Little Pink Pills

Part Twenty, by Michelle Wilder

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
Shes coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, hurry boy, its waiting there for you

(Africa, by David Paich and Jeff Porcaro)

(Revised and reposted)

----

It was harder, not just yelling it or something. I looked at Valerie. My bestest friend.

She smiled and nodded. I ducked. It was easier looking at Mom's hand.

"I feel like I was a little girl sometimes, so hard that it scares me, and other times I feel like a boy!"

I peeked at Mom, but she was... serious. I suddenly had no energy and was so tired I felt heavy.

"All the time, when I try to think, before?"

"I'm a girl...."

-

"But with Carson... I don't understand...."

-

Valerie kept holding me the same and both of them said it was okay... but not really saying anything, either? I finally stopped almost crying just from the feeling. Or fainting.

Mom finally took a breath, like she was going to say something. I looked up.

"I'm guessing you don't mean you feel any different about Carson?" Mom was pretty quiet.

I shook my head and started, but Mom held her hand up and then touched my cheek.

"I didn't think so... but what do you mean you don't know about Carson, then?"

-

There weren't words... for... feeling like a boy or girl. There just wasn't a way I could think of to describe it, and then ask questions about it... like about Carson and how she could be so different than me if I felt that way, too, if we even did?

And I didn't feel like a girl, just then. It was so strong a feeling that I ~used~ to be a girl... but I felt like a boy!

Mom and Val both didn't understand, no matter how hard I tried.

-

"Do you want to wait until you can talk to Carol about this?" She smiled. "She seems to have a way of communicating with you that we haven't managed yet...."

I nodded, but it made me feel guilty that I couldn't explain to Mom... like I shouldn't, like it was bad to tell someone else first.

But Carol might understand enough.... She had a Strawberry, just like I did... different than Val, even. And she said exactly what I felt. My big feeling.

-

We looked at more pictures, but it was almost like I was too tired to see them the way I had, before. Or I couldn't get my mind off the circles it was going in.

My leg even hurt, the first time in days. Mom said at last that maybe I should have a nap before supper.

-

She smiled when she tucked me in and ran her fingers along the puffy sleeves of my nightie.

"This is so cute...."

"Aww, Mommmm!"

"You be quiet. And don't pretend you don't like it." She kissed my nose with her finger.

"~I~ picked it out!" Val said like a little girl. Mom laughed.

"Yes, dear, and you have cute taste."

----

Brenda came over right after school and Val sent her upstairs after she made sure I was awake.

She said Carson got back just ~fine~ for afternoon classes, and was avoiding her for some reason, which I could sure understand. And could still turn red about when she giggled.

And she said Carse said for her to tell me that she had to see her therapist and was gonna be late home, and she'd call. And she was okay, it was just about the morning and what we talked about.

So Carson ~was~ talking to her.

-

But first, she said, "OHMIGOSH that's so ~CUTE~!!"

She screamed it, actually, because I'd kinda forgotten what I was wearing.

We could hear Mom and Valerie laughing downstairs after Brenda yelled, and that started her off, too.

----

Once she'd told me the stuff about Carson, Brenda went back to her little-girl giggling.

When she ~finally~ stopped, we got on to our homework. Her homework. It was my... what do you call it when it's all you do? School work, I guess.

-

Our papers on To Kill a Mockingbird were finally due and we were both finished so we read each other's to see if there were any fatal goofs. They were pretty different.

Like, totally different.

-

Brenda wrote that the book was a way to look at all prejudice, not just racism, and Harper Lee used Scout to narrate it so it wouldn't be preachy, and it was loaded with metaphors and parallels about the way people thought and how we got along. Or didn't, more.

She said Lee used a small town instead of the whole country, and then a single trial and the few people around it, and then a little girl and her father, and one racist man, all shrinking the issue to smaller bites to make it understandable.

Her essay was especially about Scout watching Atticus shoot the rabid dog, and Bob Ewell's death, and all the similar things between them.

-

It was four pages long and sounded like it was written by a professor, and it was what her class notes said, too... and I could ~see~ what she was talking about... and what she wrote... but.

I'd read the book too, but it wasn't the same thing at all to me. And I knew I'd written my essay a bit differently, but it was what I thought. What it felt like. Like it was exactly what Harper Lee meant.

After she read it, after a long time when she just looked at it, Brenda read it again, out loud.

-

"Once upon a time there were two people who could not have been more different.

"Scout was really ~two~ people. She was ~almost~ an adult, because she could read and understand and talk like an adult, more than most real ones, but she was also a little girl.

"Boo was big and strong, but bad things had happened to him when he was little and he was so afraid and shy he could hardly talk. In fact, he ~almost~ wasn't a person at all. Instead, he had become a ghost, hiding in his own house.

"By lucky chance, Boo and Scout lived on the same street. Boo could see Scout playing outside, and Scout was fascinated by the mysterious haunted house and ghost. They became nearly-friends, exchanging small gifts - almost playing - but they didn't talk and couldn't meet. The ghost was too shy to come outside, and the little girl was too scared by the stories people told about Boo. She knew the stories weren't true because her father told her, but they were still scary.

"This went on for three years. They came closer and closer, but never touched.

"Of course, Boo and Scout were not the only people in that town. They had families, and Scout had a brother and other friends. Scout's father, Atticus, was probably her best friend. He was a brave, smart, good man, and she tried very hard to be like him.

"There were many other townspeople too, good and bad - and many, many who were both good ~and~ bad. Ordinary people.

"And there was a monster.

"It was a terrible monster, ugly and old, and it had hurt many, many people.

"It had been tried, but it seemed like the monster was impossible to kill, and had become part of everyday life, as bad as it was.

"Most townspeople tried to ignore the monster, saying it had always been there, and was just normal. Some made up stories to explain it away, to make it seem almost like a good thing. Those it hurt the most said nothing, since the monster hurt them more if they spoke.

"In the third year of the story of Boo and Scout, it happened that the monster grew to a huge size, fed by fear and hatred. It became so strong that it began killing again.

"Scout's father was one of the very few people in town who was brave enough to talk about the monster they all lived with. He spoke about it and the bad things it did, and made people look at it. Scout tried to help her father, too, where a little girl might be allowed to help.

"So the monster hated Atticus. And it hated Scout.

"On Halloween night the monster decided to kill Scout and her brother.

"Now, ghosts can leave their houses on Halloween, and Boo knew the monster was loose, so he followed his friend Scout, and he saw it attack.

"But ghosts aren't real, and can't fight a real monster.

"Boo did a ~very~ brave thing.

"Despite his life of fear and shyness, he became a ~real~ person, and he killed the monster.

"Boo was afraid, worse than ever before. Everything he had ever feared could happen now, now that he was a real person. He knew he'd be afraid, but he did it for Scout, who he'd known only from a distance. His only friend.

"Scout knew how afraid Boo was. For three years, she had thought about the differences between being a ghost and being a real person. More than anybody, she could understand how hard it would be for him to be different and out in the open. And, especially, alone.

"She took his hand. She became the first ~good~ part of his life as a real person.

"And so Boo, the ghost who became a real person, and Scout, the almost-a-grown-up who was really a little girl, who were as different as any people could ever be, touched each other and became real friends, at last.

"And they lived happily ever after.

"But they didn't.

"The rest of the book, all the ~other~ people, the trial, the killing and ~everything~, was about ordinary people in an ordinary town. A very real, ordinary town.

"It was about how people in that real town pretended to live in a story-book, with childish, simple choices - imaginary lives that ~real~ children, like Scout, didn't even believe in.

"All their stories were simple and easy to understand, or ignore.

"~To Kill a Mockingbird~ is about how it takes a great hero, or a terrible monster - a crisis - to make people see reality. And even after seeing reality, many will continue to pretend.

"It's also a story about finding the good inside people, their love and courage.

"Harper Lee tells a terrible, beautiful story in the form of a fairy tale about two magical people - in the real world.

"The End."

-

"Wuh."

-

I was so gonna get an F. Brenda thought so, too, even if she wouldn't say.

But she made me print another copy and said I ~had~ to show it to Carol. And Mom.

And if she could read it to the class tomorrow?

-

"Why'd you write it like it was a fairy tale? I mean, your essay?" Brenda was reading it again. Or looking at it.

"Do you think it's too dumb? I was, well, after I finished the book I was really... just all emotional, and Val said she was too, when she read it, and I thought about it, how I didn't know what was so scary or whatever, and I thought of the haunted house thing and Boo and then that there was even a monster, really, and like the attack in the dark and Halloween was a total horror movie, and then that it was more a kid's story, with scary parts...."

"But ~you~ wrote it like a fairy tale, I mean...." She lifted my essay an inch, in case.

I had to smile. "Well, she hid the fairy tale in a book for adults. I just decided to hide a grown-up review in a kid's story."

Brenda got a funny grin and I could see she got it.

"Like a real person hiding in a ghost and a little girl hiding in a grown-up...?"

I cracked a simile.

----

"Do you remember how we met?"

"What?" I looked up from the algebra problem I was trying to figure out. Brenda was looking at me and had put her text down on her knees.

"Do you remember meeting me the first time? The first time we met?" She looked like she really wanted to know.

"Umm..." I tried to. It was at school.... "In home room? In Mr. Zabriski's class?"

"Unh hunh. But do you remember how? What happened and everything?"

I really tried, but what I remembered was walking home with her. She'd been given the desk beside me in Mr. Zabriski's home room... and history... and Greg Harmon. Greg Harmon happened.

"You remember?"

Right as class was ending, when Mr. Z had just walked out, Greg Harmon shoved all my stuff off my desk as he walked by and hip-checked me almost out of my seat. Brenda helped me pick up and introduced herself, and then I did, and she said she'd transferred there because her parents wanted her in a school where she could go to our high school....

I nodded. I remembered.

I remembered Greg Harmon called me a fag, and Brenda heard, and she didn't care... she still made friends.

I remembered talking with her all the way past home to her house and then walking back almost an hour late. I remembered telling Valerie and Mom when I finally got home, and then waiting so I could tell Dad.

I remembered. Brenda was the only real friend I made in all of grade eight, and it was in April. And-

"You said I had nice hair."

"You do. You did then, too." She smiled. "I remember how you looked when I told you that. You got the most beautiful smile, and you'd been a real sourpuss all class."

"I was?" I hadn't remembered that.

Then I... the names and... how I never got picked for games or invited to things. Dummy. Stupid. Deadhead. Gloom.

Fag.

I remembered more... walking home with Brenda, the new girl....

"You laughed at my runners...."

"What?"

"You said my runners weren't as exciting as I thought..."

"Oh, yeah! 'Cause you were going on and on about how cool they were and how you felt like you could run a mile and weren't they ~cool~??!" She laughed at the memory, or at my new Nikes... again.

"You were such a dweeb!" She did a mini-spaz and laughed even more.

Or at me.

"Oh, come on! You ~were~!" She smiled. "But you were a nice dweeb."

I couldn't even pretend to be mad, thinking of how wonderful I'd felt that day. I actually remembered the feeling, like everything was better, like school would be fun from then on, like I had a... a best friend. It was a big feeling.

I hadn't remembered Cathy, I didn't think... I don't think I would've been happy.

-

"How come you asked that, if I remembered?"

Brenda looked like she had to remember a long time ago too.

"Y'know, I really don't know? I think maybe your essay reminded me of something and then something else and then... well, I thought of it?"

I had to smile. My bed was still half-covered with old toys and Mom's album was on the dresser. I wondered where Mom's film camera was now.

"Can you stay for supper?"

-

"Do you remember stuff from when you were really little?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, when you were just in kindergarden, or really small like that? Like what you played and who your friends were and all that?"

"I dunno... no, I guess, just a few things, like here and there.... How come?"

-

"When you were really little, did you think you were a girl?"

What?" Brenda looked at me. "Oh... Well, yeah, I guess I did. I never thought about it, I think."

"Yeah. Me neither."

-

"What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?"

I had to look to see if she was kidding or something.

"No, I mean, the worst thing, in your whole life?" She wasn't.

"Me, it was when my sister was lost. We were in a park in the mountains and she wandered away or something when we were at a viewing place and it took about four or five hours to find her.... I had nightmares for years...."

She looked so incredibly sad, like... like a bad feeling inside, like sick. More than just emotion.

Lisa was in grade eight, now.

-

"I had a really good friend who moved away."

"She was my best friend."

-

"They hired some men and they packed up everything for them and we came home from school and there was this huge moving truck and almost everything was gone, I mean, the rooms all echoed and her mom was vacuuming and like, one day, I had a best friend for years and years, and after school, just a couple of hours... she was gone."

I could barely think of watching. Their car driving away.

At home, after, I remembered that Linda, that my doll Cathy gave me, that Linda was gone too.

-

"This is Cathy." I showed Brenda the last picture of her, the summer just before she left.

"She was my best friend since I was five." My eyes blurred.

Brenda looked at her a long time, and the others on the page, I guess.

"That's a pretty doll...."

"That's Linda." I started to cry.

----

"Portland... okay...."

"And last... Catherine, Anne, Oxby. Is that how she spelled it?"

I looked. "I dunno..."

"Okay, it doesn't matter. And... go." She hit enter. It only took a couple of seconds.

"It says there are seventeen Oxbys... and... do you know her father's first name?"

-

"Brent Oxby. 761 Harbison Street. Annnnnnnd... that's probably Cathy's house."

There was a blurry picture. It was white and had a tree and hedge and a For Sale/Sold sign....

-

I couldn't even write a first word. Dear.

But I maybe had her email. Her phone number.

----

"I wish you could..."

"I know, me too. But Mom and Dad want us to spend at least one night at home and tomorrow's the game...."

"I'll see you there." I couldn't keep the smile out, even if I missed her.

I wanted to talk with her about everything. I wanted to hold her.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

----

I was embarrassed that Dad saw me with all our toys. Like I had to be older.

After, after Brenda left and Val and I were in her bed so early, I thought that I should've been embarrassed more from being in my nightie all through supper... but I wasn't.

----

We added all my pillows to hers and I was propped up almost to sitting. Val played with my hair while she talked. It felt good.

-

"D'you..." She stopped, and even stopped braiding.

"Do you think your leg, and... not being able to play football? Do you think that might have something to do with all your feelings now?"

I asked, about falling in love? She said no.

"I mean about feeling like a girl." She hugged me tight. "I mean, football was ~the~ boy thing, the really ~guy~, masculine thing you did, and it's gone? And I-"

"I'm still a boy!" It felt important that I was, that she remember that.... And Dad said maybe I still could, even if I...

"I know, I know. I mean, but.... You were a football player, and it was like the... ultimate boy thing, and it was gone... and after, when you knew you really wouldn't be playing again, at least like you were, on a team... what if then you could..." She stopped hugging so tight.

"What if you could let yourself be a girl, more? Like when you were little?"

"I turned girly? Because of that?" It didn't seem... right. I looked at Strawberry, and my pretty matching nightie, and...

"No. You didn't turn girly."

Her voice stopped me.

"Please, listen, and I don't want to hurt you, please?"

She took a long time, breaths.

"All my classmates, when I was a senior... they all thought you were gay. They all asked me about you, the first few months." She hugged really hard again.

"You've always been a pretty feminine boy."

I knew that. Now. All the stuff Carol and Dr. Wilkinson asked. And the name-calling that I always thought was just idiots, before.... And Paul.

But I... I really thought I wasn't.

"And everyone remembered too, in grade school, how you used to play with the girls every recess, before."

"What?"

"You did! You were almost famous! You stopped, but were always with Cathy and her gang... well, they were your gang too... Crystal and Bev and Cathy and you? They were all over here every weekend, or you were at one of their places.... But you ~always~ played with Cathy and the other girls, not the boys."

Her saying their names brought back so many things.... Crystal went to St. Margaret's....

"Beverly..."

"Yeah. She's in Mrs. Victor's homeroom this year."

"How do you know that?!"

"She called me... well, she called about you, a couple days after your accident, and we've been sorta keeping up ever since. She was worried about you."

-

I had to think a long time.

"Brenda found where Cathy probably lives...."

----

"Do you remember grade six? Mom and Dad had to get you moved to another class because of bullying? After Cathy moved away that September and your teacher that year was Mr. Dewar? We always thought he was nice when I had him, but he let the bullies pick on you?"

"You stopped playing with the other girls that year, because of the teasing and bullies."

"That's when you started playing football so much, too."

-

"You wouldn't even hang out with girls at all again until you met Brenda...."

She sounded so sad, I turned. She was.

"You wouldn't even play with me...."

-

I was like a ghost locked in a haunted house.

----

I looked at Strawberry in the dark, at her petticoat with the ruffle all around, all wrinkly and pretty. I was really afraid, and hugged her close.

"Val?"

"Mm?"

"Am I a girl?" My voice was shaky. "Really?"

Valerie rolled over and pulled me tight and talked into my back.

"I don't know...." She took a breath and whispered.

"Can I tell you my deepest secret, about how I feel?"

"Yes?"

"I really, truly... don't care."

-

End of Part 20