“Ok, Tracy, the first item is your hair. It’s beautiful, but it’s just hanging there. Let me trim the dead ends then you can take a shower and wash your hair to make sure all the cuttings are gone. After you take off your clothes, set them outside the bathroom door so I can put them in the wash.”

I sat at her dressing table and she trimmed the ends of my hair. Then, I went into the bathroom, stripped, and set the clothes out as she said. At the time, I didn’t realize I would never see those clothes again.

After my shower, I found that she had brought a bathrobe in for me to use. She had foreseen this scenario (more correctly, a scenario similar to this), so she also had a bra and panties she had bought for me. I put it all on and, again, sat at her dressing table. She blow dried my hair, the brushed it for what seemed like an hour. Then she put clips in each side to keep my hair back. “I’ll just put a tiny bit of makeup on you. You’re pretty already, so you don’t need much.” It was amazing the magic she could work with a minimum amount of makeup.

Then she gave me some jeans, a silky, baby-blue top and some sandals with a 2” heel. I turned toward the bathroom.

“You don’t have to be shy. You can change right here.”

So, I pulled the jeans on under the bathrobe as she rolled her eyes. Then I dropped the robe and put on the top. Lisa’s mouth dropped. “Wow! Those jeans fit you perfectly! I can see now, we’re going to be sharing clothes a lot!” She gave me a necklace and a ladies watch. “I don’t have any clip-on earrings. Gotta get your ears pierced ASAP! Look in the full-length mirror in the bathroom.”

I looked. I turned and looked some more. “I look ok.”

“Oh my God! You’re hot!”

“Maybe so. Why was I so upset? I like this!”

“Ready to show your parents?”

There was a tap on the door. “I guess your mom will be first.”

“Come in, Mom.”

Lisa’s mom came in, stopped and looked stunned. “For the first time, I see the real Tracy! I love it! You have to show your parents!”

“Would you drive us there, mom? I think Tracy is still just a tad … shy.”

“Sure, but it’s odd that, after cross-dressing all these years, you don’t want to go out in regular clothes.”

“Damn, I guess that’s common knowledge! It’s just … different.”

“Well, let’s go show them their new daughter!”

When we pulled up at our house, my dad was gone … to work, of course. I was kind of glad. It was one less person to make a fuss over me.

Aunt Katy was first in the door. “Kim, I want you to meet your new daughter.”

At Lisa’s insistence, I made a grand entrance. My mom repeated all the superlatives about my “beauty”. I began to think it was a little overdone, but coming from my mom I knew it was sincere, so I tried to endure it gracefully. “The doctor is arranging a date for surgery. It’s not actually an emergency, but a ‘near’ emergency … unless she starts trying to menstruate again. If that happens, it will become a full-fledged emergency.”

“Mom!”

“Come on, Honey, we’re all females here!”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, realizing there was a lot I would have to get used to.

Aunt Katy moved toward the door. “Well, we’re going to get some din…”

“No,” my mom interjected, “I had dinner ready and James had to go back to work. Let’s eat and talk.”

They stayed for dinner, and, not surprisingly, I was the main subject of conversation. At times, they talked about ‘Tracy’, and I had to remind them that I was there. Of course, there was a lot of ‘he … she’ when referring to me. After they left, I told my mom goodnight and went to my room. I found some women’s pajamas laid across my bed. My mom was wasting no time. I put the nightclothes on and went to bed. I lay awake for hours, thinking about the events of the day and wondering about the future. I knew that, whatever happened, my future would be different. At the time, I couldn’t realize just how different.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

I woke up the next morning at 8:00 AM, and for a fleeting moment, I thought yesterday’s happenings were a dream. I looked at the nightclothes I was wearing and the clothes I had taken off the night before and confirmed that yesterday was real. I got out of bed and went to my closet to find a surprise. All the hanging clothes were women’s. All my old, boys’ clothing was in boxes on the closet floor. I wondered when my mom had time to buy all these clothes, but a closer look revealed that she had gone through her closet and found some things she thought I could wear. I decided I could kill some time trying them on. Usually, this time of the morning, she was in her photo lab. Today, she had left, probably seeing a client.

My first order of business, like every morning, was breakfast. I slipped on a sleeveless dress and went to the kitchen to browse the fare. I found a frozen waffle, microwaved it and covered it with butter and cane syrup. (Gotta be cane syrup from Louisiana). I chased it with some cold milk and went back to my room to do some try-on. The clothes were very feminine, and I spent a while trying them on. When I was done, I had a pile of clothes that needed hanging back up. Had they been boys’ clothing, I would have left them for ‘later’; probably until my mom told me I had to hang them up. Then, I would have decided that most of them were dirty. Somehow, the task of hanging was not as objectionable as hanging up my boy clothes. I began hanging them; buttoning every button and zipping every zipper. As a girl, I’m a perfectionist. As I was hanging clothes, I heard someone come in the front door.

“Tracy, it’s Mom!” She came on back to my room, looked at me and smiled. I had a sleeveless dress on. “You look comfortable. I knew you would be bored, so I’m gonna take the rest of the day off. We’re going shopping.”

“Cool … for what?"

“Clothes of course! You’ll need a lot more than what I already gave you.”

“But, Mom, my closet is almost full!”

“It’s just a start. Girls need a lot more clothes than boys. I think it’s in the bible.” She smiled. Anything she wanted to prove was ‘in the bible’, even though she never said where. “If you run out of closet space, we will have to have your closet expanded.

“We need to get your hair done, and you have to get your ears pierced, too. That’s also….”

“I know. That’s also in the bible. One of these days, you’re going to have to show me where all this stuff is in the bible.”

“We have a bible or two around the house. Just look it up!”

She knew there was little to no chance of me doing bible research, but I was pretty sure the bible didn’t say, “Thou shalt get thy hair done and thine ears pierced.”

“Ok, but I need to finish hanging these clothes.”

“What? Who are you, and what have you done with Tracy?”

Together, we finished hanging clothes, then she fixed my makeup and insisted on brushing my hair even though I told her I would do it. She didn’t believe that, because I never brushed it before.

We headed out to shop. We went quite a distance so we were unlikely to see anyone we knew. “I’d like to get back before Lisa gets back with your homework.”

“Mom, it’s only 10 AM! How long are we gonna shop?”

“Shopping takes time. You will probably try on about 10 things for every one thing you buy!”

“I’m not that picky!”

“Well, I guess it’s a learned behavior. You have a lot to learn.”

“I’m beginning to see that more and more.”

“’ It’s a whole different sex.’ That’s from a movie. ‘Some Like It Hot’. We should watch it soon.”

I don’t think I had seen my mom as excited about anything as she was about this shopping trip. Her excitement was catching. Soon, I was as enthusiastic as she was. She had given me a different dress to wear, (something nice, but easy to slip off and on) and we were off. We went about twenty miles and stopped at a salon that accepted “walk-ins”, for a quick trim, then to a mall, and headed directly for a jewelry kiosk. I got 2 piercings in each ear, and numerous earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Then to a clothing store, where I had to model for her everything I tried on.

At 3:45 PM, my phone buzzed. “Hello, Lisa.”

“I’m at your house. Where you at?”

“Shopping with my mom.”

“Awww, I wanted to go! Having fun?”

“Oh, yeah, and I’m sure they’ll be plenty more trips.”

“I have your school work.”

“Thank you. Just leave it there; I don’t know how long we’ll be.”

As I put my phone away, my mom’s phone buzzed. I heard one side if the exchange.

“Hello.” … “Yes, speaking.” … “Yes, that’s perfect, thank you.” … “We’ll be there.”

She put her phone away and looked at me. “You have surgery tomorrow morning!”

“Cool! So, they’re gonna cut away all the ….”

“They’re gonna cut away your fake penis and balls! You’ll be a perfect girl.”

“Mom! Please keep your voice down!”

“Oh, no one can hear us! Aren’t you happy?”

“Yes, but I don’t see a need to make everyone in the store happy!”

“We need to get home. On the way, we have to get some special soap for you to shower with.”

We headed home. My life was changing fast.

Next: What? No surgery?