Orphans
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

My grandmother loved us as if we were her own children. That is how I explain it. It was as if she believed that we were her own children.

My parents were killed at the Battle of Saint Lo on 13 July 1944. They left their three sons in the care of my mother’s mother, Madame Delphine Duclos. My mother Monique was herself one of three children. She had an older brother Pierre, and a younger sister Jeanne. Pierre was killed as one of the youngest soldiers to die in the last week of the fighting in the First World War. The year before he died Jeanne had died in the Spanish Influenza Pandemic that is first recorded as having started in France. My grandmother had only one child left, and she was so protective of her that she was close to middle age when she met my father, married and started a family.

So I was only 6 years old when my parents died, my second brother was 5 and the youngest only 3. I refer to them not by name as, if I ever knew the names, I have forgotten them. My grandmother never used them. We were Monique, Pierre and Jeanne to her; her children. At the age we were you do not recognize madness, you see only love.

As for our neighbors, they were gone, and our home in Saint Lo was destroyed. Our grandmother took us to Mont St Michel which she believed would be spared from any attack. It never was attacked and remained untouched during the war. Nobody noticed what happened to the three brothers who had lived with their parents in Saint Lo. On Mont St Michel we were raised as Monique, Pierre and Jeanne Duclos.

I never forgot the Americans who came through our town, and the kindness they showed us. Jackson Unger was one of them, and years later he was to become my husband. He wrote me, initially by letters addressed to my grandmother, then in reply to my letters when I started to write in English. I only knew him by his smile. He had been badly injured in the final days of the war and was unable to visit us. I was welcome to visit him anytime that I was ready to come to America.

But for the ten years after the war, until our grandmother died at the age of 75, we lived her fantasy. It was the fantasy that none of her children had died, and that they grew up all over again, 40 years later.

What killed my grandmother was the second death of Jeanne. As I said, the first Jeanne died of the flu in 1917 when she was only 15. She was her mother’s favorite. She kept all of her clothes, and these were the clothes handed down to me and then the second Jeanne, during and after the war. The second Jeanne lasted another year. In 1957 she was only 16 when she was bashed to death by a young man she had been kissing who discovered her secret. It reminded me that I had the same secret. I was three years older at the time, but I was not interested in boys. I had my grandmother to look after as age caught up with her. That was my life.

I am not saying that I was not approached by men. Before Jeanne was killed, I was 18, tall and blonde, and people had described me as strikingly beautiful. But after Jeanne’s attacker was caught and received only a short prison sentence in the light it being an assault “provoked by the deceitful presentation of a pervert” others in the village looked at us strangely. How could we let a boy dress as a girl? Nobody knew that I was not her sister but her brother

It was not that, but the second loss of her favorite that robbed my grandmother of her will to live. When Jeanne died, Pierre and I had to face the future with what little she left us. Some parts of France were booming, and Pierre could go to Paris to find work, but my options were unclear. The obvious thing was to cut my hair and become a man to follow my brother, but I thought of America. The Marshal plan funding had ended, and in the fifties the average income in France was only half of what it was in the United States.

I wrote to Jackson Unger. He sent me his address. He reminded me that he was injured, but he did not give me the details. I could stay with him. I could afford the fare and I took the ship from Cherbourg.

I could not understand why he would say that he was an invalid. He had both him arms and legs and he had the smile that I remembered. It was not until I had been with him for two days that he told me that his injury was to his groin area. His genitals had been destroyed by a grenade. His bladder had been rescued but he suffered from incontinence and chronic pain from the scarring. But worst of all, he could not have a family or even sexual relations with a woman.

“You are so beautiful that you could have any man,” he said to me. He did not know what I was.

Do not ask me why, but I decided then that I would offer to be his wife. Maybe I was sorry for him and felt that I could provide at least half of what he desired. Maybe I thought that he and I were some curious match. Or maybe I just saw in him a future of comfort. What my decision did prove to me, was that I had become so accustomed to living as a woman that I was happy for that to continue.

I was beautiful then. People tell me that I still am. As a man I would be nothing. As a woman I stood out and I was proud to stand out.

I had travelled to America on a post war passport, which reflected the fact that so many records had been destroyed. Getting paper to allow me to become Mrs. Monique Unger were a little more difficult, but Pierre was able to help, and to come across the Atlantic to give me away at my wedding.

Jack’s family were so happy that he could at last have a wife, and possibly look forward to adopting a family. I was totally and unconditionally welcomed, and I have been ever since.

Was I homosexual like Jeanne clearly was? Was I attracted to Jack sexually? I don’t know. I had forced myself to avoid sex, while I lived as a female. As for poor Jack, he had no ability to pursue it. But love is not about sex. I married him because he was a good man, and I learned to love him. He loved me always, because I gave my life to him, when he never expected a woman would ever do that.

We had intimacy, and it was wonderful. He learned that I would not touch his parts and he would not touch mine, at least while I was still male down there. I would never let him get close.

But soon after we were married, I heard that a French Doctor, a Doctor Georges Burou who lived in Morrocco, had developed a surgical technique that would turn me into a woman. He was responsible for the operation upon the great Parisian nightclub performer, Coccinelle. I started a correspondence with Dr. Burou, and that resulted in me having the same operation in 1963, 5 years after her. I told Jack that I was visiting family.

Developments in the synthesizing of testosterone which happened in the 60s also benefited Jack, to the extent that we were able to have something close to sex some years after we were married. And that continued until the day Jack died from a heart attack in our bed, in 1973.

So, when, in these days, I hear of men becoming women so easily, all I can think of was how hard it was for me. But it was harder because I never was truly a woman, just a granddaughter or a daughter. I did it because of my regard for others, so I have no regrets. Despite everything I lived a life, and a happy one as a woman, when I was in fact, a man.

And nobody will ever know. I am ready for death. I lived in a time of turmoil, but now with the memory of my loving husband, and his family having become mine, I die happy.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2019

Author’s Note:
This story has a strange origin
The image above (Orphans) was from a news reel by WW2 cameraman Jack Lieb. His commentary was as follows: “We found a little family of three brothers. Even the tall blonde one is a boy, I found out later, because their grandmother was taking care of them. Their parents, I was told, were killed at the Battle of St. Lo.”
There is no explanation as to why the blond child with hair clipped back, should appear like that. But that mystery prompted this story.
https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2014/06/05/a-new...