Charlotte’s Tale.
by Angharad.
Part 15.

We got home and were both still buzzing. How could singing a few songs with some old bloke have such an affect on me? His energy was amazing and it seemed to build as he went on, as if he’d absorbed it from the audience.

Mum parked the car in the garage and we went into the house, I switched the kettle on as a habit as much as anything else. I didn’t actually know if I could sit still long enough to drink it. I began to see how so many performers got into drugs and things, wanting to maintain the high when they weren’t performing.

When I came off that stage, I could have jumped over a ten foot wall, or felt as if I could. I still felt I could do a five foot one, which is nearly as tall as me. I was floating around inside my own head.

“Charlotte,” I heard this from afar and took no notice.

“Charlotte?” I still ignored it.

My body was poked and my mother’s voice came through loud and clear, “Charlotte, I am talking to you.”

“Sorry Mummy, I was miles away.”

“So I noticed, here, eat this and drink that.” She shoved a sandwich in my one hand and a cuppa in the other.

I took it over to the table and sat down to eat and drink.

“It’s grounding.”

“What is?”

“Eating and drinking, it’ll help you come down from your high and give you some energy when you do, complex carbohydrates.”

“What are you on about Mummy?”

“You are still on a high, somewhere up above your body. When you come down you’ll feel exhausted, the food and drink will help you to come down more gradually and ease the exhaustion.”

“Oh.” Is that all? I felt like asking.

“I read it in an article somewhere, but you don’t want to eat too much, which is what usually happens.”

“Cliff Richard was whisked away, otherwise he’d have been pestered by people for the next few hours, which followed by the buzz from performing would have kept him on his high for half the night. Instead he escaped and is probably now winding down from the buzz of working with a star like my daughter.”

I wasn’t really listening. Well I was sort of, about two sentences behind what she was saying, and suddenly, I snorted a mouthful of tea all over the kitchen table. I spent the next few moments coughing and spluttering and she was laughing as she wiped up the mess.

“Do you know how much they took from the concert?”

“No, a thousand or two?” I guessed at random figures.

“Over four thousand, according to Mrs Phillips.”

“Wow! That’s good.”

“That was great, and all of it will go to their cause.”

“Good, those poor people in Africa, must be awful.”

“Yes it must.”

“I bet, I couldn’t have done this in Darfur,” I said beginning to swoop down towards the earth.

“Done what, my darling?”

“Changed over.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t have had much chance for that.”

I felt a tear in my eye. I didn’t know what it was or where it was from, but it was there as if I felt the pain for any transgendered children in very poor parts of Africa. I assumed there must be some as this didn’t just occur in England or America.

“The civil war would have meant survival was the first priority, we’re very lucky here aren’t we?” My mother was still talking and I was half listening and half floating around the globe thinking of all the places on the earth where, kids who felt like I did, wouldn’t get the opportunity or care to do what I had done. I decided that if I ever became very wealthy, I would set up some sort of charity to help them.

“Then the church, in parts of Africa it’s very fundamentalist and would look very unhelpfully at anyone outside their very narrow view of things.” Mum was still droning on.

“Even over here and in parts of America, there are fundamentalists who think they can cure you by praying for you. They claim to be able to cure homosexual men and so on, I think it’s rather wicked, don’t you, Charlotte. Such things are probably biologically determined so won’t be sorted by divine intervention now will they? How can they suggest that people doing what feels right to them, is a sin? It’s absurd.”

“What?” I was lost, mainly because I wasn’t really listening and suddenly I discover my mother is verging on a militant for gay people.

“Oh it’s nothing Charlotte, I was sounding off about a programme I saw on the TV the other night.”

I was back with her. “What like, programme, was that then?”

“Oh one of those undercover things about how some fundamentalist churches claim to be able to cure homosexual men. They brain wash them and often it causes them to have mental problems afterwards.”

“Brain wash? How do they do that?” I had this picture of someone’s brain being put in our washing machine and spun around at enormous speed. I felt quite ill for a moment.

“They disorientate them and fill them with a revulsion for themselves and tell them if they believe enough, they’ll be cured. Then they have some sort of ceremony, which gives them huge expectations and they get all hysterical and often fall about afterwards. Then they are supposed to be cured.”

“Doesn’t Jesus like gays then?”

She stopped and looked at me as if momentarily lost for words. “You hit that right on the nail young lady. Jesus is supposed to love everyone, so that just about sums it up, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” I had no idea, I was asking a question which she had sort of answered. I was a little worried, if she was that interested in the rights of gay people, was she trying to tell me something?

“You’re not gay are you Mummy?”

She stopped as if hit with a poleaxe. “What!”

“Well you are like, getting very excited about that TV programme, like.”

“No, darling, I am not gay. I am interested because people might think you are.”

“Me!” I gasped. I felt as if she had stabbed me in the heart. “I don’t fancy other girls!”

“Some might see that as being gay.”

“Why?” I was shedding a few tears now.

“Because you used to be a boy.”

“But I’m not a boy!” I yelled shrilly, “I’m not a boy.” The tears were rolling down my face and I was sobbing uncontrollably. Mummy came and enveloped me in a huge and comforting hug.

“I know you’re not a boy, you’re my darling daughter and I love you. But we have to be aware of how others might see you.”

“But they came and listened to me sing, Cliff Richard kissed me. He wouldn’t have kissed a boy!” I shrieked.

“I know my darling, he saw a lovely girl, which you are.”

“So how could they think I’m a boy?”

“Charlotte, there are people out there who are nasty and will take advantage of any situation they can to make themselves feel better or profit from it. Often they have very poor feelings about themselves, so they seem to feel better if they can make someone feel worse than they do.”

“What, they feel good making others feel, like bad about themselves?”

“Exactly that.”

“Is this about school?”

“There are probably one or two in your new school, as there were in your old school.”

“I don’t want to go then.”

“You don’t have a choice, Charlotte. It’s the law that you go to school.”

“I’m not going if it’s full of nasty girls who are going to say nasty, untrue things about me. How can I go? How can you make me Mummy?”

“I shall be here to help you. You have to take that risk and if they do get nasty, you have to deal with it. By doing so you get stronger and they get weaker.”

“But, I don’t like, want to go.”

“You have to. Remember, there is also the chance to make new friends and do nice things as well.”

“But if we got a teacher at home like before, I could like do without going to school.”

“Darling, it’s not the answer and you know it. If you can’t survive as a girl how are you going to cope as a woman? Adults are every bit as nasty to each other as children.”

“Like Jane?”

“Jane? Your friend Jane?”

“Yes, that Jane, she’s a psycho. Even Simon is afraid of her.”

“But she always seems so nice.”

“They always do.”

“Has she been a problem to you?”

I suddenly thought I had dropped myself in it. If Mum was going to campaign for unknown gay men, what would she do for me, kill Jane?” I had to talk this down a bit. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Well if she is, you must tell me and I’ll have a word with her mother. I’m sure she wouldn’t allow it.”

“It’s okay,” I said, sighing. How come they could have two kids, one a total sicko and the other my cuddly Simon?

“Come on young lady, I think it’s time for bed. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”

“We do?” I was hoping for a teenage lie in, maybe get up in time to go back to bed.

“Yes, we’re going shopping,” she beamed at me.

“What for?” fatigue was setting in.

“I expect we’ll think of something and we both deserve a treat.”

“Yeah, sure,” I kissed her goodnight and went up to bed. I took off my makeup and the gold dress and cleaned my teeth, then crawled into bed. I was completely dead.

I was singing, I could see myself on stage wowing the audience, they were all completely in my thrall, but that was in the distance. I was like a fly on the wall and Jane was talking to some stranger, “Of course she used to be a boy named James, a weird little kid but he could sing a bit.”

“Can you get photographs?”
“I ‘spect so, but it’ll cost extra with those, I’ll have to steal them from her house.”

I felt my anger growing, she was selling me, her so called friend for money, to a journalist from some nasty tabloid newspaper. I always knew she could do something like this. Now she’d proved it.

“Get them, we’ll make it worth it,” said the journalist, a grubby little man.

“Oh I will, she trusts me you see.”

“Why are you doing this?” I screamed at Jane, but she couldn’t hear me, nor see me. I could hear myself singing away in the distance and the audience applauding. “I thought you were my friend.” I was crying.

The images faded when my mother came into my bedroom and hugged me, “It’s okay Charlotte, you’re alright, it’s just a dream.”

She calmed me down and I eventually went back to sleep, but in the back of my mind was a big question, should I give up the singing? If I was to get any success at it, parasites like Jane could suck me dry or bring me down. Was it all worth it?

The next morning I was still very tired but Mum was set on shopping and not local. She had me up at seven and in the shower. I dressed in a skirt and top with my low heeled boots. It looked like there could be quite a lot of walking.

“Why are we up so early?” I asked as I ate my breakfast, and yawned.

“We’re going to Town.” She was quite excited, I wasn’t. By Town she meant London. At least I could snooze on the train.

“Why?”

“Because we are.”

Mothers! Strange creatures.