Lead Shoes.
I wake up and I’m already exhausted.
I don’t wake because of the shakes or the twitches I’m just used to those now but there’s sometimes you just get a spasm that cramps you up so badly you wake up from it medication and all.
Both legs this morning as the muscles tightened and I swear I heard things creak and crackle.
I’ve got Spastic Quadriplegia… and No I’m not really a quadriplegic well I am and I’m not. See I’ve got CP Cerebral Palsy and it’s a condition that basically has my brain’s motor controls and all that stuff all haywire it’s like there’s a kid with ADHD playing with the neuro muscular controls of my body.
Shakes, tremors, strength just switching off and then my favorite, the way that there’s this underlying current like thing in you that’s it’s like your muscles are always on even when you’re not using them…not too, too bad when I’m asleep but waking up.
I hate waking up because I’m me again.
In my dreams I can run, walk do things without dropping them or messing them up…paint…
Heh, if I tried to paint awake, then it’d look like a Jackson Pollock. Shakes remember.
In my dreams I can dance.
Yeah dance.
And that leads me to the second thing in my life. I’m transgendered. So not only is my brain completely out of whack for my body it’s Really out of whack for my body.
I get up, well it’s sitting up.
Cough… ow. It’s so nice waking up feeling like someone’s been beating you all night.
I turn myself and set my feet on the floor sort of… my feet point forwards from the tightening of the tendons in my legs. Ballet feet that’ll never work, I reach over and push down on the lotion dispenser and start rubbing my hands with it and then my arms before working on my legs. It’s more of a massage that moisturising.
Confused? How am I doing all of this? Simple there’s a lot I can do, my hands are better at doing what they’re supposed to than my legs but I tremor or twitch dropping stuff is part of how I operate it just happens it’s not my fault any more than someone with MS or Parkinson’s. And when it’s not the shakes it’s the off switch, just suddenly my hand just won’t have any power going to the muscles and it’ll just stop working.
Doing things is a carefully planned experience of learning just what I can do. So I can do a lot of things but there’s a lot of things that I’d loved to do that I just can’t or just will never be able to.
Massaging yes, walking no not without a walker or crutches if I’m desperate but most of the time I’m in my wheelchair. I love it and I hate it at the same time.
I finish that and I’m feeling strong today so I grab a cane, I have a collection in a stand and pull my walker to me. Now I’d normally catch hell for this but there really is sometimes only so much of this that I can take even though I should be used to this.
I get the walker in position and I lock it in place and then push myself up, it takes a lot but once I’m up, the walker supports me. I go slowly and painfully the entire ten feet to the bathroom. I’m so glad that I’m not that bad that I can’t use the bathroom by myself. It really sucks that it took me fifteen minutes to go that ten feet. And feeling wiped after that’s not great either.
Of course that’s when my Aunt Holly comes in.
“Mike…Mike time to get up….Mike?”
“I’m in the bathroom!”
“Without your chair?”
“I’ve got the walker.”
There’s a sigh I can hear from in here. “Okay just be careful, you’re here only because we got lucky.”
“Okay…”
I use the toilet sitting down. An odd thing for me to enjoy, my little bit of pretend I guess. I do both sets of business and after that I take a shower/bath. There’s butt-slide friendly stuff built into the bathroom and I’ve got one of these seniors’ bathtubs that you can sit in with the door and the whirlpool. It’s not that we’re rich my aunt and me but well it’s stolen. Or I’m pretty sure it’s stolen. My aunt isn’t the greatest example of law biding citizen out there. Tattoos and slutty clothes and hangs out with bikers and all kinds of tough guys she had just got out from prison for a two year stretch for having a grow operation when she was contacted about taking me in.
That’s why we’re lucky. I almost wasn’t here.
The memories come with the steam. As I feel the water help sooth me if only a short while.
***
7 Years ago….
I was nine when things had come to a head. All of it. They always Knew I had CP, Mom and Dad. But it just hadn’t really kicked in except for little bouts of clumsiness that you could just sort of chalk up to me being a little kid.
Dad said the Doctors were full of it and he had me in sports as soon as I could play them. Hockey was his big thing, he was some high school hero that went nowhere and he was bound and determined to live his glory days through me.
But nine was when it happened my legs have always been the worst and I was all geared up to go to practice on morning and had even gotten into my gear and just like that I couldn’t walk right….
I fell a dozen times going from the house to the van. Dad was so pissed that he grabbed me and almost literally threw me inside the van. He drove to the rink anyway and it’s didn’t matter if we knew it was going to happen sooner or later. It didn’t matter how scared I was either.
I couldn’t really get out of the van I tried but it just didn’t happen. I know it sounds like it just up and jumped me, well it did…oh there was the build up of these little things but that day it became I guess official… and he was pissed. He didn’t beat me or anything like that but he sure as hell took it personally. Like my CP was my way of finally saying no to him that he couldn’t override.
Yeah, I wasn’t interested in playing sports that much, sure it could be fun but the other boys were just so loud and the games that were supposed to be fun, any of them Dad and some of the other Dad’s just made really suck because I had to be the best, I had to win.
My Dad was one of those Sports Dad’s they kick out of arenas nowadays.
It was to the hospital and tests and tests and tests and Dad just kept looking at me as time went on like I was something he stepped in. Four months into it they put me into the big heavy clunky metal leg braces.
It was like my own version of hell.
They were like wearing Lead Shoes…
Everything Dad had wanted was pretty much squashed and then it slowly got worse and worse.
School sucked. The few kids that were cool with it wanted to play robot games or power armor stuff all these games that were sort of the rough stuff I really wasn’t into. Of course I had no Idea I was transgendered… I just thought that I was a freak. Then my Mom just up and split, we still don’t know where she went to but she took off on me and Dad and that and me gave him the excuse to get even more into the bottle.
The kids started to tease me as younger kids will do. I was the gimp, the retard and I just, just hate Forest Gump because it was way too easy for them to start yelling or chanting “Run Forest Run!”
5 Years ago….
I was eleven when I got my first wheelchair and we had to move into my Dad’s mother’s place because I just couldn’t do the stairs anymore.
Grandma was cool or at least she was to me even if she was really churchy. But other than getting taken to church with her and school I didn’t get out much.
Oh yeah new school when we moved and I had to take the bus. The handicapped bus, yup the short bus.
But it wasn’t too bad, I mean I was way too visible because you get stared at all the time when you’re in a wheelchair and then if they’re not doting on you in this kind of make themselves feel better because I’m a cripple…which I wasn’t…so that made me angry sometimes. Then the CP would kick in sometimes and make me do something that really sucked like spilling something or dropping things and all the stupid stuff like those whispers of “How do they go to the bathroom?” or “Who dresses them?”
Stupid, ignorant hurtful stuff.
Kids can be really, really cruel.
Invisibility can be cruel too. Because when they’re not pitying you, or being ignorant or teasing you because there’s lots of bullies that will pick on you if no one is looking you’re invisible because they don’t want to see you. You’re a reminder of the world isn’t perfect.
Okay enough of that section of my shitty life. The real thing was at Christmas when I was eleven. Dad was working or drinking and me and grandma were watching TV. And I saw the Nutcracker ballet on TV for the first time in my life. I mean the show was cool, I loved the whole thing but seeing that girl in costume, dancing like that…it completely mesmerised me.
She was everything that I’d never be…graceful, delicate, free…beautiful.
I kind of got obsessed about ballet and dancing and more importantly female dancers and at first Dad thought it was me discovering girls which pleased him and made him sad and sent him back into the bottle or rather gave him the excuse. And he was starting pills too; he avoided me and pretty much left me to grandma’s care. The church wasn’t doing it for me, it was okay but it wasn’t making me happy.
For the next few years it was what got me through. Until last year it got worse. I got caught.
1 year ago….
See me and my dreams of being a dancer, a girl dancer were my lifeline. I was staying alive more or less by living out the impossible in my head. And as much as I loved the ballet my tastes were really varied and I loved contemporary dance, so beautiful and so artistic and I could almost project myself into the bodies of those girls on TV.
Grandma didn’t like me watching the videos with the dancers and stuff like in all the hip hop stuff. Whores she called them.
She was the one who caught me in a pair of pink hose and ballet slippers and a leotard with two socks stuffed in the chest. I was on the bed dangling my feet and watching them just trying to picture what it was like.
Oh yeah she freaked out.
I was going to hell.
She hit me only once. I guess I deserved it. I asked her while she was freaking out. “Is it wheelchair accessible?”
I still remember that slap she gave me.
Dad did not take it well either.
He took all of my dance stuff the books and the posters and trashed my room looking for clothes and found some….and make-up.
Where’d I get the stuff, just at K-mart. “Stuff for my sister.” or “Stuff for Nan.” I didn’t have much. A couple of more girly leotards and a cheap make-up kit.
He’d have beaten me if it wasn’t for Nan, he did trash my computer….
I don’t get out, and the computer was one of the only connections I had, one of the only freedoms I had. I slit my wrists that night I was that despondent and depressed and I woke in the mental ward and spent three months there.
I never brought up being transgendered, they brought up my fixation on dance and the quack there said I was fixed on it because of my condition and that I was too young to have a sexual component to it but if I did I was likely gay.
Going home and living there was fun.
I was dad’s “Gimpy little faggot.”
He was really unpleased that the shrink said that he had to get me another computer and that my access to the internet was integral to my well being given my disabilities. I’m not a violent person but that guy I wanted to punch all the time.
Grandma took sick, Hodgkin’s and she got really bad.
Dad became even worse and he started stealing her Oxycodone and taking it. And selling her stuff after awhile and he just fell apart.
I woke one morning and they were screaming or rather he was creaming at her.
“Where the fuck is it! I know you’ve got money stashed away you old bitch!”
“Get out! get out of my house Robert and you take your devil child with you!”
“You and the fucking church! you’re not going to heaven you can’t buy your way in! Not after all the shit you did!”
“You’re worthless Robert, just like you’re father!”
I heard the slaps, and the yelling and the crying. I got to my chair and out in time to see Dad over her checking if she was breathing and he looked at me panicked and he took off.
I got to Nan and she was beaten up really bad.
I dialled 911 and the police came with the ambulance guys and they took me and Nan to the hospital.
She had a massive heart attack from the beating Dad had given her and died an hour after we got to the hospital.
I told the police what I had heard and what I had seen and as much as I didn’t want to turn him in it actually might save his life.
They caught him and after two days.
Nan’s church put me up for awhile and during Dad’s trial they helped me with a place to stay and even helped the family court find my Aunt Holly.
She took me in, it was her or foster care, well one of those foster care homes and stuff.
It was a good thing too because Nan left everything to the church. And they had heard from her just what kind of pervert and sinner I was and were more than happy to be rid of me.
Aunt Holly did get Dad’s stuff and Dad’s van with the wheelchair stuff. They wanted even that, but apparently she knows some very good lawyers.
She’s a shock to the system for sure. My mother’s kid sister she’s in her late twenties and she’s got really short almost guying short black hair and she’s got tattoo’s all over her arms with flowers and roses mostly but naked girls and grim reapers and guns and knives and stuff. Lot’s of piercings too but she’s been good, setting things up and moving me here from where I lived in Dearborn to here in Oshawa.
Oh and it turns out Mom was from here, and I was born here. So technically I’m a dual citizen and stuff.
***
Oh… huh she said something.
“Uhm sorry I missed that I was just thinking.”
“I asked what color panties you wanted to wear.”
…………………… oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
“What… what are you talking about?”
“Can I come in? It’s easier that talking through the door.”
“Uhm…okay…”
She comes in and she’s not too tough looking or anything like that if I led you there. She’s intimidating though because she’s got that hot urban rough life girl thing down really good. Think Pink with jet black hair and Bif Naked’s tattoos.
She comes in holding a brand new pack of panties from the Jessica brand. My mouth goes dry. She looks right at me. “I know, I’ve seen some of the sites you’ve been surfing.”
“You’ve been spying on me?”
“No but the wireless is mine and stuff and it shows up if you’re looking.”
“Why were you looking?”
“I wasn’t not for that but when I did I kind of had a pretty good idea.”
“But why aren’t you tossing me out or freaking out?”
“Mik…Okay if we’re going to really talk honey what’s your real name?”
My real name…Oh god no one in RL has ever asked me that before.
I can’t help but to sniffle it out. “Mikayla…”
“Cool, it suits you. Okay look Mikayla, I’ve seen all kinds, known all kinds and you don’t spend time in a women’s lock up without meeting an FtM or two.”
“Oh…really?”
“Yeah, not all Butch bull dykes are really that they just didn’t know. They get into counselling and that’s when they know or figure it out. I’m cool with it.”
“You are?”
“Hell yeah girl, C’mon we’ve got a lot to do today and not just your physio appointments either.”
“Like…?”
“Getting you to a gender specialist, Kayla you’ve got enough shit going on honey. You’re my niece and I love you. You don’t have to wait to be the real you anymore.”
“But…Why…why are you doing this? No one’s been…”
“Kayla…It’s because….To me…Family is everything.” She comes over and leans down and kisses my forehead and smiles.
I sniffle on the verge of tears and look at her.
“Can I have the blue pair?”
(More? Comment and let me know.)
Lead shoes-2
Chapter 2
I looked at Aunt Holly and once I was dry I took the panties with a shaking hand that was only really partly from my nerves. Aunt Holly turned her back and she let me get myself where I can get them on. That requires that I get up, mostly my arms doing the work and put a dry towel down so I can sit and not get the panties wet from sitting in left over or cast off water.
I got a lot wrong with me that’s a given but there’s something just so…I can’t really describe it actually having permission to wear the things that I’ve always wanted to wear, needed to wear.
Okay I might not be a dancer but I am a girl and my Aunt Holly I guess get’s it?
“Okay Mikayla I guess the first thing is you’re going to be a Nair girl, I’m thinking you and a razor would be a bad idea right?”
“Heh, yeah sort of if you were going to mug me or something I’d pull a knife and fuck us both up.”
I look at her through my bangs and she’s looking at me. Then she starts laughing… “shake’s…knife…fuck us both up…” then she gives me this one armed hug and a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad that you still have a sense of humor Kayla, you’re a tough girl and you’ve gone through a real load of heavy shit.”
I can’t help but sniffle at her calling me a girl and she smiles. “I’ll be right back; you get your butt in front of the sink and the mirror okay?”
“Uhm Okay?” Wait what? She’s leaving me alone. I don’t get out much more that that before she’s gone. I know she told me to be careful and she kinda left it at that…normally, it’d have been a lecture from Nan or Dad being pissed. It’s kind of nice not to be treated like an invalid.
I’m close sometimes but there are still things I could do, should do maybe?
I reach out still were I’m at and I turn the walker around. See if you don’t know most of them come with a seat that folds down. I set the brakes and then move myself over carefully, there’s not a lot of hurry when you’re like me. Besides if you’re hurrying things happen, whether the adrenaline and the increased heart rate triggers symptoms or just plain Murphy’s Law you just should take at slow. It saves on broken bones and bruises and stuff
I’m looking at myself in the mirror a few minutes before Aunt Holly comes back with some more stuff and what looks like tool kits like those Rubbermaid heavy duty ones set up with all the compartments.
“What’s that?”
“Make-up and stuff.”
“What, that’s a tool box!”
“Yup!”
She opens it and I totally get it. She’s got so much stuff in there all actually set up like a professional hairdresser or something. Tweezers, clippers, brushes and combs irons and like I said all of the stuff you’d ever want to make yourself look good along with a huge bunch of cosmetics.
Okay a real guy might completely drool over a chest of really nice tools but this…this…
“Wow…this is the coolest thing that I’ve ever seen! Can I?”
“Sure, feel free Kayla.”
We spend an hour in there as she cleanses my pores and then uses something to tighten them and then it’s just some maintenance…eyebrows, and she shows me some tricks of colors I can use and how to blend them when I have the shakes even…if I’m steady great but even when I’m shaking there’s just a few things that can be done to blend…I learn that tissues, and Kleenex’s are a girls best friends and that mistakes happen.
Even lipstick! Did you know if you get a soft shammy cloth and put down a layered patch of lipstick on it that all you do to get some decent coverage is to slowly kiss the patch…I can do that I’m pretty sure while shaking…just like blending in foundation and stuff.
Okay I might never use eyeliner on my own or mascara but some of this I can do. I’m being shown how to do.
And we do all of this while listening to music and Aunt Holly telling me what everything is in her tool box.
I’ve waited sixteen years to feel this alive. Once we’re done she heads into the main area of my bed room and she’s got some girls clothes laid out on the bed. Nothing all super girly but Yoga pant’s in grey and a pink stripe. Then there’s a soft blue scoop necked tee and we match the pink stripe with these pink barrettes for my hair.
“Okay Mikayla I think that we’re ready to go.”
We I get into my wheelchair and we head off down the hall. Aunt Holly’s house is good for my chair with that hardwood flooring stuff all over and not a lot of furniture I mean she just got out of prison so she had to put some stuff in storage or give it away or something. It’s a big bungalow style house not in a bad neighborhood but far from a nice area either.
Someone she knew built the wheelchair ramps for the house and stuff. We get into dad’s van well sort of. She has boxes and bags of stuff some of it I know as dad’s stuff that I never wanted and she passes it to me off the workbench in the carport (it’s kind of like a garage sort of?) and she get’s me to put them inside the van before I get in with the lift.
Okay I know it sounds strange but I wasn’t really allowed to do stuff, not simple stuff like this even. Yeah I might have a spell or a time where I might have trouble doing something but so far Aunt Holly is actually letting me do something.
We get into the van and pull out and start driving. “You okay back there Kayla?”
“Uhm yeah…Aunt Holly?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks…I mean really thanks, you took me in when you didn’t have to and you…you’re actually seeing me and you’re not all ‘You’re going to hell.’ Over it and stuff and you’re not treating me like I’m broken…”
“No problem. One Mikayla you’re family and there’s not a whole lot of us left or that are close. Two you’re not broken, you’ve got a condition, you were born with it and you’ve gotta deal with stuff as it comes. They didn’t do you any favors by locking you away like an invalid. Besides…”
“Besides?”
“Yeah this is a perfect segue into the whole talk we have to have about you and the stuff I want you to do around the house when you’re not in school.”
“Like chores!”
“Ha! Yeah you sound excited now. Yes Mikayla chores I’m not just forking you over spending money so you can go and blow it at the mall with your friends.”
“I don’t have any friends… No one wants to really hang out with me.”
“Well Michael didn’t have any friends and your Dad kept you home most or the time and no offence to your Nan but the old school fire and brimstone church she was part of wasn’t exactly a teen hangout.”
“You think that, I might meet people that’ll like me?”
She stops at this place, it looks kind of seedy and stuff. She turns in the seat. “Look Mikayla, you’ve been you for just less than two hours and I see a real difference in you and the sullen messed up guy that had moved in. Now c’mon.”
It takes some time to get out of the van and I get out of my chair and sit on the edge of the open doorway and pull the stuff to me and stuff. She goes into the store…I mean it’s seedy like I said but there’s an open sign in neon and stuff there. She comes out with a dolley and we load the stuff onto it and we head inside once I get my butt back into my chair.
The Place in Cruise’s and My Aunt Holly Takes me to my very first pawnshop. It was a bit of a bitch to get in over the bump space from the pavement to the inside of the store. She holds the door for me and …she lets me deal. The big trick for something like that…is to really try and get over that five inch hump and I do that back wheels first. It’s hard.
I could’ve just let it stop me and stuff but I’d miss out on a lot of stuff if I let that kind of thinking set in. I’ve seen other people in wheelchairs do it on stairs so…yeah my arms aren’t great but it’s just one step.
I’m doing more than I ever thought. It’s emotional stuff kind of too, just getting past something that’s seem easy, everyday. I get in and she let’s go of the door and takes the dolley and we head to the counter.
But as we do I get an I knew you could do it smile from her.
I literally don’t remember the last time that someone looked at me like the believed I could do something.
The guy’s name behind the counter is named Jim and Aunt Holly introduces me as her niece Mikayla. He’s smoking a cigar which says a lot because it’s illegal to smoke in public places and he’s got a big beard and beer gut that just adds to the big burly gruff biker like image he has.
He reaches over and shakes my hand but not that firm guy shake but the way a guy shakes a girl’s hand. There’s a look in his eyes that yeah he knows but he doesn’t care. He’s actually all business as my aunt Holly is selling some of Dad’s things that were so precious he was holding out to sell them off dead last.
I mean there’s nothing really there that’s sentimental for me in there. His playboy collection which surprised me as I had no clue these were worth anything got a good amount of money as did his hockey card and baseball card collection and there was a box of Hot wheels toy cars in their boxes? That’s about in and in the end after her arguing with him over how he was going to make a mint on e-bat with some of this stuff she got four hundred dollars for the stuff cash and he threw in an old color TV and a playstation two and some games, as well as a small women’s sized leather biker jacket. I was black and scuffed up and old but it had been cleaned.
It was a lot easier getting out of the pawnshop than getting into it and she let me take the jacket and the game on my lap while she carried the TV. We got the stuff loaded into the van and she takes the jacket.
“Here…this is for you.” She opens it and holds it open for me.
“For me?”
It’s likely the coolest thing I’ve ever owned. It’s like one of those women leather jackets that you’d see someone like an actress or a female rock star would wear. I slip my arms into it and she points at the door of the pawnshop where I can see my reflection.
I see me, this very real version of the real me there…I turn and hug her around the waist and cry into her stomach.
And she let’s me.
I don’t get ignored, or told to shut up or anything like that. She just rubs my back and just before I let go she uses her arms to pull me into a hug.
“Sorry Aunt Holly, It’s just…”
“Been full of suck, I know…”
“Thanks…”
“Hey, Family remember, it means a lot to me at least and besides. A good cry is just what the doctor ordered. You look a bit better there behind those eyes of yours.”
“Behind my eyes?”
“Just a saying I got from an old timer. Its part of the eyes are the windows to the soul thing. Well kiddo anyone who did that with you who actually gave a fuck could see the pain there.”
“Oh…cool…”
“Yeah you’re Aunt’s a bit weird, you’ll get used to me I hope……here.” She passes me all the money from the pawnshop.
“But…”
“No, this stuff came from your old man’s junk, after the crap he put you through you deserve this. You’re going to need it, its expensive being a girl.”
“It is?”
“Oh yeah it really can be. But I’ll help.”
“Help?”
“I get money from the province for keeping you with me as your legal guardian and stuff until you turn eighteen and then it gets turned over to your name except for the child tax credit and that only keeps going past you being eighteen as long as you’re in school or college.”
“College?”
“If you think that you want to go yeah, I mean you can get help with all the educational stuff but your brain works you can learn lots of stuff that’ll land you a decent job.”
“Job…College, I’ve never really though that I could do anything like that…Dad and Nan…”
She leans down and looks at me right in my face.
“Fed you a bunch of crap based on their own prejudices and it was real easy for them to live off the money you were bringing in too and get to feel all better than you all the while being able to play being the martyr for taking care of you.”
She looks pissed. Really pissed.
“You’re mad….”
She blinks and stands back and we start getting into the van but she’s still talking. “I am, there’s some people who never should be allowed to be near kids even if they can have them and ……………I… Kids should be shown how to live the best life that they can, taught and encouraged and…..they should get to grow up with out having PTSD from it.”
I look at her and she’s wiping the start of tears with the back of her hand. I schooch forward and rub her back this time.
“Mikayla, me and your mom we didn’t have a good childhood, not at all…it’s why we’re both all kinds of messed up. I learned a lot while I was away and it helped and stuff but I just see what they did to you and what they would have done to your life and with what we’d been through… I swore any kid of mine was going to get my best as fucked up as it is.”
“It’s not fucked up Aunt Holly, I think it’s awesome…and no one has ever treated me like you have even now. No one in my life would’ve told me anything like this before.”
“Oh Kayla…….it’s what we do, we’re girls we’re supposed to be like this for each other.”
And we both hug each other and cry on each other for a little bit before she sniffles. “Okay…we got to get to the hospital and see to your appointments.”
“Appointments?” Like in plural?
“Yeah, I’ve got you set up with appointments with physiotherapy and occupational therapy plus in two see my doctor and get you checked out as a new patient and see what she says what we can do with your transgendered situation I mean like from the medical side and stuff.”
“You’re serious…you’re going to let me be a girl?”
She looks at me. “Let me ask you something seriously, are you sure you’re a girl?”
“Yes!” I say in fast without hesitation.
“Then don’t you think that we should get what’s been going on fixed then, I think you’ve been dealing with something that can be fixed for long enough right?”
I hug her carefully as she’s driving. “You’re the coolest you know that right?”
“Yeah, yeah I guess I’ll just have to suffer through it. It’s a curse.”
We both end up laughing together and even a few giggles come out which stuns me because well…There’s not been a lot to laugh about and I’ve never giggled before either, and that sets us both off again.
***
Okay I’m sitting in Dr. Grant’s office and there’s a sign with the whole GLBT rainbow triangle there saying that the place is a safe zone and that this office is a haven for all patients that are and the whole politically correct list follows with even all the gender-queer and even non-gendered? Are seen here and are expected to be given the rights and respect of any individual under the law.
In my whole life back home I’ve never seen that in a doctor’s office.
Dr. Grant’s a nice looking mid forties black woman and she easily puts me at ease and she calls me Mikayla and makes some notes and tells her clerk to add my real name to my chart.
I’m sixteen so she actually get’s me a bottle of water and another woman comes in and calls herself Dr. Scott then they ask Aunt Holly to step outside and we Talk. Yeah in caps talk and she’s done this before, I’m so at ease with them because the place seems like it really is a safe have that we talk and I spill my guts, I open up and tell her everything that’s been going on.
She looks at Dr. Scott. “So Abbey, what do you think?”
“I think this young lady is remarkably brave to have survived what she’s gone through and I’d like to see her more as a patient but at her age and the two year standard of care will put her into where she needs to be. I’ll want a few more sessions to be sure but seeing what we’re seeing.”
“Uhm excuse me but I’m a little lost.” I say to them.
Dr. Grant looks at me smiling. “I called Dr. Scott down as a child psychologist, she works with a lot of LGBT kids and I wanted her second opinion on your case.”
Dr. Scott adds in. “I’m going to ask that we start to have a few more sessions just talking and so I can see where you’re at and then we can see about you getting a proper course of treatment.”
“Really! like how many?”
“We’ll have to see, just keep living and doing what you’ve been doing today and hopefully we’ll have a good start by the time you’re ready to start school.”
“But…I really feel…”
Dr. Scott leans over and rubs my shoulder. “You’ve waited this long and if this is who you really are Mikayla a little while longer won’t change that. Use the time to really feel things and let your Aunt show you stuff and teach you things in between then and now.”
“So I don’t have to go back to acting like Mike and wearing all that stuff and faking it?”
“No honey, faking it would be bad. All we want is for you to be your real self.”
“Okay…” I sniffle.
I get out of there after the full exam and a whole frigging gallon of blood I think and then we’re off to the other departments. But before I go in Aunt Holly takes me into the bathroom so we can fix our faces.
We talk about what they said and that what’s going to happen is they want to see me some more before I get this thing called a carry letter that say’s I’m in transition and that I’ll be going through my RLT until I’m like eighteen then we’ll look at me getting things put to rights.
I can’t believe that they believe me, and that I’m…me…Mikayla am finally being taken seriously and everything.
I haven’t even gotten a single stare or dirty look since I’ve been here.
***
OT or Occupational therapy is not something that I’ve had before and it’s usually for older working folks trying to get back on track and stuff. But my appointment here was like the stuff Aunt Holly was talking about.
Getting a job…going to university…There’s so much that I could do really….Like the clerk there in OT, she’s blind and she uses a head set and a Braille keyboard and even a thing that she can really read.
I’m reading the stuff they gave me all the way to physio. I…I…never thought.
***
Then the most scary and freaky and amazing thing in my life happened while I was in the waiting room at physiotherapy.
I was still reading the stuff getting pretty into all the stuff with jobs and computers that use all the hands free stuff and the touch screen stuff when this guy sit’s down in one of the chairs beside me.
I flicked a glance in his direction and he smiles at me.
It wasn’t that smile a guy gives another guy.
This was this sorta charming, teen boy kinda sweet smile that turned my brain off. He had short cut but kind of spiky black hair and these green eyes that were so…I got lost in that green right up until he spoke.
“Cool jacket.”
“Huh...wha...” Oh smooth Kayla, smooth. What’s next flirt with him by taking a seizure?
He smiled and it made me feel funny inside. “Uhm, nice jacket.”
“Oh uhm thanks?”
“I’m Will.” He extended his hand and it was pretty messed up and had these new and red scars all though it and they looked like they had put the arm back together or something.
“I’m Mikayla.” Oh, oh, oh…oh! OMG I just told a boy, a real boy a cute boy my name.
He looked at me looking at his arm. “Car accident, they nearly cut it off…”
“Ow…how’s the physio coming with it? If you don’t mind me asking…..”
“Good, the whole getting my grip back’s the hardest bit and there’s some nerve damage so I get the shakes ever now and then but I still have it so I can deal. But there’s one thing that kind of is a let down.”
“Oh?”
“That whole girls digging scars thing? Turns out. Notsomuch.”
“Well if a girl was just into you for that then you really should find someone else.”
“Yeah but ah well, there really isn’t anyone anyway.”
“Uhn-huh, me too.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah like I’m really date material like this?” I gesture at myself. “It’s too intense and too real for most people to even talk to me let alone anything else.”
He looks around as someone calls out William Snow and he gets up. And he smiles at me and digs in his jacket pocket and takes out a pen and leans down and takes my arm and he’s writing and staring me in the eyes and making me feel super funny and my brain stop working and stuff and…he write down his name and his phone number and his e-mail addy on my arm.
“I was in a car that rolled like fifteen times Mikayla; I think I can handle your intensity…besides…you’re cute.”
“………………..”
“I’ve gotta go that’s me their calling for. Call me…”
He leaves following the nurse and I just stare at his really cute butt until he gets out of sight around the corner.
OMG….
I talked to a boy, and he talked to me and he thinks I’m cute….I look at my aunt Holly who smiles this great big huge grin at me.
Then we share this whole spastic girly Squee fit that’s so bad one of the nurses ran over to check and make sure I wasn’t having some kind of seizure.
And that happening was just too much and too funny and we cracked up laughing all over again.
I like laughing….I want more of this.
I want to really live.
Lead Shoes-3
Chapter 3
It was actually pretty cool even going through all the same old stuff in physiotherapy and getting my baselines of what I can do and what I can’t and what my good days are like and what my bad days are like. But it’s nothing like with Nan or my Dad.
Aunt Holly actually asks why something is the way that it is, she asks if she can be shown if any of the exercises she can do with me at home are and she is right there helping me and learning and giving a shit.
I have felt like such a drain on what I had for a family that it was a depressive physical hurt. And it cycles on you…the more you hurt the more it sucks and you get even more depressed, then it hurts even more.
If Nan hadn’t watched me like a hawk with paranoid schizophrenia then I’d have likely have found a way to kill myself.
I never, ever wanted to be a bother to people.
I didn’t want to lose my independence, to be some kind of burden that they had to take care of. God honestly there hurting inside for a lot of reasons but being like this and stuck in a chair for so damned long…not counting being TG to go along with it… If you looked up Depression in the dictionary a little while ago then you’d have gotten to see a picture of me.
But with Aunt Holly it’s like I past into a different world. The nurses and therapists look at my chart and smile at me and call me Mikayla. I mean I know they’re all in the medical profession and see all kinds of things but they legally don’t have to be nice to me. I mean they could’ve been really mean when they saw the note on they’re chart and the only off thing that way was just a few slipped pronouns.
I actually got complimented a few times on my make up and once on my outfit and I got called young lady a few times.
We’re leaving the hospital and I’m wheeling my way to the van and I turn it around fast and lean forward and hug her around the waist and bury my face into her belly.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you….” I say into her stomach. She runs her fingers through my hair and rubs my back and I let out a good little sob as I feel her fingers go over my bra.
Mine, my bra and there was no drama and screaming and stuff about it.
“It’s okay…it’s okay Kayla you let it out alright, you let it out and make room in there for the good stuff.”
(Sniffle?)
“Good stuff?”
“Yup, how’d you like to go shopping with me?”
“For?”
“Oh, stuff to fix up the house and your room and get you some real clothes and make-up and all the stuff you need as a girl y’know.”
“No…no I don’t know, I never got to know…”
“Well now you will. It’s about high time you learned the ins and outs of shopping and of being who you really are.”
***
!
!!
!!!
She Let Me DRIVE!!!
Okay, I’m not aloud to drive, if something happened and stuff then I’d be kinda likely to hurt someone. I get that but I’m having a good day and we got there to the mall and we were way back in the part of the parking lot that no one ever goes to and she let me drive. It took some doing to get moved over and I can’t use the pedals well but I can use them and it was just great, she even ran me through all the stuff that regular teens get to do when they’re driving and learning to drive.
We park and she lets me park and I look over at her and I hug her again.
“Omigoshthatwassocool!”
“Good, I’m glad we’ll keep at it until you’re ready for your drivers test to get you beginners.”
Excuse me? What’d she say?
“But I can’t I’m not allowed to drive. Is it different up here?”
“Mikayla you can drive anywhere here back home and all it takes is the right instruction and to get the drivers stuff modified.”
“But Dad…and Nan…they said.”
“Kayla…it’s not nice to talk ill of the dead but your Nan and your Dad lied for whatever messed up reasons or were just not interested in finding out if you could.”
“Aaagh! Goddammit fucking! Hell!...Aaaagh!!!” I scream, I screamed and cussed and punched the seats because this…this was just another great big lead blanket of their lies and bullshit they’d been trying to smother me under.
I’d have gotten in so much shit for a fit like this before.
Aunt Holly just sits through it. Actually she rolls down the window and lit a smoke. I calmed down a bit to the mad and heavy breathing stage and she’s looking at me and I’m looking at her a little sheepishly and I see this glint in her eyes.
“Aaaagh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” We both scream at the roof.
Then. “Aaaagh!!!!” at each other.
Then we break into giggles and laughter. I hug her again. “My God they really sucked huh.” She says.
“Fuckers.” I sniffle.
“Better?”
“No…I messed up my make-up.”
“Geez Mikayla you’re such a girl.”
We giggle together again and it just goes to show that a tough chick with all the tattoos and stuff and having been in prison can just be as much as a girl as any of us. Aunt Holly ditches the smoke and we have another go at getting me made up with me doing almost everything. I do need all the practice that I can get.
***
The Oshawa Center Mall is actually pretty cool, I’ve never been to the malls a lot, just never really had the chance to and then of course was the stares and stuff I’d get and everything.
Well I’m still getting looks and stares and yet there’s some friendly sort of smiles in there. They see the make-up and the clothes and the hair and my chair and I’m a girl. Which is really, really cool because the last thing I really need is to get clocked and stuff.
We hit a lot of places mostly just looking but also trying things on. We get some stuff that’s kind of cool and stuff at American Eagle, I got two denim skirts there… (Yay! I own skirts!) We sort of figured on a few things for easy use while I need my chair and skirts are right up there with stuff. But I do get a nice pair of jeans too because I…I wanted them…I wanted a pair of girls jeans and not just any pair but something actually in style. In the end we get two pair one called Total Girl and another pair of Arizona jeans.
My big thing is really turns out to be tops, the biggest part of what everyone’s going to see about me most of the time I guess in my torso so we really get a whole bunch of tops and blouses and sweaters and camisoles and I really love this store called Garage and I get a lot of these girls long sleeved tee’s. And I mean I really love these shirts, the cut, the neck the shelf in some of them just can’t be taken for a guy’s style ever and I’m in heaven.
I’m getting tired because I’ve done more today that I’ve done in a long time but I’m trying on clothes. I’m buying clothes out of the money she gave me for Dad’s stuff but she’s buying out of the money she gets for me living with her and we have a great time.
Oh I am so a hipster styled panty girl just like my Aunt and she didn’t show me until after I had tried some different types on. I think that’s really cool that we have some stuff in common.
I get three dresses mid length sleeves and something called a bow-back dress but it doesn’t have a bow on it like a present. I’m not sure why it’s called what it’s called but they all have this scooped neckline. I have two different floral prints on black and a black plain one. All three are… “They’re kind of short.”
“That’s true but it’s the style that the girls at school and you age will be wearing when the do wear a dress.”
“Okay, but It’s kind of a waste right? I mean it’s not like I’m going to be walking around in them. I’ll be in my chair most of the time.”
“Kayla if it makes you feel good and feel pretty and even a bit sexy than their worth having. Besides you can really show off your legs in the chair if you want to.”
“Really?”
“Yes we’ll figure all this stuff out kiddo.”
We actually hit a lot of places and I even get some stuff for my feet, I end up getting a bunch of these wedge solid soled shoes and boots that can be buckled and strapped to my ankles and stuff and I’m tottery and shaky but taking a few steps while I’m holding onto Aunt Holly.
“How do they feel?”
“Weird, not as bad as some things.”
“Well you need to find one’s that are comfortable.”
“There’s not a lot of those not the way that my leg muscles have gotten.”
“Okay, but we’ll keep looking I want a few pairs of something you’ll be able to use the arm braces in.”
In the end and through eleven shoe departments and stores before finding three cute ankle boots that are comfortable and work sort of. Well they work but I’ll need my crutches or my arm braces and still it depends on the day and I’ll still not be able to go really long or far with them.
But… (Big smiles.)
They made a lot of difference in the changing rooms and trying things on. I had to repair my make-up again while standing if a little wobbly in a changing room at Macy’s looking at myself in a full length mirror in a pretty dress.
I was okay; well I was in shock until my Aunt Holly came inside the changing room and side by side hugged me and said to me and my reflection. “Hi Mikayla.”
Oh yeah, waterworks.
***
I’m in the van and I’m hugging myself because we had just got ready to leave and into the van and had been driving for a few minute when she passes me a bag. “I missed a lot of birthdays and Christmases Kayla I hope you like these. They are going to give you any support and stuff but I thought you’d like them.”
I looked inside and there were two pairs of the prettiest ballet flats you could have ever seen.
I’m still hugging them super tight to my chest.
Lead Shoes-4
Chapter 4
Wow life can certainly turn on a dime right?
It’s been a few days since everything started to change and well I’ve been just really busy. We pretty much called it a day once we had gotten home and got my things in my room and then made supper. We actually made supper together and had spaghetti. It’s so nice not to feel useless y’know.
I filled the pot and added salt and she showed me a good trick for me. You can get these pots with colanders in them and we left it in and then just took it out of the water to drain the pasta. She’s not the best cook but it’s a far cry from the semi-old person food Nan cooked. Ragu sauce right out of the jar and those little rounds of pepperoni from a pizza pack baked on a cookie sheet in the oven until they got like all crispy and we crumbled that over it and added a bit of cheese from a pre-shredded bag.
Actually not half bad.
I had something called a McCain cake for desert. It’s like Canadian Sarah Lee I think but from a French fry company?
I have chores.
I do the dishes and yes we have a dishwasher and a lot of our stuff is cheap from places like Dollarama so we don’t stress it if I spazz and break something. I also am to swiffer the floors and do my own laundry plus we trade off days to clean the bathrooms. I’m also tech support, she has a decent if dated gateway computer and she’s sort of computer literate but I go over stuff with her and make sure that she’s got a good grasp on the stuff she has. Mostly the usual stuff but some business software and stuff too.
She leaves me at home with a cell phone while she goes to work at a tattoo place a couple of nights and a bar some other nights. She trust me, I really try and not to wreck that trust either.
She came in this morning and had heard me cry out when the spasms and the cramping made me cry out waking me from being asleep. She came in and she held me and when the spiking pain passed she looked at me.
“How’s your arms?”
(Sniffle.) “Okay…it’s my legs this morning, it’s almost always me ff.. legs.”
“You mean your fucking legs?”
(Sniffle.) “Yeah…”
“Sucks right?”
“Yeah…”
She holds up one of my pillows. “Hit it.”
“……..”
“Hit it, it’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair and you bottle all this shit up and you need to…”
I don’t let her finish as I start hitting the pillow she’s holding and over and over and I’m not very good at hitting stuff but I really cut loose on it and I’m swearing a streak of profanity until my throats sore and I can’t see for the tears and she pulls me into this hug and the dam breaks and I bawl my eyes out.
And she rocks me and say’s. “It’s okay Kayla, its okay to feel just the way that you’re feeling.”………………. “Yeah, that’s it, let it out, get the poison out, that’s a good girl.”
It’s okay…
I’m a good girl…
Anguished crying shifts to this relieved crying and when I’m done she helps me massage my legs and do some exercises with them. “If you’re in pain now Kayla then maybe we can work it out some.”
Aunt Holly does those things for me. The little huge things.
Today’s a hard one, I took some of my meds and they’re to help me sleep when I’m having pain. But they only last so long and they don’t stop what’s happening with my body so after the pain starts to fade from my cramping up it feels like I’ve been beaten then tossed on The Rack. What a good way to start the day.
She helps me get a handle on myself but not too much more than that. She’ll help me if I ask for it but she doesn’t do stuff for me.
More pain meds and some of the others and I sit in the bath awhile then she comes in with a few things. “I figured you were having a shitty morning honey so I thought this might set you off right.”
She sets down a mug of coffee and my i-pod but there’s this girls shaving kit or something like it called Veet. Aunt Holly kisses me on the cheek. “Okay, I’m going to work so call me if you need me but take anything you can out of you’re room today okay we’re going to finally fix it up when I get off tonight.”
I hug her really hard. “Thank you, you just…today would have been really sucky without you.”
“Hey I’m just taking care of my girl. Wash up then relax the shampoo and stuff and just girl out getting pretty and listening to tunes while drinking your coffee.”
That’s what I do. I read the instructions while sipping my coffee and soaking the I-pod on its little stand and I start getting rid of all the unwanted guy hair. It’s like I’m using that scraper thing to peel and scrape off a layer of unwanted boy.
I get so into the way it feels and actually getting girly the pain and just the stuff that’d drag me down just fades into the background and I’m singing along with Katie Perry, Avril, Destiny’s Child, Pink…omg…I love Pink and stuff aunt Holly showed me Heart and Wilson-Phillips and I’m singing out loud at the top of my lungs along with them to Hold On while I’m singing to my hair brush and putting on my make up.
“I know this pain…”
“why do you lock yourself up in these chains?”
“No one can change your life, except for you.”
“Don’t ever let anyone step al over you…”
“Just open your heart and your mind….mmm”
“Is it really fair, to feel, this way inside…..?”
“Ohh! Someday, somebody’s gonna make you turn around and say goodbye!”
“Until then baby, are you going to let them hold you down and make you cry!”
“Don’t you know! Don’t you know things can change?”
“Things’ll go your way…if you hold one for one more day…..”
“Can you hold on…for one more day?”
“Things’ll go your way…hold on..for..one..more..day”
I keep singing in and out of that song and it’s just so much like something I’ve been living in and like getting out of the leg braces when I was a kid, like shedding off all this stuff that got piled on me living with Dad and Nan and bursting through to this new life where I’m really me.
Getting rid of my body hair that I hate…huge.
Sitting on the seat/stool of my walker in front of the music doing MY hair and My make-up in the house alone and TRUSTED…huge.
Listening to girl’s music as loud as I want without getting hollered at and I get to SING at the top of my lungs and just be a girl!
It pushes me through the hard drag you down stuff. It takes me awhile to get dressed only because I’m choosing My outfit. I love my bra I love my panties I like getting dressed up as the person I really am inside even if the only thing I’m wearing is a long sleeved T-shirt and girl’s Nike sweatpants. I look in the mirror and I see Mikayla, I see me and while I’m not all the way there…
I can actually see my life from here.
I go out to the kitchen with my walker and make myself some breakfast I’m learning to cook a bit. I make scrambled eggs, and a dish of granola and then do the dishes. Then the washing. I well we’ve developed a cheat where I have the plastic laundry basket hooked to a leash and just pull it behind me and the floors are ceramic tile mostly for my wheelchair so it’s not like I’m going to hurt much. My walker’s good for all those things with the bench seat and everything and I separate stuff then hand wash the other stuff in the sink
It’s nice to actually feel like I’m accomplishing stuff y’know.
My room’s the biggest deal and I crank the tunes and clear out my things. That’s sort of easy with me not having really unpacked a whole lot and I cheat. I put stuff in the seat of my wheelchair and use it as a walker. It’s all hard work really but it’s almost not work with the tunes from my i-pod hooked to the stereo and everything.
I got as much as I could done short of moving furniture and got all the laundry done both mine and Aunt Holly’s stuff too.
I even make supper. I looked online for some simple stuff and I end up making pork chops that we had in the freezer thawing them out and pouring a can of Heinz chicken gravy over them and some salt and pepper and put them in the oven and along side of them some baked potatoes and a drained off can of mixed veggies in the microwave.
You can cook stuff pretty easy and generally pretty edible if you take your time and just go slowly. I put it in at about three hundred and almost two hours later I’m getting stuff out of the oven and setting the table. Just a cup towel on my walker’s bench seat and I can carefully walk the hot baking dish from where I took it out of the oven to where I can set it on the table. The same deal with the dishes and stuff. I love not being helpless.
It was way cool seeing her tuck into the food with me after she got out of the shower and the happy smile with her mouthful and stuff. Aunt Holly leans over and kisses me on the cheek.
“Thanks Kayla, coming home to something like that after work was really nice and it saved me from cooking and it was really good too.”
I blush at the praise and still from hearing her using my name just like it…well Just like it was my name.
We both take a break after supper and watch a little TV and she falls asleep on the couch through those entertainment news shows which I’m not a fan of and I switch over to watch Endgame on Showcase that’s got this Russian chess master who’s this agoraphobia but ends up solving cases that are brought to him and stuff.
She gets up after her nap and we move the rest of the stuff out and then get the other stuff from out of the garage.
She gives me all these books and magazines to cut out stuff I thinks cool while she pulls the stuff off that frames the walls and the doorway and windows and then tapes off the windows. She got this compressor thing from so guy she knows on lend and she spray paints my room while I’m cutting stuff out and changing and stirring cans of paint before loading them into the thing that sucks up the paint.
I get paint and stuff all over me and I almost get upset by my clothes being like that when she grins and yells. “Relax Kayla! Now you have official real female work clothes!”
She has a point. It’s actually kind of cool.
We paint the walls this coral color that’s white with grey and some rose in it and once that’s dry we put up wall paper sheets as like these dividers for like sections of my walls with this really girly floral kind of prints and then we fill each of those sections with posters and inspirational stuff from the magazines, the dancing I-pod girl silhouettes and stuff.
Another section is just all pictures in frames of dancers or all kinds and another section she has blank until she gives me these books of quotes and stuff from just those places like the dollar store with like Wisdom for the busy woman or Advice for the heart of the Teen girl and I start writing down the ones that move me on that section.
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…it’s about getting out there and dancing in the rain.
Guys watch out, anything with breasts and wheels will give you problems…I’ve got both.
Come live in my heart and pay no rent.
Love is what makes you smile when you are tired.
Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out but to see who cares enough to break them.
Any idiot can face a crisis, its day to day living that wears you out.
I do things for the joy that it brings; ‘cause I’m a joyful girl and because the world owes us nothing but instead we owe each other the world.
I’ll know they’re the one when they make me feel like a woman and a little girl at the same time.
Toronto’s like a really smoking hot Brunette in dirty underwear.
Sometimes I would give Anything just to be something more than nothing.
Sadness is ungrateful.
There’s more that I write down and I leave room for others but it’s a start and I can see some of my self up there in the wall. No, I didn’t write down who say these things I honestly don’t care it’s the words and the messages that I want there not the facts about those words.
By the time that’s done Aunt Holly has the mouldings back up and all repainted a nice white that sets off the rest of the colors and she’s screwing in this matching bookshelf to the wall and another tall table that is just the right height for me to sit at with my walker and …do my make-up…I smile a big smile as she adds a mirror over the table. We get finished with this redone rear car seat with a leopard print seat cover as a window seat which is kind of cool and then a wall unit for my TV and my playstation and stereo to be set on in and.
“We’re done, we’ll get a few other odds and ends as we go but how do you like it Kayla?”
“I love it. It’s really mine isn’t it? This is actually going to be mine? My life?”
“Yes, Yours, your life, and your home.”
I hug her.
I do that a lot.
We leave the rest of the stuff until tomorrow and to let some stuff still dry and to air out and stuff and it’s kind of late so after getting cleaned up and having ice cream while watching a little more TV we go to bed and Aunt Holly lets me sleep with her.
I got held in her arms that night being held by someone…by someone who really should’ve been my mom more than my mom and I fall sleep, so fast, so deeply.
“I love you Aunt Holly…”
“I Love you too Mikayla.”
Lead Shoes-5
Chapter 5
I woke up in the morning and it was a good morning for me. My soreness was just sort of general stuff the usual stuff and I’m not sure if it was having someone to hold me all night. And the smell. It’s that smell women only have, that maybe I’ll have one day when the boy hormones are getting out of me and the hormones I need are making me right.
I feel really good inside where it counts despite the stuff that’s my usual. I wake and she’s not far behind me and I get an in bed hug and squeeze. The first in god, really I don’t know how long. “Morning?” she says.
“Good morning.” It comes out actually happy sounding.
“Massage?”
“No, I’m good I think.” I slide out of bed, not too bad feeling and I walk, well it’s more like sort of tip toeing as my feet are like the furthest thing from being flat but I’m not really using my walker to walk so much as a just in case to my room.
I get into my bathroom and crank my tunes and I get cleaned up and trying to get into my routine. I’m still scrubbing the guy off of me. I know that I’m not one of those guys that worked like a real job and got all muscled and rough but there’s still so much boy there and yeah every shower I’m scrubbing off dead skin and I’m lotioning myself up and even sealing all that in with baby oil. I want to be as soft and smooth as I can be. I know the hormones will help with that too but I just want too, need to it’s like I’m catching up and stuff.
Powder and girls deodorants too, just a bit of perfume I’m a little afraid of what’s too much but if you can dress and smell like a girl, the girl you are inside then it helps. It helps so much really.
Another sweet little thing of you’re like me. I’m taking vitamins a women’s multi-vitamin but while they’re not hormones and don’t do stuff like that but it sort of feels like a big step in the right direction. I’m also taking some vitamin D and E tablets too.
And soy, I’m no fan of tofu or maybe I’ve never had it right but I drink this stuff called So-Good and we have lots of it in the house. I think Aunt Holly knows a guy who knows a guy? The vanilla is better than the chocolate by the way; the way they mix it just isn’t chocolate milk. Still like Aunt Holly says, the price was right.
I get my ankle boots on and I switch to my arm canes and head out to the living room and kitchen. Aunt Holly’s up and there’s just something about her that I’d love to be like. It’s that casual female thing that makes all girls and women beautiful. It’s that she’s just in a long t-shirt and her panties and her hair’s messy and she’s in her bare feet and no bra and she’s got that breast and butt shift and sway as she moves and fights with her hair until she pulls a scrunchie off her wrist and pops it a hasty ponytail. There is something just so right in her just unconsciously being just her that’s actually lovely.
I want that too, just the ease at being myself and not HAVE to think about it. It’s the have to think and obsess over feeling like this that really wears on you the most. Getting to be me the way I even am right now is a huge bonus for me and takes off so much pressure.
Aunt Holly is infinitely better after her first cup of coffee in the morning and I’ve never seen anyone make coffee the way that she does. She grinds the beans and then she puts them in a glazed looking African like teapot and adds boiling water to them and she’ll pour it with the grounds and all. It’s really strong but we don’t buy coffee filters and there’s spicy food too even for breakfast sometimes. I mean I can eat what I want but there’s sometimes where what she makes is just so different I’ll try it even if I don’t like it.
This morning it’s scrambled eggs and granola I like both and aunt Holly has this Indian red chili jelly stuff squirted over hers and I’ve tried that seracha stuff before too spicy for me yet Nan’s idea of spicy was black pepper, we didn’t really have garlic in the house. That was “Eye-Tal-yin” foolishness.
I suppose out of prison foods though. She’s mentioned it before a bit. People think they get great meals and stuff but they don’t. Breakfast was cornflakes, oatmeal or cream of wheat once every two weeks bacon and eggs and hash-browns. The eggs she said were out of a bucket and liquid but mixed with army styled powered eggs.
It sounds like it really wasn’t fun.
We get breakfast done and the dishes in the dishwasher but don’t turn it on; we only use it when it’s full. Then it’s getting the rest of my stuff done in my room like the books and my games and computer and DVD’s and stuff all those little things and finally get it done.
I don’t just like my room, I Love my room.
She’s sitting on my bed and smiling. “Not too shabby.”
“No I love it.”
“Good, well c’mon Kayla we’ve got some stuff to do and your appointments.”
“Okay, am I good the way I am or should I change?”
“You should change I’ve got some stuff planned that might help get into some sports gear.”
“Okay…”
I get cleaned up and into a nice pair of yoga pants and a soft yellow tee-shirt and we head out in the van. We go to the mall first? And we end up getting me a bathing suit a one piece the works with me tucked away and taped….that was an adventure.
“Why do I need a bathing suit?”
“It’s so you can go swimming.”
“I don’t know how to swim.”
“That’s okay; they’ll teach you at the Y.”
“The Y? Won’t I be liked clocked or checked out and found out or something?” I’m chewing my lower lip nervously.
“I checked on that and the local YWCA has a transgendered swim time actually as part of their policy and I was told by your doctors that it might be good for you even if you’re just paddling around on a float board.”
“Oh…are you going to be there?”
“Of course I am Kayla I’m not going to just dump you off someplace for other people to handle. Besides, I haven’t been swimming since I was your age anyway.”
“You haven’t?”
“No, sometimes you just lose the time to do just even stuff like that when you get older and I’ve not one for swimming in these parts of the lakes so it’s something I just lost.”
“What else haven’t you got to do?”
“Oh honey there’s tones of stuff and maybe we can do a lot of these things together.”
“I’d like that; I was pretty much a shut in.”
“Hostage more like it.” She makes a face.
We got to the hospital for my physio and my other appointments and Will’s there again. Oh…gosh he smiled at me as soon as he seen me. I’m not one who can really judge this stuff yet but he’s cute. But he’s smiling at me and that’s all kinds of awesome. I’m on my arm-canes today but in my head the girly me that can walk and dance and just is normal well she’s doing a happy dance in the back of my brain.
I even get brave enough to take the seat beside him. “Hey Will.”
“Hey Kayla, I was wondering how things were going with you?”
“Good, not doing too bad today.”
“You get a lot of bad days?”
“Sometimes, I really shouldn’t complain there’s a lot worse off than me.”
“That’s true, so what have you been doing.”
I fill him in on the stuff we’ve been doing for my room and how cool it is and everything and he actually listens and there was even like twice him phone buzzed/vibrated and he ignored it and kept talking to me all the way until it was his turn to go and do stuff he had to do for his arm.
Will’s sixteen, and he’s kind of a skater but he likes the bmx stuff too and he’s a bit of a metal head and stuff he knew bands that I’ve either barely or never heard of and stuff and he it’s weird he’s into books but not into the video games that much or movies and stuff and he was as bad with movies as I was with his heavy metal bands and stuff.
He does a lot of stuff he even play guitar.
Sigh.
Okay he might be cute.
Physio was good and so was the appointment with my therapist and we did a whole hour together and it was mostly catch up but a lot of stuff about my transition, my headspace living as the real me.
It was phrased as living as a girl and I think I passed some kind of test and stuff because I said. “I’m not living as a girl, I’ve always been a girl it’s just I’m being allowed to be myself without being made fun of or being told I’m sick the way I am because God knew I was a pervert.”
“Your Grandmother said those things to you?”
“To me and to anyone that’d listen because I was such a burden being the way that I was and trying to cope with my father and his drug problem.”
“You resent her for that?”
“A little it’s hard not to. But she was also a product of her generation and even the way a lot of churches looked at things. Plus it just seems back home they were a lot less tolerant than they preached they were.”
We talked for awhile and yeah there’s a few times where I lose it and get really angry at life in general. I know I can’t change having this but I’ve never actually had someone say that it’s alright for me to yell and scream and cuss and swear and have… have a fit without being yelled at to suck it up or to shut the hell up.
Turns out according to my therapist that it’s actually healthy for me to feel that way and that bottling these issues up really isn’t healthy. I couldn’t help it but that was such a no duh moment that I had a semi hysterical giggle fit too. Apparently that’s also normal after you have an emotional purge.
I feel all wrung out and loose after getting out of there and I’m in the hall sitting in the really nice chairs while Aunt Holly is in talking with them and Will comes up the hall and he’s got a tray from the Tim’s (Tim Horton’s) in the lobby. He comes over and sits beside me. “Hey.”
“Uhm Hi…again are you here to see a…” I wave my hand at the office. I kind of just clued in that it’s not really any of mu business if he’s seeing a therapist or not.
“Nope but I saw you here last time and I thought that this would be a really good time to bring you a coffee and a brownie.”
“Oh… thanks!” that was surprise and happy together it’s kind of cool of him to do that.
“I had an ulterior motive.”
“Huh?”
“Well bring a pretty girl a coffee and something sweet after she’s been through some stuff is a really good way to flirt with her.”
OMG holey crap…. A boy is flirting with me.
(More mental happy dancing.)
…………….. he said I was pretty?
Oh…
“Uhm…”
“I know it’s sneaky and underhanded but I really wanted to have a shot at going out with you and the other guys get to see the new babe.”
“Uhm.” C’mon dammit brain work! Work!
There’s a bunch of mini versions of girl me in my head like on the bridge of the Enterprise (Star Trek reference.) one of them’s yelling. “We’re hit his cuteness is too powerful, we canna take it the brain’s offline Captain!”
He’s looking at me and did I mention he’s cute?
With tractor beam lips.
I didn’t know I was doing it or going to do it and I’m not sure if will had any idea that I was going to do it either but the pull just happened it just happened and…and…
I leaned over and I kissed him.
It wasn’t long or gross but it was a kiss just a really good kiss and It was my very first kiss and it reset something in my head because I can think and…okay Will looks a little stunned and off his game. I break it and smile then pass my coffee to my Aunt who just came out of the office and she’s staring a little but her eyes are dancing. I get up and ready my braces and say.
“Thank you, the coffee and the brownie was really sweet of you. I’ll see you around Will.”
I leave with her and we’re walking and once we get into the elevator we burst out laughing and into a fit of giggles right after.
“That’s my girl; you handled that like a pro.”
“Oh god I had no idea what I was doing and he was flirting with me and saying that I’m pretty…”
“Mikayla, you might not be stunning or curvy yet but you’re definitely pretty.”
“Really?”
“Yes really, I wouldn’t lie to you.”
I stare at her and we lock eyes and she’s really serious, and really honest….just someone being straight with me is so good. People lie to you all the time to “Protect” you when you’re disabled.
“I didn’t know I was kissing him until I was kissing him.”
“Well it was a nice kiss and he was being sweet and you handled that really well for your first time.”
“I had no idea if any of that was right.”
“Neither do any of us Kayla, heck still don’t sometimes.”
“I was afraid that I might have screwed it up because I was born like this…”
“You handled it just like the girl you are honey.”
“Really?”
“Really, some guys are a lot alike but they’re also all different. Some of us might not show it but trust me my girly brain is just as messy and crosswired as yours is.”
“Really?”
She bursts out laughing and hugs me. “Yes really it’s your body that needs fixed not your brain girl.”
I hug her back and we end up back in the van and heading to the YWCA for my first thing of swimming and I’m holding my coffee and my brownie and bouncing in the seat the whole way.
Lead Shoes-6
Chapter 6
Okay despite how bouncy I was I’m really scared and nervous as we get to the YWCA. There’s the fact My CP makes me stick out and there’s this fear of being found out. Aunt Holly gets out with a bag and I get out with her and we head inside and sign in and head to the changing rooms and…I see this guy?..girl..in the ladies locker room.
He looks at me and he’s Hindu? Hindi? And I can’t help but sneak a few peeks until he looks away shyly and sort of hides behind the locker doors.
“Aunt Holly? Uhm is he like me?”
“I think she is Kayla.”
She, she…shit…I’m so not used to there being other people like me out there in the world. I mean seeing them on-line is one thing in real life is another.
“So they let girls like me here?”
“Definitely look.” She points to one of the walls.
There’s this poster of a woman slightly turned away holding a baby both nude and it’s from the waist up, the panel beside it is the same person but as womanly sort of as they are it’s a guy. The caption reads… “Gender’s really not that important is it?”
It makes part of my throat catch seeing that, something that supports this part of me I’ve been told was evil and freakish and wrong.
And just like she can read me Aunt Holly is there with a hug.
“C’mon lets get changed; I’ve got something for you.”
I go with her and she passes me this two piece bathing suit and a thong looking thing. She holds up the thong. “I made this it’s sort of like a gaff that the dancers and uhm...some girls like you need this isn’t as harsh sounding.”
I look it over and it’s a sort of crotchless close to a thong bikini thong and there’s a pouch attached to the front and it has this double sided bit of Velcro and there’s another tab on the underside of the panty part like where the gusset is but on the outside. Okay I can do this.
I slip into them and settle them where they’ll be comfortable and slide the pouch over my dangly bit like a sock the pull it flat and fasted it with the Velcro and the second tab covers it making the Velcro so it won’t chafe me. I look in the mirror and I’m flat there…The pouch thing is the same lycra stuff that the panties are made off and I’ve read about gaff’s this is easier to use and the bit of puffy looks normal for a girl. I’m tearing up and trying to wipe the tears away and Aunt Holly is passing me my other Bikini bottoms but these have that bikini shorts kind of thing and they fit great and they cover the thong and it’s stunning how much the real me just crutch stepped into the mirror.
The top is a matching sports bra swimming top with a racer back and once I put in the gel inserts I look, I look like Aunt Holly but a young teenaged version of her. Or close to it.
“We look like mother and daughter.” I say looking in the mirror.
Aunt Holly smiles and wipes away her own tear. “Yeah, well you are almost mine literally kiddo.”
“Huh?”
“You might not remember much about your mum but she and I are twins. I might be your aunt but we share a lot of DNA.”
“Okay that’s actually really, really cool because you’re really the closest thing to a real mom that I ever had.”
She really gets sniffly and hugs me. She even shook a bit.
“Aunt Holly? You alright?”
“It’s just…you’re just about my only shot at doing the Mom thing.”
“Huh?”
“I can’t have kids…I was so jealous of your mom when she had you.”
“But Mom could why not you?”
“Because…” she sits down with me. “My only baby wasn’t even born when I lost him. Your Mum and I grew up in a bad home, both our parents were drunks and didn’t really care about us unless it was when they’d smack us around. Dad because he’d still be angry at mom for whatever and she’d be passed out. Or it was Mom just because why shouldn’t we feel what she’s feeling?
It was her brother our Uncle who sort of helped hold things together, but he was…he wasn’t a good guy”
She’s shaking and I slide to her side for a change. “He…?” she nods and she’s not breaking down but those tears of pain are just streaming out of her eyes and she’s sort of staring at the floor but seeing other things.
“He got me pregnant when I was thirteen and instead of letting my parents know and stuff he took me to this place in Toronto that was a really bad place and they…they used…”
She’s breathing hard and trying to swallow and the Hindi girl comes over with a bottle of water and opens it for her and sits on the other side of Aunt Holly and helps me rub her back.
Aunt Holly closes her eyes after a few drinks and tilts her head back.
“It was a back alley abortion and he got caught after a couple of days after that when I nearly bled to death that night. Your mom got me to the hospital by ambulance and the cops went after our uncle and we got taken from mom and dad and placed into foster care. We were lucky sort of getting placed together but there was took much damage done to my insides and I couldn’t have kids after that.”
We’re quiet for a little while except her drinking her water then I hug her. “Well you got one now okay?”
She sniffles. “Yeah.” She hugs me tight and the Hindi girl gets up to leave but I reach out to take her hand.
“Thank you, I’m Mikayla.”
She smiles and takes my hand and shakes it. “I’m Sam, well Samantha I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“It was a pretty different way to meet though.”
I smile and she smiles back she’s really pretty too in a one piece but a blue sort of floral print that looks sort of Indian in style. I can’t really clock her either she’s all squared away perfectly and has just the start of breasts and nice legs. She looks about my age.
………………………… We all head to the gym talking and it’s kind of exciting to because Sam or Sammi which is her nickname goes to school where I’m going to be going and that means that I’m not going to be going through this stuff there alone. She’s actually out too which is kind of scary but she hasn’t been hassled too bad just sort of left alone except for a bunch of friends that she has that have stuck behind her.
It’s neat going swimming and the instructor she’s pretty good with me as I take the basics and start learning to swim. I’m wearing a float vest just in case I take a spastic moment and end up going under but it doesn’t happen and we take breaks to sit poolside on those lawn chair bed things and just kind of rest and keep from pruning up and stuff.
Sammi has to go because she has a job and she gives me her contact information including her home address and we hug and stuff before she goes. I’m all kinds of happy at having a friend my own age and her being like me is a huge bonus too. She can help me with stuff and maybe some of her friends might like me too?
We’re there for two hours and I even get a bit of a tour of the stuff and the girl showing me around is not one of those snobby gym girls that you see in some places but pretty and nice and she knows her stuff.
Like things here in the Y I can do that’ll help me like using the rowing machine and the stationary bikes and some other things like a palates class for people like me with CP or MS or just stuff like strokes or injury handicaps. I end up with a bunch of booklets on their services here and their online stuff and a spinning head because of all the options.
It was good day and also a rough one too.
I tell Aunt Holly when we get home. “How about you go and relax and I’ll make supper.”
She looks at me. “You sure Kayla?”
“Yes, I’m sure you had a long day too. I don’t really think that you were planning on all that stuff coming up huh?”
“No…but it’s been getting there.” She goes to the fridge and takes out some of the chocolate soymilk and pours herself a tall glass of it and me one too. Me I take out the frying pan and some hamburger out of the fridge and start making my Dad’s burgers.
Okay he might have been a druggie and an ass but there were a few things about him that didn’t suck and his burgers were one of them. I dump the burger into a bowl and add an can of Spam and some onion powder and potato flakes and some paprika…dad said that made the Spam taste more like there was bacon in the burger. I know it tastes good and sorta bacony and the potato flakes make it go all crispy on the outside. No buns just sliced bread toast and some ketchup and mustard and some cheez-whiz.
Tater tot’s made by those McCain guys to go with it in the oven.
Aunt Holly’s on the couch holding her bear…a panda Carebear with a skull on his tummy I’ve never seen it anywhere else I thing it might have been a gift from a friend. She’s de-stressing and looking through the Netficks on the remote for something to watch.
I bring her’s in first and then mine and we sit together and I look at her. “I want to be in the room with you when you’re talking to my therapists okay?”
“Okay…but it’s not all about you…”
“Oh about…y’know…?”
“Some of it but also stuff like being out of prison, my abuse issues, staying clean and sober.”
I look over at her. “Your mom and I were wild foster girls and hit the streets as soon as we hit sixteen. You get into some pretty messed up stuff really easily out there.”
“Were you a prostitute?” I blush asking it. She just shrugs. “Sorta, I was an Old lady.”
“You’re not old, well not that old.”
“No an Old Lady is a biker’s girl; she’s like his girl and only his girl if he’s patched in. But before you get to be an Old Lady you’re just a chick or whatever but you literally “do” what they say and who they say until they can trust you then you get let in. I was just one of “The Girls” until I was about eighteen and I pulled a solid getting a year taking a dope charge for the guy I was with and that got me my club ink.”
“Club ink?”
She shows me her right inside forearm and there’s a large S and a large C together like the letters of that AC/DC band. “SC?”
“Satan’s Choice.”
“Whoa…”
“They’re family and they got me the work and stuff that I have.”
“So you’re still with them?”
“Sort of, I’m retired? I’m doing the walk. That’s what the call the straight and narrow and as much as they do the stuff that they do they don’t begrudge you doing the walk. Especially when it’s stuff about family, family is everything and I learned that in The Choice not at home.”
“Oh so no bikers pulling in and no cops around then?”
“There’s be some friends around I know a bunch of guys in the LC and they stop by sometimes.”
“Luciphers choice?”
“No the LC is the Last Chance Biker club, just mostly part timers and stuff.”
“So who was your Guy?”
“Jake Fowler, they used to call him Nightowl, partly as a play on his name and he used to DJ in the joint but he liked to run black some nights.”
“Run black?”
She gets this smile on her face. “He’d go out in the country there were a lot of these back roads these guys know well and we’d be way the hell up on some hill in the middle of nowhere and he’d kill the bike, we’d coast without lights or the engine on and he’d barely even touch the breaks…some people thought it was scary stuff, crazy but I loved it and loved him.”
“So what happened?”
“He died when I was in prison, chunk of tire spun off a big rig down in New York State and it just happened so fast that it wedged his front tire and he flipped …killed him instantly.”
“It sounds so…”
“The life isn’t a life Kayla, there’s stuff and bullshit that you wouldn’t believe and while it can be cool, exciting, edgy it also is hell the bullshit never really stops.”
“Okay, I’m not sure I’d be brave enough for that kind of stuff anyway.”
“Good girl…I’m not just out of the life because you came into it Kayla, I want something more, I want normal.”
I grin and sat before biting into my burger. “You and me both, I guess that’s why you get me right?”
“Mmrh-Right.” She says through the mouthful.
I learned so much about her and everything today and tonight and she’s been through so much and she’s looking for the exact same thing as I really want.
Normal…
Screw the fairy tale bullshit I just want normal.
We watch some comedies each picking one. I play/order Tangled that cartoon movie, the scenes with the paper lanterns really get to me and that whole Nan keeping me pretty close to hand so fits me identifying with the whole tower thing.
Aunt Holly gets me to watch this movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and it was funny and the guys were actually pretty cute back then…yeah I’m pretty sure I’m into boys and I’m okay with that.
We head to bed a little late and I go with her to her room and crawl in with her. “I just want to cuddle is that okay…I just don’t feel right about leaving you alone tonight…” I say to her.
Aunt Holly pulls me into a hug in the bed and just holds me. “Thanks kiddo, I’m not used to asking for help when I might need it. You’re a good girl.”
“I’ve got a good role-model.”
(Sniffle…) “Thanks…”
“Aunt Holly?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you a huge favor?”
“Sure anything.”
“Will…Will you adopt me…?” I’m crying now it’s all scary, needy, emotional stuff coming up with the question. (Sniffle…) “I want you to be my Mum, like for real.”
“Yes!” (Teary crying sniffles) “I…I…God Kayla I wanted you for mine ever since you were a baby…!”
“Really?” (Ugly cry speaking.)
“Yeah, really…and now…I’ve been scared to ask…but I wanted too. I know you haven’t been here long but I love you Mikayla!”
“I love you too…Mum.”
It hurt and felt so good at the same time. We were both crying our eyes out and I’m nor sure when or what time but I fell asleep crying out old pain with My Aunt…the woman who really loves me and should’ve been my real Mum.
I actually dreamt of this other life, not a perfect life just a normal life but she was my Mum and I was her little girl.
Lead Shoes-7
Chapter 7
Well it’s been a long two weeks. I didn’t know all of the legal stuff that took place in getting my application for me actually getting adopted by Mum.
Yeah I call Aunt Holly Mum now.
Most of it was trying to get in touch with my birth mom who was a no show, it turned out after a serious search that was done through the Mounties who talked to the FBI where I’m an American and she was last seen in the states that she had been seen in Reno, Nevada.
They sent e-mails, and even sent stuff by snail mail and process server and all that stuff but there was and hasn’t been any response and it turns out she’s wanted on charges for fraud…bad checks…drug possession and trafficking charges.
Yay lovely.
I got to see her mug shots that they had of her and she’s looks like she could be right up there in the druggie’s f-ed up department like Dad.
It was actually Dad that helped us out the most. He didn’t just sign off on the custody papers but his lawyer was told to help us out too and that where my birth mom just took off that she had pretty much given up any custodial rights and stuff.
The only big problem was Nan’s church…they got wind of me transitioning and they tried to petition the courts that aunt Holly wasn’t a fit guardian and that she was putting my soul at risk. It really scared the you know what out of me when we got those letters. I like it here and it’s not just getting to be me but the way that the courts work up here.
The case got tossed out of court as soon as the judge asked me if I was a member of their congregation. It was as simple as me telling him no that because of having to live under Nan’s roof I didn’t have much choice of what church that I went to.
They tried to argue back but he said they had no standing over me or legal claims as I was not a member of their congregation. And I wasn’t there for the part where two of them got charged with contempt of court when they berated him on his ethics and morality.
Dumbasses…even I know you don’t do that to a judge.
Me being that close to being legal age also helped out a lot. It was just some papers in the end really making us legally mother and daughter and me changing my name officially too.
My name is actually Mikayla now. Mikayla Dawn Taylor now, and I officially have ID now saying that with a picture of me as actually me and that’s a big deal.
As big a deal as me having my carry letter.
As big a deal as me getting cleared by my therapist to start seeing my endocrinologist.
Getting my scripts.
I swear I can really feel the differences in me already. I mean its happening and stuff
But it’s not happening that fast.
And life’s actually good for a change.
I’ve settled into my routines of my chores which is the laundry and the dishes and taking out the garbage. But I help out with other things like cleaning the floor since when I use my chair it does seem to get dirty a lot faster and cleaning just in general.
Mum gives me an allowance of seventy dollars a week and that comes from the government money that she gets to have for me being there plus another stipend like thingy. I don’t know the Canadians have something called a child tax credit and there’s more money from this other thing where I’m differently abled and they’ll pay me so much a month or in my name so much a month as long as I’m in school or college until I’m like twenty five.
All good but the foster care money is gone now that I’m adopted and that was a lot of money given my condition and everything.
My doctors and therapists have helped too getting us hooked up with a lot of free things that I might need and the bar where Mum works actually has pretty great health insurance. And that’s still a big thing here even in Canada because prescriptions and stuff isn’t covered here for a lot of stuff really. And I guess forget about like glasses and dental but her boss is pretty good and a friend of people from the old days. I don’t thing he’s like a biker or a criminal but I bet he knows a lot of them.
I’ve been to the Stratton Bike Club with her a few times usually when she’s got to go in for a booze order to restock the place. It’s a big bar and a lot like that bar from the movie Roadhouse with Swayze in it but closer to town and yet not too far from the highway.
Her boss is a guy called Blake and he’s this big kinda fat huge bear of a guy that’s like well over six feet and really scary looking and everything. He’s a complete teddy bear and treats all the staff there pretty good.
I’m a sucker for the Stratton’s wings though. I’ve never had buffalo wings before and there have some kind of breading and this hot sauce their tossed it and there’s a blue cheese mayo to dip it that is just…it’s that good they serve it with their steaks too and put it on like three of their burgers.
But the biggest reason that I’ve been tagging along is Blake’s nephew. Dennan…
Sigh…
He’s part Irish and like really Irish. From that Belfast place and came over here to live with Blake when he was like seven and something bad happened over there. He’s just a bit older than me at seventeen and he’s got still a bit of that accent there that makes him all dreamy to talk to and stuff.
Yeah I like boys…more so too I think that the stuff’s kicking in and my blockers are turning off the other stuff and everything but I’m pretty damn sure there aren’t gay thoughts because he makes places of me tingle that aren’t really places yet.
And Denny…yeah he goes by Denny for short which is weird when you write it out but different when you say it….anyway he knows all about me and stuff and he hasn’t freaked out on me or anything.
Oh I know it’ll never go anywhere because well he’s got a girlfriend and she’s so good looking it nearly puts me on edge and stuff…(insert swearing) mumble…mumble…Jennifer Foxx clone…but there’s nothing wrong with like sort of crushing on a guy right?
Sammi and I are getting to be better friends too. We see each other at the Y and we talk online or we have been talking online when she’s not working. She’s got a part time summer job working at McHellnolds and she hates it, either getting stuck on fry station duty or if she’s on a late night shift getting put in one of the drive through windows.
We talk on the phone too. A lot actually and I’ve even been introduced to two of her friends by conference call Becky and Jinx…yeah apparent Jinx is her real name. I haven’t met them yet but I want to.
…………………………………..Today was rough. Just another bad day and it started by waking me up. I get this weird pain dream where I’m sort of in that machine from the movie “The Princess Bride: and it’s that feeling like your being twisted on a torture rack and that it just hurts for so long that it just feels like something had sucked the life out of you. I hurt which must have meant that I was spasming while I was out of it asleep. I take stuff to help me sleep because there’s nights that if I didn’t that I would just be kinda sorta curled around the pillows.
It’s one of those morning where someone’s been using my legs for jujutsu practice while someone spent the rest of the night hitting me with a folded over wet towel. The muscles in my back and sides are hurting too.
The thing about the hormones is they can affect your mood pretty quickly and there’s enough running through my system right now and …
When you wake up like this after so long, after over and over you do get to a point where you emotionally feel just as abused as your body does.
I rolled over and curled up on my blankets and pillows and just wasn’t able to keep from bawling my eyes out.
My right arm had a spasm week moment getting up with my walker and I went down. Hard sideways which brought Mum running in. “Kayla are you okay!”
“Yeah I’m fine.” I start getting up. She goes to help me which just lit the shortest fuse that I think I ever had and I shoved her away.
“Just leave me alone…I can get up myself y’know!”
She looks at me and works her jaw. “I was just trying to help.”
“I’m not a fucking invalid!” I yelled it at her and I’ve never yelled at anyone in my life.
I can tell it hurt and she could’ve done a lot of things but instead set this look on her face and exhaled. “Fine, I’ll be down in the kitchen.” She turned and she walked out and she didn’t help me get up either. I pulled myself up and used my walker to go to the bathroom and stuff and I had a crying jag while sitting in the shower and another one after my third failure out of five to put my make up on.
But I got dressed without too many problems and texted Sammi.
[Having a bad day…CP’s being a bitch this morning. And so am I.]
[Okay…? What did u do?]
[Took a freak on Mum.]
[‘bout what?]
[Her trying to help me up. I’m not an invalid!]
[Sorta R.]
[F-U.]
[Fine…though you’re being hormonal.]
I tried texting back but it just kept going to her messages and stuff. It was likely the hormones though…I hope…I…I don’t want to fuck things up.
I’m quiet when I get to the kitchen and breakfast and part of the day is spent in awkward silence as I think that I hurt her and I’m having a bad symptom day and just on edge with things all morning. If anything we avoid each other all day with me spending my time in my room mostly listening to music.
I tried video games but taking a twitch and dying in game because of that got old pretty fast.
Mum comes in around two thirty. She sit’s on the bed and looks at me. “I’m going to work…are we alright Kayla?”
(Sniffle.) “Yeah….I’m sorry it’s just that everything’s just been and felt extra sucky today.”
“That’s alright honey…I’ll admit that it took me by surprise and kind of hurt because you’ve never really been this upset about stuff so…I tried to give you your space.”
“Sammi says it’s the hormones.”
“Actually it might be. You’re hitting that kind of tween rush with them now.”
“So…”
“So it’s okay. I’ll try to keep that stuff in mind and cut you a little slack with this.”
“Thanks Mum.”
“Hey I love you kiddo I just wanted to make sure that we were good.”
“I love you Mum.”
“I Love you too. I’m going to leave some cash for take out you just take it easy okay honey and try to ride though it.”
(Sniffle.) “’Kay”
……………………………. I made my way out to the living room after she left and brought my laptop and got the electric blanket on the couch and nuked a beer mug halfway full of chicken broth out of one of those boxes and I lost myself in feeling miserable and watching TV mindlessly.
I was going to get some pizza when my phone rings. I look at it and its Sammi. I’m too tired to be pissed at her and stuff so I answer.
“Hey…”
“Kayla….(Sniffle-crying.)”
“Sammi? What’s wrong.”
“There’s a…there’s a bunch of them from school and…and they’ve been around and been assholes all night…”
“Huh!...what’s going on?”
“They know I’m the way I am but they’re being real (sniffle) assholes about it tonight and they’ve been calling me names and stuff every time the pull up to the drive through …”
“Are you okay? Did they threaten you?”
“Nno…but I’m…I’m scared.”
“You tell your manager?”
“No…she’s not here and it Evelyn tonight as assistant manager.”
Great Evil-Lynn hates Sammi and even though she hasn’t said or done anything wrong she’s always a complete bitch to anyone she doesn’t like.
“Okay…..”
I bite my lip and I think for a minute. “Okay, I’ll be down there as soon as I can okay.”
“Okay….but…but what are you going to be able to do…?”
“I’ll think of something.”
You’d be amazed at how much anger and adrenaline can get you moving even when you’re having a bad day. I pop some pain killers too because I might need them and take a couple of valium because Sammi might need them and I call a cab to take me down to the McDonalds where she works at.
I pay the cabbie and get out and head to the doors on my regular crutches and I see the Camero at the drive through. Sammi’s there and she’s passing them a small soda and I can see this guy driving and a girl beside him and three people in the back seat but their all leaning toward her and their laughing and Sammi’s crying as they’re saying what ever.
I huff it over to them and I catch “Tranny creep.” And “Alqueera” and I heard the driver say… “I never knew that Apu liked to sucka the cock.”
I get to the take out window and shout at the guy. “Hey! Asshole shut the fuck up!”
“What are you goin to do make me? You are a pussy Samir letting a crippled chick fight your battles for you.”
I lean against the side of the drive through window box and adjust my crutches. “I said leave her alone.”
“Fuck off cunt, like I said…”
Once I’m sort of standing and stable and I don’t need my crutches to walk I take one of then and just start using it as a baseball bat to his Camero. It’s an aluminum crutch and good and study and all that stuff from today and from way back…like all that stuff from like all my life comes out as I’m beating the hell out of his car and he peals out of there when I crack the glass on his window.
And that’s when I lose my balance and fall over.
I start to almost hysterically giggle as he squeals his tires leaving the parking lot that fast.
Lead Shoes-8
Chapter 8
I’m still kind of laughing because well…
I just went nuts on somebody and I’ve never gone nuts on someone before in my life. I mean before it was ignore being ignored. Take the looks, take the whispered little comments. Just take it, take it, take it.
But Sammi’s my friend, one of my only friends and I’ll effing die before people get away with treating my friends like dirt! (sob!)
Okay crying now.
I hurt.
Ow, I think I skinned something and my hands hurt from using the crutch.
Sammi comes running out. “Oh fuck! Kayla? Are you okay?”
I look at her.
It’s Sammi, my best friend who aside from my CP is just like me…
I explode into tears.
“I’m Sorry!, I’m So Sorry I was just such a bitch before!…I…I…I Love you! Please don’t stop being my fri….end!”
All of that was at full hormonal teenaged girl explodey cry.
She hugs me. “Hell no, I’m not going to stop being you’re friend. I love you too sweetie…oh my god you were so brave just now….you were amazing!”
No one’s ever really called ME amazing before. I’m hugging herb and crying and she’s hugging me and crying. And Evelyn is giving us that bitchy hairy eyeball of hers like she hates us and there’s some smug satisfaction there.
The Cops pull in a few minutes later, one car and a female officer gets out with her partner another woman and the walk over to us. Evelyn comes out. “It’s about time you got here, you need to lock her up!”
She’s pointing at me.
“Alright Ma’am just calm down and tell us what happened.” this is from the first police woman and she’s this kind of no-nonsense looking woman in her late 30’s maybe early 40’s.
“That demented little asshole comes up here by the take out window where Samir’s been on and started using on of his crutches to smash up the car of a repeat client.”
“Ma’am, please watch you’re language, tone it down some alright now for the record. What happened?”
Evil-Lyn’s giving this account of her’s where I just walk up out of the blue and start beating on the asshole’s car. She keeps using male pronouns too.
I see the cop look at her while the other one, went inside and went to talk to people. There’s another cop car pulling in as that happens and the car with the assholes in it.
The other cops are O.P.P. while the ones already here are Metro?
The Cops talk to each other and the black cop comes over to me and Sammi. “Alright you girls, how about you tell me what this was all about?”
She helps me up and over to a seat at the outside tables. Her partner is inside talking to the staff and some of the people inside. Evil-Lyn is talking to the O.P.P. guys or rather interjecting her own opinion.
Sammi sniffles and talks. “They’re from my school and they don’t like me because I’m transgendered…or that I’m Hindu. They’ve been calling me names and insulting me all night coming around to the drive through because that’s where I’m working…they just get a small fries or a pop but they just won’t leave me alone… (sniffle.)”
I (sniffle.) too nodding along with her. “Sammi called me and she was scared so I came as fast as I could. They were doing it when I got here and since her boss wasn’t here and that one! (I point right at Evelyn.) wasn’t doing anything to help her out so I stood up for my friend.”
The officer nods. “I see, Sammi…why didn’t you call the police?”
“Evelyn said if I called the cops she’d get me fired.”
“She did?”
The cop turns and talks into her shoulder mic for her radio. There’s some stuff said back after a few minutes.
Then there’s another police car and Sammi hugs me and cries on my shoulder. She’s shaking too which get the guy from the car and his friends laughing and pointing amongst themselves. The cops, none of them at this point look the least bit impressed with them. This crosses some lines and there’s some nods and finger pointing at Evelyn from some of the staff and the patrons too and there’s a lot going on.
Sammi hugs me tighter and whines a little. “Oh shit I’m so fired.”
I look over to where there’s this middle aged Arabic man who is talking to the police there inside and Evelyn makes her way over to him and she’s saying stuff and pointing at us repeatedly and I see Mom, there right beside them…I’m not sure who called he or when she showed but I do catch her stepping between Evelyn’s pointing hand blocking her.
We all hear her say. “If you refer to those girls in anything but the right way there’ll be hell to pay.”
I’m not sure what else is said because the voices are lowered but Evil-Lynn’s changing colors and looks pissed, really pissed. She storms away yelling. “You can’t do this!, You’ll be hearing from my lawyers!”
Mom’s talking with the cops and the manager/owner of the franchise and then they go inside for a while.
The black lady cop has a blanket and she gives it to use to wrap around each other. It’s kind of quiet in the chaos for awhile and we’re both sitting and hugging each other and someone pull’s up on a BMX street bike.
“Kayla?”
“Will?”
“Yeah, what’s going on? Hey Sammi.”
(sniffle) “Hey Will…”
I hug her a bit more even though it kind of hurts. I smile at him. “Sammi was getting hasseled by those dickheads in the car over there and her ex-assistant manager has a problem with people like us and wasn’t doing sweet F-all to stop them so I showed up.”
“Of course you did, in your crutches and stuff.” He leans in staring at me.
“Hey, what?”
“I’m looking for the super girl logo on your shirt.”
“Will….” I’m blushing a bit.
“Hey, I’ll be right back okay girls.”
“Okay…”
He pedals off standing in the pedals and hops and clears the curb and zips off. He has a really nice butt and I got a good look at it as he was taking off. Sammi leans on me putting her head on my shoulder. “He likes you.” (sniffle)
“Yeah, god that’s scary Sammi. I mean he’s a boy.”
“Uh-huh, I’d be scared too if I was into boys.”
“You’re a lesbian?”
“I think so, I mean I think I still like girls it’s just I don’t know.”
“We’re behind everyone else Sammi, I think we can be allowed to be confused about stuff…Will’s really confusing for me.”
“But in a good way.” She says with that sort of tail-end of the sniffles and start of a bit of a smile sound to it.
Here in the blanket despite all the stuff that’s gone on…this is what I’m supposed to have had, that I should have been living before. Hugging my best friend, both of us the same. It’s still more than I ever dreamed even with the stuff that’s happened with me and my hormones. Losing my temper with mom and Sammi and now this.
I smile a bit. “Yeah, but in a good way.”
We’re there awhile longer and there’s some other cars arriving and adults getting out and talking to the assholes and they’re pointing at me.
I hear one of the cops mention CP and there’s some yelling from some of the parents. Mom comes out with two cops and the manager and there’s something going on.
Dickhead with the mouth on him gets all pale as something gets played. Mom comes over with a big bag of McDonalds stuff and sits with us. The black lady cops partner is with her and she asks Sammi. “We’ve evidence of those kids harassing you Sammi, do you want to press charges?”
“If I don’t will they not press charges on Kayla?”
“I can’t get into that part of it Sammi. It’s not up to me.”
Sammi’s biting her lip and looking at me. I nod to her. “Do it, they’ve gotta list the charges in the court news, he’s got his license so he’s not a minor Sammi they’ve got to learn they can’t just go around bullying people and thinking they can get away with this.”
“But, you’re going to get into trouble.”
I shrug. “I knew what I was doing when I was doing it. Nobody hurts my family or my friends…CP or crutches or whatever. I’ll take whatever comes honey, you’re my girl…you’re worth it.”
We hug and we cry a bit more and the cop’s talking to the others on the radio. They head off to the other cops and I sniffle some more and look at Mom who’s taking out food and eating a few fries.
I look over at her. “They got evidence?”
“Yeah, video but the headsets too.”
“Headsets?”
“Quality assurance and stuff they record the headsets stuff for “training purposes” they have them being little assholes to Sammi on her mic’s pick up and the threats and abuse from the assistant manager too on there. It’s all on computers so the times they’re at the drive through match up.”
“So Sammi’s okay then?”
“Yeah, you’re both good.”
“Both?”
“Yeah, the little mouthpiece’s dad won’t let him press charges after being caught being such a little dick and getting his car beat to crap by a little crippled girl in crutches while him and his friends were picking on an immigrant kid.”
“Wow…put it that way it makes them look like a real losers.”
“Yeah and in court, they’d get things drawn out a lot more. The law is really cracking down on bullying now and you girls being TG is right in that whole anti-bullying thing and add in Sammi being racially persecuted and you having CP and the fact the assistant manager wasn’t protecting her employees…”
“What tell me you pointed a lot of these things out Mum.”
She shrugs. “Maybe…” And takes a drink of her pop.
“So…I’m not in trouble?”
She stares at me. “Hardly young lady. You effed up so you’re grounded.”
“Okay…” I look down, I disappointed her. I hate this feeling in my chest and stomach right now.
“No, it’s not okay. Look I’m proud as hell that you came here no matter how much it hurt and you were willing to really stand up for your friend and what you believe in. I love you for that.”
“You do?” I’m sniffling again.
“Yes, hell yes….but…”
“But…”
“But you don’t ever, ever do something like this without calling me, calling the bar and telling someone there what’s going on. I know you hate being judged by your CP Kayla but this is the real world. You’re really lucky those little shits weren’t a bit meaner and stupider or they’d have gotten out of the car and would have turned on you…You could’ve been hurt…or even killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know, but you never do this again without someone that’s got your back honey…okay…I just got you. I don’t want anyone taking you away from me.”
“Okay Mom.”
I hug her and she hugs me and we eat together and Will comes back driving his bike but with a tray of iced coffee’s from Tim Hortons. Mom’s eyebrow raises as he pulls up. “Okay, you’re grounding starts once you get home young lady.”
“Thanks Mum.”
She gets up but takes one of the three coffees from him. “Thanks Will, you’re a sweetie.” And he’s blinking after she walks away to the van. He blinks like a dog trying to track a dozen squirrels in his yard. Do guys always get that kind of look? God that’s cute. I feel all…I don’t know but I like it.
He sits and gives me and Sammi our iced coffee’s and looks at us. “So what happened and are you girls okay.”
I slide him my extra Mc double and eat some fries before starting in on everything.
Lead Shoes-9
Chapter 9
My grounding was for the rest of the summer.
Mom, didn’t come down hard, hard on me but there were extra chores. Like raking up the lawn and scrubbing the floor with the swiffer. And there was her taking me with her to the bar but not like the times I usually got to go but I got to be stationed behind the dishwasher they had for the bar glasses and I got to clean all of them…plus wash and polish the tables.
All the while getting little lectures by people that agreed with Mom that I will never, ever do something like that again without having someone there for back up.
Yeesh.
But it’s not all bad being grounded and all.
I get “furloughs” though when my CP acts up on really bad days and there’s my therapy sessions that got increased to twice a week to deal with my issues. Mainly the way my hormones are effecting me and my moods and the stuff that I went through at home. The hormones are having a definite effect. Okay maybe the physical stuff’s small time right now like my skin getting nicer and my hair getting better and my skin clearing up some and the start of breast buds…oh…sore and itchy…lots.
Oh and electrolysis hurts like a mother effer. But Mom’s bought the stuff and she’s got her hairdressing degree.
But it’s like getting the T blocked while the other stuff is kicking in’s been like having a valve inside opened up and the stuff I’ve been naturally bottling up because I had to…has been bubbling out of my.
Nightmares, yeah a few.
Usually me being the girl me and it’s stuff with Dad finding out and having a freak out. Sometimes it’s me meeting my Mom and there’s I think a fight between us over her leaving me and…like some dreams I don’t remember them all the way but I wake up crying.
And Mom, my REAL Mom not my birth mother is there when I’m crying so much it makes me hurt, like not just my emotional stuff but that crying till your stomach hurts kind of crying.
Sucks hard doing that in the Dr.’s office in my sessions.
God I know it’s helping and I know that I need to fix my stuff going on with me but there’s times it’s like having an emotional root canal.
Mom did let me go to Sammi’s slumber party. Becky’s nice and she’s got this sort of hard deal with her being short, with lots of freckles and long brown hair and eyes and sort of shy. Becky actually sort of reminds me of like a human deer or doe just so cute and shy. The glasses really help.
Jinx, or Jianne-Ming? But she legally changed her first name to fit in more. She’s Laotian? From Laos I hope that’s right and she’s a refugee adopted kid and she’s never really lost the sort of thick accent I like her because she’s just cute as heck and giggles a lot and she does this big inhale “Oh…” when something surprises her or she finds cool.
We watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer season one which I’ve never seen before and this really cool movie called “Heathers” that I really want a copy of. We ate chips and junk food and we ate KFC since Sammi won’t eat beef.
Hindu…sacred cows.
You want to know why they don’t kill the cows? Milk…milk makes yogurt, cheese and butter, as well as just being milk and the uhm stuff gets burned for heat. I mean it kind of makes sense really. And the way we do things in North America must seem a little nuts to the rest of the world.
It’s really kind of messed up that Sammi works at a burger joint though right?
But her folks aren’t supportive of her transitioning. So she lives with her disrespectful sister.
Yeah…eastern Cultures are really strict ad messed up. Her sister’s on the outs for marrying someone she actually loved and not who they told her to.
No, can’t have a girl think for herself right?
Yeah mini-rant, Sammi’s my best girl I get pissy when people aren’t cool with her and that kinda extends to her sister too.
Any way that’s sort of the in between stuff really.
See today’s the big day.
That big scary first day of school.
That big scary first day of a New School as a Girl….oh yeah the size of the butterflies I’m having the Caps are deserved.
Mom’s been absolutely awesome the last three days. I’ve been so spoiled and plucked and polished and literally sunk into Mom’s biggest tricks of being a girl and honestly it’s been overpowerfully wonderful.
Mom’s gotten all it’s so new for me and excited and scared for me. It’s a bit suffocating but at the same time this is huge for both of us and she’s never had her own child to go through this with and I’ve never really had someone really this emotionally invested.
Wow, I’m starting to think like my doctors.
So I’m actually getting dropped off by Mom and I hope I look good. I’ve been swimming with Sammi at the YWCA and even doing some stuff with the weights and stuff too. I’ve got a lot of problems doing stuff but they’ve got great people there to help spot me and I’m nor going to make a bloody mess out of myself on a stationary bike. As a result I’ve gotten rid of that lower body wheelchair weight or eighteen pounds of it.
Actually the bike is a torture machine. The way my leg are especially at the knees that range of motion is painful. But my physic says the muscles there are conditionally weakened in key places and the bike will stretch out the overly tight ones and built up the ones that I need to try to build up.
Mom also got me a whole bunch of these really cool boots too. She got the idea from some TG fiction story but basically My new boots are high wedge heeled boots with enough slope to fit my feet really well but the best part is that they are calf high with all these buckles like ten of them that go up the length of the sheath/sheaf? Anyway I can buckle them so they’re secure and then adjust them through the day as I need to.
And they look so badassed too, very biker and cool I even have a pair of faux alligator ones and these red ones that she had one of the car shot guys she knows dip the buckles in like this white pearl enameling stuff.
I’m wearing those right now with my black tights and one of my favorite t-shirt dresses in gray over that with a sort of tribal graphic unicorn design up one side of it. Not too girly but girl.
I’m not one of those TG story characters that goes poof! You’re becoming a girl! Love pink!, Love boys! Become super stupid giggly cutesy and happy.
Yes I do like pink, I think it has it’s place in my life but I’m not a fan of wearing it a lot. White, pink, yellow with my spilling tendencies are nightmare colors really.
So to me looking just like the everyday normal teen girl as much as I can is exactly what I want. Trust me it’s enough just being a girl.
But my big shout out to girly is my make-up not a lot but after all that time with Mom who is really good at it I’ve gotten to be really good at it even with all the shakes and everything. I look good and not overly done like a lot of others girls. And my scent, I’m wearing this bubble-gum scented teen perfume just a bit of it but it goes with both my peach scented shampoo and my baby powder deodorant.
Seriously like Mom says, you can feel really pretty just by getting that scent down. I have a lot of bangles because they’re cheap and I like them and they’re something I’ve always loved. I’ve a unicorn pendant on a neck chain that’s sorta like a brooch and it was a present from Sammi and Becky and Jinx and I’m also collecting unicorns…just, I’ve always liked them. Not because it’s cliché girly but because I was little and I saw this movie “The Last Unicorn.” and I was stuck, hooked, whatever but I was never allowed any of “that foolishness.”
My brace crutches though are my new pride though. I can’t hide them any more than my chair so I wrapped them in black hockey tape and put like stickers like you’d get for a scrapbook or for binders and stuff on them and up around the brace cuff I’ve got all these cool charms for charm bracelets super-glued on.
My shoulder bag that’s computer bag! Mom got me a new laptop!…Yay! (Okay it’s an MTG but who friggin cares!) and my purse and I get my backpack on too both are actually pretty nice and stuff and give Mom a big hug and a kiss before heading to the steps to meet with Sammi and Becky and Jinx. She squeezes a little hard and takes a bunch of pictures before and after the girls get there.
“Mom…”
“I just want stuff for today Kayla, this is a big day.”
“Okay, I get it but can we be a little uhm…more cool?”
“Okay…more cool it is.”
She doesn’t really spaz that much and she takes off her jacket when she gets out of the van showing off her tattoos and stuff. Mom is actually pretty cool compared to some of the frumpy mom’s out there and stuff and I didn’t have to take the bus…which would’ve been the “short.” bus and stuff. I’m so not taking my chair to school until I have my license and can take the van.
Oh, Canadian school is so different from home. We get up the steps and I take them instead of the ramp and we head inside. There’s security guys there but no gate, there’s not checking table for guns and stuff, they don’t check your ID’s and there’s no metal detectors.
And if that wasn’t a trip the student body is. Home back in the states there’s a lot of private schools. I mean it there is. Anyone who can afford it sends their kids to a “good” school. And a lot of those kids are white. Here there’s at least half the student body are white kids. Or the varying degree of white kids, here if you’re French, Italian, Jewish, Greek, Russian ect you’re white. But half the rest of the student body is really mixed with a about half the kids being Middle-eastern or Hindu, and the Seik? With another large chunk of varying Asians and the rest being black but not like African-American black but there’s like real African black here and Caribbean too and the rest is rounded out with like Hispanic kids and a few others.
My old school wasn’t anything like this. And it’s a lot busier here in the halls and there is security camera’s here and but there’s TV monitors well flat screens up high with the schools A.V. club and the Media club doing the announcements and stuff like TV show.
There’s a big stink already over the new school policy of them turning on a cell-phone blocker during class hours unless you’re outside or in the cafeteria. And a internet filter here at school on the wireless.
We had lots of cell stuff at the school I went to and even the teachers where really spending a lot of time on theirs. But we never had wireless. So it’s all cool, plus there’s cameras in the classrooms now too.
I’m filling out my paperwork with the girls having all the other stuff already handled by Mom and the courts and stuff ahead of now. This is that getting your schedule picked and classes picked for the year. We lucked out and we’re all in the same homeroom together and that’s what we’re basically doing for the first too periods of the day picking classes and trying to fit them into the scheduling schematic that’s like algebra or something.
It’s like this they have 6 class periods in a day called slots, but you have 7 slots for the semester which you could take as all classes or 6 classes/courses and one study period. Now each course is taught in a certain slot number so say you’re taking university prep math at the grade ten level it’s slot 2, so it fills all the number 2 slots on your sheet. Oh and it’s not the second class of the day either it’s just the time on that given day of the week that the teacher for that class is teaching that subject…?
Yeah makes no sense to me either and then there’s the days system. There’s days 1 through 6 and there’s no sense to that either. There’s only five days in the week and the “days” sure don’t match the days of the week either.
I’m staring at my paper and look at Becky. “How can Monday be day six?”
She just shrugs. “I think they’re just trying to mess with us.”
Jinx is just staring too looking mournful. “I no understan, this wrong…right?”
Sammi’s nodding. “I had no idea that this was going to be this stupid?”
Will comes over and joins us and smiles at me. “Hey got your classes picked yet?”
“No….” I look at him. “I soooo don’t get this you Canadians are nuts.”
“What’s so hard to get?”
“Uhm everything.”
“Naw, it’s easy you pick the classes you want according to the list of slots they’re in and arrange them around so you have them the way that you want.”
“Huh?”
“It’s university prep stuff. You have to get used to scheduling your classes so this gives you the chance to pick what classes you want to go where. I mean you’re only limited by the electives you’re taking.”
“Huh?”
“Okay, Art, Wood shop are gimmie classes, they’re stuff you want to take or not. Math, English the academics you need for university are electives. You have to have them and since you have to have them the you have to make the rest of it work around them.”
“It’s still confusing.”
“It’s life prep. You have to do stuff you don’t want to do like work in real life and then have the rest of your life revolve around work. This is prep for that.”
“It’s still retarded.”
“So’s most of life but my schedule works out that I have my main stuff where I want it and my free periods are lining up to where I get it at the end of my day three times in the week.”
“Meaning?”
“I can leave like an hour early?”
“Huh?”
“Here you sign out at the office and as long as you have parental approval or are over sixteen you can leave the grounds.”
“I don’t have to stay in study hall for my free period?”
“Nope, they’ll even let you audit another class in that slot if the teacher’s good with it.”
“Oh there’s so much here that’s different.”
We go from the first two periods to ten ‘o clock break then two more classes that we spend in the office area getting our stuff registered and going through the scheduling thing with the office staff or the guidance staff and a lot of waiting. Will’s funny and keeps me laughing and introduces me around and apparently I’m…
“Hey…yeah, you’re the crazy McDonald’s girl!”
And I’m not being treated like too much of a crazy spaz. And apparently I’m outed already as I’m approached by some of the LGBT kids and welcomed. Shown their booklet of stuff for the years and meetings and their website.
There’s a few holy rollers at school that gave me the eyeball and Sammi and a bunch of other kids too but they were just content to pass out and tape up their leaflets.
I didn’t get spit on or told I’m going to burn in hell once today.
There’s some of the prep squad that gave me some looks and those retards are there too at one point. The lead creep is named Kevin Ashton and he’s got his own little group of morons and stuff but he doesn’t seem to run the place here either. Actually there’s a good divide here of Kevin and people like him that are the Canadian version of “Good ol boys” and the regular student body. And it’s not even like he’s a skinhead or just some racist it’s like…it’s like he’s pretty well off and so’s the rest of them and it’s like they seem to think that it gives them a license to be assholes.
There’s a lot of the jock and jockette popular set are minorities. Asian hotty being a cheerleader is still a cheerleader and that dark handsome guy that’s captain of the school’s varsity baseball team and looks like the younger brother of the Dr. guy from the TV show “Heroes”…is named Jamir. And apparently it’s not cool to make Harold and Kumar jokes and stuff about people.
It’s that whole private school mentality that Ashton and his bunch have but in public school.
I mention it at lunch in the cafeteria while munching on the salad I got. Will’s mumble munching at us nodding his head and one of his friends a guy called Vince… (Think half black Vin Diesel…ow…) nods as he’s eating. “That makes sense, a lot of them are from the nicer parts of this end of town. They’ve got that gated community stank on them. In my old school we called them either The Labels or the Hillfriggers. Because they’re all about the trends and the name brand stuff.”
I laugh with some of the others at that but mostly when Will and Vince start this skit where they’re doing voice overs of what they might be saying.
It’s really nice to be fitting in.
It’s so different here, the way I’m getting treated, the people, even the food here’s decent.
That‘s another thing too healthy foods. It‘s only $4.00 unlimited salad bar….it’s smart too. Dressing is separate and costs so you are less tempted to buy it and the school has banned the sale of canned soda and energy drinks. The pop machines are still here but carry the bottled water and juices from those companies now. It’s all new this year I guess but I really think it’s a good idea. I was a serious pop junkie back home but Mom barely has it in the house.
It’s just so different here.
The last two periods after lunch are the welcoming assembly and basically a pep rally from the sports teams and the clubs? No really they actually have some kids from the clubs that are sports related given time to talk about the stuff that’s cool in their clubs.
Some of it sounds cool like the gamers club? I’ve played a lot of video games and having school teams for “Call of Duty” and “Halo” actually sounds cool ad so does the fact they have school versus school Wii sports tournaments too.
Glee club well hello have you seen the show? It’s changed glee clubs all over the place but so has band changed and there’s even clubs for dancing, like street dancing and stuff. I’ve heard of “So you think you can dance.” but apparently there’s a Canadian version and two of last years senior students in dance club got pretty far in it.
I want to go to school here.
Four times I went to the bathroom here and nothing, well I get asked about how I got the effect I’m using with my eyeliner and if I could show her but nothing freaky. I did get some looks from some of the kids but nothing was said, and no one was treating me like crap.
Or Sammi too, actually she I think gets more grief over her being Indian than trans and it’s the older fashion asshattery. I don’t here a lot of the kids batting around the terrorist slurs here. “Paki, Rag-head, Push button for dry-cleaning.” and of course “Apu”
Jamir actually made her blush and smile giving some of the butt-heads the two-fisted middle fingers but he put his hands together like he was praying and did the Indian shopkeeper voice saying. “Fuck you, come again.”
It was an interesting day. I end up calling Mom saying that I’ve got a lift home and Will takes me home…
I’m on the back of his BMX street bike. He’s got my arm braces set across his handlebars and I’ve my bag over my shoulder and my backpack on my back and I’m standing on those steel bar foot things he’s got for tricks on his back axle/wheel and I’m leaning against his back hugging and holding on while he drives me home.
It’s so nice.
The wind, the freedom that I feel doing this and feeling the way my hair and my dress moves…
It’s just fun.
I’m just doing something teenaged girls do right?
It feels so right.
It feels so right when Will walks me to my door and kisses me on the cheek and almost…almost my mouth too…He either teased, or chickened out but it was a really nice kiss on the cheek too.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah…uhm…definitely…thanks for the ride home…it was fun.”
“Yeah, it was…but I always have fun when I’m with you Kayla.” He smiles and leaves and I’m just standing there watching him go and I don’t even feel my CP at all right now. I’m not even leaning on my brace-crutches.
And right now in this moment.
I feel completely normal.
Lead Shoes-10
Chapter 10
I’m floating on air as I get into the house and I’m not going fast but in my new boots I make it all the way into the kitchen to grab something out of the fridge to drink and nibble on while I start my homework.
I get some Cheese Whiz and some Ritz crackers and a glass of soymilk and a stick or two of celery and okay I am feeling it by the time I get to the sofa but once I’m there I’m feeling something else took. My nipples…hard, oh so hard and like tiny little achy rocks and when I rub them and the little swells it feels nice. Like really nice but way more than that it feels real…and it feels right.
I am growing breasts, my breasts and Will…Will has me turned on? Is this what it feels like? I just cup and hold myself after a few minutes of that…God…This really does feel like a huge piece of me just got woken up and brought to life.
And…
Oh…
Oh gawd…
I have a boner!
I’m sitting there kind of stunned as Mom comes in and stares a minute before giggling. “Kayla…is there a reason why you’re just sitting there holding your boobs?”
“Mom……”
“What….?”
“I’ve…I’ve got a boner…” (Sniffle.) Yeah I’m a little upset and freaked out by this.
“Okay…you’re holding your boobs and you have an erection.”
(Sniffle.) “Yeah…”
“Tell me what happened?”
I relay the actual really good day that I’ve had up until now and I know when I’m talking about Will I sorta go off somewhere else but he’s so nice…and cute and dreamy…
“So…you’ve started to really get that first bit of attraction then.”
“Huh?”
“To boys?”
“Huh?”
Mom rolls her eyes and gets an ice tea out of the fridge and smiles at me. “Kayla it’s okay…your breasts feel way more “Alive” then what you’re used to is you starting to really hit puberty…Will turned you on.”
“Oh…”
Blink, blink… “But the boner?”
“That’s normal too.”
“But I’m on hormones and stuff.”
“And they’re doing their job, but Kayla it’s still gong to work…it’s less and less right?”
“Yeah…but this was really hard…normally all I get is a semi since they kicked in.”
“It’s still normal.”
“How?” (Sniffle)
“You got stiff when you were feeling your boobs and thinking about Will right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well you had lots of stimulation and it beat out the usual hormone effects.”
“Huh, beat out the usual hormones?”
“Kayla, what did the doctors tell you to expect when you go for SRS?”
I try and repeat most of it but she stops me. After I got to them taking my outtie and making an innie.
“Kayla think…”
It takes a few minutes. I’m not stupid but just I never thought that…
“This means that…”
“Your stiffy is from getting turned on as a girl.”
“Oh…cool.”
Mom of course rolls her eyes and we sort of leave it at that except for a really embarrassing talk about boys and T-girls and oral and butt sex. I’m not into butt-sex, I’m never…ever! Going to be into butt-sex. I’ll wait until I’m me, the real me and then I’ll have sex…the right way.
Eww…no…Ow! And ewww.
Now I know that mom’s explanation isn’t all accurate and stuff but it kind of is. As I go through stuff at home and more so at school the hormones are working their magic and I’m feeling more and more me everyday. I’m changing too with my skin and even my voice, oh I’m lucky with my voice. I guess being a shy quiet soft spoken kid helps when you start to change. I’m not as high pitched as some of the girls are but I’m not deep toned either.
And it’s more or less true about the stiffy situation. Actually it’s gotten to the point where unless I’m really feeling it…Like with my girls being awake and perky and happy and stuff it really doesn’t work.
Will…
God Will’s been a sweetheart.
I mean there’s no one really being like total asshole about my transition and stuff except for the odd asshole but y’know they’re kind of assholes generally anyway so…no big deal really. I don’t even have problems with the girls. Well there a couple of those that don’t like me or Sammi because…well.
We actually look better than they do.
We have guys that actually talk to us and even flirt. Mind you it often never goes more than that but it’s nice to be flirted with at any rate.
But Will, he’s always there. We talk and we hang out and it’s good and he treats me really great and flirts best out of all the guys. He calls me princess…I actually like that. I know that some girls won’t that they thing it’s like condescending or something but I really don’t get those girls.
I’m home and Will and I are doing an English project where we’re trying to make a bunch of poems out of non poetic famous quotes. It’s actually quite hard and there are times just looking stuff up that leads us off track.
I notice him looking at me at one point and he smiles at me.
“What….?”
“Just looking?”
“Why?”
“Just because.”
“Will that’s not a reason.”
“Okay…It’s because you’re beautiful.”
“Will!”
“You are.”
“I’m…I’m not, not really…”
“Yes you are and I can prove it.”
“Oh yeah how?”
He slides across the sofa and he kisses me.
I think my eyes went so wide that it popped my eardrums. It…It…oh…oh this is nice…I like this.
Oh kissing boys is of the good.
And it gets better, and better…and I know I should’ve been more guarded and coy and whatever but before I know it he’s got my boobs in his hands…and feeling, touching, squeezing gently and so right…so right not enough…oh dammit that’s good!
My boobs are growing, they ache and itch and sort of hurt a lot but when they’re not doing that they are awesome…yes I’ve done stuff trying out my whole feminine exploration of self but there has never been a point where they have ever felt so damned good.
My inner girl soul is squealing and doing the happy dance while throwing super slim feminine hygene product confetti around.
“Oh…Will…”…………………………. “Will, Will, Will…!”
“Kayla?”
“Y..Yes…?”
“Be my girlfriend?”
“Huh…?”
“Be my girlfriend, got steady with me.”
“But we…we haven’t gone out yet?”
“We go out all the time?”
“But those weren’t dates, we were hanging out.”
“They were dates to me.”
“Oh…”
I’m really getting into this and there’s a lot of stuff going on through my head even with Will’s kisses and hands making my brain bubble. But I keep kind of skipping to…I’m going to get worse…eventually I’m going to get worse and I…I really, have only so many years where I’ll be like this and….oh…and it’s not the CP that gets you…it’s everything else. But still I’m…I’m going to…
“Yes…”
“Yes…I want to be your girlfriend…I want to be me Will, I want to be me and I want to live as much as I can.”
He stops and looks at me and he’s not mad, he’s not hurt that part of my yes is about this instead all I see there is that he gets it. He does and he kisses me and then he holds me, pulling me in tight to him and that’s so nice but confusing too.
“Good…good Kayla…”
“Will?” He kind of sounds upset in that my voice box is seizing up way.
“I know this sucks…that there’s stuff that you go through that I’ll never get, that you fight all the time but I was scared.”
“Scared?”
“Scared that you’d be afraid to try.”
“Try what?”
“To love.”
He kisses me again and it’s the…there’s all kinds of kisses but then there’s those kisses that you feel right down to the bottom of your feet. All the way down into your soul and there’s this feeling in there now like someone just too something that was pulling down on me…away.
I feel like I could fly.
Lead Shoes-11
Chapter 11
* Nearly a month later.
Will and I have been dating. Like really dating and in a relationship with on our Facebook pages and it’s been sort of just the same really but at the same time not. He’s changed since I said yes. There’s a lot of us holding hands, and kissing.
Oh I am so starting to like kissing and being kissed and making out and necking.
We made out at the movies one night and he gave me a hickie. I proudly wore it to school. Mom and I talk a lot about boys more and about sex too and it’s not like the birds and the bees talk its real and even the stuff about guys is the stuff she’s learned about how they think and not the whole stereotypes of them.
She’s kind of relieved that I’m not into the whole butt sex thing. I’m really not. I want to have sex with a guy someday but I want him to be with me like the rest of the girls.
Ideally to me and maybe this was a leftover from grandmother and the church thing but I want to be married when I lose my virginity.
I think Mom’s proud of that.
And it ticks me and Sami off that people think that all t-girl do is think about sex and are all like latent porn stars.
Okay I might have dreams of will and I being married and me being His little porn start but that’s like normal right?
Yeah Sami, she dropped an M from her name feeling it was too cutesy and that Sami was more ethnic. She’s getting into her culture a bit more and stuff. She’s learning all this dancing stuff and its soooo cool to watch and I’m kind of jealous that, that won’t be me.
Until Will asked me to go to the dance at school.
Like him getting dressed up and me getting dressed up and going to the dance and me actually dancing. I mean I can try the slow stuff and a few other things with the brace-boots and stuff now and stuff and I was never this mobile before.
It’s hard using the boots too because they are high heeled and that works for my foot and how they tend to do the point down thing but my knees have a bit of that turn and the boots have a brace in them for that but holding them sort of straight hurts after awhile.
Though it gave my physio guys and idea.
I’m getting these adjustable knee braces that are going to be slowly tightened on one side to try and get things to shift/adjust to being straight over time like a corset trains a waist.
I’m willing to try anything really and since I’m still growing it might make a difference later on or it might not but I’m going to take the chance.
They got the idea because I’ve started to wear a corset. It sort of helps a bit with my back and stuff but I want the waist and stuff since I’m putting on girl weight in the right places.
But none of that matters because I’m going to the dance.
And it’s on our one month anniversary.
I so didn’t know that until will mentioned it.
Just that having a one month anniversary with someone is so cool…I blush and smile just thinking about it.
He never left, he never get’s turned off by me being TG or my CP issues and we’ve been together a month.
A month…I’m in a relationship.
My back hurts, my legs are killing me in my brace-boots and I don’t care. I stare at myself in the mirror of the changing room and I’m in a dress. I’m in a dress and I’m buying a whole new outfit for the dance.
I’m going to the Dance!!!
I look in at my reflection and smile at what I see. I mean it’s me and I’m getting more used to being me like the real me but today is so different. I’m going out to the dance with will and this is the very first dance I’ll have ever been to in my life.
I’m going to be dancing.
I look at my reflection and I look pretty. I look actually really nice and I’m wearing a grey tunic dress with ruffled cuffs and a ruffled cloth skirt with a not too deep plunging neckline and it has this almost tattoo styled line of flowers on the sides done in yellow embroidered thread. It’s really kind of girly and sort of street and hot to because the main flowers are lilies and they come out from the sides just enough to cup my breasts.
I really, really like my breasts. I mean sure there’s that part of it but just standing here in the mirror with my bra just peeking a bit but my cleavage showing so…right, nice I feel just so…I feel like a girl and that’s a huge thing.
I shimmy a bit back and forth just mostly my upper torso and love the swish of the dress and the way that I bounce.
Yes, yes, yes:)
I walk out to show Sami and Mom who’s with me and I strut. Well I can’t really strut but a slow careful lady like walk which for me after practicing it feels like strutting to me. It’s one of the reasons why I’m hurting is nine stores, and this is my fortieth something outfit and getting to shop like the other girls and model the clothing just like the other girls I just had to model and strut.
It’s why I’m really sore and why I’ll likely have a rough night tonight and morning too but right now it’s just this really amazing time and experience.
“So you guys what do you think?”
Mom looks at me and gives me the thumbs up. “Another winner, you like it?”
“Yeah I do. Sami?”
“It’s so perfect! I’m not usually a fan of grey but with your hair it just matches so well with the flowers and the whole thing makes your eyes just pop!”
“Cool, I thought so too but it always helps to have another set of eyes on an outfit.”
Sami looks at me. “So which one are you going to choose?”
“This one definitely this one, I love the look it has with my boobs.”
I look at Mom. “This one definitely this one.” I had narrower it down from forty some choices to five really nice dresses.
“You sure/”
“Oh yes please?”
“Well lets go and pay for it then we’ve other things to get.”
“Okay…like what/”
“Purse and a nice jacket. You need to wear your brace-boots so footwear’s handled you don’t need to buy shoes so lets get a nice purse and a nice jacket.”
“Really?”
“Yeah really.”
I’m sore but so excited that it doesn’t stop me from pulling out a full on squee with Sami and Mom. I really think she’s been yearning a long time to have a daughter because she is really happy about all of this.
She actually goes all out with me.
I mean it’s not that getting too girlied up and stuff but it’s getting girly. Shopping for a cool outfit, getting stuff to go with it. Having a full salon thing done…she even paid for Sami. It’s the spa thing and the mud and the massage.
Oh god there is this thing with these heated stones they do that just was so soothing and wonderful it put me to sleep. Waxing and mani-pedi, this string thing for my eyebrows and a new nice hairstyle. It’s sort of that relaxed cool chick Avril Levine thing now and I have highlights.
Mom’s getting all this done too but in her own style and that’s cool because there’s people that assume stuff with her having all the tattoos and the fact that she works at a bar. She looks really hot all cleaned up too.
And OMG she got her hair chopped! She has this look that is short and yet it makes her look younger and really sexy. Like that Annie Lennox singer.
We get home and I was right about pushing myself. I woke up crying because in hurt so bad about three in the morning having cramping and tightening so bad it felt like bones were going to snap.
Mom.
Mom came in and she carried me to her room and she gave me some of my pills and held me and she made a call and stayed home from work to massage things out as best she could why I cried and even lost it a bit as I started to freak out about going all spazzy tonight and not being able to go and dance with Will.
You know that they love you when they’re crying because you’re in pain.
I finally loosened up enough to sleep once the muscle relaxers and the antispasmodics kicked in and I heard her on the phone about ten? I’m awake by three and she takes me to the hospital. I’m fine…sort of but she talked to my doctors and they see me long enough to give me the Botox shots which does help a lot but also a few cortisone shots well a few places and a really big needle…into places in my feet, and ankles and mostly in my knees.
My M.D. specialist actually massaged me until stuff felt better a lot better even if it’s just temporary since she couldn’t fit me into the physio department with out an appointment.
“Because a girl’s first dance is important.”
I hug her really tight and say. “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you…I…I dream of dancing…I’ve wanted to so bad for so long that it…it…just hurt…and now I’m getting to go and with my boyfriend and…Thank you.”
We all had a good little girly bawl at that and Mom drove us home and she picked up supper at pizza hut and we ate as I was getting ready.
“Oh Mom I’m so nervous…I’ve wanted this for so long.”
“I know honey, I’m so happy that you are getting to have this chance.”
I hear the doorbell and Mom goes and answers it and Will’s there.
Oh my god.
He’s cut his long skater boy hair. He’s got this really nice clean cut style and he’s not in his usual clothes either. He’s wearing charcoal dress pant s and real shoes like the kind made from leather and you have to polish and stuff and no shirt with a tie but a nice cotton sweater that looks really good on him with a v-neck. All his piercings are replaced with these simple nice classy looking gold ones and just a simple cross on a chain.
Even a jacket a nice one and wow…just wow.
He take’s my breath away and then he does it again when he comes over and from under the jacket he gives me a red rose.
I’ve never had a flower give to me…I smell it and I’m almost crying it’s such a powerful thing…I mean no…no idea it’s mean this to me…never even thought about it before and now getting the cleaned up for me making this special for me boyfriend and that single red rose thing…I’m fighting my tears for all that I’m worth and I’m shaking and it’s nerves. Good happy shaky nerves like every girl GG or TG should have and not my CP.
I lift my head to look and him and he leans in and gives me a light but very sweet kiss.
“Happy anniversary Mikayla. You look so…I dreamed of tonight all week with us and I really never came close to how amazing and beautiful you really are.”
“Will…” my voice fails me and there’s these huge big glomphy make up wrecking happy tears running down my face.
The he…he just has to smile at me and say. “I get it…I get it…here.” He pulls me into a hug and wraps me in his arms and guides my head to his shoulder and holds me…holds me as I hang onto him and cry…I’m happy but it’s like I’m overloaded and Will just holds me and then he takes his phone out and he does somethings and music starts to play. “All I ever needed.” By Bret Michaels.
Then…then he starts to dance with me…
There you lay, and here I stand.
He knelt down on his knees and took her by the hand.
We've seen some good times, been through some bad.
But somewhere between the laughter and the tears
We sure had a lot of great years.
He said
We didn't need fortune we didn't need fame
Just a little shelter from the rain
Your hand to hold on to
When times got tough you pulled me through
We didn't need a castle made of stone
Just you there as I grow old
Your heart to hold on to
All I ever needed was you.
Remember our first dance and our first kiss
I pictured my life with you to be just like this.
You stood by me
I stand by you
We share the laughter, joy, and pain
But its a moment like this I hope it never ends
We didn't need fortune we didn't need fame
Just a little shelter from the rain
Your hand to hold on to
When times got tough you pulled me through
We didn't need a castle made of stone
Just you there as I grow old)
Your heart to hold on to
All I ever needed was you.
Share my life with you girl yeah, oh yeah
I thank you for sharing your life with me
For giving me a reason to believe
For loving me for who I am...
We didn't need fortune we didn't need fame
Just a little shelter from the rain
Your hand to hold on to
When times got tough you pulled me through.
We didn't need a castle made of stone
Just you there as I grow old
Your heart to hold on to
All I ever needed
All I ever needed was you.
You're all I ever needed.......
Lead Shoes-12
Chapter 12
Have you ever had one of those so romantic moments that it’s like some angel had come along and hand stitched the entire thing onto your heart?
I would have told you a few hours ago that I didn’t really believe in God or Angels or a lot of those things but right now…the so unbelievable has happened for me I’m not sure that if I stepped outside and seen a unicorn out on the front lawn that I’d be as surprised, shocked and just moved as I am right now.
I’m a T-girl in transition and I’ve no illusions about all of that and then there’s the fact I have CP and all it entails. Fairy tale stuff doesn’t happen in the real world, the real world is tough and it only gets tougher as life goes on for so many of us not being born into the privileged few.
I’m not saying that people don’t get happily ever after but I’m saying that people like me really don’t.
There’s days that I feel like I’m Quasimodo trying on Esmeralda’s dress.
I’m not supposed to have a boy friend.
But I do.
Will…
He’s a skater boy and he’s a BMX racer and stunt guy and he’s sweet and brave and he’s a little crazy when he’s doing a thing but it’s more like he’s fearless. I mean he’s brave enough to see me for the person that I am on the inside and he’s brave enough to…
Cut off his long hair and dress up nice to make my very first dance as a girl that special.
To bring me a flower.
To actually hold my heart so tenderly in his hands he makes me forget that there was ever a time that life had broken it.
To calm me down when I had started to freak out and then gave me my first dance in my living room to this amazing sweet and romantic song.
We finish our dance and Mom smiles at me and at him. “We’ll be right back Will we just have to do some damage control.” She takes me by my arms but leans over and she kisses his cheek and she takes me to her room where I had built back up this whole Glomphy overload and started to babble and go on about just what kind of a guy that he is and how sweet the rose was and Oh My God that song!
Even Mom gets misty about all of it and the fact that this has been something that she has ached for in her own heart for a lot of…for too many years to have a girl…a daughter to have these moments with and to share this elemental moments of being a woman with and she’d been in that heartbroken lonely desert that life can be just like me but over on the other side of it.
It takes a bit to get better, and unblotchy and I’m a little nervous heading back out to were Will’s at, I mean I seriously spazzed out on him.
He escorts me out to the van because I might really need my chair by the end of the night and Will doesn’t have his license yet just his learners permit. I’ve got mine, okay the actual license was just a few days ago but I still got them.
Yay me!
We get to the dance and Will is doing all the mannerly guy stuff and opening the doors and helping me out of the van and he’s careful with my dress and we head inside. I’m using my crutches because they’re actually easier on me than my arm braces.
It’s amazing inside as much as it’s not.
Okay, Let me explain that. This is just a school dance, not prom.
But it’s my very first school dance ever. So yeah I might just be a little biased about how awesome it is?
There was the lights all down low and a couple of kids from school doing the thing for the music which was a really odd mix.
Justin Beiber (Bleech.) a lot of the stuff I do listen to like Taylor Swift, Aly and AJ a kind of thing is that Will says I sort of look like Aly. Avril, Demi Levato and a whole bunch of others including some really good older stuff.
Will leads me in and we claim a table close to the dance floor and once we’re settled the girls are over and kind of gushing over my dress and my make up and stare shock mouthed at Will all cleaned up and he’s all embarrassed and red faced from the attention so he spends a lot of time fetching us all punch and stuff.
It’s pretty cool because I’m hanging and telling them all what happened so far tonight and there’s some of the girls I usually don’t hang out with there but there’s kind of been a lot more awareness about trans at school lately with me and Sami going through ours but there’s some openly out gay and lesbian kids in school now and they’re there with their S.O.’s and that just kind of takes all sorts of pressure off. And it answers a lot of questions too as I really don’t act like two of the three gay couples there…two are really gay…like campy stereotype gay and the other guy’s just kinda normal. It’s good because just by watching Sami and I they’re getting that “Nope” Trans isn’t me being some gay cross dresser thing.
Then I actually get up and dance. It’s mostly with Will and mostly the slow stuff and it’s more than I ever thought. I have a bunch of tissues in one hand and I’m blotting as the tears come so I really don’t mess my “water-proof.” make up.
But…
Oh wow…I’m dancing…I’m dancing at a real dance in a pretty dress and every time Will turns me something hurtful that was hanging on gets shaken loose and I actually feel lighter and lighter as we dance and then oh…
He takes my arm and lifts it up over me and I know it’s coming and he spins me like I’m…like…I’m that ballerina…that dancer in my heart….I close my eyes and deep inside that dark spot inside me where I sometimes get pulled into…that place where all the negative stuff lives…there’s a spotlight that flickers on there and Mikayla…the real me stops hugging her knees and lifts her head up and looks at the light and she gets up like she’s never been bound by CP and she starts to dance…
She dances…and we…we…spin and smile…
I’m not even sure if he timed this or set it up but I was just caught in him and I dancing but when he started to take my arm and turn me into that slow dance spin I realized the song that was playing that I was spinning to….
This has almost been a song that was like a prayer for me….made me cry, kept me sane sometimes…
*I Hope You Dance.* By Lee Ann Wolmack…
I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances, but they're worth takin'
Lovin' might be a mistake, but it's worth makin'
Don't let some Hellbent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to sellin' out, reconsider
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along)
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder, where those years have gone?)
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
Dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along)
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder, where those years have gone?)
As the song fades out Will’s holding me tight in his arms and my legs…hell everything about me is shaking and I wrap my arms around his neck and hang on and stare into his eyes and he gives me his cute boy smile.
“Will…how?”
“You’re my girlfriend Kayla, my best friend I know your favorite songs.”
“Thank you…god thank you.”
“Other way around beautiful…you haven’t gotten that yet? I’m the lucky one.”
“Oh Will….”
“Tired? You want to get a seat?”
“Not yet.”
I pull him to me or myself up more to him and I kiss him, I kiss him with everything I’ve got inside…that kind of kiss that’s more than a kiss it’s me being the girl and connecting with his soul every bit as much as a boy and a girl connecting when they make love…
My legs go all over use shaky and He scoops me into his arms and carried me over to our table and we’re kissing the entire time.
I really, really think that I’m falling in love with him.
Could Will be my Forever-Boy?
Lead Shoes-13
Chapter 13
We were kissing and it was so good!
I mean it!
I’ve never felt before that kissing was so much like this. His lips are so…and he smells so good but I feel so…I feel like a girl. I am one…I’m going to be me but this was like every cell of my body was like…
Pink, frilly, butter cream icing on cupcakes, satin panties oh my god yay squee!!!
I ache in the best ways ever and I am really, really getting why there’s teenaged pregnancy. I’m not planning on ever having sex at least until I’m really me but oh my god I want to have sex, even more than being scared.
I’m hot and getting hotter, I feel squirmy under my skin and the stirring in my panties while it is what it is… it feels like I want that same feeling reversed…I swear I can almost feel it in reverse…like I’m achy for Will in the right way instead of the boy way.
And it’s Sooooooooooooooo unfair when we get coughed apart by one of the teachers there chaperoning.
I end up blushing and Will and I sort of back off from each other but remain close and a few of the others around us laugh and tease us making fun of us making out and getting caught.
I’m kind of a bit shy at first but at the same time excited and I get together with some of the other girls and we head to the washroom to get freshened up.
Sally McGuire one of the girls in my class looks at me as we’re wiping off our make up with skin wipes to redo our faces.
“You were having a good time.”
“Oh god yes, this has been amazing.”
“He a good kisser?”
“Uh-huh, I…I’ve never felt like this.”
“Like what?”
“So real?”
“Huh?”
“The girl thing…I know I’m a girl in here.” I tap my head. “But there’s times it gets hard. Like there’s just such a huge mountain to climb.”
“So if you feel that way are you sure?”
“Yeah a hundred percent really.”
“But if it’s so hard.”
“I can’t help it…I can’t not be me…if stuff went on…I don’t know what I’d have done.”
She stares at my then passes tissues because I’m crying a little. “It’s that bad?”
“Yeah…it’s all the time knowing right down deep to the blood and bone that I’m a girl and yet there’s all these things going on in my body even with it being messed up as it is. I hate being this way, we all do.”
“I guess, it’s just…I’m good with being me and can’t really imagine what this is like.”
“Count your blessings Sally, it hurts…it literally hurts.”
“You’re going to be pretty Kayla.”
I blush. “Thanks…I’d just settle for being complete but hearing that helps…I think we all want to be pretty right?”
“Yeah…sometimes needing that sucks.”
“That’s sort of close to what I feel.”
“Huh?”
There’s some of the other girls here now listening now.
“You know when you end up someplace and you end up being where there’s all these girls or women that just seem so with it and so beautiful and you don’t measure up?”
“Yeah…” Sally says kind of hugging herself, she pretty but still honestly average, not one of the super good looking bunch around. There’s nods and murmurs all around too and even a couple of the real prettier ones too.
“It hurts right not being like them, not feeling good enough like you’re either lacking something or maybe even everything?”
There’s more nods and I say. “That’s us, that’s what being transgendered can be like every single day….”
There’s some hugs and sniffles from Sally and others even from Sonya King who’s one of the most beautiful girl in school if not my classes.
She get’s a look from Desiree Noton one of the more out there gothy girls. “Why’re you crying you’re one of the one’s that makes us feel that way?”
Sonya actually flinches and I hug her. “Des, we all feel that way, it’s part of feeling like a girl.”
Desiree looks unconvinced. “No, really I can’t see how she’d feel anyway the way we feel, the sheep worship her for fucks sakes.”
Sonya’s wiping away at her tears. “Yeah, I look good I got lucky like that I know and I can’t help that but that don’t mean I don’t get it.”
Desiree frowns. “What’s to get, you don’t, you can’t!”
Sonya cries at her. “Yeah you wanna bet? You’ve got great grades, all these different friends…I’m not good at schoolwork, I’m not smart like you…I know I’m not smart or interesting like other people get to be and I can’t get a grip on stuff you just get Desiree…the worst thing is I know it! You know how small I feel when there’s a whole bunch of people talking and I get so lost in what’s being said? So all I can do is just keep quiet and smile!? I hate myself sometimes because I feel like some stupid bimbo!”
She bursts into tears and she tried to bolt to a stall but Sally and I hang ontop her and she turns and bawls into my shoulder.
Desiree and some of the others look shocked.
I rock Sonya taking a cue from Mom and how she treats me. “See…all of us, and we all get that way. I feel like Sonya too when all the rest of you are talking and doing things you’ve always done and don’t even have to think about.”
“Sorry Sonya…” Desiree says coming over to get in on the hugging.
I smile.
It gets a lot more friendly as we all sort of had a cry and them making up and even talking about the stuff about each of us has that we hate about ourselves both body and mind and it’s really this amazing girls bonding together experience and we trade cell numbers and head out to the dance. I’m sort of feeling things getting over worked and stuff in my legs and even my arms so I just sit with Will and rest at the bleachers and he went and got my chair.
It’s still great and romantic as anything that he is sitting and has my legs up on his lap and he’s massaging out the tightness or he’s trying to and when I do get a cramp he looks at me. “Hurt?”
I nod and sort of clenched teeth say. “Yeah…”
He takes my hand in his. “Squeeze…”
I do and it helps me more in my heart than my body and it just makes things just so good.
CP is so damned hard sometimes but having someone that loves you through it really changes things. There are days when you just run out of your own steam and if you can use someone else’s it’s the only way you get through the days.
Will sometimes is the only reason I can fight through things on bad days and get up and get going. Because sometimes just seeing him smile because he’s happy to see me makes it all better.
Yeah I am falling in love.
It’s also really hugely sweet when people come over to see if I’m okay.
I know I’m pushing things but I do fight and make myself get up for the last dance of the night and Will and I snuggle while standing and my right leg get’s wobbly on me.
“Stand on my feet Kayla.”
“What?…no..”
“Kayla…please…this is nothing…”
“Will…”
“No…Kayla get used to it…” He’s staring me right in the eyes and he’s so…determined…strong about this it’s kind of…I like it I feel…..it’s sort of nice. Not tat he’s being dominating. Sometime’s I don’t know what I need…I just…. Then he… “Are you going to be this stubborn when you have a flare up at our wedding?”
…………………. Wha..
“Uhm….”
I put my feet as gently as possible ontop of his and he holds me up and he holds me tight as the last song plays and I almost melt and bury myself into him as *Unchained Melody.* is playing.
“You said that on purpose didn’t you?”
“Yeah but it worked right?”
“Yeah but that’s dirty pool.”
“Have to…sometimes Kayla you get more stubborn than you need to be.”
“Sorry, sometimes I need to think that way, it get’s me through.”
“That’s cool just so long as you sometimes get why I have to save you from yourself.”
“I love that you do that you know.”
“I love you.”
……………..
“I love you too.”
Oh my god we said it, we said it to each other and my head and my heart’s so full of being happy that I don’t even notice until we have to go because the principal has to lock up. He carried/held/danced us right through everyone leaving and even the clean up….
My first dance…
I will never ever forget this…ever.
Lead Shoes-14
Chapter 14
I almost don’t want to get into the van to drive home once we’re out of the school and he pushes me along with me in my chair. I have had I think the most amazing night of my life and part of me really doesn’t want it to end.
I take out my phone and text mom.
[Hey.]
[Hey, how was the dance?]
[Perfect, better than perfect.]
[I can’t wait for you to tell me all about it.]
[Can you?]
[Can I what?]
[Wait.]
[What’s up?]
[I want to stay out all night.]
I bite my lip and wait.
[Why?]
[I don’t want the night to end. I want this to be just…I want a forever memory.]
[No sex, no booze, no drugs but okay.]
[Okay!!?]
[Kayla, I love you, I trust you and you’re right.]
[I’m right?]
[These moments aren’t common, just be careful but pull it all in.]
[You are the coolest Mom ever.]
[No, just been there and you’ve earned the trust kiddo.]
[Thank you, Love you!!!]
[Love you too; we’ll talk in the morning.]
I put my phone away and sigh and smile and look up at Will. “I suppose you were smiling and spying over my shoulder?”
“Yeah sort of.”
“You can stay out?”
“Yeah, in some ways my folks are very hands off.”
Will comes from a busted up home….his folks are divorced and his dad’s kind of a decent guy and that’s who he lives with but at the same time he could give a shit a bit more. I think by the sound of it Will has a dad that has no clue how to be a dad and he just kind of half asses it and figures as long as will’s not a junkie or in jail he’s doing alright.
I don’t know much about his mom though except she lives in Scarborough and took his little sister with her in a custody thing. Oh and she actually make these really killer homemade pirate cookies…those are this peanut butter cookies held together by a peanut butter icing. She sends them to Will every couple of weeks and he shares them out when he gets them.
Yeah he’s that kind of guy.
He smiles at me and even after the long night here dancing he’s still pretty handsome. “So what now handsome?”
“Let’s go for a drive I have an idea.”
“Okay…what?”
“You’ll see.”
I bite my lips and we get to the van and once inside he get’s us to stop at Wendy’s. It’s the same burger place as we have down home but here a lot of the time they sort of share space with Tim Horton’s too like side by side and we get a few burgers and they’re actually open late here in town and not just the drive thru which is nice to sit and have something nice and hot to eat. I actually like their chilli for a chain place and I have a small chilli and a junior bacon cheeseburger. We get two hot chocolates before we leave and he shows me where to drive to and it’s this nice little park on almost the other side of town built beside this older hospital.
“Are we allowed here?”
“Yes, no it’s a public park so there’s no hours but we might see a security guard or something.”
“Oh and then?”
“And then we’re on a date.”
He helps me out and into the chair but I take my braces too and he puts his coat around me and it smells nice…and it’s so warm with his body heat…part of me honestly loves this…the smell of boy, well of Will at least and just everything.
And we just play?
I haven’t just been on a playground doing playground things since…well since my CP kicked in and my life seemed to grind to a halt.
I can still swing and kick my legs to get going…getting pushed was nice but I still keep the swinging up. I even swing pretty high…I’d never jump off but just the feeling of my effed up legs and my feet being clear of the ground was just so amazing and we just swung there together for the longest time and it just got better.
I know I was smiling a lot and that had will smiling too but it was freeing and empowering in this taking something that was stolen back and at the same time…I’m doing this with my boyfriend…the air is blowing my hair around and it’s flowing around my dress and these are feelings that I never had before and in their own way they are just as amazing and special as the dance.
I really liked going on the see-saws too, and there’s this really cool time when we went on this spinning wheel thing and after Will pushed us at this full run he hops on and then sits down and pulls me onto his lap and we listen to music off his phone as the thing spins gradually slowing down and stopping but it was really sweet and cool to have the park and the night sky twirling around us.
There was this whole slipstream of happiness thing going on in that moment where I felt like we were outside of time and the universe was turning around us.
Kiss from a Rose by Seal was a really nice song to have that happen with/or too? I don’t know how to phrase it but it was just cool.
We stayed there in the park until you could sort of tell that it was getting toward light out and we get back into the van and I turn the heat on and Will’s actually cold so I slip over onto his lap and kiss him some as I rub my hands up and down his arms and actually warm him up.
I don’t complain about him not saying that he was getting chilly…he was being gallant and that’s really sweet and I like that about him. I like that there some old fashioned chivalry left in the world and I get to actually experience it.
I like also being able to take his hands in mine and hold them and blow heat onto them.
I even kind of hope that I might have been sexy? There’s this thing guys have that’s all ooooh about a girl blowing on anything…yeah I get it but don’t considering what they’re thinking of is actually done in reverse.
But I like the romance of it…warming his hands that way. I like being active instead of reactive.
We do another Tim’s stop for morning coffee and we drive home and we just sit in the side door of the van and there’s this really nice oh forty minutes of morning twilight and us cuddled up and kissing before dawn rises and we snuggle together and watch the sun come up.
A perfect way to end the perfect night really…my first dance and my first sunrise.
Lead Shoes-15
Chapter 15
I think honestly it was the adrenaline and the lift that I’m riding on from the sunrise and all the cuddling and kissing that gives me the strength to get back into the house with just my arm canes after I see Will off in the cab that he called.
I get inside and I make a bee line to my room and see Mom is up and she’s doing some laundry and she smiles at me. “Good night?”
“Best night mom, it’s one of those nights that really, really makes up for everything up to this point.”
“Going to bed or do you want to talk about it?”
“Bath, just to head off the worst of what’ll be incoming cramping and all the stuff that I know that’s going to hit me because I really pushed it tonight, well last night.”
“Good idea, you must be tired.”
“Over tired, I feel a little buzzed right now.”
“Okay, talk soon?”
“Definitely.”
I make my way to my room and get undressed and it’s starting to him me now that I’m home. I get into the bathroom and relieve myself and get my make-up off and I take my meds for my CP and slowly make my way into the bath tub and I know that I pushed it because once the hot water starts to take hold with my body I can almost feel the muscles in my legs unwind and then threaten to wind back up even tighter over and over again.
I don’t care it was so worth it really.
The date and the songs and the dancing, oh god the dancing and to be able to just do that even if I’m completely crap at it compared to everyone else. It was completely worth it.
And I’m taking some strength from that too. I dunk myself and the comb my wet hair back out of my face and I take up the initiative with my CP effects and I start to massage my legs while I’m in the bath. When I feel things go for a tight spasm I grit my teeth and work at it until it stops and a time or two I just look over at my ballet flats that I got to wear or my dress that I felt so right in and pretty and I work through it.
I am me.
I am not my disease.
And there’s other things that I’m finding is making things better, less of a hard time with everything and even making me smile.
Like having hair finally long enough to really shampoo like the girl that I’ve known that I am. I know its silly right but if you’ve never had the chance it’s actually kind of a big thing. Heck even for regular girls their hair can be a big thing.
And…
Hair washing boobs.
Yep, oh every one knows sort of what I mean that really cool boob effect that every woman gets young or old when you have your arms up over your head and it does this magical effect on your boobs.
I’m kind of grinning that I have that now, that I have boobs enough that I can do that and it’s this maybe just a Kayla bit of crazy puzzle but it still cool to me.
And it get’s me felling girly all over again enough so that I’m humming along to Kiss from a rose in my head while I’m putting my hair into pig tails to sleep in and brushing my teeth and doing the whole girly routine of getting ready and lotioned for bed and I even slip into a pair of slinky satin panties and then my flannel pants and my sleep shirt.
I’m getting into bed when Mom comes in with some clean clothes in the basket and she sets it down and she slips into bed beside me and she snuggles up and holds me and says. “Okay, dish.”
And I couldn’t keep all of it in if I even tried and I start telling mom about all of it and the date and the dancing and how everyone was and how everything felt and I’m good crying a little bit here and there and we’re just having this whole great close mother daughter moment that I am really taking to heart.
I won’t ever care if it’s uncool for us to do this.
It won’t ever be to the point where I won’t want her to feel like she can come in and hold me and we can be mother and daughter.
Well unless I’m married and I have my husband in the bed with me but y’know what I mean this is stuff that I never had and it’s the talking and stuff and the bath and her just being there for me that lulls me off to dreamland.
And…
It’s worth more than any amount of money when just like I figured my CP decides to charge me a toll for all of the time and fun that I had last nigh and I wake up in pain.
Not my legs, not at first it’s my back.
It’s a screwed up thing to try to explain to someone that doesn’t have CP but you ever see this way your back looks like in a medical book and the bunches of muscles and all of that well it’s hitting my muscles but not all of them just a few of them…those long support muscles and it hits with that tightening feeling like someone just tried or is trying to twist my like I’m a towel their trying to wring out and it sort of radiates to other areas from there not like in a cramping way but my shoulders hurt…ache like crazy like someone was playing tug of war and the ache there is right in the joints.
I hate, hate, hate waking up in pain.
You don’t get as used to it as people think because sometimes when I’m asleep? I don’t feel it, I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with me and then I wake up like thing and it’s just.
It hurts and it sucks and it’s draining.
It’s the draining part though that hurts us the worst.
Ask anyone one with any kind of bad chronic condition it’s not usually the pain that gets to any of us. We’re really good as a rule at dealing with or handling our pain. But it’s the way a chronic illness or condition can suck the energy out of you that’s literally the killer.
Literally, if you’re alone or made to feel alone or worse made to feel that your condition or conditions are a burden on those around you and it just never stops…it can be deadly.
And it really sucks ass to go to bed tired, worn and aching and wake up in pain or just waking up feeling you went five rounds with a boxer or something like that.
And a chronic illness is mentally contagious.
Just imagine how hard it is to live with someone like me? To have to deal with someone that rarely might have a good day? Or is lying to you because after so long we get that you just don’t want to hear it?
This is why my mom rocks.
I mean really rocks because she’s been through stuff and the stuff she’s been through I think has made her tough enough to be this amazing person for me and when it gets really bad she rolls me over and she pulls me too her and holds me through the pain and the frustration and works me through it.
It’s good to have a parent that tells you it’s alright to be able to cry but not just that but that it’s okay to cry and scream and just rage at things.
I’ve talked to other CP people online that don’t get why I’m bothering to cry and to scream it out when I’m hit by these things. “Why do it, why bother because it won’t make anything better Mikayla?”
It does for me.
Being that open with mom lets me get it out and I don’t store up my anger and pain and let it take me over and I don’t lie and say that I’ll be fine or be okay and feel like I’m walking on frigging eggshells.
And she doesn’t let me wallow.
I get so long and once she’s sure more or less that the rough patch is done. She’s got me going and moving and doing stuff.
It’s Saturday so there chores to do and she’s planning on cooking and I’m going to help after I clean out and vacuum out the van.
And I need it I’ll admit it and as much as I’m grumbling and I guess being a normal teenager it’s still pretty cool and after that I’m learning how to make her chilli and baked beans and molasses cookies and something called a war cake?
I like the way that even though she is right there and has my back she also doesn’t cut me any slack either.
She does make me smile once we have the first batch of cookies in.
“Why don’t you call Will and ask him over for supper.”
I’m grinning and headed to the living room sofa to call my boyfriend.
I have a boyfriend.
That in itself is so cool.
I call Will up and it just keeps ringing and I try his cell phone and get his voice mail. I head back into the kitchen and help with supper. I’m okay really for a lot of stuff and I want to learn these things because one it’d be cool to be able to surprise people who think I can’t do the regular stuff everyone else does because of my CP.
And my mom keeps saying that I’ll need to know this stuff for when I’m at university. I mean it’s really, really cool that she is actually assuming that I’m going to be going to university.
Kind of scary too.
My Dad, and My Grandmother really tossed me into this hole called invalid and let me pretty much think that there was this bare existence as my only resort. I was getting aid checks for my CP and I was pretty much just a check to them and someone to dump on.
There’s nothing so classy as getting repeatedly told that you’re the anchor that’s drowning them and their life.
So I really never had held out hope for that kind of stuff and I have no idea of what I should study for university. I have some ideas maybe?
I think I might want to be a therapist maybe? I mean it’s not like my life experiences haven’t shown me things that sort of give me a different take on things right, and it’s a verbal and or with computers kind of thing so…
But I’d love to study something with dance even though I can’t. Maybe you don’t need to dance to study choreography?
Anyway I’m helping make the chilli and its pretty easy mom likes to try to go for healthy as much as she can with my issues and stuff like that so its ground turkey and it’s being cooked with two slices of bacon and a spicy Mexican sausage more for the flavors and the fat. There’s not a lot of greasy stuff in the turkey so this actually helps.
Once that’s browned off she adds the spices to it which is cumin, chilli powder, onion powder, paprika and black pepper and she shows me to make a space in the middle of the pot and add it there so it sort of cooks the spices a few minutes.
Then we add the stuff I’ve been chopping into small cubes and that’s onions and celery and carrots and some green bell peppers. It’s all in there and left to cook awhile and then once those are soft enough it’s a couple of cans of tomatoes and a can of kidney beans, a can of navy beans and a can of black beans and then she adds these sweet jarred jalapeno peppers the whole jar of them and some chilli flakes.
When just about done she adds a can of Bushes brown sugar baked beans and a small can of tomato paste. She makes sure we stir it really well before letting it set.
The baked beans are a lot easier she used white kidney beans soaked overnight and several diced up onions about three I think for like a gallon of the beans and diced up ham. We take the whole thing and mix it up with powdered french onion soup mix, brown sugar, dry mustard, black pepper and molasses and we put it into crock pots and we use apple juice for the liquid. That’s it just mix and bake and let it all slow cook.
The war cake is really something I’ve never heard of and mom says it’s something from her maternal grandmother who she didn’t really know too well since she died when she was young but mom had ended up with this old faded recipe book of all these really old recipes and stuff.
It’s more or less this molasses flavored pound cake that you add a bit of rum or run extract if you have it, and it has soaked raisins and cut up soaked dates in it and the odd thing is that you use the hot water that you use to soak the dates and raisins in as the liquid for the batter that and the recipe called for butter or bacon grease.
Mom actually made us bacon sandwiches while we were making supper just so we could try that. Apparently this was a WW2 thing sort of like a fruit cake but not? There’s “tinned” milk in it and stuff but it’s supposed to stay moist and last a long time or something.
Why are we making it? Tradition I guess mom said growing up as bad as things were they always had this stuff for deserts whenever they made baked beans.
And while really different and stuff it’s kind of nice to get to learn a bit about my Canadian family history.
Honestly the best part for me is the way that all of this makes the house smell. Grandmother could cook but she only really put any effort in for the church on Sundays and the holidays.
I try Will several more times still getting his voice mail and okay I’m getting a bit worried since he usually returns my calls and stuff.
It’s like that all afternoon and into the evening and then there’s a police car pulling up to our place and mom goes to the door and I see Will in the back seat. I hear the police telling mom.
“There was a fight at William’s house tonight and his father ended up taking a massive heart attack and passed away. He’s old enough that social services aren’t really an issue but he’s in shock so he said we could take him here?”
“What about his mother?”
“She was intoxicated on the scene and was arrested after throwing beer bottles at the EMT’s.”
“Will mentioned things weren’t good there thank you officer he can stay here as long as he needs to.”
“Thanks, he isn’t in the shape to be alone right now.”
He went out to get Will and I’m at the door waiting, he’s red eyed and both his hands are bandaged up and he looks just…
I know, I’ve lived that just blank but for the hurt thing.
He’s quiet right up until he sees me there in the doorway and he blinks a few times and he hugs me and he starts shaking and crying.
It’s my turn now.
“It’s okay Will, it’s okay.”
Lead Shoes-16
Chapter 16
Poor Will…
I’ve never really seen or help anyone before when they’re all upset, but Will is really upset and I pull him inside the house with me and somehow I manage to use my crutches and the fact he’s sort of still able to stand to get us into the living room and the couch.
We just get down and he starts to shake even harder.
“They woke me up…I…I was asleep and I heard the first crashes of stuff getting thrown. They were both doing it. Dad got paid a couple of days ago and stuff but mom was out…she had took off on another bender…and dad…dad had left too and went looking for her and I…I think he ended up at a place with some VLT’s and that was it.”
“VLT’s?”
“Gambling machines…those stupid electric slot things.”
“Your dad was a gambler?”
“Yeah…just…fuck!...Kayla he blew the whole pay check he just fed the whole damned thing into the machine!”
“And your mom?”
“Pfft…fuck her..”
“Will…”
“No!...no she always does this! She can’t stay out of the goddamned bottle Kayla! Why!? What the hell did I do to deserve this huh?”
“I don’t know will I really don’t…I’ve been asking myself the same stuff most of my life.”
He looks at me and stops and he’s blinking tears away and he gets this sad look in his eyes. “God Kayla I’m so sorry…I never thought…I didn’t…”
I reach over and tilt his head and his chin up and I kiss him. Yes…me kissing him. Long and slow and really deeply and letting him know it’s going to be okay.
He knows, he knows my history and the stuff with my birth mom and my dad and even with grandmother. He knows because I told him.
I press my forehead to his and we just stay like that together with our eye’s shut holding each other and just breathing.
“Its okay Will its okay…there’s not one person on the whole damned planet that isn’t messed up some how in some way. If they say they’re fine they’re lying.”
He nods against me and there’s this big almost horrible sigh that comes out of him and I schooch back into the corner of our couch and pull him down.
Really I don’t know what I can do other than that? I just sit there with him and his head pillowed on my chest which honestly has me really feeling…female…nurturing and legitimately female. It’s a nice conformation really that everything we’re doing is all right, is right.
It’s one of those body and heart being able to go yes moments.
Will actually falls asleep there and it’s pretty deep too. I’ve no idea how long he’s been up since or if it’s the stress of everything but he’s hit a deep heavy sleep. I run my fingers through his hair and I hum to him trying to be soothing. It’s actually hard to remember a soothing song to try to use when you need on. Just goes to show that life’s not fiction right?
Mom comes in awhile later and she gets busy doing something and eventually will wakes up and he kisses me and I kiss him back. “You hungry?”
He shakes his head no. “No…just wanna sit here okay?”
“Sure…TV?”
He shrugs.
I decide its likely better just to leave it off for now. I mean after everything that just went down it just doesn’t feel right. He sits up a bit more to look at me and we just sort of stare at each other for awhile.
Okay it’s not just stare but it’s just when you do just sort of look deeply into each other and you kind of have that moment when you’re just connecting in a deeper way than like dating or kissing or maybe even making love.
Alright I really don’t know about the last one on that seeing how I’m still a virgin.
And I want to remain that way at least until I get fixed and all my plumbing issues at least fixed before I go that route. I want the first time that I have a sexual “Moment” to be as the girl that I’m supposed to have been born as.
But this, this is us staring deep into each others eyes and just seeing each other. And that’s more than I ever thought or even dreamed that I’d have. It’s intimacy on a completely different level I think.
Then we’re kissing again and we’re kissing until Mom comes in and she doesn’t do any of the a-typical parent stuff like comment or cough no, no, she does worse she just stands there leaning on the hallway entrance and she watches us.
Do you know how hard it is to get your kiss on why a parent watching you?
It’s way too…ickward.
“C’mon you guys supper.”
We go into the kitchen and for someone who told me that he wasn’t hungry he can certainly put the food away. Though he does admit while we’re eating that he’s not sure when he ate last but he thinks it was a slice of pizza and a can of coke sometime yesterday out of the fridge.
Mom looks at him. “Will we’re going to have to go over to your house and get some of your things okay?”
“Okay…like what?”
“We might need most of it really; I honestly think your mom might be seeing some time for this.”
“But he took a heart attack.”
“Yeah but she attacked the cops and you.”
I look at him. “She attacked you?”
He kind of gets quiet and he looks ashamed, embarrassed maybe. “Yeah…she just wouldn’t stop; she didn’t even seem to get that dad was down.”
I look at him and then his hands and his arms where all the bandages are I gesture to them. “She…?”
“She had a broken bottle and she was going to cut him and I…I had got in the way.”
“She cut you!?”
He just nods. Mom actually reaches out over the table to him and takes his hand and he looks at her. “It’s okay…you here with us Will, both me and Kayla get it, we’ve been through it…sometimes family sucks…sometimes blood is poison.”
He just sort of stares back and there’s that thing between the two of them that you can see. She’s not my Mom or my Aunt right now she’s the girl that went through all the crap she told me about and that’s a big deal.
Sure you can empathize and stuff but unless you’ve been there it’s not the same.
It gets even more surreal and grown up as mom and I do the dishes and have a coffee and we’re talking about stuff that he’s going to have to deal with. Like the house and their things and the funeral and if he wants to fight his mom on the arrangements because they’ll still ask her first even if she’s in jail or prison.
Assault on Will, Will’s Dad, the cops, and involuntary manslaughter charges too maybe, resisting arrest, deadly weapon charges with the bottle. Mom thinks that even with her pulling out all the stops and getting off light, really light she’ll be in there between three to eight…likely more because she’s sure that Will’s mom has a record.
It’s really heavy stuff and Mom’s supportive but she doesn’t pull any punches either she explains that a lot of the stuff is likely going to be left up to him or the courts might decide to take things over if he doesn’t.
He’s frowning into a coffee and I dry my hands and go over to him and sort of lean on his back and rub his shoulders. “Hey Tiger you’ve got us in your corner okay?”
He nods. “Okay…I just don’t know how to do any of this stuff.”
Mom’s getting herself a coffee now. “I’ll help, I know what this stuff’s like and I know what it’s like to do this stuff alone. Will, you don’t have to do this alone.”
He looks at us and there’s a bit of a smile there but it’s a scared hurt one.
……………………………………………….We don’t go to school the next day. Mom actually thought it was best to get as much of the stuff done that we could do done right away. So we clean out the van and we head over to his house.
I’ve never been to his house and it’s in an iffy looking neighborhood. I don’t really mean a bad one but….most of the houses are like old and they just sort of look well seedy. Mom and I don’t live in a great neighborhood either like some people in school but I’d say we’re lower middle class and Will’s place well it’s like middle lower class. Like just able to live in a house instead of the really shitty looking apartments just down his block.
We head inside and oh…
It’s…there’s the smell of old cigarettes and ashed mixed with stale beer and there’s glass everywhere and what looks like vomit…
And while the place is messed up from what happened it’s not really dirty but I’ll say that his mother had only a passing association with Clorox or Lysol. I look around and honestly I can see where the money seemed to have really never made it home.
My Mom’s a lot of things and she’s got a past and we’re still sort of a work in progress but it’s so much more… worse than I thought that was going on here.
We don’t stay long, we don’t. We’re only there long enough to get Will’s things and really there’s not much. Everything he had in his room just takes half of the van.
He’s really quiet though all the way home.
There’s really so much I’ve seen that I’m not sure he ever wanted me to see or to know. And he’s really quiet right now and I want to be there but I really just don’t know what to do.
We get home and we slowly get stuff into his room…the one that Mom had set up and I help by doing the washing for his bedding.
I really wish I new what to do next.
Lead Shoes-17
Chapter 17
I put the van into drive and well pull out of the single lane alley going slow and keeping and eye out. Will’s little sister was put into foster care since he couldn’t take care of her and Mom’s been trying to get her in with us instead of the place that she was in but with Will’s problems and Mine and my record with stuff that happened to me back home and Mom’s records there’s been several snags.
There’s apparently some cow in CPS that doesn’t think Mom should be my guardian or Will’s since she must be at fault for supporting me or some bullshit like that. Truth is we only heard that from a friend of a friend of Mom’s and CPS is being all tight lipped and just saying that Mom’s request in still under review.
If it is true it must really gall the cow that I’m of an age here in Canada that she doesn’t have a whole lot to say on the matter.
It’s been actually about two month’s since Will’s been living with us and it’s…
It’s been hard actually, like real life hard and not the loving happy all the time or me making it all better thing that I first thought that it was. He get’s frustrated and I’m there or I have a bad day and get frustrated he’s right there which you’d think would be all romantic and great and stuff.
Uhm…not true.
Like when you’re frustrated with each other. It compounds things and with Will having all this happen and the stuff with his little sister. God I know it seriously sucks but when he’s pissed off and he’s taking it out on me…
I get mad too.
That’s something I honestly never thought would be me. I mean you look at stuff about MTF’s online and there’s this huge fantasy scam almost that we have to be meek and mild and pretty or at least act that way.
Like I just said it’s a scam and I even bought into it. I thought that when I’d get mad at him for taking it out on me that I wasn’t being very “Girly” that it was sort of questioning the whole me really being a girl thing because fighting and arguing wasn’t very “female”.
I think it was after our third blow up that I had with Will over him thinking this time about quitting school and trying to get a job to support him and his sister. We’d got into a shouting match and stuff was said and he left and I…ha…ha…tried to run to my room.
I got that angry that I forgot myself and I can sort of walk when I’ve got my boots on but I can’t actually run or storm any where.
Bam…I hit the floor and it hurt…full on boob crash and that was all I needed to start bawling.
I was still there when Mom came home from work and she went over and sat on the floor and pulled me onto her lap and I cried into her stomach for another good ten or fifteen minutes.
“Kayla what happened?”
“Will and I got into a fight.”
“Over?”
“He..he was going to quit school and get a job…” She helps me sit up and then hugs me from behind.
“I take it that you let him know that wasn’t a good idea?”
“Yes! Mom that’s retarded! You can’t get any kind of job or have any kind of future without an education.”
“Good girl, I learned that one the hard way honey.”
(Sniffle.) “Yeah and dad did too, he was just one of those guy that did that too y’know. Around town because he didn’t have a life or like a future because no one wanted his useless butt.”
“And?”
“And he told me that I wasn’t living his life and that I don’t know what it’s like and to mind my fucking business!” (Sniffle-sob.)
“And you said?”
“I blew up Mom, Will might know what I’ve told him that home was like but he never lived it…he thinks that he’s the only one that’s had it hard!? I lost it again and….and…”
I started crying again.
“And what sweetie?”
“And I’m…Mom what’s wrong with me that when he does that and he’s blowing off steam that I just get right back into his face…it’s…It’s not girl…”
She looked at me and turned my head and stared into my eyes.
“Mikayla, listen to me. There is nothing ungirly or unfeminine about standing up for yourself.”
“But…but boys fight and all that stuff aren’t I just lying now? I mean I really lost it with him. Mom I wanted to smack him…”
She laughed and smiled looking at me some more.
“Kayla he sounded like he deserved one. Look honey women come in all kinds, all shapes and sizes and backgrounds and experiences and well some of them might be the shy and quiet meek and mild girls and if that’s who they are that’s fine…but slugger what you did when those kids where bullying your friend that’s not you.”
“But…”
“Honey would you call me or any woman that was in the army or the cops or stuff not real women because they did that stuff?’
“No…but…I’m supposed to want to be a girl…and I do and I like being nice and pretty and I try to be nice and sweet.”
“Kayla what does any of those things have to do with not taking someone’s bullshit?”
“Mom?”
“You can be all of those things and you can still just be yourself. You’re one heck of a tough chickie Kayla.”
(Sniffle.) “I am?”
“Yeah, hell yes you lived with CP and with your Grandmother and the church treating you like that and all the stuff with your dad. That’s you honey and before you even got started on transitioning you always were a girl. That’s a lot on anyone’s plate so take it from your mom okay you’re a tough and amazing girl.”
I hugged her tight and she did the amazing all over again by just being there and being sweet and loving and caring.
And the more that I thought about that the more I saw the woman not under the other stuff but with the rocker hair cut and the bar job that’s been to prison and had tattoos and with all of that she’s honestly amazing.
So there’s been bad along with the good between us and no he’s never gotten violent with me he’s never pushed me or hit me or even punched the walls…okay not that I’ve seen but it’s just a rough and rocky time.
If life was a fairy tale then I’d look like Rapunzel from Disney and be a dancer instead I’m just me and I think I’m getting to be a little bit closer to being more and more good with that.
Mom did set up this old punching bag in the basement for him though she got from a friend and it’s helped actually.
He’s calmer after he’s come back from thrashing that thing.
So we’re actually good given what’s going on and I look over at him in the passenger seat and he’s got his elbow up on the door and he’s sort of chewing on his knuckles while he’s looking outside and bouncing his knee.
He’s worried…he really is.
She’s still a kid just like us as much as we think that we’re not because of the stuff we’ve been through. It’s more I’m not so worried as what she’s going to do as what she might get talked into or have done to here.
We’re not a bad city but we’re still a city and there’s still a lot of assholes that’d take advantage of her. Especially a teen girl that young late at night…
I pull into Tims for a refill, coffee and sugar a good mix of both is keeping us going and we went in since I need to pea and we really should get something solid in us too while we’re here.
He still get’s my door for the van and for Tim Horton’s and it’s very, very nice especially during all this going on.
I stop after the second set of doors inside and I lean over on my crutches and I kiss him on the lips.
“Wow…uhm thanks?’
“You deserved it.”
“Why?”
“They way we’ve been. Will it’s too easy to get all caught up in the fights and the stress. I know this has been a really shitty time honey but you’re still trying…you’re still a decent guy.”
He looks at me and he does the whole tough I’m a guy swallow and blinks a few times and I kiss him again on the cheek.
“I’d love to hear what really sweet and romantic thing you’re coming up with honey but I really need to pee.”
I scoot off to the ladies room giving him time to regain his man-self and not cry and stuff and I really do have to go. I swear the hormones are shrinking my bladder….what it is; is it’s more stuff to do being a girl compared to just standing up and doing it. So of course I have to go more it’s like cosmic law or something.
I actually have an idea while I’m touching up my make-up in the mirror. I head out and he’s over at the Wendy’s section. Up here a lot of Wendy’s are like paired or share a building with Tim’s I think it’s a franchise thing or something.
I’m hungry and that’s good and he’s already ordered for me. I like most things just not their burgers. He got me a large fires and a chili and he even got pepper. I just can’t have salt on my fries; it just doesn’t taste right to me.
I make a face though when he puts vinegar over his. Unless it’s fish and chips that’s just ick.
“I have an idea, she have her phone?’
“Yeah but she’s not picking up and the cops said that she’s been keeping it off so they haven’t been able to find her since she took off.”
I take out my phone. “I don’t need that to see what she’s been up to.”’
“You don’t? How?’
I smile at him. “She a teenaged girl and she’s not going to beat her need to be on her Facebook or Tweet stuff.”
He’s nodding and I’ll admit I’m a sucker for that too. I’m no where near as bad as some of the other girls at school some of them just completely live in their phones but I’m on there quite a bit myself especially since I’ve made some more friends since the dance.
It takes me most of the meal to check through her stuff and to “creep” her FB page and go through the pages of people on her friends list and stuff before I find a text.
“I think I’ve found her.”
“What where?”
“I think she’s at Bowl and Wash.”
I’m actually going onto their page and getting the address.
“Where?’
“Bowl and Wash…it’s a Laundromat with an attached Bowling Alley and it’s open twenty four seven. Mom’s taken me there a few times before when I’m in too much pain to sleep.”
He buses our trays and gets our coffee and the doors again and we’re at the van when he kisses me like I kissed him.
“You really are amazing y’know. I don’t deserve you.”
“Oh yes you do mister, some little never been through anything girl wouldn’t be able to handle you.”
“Well thank you. I’ve been pretty hard to live with.”
I kiss him back. “Will, it’s okay. We’re in a relationship and it’s real not the Family channel.”
“Will you stop telling me that me being a Butt is okay?’
“Fine…fine…you owe me some serious make-up dates then Butt.”
He smiles the first in awhile as we get into the van. “Deal.”
I’m smiling inside a lot at the change and I pull us out and head to where she’s likely holed up at. Hopefully she’ll still be there when we get there.
Yeah it’s not a fairy tale or a sitcom and y’know it’s still good.
Lead Shoes-18
Chapter 18
It’s good that he’s in a better mood after all of that as we head to the Bowl ‘N Wash and I go around the back way. There’s lots of room and stuff and while like I said it’s not a bad area out front there’s usually a bunch of kids out there to smoke and smoke up or drink.
It’s the “rebel” teenager stuff kind of place but I park the van out back and we head to out front from there.
I slow down well I can’t really go fast in my crutches anyways but I wait and see if I can see her out front and she’s there.
“Wait a sec Will until she goes back inside.”
“Why?”
“Because she’ll see us and she might try and take off.”
“Oh, okay smart.”
“Well it’s not like I can chase her.”
He nods and it takes about twenty minutes before we see her go inside with a bunch of other kids. By the time we get there it’s been long enough and I go one way and he goes another and I see what I think is her jacket and there’s a stuffed backpack with it and a shoulder gym bag and I go over there while he’s going over to her.
I sit in the seat on her jacket and run get a hold of her bags when she comes over stalking away from Will.
“No! No fuck you Will I’m not going back there!”
“You took off Tammy that’s not helping things.”
“They’re assholes Billy, they’re nothing but assholes and I’m tired of being treated like I’m trailer trash!”
“What the hell happened there?”
“They put me in a foster home Billy.”
“I know that but it was supposed to be a decent place…What…Happened.” He takes her by the arm and he turns her around.
“Oh, oh nothing except shifting me around to a school with a whole bunch of people that I don’t know and then they treat me like I a prisoner there while saying it’s for my own good and that they’re taking care of me while I’m getting shit on at this fucking school because I’m one of those kids.”
“Tammy why didn’t you call me?”
“And what are you going to do? You’re no better off than I am you’re a minor too.”
“I’d have done something.”
“Like what?”
I look at them both. “What we’re going to do now and that’s take you home with us.”
Tammy spins on me and she glares. “Get the hell away from my stuff!”
“No, you’re coming home with us and I’m hanging onto it so you don’t decide to take off on us.”
“This is none of you’re business freak!”
Will yells. “Tammy Jesus knock it off!”
“Why Billy, he’s a freak and you’re a fag for going with her. I bet she fucks you up the ass right?”
People are looking and it’s really not the greatest thing to get outed in front of a crowd. One of her friends is looking at me. “She’s a guy!!?”
“No I’m not I’m trans.”
There’s another one and she goes. “But that means that you’re a guy! You have a dick!”
I hear a few of the teens mouthing stuff. “Tranny…they’re fags…Ick…”
For the life of me I’m actually not mad, it’s the oddest feeling I thought that I’d be mad and hurt if this happened but I’m not.
I look at them. “First when you all get your doctorates then fine you can diagnose me. I’m a girl, I might have a glitch in my system but I’m fixing that.”
They still look hostile.
Not violent but younger teen a tween bitchy hostile.
I get up and adjust my crutches and stare at Tammy. “Okay we’re going to go now.”
“I’m not going anywhere?”
“Okay, so you’re not so here’s what’s going to happen.” I look at them all. “Child protective services will get called, then they’ll call the cops so who’s folks are going to want that coming to their door?”
They get quiet and look everywhere but at me or Tammy.
I keep going but this time I look at her. “Now since they’re looking for you, you can’t go to a shelter because they’ll be looking for you so what then? The streets, you’re a tough girl a survivor huh well what happens when you run into some asshole that really doesn’t care about the law or the fact that you’re as young as you are?”
“You’re making me sound like a statistic.” She’s not shouting any more but pouting and frowning and sullenly bitchy.
I move so I can get in front of her some more. “Stat’s are numbers but their based on real people that have really bad shit happen to them…just like you.”
“It might not.”
I lean in her face. “And I’m sure you’re mom said that too when she was your age.”
She stares at me and she’s mad and she’s getting madder then she just sort of breaks and she starts to cry. Will turns her around and he hugs her and she starts to bawl.
“….Why did she do that…? Why can’t it not be us…!?......what did we do Billy? What did we do!?”
My heart goes out to both of them and honestly I get it because aside from my Aunt…Mom…the rest of my family is kind of full of why’s too.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a lump in my throat.
I get up and I looked for her “Friends.” Tammy started crying and really getting emotional they bailed. You don’t do that to friends when things get real.
It’s when we need you the most.
I scoop up her bags and take her jacket and slip it in over the shoulder bag and I look at Will and mouth “I’ll go and get the van.”
Okay it takes a little doing with everything and I get out the door and her stuff in the van and I have a blanket there in the back that I get out and I turn the heater on.
I get cold when I really get upset, well after I get upset and I pull around out front and I get out and call mom.
“Mom?”
“Kayla, any luck?”
“Yeah we found her hanging out at the Bowl ‘n Wash hanging with her so called friends.”
“Oh?”
“Things got real and they bailed on her.”
“Happens don’t get too pissed at them they’re not really of the age where they’ll be good with real drama.”
“Okay…we’re bringing her back to the house.”
“Okay…we can talk to whoever in the morning.”
“Mom…”
“Yes honey?”
“It’s bad, or she’s taking it really bad there.”
“What happened?”
“Well from what I can get she’s in a foster house and away from everything and everyone she knows and okay I can get that’s going to happen but from what I can tell she’s in a new school and she’s getting looked down on for either being poor or being a foster kid or both.”
I hear mom sigh. “I told them that, it wasn’t a good idea to take her out of her school and her surroundings.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know but it’s late and I’ll think of something.”
“Okay, I just wanted some advice and to give you a heads up.”
“Good girl I’ll see you two…you three when you get here.”
“Love you momma.”
“Love you back Kayla.”
I wait until Will comes out with her and we get her into the van and situated with the blanket around her and I drive us first to Tim Horton’s again and I get Will and I another coffee since it might still be a long night yet and I get a french vanilla hot chocolate for Tammy. It’s a mix stuff they use but I’m still hoping the hot beverage and the vanilla will help steer her towards being sleepy.
She looks at me when I give them their cups and she’s a tween again and messy and sad looking and vulnerable.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
I smile a little and wait just a second before turning back around to drive. No, no apology yet. She’s a tweenager and I might have been raised all old style by my grandmother and her church I know enough that I’m not going to get a real apology if I demand one.
So I’m leaving her alone with that. I was in her face pretty hard earlier and that’s going to take awhile for me to get unbitched in her head.
I turn on some soft rock and I don’t take us home right away. I drive us around and just let the drive help chill her out and let her have some time with her brother. Will needs this too and judging from the little awkward things that I’m seeing before this they were brother and sister but in that usual way…not deep down and out close.
I go down by Lakeview Park and then just around until we get out by the airport and I slow down to watch a few planes and then drive us home.
Mom’s up and she comes out while I’m parking and she gets this look from Tammy before Tammy starts crying again and mom wraps her up in the blanket and a hug and leads her into the house.
“It’s going to be kiddo, you’re not going anywhere soon without a fight.”
“Really…?” (Sniffle.)
“Yeah, they want to put you back there well they’ll be going a few more rounds with me and my lawyer.”
Tammy hugs her and starts crying again and I hold the door open for Will who stops and sets down his sisters stuff and he kisses me.
“You are amazing you know that.”
“I’m not but I’ll agree if this is taking the credit.” I kiss him back….god I’m such a girl because kissing Will does these really awesome crazy things to my brain. And it’s just kissing…okay it’s really good kissing but there’s like none of the other naughty stuff.
I’m sort of ready and sort of not and Will gets that.
And Will getting that does things for me.
“No…Tammy flipped out and she said some stuff that was really uncalled for.”
“Yeah but she’s hurt and upset and she’s freaking out…and she’s a kid.”
He smiles and looks at me. “Oh and you’re an old lady?”
“Older than I want to be sometimes.”
He sighs and he nods and I can see the couple of metaphorical years he’s piled on himself recently and I kiss him some more and we Eskimo kiss and nuzzle until he smiles a little.
“Okay if this is older and wiser then I’m all for it.”
“It is.” I kiss him some more. “Let’s go inside and maybe once things are settled we can find a movie and the couch?’
He gives me this look.
This something broken and something hopeful there too. It’s like I can see the really? In his eyes. Then again given his family life…he kisses me again but this time it’s that take my chin kind of kiss that has me do that girl leg curl in a good way.
Like I’m just me…and not me and my CP.