray clouds dropped a heavy rain, the Mexican monsoon that hits our mountains some years.

But I wasn’t getting wet. Dreams are like that.

Ahead of me in line, the rain soaked Pete to the bone, and ahead of him, other kids from our class in Presley tried to shelter under ponchos and rain hoods.

The line moved forward slowly toward the equipment locker where one of the teachers was passing out playground equipment. The teacher seemed to have the head of a cow, but that is often a feature of my dreams. I see a lot of cows when I’m awake.

Pete muttered to himself, complaining, “We shouldn’t have to go to school if it’s raining.” He wasn’t looking at me, so I had a view of his profile. Raindrops clung to his eyelashes and cheeks, looking like jewels.

“I’m sorry you’re getting wet,” I said. But I kind of liked looking at his face, damp and glowing.

“No fair,” said Pete, looking directly at me. “You’re not getting wet. You’re cheating. Girls always cheat.” He tried to push me out of line, and I stepped away from him, a little mad about him calling me a cheat and pushing me.

I turned away, looking around to see if any of my other friends were on the playground. Pete began muttering again about girls being cheaters, but I didn’t look at him.

Rhea, Grace, Penny, and Marcie had started a game of Four-Square on a random piece of blacktop, the shiny red ball splashing in the rain puddles. I wanted to play, so I called out, “Ups! I’ve got ups.” 

But that’s what the boys say when they play Three Flies or Work-up or other games with a softball. For the girls’ games with the big red playground balls, it’s “Nextie. I’m nextie.”

Everyone ignored me except Pete, who turned around again and scowled at me. “Make up your mind,” he said. “No one plays Three Flies in the rain, the ball is too big and red.” He walked away toward some of the boys that already had bats from the cowface at the equipment locker and were hitting rocks and mud clods with them.

I went looking for the right kind of ball, except I didn’t want to play Three Flies with the boys. Hitting mud clods with a bat would be a way to get really dirty. But I looked at the softball mitt on my left hand, and there the ball was. I took it out and threw it at Pete.

“Pickle,” I shouted, but the rain got in my mouth, and suddenly I was as wet as anyone, my skirt hanging limp around my knees. Pete threw the ball back, saying, “You can’t play Pickle with only two people. Someone has to be the girl in the middle.”

I missed catching the ball because I had lost my mitt so I guessed I must be the girl in the middle. Except the boys weren’t playing Pickle, they were playing Pepper, throwing the ball back and forth and Around the Horn except no one would throw it to me.

I waved my arms and cried in the rain, but everyone ignored me. I was all alone on the muddy playground. I wandered around for a while, though I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.

I found a First Baseman’s Mitt, but I left it lying there. I said, “Every boy knows you don’t play Pepper with the wrong kind of mitt,” and kept looking.

The Four-Square ball bounced past me, one of the big red ones the girls used, as big as a basketball. I caught it and started toward the game I could see being played on the blacktop in front of the cafeteria. 

Marcie stood in my way. “You didn’t say Nextie so you can’t play,” she said. She was a big girl, a year older than me, and she’d started middle school last year. “Give me the ball,” she demanded. “You’ll never be a real Nextie because you’ve got a dick. You’re not a real girl, just a cheater.”

I threw the ball so it bounced in front of her, splashing mud on her knee socks. “You snot! You did that on purpose,” she accused.

“Youble cablant problove iblit,” I said, and the other girls laughed.

I smiled in my sleep and the dream dissolved in the rain.

*

I woke up smiling because I smelled cinnamon rolls. Mom hadn’t prepared them the night before so they must be the kind that came in a paper tube, but those were good, too.

My mouth already watering, I got up and put on my slippers then went down the hall to the bathroom before heading to the kitchen. “You didn’t wait for me to come help,” I said to Mom.

She snorted. “This is too easy. I didn’t need the help. You can pour coffee for the guys.”

I climbed up on my stool, taking down three thermal cups from the cabinet and prepared to pour coffee.

“Are we going to glaze them?” I asked. We didn’t always with the homemade rolls, but the ones in the tube came with a squeeze packet of glaze it would be a shame to waste.

“I like them without, that store glaze is too sticky,” she said. “But no one wants to hear Morgan whine.”

I giggled. “Moose does love his sweets,” I agreed. 

She pulled the pan from the oven, turned the rolls out on a cutting board then did a shuffle, so they were topside up. With the board in front of me and the packet of glaze warmed from lying on the back of the stove, I got the scissors out to snip off the corner of the packet. Glazing pastry and decorating cakes was one of my favorite kitchen chores.

“Leave one without glaze for me, honey,” Mom said.

“Okay,” I agreed, giggling. “More sweet stuff for the rest of us.” When Moose came down, I handed him the two ooiest, gooiest, rolls in the pan. He had to lick part of it off before he could bite into them and he still got some on his nose.

* * *

Later after the guys came back from chores and we had a full breakfast and cleanup, it was still barely seven. Mom pulled me aside and said, “We’ll have to go get you registered at school. I figure the office people will be ready for us by ten so you’ve got time to play a bit. If you’re ready to go by nine, we’ll have plenty of time.”

“Okay, Mom,” I said. I kind of dreaded going in to school to register as a girl, but it did seem like something that had to be done.

She reminded me of something else. “When you get ready, don’t do your hair. You can wear the wig to the school office.”

“It’ll be hot,” I pointed out.

“You think long hair isn’t hot? You’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe I’ll just keep my hair short,” I suggested.

“Maybe I’ll put ribbons in it and dye it pink,” she countered.

“Mom!” I knew she was teasing, but still, pink hair?

“Go on,” she urged. “You could get some playing in if you change clothes.”

“What can I do in just an hour or so, though?” I asked as I headed toward my room, still in my nightgown, and thinking that maybe I could wear some of my boy clothes and run around outside for a while.

I went to my room and put on a pair of blue jean shorts, an old t-shirt, and my sneakers. I looked at my messy hair and tried to finger comb it a bit but gave up with it still a mess of curls any which way.

“I’m going outside,” I called to Mom, and she answered okay from her own room. I left by the windlock at the front of the house, looking off toward Pete’s house down by the highway. Pete still wasn’t home, and I missed him. There’d been a lot of changes for me while he was gone and I felt nervous about seeing him again.

There wasn’t a lot to do by myself without getting too far from the house, so I climbed up on the rock border around the flower bed and pretended to be walking along a narrow bridge. I went back and forth a couple of times, but it was a stupid sort of game, and if I did fall off into the flowers, Mom would be annoyed.

I jumped down onto the grass and tried spinning as fast as I could to make myself dizzy. That worked, and I ended up sitting down on the grass to keep from falling, and I laughed at myself for being silly.

One of the older hands, Gilberto Duarte, rode by between the house and the barns and waved at me. I waved back, wondering whether he thought I was still Audie or knew I was Audrey now. 

“Going out looking for dogies lost in the chaparral,” he called. “Wanna saddle up and come along?”

Dogies are yearling cattle that have just been weaned, and they bawl like babies and will follow anything around demanding someone give them milk. They can get into some pretty silly scrapes if you don’t keep track of them so if a few were missing from the upper pastures, they had probably wandered into the rougher desert further down the hill.

I’d done the work before, it’s mostly just finding them and leading them back to grass, but would Gilberto make the same offer to me as Audrey? Or did he think I was still Audie?

Either way, I had no time to saddle up and go along. I shook my head, calling back to him. “We have to go into town in a bit, sorry.”

He gave me a curious look, shook his head, grinned, and rode on by. “Maybe next time, Miss Jane,” he said.

So he did know. I felt my face turn red.

And I knew my hair was messy. Suddenly shy, I headed back inside.

I went to my room and Mom said I could pick out my own clothes for going to school registration, but I would have to look neat and clean, and I should wear a skirt since that was school rules for Monday. Sigh.

“You haven’t opened that one package I gave you yet, have you?” Mom asked, following me to my door.

“Uh, no?” I admitted. I’d seen it on the floor of my closet and went immediately to retrieve it. “What is it?” I asked, sitting with it in my lap and giving it a little shake.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Open it and find out.”

The wrapping paper had green and blue and yellow lollipops on a pink background. They must have wrapped it for her at Nordstrom’s. I started undoing the tape at one end.

Mom made a puffing noise. “You and your father, Audrey. Neither of you knows how to unwrap a present.”

“But the paper is pretty,” I said. “We might want to save it.” I had one end undone and pulled the rest down like a sleeve. “It’s a baby doll,” I said, not sure if I were really pleased or not.

“Look close,” Mom said. 

The doll had bright yellow curls and blue-violet eyes, just like my own. She had a name embroidered in blue on her pink jumper, too. It said, Baby Audrey.

Mom had got the doll from the specialty shop next to Nordstrom’s while I was looking at shoes. She was awfully cute, but I still wasn’t sure whether I was pleased. What does it mean when a girl giggles and cries at the same time?

*

Baby Audrey —the doll, not me— got an honored place on the bed next to my giant plush duck who I had named Myron Mallardo. They would be best friends forever, I just knew it.

I was still trying to think about how I felt about having a baby doll—well, two now—and both of them sort of named after me. I’d put the little Madeline baby doll I’d gotten at Perky’s on my dresser.

I’d had a shower last night, but I put on my other bra, the one I hadn’t worn yet. Going without a bra is really out of the question, already. I’m not big there, but things are so tender.

Clean panties, too. I still look like a boy between the legs, but I’m just a kid, and the evidence is sort of tiny. For some reason, I felt irked at Marcie, an older girl I hardly even knew. Pete got a little shaft of annoyance, too. He was still out of town and wouldn’t be back till evening.

What the heck was I going to say to him, anyway? Should I show him my new dolls? Yikes.

I went back to getting dressed. It felt safer than thinking about Pete or my other friends.

I picked some very thin socks decorated with lace, then my flat oxford shoes with the fake buckles. I buffed those; they had gotten a bit dusty. Mom said I should never put a real shine on them; girls’ shoes shouldn’t be too shiny. Huh, wonder why?

I decided on a dress. Jump in with both feet, Beth Ann had said. The sundress with the big blue flowers, bell-shaped short sleeves, and full skirt. Mom and the salesgirl had both said I looked sweet in it. Looking sweet is good for a girl unless you’re in a fairy tale being chased by a hungry giant.

I added my necklace with the blue stone and my unicorn charm bracelet. We’d gotten two more charms for it at Nordstrom’s: a silver stetson and a gold heart. The gold heart would come apart into two charms, one of which you could give to your best friend. But I couldn’t imagine Pete wanting to wear it.

I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that, except for my hair, I looked like any other girl on the first day of going to middle school. Even messy from sleeping, my haircut didn’t look so boyish, though, just short. 

The sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach might have been a twinge of horror for my situation, but any sensible person would be a little afraid, wouldn’t they? I was going to march into school and tell a bunch of grown-ups that I was a girl now and they should treat me like one.

Oh, yeah, no pressure.

On the “both feet” principle, I had agreed to wear my wig, so I got it from the stand in the closet and went looking for Mom for help putting it on.

Her bedroom door wasn’t closed, so I walked right in and discovered her there in just her panties and bra, trying to decide what she was going to wear.

“Oop!” I said and backed out quickly.

“Audrey?” Mom called. “It’s okay, come on in.” She came to the door to find me half-way back down the hall. 

The guys were all out of the house. Dad had gone up the Big House to meet with Mr. Fordyce, and Moose and Junior had already left for Chularosa Valley High, also in Rosa Morena, but starting a day earlier than my middle school. Lee Junior drove the older of our F150 pickup trucks, with Morgan riding shotgun for his first day of high school. 

Most days, I would probably ride with them instead of taking the twelve-mile trip on the bus, but today, Mom was going along to help me register. As the new me. 

And here I had walked in on her in her undies. I had already blushed more in the last three days than anyone should have to in a lifetime, but I knew my face was redder than manzanita berries.

Mom turned to go back into her room, motioning that I should follow. She laughed, “Just us girls here, right?”

That’s what it meant that she had not bothered to close her door with all the males out of the house. I sighed and followed her into her room.

“That blue looks so good on you,” she commented. “Should I match or contrast?” She surveyed her closet.

“I dunno,” I said. I still had the wig in my hands but was afraid I might start shredding it from anxiety, so I put it down on her dresser. “Are you going to wear a dress, too?”

She seldom wore dresses or even skirts, but she nodded. “I thought I would. In solidarity, if nothing else.”

“Solidarity?” I repeated. 

“Togetherness,” she clarified. “Showing that I’ve got your back.”

“Are you… going to need to have my back?” I asked, remembering how Dad said Mom was bold instead of brave. Full speed ahead and don’t stop for torpedoes. I bit my lip, worrying about the torpedoes.

She shrugged. “Who knows? I put a call into Mr. Lemuel’s office a few minutes ago, but he wasn’t in. His office wasn’t even open.” She snorted. Garret Lemuel was the Fordyce Ranch attorney.

“Huh?” I said.

Mom pulled out a green and blue dress and held it up against her. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Uh,” I shook my head. “The stripes are too wide, and the blue is too close to mine. The patterns would clash.”

“Too wide, huh?” she mused. “You aren’t saying that I’m getting fat, are you?”

I giggled, knowing she was teasing. At five-foot-six, Mom weighs about 125 pounds, fat only by super-model standards.

She grinned at me and pulled out another dress. This one had a lot of small violet flowers with blue, green and yellow details. The vivid colors would not have worked for me, but they brought out her dark coloring and made her gray eyes bluer.

I nodded. “I like that one.” The weirdness of recommending dresses for my half-naked mother had faded a bit. How could that be?

Mom put the one dress back and slipped the other one on. “This one zips in the back with a little hook at the top,” she said, turning away. “Get that for me, would you?”

I did so, suppressing a tiny giggle. The mother-daughter bonding of it all just suddenly seemed hilarious.

She turned around, commenting, “I can reach that myself, but it’s awkward to fasten without seeing….” She saw my expression. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t help it. I had to giggle. “Are we going to end up dressing alike? I mean, like to go to church or…something?” I had trouble imagining it.

She laughed. “Probably not,” she admitted. “You look great in pastels, and they always make me look badly embalmed.”

That did it. We hooted like owls and staggered around like drunks, eventually falling into a mutual hug. I guess we bonded real good.