by Daphne
 

Saturday, May 12, 1906

They have decided to send me to live with my Aunt Enid in Baltimore. She is my father’s older sister but we scarcely know her. I suppose my dear mother and father have nowhere else to turn. The surprising thing is that I am greatly relieved. Although I am determined to endure and overcome this tribulation with God’s help, I cannot continue as I have so far. I now seem so girlish in my outward form that my onetime chums are embarrassed to keep up their acquaintance with me. I can scarcely stand to look at my own image in the looking glass!

As for Finney Baker and that pack of baboons that he commands — without perceiving why, in the past year I have become their daily sport. Of all the boys in Perkinstown, only Billy Barkell holds back from taunting me. Hearing that I was going away, he came to our house yesterday. Billy swore that he would always be my friend — he would never forget our our “scientific experiments” and “pirate expeditions” and swims at the reservoir. He hoped that this thing which has so changed me me will not last, and we shall be able to resume the manly pursuits we have shared so happily these many years. When I parted with Billy, I again thought I wanted to die.

It is true, I have thought of killing myself, although it is the greatest sin. They tell us at church that there is a divine plan in which we all play our part. But what God would create one a male in his parts, and then inflict on that half-ripened boy a form that every day became more unmistakably female?

My teacher, Mr. Truscott, has been a true friend. Having observed the signs of my distress, he took it unto himself to speak to my parents. I think there can be few teachers so sympathetic to the torments that are visited on youths who in some essential respect are unlike their peers.

Dismissing the others one day some months ago, Mr. Truscott kept me after class, and bade me tell why my mathematics exercises suffered so. I had been at the top of the class, he said, and now at my present rate of decline seemed destined to plumb the bottom. Miserably, I acknowledged the truth of his observation. Again Mr. Truscott asked me why I did not summon up the fortitude and intellect that he felt sure was still within me.

Then, without calculation on my part, I broke into such an unquenchable fit of weeping that it astonished us both. At length, still sobbing, my head laid for comfort instinctively upon his manly breast, I confided my worst and most horrid nightmares. I told him that I could no longer endure the taunts and teasing of my schoolmates.

I shudder to imagine what another might have thought had we been observed on that afternoon. Tenderly, Mr. Truscott held me close to him until the fit had passed. He took my shaking hands in his own firm grip, and, looking directly into not just my eyes, but through them into my very soul, he told me that this terror I felt would surely pass. My body’s treason was not the consequence of any inherent fault of my own, he said. Science has learned that in human experience, there is a much greater range of emotion, intellect and outward semblance than is commonly believed. By a chance combination of these elements, I have been caused to suffer the greatest distress but, Mr. Truscott said, this affliction would not kill me. It was his confident belief that I would emerge the stronger for it, were I to rely on the assistance of those who loved me.

Finding words that I could never bring to cross my own lips, at an early opportunity Mr. Truscott specified to my parents my affliction and its consequences in my social relations and mental state. Perhaps this moral and physical distress would prove transient, he said; if it did not, it was doubly urgent that I be removed from my school and town for some time, that I might in comparative tranquillity adjust to the changes that fate has strangely visited on my body and my emotions.

Thus it is that I am now approaching the City of Baltimore in a second class railway coach. My parents have taken to heart Mr. Truscott’s earnest recommendation that I should be withdrawn, at least temporarily, from our local school. To my astonishment, his intervention prompted heartfelt expressions of concern and affection from my mother and even my father. Condensing many words between us into few, suffice it to say that in their view, I was their child. They knew I was good and decent and they would not be shaken in that belief unless by my own acts the contrary supposition was made manifest. Even then, they said, they would bear me the affection that parents naturally feel for their children.

Much moved, for my parents are commonly the most reticent of mortals, I have resolved to support their high estimation of my character. Indeed, I have begun to hope again that my affliction might prove transient, and perhaps even in some yet unperceived way be a test from which I may grow stronger and better.

Now the train is arriving at Baltimore, ten minutes late. On the platform I see an erect, impatient-looking woman dressed in black. It must be Aunt Enid, to whose care I have been commended.

May 14 (Monday). I am sure that my Aunt Enid loathes me. Our relations are brittle at best. She will not regard me directly, addresses me with scarcely a hint of warmth, and seems preoccupied by terrible thoughts she does not wish to impart. She is at least 50, a wealthy widow. I wonder why she agreed that I should come to live here with her.

May 15. In my Aunt’s household there are myself, my Aunt Enid, and five servants: Cook, Moira the upstairs maid, Peggy the parlor maid, and a Negro couple, Beulah and Gideon, who are washerwoman and coachman respectively. I don’t know how to behave around so many servants. Moira is especially pleasant and helpful.

My uncle perished long ago in a wild storm at sea, but that is not my aunt’s great tragedy. The sorrow on which she broods is the loss of her daughter and only child, my cousin Evelyn, by scarlet fever in her infancy, scarce months after my uncle’s own death fourteen years ago. I have learned this from Cook.

May 16. My breasts hurt again, and are sensibly swollen. I have also great difficulty with my trousers which are ever so tight about my hips. What shall I do? I have been here at my Aunt’s nearly a week and, as she has scarce directed a word at me, I remain at a loss as to how to conduct myself to win her favor. Surely the reason for my removal to her care has been imparted to my Aunt. I have resolved to write my father or Mr. Truscott, or both.

Thursday, May 17. The mystery of my Aunt’s unkind behavior has suddenly come clear. This evening, after I had helped Cook clear the supper table, Aunt Enid bade me sit next to her so that she might impart to me some important matters regarding our relationship. She said that an unwonted but persistent agitation had overcome her as she anticipated my arrival. She had thought her discomfort would pass, but it had instead intensified once I had been installed in her home. What I had most certainly taken for ill-will, she said, was her dread that she would be incompetent to discharge the responsibility laid upon her.

She knew little of the mental and moral development of a youth, Aunt Enid said, and almost nothing of his physical development. What she did know terrified her; it had been imparted to her that although I had seemed to be a normal boy, the perverse physical development of my body beginning early in my thirteenth year had engendered most troubling concerns. At wit’s end, my parents had sent me away into her care, but, said my Aunt Enid, considering her own lack of capability in these matters, how then could she possibly do right by me?

Much moved, I replied that I was indeed sensible of the great burden that my arrival must place on my Aunt’s settled circumstances. I would endeavor, I said, to be as worthy and dutiful a nephew as she might wish. As to my affliction, to which she had referred, it troubled me most of all. I was, it must be said, horrified by the strange changes in my physical aspect; I hoped for her understanding and support. For the present, I said, I hoped only to continue my education as well as I might, and trust in God’s mercy.

Aunt Enid replied that I was a brave lad, and that she would help me deal with my affliction as best she might. By my frank appreciation of my circumstance and hers, I had helped her to see clearly her own duty, she concluded, and wished me a good night.

Friday, May 18. I slept very well after the conversation with Aunt Enid related above. When I arose, I found that she had already left the house on a shopping expedition. I have passed the morning reading Mr. Dickens' Great Expectations. Immersing myself in Pip’s travails, I am able to forget my own, however briefly.

Monday, May 21. An extraordinary several days have passed, of which I shall now endeavor to set down an account in some detail, for I fear that if I do not, my mind may in time become so muddled that no clear account is possible.

On Saturday, Aunt Enid did not return home until tea-time, followed by a deliveryman who brought a mountain of parcels. I observed that these were from several large stores specializing in fine garments for ladies. Apropos, I remarked to my Aunt that our conversation the forenight must have restored her spirits equally as much as they had buoyed my own.
“Ah, yes, Edward,” replied my Aunt. “I have embarked us on a course that, if we hold to it, will bring us safely to a good result. You will see presently.”

What on earth does she mean, I wondered.

“Edward,” my Aunt continued, tea now being finished, “now you must bathe yourself. Cook has already heated water, so there is no reason to delay your bath.”

Of course, I am accustomed to regular bathing, it being the foundation of good hygiene. At home my older brothers and I, as a rule, bathed after supper on Saturday nights in anticipation of church services the next day. This however was my Aunt’s house, and as it was my duty to accommodate to her preferences, I did so most agreeably.

Cook had indeed heated a great quantity of water, and I luxuriated in it, soaking for fully a quarter of an hour before soaping and washing over every inch of my body. Then I arose from the bath, rinsed, and dried myself with a thick towel.

Regarding myself in the tall looking-glass, I saw a slim youth of about fourteen years. I knew well from summers past, long days swimming at the reservoir in Perkinstown, that it was not the body of a normal boy of fourteen that I beheld. Yet, for some reason, perhaps the torpor induced by the warmth of my bath, or perhaps because my Aunt and I had seemingly found a more comfortable relationship between us, I was sensibly less agitated than usual by the swelling of my breasts, the broadening of my hips, and — candor requires that I add this — the so far negligible development of my male parts.

This inspection completed, I turned to dress. To my consternation, the shirt and trousers that I had carefully folded over the back of a chair were gone. In their place, was an embroidered nightgown of white cotton, unmistakably that of a woman, and just as unmistakably left there for my own use!

Wrapping my towel about me and opening the door of the bath-room a few inches, I called to my Aunt. I was blushingly conscious both of the ridiculous situation in which I found myself and that (however desperately I sought to deepen my voice) a mere girlish whimper was all that I could produce. “Aunt Enid,” I said when she came near, “I know that my garments are ill-fitting and perhaps also in want of cleaning, but even so, I would much, much prefer them to this gown that has been left in their place.”

“Edward, you will surely indulge me in this and certain other amendments that I believe best calculated to ensure your happiness during your stay here. I will not argue the matter with you naked behind this door. Be so good as to dress yourself, not neglecting the robe and slippers that have been set out for you in your room. When you are presentable, come to my bed-room and I will endeavor to relieve the confusion that you doubtless feel at this moment.”

‘Confusion’ indeed! The sensation I felt as my Aunt firmly pulled shut the door was closer to mortification. Was it possible that she meant for me to dispense with the garments that signify my membership among the manly half of society? Already the treason of my body had caused me to become the butt of my schoolmates’ cruel teasing. I resolved to take a firm position with my Aunt. I simply could not bear the torment that must ensue if in addition I were observed to be attired in clothes more appropriate to a young woman than to a person of the male sex. I picked up the gown, which was soft and sweet-smelling. The scent reminded me of my mother’s bed on mornings long ago. . . .

An instant later, I regained my faculties. I would not, could not wear this garment, however much my Aunt desired it! Wrapping the towel more tightly between my chest and knees, I ran from the bath-room to the safety of my bed-room. Attaining this sanctuary, I bolted the door. Disdaining the beribboned robe laid out on my bed, I flung open the wardrobe. But — where in Heaven’s name were my clothes!

Half an hour later, I knocked at Aunt Enid’s door. Deprived of my own garments, I had at last put on the items chosen for me. I was angry, and at the same time discomfited to realize that they fit me far better than my usual nightshirt.

“Please come in, Edward, and forgive me,” said my Aunt, indicating a settee. It was the first time that I had been in her bedroom. Aunt Enid took an adjacent chair. Rather awkwardly, she touched my knee, then drew back and began:

“I have been rough with you, my dear. You know that your parents have entrusted your welfare to me, and this is a charge that I will carry out as well as I am able. What may be less evident, even now, is that I am truly sensible of the almost unthinkable anxiety that circumstances have inflicted upon you. After much reflection and a bit of prayer, I have concluded that one course alone may offer some relief, and that . . . that is for you to adopt the dress and manner of a young woman.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but my Aunt stilled me and rushed forward herself. “I expect you must think my proposal bizarre to an extreme, but please hear me out. I do not doubt that within you there burns a spirit that is masculine, or that you possess in abundance all those virtues that commonly distinguish the male sex. Nor do I doubt that within a few years, you may grow into a manly young gentleman. -- Presently, however, your outward appearance is wholly deceiving; the casual observer would see not an awkward young man, but instead a far more attractive girl on the verge of maidenhood. You know. . . we know . . . that while this contradiction persists you will be the butt of taunts and beatings at the hands of other boys. Am I not right?”

Miserably, I nodded.

“Here then is my plan,” said my Aunt. “It may be deficient in some respects, but it is the best I can devise. Today, in addition to visiting several shops during the forenoon, I also met my dear friend Edith Hamilton at luncheon. She is Headmistress of the Bryn Mawr School. I acquainted her with the nature of your affliction, explaining that while it persists, the rudeness of a masculine environment renders you unable to profit from continued study. I told my friend that this is a great tragedy, for I have observed that you have an uncommon aptitude for higher education.”

Perceiving the direction of my Aunt’s discourse, I struggled for words. “But, Aunt, surely you did not. . . I mean you would not think. . .” I stammered.

“Indeed I did,” Aunt Enid answered. “I put it to Miss Hamilton that you should be encouraged to develop your intellect to the fullest extent. I asked her to assist in the mitigation of your misfortune by allowing your admission to classes at Bryn Mawr beginning in the Fall term.”

“It is hardly thinkable that she would agree to your proposal,” I ventured.

“Yes, and Miss Hamilton thought for rather a long time. She asked me many questions but at last, I think largely because of the trust and affection she feels for me, she gave it her conditional consent.”

“Now, this is what I propose to you,” said Aunt Enid. “I say ‘propose’ because although I can of course require you to obey me, my plan is sure to fail without your willing and active support. I have 'brought you to water,' but now I ask you to 'drink' it of your own free will."
Neither Evelyn nor Edward would so lie! She says that then skips a day.
It has grown late, and I am very weary. Tomorrow I shall recount in detail all that my Aunt has desired of me. Let me break off here by merely recording that I have agreed to her plan.

May 23 (Wednesday). I am writing this entry in the dayroom of Aunt Enid’s townhouse. Outside the window, azaleas and lilacs present a cheerful appearance which I endeavor to emulate in my own manner. But, however tranquil I may seem, my appearance masks turbulent and confused feelings, of which more later. I am dressed in the fashion of a girl of fourteen, and only the shortness of my hair and, I am sure, the awkwardness of my gestures would betray to a visitor to this pleasant room that I was perhaps not what I seem to be. Nor does it seem entirely queer.

Aunt Enid has required of me that I shall adopt in all respects the dress and manners of the gentler sex, insofar as I am able, and she, aided by her maid, Moira, has undertaken to tutor me in ladylike graces. Our morning lessons are spent on toilette and costume, our afternoons on deportment, and our evening activities are intended to acquaint me with feminine pastimes. I am knitting a scarf — that is, I have started and undone it now three times. Aunt Enid would have me play the piano as well. I believe I have convinced her that I am already too old to learn to play an instrument, particularly that instrument, with any degree of facility.

The household staff have been sworn to support my transformation. Cook, Buelah her washerwoman and Gideon her coachman have served my Aunt for many years. Peggy, who was the parlor maid, has just been promoted “upstairs” — she will serve Aunt while Moira is given charge of me. Peggy’s sister Kate has replaced her downstairs. Both are “second generation”; their late mother was Aunt’s lady’s maid even before she was married to Mr. Westcott. All of them would probably believe the moon to be made of marzipan if she so bade them. Aunt Enid has imparted to the servants nothing less than what I too must accept as the truth — that I was mistakenly thought to be a boy.

This morning, Cook just smiled and gave me a hug. As for Moira — she is bright and bold, and takes this as a most amusing game, I think!

Now, here is another amazing thing. I am to enter Bryn Mawr School with documents that identify me as my aunt’s own daughter. (Aunt Enid’s only child, Evelyn, was born in 1893, six months before me, but was taken by the scarlet fever only two years later.)

Friday, May 25. The dressmaker has departed with over twenty dollars in her purse. Aunt Enid said she was well-pleased with the shirts, skirts, waists and jacket the woman has cut and sewn for me, and paid her generously.

People who have always worn skirts and petticoats probably think nothing of them, but I must confess that to me this feminine drapery seems both intimidating and somewhat thrilling. Aunt Enid says that I am fortunate to live in a time when corsets are being abandoned — at least by the young — in favor of more “active” fashions. She has not put her own corset and stays aside, of course, but she was adamant that a young woman with a lithe and willowy figure (by which she meant me) has no need to be “encased like a sausage.”

So here I am, already dressed for supper. It is a relief to have clothes that fit me! Moira has helped me dress, else I would be still in a hopeless muddle of undergarments. My skirt and jacket are simply cut, “as befits a schoolgirl,” Aunt says. I rather like my high-collared, starched white shirt. It is softened by a satin bow at the neck, and I must say that up to my neck, at least, I look as though I might have just stepped from a drawing by Mr. Charles Dana Gibson.

The resemblance I fancy I see in the mirror to a fashionable young woman is of course completely undone by the absence of maidenly tresses. Moira has done her best to arrange my curls fetchingly. She has cunningly woven in a ribbon into my hair that is the shade of my waist, but no artifice can disguise the fact that the longest hairs on my head are but six or seven inches long!

Ah, Diary! I am called for dinner.

May 27. I have decided to read Anne of Green Gables, to see why all the girls so adore the book.

May 28. Anne is clever, nauseatingly charming and far too predictable. Give me Mr. Dickens any day! Cook is making risotto. It is a kind of rice that is simmered forever in broth, a favorite of my aunt’s. It seems Cook arrived from Bologna in Italy at nearly the same time that my Aunt returned here a widow.

May 30. There was a grand Decoration Day parade this morning on Pratt Street. Setting me a challenge, Aunt bade me go out to see it. Moira helped me choose my costume — a white middy blouse with a blue collar, short blue skirt, black hose and low boots, and a “boater” straw hat with a matching blue ribbon. She came along to buoy me up should my courage fail. We rode the C&P trolley to downtown. Downtown has almost totally been rebuilt since the great fire only two years ago. The buildings are quite grand, especially the department stores. As it was a midweek holiday, the crowd in an exhuberant mood. It was great fun to be part of it! With all the noise and excitement of at least a dozen brass bands, I doubt anyone paid me or even Moira (who is indeed buxom) the slightest attention!

The bandsmen strutted by in their uniforms, blaring away on marches by Mr. Sousa. The greatest cheers were given to a few venerable veterans of the Civil War, some in gray uniforms and more in blue, and now too old to march. They were in carriages, attended by members of the City Council and young women with patriotic sashes and ribboned hats. Veterans of our liberation of Cuba and the Philippines from Spain marched past making loud huzzahs. There were also detachments from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the Boy Scouts, Elks and Woodsmen, and patriotic associations from several city wards. Caught up in the festive mood, Moira and I waved our flags as wildly as anyone!

Sunday, June 3. Aunt Enid has been invited to a garden party this afternoon, and is determined that I should accompany her. I am filled by dread. I will not be able to hide in a crowd today! She assures me that people will be kind if they notice anything odd at all. I am sure they will laugh at me behind my back, perhaps to my face as well.

At least I need not be embarrassed by the shortness of my hair. Yesterday while Moira and I were at the grand parade, my generous aunt purchased me a beautiful fall. It is exactly the color of my own hair, auburn. The fall is nearly twenty inches long, locks as full and rich, I think, as adorn any girl in Baltimore. It saddens me to imagine what adversity has forced some poor woman to part with these glorious tresses. Discreetly clipped and pinned into my own hair, the fall is impossible of detection.

I asked Aunt if I might wear it up. Moira put me up to it. She is a minx! My aunt firmly replied that at fourteen, I am still far too young for that. Perhaps, she said, when I am seventeen. Will I still be wearing a girl’s dresses then? It causes me to wonder. Women have much to commend them, in particular a kind sympathy that is rarely found in a man. Without their tender care, guidance and example, it is doubtful that boys would become civilized at all. And yet, I am used to my freedom. Even boyish adventures — roving over hill and stream, competing in sports -- are a form of testing and toughening that develops manly character.

Should I then bid adieu to all that? Oh, I hope not; whatever it is I may be, I crave adventure!

Sunday Night, still June 3. Oh, Diary, the garden party was so much fun!

Aunt and I compromised. She conceded that I might wear my new hairpiece in a braid, a lovely thick auburn braid that reached to my back. It is strange how that favor calmed me. I must say that it caused me to anticipate the event with positive pleasure.

People may think it strange, perhaps, that I have so readily ceded my trousers, but I think it not so strange. In the first place, my trousers no longer fit me, nor do my shirts or undergarments. Even if they did, my features are hardly manly. And to admit the truth, Diary, as long as I can remember, I have thought of manly as something I am expected to be, like my father and brothers, not what I truly am.

Today, I actually felt girlish. I wore a new afternoon dress. Well, all my dresses are new, aren’t they? But this nainsook cotton one I like especially. It is mostly white, with blue embroidery at the collar, cuffs and hems. The neckline is low and square, the dress is all of one piece, and its hem falls just below my knees. With it, Aunt allowed me to wear silk hose and court shoes with a tiny heel.

I observed myself in the mirror and it was just as Moira insisted: I seemed unmistakably a girl, at least as far as externals matter. It occurred to me that acting out my role, I would be clumsy and tongue-tied. I said as much to Moira.

“Don’t worry a bit about that, Miss Evelyn. Just smile when people talk to you; look right at them and smile and nod when they say something. Curtsey to the old people. They’ll think you are ever so intelligent.”

Whether my Aunt’s friends thought I was intelligent, they didn’t say. She introduced me as her niece from the Pennsylvania hills, come to Baltimore to enter high school, which was true enough and excused my awkwardness. I curtseyed a lot.

After a while, a boy rescued me from the old people. He introduced himself as Martin Tolliver. “Oh,” I blurted out, “the preacher’s son!” Aunt Enid is a member of the Unitarian Church, where the Reverend Joseph Tolliver is pastor.

“Yes, I am,” the boy smiled. “And everything they say about preachers’ sons is true. Would you like to look at the Japanese goldfish in the pond over there with me?”

Martin is sixteen and full of enthusiasms, including doing magic tricks, and the Baltimore Orioles base ball club, and playing tennis. He is not so very handsome, however — all of his parts seem to be of odd sizes, and his ears stick out. I had to laugh when he retrieved first a penny and then a nickel from my ear. He promised to teach me how to play at tennis.

I asked Martin if he would give me the penny. Regarding me quizzically, he complied. I tossed the penny into the goldfish pond. “There,” I said, “now you cannot go back on your offer. When is my first tennis lesson?”

Monday, June 4. My aunt declared at breakfast today that I am a social success. “You were bobbing up and down so, clutching your straw hat like a life preserver, that I was reminded of one of those yo-yo toys. But everyone thought you were charming.” Thank you so much, Aunt Enid!

Is Martin going to invite me to play tennis?

Saturday, June 9. Diary, I’m sorry. It’s harder to keep up. So many new things are happening to me now. Like tennis. Martin fixed it up. He arranged for me to become a junior member of the Baltimore Lawn Tennis Club. It is in Druid Hill Park, not far away from Aunt’s house on Eutaw Place. Now that school is over for the summer, we play every day, a dozen or more of us, boys and girls and me. It is so nice to have friends again. I don’t think anyone suspects that I am . . . what I am. Oh, Diary, I hope not!

Martin is so sweet. Really, I get goose bumps when he even notices me. We are going together to a base ball game next week.

Tuesday, June 12 (late). Oh, Diary, I’ve been to the ball game with Martin. Our Orioles beat New York in the end, which pleased Martin infinitely. I was amused to deflate him just a little bit, however. The Yankees scored in their half of the fourth inning. Then the Orioles were at bat, and the famous Willie Keeler had advanced to third. George Jones was at bat with one out. “Watch, Evelyn! Jones will knock one hard, I’ll bet,” said Martin.

“Look,” I answered, “the infielders are playing too far back. All Jones must do is bunt toward first base, and Keeler is home safe with the tying run.”

Martin smiled at me indulgently. An instant later, Jones laid down a perfect squeeze bunt. There was a cloud of dust at home; Keeler was safe, Jones perched on first, and Martin’s superior manly knowledge confounded. He looked at me with new respect. “When I was still a kid, I used to play base ball with the boys,” I admitted. “I did.”

June 13. Both Cook and Moira are sure that Martin wants to be my beau. I am much too young for a beau. If I were fond of a boy, I should be compelled by decency to confess that my parts are not normal, and I cannot imagine how I could do that. I will not even think of a beau until I have completed high school. There are so many other things I must do first!

June 14 (Thursday). Mother has written, sending me a lot of ”news” but little real information. The winter wheat was abundant, she says, the corn is well-started and the pigs and chickens are multiplying; my next older brother is engaged to be married and Ellen, the wife of my first brother, has just made me an uncle for the third time. Mother hopes I am fine and enjoying the company of Aunt Enid. Dutifully I have written back, sending my letter yesterday, signing it Edward, of course. Aunt Enid cautions that I should not tell my parents that she has persuaded me to present myself as a girl, not yet at least.

I would have wanted to know if Mother and Father miss me, but since she does not touch on that, neither do I. I report that Aunt is most generous, that I will start high school in the autumn, and that I hope to see her and Father soon, in Baltimore if not at home.

I have terrible dreams, nightmares. I see in them my mother, my father, but they do not recognize the poor girl who calls to them. My former teacher, Mr. Truscott, glides or maybe slithers toward me, whispering that everyone believes Edward is dead.

Last night, I woke up crying uncontrollably, and then an irresistable need drew me to my aunt’s room. She was still awake, reading. I paused, my face streaked with tears. “What is it, child? Come, climb into my bed with me.”

Thus bidden, I crawled into my aunt’s bed. She pulled me to her. Enfolded by her arms, I felt immediately comforted. I began to whimper. Then I bawled, shedding tears as though a dam had broken. I felt terrible because Aunt Enid was so kind; that only made me cry more.

Oh, what was to become of me, I gasped out. My aunt had given me refuge and opened her purse and yet I . . . was a frightful, ungrateful person. My tears would not abate. I was so ashamed, I confessed, when I regarded my body — ashamed to be such a strange creature, neither boy nor girl. Notwithstanding the evidence of my swelling breasts and my hips, I could not be called a girl. Other evidence proclaimed me male.

“In my heart and mind, I know I am really still Edward Tucker, not Evelyn Tucker,” I said, sobbing, “Why is Edward Tucker being punished by God? What did he do to deserve this agony? Why must Edward pretend to be a girl? I simply cannot go on,” I told my aunt. I am afraid of the strange thoughts that race through my head. I am afraid, afraid of being found out. If someone caught me out to be a boy, I think I would rather die.

I said I had dreamed I was on exhibit at Mr. Barnum’s Museum in New York City.

I did not tell my aunt that once or twice I have contemplated making an end to my life. Instead, I said to her that I knew I was much out of line, I must seem ungrateful, but now I wished to abandon her experiment. I could no longer sustain this unnatural masquerade. Someone would find me out, and worse than in Perkinstown, I would be the butt of everyone’s jokes. I begged my aunt to call it off. I would rather be a poor sort of boy than a well-bred girl . . . . that was my considered judgment.

For another moment, exactly and quietly, Aunt Enid rubbed my back and shoulders. Then she spoke, as though she too had been lying awake thinking, far too often, since I had come into her life. “Yes, I can imagine the terror you feel. About what you know and do not know. Evelyn . . . it scares me too.”

That was when I realized that I love my aunt. She continued that she had spoken of my situation to her friend Adolph Meyer at Johns Hopkins University. He had taken a friendly interest, my aunt said, and hoped I would allow him to examine me. I might meet Dr. Meyer and his colleagues presenting myself however I wished, Aunt said. They were brilliant people who sought, through the study and propagation of mental hygiene, to help people cope with the horrors of their inner lives.

Wednesday, June 20. Today, less than a week after my midnight talk with Aunt Endi, we took an electric streetcar from Madison Park to the university, changing at North Street. Hopkins is not so far off; in fact many students board in our neighborhood. I was thrilled by the campus. It is full of huge green trees and handsome Georgian brick buildings. A few summer students (some women as well as men!) were hastening to their classes. None gave me so much as a second look, thank Heaven!

We found the Medical School and were directed to Dr. Meyer’s offices. I was surprised that a man so eminent was in fact still quite young, and rather handsome, too. Dr. Meyer greeted us kindly, introduced his assistants, inquired after my aunt’s health, and then turned his full attention to me.

“From what your aunt has imparted to me, Evelyn, circumstances have conspired to put your mind into a fragile state — is that right?”

I nodded, blushing, and he continued. “We have learned that the origin of mental illnesses lies in the interaction between biology and life history events. It has also been shown that many disorders of thought can be cured, or relieved simply by providing the victim with a better understanding of the cause of his or her distress.”

“You need to know because you are men of science,” I replied. “It is your work. I must know because my life depends on it.

“Will you examine me now?”

“Not today, I think. Today I propose that you tell us your life story. Charlotte and Reuben here will assist me by taking careful notes.”

I resolved to share everything, even my innermost thoughts, with these kind people. Prompted now and then by questions, I spoke for over an hour. Dr. Meyer and his younger colleagues seemed interested in the smallest details. I confessed to turbulent emotions, confused dreams, disgust with my body, dread of what might lie ahead. This time, however, I did not break into tears. I felt a rush of relief that my aunt and these kind people would listen as though what I knew, and what I did not know, was terribly important.

I finished telling my “life story,” and gazed expectantly at Dr. Meyer. Instead, it was Dr. Charlotte Clathrop who spoke.

“Perhaps the most important thing we can tell you now, Evelyn, is that you are not unique. Your condition is rare, to be sure, but it has been known throughout human history. In ancient times, you would have been regarded as sacred — marked by the gods.

“Do you know the myth of Hermaphroditis?”

“Uh, yes. . . . Oh, gosh! Of course, that’s why those bullies called me a morphodite!” Why hadn’t I figured that out?

“Hermaphroditis was created with both male and female chemistry, just as you seem to have been,” Dr. Clathrop continued. ‘In modern times, science has recorded the stories of dozens of people not unlike you. By allowing us to work with you, Evelyn, you will help us understand and find better ways of helping others — the many others of indeterminate sexuality who live solitary, desperate lives. Will you do that?”

My bosom was tight with emotion. I could only whisper. “Oh, yes, yes!”

July 3. I awoke on Sunday morning, two days ago, to find a beautiful woman sharing my bed. The first rays of the sun were lighting the ceiling so it must have been about half past five when the soft murmuring of another soul intruded on my own dreams. “Oh,” she said. “No, you cannot be certain of that, Richard. Anyway, I don’t want. . . don’t want. . . .”

Amazed, I awoke. I resisted the impulse to cry out myself. Instead, raising myself on an elbow, I studied my importunate companion as she struggled without success to complete her dream sentence.

Chestnut curls fell about the young woman’s head and shoulders. She cradled a pillow as though a lover. Her lips were full but her figure still somewhat girlish, half hidden by the folds of a sheet. She wore, as did I, a muslin nightgown trimmed with lace. Detecting the scent of tobacco on her breath and a touch of color lingering on her lips, I took her for twenty or more.

Just then, my companion sat up suddenly in bed. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh my God, what an awful dream!”

“You are safe here,” I answered. “Whoever you are.”

“Oh, I’m Fiona Rawlings,” the young woman replied, sitting up and shaking the cobwebs from her head. “You must be as surprised to find me here as I was amazed to find you last night in ‘my’ bed.”

I agreed to the probable truth of Miss Rawlings’ statement. “My name’s Evelyn Tucker,” I added. “I guess you are a friend of my Aunt Enid.”

“Oh, I call her ‘Aunt,’ too, though there’s no blood relation. She’s my Godmother.

“Mummy and Daddy and my younger brothers have gone to Europe for the summer. My older brother Ted is bunking at the Ariel rowing club. So of course when I reached Baltimore last night, I preferred Aunt Enid’s to our musty old wreck of a townhouse.

“It was very late, everyone was already asleep, so I let myself in with my key and went straight to my room, dead tired! And here I found you” she added, and waited until I should explain myself.

“Aunt has taken me in, uh, only recently,” I explained. “She has been most generous, an unwarranted kindness, in fact, that I must strive to repay.”

“You are quite a pretty child. I think that alone must endear you to Aunt Enid,” she said. As I endeavored to construe her meaning, my companion wrapped an arm across my shoulder, turned my head, and kissed me full on the lips!

I was startled, though I found Fiona’s gesture not a bit unpleasant. I have never been kissed before, Diary. I think I should like to be kissed on the lips often, but preferably by boys. That is how I interpret the pleasant sensation I felt as I slid away from Fiona’s embrace and off the bed.

We washed and dressed, making small talk only. I alerted Moira, who passed the word to Cook, who set an additional place and saw to it that Aunt Enid was informed of the midnight arrival of her goddaughter. Then came, in the conservatory where Aunt regularly takes breakfast in the summer, a full explanation.

Fiona has been a regular guest at my aunt’s, hence her own key. She
is majoring in Anthropology at Smith College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was on her way to North Carolina to join one of her professors. Both women are to spend the summer photographing the people of the Great Smokey Mountains — Cherokees, Negroes, a strange race called Melungeons, Whites — and recording their life histories. I think myself that the two of them will be truly the oddest thing in those hills.

Aunt Enid declared Fiona’s summer work absolutely necessary and not a moment too late. “How can we help?” she asked, and proceeded to write a substantial cheque to Fiona “for support of scholarly investigation.”

The Fourth of July, 1906. The United States is 130 years old today, Diary. Fiona and I are to celebrate by going down to the Ariel Rowing Club. We will be guests at a “clambake” organized by her brother Ted and his chums. At 9 pm, there will be a grand fireworks show over Fort McHenry. We’ll watch it from the Club’s launch. Imagine that, Diary! I’ll actually see those “bombs bursting in air” that we sang about in school back in Perkinstown!

Monday evening, July 9. Dr. Reuben Crawford has telephoned Aunt Enid. He has inquired if I would assist him in his therapeutic research. What on earth does he mean, I ask. My aunt is not quite sure herself. It seems that Dr. Crawford has a new patient, the mirror opposite of me. He thinks we could help one another.

I have agreed to help.

Thursday, July 12. This morning I met Dorothy Downey at Dr. Crawford’s office. She is wonderfully feminine, but she is male withal. Dorothy is just fifteen, and doomed to grow a beard, grow long and bony — in fact, her transformation has begun and this has brought her to Hopkins.

Miss Downey’s history is marvellous and yet, if Dr. Crawford is to be believed, not entirely rare. Her father ran off when she was still a babe. To make ends meet, her mother bravely opened a school for little girls. She is a gifted teacher and the school has prospered.

Years passed, yet little Dorothy was not breeched. She knew that she was a boy, and asked her Mama why. “Because,” she was told, “it would scare the other little girls. Be brave, and help Mama.’

The Dorothy I saw was every inch a female. In her oyster shirtwaist and plaid skirt, her heeled boots and a fetching chapeau, auburn locks twisted in a thick braid that fell over her shoulder, Dorothy seemed far more at ease in her femininity than I shall ever be.

“I am a victim, but in the end, I am forced to admit, a willing and culpable victim. I would happily stay a girl.”

And there, Diary, is the amazing contradiction. I would happily stay a boy but am forced to become female. Dorothy would happily remain a girl but must become male. It flashed through my mind that we should exchange souls, if only we knew how.

I am nothing if not forward in my speech. As our meeting ended, I asked Dr. Crawford for what he hoped by bringing Dorothy and me together. He said that he hoped only that we might become friends, that through our friendship we might be of comfort to each other.

We will both continue to meet with Dr. Crawford regularly for therapeutic sessions, he said. From time to time, we would also be examined by Dr. Charlotte Clathrop, who is a medical doctor. No fee will be charged provided we are of assistance to the Hopkins research staff.

It being lunchtime, I thanked Dr. Reuben Crawford and suggested to Dorothy that we seek nourishment at a restaurant nearby. She agreed without hesitation. So it was that as we lingered there over sorbets, I found myself listening to a story even stranger than my own.

“Mine is a horror story, not entirely of my mother’s conscious making,” explained Dorothy. “She took the path of least effort. It was easier for her to keep me in skirts, and promote me to be her teaching assistant, than for her to treat me as a son -- at least until now.

“I don’t know the least thing about being a boy. I like everything about being a girl. Perhaps that is silly, but I do not wish to have to prove that I am fearless and strong, ready to hazard all rather than be judged unmanly. I desire instead to cultivate domestic virtues — to make a home that is a comfortable retreat for a good man and a sanctuary for his children. Is that so wrong, Evelyn? Is it my fault for wanting that so?”

It was only at that point that I realized Dr. Crawford had not referred to my own situation. Was Dorothy aware, I inquired, that I too was a ‘victim’ of sexual ambiguity?

“Well,” Dorothy replied, “I guessed. I supposed there must have been a reason. Are you really a boy . . . beneath?”

I explained that I had been reared as a boy but recently it has appeared that I am in fact a hermaphrodite, neither fully one nor the other.

“Ooh,” said Dorothy. “What will you do?”

I confessed that I had no plan but to appear to be as much of the sex I most seemed to be, and that I doubted my ability to take up the role into which I had been cast.

“Don’t worry, silly! I can teach you all you need to know,” exclaimed my companion. “That must be why Dr. Crawford has put us together. But . . . you must teach me to be a boy. Won’t you?”

And just then, Diary, I was possessed of a wonderful inspiration. At least, I believe it wonderful, though some may think it evil.

I reached across the table, and took Dorothy’s hands between mine. “We shall be the best of friends,” I proposed. “When you visit me, you shall continue to be the lovely Dorothy Downey — at least so far as artifice shall allow — and I think no one shall be the wiser. And when I visit you, now that you must endeavor to live as a boy, I shall encourage you by appearing as my former self, Edward Tucker, hoping also to give no alarm to the assumptions of the naturally credulous. In that way, we both shall test the boundaries of the new lives we must perforce live.”

“Oh, Evelyn!” said Dorothy, squeezing my hands in her excitement, “we shall have such fun!”

Well, Diary, I certainly hope so.

July 23. Martin has at last returned from a visit to his cousins. I am so glad, Diary. It has been wretchedly hot and I have been bored. He came by this afternoon riding on a tandem bicycle, quite dapper in a boater, an elegant striped shirt, gray linen trousers and spats! His shirt was open at the collar because of the heat. Before I could compliment him on his appearance, Martin inquired of me if I perhaps knew someone who wished to bicycle in search of a cup of ice cream.

“I do indeed, sir,” I replied, and bade Martin wait in the relative cool of our back parlor while I ran to change my costume. For bicycling, I have a split skirt with ever so many pleats -- Aunt Enid thinks of everything! In no time we were on our way to Doebreiner’s Creamery. Everyone says Doebreiner’s has the best ice cream in all of Baltimore. I am sure it is so by the evidence of our chocolate milk shakes.

Martin has set his cap on entering Cornell University. It is in Ithaca, New York, where he has just visited his cousins. He was mightily impressed by the facilities of the university and by the enthusiasm of students he while met there. He witnessed an aeroplane flight demonstrated by Mr. Orville Wright, who circled over the Cornell campus for fifteen minutes! If he is admitted to Cornell, Martin says, he will study engineering and learn to build aeroplanes.

Saturday, July 28. My aunt is a very interesting person. That’s not just my opinion. It seems that everyone believes so. It is quite hard to believe that she is my father’s older sister.

Yesterday was another horribly hot day. In quest of a breeze, I joined Cook on the back porch. There, in response to my questions, Cook told me how Aunt Enid came to be a grand lady of Baltimore.

Despairing of accomodating her stepmother’s demands on her, Aunt Enid left home when only 16. (I can imagine this; Grandmother is a difficult person!)

She found her way to Baltimore where by luck she was engaged as the private secretary to a wealthy young woman. Subsequently, they travelled to Europe, where my aunt caught the eye of an elderly nobleman. They were married, after a few years he died, and she returned to Baltimore in 1885 as a wealthy widow!

Of course, Aunt Enid was besieged by suitors, and from them she chose a Mr. Westcott, by whom she had a daughter, Evelyn. Now came the great tragedy of my aunt’s life: her husband was lost in a shipwreck and scarce three months later, her baby was carried off by the fever. That was long ago, yet still my aunt wears black — more, says Cook, for the child than the husband.

Several afternoons and evenings every month, except for August, my aunt’s house fills with people — doctors, lawyers, and professors, occasional travellers from New York or Philadelphia or Boston, educated Negroes, YMCA people, a few radical politicians, missionaries, ladies who communicate with spirits, 7th Day Adventists and Jews — only the German sort, of course — social workers, preachers, authors, socialists but no anarchists — my aunt draws the line at anarchists — and now me. At first I was just a fly on the wall, but discerning lately that what I say makes about as much sense as what anyone else says, or at least is regarded as such, I am become quite bold.

1 August (Wednesday). Aunt Enid and I have had a “talk.” I spoke of the difficulty of coming to terms with a change from being a boy to appearing and behaving at all times as a girl — it was not simply a matter of changing one’s clothes — and that as Aunt might readily apprehend, it would be helpful to have the support of people my own age.

She remarked immediately that I had said people, not girls. I explained that Dr. Reuben Crawford had acquainted me with another young person afflicted by sexual ambiguity, a person whom I desired to visit from time to time, and to have visit us as well. And in this wise, I added: that I should visit my friend in the guise of Edward Tucker, and that my friend should call at our house in Madison Park as Dorothy Downey.

Aunt Enid was silent for a few minutes. I cultivated maidenly patience, and reflected on the numbers of gears that doubtless were spinning furiously within her head.

“Evelyn,” she finally said, “I have come to love you, not the least because I see in you a noble soul, a soul able to rise above the slavery of sex roles and perhaps able to lead others into an era where we may all — men as well as women — be judged by our abilities and achievements, and not by our sexual apparatus.

“To find your destiny, of course you must exercise your spirit. Dorothy will be most welcome in our house. I trust that Edward will be welcome in . . . Arthur’s, . . . is that right?”

Yes, it was, I nodded.

4 August. I am writing this on the steamboat President Garfield, enroute to Chestertown, Maryland. Every August for many years, Aunt Enid has passed two weeks with her dear friend and onetime employer, Mary Campbell Cooper, and her family. My advent changes things not a whit. Moira is on the deck below, keeping an eye on our steamer trunk.

Most of the merry throng that crowded our vessel have disembarked at Betterton, bound for its beach and distractions. Betterton is on the south side of the Sassafras River, just a few miles downstream from the Campbell family “farm.” Aunt has just pointed out Mrs. Cooper and several of her children, who are waiting for us at the pier with a driver and a wagon drawn by a pair of fine-looking horses.

9 August. After five days, at last a letter from Martin. If it were not for him being there, I don’t think I should miss steamy hot old Baltimore at all! Martin has little to say, but it gives me a reason to write back. I fill several pages reporting what great fun I have been having with the younger Campbells and Coopers. Just to tease Martin, I mention Frank Campbell several times, though I think Frank (who has a devilish smile and is deadly at charades) has scarcely noticed me. I have gone riding twice already with Flora Cooper, who is the youngest of Mrs. Campbell Cooper’s five, and with her cousin Sally Campbell. It is such fun to be back on horseback again. They were amused by my countrified way of riding (I tucked up my skirts and used a man’s saddle) and have undertaken to teach me how to “sit a horse” properly. I’ve made them confess that “country” or not, I am the better rider! Tomorrow we shall all go fishing at Rock Hall.

August 17. All good things must end, Diary. Aunt and I will return to Baltimore tomorrow. Chestertown has survived a great storm that blew for a day and a night and knocked down many trees and smashed some boats. In its aftermath, the heat has abated. While the rain came down in great sheets outside, Flora and Sally and I tried on each others’ frocks and talked such a great deal about nothing at all. They could not help noticing the fall that is woven into my hair, and asked me about it. Forced to improvise, I said the first thing that came into my head — that I had been desperately unhappy where I lived before I came to Aunt Enid’s. One day, in a fit of despair, I said, I had chopped my locks off with a pair of scissors.

My woeful story elicited much sympathy. I expect it was Sally who spread it around — in any event, it was Sally’s mother, Mrs. Elizabeth Campbell, who questioned me further and then advised that I forego the artifice in favor of a boyish look! “Wear short curls while your true hair grows in,” she said. “It will render you interesting.” I don’t know, Diary. Mrs. Campbell has not been fourteen for a very long time.

Both Sally and Flora have attended Bryn Mawr School for years and years. They assure me I shall be happy there. Of course it is easy to be happy if your mother or aunt is among the founders of the school and you take your membership in Baltimore’s elite as a matter of course, whereas I — despite the many kindnesses the Campbells and Coopers have shown me — I expect I shall be thought a great rube and bumpkin!

Evening, August 18. Back in Baltimore, and exhausted! Martin was waiting at the pier with flowers. He claims to have missed me, but I know that he has plenty of girl friends.

28 August (Tuesday). After hearing me hold forth at one of Aunt Enid’s soirees, her friend Miss Hamilton has decreed that I shall begin in the 10th Grade at Bryn Mawr School, not the 9th. She visited my aunt yesterday to impart this fact. I can’t for the life of me remember what I said to impress Miss Hamilton, unless it was maintaining that women would no doubt make better surgeons than men, if skill at butchering and sewing were to give a clue.

I am dreading school. It begins in ten days’ time. I am sure that I shall be a freak no matter how hard Aunt has tried to teach me deportment and feminine graces. I love to read, I laugh much too loudly, argue too forcefully — and it is at least half my Aunt’s own fault; see the example she sets me!

September 22, 1906. School begun two weeks ago for both Arthur and me. He is at Boys’ Latin School on Brevard Street, the same school as Martin, but is only a freshman, whereas Martin is a lofty senior. I have asked Martin to keep a friendly eye out for Arthur. I am in the 10th grade at Bryn Mawr School. Miss Hamilton is determined that I shall not fail in any respect. She has literally commanded me to turn out to compete in field hockey, to join the Drama Club, and to sign up for the most challenging courses, as though these would be easy for a boy who has just emerged from the hills of Pennsylvania!

Field hockey is such fun, a lot of running and banging with sticks. I had never played it before but it comes to me far more readily than to the other girls, perhaps because I have played team sports for so many years and my competitors were boys.

Sally Campbell is also a sophomore, and has been very kind to me. Her cousin Flora is a freshman.

My courses are a mixed bag — history is easy, biology and English literature challenging, and I am hopeless at home economics! Why can’t I sew a straight line? And Algebra is such a horror! I can't work out the solution to a quadratic equation. Why did Miss Hamilton insist on it? But Diary, I shall not give up!

October 6, 1906 (Sunday night). Miss Dorothy Downey visited us this weekend. She arrived by streetcar in the guise of Mr. Arthur Downey. By pre-arrangement, Moira greeted him at the door and whisked him into a transformation chamber, from which Dorothy some moments later emerged. I greeted my friend with an enthusiastic embrace and, in fact, we shared tears of happiness that we might be together again.

I soon learned that it is not well with my friend Arthur. He is hazed at school by other boys who find him, well, not manly enough. Martin can only help so far. Arthur says he is bucking up. Yet, . . . it is so evident that Dorothy is who he — no, she — really is. She is the one person my age with whom I can share all my thoughts.

Aunt met Dorothy at teatime and proclaimed herself enchanted. We must all go to the theater this very evening, she decided, and sent our coachman, Gideon, in quest of tickets to Mr. Shaw’s new comedy, Pygmalion.

Gideon returned in due course with the tickets and so there was a frenzy of preparation. Neither Dorothy nor I had ever been to the theater at night nor, were the truth to be freely confessed, had we dresses long enough to suit the occasion. We barricaded ourselves in my rooms and endeavored to improvise, sending Moira forth to ransack Aunt’s closets for longer skirts we could possibly wear with my still maidenly selection of tailored waists and jackets.

When we at last emerged, Aunt told us we should not have bothered to affect such a grown-up appearance, for it had become quite ordinary for younger girls to attend the theatre if properly chaperoned. But, she added with a wink, Dorothy and I seemed quite a la mode. . . .

And, oh, Diary, what a wonderful play Pygmalion is! Mr. Shaw’s point is that any transformation is possible if we only have the brains and pluck to rise above the foolish prejudices of polite society. Both Dorothy and I shall endeavor to do so. Indeed, I must, oh, I must.

October 8. School is going better than I could have imagined. I have been selected to the first varsity hockey squad, which is a great honor for a sophomore.

October 13 (Saturday). Moira has asked if she might have a few pairs of boots and slippers that I have outgrown. “Whatever for, Moira?” I asked. “Surely they will not fit you, either. Why, you are still taller than I.”

“Yes, Miss — they are not for my use, but for my brother’s,” replied Moira. “Harry has become uncommonly bad of late, and my Mum is resolved to do something about it.”

“Whatever do you mean, Moira,” I cried, suppressing a slight tremor of . . . was it anticipation?

“He has always been one to call attention to himself. Now Harry is twelve, and has taken up bullying the smaller boys at school and showing disrespect to his teachers, or so they report. He steers well clear of me, because he knows I’ll cuff him if I must, but he taunts my younger sisters something awful, especially when they are good.”

“But. . . what will your mother do?”

“She’ll put him in dresses for a while, she will. He’s to wear girls’ undergarments all the time, and as soon as school is over, Harry is to return home and exchange his boys’ clothes for dresses and a pinafore. Sundays, it will be dresses all day, including to Mass, my mum says.”

I gasped, imagining the horror young Harry must doubtless feel to be unmanned. My situation had not permitted of choice, for my own body had betrayed me. Even so, I had spent many miserable days, countless sleepless, tearful nights, before it was clear in my mind that I should become the best girl I could. I said as much to Moira.

“Harry’s case is different, Miss. He’ll know that as soon as he learns to behave, he’ll be permitted to go back to being a boy — a proper boy. And after, as long as he is under my Mum’s sway, Harry must fear that any misbehaviour will mean another spell in skirts.”

I still could not believe my ears. “Surely, Moira, your father won’t permit Harry to receive such treatment?”

“Oh, yes, Miss! My Da doesn’t go up against my mum much anyway, not about the rearing of the children to be sure, and he’s quite in favor of teaching Harry some proper respect for women. The same was done to him, you see, by our Nannie, and Da says it turned him right around. That’s how my mum learned about it, from Nannie, er, Da’s mum.”

“Then I must help, I suppose. You may take the green slippers, and those boots I wore when I first came here, and — Moira, will you wish some of these dresses that are now too short for me to wear?”

Now Moira has gone off with two carpetbags full of my outgrown clothes, Diary, and I have sworn her to give me frequent reports of Harry’s “training.”

Tuesday, October 30, 1906 — Tomorrow is All Hallow’s Eve, Diary, what a fine day to go roving once again as a boy! I have found a cap that will contain my curls, and ready-made trousers, a shirt and jacket from the dry goods stores on Tremont Street. Boots, too — big ones, with hob nails.

November 1. I have been caught out — as a girl! Last night I contrived to go roving with Martin and Frank Campbell and some others of Martin’s friends. Of course they were all in on the joke, and affected to treat me as one of their chums. We tied scarves and kerchiefs over our faces and stopped at a number of houses to demand “treats.” Old Mrs. Meacham saw through my disguise immediately. “Who is that pretty child, Martin?” she demanded to know. “It is obvious that she is an imposter -- not one of you lot!”

I confessed to the truth of Mrs. Meacham’s charge with a curtsey, and begged to know how she had detected me as counterfeit.

“I have known this gang of ruffians all their lives,” she said. “See how they push and shove each other around. Whereas they are taking great care not to bump or jostle you, my dear,” she explained triumphantly!

November 5. I may have been detected by Mrs. Meacham’s sixth sense, but I still can fool everyone else. Arthur, on the other hand, is making rather a hash of it in his efforts to live as a boy. Seriously, he cannot walk without swaying, nor look a man directly in the eye without blushing! I took him down to the harbor. It was a lovely Indian’s summer day. We rented a boat and fishing poles, and I set to teaching Arthur to row. Rowing is not so hard — you just dip the oars so, and pull, and lift, drop back and pull again — but try as he might, Arthur had the greatest difficulty. Despairing of ever getting a line in the water, I relieved him at the oars and propelled our craft straight to the place I had chosen near the end of a derelict wharf.

Diary, would you be surprised to learn that Arthur was also unable to bait a hook? Or to boat the fish that insisted on taking his bait, not mine? Or that scarce an hour had past before he was sharing, with tears drizzling his cheeks, the misery he felt as he forced himself to enter Boys’ Latin School each day. “I don’t think I can do it, Evelyn, no matter how hard I try.”

Gently, I reminded Arthur that at least for today, I was his chum, Edward, not Evelyn.

“No, no, no!” he wailed. “Not my chum. My girl friend, perhaps, or my beau even, but not my chum! Boys are such pigs!” Arthur gasped for breath. Recovering somewhat his composure, he continued “not you, of course. You aren’t really a boy, though you wish you were. I am not a girl except in my head and my mother’s head. Oh God, why has this happened to me?

“Evelyn? You know what? Sometimes I wish I were dead.”

Before I bade him goodbye that afternoon, I made Arthur promise to visit Dr. Crawford without delay, and to spare no details of the hazing he suffered daily at Boys’ Latin. I do believe it helps to talk things out with someone who listens and understands.

November 7. I wish Mother would write!

November 8. Moira is as good as her word. She brings regular reports of her young brother’s improvement through petticoat training. He has progressed so far, she says, that they (for she has been her mother’s keen confederate) calculate that they must allow Harry before long to regain his breeches lest he be permanently unmanned.

I confessed a desire to see this paragon of femininity with my own eyes. “Done,” said Moira. Come with Miss Dorothy to Carroll Park on Sunday afternoon at two, and you will meet me and my sweet sister Henrietta there.”

November 11, 1906. We were in luck! A fine Indian summer day! I met ”Dorothy Downey” at on McCulloh Street and we took the trolley to the southwest part of our city, near the Baltimore and Ohio railway yards. It is where the majority of the Irish live.

However great a rogue and bully young Harry O’Dwyer may have been to his sixth grade classmates, there was no evidence of such in the winsome colleen who kept Moira and her beau company yesterday in Carroll Park. Dressed in a childish frock and velveteen cloak, short, silky curls held in place by a jaunty velvet ribbon, and cradling a china doll, Henrietta seemed closer to eight than eleven.

Moira’s beau seemed quite pleased when, with a wink to Moira, Dorothy and I invited Henrietta to join us for iced cream. In moments we were at an ice cream parlor.

“Oh, Misses, this is wonderful, I do so love pistachio iced cream, and so does my little girl Mollie (here she caused her doll to curtsey), don’t you Mollie? I had been wishing for iced cream but had made up my mind that I should not get it; that boy Evan (Henrietta meant Moira’s beau) has hardly two nickels to rub together; I do wonder what Moira sees in him ‘cept, of course, he’s devilish handsome and funny.”

Was this the cloddish boy of which Moira had complained? I had to find out.

“Harry, dear, we know your secret. Moira is my friend and confidante. Tell us, is it frills and frocks that have caused this wondrous change in you?”

Harry squirmed in his seat, and searched the ceiling as if perhaps the answer was written there. “Mollie and I talk about it,” he said in a barely audible voice. “I feel better when I don’t havta pretend to be what I don’t like to be.”

“What’s that, uh, Henrietta, dear?”

“Well, like I havta fight because I’m a man, not do girl things, and keep my little sister away from boys like me.”

“Boys like you?”

“Well, misses, boys like I was. I understand now why nobody didn’t like me. It’s better in school already. Mum says that if my grades are good this term, I don’t have to wear dresses no more.

“Will that please you, Henrietta?”

The child thought for a moment. “Y’know, miss, I don’t know. Maybe sometimes I’ll want to be a little bit bad, so’s I don’t forget.”

We returned to find Moira sitting quite close to Evan. I think I saw stars in the eyes of both. “Oh, Miss Evelyn! Whatever shall I do? Evan wishes me to marry him!”

Henrietta tugged at my sleeve until I bent an ear to hear. “Y’see. I told you so!”

Diary, human nature is such a various thing!

Tuesday, November 13. Mother has received my recent letter, full of chat about school, and apologized that she was not able to reply immediately. All have been busy with the harvest.

Again I have told her everything — that my life’s path has turned decidedly for the better – and nothing at all. They retain their illusion of me in trousers!.

Mother writes back that our crops were abundant this year, both the field crops and the apples. The fine weather continued through the end of October. Father and my oldest brother Jeff have the farm work well in hand. Mother wishes my father would slow down a bit. My second brother Eben and his wife are expecting a baby, or perhaps twins, in January. Mother has put up jar after jar of fruits and will send me and Aunt Enid a large sample before Christmas. Oh, and she and Father miss me. . . .

November 21. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Yesterday was the great match against St. Timothy’s. Their girls’ hockey team was unbeaten — until yesterday. I scored two goals. Photographs of me and of Clarice Brown who so staunchly defended our goal are on display in the entry of the school, next to the challenge cup we have captured for the year. I am counted an heroine for Bryn Mawr School, and I must confess, Diary, that it is quite grand!

If I had known Martin Tolliver was watching the end of the match, I am sure I should not have played well. He is so handsome that thinking he likes me at all just turns me to jelly! Martin had been on his way home to the parsonage, he told me afterward, when he heard the huzzahs from within the school gates and guessed immediately that a match was underway. He had not joined the crowd of spectators for more than a few minutes when I scored my second goal, the one that put Bryn Mawr ahead to stay.

Martin has asked me to a tea dance that is being organized by some friends of his mother during the holidays. That is, he will arrange to have my name on the list of girls to be invited! Oh, Diary, I dance so badly!

December 1. No! No! No! I cannot believe it. No, yes I can, but it is the most horrible thing imaginable. Arthur Downey is in the hospital. Dr. Crawford broke the news to me when I answered his urgent summons yesterday. He did not want me to hear by chance, he said. Arthur has . . . severed . . . his male member. The damage cannot be repaired. He has lost a great deal of blood and it will be some time before he is, well, well. If ever, I suppose.

Dr. Crawford asked me how I conceived of Arthur’s nature. I answered truthfully that it is not at all easy to think of him as Arthur, his is so much the nature of a Dorothy. Dr. Crawford said that was his view too.

Surgery will be necessary, so that Arthur can pass water easily. Perhaps, said Dr. Crawford, the surgeons would also remove the rest of Arthur’s male parts, the gonads. If their influence is thus checked, Dr. Crawford says, Arthur’s female side — Dorothy — will dominate. He — or should I anticipate by saying she, Diary? — will make the decision when she is strong enough.

Self-mutilation is said to be a great sin, Diary, and a rash and desperate act. Yet, curiously, I am happy for my poor friend who has been so very troubled by the catastrophe — as she conceived it — of her manhood. She has escaped death and the terrors that were for “Arthur” worse than death itself.

December 09. Arthur will be “O.K.” but not as “Arthur.” The wound is healing nicely. My friend has been moved to the women’s ward, which pleases “Dorothy” no end.

December 16, 1906. What fun I’ve had at Christy Hodgson’s tea dance party, dear Diary! It was Martin’s doing; I’m sure the Hodgsons were totally unaware of my existence until he whispered in his aunt Hodgson’s ear. They have a great house, called Bellemeade, and it was beautifully decorated for the holiday, with ever so many candles and mirrors and evergreen boughs. Nearly all of the boys were from Martin’s school, Boys’ Latin. Many of the girls, including Christy, Martin’s cousin, were students at St. Timothy’s, which is Bryn Mawr’s arch rival. They welcomed me cordially out of friendship for Martin, however. He, gallant as always, took special care to introduce me to each of his friends and to make sure my dance card was full.

I had a new dress that Aunt had gotten up for me especially for the tea dance. It is slim in the new style, with a squared neckline, a high waist and “kimono sleeves” to the elbow, in the most luscious rose georgette fabric. Aunt insisted that the hem fall just a few inches below my knees, however. I was disappointed, for I’d imagined myself with my hair up and a gown that nearly swept the floor.

Aunt Enid had Gideon drive me to Bellemeade. It would not do to ride the streetcar at dusk in a cape and dancing pumps, she said. As soon as I’d arrived at the Hodgsons’ I knew Aunt was right — the gown I’d wished for would have been way too old for me, and out of place — nor did any of the girls put up their hair.

A room had been consecrated to us “young ladies” where we could freshen up and eye each other out of the sight of the boys. There was much teasing going on, for most of the girls were classmates, and oohing and aahing over each others’ finery. Also present was Stella Sampson who was also from Bryn Mawr School. Though I had considered her a bit of a prig, Stella complimented me sincerely and I was no less honest in my appreciation of her own gown. I enjoyed the sensation of being one of this friendly and high-spirited group, secure in the knowledge that to all appearance and, I hope, manner, I was as feminine as any of its members. And to think, Diary, seven months ago, I was still the most miserable boy on Earth!

Martin was quite the handsomest of the boys! And I am sure he was the most gallant and the best dancer! Thank heavens for my practice with Moira! Perhaps I decieve myself, but I felt light as a feather when Martin danced with me. We even tried to dance a polka. I kept mixing up the steps dreadfully and at last was overcome by giggles. There was nothing to do but abandon the attempt to polka and seek out the punch bowl. That gave me a chance to thank Martin most sincerely for arranging that I should be included in Miss Hodgson’s party. He replied, with just a little bit of a blush, that he was most happy for my friendship, and hoped that he should continue to merit it. I could not think what else to say or do, so I took his hand in both of mine for an instant — a friendly squeeze that he returned. It was most affecting, Diary! I feel as though Martin and I have an understanding now.

December 22, 1906. Aunt’s house is piled high with presents. Mama has written; oh, how I miss her! I will glue her letter in right here.

Dear Edward, your father and I had been hoping you would be able to return home for a visit during the Christmas holidays, but understand that schoolwork and other obligations make that difficult for you. We miss our little boy a great deal. Of course you are no longer a little boy, are you? I imagine you have grown six inches since we saw you last!

Thank you for the embroidered towels. They are very handsome by the washstand, and someday soon I shall venture to dry my hands on one. Your father is most happy with his large tin of pipe tobacco, and everyone here has enjoyed the pecans and dried fruits your Aunt sent with your package. We send our love. Please thank your Aunt and commend us to her. Fondly, Mama.

December 25. I have never been away from my family at Christmas. What a miserable feeling it is! I suppose I am unkind to my dear, generous Aunt to think so, but Diary, I yearn for the cruder comforts of our home in Perkinstown. The warmth of the kitchen, where my mother reigns. I can smell her apple pies now if I close my eyes and remember hard. Snow on the hills, ice on the lake — breaking the ice so the livestock can drink, milking the cows with Father. The vast starry sky and the quietness of a winter night. I would love to see my little nieces — they must be crawling by now — and to sit by the fire as Mother reads to us all.

What would they make of me now, Diary? A pampered girl, who wants for nothing but their embrace! I’m sure my manly brothers, Jeff and Eben would recoil from me, dismayed, perhaps disgusted. Mother has always been my confidante, and may understand, but could Father, who never ceased urging me to “buck up, be brave and strong”? Oh, Diary, they have had such hopes for me. I was to have been the first of the Tuckers ever to attend college, to have a profession, to make them proud. In that at least, perhaps I may not disappoint them.

Tuesday, January 01, 1907. A whole new year, Diary, and how oddly it has begun. I do not know what to think about Fiona. But NO, I won't even write about it yet.

January 04. Dr. Charlotte Clathrop has sent a note asking me to allow her a complete physical examination. It is for science. I stopped by to meet her at her laboratory on the Hopkins campus on my way home from school. I agreed on condition that she shares all she learns about me, or surmises. She says I should call her Tottie from now on.

January 12 (Saturday) It was not so terribly bad, Diary. I am devilish healthy, Tottie (Dr. Charlotte) says, just ambiguous in my physical development. “What should I take that to mean,” I asked — “is it something I have some control over?” Seemingly not. My role is to lick my lolly and let others do the worrying for me.

“That will not do!”, I told Tottie in no uncertain terms

January 14 (Monday) I visited Dorothy yesterday after church service. She is still convalescing at home. I wrote to Mrs. Downey expressing a desire to call on my friend, and she invited me to come to their home for Sunday luncheon. I had never been there before. It is not very grand, an apartment on the third floor above Mrs. Downey’s school.

Mrs. Downey struck me as positively vaporous as well as a terrible cook. She served us week-old cake and a stew that must have been assembled from whatever was lying around the kitchen that morning. It is absolutely frightening to imagine her as a mother. Seemingly, it is enough for her to believe a thing to make it so, hence Dorothy rather than Arthur. She has persuaded herself that Dorothy has suffered an accident as a consequence of attempting boyish games.

Dorothy, on the other hand, is in high spirits. She has resolved to have an orchotomy — the surgical removal of her testicles. At Dr. Crawford’s request, a Dr. Olsen will perform the surgery. Dorothy is sure they would have refused it had she not taken a knife in her own hands to destroy her male member. I tremble just thinking of that!

January 19 (evening). Fiona came by this afternoon. She will leave tomorrow for the Spring term at Smith College. Fiona was dressed very like an Amazon, I thought — high boots, a quite dashing green tweed cloak, a cloche hat over short chestnut curls. My heart pounded to see her again.

Fiona said she wished to apologize for overly familiar behavior on New Year’s Eve. I said I had not given it a second thought, which is untrue. (In fact, I have thought often of those ardent confidences. I believe that only the secret that I concealed deterred me from yielding further to her advances.)

Fiona continued that she did not beg my forgiveness for being attracted to me. I was singularly beautiful, she said with a bit of a stammer, and for reasons that perhaps God only knew, Fiona found men entirely uninteresting. Women on the other hand engendered in her strong feelings of sympathy. No, Fiona was only embarrassed, I gathered, that she had sought intimacy with such a young woman as I.

At fourteen, Fiona said, no one knows their own mind. Hence it was insupportable that she had sought to seduce my affections.

I could not let Fiona’s cavalier equation of youth and poor judgment pass uncountered. “Au contraire,” said I, taking her hands between my own. “You were perhaps rendered indiscreet by the champagne, whereas my only indulgence was about one dozen too many oysters! The fact was, I was flattered by your intentions. I consider you quite the most dazzling creature I know.”

Impulsively, I pulled my friend toward my bedroom. We entered, I closed the door, and dared Fiona to prove that in fact I am too young to love.

January 20. For avoidance of doubt, Diary, I shall record here that notwithstanding many sweet kisses, my secret is still safe.

Wednesday, February 6. It has been terribly cold, Diary. The Baltimore Sun says this is the most wicked winter since 1888. My classes have been stopped for a week because of the snow and ice. Even so, Aunt Enid and I braved today’s blizzard for a meeting at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Charlotte Clathrop — Tottie — had taken my demands to heart. She arranged this meeting to explain my condition, and most importantly, my choices, to me and my aunt.

Presiding again was the eminent Dr. Adolph Meyer, Aunt’s great friend, the founder of the Hopkins Institute of Mental Hygiene. Dr. Reuben Crawford was present also; he took me aside to whisper that Dorothy is recovering well from her recent surgery. Having had an ebulliant note myself from Dorothy yesterday, I knew this already, but I thanked Dr. Crawford just the same. He reeked of antiseptic solution.

The meeting was organized by Tottie, and with Dr. Meyer’s evident consent, she took command. She has just been promoted to be an assistant professor. Tottie is an expert on internal secretions. Have I mentioned that already, Diary?

Internal secretions are those emanations from our various glands that regulate the functions of our bodies. Normally they work in concert, but not always. Everyone knows now that a malfunction of the thyroid gland or the pituitary (not so long ago thought insignificant!) can have grave consequences. Another set of glands regulates sexual development. Gross indica of maleness or femininity are largely the province of the male and female genitals — the testes and the ovaries, explained Tottie. Secondary sexual characteristics like a beard or lack of it, breasts, widened hips or hard muscles are governed by the secretions both of these glands and others, for example the adrenal glands and the “corpus luteum.” These secretions have been the object of Dr. Tottie’s research since 1902!

My friend confirmed what the mirror has already told me — that I present as a boyish, late-developing girl. I have but tiny breasts, my hips remain narrow, worst of all, the harbingers of a beard are sprouting randomly on my face. Tottie said that it is because I have an insufficiency of certain secretions. She surmised that if my nature is allowed to run its course, I will reach adulthood as someone neither obviously male nor obviously female.

Tottie was quick to add that this is not, emphatically not, a tragedy. Dr. Reuben Crawford chimed in here too. It would only be, he offered, a tragedy if I thought it so, like Dorothy Downey. Reuben started awkwardly to propose that people, by and large perceive as true what is presented to them as true. This was a psychological finding beyond dispute, so that by careful cultivation of feminine traits. . . .

Perhaps I was supposed to listen patiently, Diary, but I could not. I rose standing to my full five feet two inches. I must admit that I glared at them both. “Is that all you have to offer me?” said I in a tone so cold that it astonishes me in retrospect. “Assurance that with proper mental hygiene I can get used to being a freak for the rest of my life?”

There was a long thirty seconds of silence before Tottie answered. “Actually, no. You could be our human guinea pig, instead. Please sit down and I will explain.”

I sat. I was quivering with anticipation. Was it obvious to the others, I wonder.

“I have had some remarkable successes inducing secondary female traits in laboratory animals by injecting them with a refined extract of the urine of pregnant sows,” she said. “We — my laboratory assistant and I — we don’t yet understand the biological mechanism in its entirety, nor have we isolated the secretions that act in this instance, but the cause and effect is beyond doubt.

“I consider the procedure safe. If you and your aunt so wish it, Evelyn, you and Dorothy Downey shall become the first human subjects of this experiment.”

I know I ought to have deferred to my aunt, but I could not resist. “Yes!” I cried. “I do so wish!”

February 9th. The blizzard has eased, and it is Saturday. I braved the drifts to present myself at Tottie’s laboratory quite early in the day. She introduced me to her lab assistant, an intelligent-looking Negro man of perhaps thirty-five. “Here is the real genius of my laboratory,” Tottie said. “Balthasar is infinitely patient and methodical. I would not suggest this procedure to you or your Aunt had he not tested it so carefully on lesser mammals.”

The black man nodded respectfully and inquired if I wished to inspect some of the specimens. I replied that I did. He showed me three guinea pigs, a terrier and a chicken. Each, he said, had been born male. They were castrated at the first sign of adult development, and then injected with small doses of the extract obtained from the urine of pregnant sows. I confessed that I could hardly tell the sexes of guinea pigs or dogs apart, except in the grossest way. The chicken was most evidently a hen. So too, Balthasar assured me, were the other specimens. They were behaviorally indistinguishable from females of their species.

Tottie asked me again if I wished to proceed, knowing that the procedure is experimental. I replied that I most certainly did, and gave her my aunt’s letter of permission. Then she took my temperature and carefully recorded my weight and height, and measured my hips, waist and bosom. Balthazar meanwhile had filled a syringe with a dark amber fluid, which Tottie then injected into my calf muscle. It was painful; I could not help but wince when she plunged in the stainless steel needle. Tottie said she had begun with one ounce of the extract. She will increase the dose if there are no adverse reactions. We agreed that I should return at weekly intervals for the injections.

February 17. We have lost the basketball trophy to St. Timothy’s. The whole school is in a funk, especially Sally. She and Stella Sampson were the only hope (our team is relatively weak this year) and both were “off” yesterday afternoon.

February 22. There was no school today, it being the anniversary of President Washington’s birth, so I have written long letters to Mama and Fiona. I considered writing also to Billy Barkell, but could not think what to say to my former chum.

Sunday, February 24. Moira’s wedding is set for April 13, not a Friday of course but a Saturday! I have agreed to be a bridesmaid! There will be three of us. Moira’s married cousin, Bridget, will be the senior bridesmaid. Tricked out as his sweet alter-ego, Henrietta, young Henry will be the junior bridesmaid! It was Henry’s own idea, Moira swears. She had but wished aloud that she knew a girl who could serve when he volunteered for the role. Besotted with love, Evan has not objected.

March 6. I sense that the weekly injections are exerting an influence over my physical and mental state. Some days I feel quite giddy. The rhythm of classes, hockey practice, rehearsals for our class theatrical (in which, quite literally, I will carry a spear and speak only in chorus!) steadies me. My breasts are swelling again, and they hurt! I am sensibly wider at the hips as well.

The midyear grades have been posted. I am third in among the sophomores behind Mary Alice Webb and Beatrice Cohen.

March 9 (Saturday). I met Martin by chance today while running an errand to the florist’s for Aunt Enid. I invited him to the theatrical. Martin invited me in turn to a tea dance at the tennis club on Friday, March 15. I think he has grown another two inches since Christmas!

March 16. Oh, diary, how splendid Martin would be for a beau! I doubt it crosses his mind. I am just a convenient, sisterly friend to him, I am sure. At the tea dance today, Martin took care that I had plenty of boys to dance with. They were nice boys, but all I could think to do was twist and crane my neck to see with whom he chose to dance whilst I was parked with his chums!

I wore a pretty tea gown, white georgette with cap sleeves and a sky blue georgette velvet sash. Aunt allowed me to wear my new court shoes with two inch French heels. I thought I should wobble, but I did not, in fact it seemed that I danced a bit more gracefully at that elevation! There were a few girls who wore their hair in a twist — I shall tell Aunt. Though she continues to insist that I am too young to put up my hair, my skirt had three layers and the bottom one came to within six inches of the floor!

Fiona has not written. I am sad but I will not sulk!

March 22. Moira and I and the other bridesmaids will be fitted for their frocks tomorrow. Aunt seems amused that I shall be part of our upstairs maid’s wedding party.

Evening, March 23. We shall all have to be careful that young Henrietta does not upstage us all, even his sister the bride!

Moira will wear white, of course. She has ordered made a flowing satin gown trimmed with lace. With it, Moira will wear a handmade lace veil that was her grandmother’s, and carry a bouquet of daisies and shamrocks. We bridesmaids are all to wear pale yellow linen frocks with puffed sleeves, emerald green satin sashes and broad brimmed hats. Henrietta’s frock has a shorter skirt, of course, and a stiff petticoat after the Irish fashion. In white stockings and low-heeled strapped shoes, his straw colored curls gathered by an emerald ribbon, Henrietta is quite a charming colleen. Though I know he is all boy, his manners are now so fine that it is impossible not to think him a well-bred little girl.

March 31, 1907. Time is flying by so fast, Diary. It is nearly a year since I left Perkinstown, Pennsylvania, since I last saw the careworn faces of my mother and father. I know I should miss them more. I suppose I ought also to long for the familiar company of my older brothers but — am I horribly wicked, Diary? The truth is, I dread a reunion.

It is not only that the miserable, awkward boy they know as Edward has disappeared forever, his place taken by a happy schoolgirl. That I should have become Evelyn would perhaps be easier for my parents to comprehend than that my mind is now filled with questions, thoughts and aspirations that would hardly occur to the yeomanry of Perkinstown. And, though I have been a reasonably dutiful correspondent to my mother, I have not ventured upon either subject with them.

Be that as it may, my parents have written my aunt to say that they plan to visit. Aunt has replied, insisting that they must stay in our home. It is all quite formal, for my aunt and my father have neither met nor hardly communicated for about thirty years. Mother and Father will arrive on the train from Harrisburg on Friday evening. I have been in a perfect funk. Aunt tells me I must “buck up.”

Why must they come now? I have an examination in math the following week. Hockey practice has begun again, and that takes time, too. And then, I’ve had to cancel my place in an outing to Annapolis. The Japanese cherry trees along the Severn River will be at the height of their bloom, and Martin will be in the company of a number of girls far prettier than I.

I know my parents’ visit will be terrible, and on top of that, I shall fail my math examination because I cannot concentrate on my work.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

April 7, 1907 (Sunday afternoon)

Mother and Father have come and gone. It was not half so bad as I had feared. In fact, we are all better off now that I have shared my secret with them.

Last Friday was a miserably wet and gloomy day. It was already growing dark when I returned home from school. As I let myself into the house, I could hear voices from the parlor. My father was indeed aroused! Again I sent a silent prayer of thanks to Aunt Enid for proposing to receive my parents first, to explain my present circumstances before I should have to appear before them. But, had our plan gone astray? Their voices carried to the hall. . . .

“An abomination! ‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God’’— Deuteronomy Chapter 22 verse 5. That’s what it is, Enid, no matter what reasons you offer. It was not your business to undo God’s work!”

“Frank, I know you aren’t a fool, nor do I think you believe everything written down in the Old Testament or else you’d be growing a full beard and refusing to eat pig meat. Fate, or God, or whatever, dealt your Edward a nasty blow — the genitalia of a man and the internal secretions of a woman. So, which would you rather see — dressed, not buck naked, of course — a tortured, womanly man, or a confident, womanly woman? Of greater importance, would you rather have a child who can develop all her talents and be of some service to her fellow men, or a child so desperately out of place that suicide is constantly in ‘his’ mind?”

By some trick of acoustics, every word uttered in the parlor, every sigh breathed, seemingly even every thought one dares imagine, resounds in Aunt’s dim, chestnut-paneled hallway. I took off my dripping cloak, and hung it on the peg ready by the door. I regarded myself in the mirror that hangs where the hallway meets the staircase.

The staircase is on the right. On the left is the double parlor where my Aunt was entertaining my parents. Proceeding further, the hallway gives onto the large room Aunt calls her “salon” and through it, then, ultimately, to the dining room and kitchen. From which direction Moira appeared for an instant to blow me a kiss. . . .

In the hall mirror, I could see a girl of nearly fifteen, a girl on the verge of womanhood. I was wearing my Bryn Mawr School uniform: a white blouse, a loosely belted grey shift dress with the school crest, dark hose, black ankle boots. But it was not my clothes, nor was it the ribbon in my hair nor the auburn curls now long enough to wave about my neck that gave me the appearance of a true woman. It was the swelling of my bosom, the broadening of my hips and softening of my features that made me so.

It is less than three months since I began receiving weekly injections at Tottie’s laboratory, and already the effect of the ‘hormones’ is profound. I would not, could not possibly look back.

So what is the worst that can happen, I asked myself bravely. Perhaps they’ll never want to see me again. If I must, I can handle that. Or could I? Sucking in a deep breath, I pushed open the door and faced my mother and my father with my most sincere and hopeful smile.

“Oh! Oh my heavens! I never . . . .” My mother, at a total loss for words, rose and flew at me and I her till we clutched at each other like nothing less than a pair of magnets, or a mother and daughter who had been separated overlong.

At length we became aware of my father, who with my aunt had also risen and who was hovering uncertainly nearby.

“Frank, tell her you love her. Tell Evelyn she is your own dear daughter,” commanded my mother. I felt my heart stop, skip beats, pound inside my chest. No matter what I had thought, I could not bear it if my father judged against me.

“Child, are you content with yourself as you now are?” my father asked.

“Yes, Father. As content as I can imagine being. And so happy to see you and Mother again. . . .” Words failed me then. I felt my lips quiver, my eyes fill with tears, the confidence that had borne me into the parlor ebb. Silently, I awaited my father’s judgment.

Father has always been everything I imagined a man should be. I recall thinking, as a child, that I should someday grow up to be like him — strong, steady, of few words but ever present, the pillar from which the entire household depends. What had he hoped of me?

I was, of course, his last child, and indulged not only by my mother. He had been fond of me, at times tender and never so severe as he had been with my so much older brothers. He had never beaten me. Was he now ready to accept me as his daughter?

“Child, I just don’t know,” my father said. “I’ll have to pray on it.” He did not touch me. We stood awkwardly regarding each other, my father and I. My mother had a hand on my shoulder, another on Father’s elbow, as though striving through the language of her body to unite us.

My aunt, meanwhile, invoked supper. “Come Frank, Arabella. You’ve had a long trip and are tired. Let us eat a little, enjoy each other’s company after so many years, and then rest.”

Cook is no fool. She didn’t serve up crabs or oysters or other fancy Baltimore fare. It was chicken and dumplings for supper and for breakfast, ham and eggs, with grits optional.

Moira made sure my parents were comfortable without making them uncomfortable by giving too much attention. She must have said some nice things about me.

On Saturday morning, my father was willing to meet my eye. My courage returning, I was able to meet his. “Shall we go for a walk then today? The forsythia are in full bloom, promising a wonderful spring!”

My mother begged off. She was going to show Cook how to bake a squash pie, she said. So it was that my father and I trudged off to Druid Park together but still alone.

“I love you, Father,” I said. I hadn’t planned that declaration, it just erupted. I said I had been as surprised to find myself a woman as he had been. It was something that happened, the only difference being that I was, in Baltimore, literally surrounded by the best medical expertise in the United States,

We were looking at the huge Japanese carp in Boat Lake, fish of an incredible shining mix of colors — gold, black, white and red! “Every one different,” I said. “Not one knowing why, any more than I do.”

“I know, child. Give me time.” My father squeezed my hand.

“Father, I’m Evelyn. Not ‘child.’”

“I’m working at it,” he told me.

This noon, Aunt Enid and I saw my mother and father off at the Lackawanna Railroad station. My mother embraced me, covered me with kisses, told me she’d see that I was welcomed back to Perkinsville or else!

My father held my arm for a minute or two, staring into my eyes as if searching for something to say. Evidently, he couldn’t find the words he wanted. As Father mounted the steps into the railway car, I reproached myself that I had not said all I wished to say, either, though I’d come close. I’d said I loved him. I hadn’t said why, that he is my ideal of a man.

April 10. Three days until Moira’s wedding. Aunt has given Moira ten days off with pay, beginning today. A temporary girl has been sent around by an agency. She’s not half so smart, or a tenth as much fun as our Moira.

April 13, past bedtime. It was a beautiful wedding, Diary. I danced and danced. The party will last all night, someone said. As I left, having promised to meet my aunt’s coachman Gideon outside at ten-thirty, the young people were still jigging and waltzing, whilst the older ones — all the O’Dwyers and Duffys, the Hallorans and O’Tooles — were sipping Irish whiskey or tea and watching misty-eyed. Moira and Evan O’Toole are a most handsome couple. They too have left the party, very tired and a bit tipsy, I think, from toasting each guest.

Henrietta I saw sprawled asleep amidst a pile of coats in a bedroom. She -- er, he, in his bridesmaid’s regalia -- has been a great favorite with the crowd. At one point, Henrietta sang “Rose of Tralee.” As he began that sweet tune, a hush fell over the room that persisted even as the last notes died away; it was so quiet that everyone heard Father Brendan talking to himself. “Oi, such a shame, such a splendid lass he is!” There was general and affectionate laughter. Our Henrietta seized the moment to curtsey to one and all!

April 15. Father and Mother are not to be the only visitors from Perkinsville. Today I have received a letter from my old teacher, Mr. Lucian Truscott. He will be visiting Baltimore on a legal matter, and hopes to see me.

I have replied that of course I will be pleased if Mr. Truscott were to call at Aunt Enid’s, but, I warned him, he would find me amazingly changed.

April 20. Wonderful news! Martin has been admitted to the Cornell University College of Engineering, subject only to his getting at least a “B” in the Calculus. He says nothing will stop him from earning an “A”!

April 21, Sunday evening. Mr. Truscott has visited me and my aunt. He was not surprised to find me thus, having talked with my mother a week ago. “But, of course, in your mind you remain a boy withal?” he insisted. I replied firmly in the negative. What had begun as a device to put the world at ease with me had become second nature. Mr. Truscott seemed disappointed.

Why does everyone want to kiss me? First Fiona, now Mr. Truscott. His attentions were not half so agreeable as Fiona’s. Though he is a man, he is at least 30 years of age! I insisted that Mr. Truscott reconsider his apparent ardor. He was upset and did not stay for dinner. It was not my fault, but I worry that he may vent his displeasure by telling stories about me.

What should I do, Diary? My life is so full now. There do not seem to be enough hours in the day to meet the expectations of my teachers and friends, to spend a few precious minutes with my Aunt or dear Moira, let alone to send a few lines to Martin or some other person who has paid a bit of attention to me. Diary, you are my refuge and release; I will write in you those things that I cannot confide to another soul.

For example, Dorothy Downey is to enter Bryn Mawr in September. She will be in tenth, a year behind me. Aunt waited only for confirmation that Dr. Clathrop’s injections are having their intended effect on Dorothy before she proposed her admission as a scholarship student. I am so proud that Miss Hamilton did not even blink on hearing Aunt Enid’s suggestion. I am sure it had nothing — well, little — to do with my aunt’s generous donations to the school. Anyway, Dorothy will do well at Bryn Mawr, I think, now that she is free to be “herself.” Her agony was not from want of intellect but from want of love and understanding.

Dr. Reuben Crawford has spent many hours talking with Dorothy and with me, sorting out the multiple strands that make up our personalities. He says that who we are is a mixture of nature and nurture. For example, if he is not of a nature to be so trained, no number of years in petticoats can extinguish the “boy” in a person. Similarly, a child who is by nature gentle and nurturing will instinctively cleave to its mother and will protect his siblings against surprises and dangers.

Most children, Tottie says, seem to be at once a bit of maidenly timidity and boyish adventure, girlish modesty and male roguery; the balance is determined by chance and circumstance. In Dorothy’s case, circumstance exerted an irresistable influence on a child eager for his mother’s approval and unsure of his own manliness. As an adolescent, Dorothy was doomed to terrible inner conflicts. . . .

April 28. Dorothy and I both were seen by Tottie yesterday morning. She professes herself satisfied by the development of our bodies. In truth, Diary, Dorothy and I are amazed beyond our fondest hopes. Tottie and Balthasar have proposed to increase our weekly dose of “hormone” extract. For that, I’ve agreed to submit to that horrid needle early every Wednesday on my way to school and again on Saturday. Dorothy is responding more vigorously and so will get injections at five day intervals.

May 5. Yesterday was my 15th birthday. That used to seem so old! With Aunt’s permission, I invited my girl friends to Dobreiners. We had a private room on the top floor. All of us gobbled cakes and iced cream like absolute swine! From the sophomores were Stella Sampson, Ginnie Montgomery, Sally Campbell and Trudy Welch. I included Flora Cooper also; though she is but a freshman she is Sally’s cousin, my friend, and will be Dorothy’s classmate in September. Dorothy charmed them all. She has a knack for saying just what girls want to hear but sounding sincere. I on the other hand say exactly what I think; it is a wonder anyone likes me!

Dear Mama left behind a mezzotint of my brothers and me in front of our farmhouse as a birthday present. I remember the photograph; Mama has had it colored. In the photograph, I am nearly six and have just been breeched. We are all so solemn, except for my dog Barney who would not hold still and is a blur!

May 11 (Saturday). Martin came by this morning on a tandem bicycle. It needed another peddler, he insisted, and I had been chosen. I laughed and excused myself to change into a split skirt that Aunt had her seamstress make for me not long ago, just for such an occasion. Martin and I cycled to Calvert Street for phosphates — he had cherry and I of course chocolate. Martin has excellent leg muscles, I think.

Wednesday, May 15, 1907 Oh, dear Diary! Today is a year to the day that I fetched up at Aunt’s house, drooping and despondent. Had anyone told me that today I should be full of the joy of living, quite as happy as any girl in the world — I should have laughed (had I been capable of laughing then).

We are the champions of Baltimore! Yes, today our Bryn Mawrtyrs defeated the Baltimore Ladies’ Hockey Club. Soundly, too — 6 to 3 — and that wins us the Cup. I was not the heroine of the match; Beatrice McKenzie was, and therein lies today’s story. Beatrice is a senior and our captain. She’ll be graduated in another three weeks. Up to now, she’s hardly paid me any notice, or so I thought. After the match, however, as Clarice and I and a few other sophomores were changing back into our school clothes, laughing, joking, celebrating our victory and the end of our glorious year, I realized suddenly that Beatrice herself was standing next to me.

“Can I speak with you privately for a moment?” she said.

Of course, I practically fainted to be so honored, but managed to point to a corner where the benches were empty of anyone who might want to listen in to whatever our team captain should choose to impart.

“I found you rather odd at first,” Beatrice said. “Coming from nowhere, very awkward, almost mannish, and awfully good at field hockey for someone who claimed no prior knowledge of the game. But . . . you have made your place here, and won our hearts. Of all the underclass girls, you are the top player and the natural leader. None of the juniors can hold a candle to you, so I’ve been sent to ask — will you agree to captain the team next year?”

Diary, I thought for a long moment. I imagined being captain. To keep from floating away, I bit my lower lip, I was so happy. And then I said what I truly believe. “You must not. You must give the captaincy to Clarice Brown. She is the rock of our defense. Of all the juniors, she is the one who must be chosen. And I and the other underclass girls will loyally support Clarice.”

What strange, almost swooning pleasure it gave me to refuse an honor I do covet — not for now, but when it is my turn. “Well, that’s that, then,” said Beatrice, leaving me to huddle again with Coach and her senior mates. Moments later, she was summoning us all. “Girls, please, your attention! Our year is ended, and it is time to pass the torch. I apologize that it has taken so long. We’ve been earnestly debating who among you is most deserving of the captaincy.”

“Now I can announce our decision, confident you all will agree.”

“The Bryn Mawr School Hockey Team will be led in 1907-08 by goalkeeper Clarice Brown. . . (scattered applause) and right forward Evelyn Tucker (a few more scattered claps), co-captains! (Sustained, sincere applause!)

“Clarice, Evelyn, come forward!” I was propelled toward Beatrice by my mates. So was Clarice. She took us each by a hand and lifted them skyward. “Girls, I give you your new captains!”

I would never have guessed, Diary, that I could be such a happy girl. I’ve had the help of some wonderful people — my dear Aunt Enid first of all, and Doctors Tottie Clathrop and Reuben Crawford. Dear Moira has taught me so much about being a woman. Miss Hamilton dared to admit me to Bryn Mawr and today she confided to me her satisfaction (I am to be awarded the sophomore biology prize!). My dear mother and father have embraced me for what I truly am — a young woman with some accidental male parts. I have a stack of chums and a very special friend, who was waiting at the gate when I emerged on my way home this evening.

Martin congratulated me then. He looked around to be sure that no one was watching, and kissed me — on the lips! He said that he loves me. We are both too young for either of us to make promises, Martin said — and besides he will be far away at Cornell University for the next four years. Even so, he cannot deny his feeling. Nothing makes him happier than to be with me, he said. And Diary, I told Martin that my sentiments are exactly the same! And kissed him back!

Note to readers: If Evelyn’s Diary is welcomed by the attentive public, several more chapters will follow in due course. My two favorite BC authors, Jan S. and Justme, were generous with their counsel, comments and corrections as the story was being written; if discontinuities and anachronisms remain in Evelyn’s Diary, I am the one to blame. Hugs, Daphne.