Vanilla Sky…part three.

I’m not used to getting this kind of feeling from people. Especially from people that know about me. And Liz…my…stepmother…is just so amazing…and scary too. I meant what I said it’s nice to feel like I’ve got someplace now.

I don’t want to be stiff and rigid but I don’t know anyone here and I’m dressed as a girl, well the girl that I’m supposed to have been.

Lizzy looks at me and gives me a soft smile. “It’s okay, they’re all as nervous as you are.”

“They are?”

“Hey, yeah you’re the bosses daughter.”

“I am…oh damn…”

She laughs and has such a nice and easy smile. “It’ll be okay breathe, once we get stuff going and some music playing things’ll relax.”

Dad’s following us and he gets a big plastic cup of ice and he pour canned coconut water in it with something called ginger beef and heads to the grill area. I take a look at one of the bottles and there’s no alcohol in it. Maybe it’s something he’s picked up from the Phillpino’s here?

Lots of food and people, salads and potato salads and I’m….

I look at Lizzy. “Can I help? I’d feel too nervous just sitting here.”

“Gotcha, sure we got through a lot of stuff at these things and you can help me make dessert.”

“Dessert?”

“Oh nothing fancy just cheesecake shortcakes.”

“Okay but I’ve never really baked or cooked.”

“They’re non-baked.”

She takes me over to the back door? Of the main house and there’s this coat/mud room? There’s an open closet and a big rack to put boots on and even a bench to sit and put things on and off on with a nice ceramic tile floor. Makes sense if you’re running a farm. I wipe my feet on the mat there just in case and look for a place too sit.

“Oh don’t worry about you feet kiddo the yards pretty clean and we don’t worry about it when we’re putting a to do on we just clean up later.”

“Oh I just thought…”

“Yeah we do and we usually have a set of indoor shoes and an outside pair but we’ll just have too much traffic here today.”

“Uhm okay.”

She leads me up three steps that keep this room from the rest of the house and to my right there’s this big room that has washers and dryers three of each and a sink for stuff and a bench with a clothesline that comes into the house? On the opposite wall to the laundry stuff has to be a larder it’s all these shelves built into the wall full of canned goods and dry goods and preserves and baskets here and there full of things like potatoes, turnips, and other veggies and lots of apples.

Part of the hall leads to other parts of the house but just turning right leads me into this huge country kitchen. You know the really old ones where the longest wall ad part of the other wall is counter space with cupboards above and below it. There’s really modern looking appliances and some older looking ones and a big table instead of where most modern homes would have an island.

And the smells.

Mom wasn’t a bad cook, but this was like going to my Step-dad’s parents place with all those home cooking smells. Lizzy gets me an apron and we start baking. I’ve never done this before…mom and my step-dad would’ve freaked and “boys” weren’t allowed to take home ec. in my school.

Shortcakes the way they make them here is my first lesson. All I knew was those yellow store bought sponge cake twinkie mutation things. Lizzy shows me how to make these sweet biscuit things. Now in know overseas a biscuit’s a cookie or something but here it’s more like bread but more like a pastry thing?

We take five cups of self rising flour and add two cups of cake flour to it and two table spoons of baking powder and one of baking soda and a cup of white sugar. Then we have a liter or a quart of room temperature milk and mix the two and add in a teaspoon of vanilla extract and grate on a cheese grater half a pound of real butter. Then you fold the stuff together and not a whole lot because biscuits get tough if you over mix them and you still want the butter in those bits and not creamed into the dough. Then we tip it out onto the table after putting flour down on it and kind of pat it or roll it into a big flatter shape about an inch thick. Then we cut them out with a big water glass.

Okay it’s really cool to watch them bake, apparently the baking powder and soda start working and the gas from it makes them fluffy but it’s the water content in the butter escaping as it cooks and melts that makes them really get fluffy.

It’s like learning magic to me. And they’re sweet too not really sweet just like kind of a really sweet bready thing but flaky.

I’m more interested in the cooking than the eating. I swear if I let myself I’d be a balloon here. I’m too damn boyish and huge now. But baking, in my new clothes and my hair and everything and getting called Sam all the time I’m floating.

The cheesecake’s nowhere near as intimidating as I thought. Lizzy shows me how to make her no fail super cheesecake. It’s a full quart of whipping cream and a cup of sugar, the juice of one lemon and two half pound sticks of cream cheese. And all we do it use the icing beater on the mixer stand thing and mix it until the whipping cream becomes whipped cream. The cream cheese and the lemon juice gives it that tart kick with the sweet. It’s so not hard to do except you have to start it fast because of the lemon juice and the cream you shouldn’t let it sit and not whip it too long or the whipped cream becomes butter instead.

We have toppings for it that aren’t just strawberries but blueberries too and because we’re here she makes or has made this stuff that’s like apple pie filling with huge chunks in it of apples.

And she makes jello-sagna?

It’s the cheesecake stuff with three different kinds of Jell-O made into these cookie sheets that have cling wrap on them. Orange, Cherry and Lemon. She cut’s then on the sheets into cubes and folds them all together and it all goes into a big Tupperware rectangular dish with the graham cracker crumb stuff regular cheesecake has. She makes it really thick and puts it and the rest of the cheesecake stuff in the fridge to set.

I’m learning so much, and it’s girl stuff.

“C’mon Sam let’s get touched up before we got out to eat.”

“Uhm…okay…”

I head down the hall to the first floor bathroom and it’s two girls doing just a bit of primp and touch up and Lizzy shows me how.

“Thank, just…thanks so much this…you’ve been really good to me.”

“Sam…it’s no problem it doesn’t cost people to be decent to others.”

“Not where I come from.”

“I know, your dad told me.”

“I…I don’t think I’d have made it.”

“Hey, don’t say that you’re stronger than you can imagine.”

“Am I?”

“Of course you are, you’re a woman and we’re made to be that strong.”

“Maybe…”

She turns my head to look at her instead oh it hanging down. “You’re a girl right?”

“Y..yes…”

“Then it’s true.”

“Is it I wasn’t born a girl.”

“And there’s some women that weren’t born girls either despite their genes. I grew up with a girl like that and yeah she’s married with kids and a husband but she’s still not really a girl and she doesn’t act like one.”

“Oh so she’s?”

“My cousin Mel, and she’s not transgendered but she’s just fe-MALE.” She sort of said it hyphenated with that emphasis.

“Huh?”

“She’s straight, she’s female, but she’s one of the most stand up guys I know with breasts and a vagina.”

“Huh?”

“She’s just Mel, and you should just be Samantha. Don’t worry about stereotypes or labels even the LGBTQ ones just be Samantha and everything will work out.”

“But how do you know it’ll work out?”

“I don’t but you don’t know that it won’t work out so hurting and worrying and wondering if it will take time and energy and joy from the times when you could just be you.”

“But what if people don’t like me?”

“So, there’ll be lots of people that don’t like you. There’s lots of people that never liked me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’m native….I’m a dirty Indian, wagon burner, ect. And I married your dad which pissed off some locals that though he should’ve married white and your dad’s got people mad at him for marrying me, it’s a tax thing and he brought in the workers and moved them in which some people didn’t like. Sam…there’s always going to be assholes, I learned if I let them and the people threatened by my happiness have their say and their way I’d be back home in Millbrook either in a shitty relationship, in a shitty job, a drunk or on drugs or all of the above. I decided a long time ago that I’m worth it, and so are you.”

“I am…” (Sniffle)

“Yes, oh god yes honey. You’re a girl…but so what you were born a boy. It’s a blessing.”

I choke sob a bit incredulous…. “A Blessing!?”

“Samantha…some people are born exactly what they are, some are deer or foxes or birds but you honey, you get to be a butterfly…you are actually able to transition and do it aware that you’re doing it…you’re not just a butterfly honey, but you’re a butterfly that’s able to paint her own wings.”

I…

Oh…

I…

“I can be who I want….?”

“Yes honey, of course you can!”

I lose it.

No one has said that to me, oh sure the doctors are all clinical and gender identity this and transgendered that but. To have someone tell me that it’s not a disorder, not a bad thing but…

That I can paint my own wings…..

I hug Lizzy and I happy bawl my eyes out on her shoulder.

And she moves us so she’s sitting on the edge of the tub there and pulls me onto her lap like I’m twelve and she holds me tight and rocks me as I cry.

“That’s it, that’s my girl…let those out. We need the happy sweet tears to wash the painful ones away. There we go, lets get your heart clean.”

I cry another good ten minutes before I’m done and I swear I feel like my head’s lighter. Like there was this weight tied there with a too tight headband that got taken off.

(Sniffle.) “Thank you…hank you so much.”

“Hey it’s okay…lets get you fixed up again and go eat.”

“Okay, I could eat, but I don’t want to get fat.”

“I get that, but don’t obsess about that either, we’ll have lots of time to get Samantha free and clear from the old you that you were hiding as.”

“But…”

“Tell you what, we’ll work on it together…not lose a pile of weight but get healthy.”

“Okay….but…” I’m looking outside.

“This is a special occasion, and we can splurge on these time because we’re feeding our hearts as much as our selves.”

I nod, biting my lip and smiling a little after that. “You’re the most upbeat person I’ve ever met.”

“Had to be, we all should be because like I’ve been saying Sam. Life’s hard enough on all of us we don’t need to give it any help.”

“I…I want to learn that…”

“Well come on.”

I head out with her and we join the others and I’m carefully trying to remember names. I’m surprised at how good everyone’s English is. But they all have accents and the women are all pretty or I find them so and so are the seven girls around my age and blush at the looks I’m getting from some of the boys.

There’s salads that I try and they’re good. I liked the one with the tomatoes and cucumbers with the apple bits and the water-melon, I’ve never had it like that and the dressing is so strange and good but barely there. I liked the coleslaw that Juanita made? It had grated sweet potato and carrot into it and grated raw turnip…I know sounded strange but it was kind of radish tasting.

I had a hamburger that dad grilled and was pretty good and I tried some of his lobster. Yeah they had this big feed of lobsters there and I’m not really sure that I’m any where near the lover of it that dad is. He eats even the green stuff in the bodies and the eggs and he had quite the few of them too but he’d open some and feed some to Lizzy or give some to me but dad…I mean he’d suck the salt water brothy juices out of the claws after he snapped it off the arm. He’d just grab the thumb claw and move in back and forth like a pump then he’d take the knife and crack it open.

I like the claws better than the lobster tails, the tails are good but chewy unless you cut them up. Dad likes nothing on his and others have different stuff they dip it in from butter to shrimp sauce to vinegars. I’m with dad on this one and like it plain.

They’re saving the bodies and all the little legs and oh that green stuff is called the Tomali and it’s like lobster liver or something. I wasn’t brave enough to try that, maybe in the future.

There was lots of other stuff there too like a big BBQ would have like steaks and chops and chicken and brats and hot dogs. And some regional stuff too, well regional for where the other families are from so there was fried garlic rice and pork? And there were tamales too. I have a tamale, and these were better than some I’ve had and I went with a vegetarian one they had with grilled green bell peppers and hot peppers and green onions in the middle.

I know not a lot for a teen boy but I ate like the girl I am and got to hold my plates and forks the way I felt, eat and chew the way I felt and just was me. I was allowed to be me for the very first meal of my life.

It felt so great.

I know I wasn’t as social as I could have been but neither were the others, we’re all sort of new to me being here and I will say they weren’t rude and excluded me from them talking. I think most of the kids here my age whether the boys or the girls are all immigrants from their accents and the fact they’re quiet.

But they say please and thank you and I even think I’m picking up a few words of either maybe.

The whole day is kind of an accomplishment. I’m watching some of the older men taking out instruments and stuff and start playing. It’s a mishmash of mostly Spanish stuff with a Philipino on one of those big hand drums they put between their legs and a flute joining in. Dad’s got quite a village thing here and he’s got another coconut ginger drink and is sitting with them and this old beat up amp and electric guitar.

I don’t think he drinks.

My Step dad used to drink, I mean I’ve nothing against someone having one but I’ve never really see an adult guy that didn’t.

I get a tug on my wrist and some of the littler kids, well the girls are hauling to the edge of the dirt yard and they’re making the thing for hopscotch…

“Can I?”

I’m doing this biting my lips kind of smiling thing as they’re saying yes.

And there’s jump rope too.

I’m…there’s this happy light something inside.

I take that first hop.

I’m going to paint my own wings.