Everyone makes choices, even if one chooses not to make them.
Everyone makes choices, even if one chooses not to make them.
Leslie Francis Love latched the motel door then walked back to the rollaway bed, his feet bare on the concrete floor. He shivered as he crawled beneath the cold sheets and thin blanket. He lay there with the lights on and looked across the room at the empty full-size bed on the other side.
Midnight had come and gone, and his parents had not come back to the motel yet. “They’re drinking,” he told himself, “same as they always do on Saturday night. We might as well have stayed home.”
But he knew that wasn’t true. His parents had many reasons for moving, sometimes in the middle of the night. This time had been a little after noon. “It’ll be like a vacation,” they’d said when picking him up from school.
At thirteen, Les had already achieved a level of cynicism and defeat worthy of someone four times his age. His parents had promised that things would be different in a new city. They would do fun things together, visit museums, theme parks, take a boat ride.
Instead, after driving for hours, they had parked him at a motel with ten dollars in quarters for the snack machines and gone out to “unwind,” promising to be back and take him to dinner. “Some vacation,” he muttered.
He dozed resentfully until an insistent knocking at the door woke him at almost four in the morning according to the cracked face of the motel clock. Yawning, he got out of bed and padded toward the door, his feet getting rapidly cold again. “Must have lost their keys,” he muttered. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to let them into where they were staying.
But when he reached for the door, the knocking came again, along with a voice saying, “Police! Open up!”
Startled, he reached for the door handle then hesitated. His parents did not like the police, and he had no real reason to trust them. More than once, he’d gone down to the jail with one parent to get the other one released on bail and the cops, as he thought of them, had never been friendly.
He put the safety lock on before he asked the door. “What’s this about?”
“It’s a kid,” a voice said on the other side of the door.
“Open up kid, this is the police,” said another voice.
“How do I know that?” Les asked. He didn’t doubt it was the police, but they hadn’t made him believe he should open the door.
“Look through the peephole,” said a voice.
“I’m too short,” said Les. He wasn’t really, not if he stood on tiptoe, but they didn’t know that.
“Come to the window then, we’ll show you our badges,” said one voice.
But the other voice interrupted, almost snarling. “Open the door, kid! It’s your parents. They’re dead.”
Les opened the door. One of the big burly cops snatched him up and carried him to a cruiser, putting him inside and closing the door while the other one searched the motel room.
He sat in the darkness of the locked back seat in his pale yellow pajamas, crying without making a sound and thought somehow he had always known this would happen.
Except it hadn’t.
He didn’t find out until after hours of sitting on a bench in the police station, but his parents weren’t dead. No one told him anything or answered any questions, and when he asked, he got only silent glares. “Sit down and shut up, kid,” one man with chevrons on his sleeves finally told him. “The social worker will get here when she gets here.”
The sun came up while Les dozed on the bench until someone shook him awake. He sat up.
A plump woman with a briefcase in one hand and a colorful cup of hot chocolate in the other smiled down at him. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Les responded, using knuckles to rub sleep from his eyes.
“Want some cocoa?” she asked, holding out the festive paper cup.
Les nodded. “Thank you,” he said, but the liquid was still too hot to drink, so he just held it, warming his hands.
The woman sat down beside him. “I’m Mrs. Madison. Your social worker.”
“Uh, huh,” said Les. He’d met social workers before, nice ineffectual people for the most part; vengeful bureaucrats with obscene amounts of power in a few cases.
“What’s your name, honey?” she asked, taking a notebook and pen out of her briefcase.
“Leslie Francis Love,” said Les, taking a cautious sip of the cocoa. Good.
Mrs. Madison scribbled away. “Are your parents Leland Ormond Love and Rachel Frances Love?”
Les nodded. “The c-officer said they were dead,” he added. His eyes were dry. He had cried himself out when he first arrived in the cop shop.
The SW shook her head. “They’re not dead. Your mom is in the hospital, and your dad has been arrested for an incident at a bar.”
Les didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry. Mostly he felt tired. “Okay,” he said. He sipped more cocoa, pushing his too-long hair out of his face. Like a lot of things they wouldn’t spend money on, Les hadn’t had a haircut in months. Spending money at the barber would have cut into their drinking.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Thirteen,” he answered. She wrote that down, too. She asked more questions and wrote down more answers. Les didn’t give her any information she didn’t ask for.
She folded her notebook around her pen and looked at him for a bit. “You’re short for your age,” she suggested. He shrugged, finished the cocoa and looked back at her.
“I’m going to ask you another question, but first I want to tell you something. It’s going to be a few days before either of your parents can come get you, so you’re going to have to stay somewhere.”
Les began unrolling the curled edge of the paper cup, waiting.
“Normally, you’d go to a juvenile holding facility, but those are all full up. So the choice is a juvenile detention center for youthful offenders or a foster home. Thirteen-year-olds who go to the JDC are put in with the older kids, instead of the younger ones.”
She’s telling me I’m going to get beat up, thought Les. He had unrolled the edge of the cup and began tearing it in strips down to the round bottom.
Mrs. Madison took a deep breath. “The only foster home I have available right now only takes in girls,” she said.
Les blinked at her. He had turned the paper cup into a raggedy, cocoa-stained flower.
The SW looked at Les. “I hope you’re not a boy,” she said.
Les shook his head. He used a fingertip to give each petal a curl, then set the pseudo-origami creation on the bench beside him with the brightly colored outside up.
“Pretty,” said Mrs. Madison.
He nodded and smiled at her. “Thank you for the cocoa,” he said.
“You’re welcome. Are you hungry?”
“No,” he said. He’d eaten Pringles and Little Debbie cakes and drank a Red Bull back at the motel then thrown it all up like he often did when stressed. He hoped he could keep the hot chocolate down.
She took her notebook out again and wrote in it with the pen. He leaned over to look, and she let him. He saw that she had spelled his name wrong, but he didn’t say anything.
“They can feed you at the foster home,” she said.
He nodded.
She stood, taking a brush from inside her briefcase. She brushed his hair, parting it in the middle. She put the brush back, taking out a tube of cherry lip balm. “Let me put this on,” she said.
She applied it to his lips, and he let her do so.
She took his arm and he stood beside her, though several inches shorter. “Let’s go find you something to wear besides pajamas and dirty feet,” she said.
“What’s your favorite color? Say pink.”
After Mrs. Madison signed some papers and picked a pair of pink shower flip-flops for him from the jail’s grunge pile, they left the police station through a side door.
“The cops sent the clothes and things they took from the motel room to the wrong precinct, and now they’ve lost them completely,” Mrs. Madison explained while unlocking the doors of a battered-looking ten-year-old Toyota. “We’ll stop somewhere and pick you up some things to wear.”
“You don’t have to do that, -uh- Mrs. Madison,” he said. The last time he’d been in juvie, a little over a year ago, he had picked up two broken fingers and a scar above his left ear that was now hidden by how long his hair had gotten. But had it really been a good idea to let the social worker pretend to believe he was a girl? She wasn’t going to make him wear a dress, was she?
“Call me Maddy,” she said. “Everyone does. Better than Dolly, I guess.” She cleared piles of paper off the passenger seat by dumping them on the floor in the back. “Get in,” she told him.
He did, a little awkwardly as it occurred to him that he might be performing a charade for some time. Did girls get into cars differently than boys?
“Fasten your belts,” said Maddy and the car took off suddenly before he had time to comply.
*
They were headed to the suburbs he noted a few minutes later as they entered the expressway, but Maddy took the very next exit stopping them in a deserted K-Mart parking lot.
Maddy was making up a list as they got out and she locked the car. “Jeans. A shirt and a jacket, it still gets cool this time of year, especially at night. Sneakers and socks. Some underwear.”
She took his arm and steered him toward the entrance. “A girl your age should have a little shape, so a training bra padded out to an A-cup.” She looked at his face to judge his reaction.
He knew he must be blushing but said nothing. Almost any amount of embarrassment would be worth avoiding the beatings he would get if put into detention with other “youthful offenders.”
As they pushed inside, Maddy asked. “What’s your favorite color? Say pink,” she added before he could answer.
He couldn’t do that; it just wouldn’t come out, so he nodded. Maybe he would need all the help he could get to convince a foster family that he was a girl. Minutes later he was not at all sure of the strategy as Maddy added a package of girl’s pastel flowered panties to a cart already containing cheap pink sneakers, socks with teddy bears, a turquoise Little Mermaid t-shirt showing Ariel, with the slogan, “Sea Life Differently.” Blue jeans with pink seashells on the butt and a satiny pink jacket with the names of all the Disney princesses went into the cart, too.
I’m going to die if I have to wear that stuff, Les thought.
“Are you brave?” Maddy asked as she paused the cart in front of a display of training bras.
Les closed his eyes and shook his head, knowing his face was pinker than anything in the store.
“You need to be brave,” said Maddy. “Your parents are not going to be able to pick you up for days, maybe weeks.” She added two of the lacy props to the basket, one pink, one white.
“Telling the truth would be the bravest thing I could do,” said Les, thinking of the beatings he would receive.
Maddy shook her head. She pushed the cart into the accessories aisle. “Do you like this?” she asked, holding up a cheap chain necklace with a large pink crystal heart on it.
“You… I…,” Les stammered.
“Be brave,” said Maddy.
“Okay,” Les managed.
Maddy added the necklace and a set of pink and blue plastic arm bangles to the cart.
The total came to over $100 at the checkout. “I’ll never be able to pay you back,” Les protested.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’ll file a claim with the city.”
Les doubted that such a claim would be paid, but he said nothing more. Still wearing his yellow pajamas and the pink flops, he followed Maddy back to the car.
“Are you hungry?” she asked again as they loaded up their treasures.
Les shook his head. Eating when he was frightened or upset was sure to make him vomit. Embarrassment would likely do the same.
“Well, I am,” Maddy announced. The car took off in another jackrabbit start and headed across the parking lot toward a McDonalds. They went in by a side door and headed immediately to the girls’ restroom, each carrying a large shopping bag.
Les’s stomach clenched as they went under the sign, but he did not protest. Beatings, he reminded himself.
They took over the accessible stall and laid out Maddy’s purchases on the fold down baby changing table. Maddy fetched wet, soapy paper towels and dry ones and washed Les’s feet, saying, “I want you to strip off completely,” after he was standing again in the flip-flops.
Les did so, down to his briefs, throwing the pajama tops and bottoms onto the table.
“Those, too,” Maddy ordered, handing him a pair of panties. She turned her back.
Les observed that the underwear, while blue, was decorated with pink and yellow roses. He took off his briefs and slipped the panties on. They were snug, and the outline of his boy parts showed clearly. He frowned, looking down.
When Maddy turned around, she frowned too and looked away quickly. “Can you tuck things in?” she asked, handing him another pair of panties. “If you wear two pairs, they should keep anything from showing.”
Les was surprised that important parts of his anatomy would fit up inside him and the second pair of panties over the first did indeed hold things in place.
He stood a moment while Maddy looked him over. He knew she could see the old bruises on his legs and arms, and the newer ones on his ribs, the scar on the inside of his left elbow and the crooked toes of his right foot. He crossed his arms over his chest.
She handed him one of the bras and smiled. Perhaps she was smiling at how red he had turned, but he didn’t get the feeling that she was laughing at him. He took the bra, and she showed him how to put it on. It had two layers of removable padding which were both left in place.
The t-shirt fit tightly, too, and the jeans were tight enough to need a bit of squirming to get them up over his hips. Then again, he was certainly not in danger of showing anything in the crotch now.
“How did you know my sizes?” he asked while musing that the jeans had no fastening front or back, held up by elastic geometry alone.
“Experience,” she said. “Thirty years of it, raising my own two then working with the city and county. I can tell a kid’s size just by looking at her.”
He sat down on the toilet seat to put on the shoes and socks. He noted the pronoun Maddy used. She gave him the necklace, and he fumbled at putting it on. The bracelets followed, and he slipped them onto his right wrist.
“You’re left-handed,” she mentioned.
“Mostly,” he agreed. “I write and eat at the table right-handed.” Thinking about that, he swapped the bangles to his left arm where they would be less in the way.
Suddenly Maddy showed a set of dimples. “Me, too,” she said. “My parents and teachers beat using my right hand into me back in the seventies.”
Les’s mouth fell open. He hadn’t expected such a connection with the social worker. He felt as if he might cry. The woman pulled him into an even more unexpected hug, and he did start crying. No one had hugged him in…he didn’t know how long.
Mrs. Madison made comforting noises but released him quickly when he tried to pull away. She handed him a tissue to dry his eyes. “Better?” she asked.
He nodded, amazed that he did indeed feel better.
Maddy handed him the Princess-themed jacket, and he put that on, too. It didn’t seem to matter as much to wear one more piece of girly clothing.
While she gathered his male discards and the removed tags and wrappers, she asked, “What do your parents call you? Lee?”
He shook his head. “No, Lee is my dad.” He didn’t want to think of some of the names his father called him, while his step-mom hardly ever addressed him at all.
The social worker nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll call you Elle,” she said.
“L?” Les was confused.
“Exactly. Spelled E-L-L-E. It’s a girl’s name, and it can be your nickname.”
He’d never heard of the name before. “Wouldn’t that spell Ellie?” he asked.
Maddy nodded. “Elle or Ellie, sure.”
They left the oversize stall, and she discarded most of the bags, wrappers, and tags along with the pajamas and boy’s briefs in the big trash can, keeping only two small bags, one for the shower flip-flops, the other for the remaining socks and underwear.
Les stopped in front of the full-length mirror by the door, staring at the slender girl who looked back at him in place of his own reflection. “Elle?” he said.
Sharing a room? With a girl?
Les yawned hugely when they lined up at the McDonalds counter to order. He’d suddenly felt hungry after leaving the restroom when Maddy expressed an intent to order breakfast.
“Egg on a muffin,” he told the bored lady behind the counter when his turn came. “No meat, no cheese. And a milk.” He yawned again while they waited for their food.
Maddy had ordered coffee, sausage biscuit with egg and cheese, hashbrowns and an OJ. She carried both their orders to a corner table and Les followed. Even the smell of the acid in the orange juice made him slightly ill.
“Is that all you’re going to eat?” Maddy asked after he declined all offers to share her food.
“More than I usually have for breakfast,” he told her. “This milk is good.”
She broke her hashbrown patty in two and put half in front of him which he nibbled at while she finished eating. They cleaned the table and Les finished the milk carton on the way out.
“Let’s get you out to Evandale to meet your new family,” she said. They made their way out to the car and climbed in.
New family? he thought, yawning again, but he was fast asleep in the car seat almost before he could get the seat belt fastened. He didn’t even notice when Maddy got the car moving with her usual jerking start.
*
Les woke up when they got off the expressway again. Around them, wide lawns fronted deep properties with large, mostly two-story houses and lush tree-lined driveways.
“Holy crap,” said Les.
Maddy glanced at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “Where are we?”
“This is Evandale,” said Maddy. “It’s part of the city, though the people who live here like to pretend it isn’t.”
“It’s not… It isn’t….” He didn’t know what to ask.
“It is,” she said. “The foster family that is going to take care of you lives here — the Davenports. He’s a doctor, and she’s a veterinarian. They already have five kids, three of them adopted.”
“They’re rich,” he said.
“Not relatively. Some of their neighbors are twenty or fifty times as well off as they are.”
They took two turns after getting off the expressway. The houses got smaller and older while the properties got larger. He saw horses behind fences in some places.
Maddy pulled into a driveway and stopped in front of a medium-size dwelling for the neighborhood. Back home, Les would have called it a mansion.
“I timed this so the other kids will have already left for school,” Maddy commented. She pulled something from the briefcase and handed it to him, flipping down a mirror on the sun visor. “Can you put that on?” she asked.
He expected it to be the lib balm she had used on him before but what he had in his hand was a tube of candy pink lip gloss with a clear cap so he could see the color. He looked in the mirror, and before he could think of any reason not to, he had taken off the cap and applied the gloss, just as he would have the lip balm.
He replaced the cap and tried to hand it back to her, but she shook her head. “Keep it, put it in the pocket of your jacket. Use it whenever you get to thinking you might be mistaken for a boy.”
Les thought about that for a moment, looked at himself in the mirror again and put the lip gloss in the pocket of his Disney Princess jacket, blushing as he did so.
A middle-aged woman came down the sidewalk from the house to where they had parked as Maddy and Les climbed out of the car. The woman rushed toward Maddy making happy noises, and the two women hugged, both talking at once.
Les stood quietly, feet together, hands folded in front of his chest, acutely aware of what he was wearing (the padded bra especially).
Both women turned to him at the same time, smiling.
“This is Elle or Ellie,” said Maddy, reaching out and taking his hand to pull him closer. “Lesley Frances Love and isn’t she lovely?” Les blushed, startled more than embarrassed.
The woman laughed. “I don’t think she knows what a beauty she is,” she said. “I’m Jessie Davenport….”
“Dr. Davenport,” Maddy interrupted.
“Don’t call me that,” Jessie protested. “None of my patients do.”
Both women laughed, and Les remembered that Jessie was a veterinarian. He smiled.
Jessie laughed again. “Mom-humor as my other daughters call it.” She took Les’s hand and led him toward the house as Maggie let go of his other arm. “And I was serious about your looks. Pris is going to be jealous, she’s my middle girl and just about your age, uh, how old are you, dear?”
“Thirteen,” Les answered.
“What grade are you in?”
“Sixth,” said Les. “I got held back because of missing so much school. We moved around a lot,” he finished lamely.
“When’s your birthday?”
“Uh, December.” He glanced at Maddy. This woman asked a lot of questions he had answered before.
“Oh. Already passed. Well, you’ll be in the same grade as Pris then. She turned twelve in January. We’ll have to get you into classes, go over to the school this afternoon, hmm? Come in and let me show you your room.”
Still astonished that he had not been called out for being a boy dressed as a girl, Les followed her into the house.
Maddy caught up with them at the door. “Jessie, I have to get back to the office, so let’s get things signed. And I’ve got a receipt for what I spent on getting her some clothes. Poor thing had nothing but a pair of dirty PJs.”
Jessie looked Les up and down and smiled. “She’ll be able to wear some of Pris’s things. But let me sign things after I show her where she will be sleeping.”
It felt very weird to hear himself referred to as she and her, thought Les, following Jessie up a curved staircase while Maddy distributed paperwork in piles on an enormous dining room table. He couldn't take it all in. The entryway had marble floors.
At the top of the stairs, Jessie called out. “Bettina, are you up here? Maddy is downstairs with papers for me to sign. Can you make us some coffee?”
An older dark-skinned woman with crisp grey curls emerged from a doorway. “Okay, Jessie. I can do that now. And who’s this? She’s lovely!”
“That’s her name, sort of,” Jessie laughed. “Ellie Love, this is Bettina. She keeps the house organized, does the cooking and looks after things I am too busy or too scattered to remember to do.”
“Oh, she’s blushing,” Bettina cooed. “Oh, isn’t Owen going to crow about having a beauty like her in the house! We’re teasing you, love. Oh, Love! It’s your name!”
Both women laughed.
Les wondered if he were going to have to run to the bathroom to throw up; the tension of pretending to be a girl had him wound too tight. He regretted having eaten anything at McDonalds. Where was the bathroom?
Bettina started down the stairs, still chuckling. Jessie took his hand again and said, “Owen is my husband, he’s the real Dr, Davenport. And Bettina is right; he’ll make a big deal about how pretty you are. Men.” She ended with a sniff and a grin.
Les smiled weakly. The idea of meeting Dr. Davenport, the male Dr. Davenport, scared him. How had this charade ever seemed like a good idea?
“That’s the master bedroom that way,” Jessie was saying. “And this is Kimby’s room. She’s our eldest. Carol’s room is downstairs. You’ll be sharing this next room with Priscilla….”
Sharing a room? With a girl?
Jessie held a door open, and Les saw a large bedroom with two twin-size beds, two desks, some other furniture, one open door that was certainly a walk-in closet and another door that seemed to be a bathroom.
“Excuse me,” he said taking a step in that direction.
Jessie took one look at his face and got out of his way. “Oh, dear,” she said trying to follow.
Les didn’t know if he were going to make it, but once in the bathroom, he closed the door in Jessie’s face and dropped to his knees in front of the toilet bowl. The room smelled of sachet and cologne. That didn’t help.
He flipped the lid and ring of the toilet up and retched, bringing up bits of the egg, milk, and muffin he had eaten for breakfast.
His stomach hurt when he finished, but Jessie was kneeling beside him, holding his hand in one of hers while she wiped his forehead with a cool, wet towel in the other.
“It’s all right, honey,” she said. “You’ll be all right. I know you’re scared, but you’re home now. You’re home.”
Is it hard to be a boy? Or harder to be a girl?
After rinsing out his mouth with water and mouthwash, Les lay on one of the beds in the room he had been told he would share with his “new sister,” Priscilla. The other bed looked more recently used.
This is a mistake, he thought. I can’t do this. Better to go to juvie and get beat senseless. I’m going to puke myself to death trying to pretend to be a girl.
Jessie had left him alone in the room after being very solicitous. I can’t believe how trusting she is, he thought. If I were like some of my parents’ friends’ kids, I could totally rip this family off.
In the quiet, he heard voices. After listening a moment, he realized that they came from downstairs. A fluke in the ducting meant that the floor vent right beside this bed connected with a ceiling vent almost over the dining table below. He could hear Maddy and Jessie talking. About him.
Naturally, he listened.
“She’s so thin,” Jessie said. “Perhaps she’s bulimic?”
Les didn’t know that word. As far as he knew, his family was English, French and Dutch.
“I think it’s mostly bad nutrition,” said Maddy.
“I don’t know,” said Jessie. “Her skin is beautiful and that lovely hair. My experience with animals suggests that the hair is the first part of the body to suffer in malnutrition cases.”
“That would apply to bulimia, too,” Maddy pointed out.
“I know,” Jessie agreed. “She seems very resilient. Maybe it’s just fright and natural thinness.”
“Mmm. Can you sign this one, too?”
They were quiet for a time, then Maddy announced. “I’ve got to get back to the office. She’s yours for now, and from the look of this case, it may be weeks before her parents can come for her.”
“No other kids?” Jessie asked. Maddy must have shaken her head. “That’s a blessing, I guess. But the kid must be lonely.” Jessie continued. “Does she have any relatives at all nearby?”
“Not in this state,” said Maddy. “The father says he has an ex-wife, Elle’s real mom, in Texas, and she, the mother, has a brother somewhere. That’s it.”
Elle. That’s me, thought Les. They keep saying her and she, and they mean me. The taste of acid bubbled at the back of his throat. If this family finds out I’m a boy, they will send me straight to juvie, dressed like I am, and I’ll get killed.
He felt a pang at the thought of Mom-Mom, his real mom, and his Uncle Billy, neither of whom he had seen in years. Yes, he had been lonely.
He put an arm over his face. He heard Maddy murmur, but she had moved away from the acoustically unique spot that carried her voice upstairs, and then he heard a door close.
She’s gone, Les thought. He considered leaping off the bed to run downstairs and try to follow her, but he knew he was stuck now. Why did she do this to me? How am I going to survive? I don’t know how to be a girl.
A few minutes later he heard steps coming closer, pausing outside the door of the bedroom. He tried to go limp, preparing to fake being asleep. A sound might have been a door opening; another might be it closing. He didn’t think it was the door to Pris’s room, but it might have been.
Was someone in the room? He kept his eyes closed, breathing slowly, not forcing it. Without realizing, he fell asleep.
*
He drifted through dreamscapes filled with fragments of unpleasant memories. Most of them involved his parents and having to move, time and again. Always being the new kid in class, always being behind in his schoolwork, dealing with bullies, and teachers who couldn’t be bothered to even try with a kid they knew would only be a transient.
He sat a kitchen table, eating generic oat cereal with Dr. Pepper on it; they were out of milk. His stepmom sat across from him, smoking a cigarette and drinking the rest of the bottle of soda, poured over ice with a jolt of rum in it.
His father’s snores came from another room and Corrie, his stepmom’s name, sneered in that direction. “Be glad you’re not a girl, kid.” She took a sip of the concoction in front of her. “Even if you got a girly name you get beat up for, being a real girl is worse.”
Aware of the cuts and bruises on his face and arms, Les felt the sting of the soda on his busted lips.
Corrie smiled a huge, drunken leer at him, showing two missing teeth on the left side where she had “fallen.” “When they call roll for you at school, do they say, ‘Love, Les’?”
*
He woke up, disturbed by some dream he didn’t remember. The light against his eyelids seemed wrong, and when he opened them, he saw the pale green of the ceiling and the pink of the walls without recognizing them.
But the room smelled nothing like a motel or any of the other dumps where he had lived—none of the dust of a Colorado feedlot next door, or the road tar odor of a hot day beside an L.A. Freeway, or the sewer-like smell of a Louisiana swamp.
The memory of where he was and what he was wearing came back suddenly, and he sat up all at once. Someone gasped, and he turned his head. A blond girl about his age sat on the other bed looking at him. “You scared the freak out of me!” she protested.
“Sorry,” he whispered. His heart had leaped into his throat when she had spoken.
“I’m Pris, really Priscilla, but never call me Prissy,” she showed a set of dimples that went well with her short pixie-cut hair. “You’re the new girl.”
Les winced but nodded, realizing he was supposed to introduce himself. “Uh-,” he stammered. His mouth felt as dry as two Mojaves stuck together. Contrariwise, he felt the need to pee. “Excuse me,” he said, getting off the bed awkwardly and heading for the bathroom.
Pris followed. “Is it Elle or Ellie?” she asked.
Les rinsed his mouth first, getting a miniature cup from a dispenser above the sink, then drank two cupfuls. “Either, I guess. Uh, my real name is Leslie.” Well, that was the truth.
“Lesley,” Pris repeated, and Les winced because he knew she was mentally spelling it wrong. “I think I like Elle better, too.” She laughed.
Les nodded. “It doesn’t sound like a boy’s name,” he added and then wondered why in the world he had said that.
Pris laughed again. “Elle means she, in French, so no, it doesn’t sound like a boy’s name. I guess Lesley does…. Did that bother you?”
He shrugged, unsure of what to say. Yes, being named Leslie had bothered him for exactly the opposite reason.
“Maybe your parents wanted a boy?”
“No,” said Les. “I don’t think they wanted me at all.” Why did I say that and why did I say it out loud? He worked his mouth like someone trying to determine which tooth needed a root canal. Tears came to his eyes.
Suddenly, Pris was there, her arms around him. He stepped away, and she let go immediately. Les stared at her. Pris was actually an inch or so taller.
He wanted to pull her in close again; he wanted to push her farther away. “I have to use the bathroom,” he said, nodding at the toilet.
She stepped out of the way but did not leave the room, still smiling at him.
“No, I mean,” he said, looking at the doorway.
Pris nodded, leaving. “You want the door closed?”
“Please,” he said.
When she had closed the door, Les did his business sitting down because he knew the sound would be different if he stood to pee. Not that he had much to do; vomiting earlier had dehydrated him somewhat.
He could hear Pris moving around in the bedroom and eventually, the sound of a TV being turned on. Perhaps an after-school special about poor kids in Appalachia. Les had seen one like that once and had felt envy for kids who had parents who stayed in one place.
He carefully rearranged things inside his two pair of panties, then pulled up the seashell jeans. Washing his hands in the sink, he stared at his reflection. His hair was long enough, and with the clothing, he did look much more girlish than he had. So far, no one seemed even to suspect he might be a boy.
He shook his head and drank another cup of water before reaching for the door.
I guess I’m going to find out if it’s really harder to be a girl, he thought.
“That dress matches your eyes!"
When Les came out of the bathroom, Pris muted the TV and simply ignored it after that. More importantly, she had opened the door of the closet and piled clothes on the two beds.
“Mom said you didn’t have anything to wear except what Aunt Maddy bought for you, the cops misplaced your things.” She dropped another double armful of clothes onto the bed he had been sleeping on.
“You can go through this pile,” she said, motioning at the same bed, “and keep anything you like. Most of it won’t fit anymore, or I just don’t like it now.”
“Uh,” said Les, staring at the colorful aggregation. He shook his head.
Pris stopped to look at him. “No?” she asked.
“I can’t take your clothes,” he said.
“Sure you can,” she protested. “I bet I haven’t worn more than half a dozen of those things in the last year.” She gestured. “Look at this stuff… And you need things to wear. You can’t be Ariel all the time.”
Ariel? Oh, the shirt. Les felt his head wobble like a bobble-head doll. “Uh, I might not be here long….”
“Then again, you might be here for months, or even longer. I already have three sisters that came here temporarily, and my parents adopted them. You could end up being my new sister, too.”
Les shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. I can’t be your sister.”
“Why not?” Pris demanded.
He boggled at the question. “Because…. Because I’m a boy!”
Pris broke into a huge grin. “That’s original!” She laughed a little chuckle, then a bigger belly laugh.
Les turned bright red. Had he messed up? Would he be kicked out? How could he share a bedroom with this girl?
She pointed at him, still laughing. “Your face,” she spluttered.
He frowned, he was no stranger to being laughed at, but Pris didn’t seem to be sneering; she appeared to be genuinely cracked up that he would claim to be a boy.
Pris fell against the pile of clothes on her own bed, wiping at her eyes. “Hoo, boy,” she said. “You look like such a stick, but you are funny, girl!”
Les tried to smile which set Pris off again, hooting her amusement this time. Clutching his hands in front of him, Les looked at her imploringly. A nervous giggle escaped him. Pris fell to the floor cackling, sliding off the bed to land with a thump and an “Ouch,” in the middle of her hilarity.
Finally, Les laughed, too. More of a giggle, really. Pris looked ridiculous, clothes tumbling off the bed around her while she tried to hold them back, unsuccessful due to her laughter.
Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop. There might have been a note of hysteria in his snorts and gasps. He sat on the other bed amid feminine treasures of juvenile finery. He and Pris laughed for at least a solid minute.
Les lay back on the bed where he couldn’t see Pris, trying to get control of his gasping. He hiccoughed.
“Hey,” said Pris, calmer now. He lifted his head to look at her. She crawled across the floor to sit near his feet. “Hoo, boy, that was a good one.”
Les giggled, still nervous, and Pris almost started up again.
“No, no,” she said. Getting up on her knees, she looked at him as he lay there. “Let’s sort these, just throw the ones you don’t want off the bed, and they will get sent to some charity. But you have to have something to wear while you’re staying here,” she added reasonably.
He sighed; she was right of course. He needed things to wear, and if he were going to be a girl in this household, he would have to wear girl clothes. Maybe his parents would come to rescue him soon. He snorted at that thought.
The first thing to do he decided was to take all the dresses out, and anything pink, or ruffled, or with glitter on it. Accordingly, he picked up an aqua-colored dress with a ruffled hem and glittery pink trim and made to drop it on the floor.
“No-o-o!” Pris yowled. “That dress matches your eyes! You would look fantastic in it! You can’t throw it away without at least trying it on!”
“I don’t wear dresses,” said Les, hoping that would be enough reason not to have to wear the thing.
“Because your parents didn’t buy nice ones for you, I bet!”
Well, yeah, sort of, thought Les. He found himself grinning. He nodded and shrugged.
“This was one of my favorites, but it’s too small for me now.” She glanced down at her chest. “But you’re like super-skinny. I bet it would fit you and look great.” She put the dress back on the bed, “Let’s make this pile for stuff you will try on before deciding, okay?”
“Ha,” said Les. “Okay. But I don’t even know how to wear a dress!”
That stopped Pris for a moment. “What do you mean, you don’t know how to wear a dress?”
“I’ve never worn one,” said Les. “Well,” he suddenly remembered an embarrassing picture in Mom-Mom’s album of himself wearing a christening gown. “I guess when I was really small.”
“Elle!” Pris exclaimed. “What do you wear to parties or church or school? My school has uniforms, and all the girls wear dresses.”
Les had to sit down. Hadn’t Jessie said something about he would be going to the same school with Pris? He shook his head, “Never went to church since I was small either.” Mom-Mom had been some sort of religious, not Catholic, but one of those denominations where people did get all dressed up to attend. But she left five years ago, taking him and the baby. Then the baby died, and they had put Mom-Mom in a home and sent him back to his father.
Les felt his lip trembling. The baby had been a girl, named Hanna. She was just three when she died after being sick almost all her life, leukemia they said. It was all too horrible to think about.
He became aware that Pris was sitting beside him again, holding his hand with one of hers, her other hand around his shoulders. Neither of them said anything for a time while Les wept for his Mom-Mom and his baby sister. And himself.
He hadn’t cried for Mom-Mom and Hanna for a long time. Mostly, he cried when he was afraid, not because remembering hurt. A while after they both stopped crying, Les went to the bathroom to blow his nose, wash his face and drink more water.
He’s shut the door behind him, but Pris knocked, and he opened. She thrust the blue-green dress toward him. “Try it on?” she suggested. “I think you’ll be so pretty it will cheer you up.”
He doubted that, but he took the dress and nodded to Pris before closing the door again. Let her think he had an odd privacy kink.
It seemed simple to put on, more or less like a long t-shirt with a single hook at the back of his neck. Stripping out of the jeans and t-shirt, he slipped into the dress, fastened it while looking in the sink mirror then turned to examine his reflection in the full-length on the back of the door.
“Holy cow,” he said. The dress looked very nice on him. “What?” he said. He turned sideways, then the other way. He had never looked so good in his entire life. He didn’t look like a boy wearing a dress. He looked like…. He looked like a girl wearing a very pretty dress, one that came to just below his knees ending in a lacy ruffle.
He debated taking the dress off and telling Pris it didn’t fit. But it did fit, and something about the cut of it made him seem to have curves. He blinked several times, but the view did not change.
He tried to think of a reason not to wear the dress. But what kept occurring to him was that if he were going to have to pass as a girl to live with the Davenports, the dress would be his friend. No one looking at him in pale aqua with the little ruffle at the hips and the pink threads in the seams was going to think of him as a boy.
He sighed. Better get used to it, he told himself. But what’s going to happen when Dad or Mom does come after me? His stomach twinged, and he frowned at the girl in the mirror. Worry about that later, he decided.
He tried striking a couple of poses: hands on hips, one finger touching his chin while he looked thoughtful, another with both hands behind his head.
“Holy cow,” he said again. He giggled, feeling a bit silly, but still amazed that he did not look silly.
He reached out and opened the door so Pris could see how he looked.
She looked up from where she was still sorting clothes. First, her jaw dropped open, then she grinned. “You’re going to need shoes with that. What size do you wear?”
Les didn't know how to take compliments. He had a lot more experience at being insulted or ignored.
Les looked down. He giggled. “Yeah, the sneakers don’t go with the dress, huh?” He felt a bit dizzy. “I have no idea what size shoe I wear.”
Pris laughed. “They don’t. Let’s try some of my shoes.” She disappeared into her closet and came back out with half a dozen shoe boxes which she dropped in front of his bed. “These are some I don’t wear anymore. See if any fit you.”
Tentatively, he opened the boxes and examined the shoes. He cringed a bit when he observed that they tended to the feminine and decorative end. Pulling off the sneakers Maddy had bought for him, he checked them for size, noting that he was wearing thick socks with them and even so, they were a bit loose.
With that size info, he picked a pair of simple flats, navy with a small pink bow. Only slightly cringe-worthy, he decided. And they fit, though the thick teddy bear socks looked a bit odd with them.
Without him saying anything about the problem, Pris dropped an unopened package of lacy white socks beside him. He sighed, changed socks, buckled the new shoes across his ankle and stood.
Pris looked pleased. “Those work. Maybe not warm enough for outside in March but they look nice with….” She frowned. “You really don’t know how to wear a dress, do you?”
Les shook his head, embarrassed.
She gave him some instruction. “You were sitting, so when you stand up, you need to smooth the dress over your butt because it might ride up or catch on something. And keep your knees close together.”
He nodded, and Pris laughed.
“We should, uh, do something about those tacky bangles you’re wearing,” said Pris. “How about these instead?”
Les examined a pair of metal rings Pris passed over, one silvery, the other golden, both with worked leaf-and-flower motifs. Less gaudy, still feminine without being quite so flashy. He replaced the plastic rings on his left wrist almost happily, handing them to Pris with an embarrassed giggle.
“This is your dresser,” said Pris, putting the discarded plastic loops on top of the piece of furniture next to the bed he had been napping on.
A voice came from downstairs, “Girls? Dinner time.”
Pris grabbed his hand. “We eat dinner early here,” she said. “Because afterward, we take care of Mom’s animals.”
“Animals?” he repeated while being tugged toward the door.
“Uh-huh. You’ll see. We have stables at the back of the property, next to Mom’s office.”
“What kind of animals?” Les had some unpleasant past experience with the sort of large, ill-tempered dogs kept by members of the underclass.
“Horses, cattle, sheep, we had a mountain lion once, that was interesting,” said Pris. She pulled him out of the room and to the top of the circular stairs above the entry.
Wait, thought Les, I’m about to go downstairs to dinner wearing a dress! How did this happen? He tried to dig in his heels a bit. “Wait!” he squeaked as Pris’s larger size and greater strength urged him toward the precipice. The soft flats he was wearing didn’t do anything toward gripping the polished wood of the floor either.
Pris paused. “Oh!” she said. “You don’t know how to go down stairs wearing a skirt, do you?”
Les shook his head. He hadn’t even considered it as something one would have to learn. Perhaps his look of panic amused Pris because she snorted a laugh.
“Just put one hand on your thigh, like this,” she demonstrated. “If it’s outside and there’s a wind blowing, you might need two hands and to grab a bit of cloth.”
“Oh, fuh—” said Les as he and Pris descended, still holding hands. No, no, no. I can’t be doing this. I can’t.
“You’re fine,” said Pris. She led him through a wide living room and a formal dining room to where noises indicated people getting ready to eat. They passed through an archway with a large kitchen on the right and a smaller, but still substantial, room filled with an enormous table and ten chairs.
A white-haired man sat at one end in a captain’s chair. He didn’t look old enough to have really white hair, so maybe he was just a platinum blond. On his right sat a slim black girl, or woman, who turned to look at Pris and Les entering. “Hey, sis. Is this our new waif? She’s gorgeous,” the girl said.
“Hey, everybody,” Pris said loudly. “This is Ellie Love or just Elle. She’s going to be staying with us for a few weeks.”
Les felt his bones melt and almost collapsed from fright.
“You know Mom, Elle,” said Pris, gesturing at Jessie at the other end of the table. “And the only guy here is, Dad. Dr. Owen Davenport.”
The white-haired man smiled at Les. “I keep getting surrounded by beautiful women. I must have been a saint in a previous life,” he said.
Les looked at Pris quickly, but she ignored her father and continued the introductions. “Next to him on this side is Kimby, our oldest sister; she graduates from high school soon.”
The black girl chirped, “Hi, Elle.”
“Next to Kim is Carol,” said Pris. Another girl turned around to greet Les, and he saw that something was wrong with her face and that she was sitting in an elevated wheelchair.
Carol smiled crookedly and carefully pronounced a greeting. “Pleased to meet you, Ellie.”
Les ducked his head to acknowledge the greetings. “Hi,” he managed to gasp.
“On the other side of Dad, are the twins, Lolly and Molly.” Two eight-year-olds scowled at Pris. They couldn’t really be twins since one was blond and the other a brunette, probably Hispanic, with cinnamon skin and milk chocolate eyes.
“It’s Laura and Maribel,” said the little blonde, indignant. The brunette giggled.
“That’s what I said,” agreed Pris, “Lollipop and Mollybell.”
“No-o-o!” protested the small blonde who looked in fact like a younger version of Pris. The brunette giggled again and hid her face.
“Bettina and Josie sit over there,” Pris pointed at the empty opposite corner, next to the twins, and you and I will sit here between Carol and Mom.”
“You look very nice, Elle,” said Jessie. “That’s one of Pris’s frocks, but it looks better on you.”
Les shook his head, confused with all the names.
“Oh, yes, it does,” insisted Pris.
Having absolutely no idea of what to do or say, Les settled for a small giggle. It seems to work for Molly, he thought.
Pris whispered to him, “When you sit down, run a hand under your butt, so your dress isn’t all wrinkled when you stand up.”
I never knew wearing a dress was so complicated, Les thought. Which caused him to smile with the absurdity of the thought. Amazingly, everyone at the table smiled back.
Owen, the male Dr. Donovan, looked pointedly at Pris. “The twins set the table, so it’s your turn to help serve, Priscilla.”
“Sure,” said Pris. “That’s why I hadn’t sat down yet.” She tapped Les on the shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen where Les could see two women working at the counters. “And you and Carol get to help clean up,” Pris said in passing.
Me? thought Les.
Beside him, across the empty chair between them, Carol laughed softly. “It’s fun. I carry stuff to the sink in my lap,” she said in her precise way of speaking.
And then everyone was talking at once as Pris, and the two women (one of whom was Bettina that Les had met before) brought in bowls of salad and soup, baskets of bread, platters of meat and vegetables, and pitchers of water, juice and milk.
“Did you find any other clothes you liked in Pris’s closet?” Jessie was asking him after getting his attention in the hubbub.
“We just started,” he explained. “This was the first thing I picked up, and Pris insisted I try it on.” He blushed.
“Well,” Jessie said. “You have excellent taste. That color is perfect for you.”
Les could only giggle, unable to tell Jessie how much he had resisted putting the dress on.
She laughed. “You don’t know how to take compliments, do you?” she asked.
He shook his head. He had a lot more experience at being insulted or ignored.
Once everyone was seated, with Pris slipping into the seat next to Les, Owen held his hands out to each side. “Let’s all hold hands and give thanks for this meal.”
Les took Jessie’s hand on one side, and Pris’s on the other, wondering. It wasn’t Thanksgiving, did the Davenport family do this at every meal.
Owen spoke what could only be called a prayer, though it was not addressed to any sort of supreme being.
“Let us be joyful,” he said in a clear baritone, “in our daily lives and thankful for our fellowship and this meal we share tonight. Let us be humble to remember that we did not make this food grow and respectful of those who had a hand in its preparation.”
He continued, and his words pierced Les’s heart. “And let us welcome the new addition to our circle tonight, Ellie Love, whose name reminds us of why we are a family. Let her grow in closeness within our circle so that when she returns to her own family, she will know that she will always have friends here.”
Les burst into tears.
Eating dinner as part of a large family was a new experience for Les.
Jessie put a hand on Les’s arm. “Are you okay, dear?” she asked. “Do you need to leave the table?” Pris in the chair beside him gave a one-armed hug.
Les shook his head, trying to smile through his tears. “I just—I don’t know. I’ve never heard such a beautiful prayer. We didn’t pray at mealtimes in my family.” He looked up to see everyone at the table smiling at him.
Josie, the young woman sitting directly across from him (and who looked as if she might be Bettina’s daughter) chuckled. “I’m glad to know it wasn’t because my mashed potatoes have lumps in them.”
Everyone laughed then. Jessie handed Les a cloth napkin from beside his own plate, and he dried his tears with that then put it into his lap like he saw everyone else had already done.
Pris leaned over to whisper, “Josie is a really good cook. If her potatoes have lumps in them, it’s because they’re better that way. Her school is on spring break, and she’s visiting her mom and helping with the cooking.”
Les nodded, he had wondered. The Davenport family seemed very varied and complex. He smiled, thinking that adding a boy in a dress hardly disturbed things at all.
And suddenly he was ravenous. Hunger often struck that way with him. He’d lost the only meal he’d eaten during the day, a victim of tension and fright but now platters, bowls, and decanters were being passed around the table.
He accepted a platter from Jessie of what looked like small circles of meat and took one of them to put on his plate before passing the dish on to Pris.
“Beef medallions,” she said. “Yummy. You should take two because they will never make it back around this end of the table.” She took two for her own plate and put a second one on Les’s.
He started to protest but the smell of the food caused him to have to swallow a mouthful of saliva, and he missed his chance while Jessie, on his other side, put a large spoon of mashed potatoes next to the beef. A gravy bowl followed after he passed the potatoes on and Jessie ladled some of the golden brown liquid atop both meat and vegetables.
Baked squash and steamed broccoli followed along with a piece of fluffy bread from a basket, a glass of milk from one of the pitchers and a separate small plate for some mixed green salad.
“Maddy told me you like milk,” Jessie commented.
Les laughed, a giggle, really. “We didn’t always have milk. I remember eating breakfast cereal with Dr. Pepper on it.”
“Ew!” said Pris and Jessie made a face.
“This seems like a lot of food,” Les said. “I’m not sure I can eat all of it.”
“What you can’t finish will go into the slops for our piggies,” Jessie told him.
“And then, we eat the piggies,” said Pris.
Les made a face, and Pris laughed.
“Eventually,” agreed Jessie. “This is a real farm, and we want the kids to know where their food comes from.”
“Circle K?” said Les, looking completely innocent.
Pris howled with laughter, and Jessie chuckled. Then Pris had to repeat the joke to everyone at the table, all of whom laughed, too. By which time, Les had managed to eat most of the food on his plate, including a dinner roll that was some of the best bread he had ever tasted.
Small bowls of fruit brought from the kitchen by Pris and Josie served as dessert and Les managed to eat more than a few bites of that, too. He wasn’t sure he had ever been as satisfied with a meal, but he had stopped before getting completely stuffed.
Owen stood up and announced, “Kimby and I have the animals to deal with tonight, but anyone who hasn’t something else to do is welcome to come along.” The twins were on their feet immediately and followed their father and oldest sister out through a utility room with much chatting and giggling. After speaking to her mother, Josie hurried to catch up.
Carol leaned forward in her chair and said to Les around Pris. “It’s our turn to clean the table. You get the silverware. I will start on the plates.” Les nodded, pleased to feel useful. It wouldn’t take too long. Every diner had already carried most of the things they had used themselves into the kitchen.
Jessie and Bettina helped and supervised, directing the gathering of the serving dishes. Pots and pans had been soaking in hot water during dinner and were ready to be washed.
Bettina put away leftovers, and Jessie discarded scraps after showing Les how to tie on an apron so he could rinse plates and bowls and start filling the dishwasher. “I like to dress up for dinner, too, “ she said to him. “Even if I have to be extra careful if I’m doing clean-up.”
A giggle seemed like a safe reply to that, Les decided.
Carol made several trips in her chair and seemed pleased with herself each time. “I can’t reach into the sink from my chair. Or the cabinets to put things away,” she told Les. “I always do the table cleaning. I like doing it.”
Les smiled and nodded, unsure of what to say.
The efficiency of the operation impressed him. In a large family, such organization would be necessary. The clean-up of the kitchen went quickly, and Les felt good about helping out and doing something for his hosts. Even if he was wearing a dress to do it.
Pris showed up and volunteered to show him where to put things away. “You’ll get the hang of it,” she assured him.
“It’s not rocket science,” Les agreed, standing on tiptoe to replace a salad bowl on a high shelf.
Carol said, “That’s good. I’m terrible at rocket science.” After everyone laughed, she added, “Finally. Someone gets one of my jokes.” She grinned when that got more laughs.
Later, Pris and Les went up to her room. Or, our room, Les thought. It looks like I’m going to be staying awhile at least.
“You ready to try on more clothes?” Pris asked.
He groaned. “I’m terrible at trying on clothes,” he suggested.
Pris laughed. “Actually, I think you’re going to be good at it. You’re so slim—almost anything is going to look good on you.” She picked out another dress from the pile. “Try this one. It never fit me right.”
“It’s pink!” he protested.
She nodded. “Coral pink. You’re a dark-haired spring, so it will look great on you. I’m a summer, and it makes me look ill.”
“Huh?” said Les.
Pris loaded another dress in his arms too and pushed him toward the bathroom. “Try them both on!” she said.
“At least this one isn’t pink,” he muttered looking at the simply cut charcoal of the second dress. But it’s still a dress, he told himself.
Might as well get it over with, he decided. Taking the turquoise dress off turned out to be harder than putting it on until he remembered the hook behind the neck. After that, it was easy.
“Do you have pierced ears?” Pris asked through the door.
“Uh, no,” Les answered. He put the aqua dress back on a hanger before checking the coral one for booby traps. Oh, no, it had slight padding in the bust. He was already wearing a padded bra. Maybe he should take it off?
“You don’t have, like, religious objections to getting your ears pierced, do you?”
“What? No. Why would anyone object for religious reasons?” Les wasn’t big on understanding religion in the first place, but he didn’t object to the idea of pierced ears. It’s just he was pretty sure what kind of earrings Pris would want him to wear. His Uncle Billy had pierced ears with large black studs in them. He almost told Pris that before thinking better of it.
He smoothed the coral dress over his thighs and looked in the mirror. The color seemed to light up his features as much as the aqua had. Spring, huh? It kind of made sense.
“Your parents wouldn’t object? To ear piercing?”
“I dunno,” Les admitted. Not half as much as they would to me wearing a dress he thought, looking at the mirror again and touching his earlobes. He tried to take in the whole picture and felt a sinking sensation. If anything, he was even prettier in the pink dress. “I’m doomed,” he said aloud.
“Huh?” Pris asked from the other side of the door. “Why?”
“You want to put more holes in my head,” said Les. “I’m doomed.” He opened the door and on a whim struck a pose like he had seen girls in magazines and catalogs do.
First Pris laughed then she gasped. “That never looked so good on me, Elle! You should be a model.”
Would he get so used to dressing as a girl that he would not want to go back to being a boy?
After trying on a few more clothes, Les had to admit that he did wear them well. Odder still, he discovered that the girlier he looked in the mirror, the safer he felt. No one could see the girl in the lacy dress and imagine that she might be a boy who was avoiding going to juvie.
In one way, it scared him to discover this. What if he ended up here for months? Would he get so used to dressing as a girl that he would not want to go back to being a boy? What if when his parents came for him, they didn’t want to take him home because he was no longer their son?
And what happened when the Davenports discovered his deception? Because—how could they not, eventually?
“What’s wrong?” Pris asked, pausing in her efforts to reorganize the closet to make a separate part just for the clothes Elle was choosing.
“I-I can’t take your things,” Les said again. He had to say something.
“Sure you can, and I already got permission from my Mom to give them to you.”
“No,” he said. “I mean, when I leave, I won’t… you don’t understand. We live in motels and trailers and shacks. Your stuff is way too nice for—for me.” He knew he would start crying again in a moment.
Pris emerged from the closet and rushed to Elle’s side. “Hug?” she offered, arms open wide.
The two did hug briefly, but Les broke away, sniffling.
Pris handed him a tissue. “So, when you leave, if you leave, take what you can with you. Okay?”
“I—,” he tried to protest.
“No, no,” Pris insisted. “We’ve got nice things because we’re rich and if we don’t give some of it away, we’ll all go to hell.” She seemed completely serious. “You don’t want me to go to hell, do you?”
Les broke up, laughing and crying at the same time. Pris joined in the laughing and gave him another hug. Then she handed him a box of tissue.
Wiping his eyes and blowing his nose gave Les time to think. On some level, he wanted out of the mess he was in. Wearing girl’s clothes was not the right thing to do, he felt sure. But dressing as a boy would probably result in him being held in some form of juvenile custody that would expose him to the violence of older boys.
And now he understood a little bit more of why he kept getting beat up in such situations. He really did look like a girl, especially with his hair as long as it had gotten. A haircut wasn’t going to fix it though, he suspected. He’d just look like a girl with a boy’s hairstyle, and teenage manly boys were the natural enemies of teenage girly boys.
He smiled, shook his head and sighed. Pris looked at him, also smiling with...with...? Sisterly concern? How would he know, he’d never had a sister before.
Or been one.
Would he ever stop crying?
Pris’s concern wasn’t really helping, and now he had the hiccoughs. “Hold your nose and breather through your mouth,” she told him.
Well, it got him to stop crying, and besides that, it stopped the hiccoughs. Mostly.
“Hic,” he said.
Pris shook her head and then made a face at him, eyes crossed, tongue sticking out sideways.
He giggled and hiccoughed again. Pris brought a washcloth, and he washed his face and hands. They sat next to each other on his bed, Elle’s bed, clothes piled on either side of them. Pris held his hands, and neither said anything for a long time.
“I’m just worried about my folks, I guess,” Les volunteered. He meant he worried about what they might say about his solution for staying out of juvie. Would he ever escape the consequences of what he was doing?
“What happened?” Pris asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” he admitted.
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” She seemed astonished.
“No one tells kids anything much. Maddy, uh, Mrs. Madison said my dad is in jail for being in a fight, and my step-mom is in the hospital. So I know they aren’t dead which is what the cops told me to get me to open the motel room door.”
“They lied?”
Pris’s offended tone was funny. Les giggled. “Cops lie, people lie, all the time to kids.”
“So you—they—.” The unfairness apparently broke Pris’s ability to cope with the information. “Kimby and Carol went through some awful stuff, but I didn’t know much about it at the time. I was small. And Mollybell had problems….” She was quiet a moment. “We’ve had other girls stay with us, sometimes just for a few days….” She trailed off again.
Then brightened up. “Aunt Maddy said you would likely be with us for two weeks or so. We can have fun while you’re here.”
Les smiled. “Okay,” he said. He wanted to have fun, but he did need to protect his secret. “Am I having all the fun here? Why don’t when I try something on, you do too?”
“Hey! I like that idea, but I wish I had some new stuff to try. I’ve got things I haven’t worn in months, mostly because of weather.” She hopped up and disappeared into her closet. “But it’ll be warm enough for some of this stuff soon. And I ought to find out what still fits.” She poked her head out and grinned. “We could end up with a good excuse to go shopping!”
Shopping? thought Les, rolling his eyes. But he picked up another of Pris’s discarded gowns and headed for the bathroom. This one is not going to fit. Even I’m not that skinny.
But when he had it on, it did indeed fit and looked good on him. He sighed, looking in the mirror at the slender girl he could see. This thing is so short, if I lift my hands above my head, someone will see my underwear. He blushed though no one else could see.
“Elle,” Pris called from the bedroom. “Come out. I want to show you something. And are you wearing the green mini? You need tights with that or someone will see your panties.” She giggled.
Emerging from the bathroom, Les commented, “You could have told me…. Oh.”
Pris struck a pose in the blue-over-red one-piece swimsuit she was wearing.
Les grinned. “It’s too cold to go swimming, but you look cute in that.”
“I know, huh?” Pris beamed. “But I found two that will probably fit you and not me, anymore.” She pointed at the bed. “And the club has a heated indoor pool.”
“Club?” said Les, looking at the colorful suits lying beside the gowns that had not been tried on yet.
“Evandale Society and Culture Club,” Pris said. “It’s really just a country club, but they had to get fancy with the name cause this is Evandale.” She laughed. Then slyly added. “I bet I know which of the suits you’ll want to wear first.”
“Hmph,” said Les. One was almost plain navy blue with stripey white details at the seams and straps. The other was aqua and pink with a fluffy mock skirt just above the hips. He looked over at Pris and picked up the plainer one-piece. “This one?”
She laughed. “Can’t fool me,” she said. “The other would be your favorite. You’re turning into a real girly-girl, now that you have a chance to wear skirts.”
Yikes! thought Les, but he blushed and giggled, too. Pris at least was being fooled by his act. “You should’ve told me about needing tights with this one,” he accused, gesturing at the sea-green dress he wore. “I’m afraid to bend over.”
“It’s just us girls here. And you’d be an idiot not to wear tights outside with a skirt in March around here.” She took another look at Les. “That makes you look like you have really long legs. And it is way too short on me now.”
She handed the pink, skirted swimsuit to him. “Try this on, and we’ll see if we can get Mom or Dad or someone to take us to the club after school tomorrow.”
“School?” said Les with a sinking sensation.
“Sure,” said Pris. “You didn’t think you got to skip school just cause your parents have problems, did you? But don’t worry, you’ll go with me. It’s an all-girl private school, and no one will be trying to look up your skirt.” She laughed.
Les took the girly-girl suit into the bathroom to try on without even thinking about it. He had something new to think about. Could he fool a whole school full of girls into thinking he was one of them?
Would he dream of being a girl?
After getting the closets sorted out, with one large pile to go to charity, Les and Pris lay sideways across Pris’s bed under the larger of the two bedroom windows and talked about school.
“It’s a very nice school, Evandale Academy Middle School. That’s grades six to nine. What grade are you in?” Pris asked.
“Sixth,” said Les. “I got held back one year because we moved around so much, and I got sick, so I missed most of the second grade.”
“That sorta sucks,” said Pris. “But that means we’re in the same grade.” She turned sideways and grinned at him. “And you look younger than thirteen anyway. Has your chest started developing yet?”
Les blushed and resisted the urge to giggle nervously. “Uh, no,” he admitted.
“Pretty soon, then,” Pris suggested. “Mom says the next thing for me is probably my first period.” She made a face. “She’s got me wearing panty-liners to school ‘cause she says it could be any day now.”
“Yikes,” said Les and they both giggled for entirely different reasons.
“You’re wearing a bra even though you don’t need one?” Pris observed.
“Uh-huh,” he said, embarrassed even more than hearing about Pris’s looming period. During the trying on of clothes, Pris had opened the bathroom door a few times and seen him in his underwear. And she still didn’t seem to suspect that he was a boy. Wearing two pairs of panties had successfully kept everything out of sight, apparently.
“Did Maddy buy it for you?”
“Maddy bought everything for me,” Les told her. “All I had to wear was a pair of dirty pajamas.”
“She must have not wanted you to be embarrassed about not being developed yet,” Pris offered as a guess. “Your first bra?”
Les nodded, unable to even grunt an agreement.
Pris sat up and tugged him up into a hug. “Won’t be long,” she whispered in his ear. “You’ll be a big girl, soon.”
Heart pounding, Les hugged her back. He almost wished it could be true, that he really was like Pris and looking forward to growing up to be a big girl, too. And not just a boy trying to avoid the hell of juvenile detention.
***
The elder Davenports came in to say good night a bit before the two youngsters started feeling sleepy.
Jessie, Mrs. Davenport, chided them both to brush and floss. “Here’s a new brush for each of you, throw the old one away, Pris.” She handed out the equipment, one pink and one lavender.
Les ended up with the pink one. Of course, he thought. But it had been some time since he’d had a new toothbrush, frequently making do with his finger, so he accepted with a murmured, “Thank you.”
Owen, Mr. Davenport, reminded them that it was a school night and that they should be in bed before nine, then relented and allowed them a bedtime of ten with a wink. “I guess Elle doesn’t need as much beauty sleep as you, Pris, so you both can stay up. Wouldn’t be fair otherwise,” he said.
“You’re funny, Daddy,” Pris accused with a mock scowl. Les knew he must be blushing and said nothing at all.
Hugs were offered and accepted, Les feeling very strange about this ritual but comforted none the less. He couldn’t remember the last time a man had given him a hug. Jessie added a kiss to each forehead then the parental units departed to send the “twins” down the hall to bed, too.
When they had gone, Les stared at the door for a long time. “Your folks are nice,” he said at last.
Pris nodded, watching him closely. Les had a slight smile on his face and one tear rolling down his cheek. She said nothing about it but instead opened a drawer and took out a pair of nightgowns. “It’ll be cold when they turn the heat down, but I don’t think cold enough for flannel.” She handed one to Les.
He accepted the garment, noting that both gowns were pink this time and made of some almost sheer material that still felt like cotton. He smiled wider and wiped away the single tear.
“You go first,” Pris offered, gesturing at the bathroom. “I’m going to dig out one of my old school uniforms that should fit you. You can try it on tomorrow.”
“Okay,” said Les. What was one more dress fitting, after all?
After brushing and flossing, he changed out of the last dress he had tried on—a lovely if utilitarian blue corduroy jumper—and into the nightgown, leaving the bathroom for Pris to use. She had already changed into her gown and only needed to clean her teeth which she did with the door open, chattering away with a mouth full of foam.
“I’m wearing my bra to bed because I’m tender up there and the padding keeps me from scratching in my sleep. But I can see your bra straps and you don’t need to wear one except for looks, so why wear it to bed?” she asked.
Les blushed which made Pris giggle. “I want to get used to wearing it,” he said. Honestly, he had not thought to remove it. Or his jewelry, he realized, taking off the necklace and bracelet now and putting them on the dresser.
“Okay. I understand that. In fact, I think I did the same thing with my first bra. I just didn’t want to take it off.” She giggled and he laughed, too, still blushing.
Les clambered into bed awkwardly, a bit unsure of how to manage the skirt of the nightgown without flashing his panties. I’ve really got myself into a mess here, he thought, but everyone is so nice to me. He pulled the covers up to his chin and snuggled into the cool, clean sheets. He wouldn’t even be here if they knew he was a boy, Maddy said they only took in girls here.
Pris turned out the lights on her way to bed, leaving only a peanut bulb glowing in the bathroom and the small amount of light from under the hallway door. Above both beds, a suburban darkness filled the windows and a sliver of moon sailed through cloudy shoals illuminated from below by the distant city.
They talked a bit in the darkness. “I don’t know if we’re supposed to ride the bus in the morning or if Mom or Bettina will be taking us to school, since you will have to register,” Pris said.
Les felt a pang of anxiety, would someone at the school discover his secret? How could they not? He must have made a noise because Pris was quick to reassure him.
“Don’t worry, Aunt Maddy will have taken care of most of the paperwork, like she always does,” she said. “Good night,” she added, turning over.
Les lay still in the darkness for some time then the quirk of acoustics brought him voices from downstairs again.
Owen Davenport was saying, “Elle is such a pretty thing but so shy.”
“From what I heard from Maddy, she has reason to be timid,” Jessie commented.
“Mmm. Well, whatever else her parents did wrong they managed to raise a sweet, polite and really lovely daughter,” Owen said.
No, they didn’t, thought Les.
“She’s ours now, probably for at least a few weeks,” said Jessie. “Let’s not mess it up. Doesn’t she wear clothes well?”
“She does that. She has a careful grace and a vulnerable awkwardness at the same time that is very endearing,” agreed Owen as the two moved through the spot downstairs where voices carried upward through the vents.
Les lay still, comforted by the voices but still worried about the morning. What would school be like? He’d be wearing a dress out in public, wouldn’t someone notice that he was a boy? At his last school, sixth grade was at the elementary level, would going to a middle school be different? And it was a private academy which meant a lot of rich kids, he didn’t know if he could fit in.
A lot of rich girls, he corrected himself. How on Earth could he fit in?
Pris was nice, though. All of the Davenports were nice to him.
They wouldn’t be if they found out he was really a boy, though. And just how long could he keep that a secret?
He had to try. He was even going to be sleeping in a dress. Would he dream that he was really a girl?
No one dressed in such a definitively girly way could possibly be a boy, could they?
Falling asleep proved harder than he had thought for Les. Despite nervous exhaustion brought on by the events of the day, he lay between the covers hovering between wakefulness and oblivion.
The noises of the household faded slowly. He heard the adult Davenports go to their room on the other side of the staircase and Kimby followed shortly into her room across the hall. The twins’ room at the end had been silent for some time.
Downstairs, Carol, Bettina, and Josie stopped moving around. In the bed below the other window, Pris’s breath became one slow sigh after another.
Outside, an animal made a noise like a drowsy oboe. Further away, traffic whispered on some road going to or from the city. In the greater distance, a moving train communicated a bass note, felt rather than heard.
The world slept.
Lying in the darkness, Les dozed off several times only to waken with a start of fear. No images accompanied his fright, formless in its power. He couldn’t fight it and at last had to surrender to a night terror that brought him fully awake, sitting up, with his hands over his mouth to keep him from screaming.
His heart thuttered like a small captured bird trying to escape the jaws of a stray cat. He got up and went to the bathroom, the peanut light under the sink casting shadows on the ceiling. Being dressed in the nightgown reminded him to sit down to pee. He even thought to unroll a length of toilet paper to wipe with, just in case Pris was lying awake listening.
What would his punishment be when his deception was found out? A trip to juvenile hall and some youth detention center, certainly. There he would likely be beaten by guards and boys alike, perhaps worse than beatings. He shuddered.
Finishing his business, he pulled both pairs of panties up, hiding his boy parts up inside him again. Then he debated whether he should flush for number one. He had spent some time living in the Colorado desert and down there, you didn’t flush for a simple number one. And flushing noisily might wake up Pris who probably wasn’t used to sharing her bedroom and bath.
He compromised by closing the lid and tiptoeing back to bed.
He lay awake between the covers for a long time. In the morning, according to Pris, he would be going with Mrs. Davenport to get registered for school. A girl’s school that Pris went to, too. Pris had already laid out a school uniform for him.
Another dress for Elle.
He’d seen the uniforms Pris had laid out. He didn’t know the words to describe it, but it was not exactly a dress. It had a plaid jumper skirt with a dark green bib. A long sleeved pale green blouse, a red bowtie, and a plaid jacket. Tall yellow socks and maryjanes completed the look. The plaid had red, green, black and yellow in it. There was also a silly looking hat with a red pompom on top of it.
The idea of wearing the uniform made Les cringe. Then again, no one dressed in such a definitively girly way could possibly be a boy, could they?
The shoes were a small problem. Pris’s older pair of shoes barely fit him but didn’t fit her at all. “I’ve got big feet,” Pris said earlier, clowning around as if she wore circus shoes. Les smiled, remembering. “We’ll buy new shoes after school tomorrow,” Pris had decided.
Les shook his head to think about how much money had already been spent on him by Maddy and the Davenports — and going to a private school? That couldn’t be cheap and in an expensive suburb, too — lots of bucks.
A girls’ school. How would he keep his secret? His stomach cramped in anticipation of the tension and stress he would be under. “Don’t throw up,” he told himself silently. In the darkness and quiet, he managed to master the urge to vomit and fell back into a fitful sleep while repeating to himself. “Don’t throw up, don’t throw up,” until it lost all meaning.
* * *
He dreamed of the short time it had just been him, his mother and his baby sister Hanna. Becky or Rebecca, his Mom-Mom, his birth mother, had left his father and they had moved to Sherman, Texas where they rented a house and the baby was sick all the time.
Elle, Mom-Mom had said, here’s five dollars, go to the Circle-K and get the baby some Pedialyte, she’s dehydrated. So Les trotted down to the freeway exit in his maryjanes and school jumper, but he couldn’t see Pedialyte on the shelves. He hunted and hunted for it but couldn’t find it.
He finally remembered that Mom-Mom had once bought Gatorade when she couldn’t find Pedialyte, so he found a bottle of that and went up to pay. Leaving the store with the bottle of pink grapefruit-flavored Gatorade in a bag and some change in his hand, three boys stopped him.
They were wearing jumpers too, but theirs were blue, and they accused him of being a sissy for going to an all-girls’ school which they could tell because of his plaid skirt.
Give us your money, sissy, one of the boys demanded. What’s in the bag, another asked. Then they took his money and drank the Gatorade and when he got back to the house, the baby had died.
But it’s not your fault, Elle, Mom-Mom said. It’s not your fault.
He relived the dream over and over. Sometimes he found the Pedialyte or the Gatorade was green or the boys beat him up before taking his money and drinking the life-giving fluid. Once they promised to kill him if they saw him again.
But the baby always died, and Mom-Mom said it was her fault and she went crazy, and the police came and took her away so she wouldn’t hurt herself.
* * *
Les woke as dawn broke through the springtime haze over the city’s more rural suburbs. Pink sky pushed back the darkness, and animal and traffic noises began to penetrate the quiet room.
Someone knocked on the door. “Breakfast in twenty minutes, bus leaves in an hour.”
Les stirred. Breakfast did not sound horrible.
The voice came again. Was that Kimby, the oldest adopted daughter? “Make a noise, so I know you’re alive.”
“Augh!” said Pris from her bed under the other window. “I can get ten more minutes of sleep if you keep quiet.”
“There’s two of you to use the bathroom now, remember?” Kimby said through the door, but then her footsteps went away.
“Elle,” Pris begged, “you can shower first and wake me when you’re done.”
“Okay,” Les agreed without thinking. Shower?
He got out of bed, pulling his nightgown down to cover his knees. A real shower? Would the water be hot? He hadn’t had more than a sponge bath in days. The shower in the motel room had been hideously unusable; even the cockroaches were mildewed.
He went into the bathroom to examine the plumbing. A large tub had a sliding door of translucent glass and a showerhead with a detachable nozzle. Rich people have nice showers, Les thought.
Quickly, he gathered things he would need from his dresser and the chair where Pris had laid out the school uniform he would wear.
He had to hurry so he could get done before Pris needed to use the shower, too. The bathroom door had no lock, so if she came in while he was exposed, the next bath he got would be in juvenile detention.
Big fluffy towels were on a rack above the laundry hamper which also contained a stack of washcloths. Soap, shampoo, and a funny, net scrubber like a big nylon flower were inside the shower already. The water got hot quickly.
Les stripped off everything, including his two pair of undies and his padded bra, and jumped in, shutting the door.
He washed grime out of his hair, enjoying the fresh floral scent and not caring how feminine it might be. Creme rinse was a luxury he had seldom had the option of before, so he used that too. The rest of the shower went quickly.
He stepped out onto the bathmat after first opening the door a crack to be sure Pris was not in the room. He wrapped one fluffy pink towel around himself, remembering to put it under his arms. He wrapped another towel around his wet hair to soak up some of the water before combing it.
He looked in the mirror, seeing himself wearing two oddly placed large fluffy towels. He smiled and shifted his position a bit to catch a glimpse of the girl he hoped everyone else would see, fresh out of her bath and looking clean and happy.
No one dressed in such a definitively girly way could possibly be a boy, could they?
Les dressed quickly, two pairs of undies again, his training bra, and then the uniform blouse and dress. His wet hair hung past his shoulders as he went into the bedroom to wake Priscilla.
“Five more minutes,” Pris whined.
“Okay,” he said, standing by the bed. He glanced at the clock, seeing that he had used up more than half of their allotted twenty minutes in his own shower. With a sigh, he counted to five then bent over to drag his wet hair across Pris’s face.
“Augh!” she cried, flinching so hard she almost fell out of the bed.
Les stepped back, trying to look innocent as Pris sat up and glared around. “You!” Pris accused.
“Me?” asked Les, green eyes wide.
Pris glanced at the clock, yelped and dashed for the bathroom. Les stood, walked over, closed the door and sat back on the bed. He smiled, remembering once when his birth mom had woken him in the same way. Then he tried to figure out how to put on socks while wearing a skirt without flashing his undies.
Socks conquered, Les deciphered the mysteries of maryjane buckles, decided the bowtie and jacket could wait till after breakfast, and spent the next several minutes combing his hair and listening to Pris laugh while she got ready in the bathroom.
“I’m going to get you for that, Elle,” Pris promised as she emerged from the bathroom, wearing only one towel and with her hair dry. She dropped the towel and kicked it back into the bathroom then stepped to her dresser and pulled out undies. “When you least expect it, too,” she said.
Les had smiled at first, but then, startled by her behavior, he tried to look away and ended up twisting completely around on the bed to avoid seeing his naked roommate in any of the room’s mirrors.
“Maybe at lunch, an ice cube down the back,” mused Pris. She giggled. “You are such a surprise, girl. So solemn and shy then you pull something like that.” She turned around, fastening her bra behind her.
Noticing Les’s awkward position, she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Uh,” said Les. “I’m not just shy when I’m naked?”
Pris laughed. “Okay, now I know just how to get you!”
“Ack!” Les protested, and Pris answered with a cackle.
* * *
They trundled downstairs only five minutes late but not the only tardy ones. Doctor Owen was just settling into his position at the head of the table, admonishing the twins as he did so. “No standing on your chairs, girls. This is breakfast, not gymnastics,” he said with a grin.
Giggling, Lolly and Molly settled down.
Breakfast turned out to be egg-in-a-window with the bread toasted a perfect golden brown, served with a single piece of bacon, a dish of sliced apple and pitchers of various things to drink.
“Dig in, kids,” Owen told them. “Jessie, Kimby and Carol already ate and said a prayer.”
The egg dish was something new for Les, and he approached it cautiously, watching Pris to see how she ate it. The proper procedure seemed to be to pop the toasty little square that had been cut out to make the window into your mouth, all buttery and crunchy, then to use a knife and fork to chop the rest into bite-size pieces covered in slightly gooey egg yolk.
“Good, huh?” said Pris and Les nodded.
The salty bacon made a nearly perfect taste combination completed by the sweet-tart apple slices. The meal was so good, Les’s toes curled and uncurled in his maryjanes. “I don’t usually eat breakfast,” he commented. “Or just a Poptart or something.” He didn’t mention putting soda pop on cornflakes as a meal, and in fact, that had been for supper.
Owen looked annoyed but quickly smoothed his expression out. “A good breakfast is important,” he said mildly. “No wonder you’re so skinny.”
“She’s not skinny, she’s fashionably thin,” said Pris. “Dad, you should see, she looks fantastic in almost anything she tries on.”
Les blushed. Not only did he not know how to react to compliments, but he was also being praised for looking good in girl’s clothing; something he wasn’t sure was a thing to be proud of.
“Are we going to ride the bus to school?” Pris asked Owen.
“You are,” her father replied. “Jessie will be taking Elle in so they can fill out paperwork at the office. And she has to take a placement test so they can put her in the correct grade.”
Les’s heart sank. He knew he wasn’t a good test taker and his feelings about it must have shown on his face.
“She’s in sixth grade with me,” said Pris, defensively.
Owen nodded. “Most likely, but does she need any extra classes to get caught up with everyone else?” He looked over at Les. “I mean, your life has not been exactly stable, has it?”
“No, sir,” said Les. “We moved around a lot, sometimes five or six times in one school year.”
A moment of anger flashed in Owen’s eyes but was extinguished by a smile. “We’ll try to do better by you, honey. We’ve lived in the same house here since before Pris started school.”
“Molly lived on the moon once,” Lolly announced.
Maribel shook her head, smiling. “It was just a cul-de-sac called Luna Place.”
“Luna is the moon’s name,” said Lolly, grinning now. “And the moon is a place.”
Les laughed with the others at Lolly’s logic. It gave him an unexpected warm feeling to be sharing jokes around the breakfast table. At least, jokes that didn’t involve alcohol, mayhem or arrests.
“Can’t Elle go to school with me on the bus? She could go to first period with me and not have to sit around here waiting for someone to take her?” Pris offered.
“I thought that she and I could get acquainted this morning. It’s Wednesday, so I’m not going into the office and can wait till a bit later to do my hospital visits,” Owen said.
Les glanced at Pris, but before anyone could say anything else, Josie called from the hallway. “Phone call for Dr. Davenport from Dr. Davenport,” she said with a small laugh.
Owen smiled. “I’d better take this,” he said. Carrying his coffee cup with him, he went to the living room phone to accept the call.
*
Les and Pris went back up to the room they shared to finish getting dressed.
“Wish you could ride the bus today with me,” said Pris, tying her bowtie.
“Me, too,” said Les. “It’s neat having a friend my own age.”
Impulsively, Pris gave him a hug. “You didn’t have friends?”
Les shook his head, trying not to cry. “Not many, we moved too often. I was always the new kid.”
“And I bet because you’re so pretty that a lot of the other girls were jealous,” Pris guessed.
Les shook his head harder. “I’m not—” he tried to begin but couldn’t think of what to say.
“Oh, yes, you are,” Pris insisted. “You’re going to be the prettiest girl in sixth grade!”
“I’m not—” Les tried again.
“Uh, huh!” said Pris. “The middle school boys are going to be coming down the street to our school, just to see you!”
She said it with a twinkle in her eye and Les suspected he was being teased now. “Huh-uh,” he said, but he knew his face was red with embarrassment.
Pris laughed. “How can you not know what you look like? Was your mom beautiful, too?”
That stopped Les. He considered it. His father, when most annoyed with him, often accused him of being just like his mother. Meaning Mom-Mom, and he knew he did resemble her in coloring and features.
But he had always supposed that his dad meant that he was hard to get along with, like when he refused to steal tips off of tables in restaurants. “You’re a kid, you can get away with it,” his father had demanded.
“Yes,” he told Pris. “I do look like her. And she was very pretty. But it caused her problems….”
“Huh?”
“When other men would notice her, Dad would accuse her of flirting with them. Then sometimes he would hit her….” Les trailed off.
Pris’s appalled expression had stopped him from telling more. “Is that why you don’t want anyone telling you how pretty you are?” she asked.
“Part of it, maybe?” Les admitted. It hadn’t occurred to him before but being told he was beautiful was scary in more than one way.
Pris pulled him into another hug, whispering, “No one is going to beat on you here, Ellie. You’re safe.”
No, I’m not, he thought. But he hugged her back before pushing away from her. But he smiled.
Pris smiled, too, stepping back to look him over. “You are beautiful. And cute in the school uniform.” Then she laughed. “But you never learned to tie a bowtie, huh?”
“I can tie a bow but not under my chin,” he admitted, looking in the mirror at the mess he had made of the accessory. “Help?”
*
The other kids had all caught their buses, and Dr. Owen sat with Les in his home office, attempting to put the disguised boy at ease.
“Jessie called a bit ago, and she and Maddy are on their way here. Now, don’t worry, but Maddy says she wants to talk to you about something. I’m sure it isn’t anything too important, but it might be news about your folks,” said the doctor.
Les was not reassured. How could any information be other than bad news? And there was the obvious possibility that he was going to be found out as being a boy and would have to leave the Davenport home. He felt ice in the pit of his stomach and the wholesome breakfast he wasn’t used to having threatened to come back up.
“Yes, sir,” he managed to say, but his voice trembled.
“Just breathe easy, Elle,” Dr. Owen suggested. “Breathe in, one, two, three. Hold your breath, two, three. Breather out, one, two, three.” Owen demonstrated the exercise as he spoke and Les tried to copy him.
Amazingly, it seemed to be working, and Les felt notably calmer. He smiled at the doctor and got a smile back.
“Better?” asked the doctor.
Les nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s good, then. Whatever problem Maddy has discovered, if it is a problem, I’m sure we can deal with it.” Owen pulled up a paper from his desk. “I was just looking at the requirements for a student at Evandale Academy. They’re going to want you to take a placement exam, or several of them, really, because you can be on different racks in different classes.”
Les’s smile turned a bit nervous. He really had no idea how his school performance stacked up against whatever might be considered normal. Not good, he expected.
“There’s another requirement we’ll have to take care of. They want a physical examination. Either by their doctor or by someone else. I could even do it here….” Owen stopped because Les had turned white as a sheet.
“Don’t you look smart in your school uniform,” said Jessie after greeting Les.
"What's wrong?" Dr. Owen asked.
Les sat there trembling, sure that he could never speak because what would he say? "I'm… It's… You're going to find out…" he stammered in spite of himself, sure that he would simply blurt it out if he kept talking.
But Dr. Owen turned as they both heard the front door open. "Hey-O!" Dr. Jessie called. "Maddy's here."
"We're in my office," Owen called back. He started to stand but seem to change his mind and settled back into his chair. "Do you want to talk about what has you upset?" he asked.
Les shook his head, clearly miserable and frightened.
The doctor watched him, saying nothing for a long moment.
Les trembled. Almost he wished to confess his deception, but he kept silent. Maddy, after all, was here and she had already produced a miracle or two, getting him out of the police station and into this beautiful home. Even if he had to disguise himself as a girl to make her plan work, it had worked.
"Excuse me," said Owen. Rising from his chair, he stepped to the door and opened it. "We're in here," he called out, then returned to his desk, leaving the door open. He smiled at Les, "Don't be afraid. We can be sure to find you a woman doctor if that will make you more comfortable with the exam."
Les started. A woman doctor? What? Why? He trembled, having no clue that Owen had concluded that he —or she, as the doctor assumed— was afraid of being seen unclothed in front of a male.
Maddy and Dr. Jessie came in the open door, wearing serious expressions. "Don't you look smart in your school uniform," said Jessie after greeting Les. Then to Owen, "Honey, Maddy wants to talk to Elle alone for a bit."
"It won't be long," said Maddy. "Some of it is about her parents, and I've already told Jessie what I can about them." She smiled at Les, communicating confidence and reassurance to the boy.
The Drs. Davenport soon left the office, closing the door behind them. Les watched them go with some anxiety.
"Hello, Ellie. You do look nice," said Maddy, pulling his attention back to the social worker. She held her arms open, motioning that it was okay for Les to find a hug if he needed one.
The boy stepped into the embrace. "They need a physical exam, so I can go to school," he said, tears threatening to start.
Maddy hugged him gently. "It's okay. It's okay. We can handle this."
"We can?" he murmured against her shoulder. "But they'll find out I' m… I'm…"
"It's okay," Maddy repeated. "We'll tell them first. We'll tell them the truth before they find out. The truth is very powerful."
Les pulled back. "The truth?"
Maddy nodded. "First, though, I have to tell you about your parents."
Les's heart sank.
Maddy moved him closer to the couch in the office and indicated he should sit down. He did so, then lifted slightly, using his left hand to smooth his skirt under him the way Pris had shown him.
Maddy smiled approvingly.
"Are my folks coming for me?" he asked the social worker.
She shook her head. "No, not for some time. I've been up all night tracking them down. Your mother, Corinne, has a broken jaw. They've had to put a pin in and wire it shut. She may file charges, but it isn't clear against who. Or if she may have charges against her. She's still in the hospital but will probably be released today."
She went on. "Your father, Leland, is being held for assault, disorderly conduct, destruction of property, and resisting arrest. He can't make bail, and the night court ordered him held because he refused to enter a plea."
Maddy continued. "He's unlikely to see a judge today, but he'll probably get a lawyer assigned. I'm going to file paperwork to keep him and Corrie away from you."
Les shook his head. "You… you…."
"They left you alone in the motel, it is a clear case of neglect, and I don't expect any disagreement from the judge at family court, especially since I've already placed you with a foster family. Your folks don't even have a legal residence in the state." Maddy smiled at him.
"Do you like living with the Davenport's so far?" she asked.
Les felt his eyes burning. "I… but… they need an exam so I can go to school."
Maddy nodded again, still smiling. "Is that the school uniform you're wearing?"
"Yes," Les told her. "It's one of Pris's. It's a private school, just for girls. I…" He trailed off.
"You look pretty and sweet in it, dear," she assured him.
Les's face turned pink. "Maddy. Mrs. Madison? You do know that I'm…."
She interrupted him. "Physically a boy? Yes, I figured that out this morning after talking to your mother. Stepmother."
Les blinked. He'd been sure that she knew earlier and had come up with the idea of disguising him as a girl to keep him out of the juvenile detention center.
She was nodding. "But you present as a girl, quite successfully. None of the Davenports have indicated they thought you might be a boy, have they?"
"I did tell Pris I was a boy, but she laughed. She thought I was joking."
"There you go," said Maddy. "You didn't try to prove it, did you?"
"Uh, no," Les admitted. "I slept in the same bedroom with her last night, in my own bed." He paused. "She thinks I'm pretty." He blushed again.
"Everyone does, dear. And you still have the same problem you had last night. There are no safe foster homes or safe holding centers for a slender, pretty boy in this county. I'm not allowed to take you home myself, or I would." She sighed, seemed to remember something and continued. "I've got a plan."
Les pushed his hair away from his face. He stared at her.
"You're transgender," said Maddy.
The boy blinked. He had heard the word.
"A transgender girl. It's pretty obvious that you can successfully pass as a girl," said Maddy. She waved at Les sitting there in the plaid school jumper and red bowtie.
She sat beside him on the couch. "Tell the truth, seriously. Would you rather be a girl or a boy?"
He stared at her.
"I can be blunt," she said, taking his hands in hers. "Would you rather be a girl living with the Davenports—or a boy down at juvenile hall?"
He trembled.
"I'm certain I can get the Davenports to accept you as a transgender girl. And I'm going to do everything I can to keep those morons with your last name from getting custody of you."
"But I am a boy…." Les began.
"Physically, as far as sex goes, you are of the male sex," agreed Maddy. "But, honey, I wasn't the only one at the police station who took you for a girl at first. You don't present your self as a boy, not as a person of the masculine gender. You just don't." She squeezed his hands.
"Lord knows with a male role model like your father," she muttered, "but your step-mom is no prize either."
Les pulled his hands away and wiped his eyes. "Did they…."
She shook her head. "Neither of them asked about you, or each other for that matter. Well, Corinne did say she hopes your father rots in jail. She just assumed that was where he was."
"And she was right," said Les.
Maddy yawned. "Excuse me. Look, we can get the Davenports on your side. They're good people. I know they will accept you as a transgender girl."
"For … how long?"
"As long as necessary. Weeks, months. Do you have any other relatives who could claim custody?"
He shook his head. "Mom-mom, my real Mom, Rebecca, is in Texas. I'm not sure where. She had a nervous breakdown. Her brother, my Uncle Billy, uh, William Engels, lives in Indiana. He's on probation for a car accident when he was drunk. He can't drive, or-or leave the state."
"Jesus," said Maddy rubbing her face again. "How do you end up such a sweet kid with a family like that?"
Les began to cry, quietly.
Maddy grabbed tissues from a box on the doctor's desk and handed them to him.
"I don't know what to do, Maddy," he said.
She pulled him close and hugged him again. "I do," she said.
Everyone has their own truth. But is Les's truth the same as Elle's?
The Drs. Davenport, Jessie and Owen, re-entered the home office wearing somber expressions. Mrs. Madison stood beside the French windows that opened onto the back porch of the large suburban house, smiling. Les sat in the chair in front of the desk, looking at the floor.
“What is this about, Maddy?” Jessie asked. She and her husband moved behind the desk, but neither sat. They smiled, but Owen’s eyebrows made peaks on his forehead, and Jessie held her hands together in front of her.
“It’s all about Elle’s true status,” the social worker admitted. “I discovered that her parents are unlikely to be able to claim her for months, and in fact, may lose their parental rights for abandonment.”
Owen smiled, and his eyebrows relaxed a bit. “It’s good that Elle’s here with us then.”
“There’s a complication,” Maddy said, putting a hand on the back of Les’s chair.
Les closed his eyes. No one heard him whimper. If he hadn’t already been sitting down, he would have collapsed.
“What sort of complication?” Jessie asked. “Another relative?” She reached out toward Les, but the boy in the dress did not see or respond.
Maddy shook her head. “No. There are other relatives, yes, but no court in this state is likely to give any of them custody, either. Not if I oppose it, at any rate. And if you are still willing to give Elle a home.” She glanced from Jessie to Owen and back.
“Of course,” said Owen and Jessie nodded. “Providing foster homes for girls in trouble is one of our joys.” But their smiles flickered. Maddy’s attitude signaled that something still needed to be brought into the open.
Les trembled under Maddy’s hand and she gave his shoulder a squeeze. He looked up to find both Davenports’ gazes on him.
“Um,” said Maddy. “I don’t want you to feel like I boxed you into this.” Her voice stayed firm even if her words expressed some tentativeness.
Jessie blinked several times, then looked directly into Les’s eyes. “Maddy…” she began.
“Elle is transgender,” Maddy said quickly. “She’s a transgender girl, biologically male. I confirmed this from a fax I received from her school in Colorado.” She paused. “The paperwork I got from the station house yesterday was wrong.”
Owen and Jessie stared at Les. He blinked several times. After a moment, quiet tears rolled down his cheeks, but his eyes were closed again. Maddy bent beside his chair.
“I tried to tell Maddy yesterday and… and Pris last night…” Les murmured before opening his eyes and looking up again. “Please don’t be mad. I know I let you think I was a girl, but I was… so… so scared.”
Owen smiled. “Elle, honey, you are a girl.” He glanced at his wife who had already started around the desk to fold the crying boy into a hug. “The only problem I see is what do we tell the school,” the doctor continued.
Jessie glanced back at Owen while hugging Les. “Elle, I don’t see how anyone could think you were a boy!” She held him out to look at him, laughed, then pulled him in close for more hugging.
Les wasn’t sure what to think about that, but he smiled at her through his tears. It looked like he would get to stay. He tried to relax into the hugging.
Everyone talked at once.
Maddy was saying, “I have paperwork I will have to straighten out….”
Jessie said. “We’ll have to find out if Pris still wants to share a bedroom with you….”
Owen remarked, “I know a doctor that has some experience in this area….”
Les floated halfway between happiness that he would be allowed to stay in the family and fear—fear that this meant he would have to continue trying to convince people that he was a girl. How long could he do that for? “I told Pris… I mean… I don’t have to go to a special school…. Do I? Will my folks have to find out? Is anyone going to tell Mom-Mom?”
“I can get a bigger allowance from the state for Les as a special needs child,” said Maddy.
Owen shook his head. “The money isn’t important.” He looked at Les. “But, Elle, if Pris doesn’t want to share rooms, I’ll move my office into the living room corner and convert this into a bedroom.” He waved at the room, grinning.
Jessie commented. “The school already has another transgender girl attending. I know because I’m on the board there, so that is not really going to be a problem. Or only a minor one, at least.”
Maddy remarked. “I can write letters to all your relatives, Elle.” Then sort of as an aside to herself, “We can manage what we tell them.”
Jessie smiled at Les. “Pris is not going to care, honey. She’ll be tickled that you told her the truth and she didn’t believe you.”
Owen laughed. “No wonder the idea of a physical exam scared you so bad. I’m sorry I was being thick about it.” He shook his head.
Les giggled, cried some more, and got the hiccoughs again. The buzz of talk among the grown-ups continued.
“How soon can we adopt her?” Jessie asked Maddy.
“Six months normally,” said Maddy. “But if I can get paperwork in front of a judge to declare that her parents have effectively abandoned her, maybe in only a few weeks?”
“Would you like that, Elle?” asked Owen.
“Her name was misspelled on the police paperwork, they spelled it as two girl’s names,” Maddy told Jessie. “I got the correct spelling today and investigated.”
Les wondered about that. He had felt sure yesterday that Maddy had known the truth and was just scheming to keep him out of juvenile hall with her masquerade. But now everyone seemed to know he was a boy and assumed that he wanted to be a girl.
Did he? Maybe if it meant he could stay as a member of the Davenport family, maybe he did.
“We can get your name changed as part of the adoption,” Jessie said.
“The doctor I know can give you hormone blockers until you’re sixteen so you don’t have to go through male puberty,” said Owen.
Maddy brought something else up. “Elle was born in Henderson, Nevada. We can get her birth certificate changed to show female even before she is old enough to have surgery.”
Les’s head buzzed with all the talking back and forth. Had he heard what Maddy said right?
“Do you like ‘Elle’ as a first name, honey?” Jessie asked him. “Or should that just be your nickname for something longer? Ellen? Elizabeth Eleanor?”
“Keep your last name as your new middle name,” suggested Owen. “Eleanor Love Davenport.”
They were all smiling. Happy for him. He couldn’t tell them he wasn’t sure, could he? “Where’s the b-bathroom?” he asked, his voice breaking a bit.
Owen indicated one of the rooms other doors. The office turned out to connect with the large disability-equipped bathroom attached to Carol’s first-floor bedroom. He went in and shut the door. The tile, porcelain, glass and metal surfaces made every sound louder and more sharp-edged.
He could still hear the voices in the office through the door.
“She’s adorable,” Jessie was saying. “So pretty and feminine, with that awkward grace like a fawn or a kitten.”
“She would never have survived being put in juvenile detention with the sort of boys she would have been with,” said Maddy.
“I don’t see how anyone ever believed she was a boy,” commented Owen.
Les put the toilet ring up and knelt beside the tall shape of the porcelain bowl, careful not to kneel on his skirt. He gagged a couple of times and spat up some sour fluid into the water. But he did not throw up.
Jessie said, “She wears clothes so well, she could be a model. Pris commented on that.”
Owen speculated. “I know they can give blockers at her age, but I’m not sure about other hormones.”
“We have to do some research,” said Maddy.
“Get her some counseling, too,” said Owen.
“It’s important to do what’s best for her,” said Maddy.
“She might not want to be a model,” Jessie said. “That can be a hard life. We need to find out what she does want to do.”
“Exactly,” said Owen. “That’s the most important thing. Find out what she wants to do with her life. What she really wants to do.”
“And help her be the best person she can be,” added Jessie.
Les blinked tears out of his eyes again. Would he ever stop crying? People wanted to be nice to him, but why did it hurt so much?
“Are you all right in there, honey?” Jessie’s voice came at the door after a soft knock.
“Y-yes, ma’am,” he answered. He took tissue and wiped his eyes.
“All right, dear. We’re going out to the dining room table to strategize and make coffee. Come see us there when you feel better. This is a lot to take in, isn’t it?”
Les nodded then realized she couldn’t see him. “Yes, ma’am,” he repeated.
“You’re not throwing up, are you?” Jessie asked.
“Not so far,” Les said. “But it was close. Ma’am.” He wasn’t used to people caring or even noticing what he did or how he felt.
Jessie was quiet a moment, then said in a softer tone. “You can call me ‘Mom’ anytime you want to, honey. Not required but I would like that.”
Les didn’t say anything but grabbed more tissue, and after a while, he heard Jessie and the others leave the office. He knelt beside the porcelain a while longer, his thoughts circling non-ironically around his situation, his past and his future.
Finally, he stood again, smoothing his skirt the way Pris had shown him. He flushed the toilet, watching the sour spit and tear-stained tissue disappear.
At the mirror over the sink, he examined his reflection. Was he really all that girly? He pulled his long hair away from his face with one hand and covered up his foofy bowtie with the other but could not decide if that made him look more like a boy.
He fluffed his hair back up with his fingers and turned to the full-length mirror on the door. He did look cute in the school uniform with the big red bow at his throat and the plaid jumper skirt. He tried a smile and a pose, then another one. Was that what models had to do? He did have long pretty eyelashes, didn’t he?
Counseling? What would he tell a counselor?
Les opened the door, left the office and turned down the hall toward the dining room. When he entered, everyone stopped talking to turn and smile at him. He made a decision, maybe not a permanent one but for the time being anyway.
Elle stepped into the room, moving toward the chair she had used at dinner last night and breakfast this morning. She needed to talk to her foster parents about seeing a doctor and a counselor. She smiled back at them, trying to feel light-hearted and unafraid.
It couldn’t be that hard to pretend, could it?