The House

By Dawn Natelle

Part two of the Sapphire arc: Dawn.

Chapter 21 – Love breaks

In September Grey was working on the porch, making a swing, when he heard Billy peel into the lane. “Where’s my little whore?” he called from his bike.

Grey was incensed. How dare he? He put down his tools and stood up, intending to face the man who had insulted his love. He was halfway down the steps when Sapphire darted past him, kissing Billy and then taking the pill he offered. They sped out onto the highway leaving Grey in shock.

It hit him all at once. Billy was right. She was a whore. She was whoring for drugs, not money, but still a whore. Sun had been right, and he had argued against her. His love for the girl crumpled as he realized that she was nothing but a whore and a drug addict who was risking her unborn children for her own pleasure. He fell to his knees, and then laid flat out on the drive for several minutes as his world fell apart.

He eventually got up and went into the house. Dary was the only one to see him and for the first time ever he ignored the younger boy’s questions as he went to his room, now partially decorated with Sapphire’s things. He took his bow and hunting tools, along with his deerskins and bearskins and headed out, again ignoring Dary.

Grey headed to the camp near the Grove, and moved into one of the wigwams. He crawled under the skins and didn’t leave for three days, other than to drink at the spring or use the latrines. Eventually hunger got him moving, but not back to his house of shame. He shot a raccoon: not the best eating, but delicious after a 72-hour fast.

Grey finally started working. He moved the longhouse that Sun had used as a shop before she moved into the mill. He placed it near the wigwams, close enough to be the new cook building when the Ojibwe Junior Warriors next came out. Dan had come out to check on him during his second day of misery, and mentioned that the group was growing again. Grey knew that he was hinting at giving him some of the group, but Grey just stayed curled up in his skins, finally telling his best friend to leave him alone.

Two days later the longhouse was nearly finished when Grey heard a long, wracking sob. It got louder, until he saw a crying Sunflower break into the camp. He stopped working, and put his arms around his sister, who seemed heartbroken.

“He is gone. I told him, and he just left,” Sun sobbed.

“Who? What?”

“Hawk. He was pushing me to take our relationship to a new level, and I told him: about my past.”

Grey got it. To him Sun was a complete woman, but now he remembered that she was not quite complete. And Hawk would want to do things that she was unable to accommodate. And she had told him.

“What did he say?” Grey asked.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. He just got a blank look on his face. Not angry or anything, just … blank. He picked up his things and got in his truck and drove away. I love him, and he is gone.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Grey said. “He might come back. Or you might find someone better.”

“There is no one better,” Sun wailed.

“If he can’t accept you the way you are, then he is not the man I thought he was,” Grey said. “I really liked him.”

Sun sat cuddled in front of Grey for hours until dark fell. Grey had shot and skinned a rabbit earlier that day, so they had roast rabbit for dinner, and then fell into bed in their wigwams, with Grey supplying some of his skins for Sun. It was now fall, and cooler at night, so it was no surprise that Grey woke to find Sun spooned around him for heat.

Each of them used the latrine and spring, then ate some cold, but cooked, rabbit for breakfast.

“What happens now,” Grey asked.

“I have to go back before noon,” Sun said. “I have to take my potion. Although only for a little while longer, perhaps. I have told Dr. Nora about my … condition and she has booked me with an endocrinologist. After that she says she wants me to start on normal hormones. The ones we brew up scare her. She wanted me to quit them, but I refused. I don’t want to go backwards.”

“I will stay out here, I think,” Grey said.

“NO! I need my brother. Come back with me. She is still here. She came back the other night as if nothing happened. Moved back into your room and never even asked where you went. She is a user, and she is using you. I think we need to have Daisy kick her out.”

“Okay. I guess I have to go back sometimes,” Grey said. “And a diet of exclusively wild animals can’t be good for me. I didn’t even bring any beans or rice with me.”

They got back, and discovered that Sapphire had left again with Billy less than an hour before. Sun got her potion, and they sat around the table for lunch. Grey apologized to Dary for being rude to him, and gave the boy a big hug.

“I think we need to talk about Sapphire,” Sun started as the whole family sat around the dinner table that evening. “Grey is no longer love-struck, and I think it would be best if she was to leave. I know no one has left the house since we arrived, but she contributes nothing but strife.”

They went around the table, with everyone agreeing, until they came to Daisy.

“I can’t send her away,” the older woman said. “Most of you know that I sometimes have dreams with the house talking to me, and I had one last night. The house wants her to stay. It wouldn’t say why, but apparently her time to leave has not come. She has to stay.”

Even though Sapphire would not be back that night, Grey moved his skins into another room, and then took all of his things from his old room to that one. That evening he sat in the easy chair from the auction sale, fixed by Sun, and sat and whittled.

He had been building a set of Lincoln Logs for Dary to play with, but today he was whittling a bigger chunk of wood, a eight-inch long piece of oak about three inches thick. After about an hour he had it roughly shaped, and was working on the face. He called Dary over and showed it to him.

“This is a present from me for being so awful to you the other day, I started it out at the camp, but now it just needs some finishing touches to the face. I want you to tell me if it should be a girl face or a boy face.”

“If it is a girl face, it would be a doll,” Dary pronounced. “Boys don’t play with dolls.”

“That sounds like Earl talking,” Grey said. “Here you can play with whatever you like.”

“I can? I would like a girl face then,” he said softly. “But I am a boy. Not a girl. A boy can’t be a girl.”

“In this house you can be whatever you want,” Grey said. “A boy, a girl if you wish.”

“I can be a girl?” Dary said, trembling.

“If that is what you want,” Grey said.

The boy leapt into Grey’s arms. “I want to be a girl. I have always wanted to be a girl. Please let me be a girl.”

Grey hugged the sobbing girl, cooing into her ears. “You can be what you want, and I will always protect you. I am your uncle, and you are my niece.”

Across the room Willow sat with mouth wide open. Grey looked over to her and said “This may be a shock, but I’ve seen hints over the last while. I think Dary needs to have a long talk with Sun. She has a Masters in psychology, specializing in gender issues. Perhaps you and I could meet with Dr. Nora while they talk.”

For the rest of the evening the group split up, and Sun eventually put Dary to bed after a long talk, promising her that they would go out tomorrow and buy a nightdress and some female clothes for the new girl. She was ecstatic.

Willow was a harder sell. She had known Dary was effeminate, but assumed that he was gay. She actually was relieved that she was transsexual, or somewhere else on the gender spectrum that the doctor explained. She recoiled when the doctor told her that many trans children commit suicide when they are not supported. “Of course I would prefer a trans daughter to a dead son,” WIllow insisted.

The final decision was that Dary would accompany Sun to her meeting with the endocrinologist to see about getting blockers to prevent her looming puberty from changing her body in unwanted ways.

The next day Dary, Willow and Sun went shopping in Tweed and found several items of clothing for her. She only wanted dresses and skirts, but Sun found a pair of jeans that had feminine stitching on them for her to wear when she was checking on the chickens, who were getting close to becoming layers.

Sun also remembered when she was first wearing jeans, and bought two pairs of denim coveralls, and some denim material from the fabric shop. She explained to Dary how she had sewn big V shapes into the jeans to make them a maxi skirt, and the girl was intrigued. Especially when Sun told her that each one of them would sew a skirt, so Dary could learn how to sew simple clothes.

A few days later Sun, Willow, Dary and Grey drove to Peterborough early in the morning to meet with the endocrinologist. The woman saw Dary first, and took blood samples. The girl wore a simple sundress, even though it was getting into fall and time for warmer clothes. Next Sun was called in, and also went through the blood tests. Like Dr. Nora, the endo was concerned about the concoction that Sun had been taking.

“I would like a sample of this stuff,” the endo said. Grey had two doses of the substance, one of which Sun would take at noon. He provided the other one to the endo.

She opened to vial, and took a sniff of the vile smelling concoction. “What is in that? It smells horrid.”

“A lot of herbs and wild plants,” Sun said, “but the main ingredient is urine from a pregnant moose.”

“Moose piss? You are drinking moose piss?” the endo shrieked. “This stops now. We’ll get you on something better in a few weeks.”

“This stops the day before you provide me with an alternative,” Sun said. “Dr. Nora said that some estrogens are made from the urine of horses out in Manitoba.”

“Yes, but you don’t drink it untreated,” the endo said.

“It isn’t tasty, but it works,” Sun explained. “It has given me a female shape on a body that was nowhere near feminine before. I have breasts now: in fact over the past month or so they have been growing again. I am nearly a D cup now. They just look smaller because my band size is so huge.”

“Well I can’t stop you from taking it, I guess. Do you promise to stop if I proscribe something else? Are you planning to proceed any further with surgeries?”

“I promise. And yes, I am taking steps towards my bottom surgery. I am under Dr. Nora’s care, and I will soon start seeing a psychologist.”

“I have a list here, if you don’t have anyone,” the endo passed a sheet of paper to Sun, who quickly scanned it. She was about to put it away so she could discuss it with Dr. Nora when a name caught her attention.

“Noreen VanEyck?” Sun asked. “I went to school at Mac with a Noreen VanEyck. We did a project together.”

“It could be the same woman,” the endo said. “She is in her second year training under Dr. Volders, and hopes to develop a practice for trans patients in the Peterborough area. Right now most go to Toronto. She is quite nice, I understand.”

“Well that solves my needs to find a psych,” Sun told the endo. “I hope she can take on Dary too. It will be a longer time for her to get to the point of surgeries, but she will be ready.”

After the appointments, the endo said she would email the results to Dr. Nora, who could prescribe the needed drugs. Sun intended to get any prescriptions filled by a chain drug store in Belleville. There was a little pharmacy in Tweed, but the last thing Dary or her needed was a gossipy clerk blurting out what their medications were for.

Back at the house Sapphire was breezing through life, taking off once or twice a week with her biker, and then coming back for the free rent and meals. It was at one of these meals that she came out with this statement.

“You are a lawyer, right?” she said to John.

“Well I was,” he replied. “Right now I consider myself more of a woodsman.”

“I want an abortion,” she said. “Can I do that?”

You could cut the silence in the dining room with a knife as everyone stopped eating and stared at the girl. After a moment John spoke: “An abortion in Canada is legal at any stage. A few years back you had to have a committee of three doctors approve it, but that was declared illegal. No new law has been passed, so effectively there is no abortion law in Canada. It is a matter between a woman and her doctor.”

Sapphire turned to Nora: “You are a doctor. Will you perform an abortion on me?”

“No,” Nora blurted out. “Even if I was qualified for that type of surgery I wouldn’t. You are nearly full term with your babies. I don’t know of any doctor who would conduct a full term abortion. Maybe someone in Toronto. But I won’t even investigate the situation for you.”

“Toronto eh? Billy doesn’t go past Peterborough on his runs. Could I get an ambulance to take me there?”

“Not unless you are willing to pay a $45 fee,” Nora said. “Ambulances from private residents are not completely covered by our health care. Only transfers between hospitals are.”

“So if I went to Tweed hospital, and got them to transfer me, then it would be free?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Nora said. “But you would have to be admitted to Tweed General first.”

“I’m a pregnant woman,” Sapphire said. “I think I could get admitted fairly easily.”