CHAPTER 9
And school days passed, until the weekend came, and each day began with the assembly of what was becoming, for me, a type of second family. We girls would meet on the bus, tease and be teased, and pass comment on everything from the colour of a teacher’s hair to the particular gifts and failings of boys.

That was something I was profoundly unsure about. My life had so far kept me hidden from the view of others, and I had never worked out how I felt about them. My feelings about and for girls were very clear, and that can be summed up in the words ‘other girls’. I saw them, I envied them the gifts of their birth, and to an extent I wanted to be like them. Not to wear my skirt hem level with my vulva, if I had had one, nor to do what rumour had it that several of the ‘other girls’ had done with Pierre Forgeron, but just to have the ease to make that choice and not be forced into no choice at all.

The second weekend, Rollo would be off work, and the weather looked set fair. I sounded her out on Wednesday.

“Maman…”

“Yes, my little sweet?”

“If I help on Sunday, could we eat in the garden?”

“How many?”

“I am sorry?”

“How many girls do you wish to feed?”

“How did you know?”

She turned from the sink, where she was slicing potatoes for a tartiflette, and smiled.

“I know I am but a wrinkled old lady, whose faculties fail more with each passing day, but inside this desiccated bosom still beats the heart of a young girl. Besides, my dear, you have talked of little else since that first Monday. Who would you ask? This Elle, that Margot?”

I felt myself blushing, and blamed the little pills for that. “Perhaps. I shall ask them tomorrow, and then they will have time for asking their families”

“Then I shall see about doing salmon in a crust. I haven’t cooked that for…oh, since yesterday at work. These girls, you are sure they are safe?”

I thought of Elle crying with me in the toilet. “Yes, Maman, I am sure. Thank you”

She held me at arms’ length after our embrace, and smiled fondly. “How could I not have seen you so clearly before? This is you, this is how you should always have been. Sophie…I do not miss my son. I simply realise that he was never truly there, and that brings me no sense of loss. I still have the child I bore, and…and I worry no more that I shall lose her, for surely I did when we lived in that place. Now, if we are to eat, we will need to make our rounds. That we can do tomorrow, and if it is as nice as it is today we shall treat ourselves with a new flavour of ice cream”

I broached the subject with the girls the next morning, and both of Maman’s suspects seemed enthusiastic. Fatima explained how she had to visit family that day, which would help reduce the quantity of work that my mother had in store, but I was still determined to help. Friday morning, the answers were given, and both Margot and Héloise were free to dine with us. Elle was in full flow, of course.

“Have you seen that new film, Le Diner des Cons? That is what Sophie is about, I would bet! Obviously it cannot be me that is the idiot, so it must be you, Margot!”

“You cheeky piece! Who is that does all of your mathematics homework?”

“Well clearly it cannot be myself that is the idiot because I am just so sparklingly marvellous at all times!”

“Not when you are drooling over some boy’s bottom, my dear”

“A girl needs a hobby”

So it would go each morning, and I do not remember happier times. Rollo drove us to the giant shop that Friday evening, where Maman loaded up her chariot with the best she could find of the necessary ingredients, including several blocks of chocolate for a mousse. There were also bottles of decent local cider, none of that Breton stuff, for us girls instead of wine. Mother was very insistent.

“My daughter will not squander a Sunday afternoon lying like a Pole in the sun. This will be a decent meal, eaten as a family meal should be. Now, before ice cream…”

It was shoes, in the end, that she led me to, and it was shoes different from those first sandals that I was given. As plain as black leather could ever be, but as elegant, oh yes, as elegant as a woman could ever desire. Heels of, perhaps, six or seven centimetres, no more, but they were mine. Even my mother was moved by the event, and this was noticed by the shop assistant.

“These must be your first pair of shoes for a woman, rather than for a girl, my dear”

My first shoes for a woman rather than for a boy would not have been true, but it very nearly was. She turned to Maman.

“Such a moment, Madame, when a child moves on, becomes a woman. Would you like me to wrap them, or…I can see the answer to that question in your child’s eyes”

What else could I do but wear them for the rest of the rounds? So they pinched just a little at first, and limited me in how I could walk, but they were mine, and I was happy. Rollo groaned in a theatrical way.

“Must I now have to survive shopping for clothes with two women? You must promise me to limit your shopping just to those establishments that provide husband chairs”

Maman sniffed. “You are not a husband, my son. Not unless you are better at keeping things secret than you were when you used to hide those spicy magazines under your mattress”

He almost blushed, and we made him buy the ices.

Saturday was a day of preparation, for it would be the first time the new house had received guests. Maman was insistent that everything gleamed, sparkled or sat in just the right place. I had to pay the same attention to my bedroom, for she smilingly suggested that it would be the first place my friends would wish to see.

“I have told you, my little one, this heart is still that of a girl. A mother knows these things. Now, what you must do is…”

She took my room, the one I had worked on so hard, with the vacuum cleaner and the dusting cloth, and she proceeded to make it once more untidy, but it was an artful disorder. My wardrobe was left slightly ajar, with one of my favourite dresses hanging from the top of the door. Cosmetics were carefully placed in disarray on my dressing table, and my old bear was produced, to sit to one side of my pillow. As a final touch, Maman disappeared for a few minutes downstairs, returning with a tall glass vase holding the heads of three of the sunflowers we had coaxed up the side of the house until they were taller than my brother.

I looked at the results of her work, and she was absolutely right. Who else could occupy this place but a girl?

Sunday morning came, and I showered and paid attention in tiny detail to all surfaces of my body. This would be an important day for me, for Sophie. I had tried, in some quiet moments, to order my thoughts and what I was seeking to put in place in some sensible manner was my identity. I was not Serge, but Serge was still me. I had tried to read up via the computer those subjects and articles that touched on my life, but I had been shocked almost completely away from the machine once I saw how overwhelmingly the searches produced nothing but pornographic images, and those of a type of individual I did not wish to think about. Why, I asked myself, go to all the pain and difficulty of changing one’s body and yet…keep THAT! I had eventually managed to find the right sort of words and questions to ask the machines, and began at last to learn.

That was where my confusion originated. I did not see myself as two persons, but one, a united individual who had merely changed name. Serge was me, and I was Sophie, and she was Serge. I suppose that I was lucky in that, for at no point was I being compelled to dress up as Serge had, for Maman and Roland had broken that chain. I was simply myself, form day to day and dawn to nightfall, and myself had guests to prepare for.

Elle arrived first, and under the extra sun of Summer we had been granted she wore boater’s hat in straw above a beautiful chiffon dress in a delicate rose print. Her parents had driven her to our house, and I got to see the famous beauty she had warned me of.

She was tall, and her nose was far too big, and I thought her too thin, but every movement exuded grace. ‘Papa’ was shorter, a dark man with receding hair and a scar on his chin, but it was clear from their movements how deep their bond was.

“Maman, Papa, this is Sophie. Sophie, Mme Laplace, my parents Emil and Françoise”

Maman gave the normal three kisses each, as did I , and introduced herself.

“My son Roland will be here shortly. I have sent him for the bread”

Elle’s Papa smiled. “A real family meal, eh? What time shall we collect our little jewel? And must we pay a small deposit in case she breaks too many things?”

“PAPA!” she snapped, but there were smiles there from all three. More smiles, an agreed time, and two were gone just as another arrived.

“Maman, Margot”

More bisous, and Maman sent us up to my room to leave room for her to perform her duties as goddess of the hearth and kitchen. The girls were entranced by my room, and I saw how carefully my mother had arranged things. Elle looked around almost in awe.

“Sophie, there is no way that you were ever…”

She shut her mouth abruptly, and Margot frowned. “Ever…?”

I glared at Elle, who was blushing, then turned back to Margot.

“Are you my friend?”

“Of course I am, you know it”

“Can you swear to keep a secret?”

Margot looked slightly worried at that, and then she did something that revealed to me the depth of her intellect, of her near genius.

“Oh. I see. If I am wrong, my dear friend, do not see me as being rude, no? Would I be correct if I say…you have issues with the way you were born? If I have the wrong guess, please forgive me”

I sighed, and shot another glare towards Elle. “If you have the guess I think you have, then the answer is yes. I was once called Serge. Things are changing, but my childhood will always have been the wrong one. Margot, Elle, please; this must remain for us to talk about, not others. Can you promise?”

Margot embraced me, and was joined by Elle. The taller girl just squeezed me, and then turned to our friend.

“You, I shall have to think of a suitable chastisement for. That was wrong and careless. Now, I suggest we change that dangerous subject and go and offer Mme Laplace help in arranging the table”

And so we did, and as we finished he walked in the gate, shirt open by three or four buttons, his hair in disorder from driving with the windows open, and he smiled at three girls laying out cutlery and glasses, and one of them, the tallest, turned to me and whispered.

“And he is how old?”