The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1330 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“You are a proper girl, darling, legally as well. The only thing you can’t do is have babies, and there are quite a lot of women who can’t do that for a variety of reasons. The female reproductive system is very complex and even if you’d been born a normal girl, you might not have been able to have babies.”

“But I will after you do me, won’t I?”

“I don’t think it works like that, darling. Your not being a biological female is not a sickness as such. So it very probably won’t work.”

“But it is, Mummy. I don’t have bits–I need to grow them.”

“It won’t happen, sweetheart, because–.”

“Because what, Mummy?”

“Because it wasn’t meant to.”

“I wasn’t meant to be a girl?” I saw tears forming in her eyes.

“Not biologically, so you haven’t got the bits. I’m sorry, darling.”

“No,” she pushed away from me, “Jesus says I can be a real girl if I believe in him.”

“Who told you that?”

“The nuns tell us regularly that if we believe in Jesus and ask him for help, we can do anything.”

Oh bugger, how do I tell her that they were speaking metaphorically?

“Look, sweetheart, we don’t know what makes some people have a different sex in their heads to their physical bodies. Some people are born neither one thing nor the other, but most of us have an identifiable physical sex and a matching view of ourselves as being the same in our heads. But now and again something different happens, and people like you and I are born whose body is one thing and yet their mind is another.”

“I understand, Mummy–but won’t the blue light and Jesus make me a proper girl?”

“I don’t think it works like that, darling, I really don’t.”

“Did the nuns lie to me?”

“I don’t think they lied, I suspect more that they didn’t explain things very well.”

“Silly old bags.”

“Don’t be rude about them, I’m sure they meant well.”

“Do the blue light, Mummy–see if it works.”

“Can I ask you something first, darling?”

“Of course, Mummy.”

“I know that the boy bits you lost won’t grow back because they’ve been removed...”

“You don’t think that could happen, do you? That would be horrible.”

“I just said I don’t think that could happen, but what if the light thought that your mind was sick?”

“My mind, Mummy?”

“Yes, what if the light thought that it was doing the right thing by making you feel like a boy not a girl?”

“Don’t be silly, Mummy, how could that happen?”

“I don’t know, and I’m not saying it would, but just think for a moment–as far as we know, until you did your own bit of surgery and then the doctors sorted you after Auntie Stella accidentally cut you, you had a normal little boy’s body.”

She huffed and folded her arms.

“It was your mind that was a girl’s, not your body. What if instead of doing something to your body, it changed your mind?”

She laughed, “That is silly, Mummy.”

“It would be ironic and awful for you to be a boy stuck in a girl’s body, wouldn’t it?”

She laughed again, but her expression meant she was thinking about what I’d said.

“Would you want to take that risk–becoming a boy who had no willie and no chance of getting one?”

“No,” she shrieked and ran off up the stairs.

I felt rotten–I was scared because I honestly felt that something like it could happen. It was unlikely, but I wasn’t prepared to take that risk with her and I’d outmanoeuvred her. Was I acting in her best interests?

To be honest I didn’t think anything would happen, because it isn’t usually the sort of thing that it deals with, and besides, with the exception of being fertile, she was likely to become a full woman, with a female figure and I suspect attractive face–she was quite a pretty kid already. Why do we always want more than we can have?

I understand her, because I wanted it too, but I know my limitations and I do have the joy of breastfeeding, which I believe she could too when she’s older.

I sat at the kitchen table and putting my arms on the table hid my face in them and sobbed. I was still there when I felt a hand on my shoulder, “What’s the matter, Mummy?”

I looked up through bleary eyes and saw Julie standing beside me. “Hello, sweetheart,” I said trying to pretend I must have fallen asleep.

“Why have you been crying?” she persisted.

“Oh it’s nothing.”

“It must be, you don’t cry for nothing–c’mon, tell Auntie Julie all about it,” she said patronisingly while patting my hand.

“Make some tea, while I clean myself up,” I said and went upstairs. I washed my face in cold water, at least I wasn’t wearing any makeup to smear all over my sleeves. I went to check on Trish, who was lying on her bed reading a book.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

“Huh, what d’you care?” she threw back at me like a spear and then pretended to read again.

“I care a great deal about you and all the other children who look to me to look after them.”

“Well you failed, didn’t you?” she got up flung the book on the bed and pushed past me.

“I seem to have failed to teach you any manners, young lady.” I said to her back.

She replied with something which sounded like, duck off. I felt extremely hurt and angry with her but felt powerless to do very much because I was so angry. However, I wasn’t the only one who heard it.

At the bottom of the stairs stood Julie who confronted Trish; “I think you’d better apologise before I wash your dirty mouth with soap and water, squirt.”

Trish made the same reply to her older sister and Julie grabbed her and shook her. “Don’t you speak to me like that, you dirty little scumbag,” she was about to slap her when I shouted to let her go.

Trish stamped on Julie’s foot and ran past her and out into the garden, I got downstairs just in time to see her disappear through the back door.

“God, that bloody hurt,” gasped Julie, “I only came to tell you I’d made your tea. I’ll kill the little bitch if I catch her.”

“No you won’t, I’ll deal with this,” I said forcefully before giving chase up the garden.

I kept telling myself that she is seven years old and abused in previous homes, but I still had an urge to strangle her slowly. I saw her disappear into the orchard and I began to run after her.

“Trish, come back here, this minute,” I shouted closing on her.

“Go to hell,” she shouted back at me turning to face me before running off and straight into an apple tree. It caught her on the face and head with a sickening thud and she bounced back before collapsing onto the grass.

With heart pounding I rushed after her kneeling down beside her watching a contusion form on her forehead and start to bleed into her hair, her eye was swelling and turning a dark red colour and there was blood oozing from her mouth.

Realising that she’d probably bitten her tongue and aware she was still breathing, I turned her on her side to let the blood drain from her mouth so she didn’t choke on it or inhale it.

As I touched her, I felt energy flow into her inert body, and I recognised the irony–she wanted blue light, she got blue light–but not quite as she wanted it.

I felt her coming back to consciousness and she stirred a little, “It’s alright, darling, Mummy’s here,” I cooed to her.

She groaned and touched her face with her hand, the blood leaving her pink painted nails red.

“Oh, that hurts,” she said.

“I’m sure it does, sweetheart, you ran full pelt into that tree.”

“Did I? Where am I?”

“In the orchard, in Gramps house.”

“Orchard–what orchard? Who are you?” she asked looking at me through her good eye.

“I’m your mummy, Trish, remember.”

“No you’re not, my mother’s got dark hair, and my name’s Patrick–so who’s Trish?”