Chapter 3 – Becoming an Indentured Servant

Doug had me start taking meds that I had been collecting for some weeks. I would only find out years later that he was supplementing the drugs with supplies his parents had plenty of in their research lab. I never got to see in their lab, but there were testing drugs on animals as well as working with regular patients. One of the reasons they moved into our neighborhood was that the nursing home and the local Children’s hospital were part of the research project. They didn’t experiment on their patients, but gave them access to the latest methods of fighting cancer that the Rylands were testing in the lab. Soon, that would change my life. What Doug used the nursing home for was a means of cover in case I got caught being on the medicine so it didn’t tie him to his parents.

Doug said that if he had the chance, there was an implant he was aware of that would help me down the road. But, for now, he had calculated the proper dosages for whatever I was taking. Not bad for a kid who could teach his calculus teacher thing or two. The medicines Doug said stopped me from growing and turned off my boy hormones. My hair would grow by five inches and I had almost shoulder length hair by the time I turned nine. I had to start putting it in a ponytail. To my surprise, I found Doug knew how to take blood samples from me as well. He had learned from his parents how to take blood and read blood tests. He used supplies from his parents’ lab. They did so many tests on their subjects, they didn’t even notice. This way he could monitor my hormone levels without letting anyone know what was happening to me. I didn’t ask questions, but on the some of the days I was at the nursing home, he could be found at his parent’s lab running blood tests from samples taken from me in the morning before heading off to school.

Doug warned me that he would just watch me and not help with my next series of tasks. “Samantha, I want you to trust me again. It is going to sound weird, but it is important that you do this. I want you to start helping your mom around the house. By helping your mother with her chores, you will be able to observe femininity and be better able to come out as a girl in the real world. It will mean less time being Samantha at my place.”

“So, I won’t be in a dress as much?”

“Yes, it will cut down your Samantha time. Here is why. Girls work together in a way boys don’t. Which is to say, boys push and shove their way against each other to see who is the best by competing. Girls pull and help each other to become their best together in cooperation. Boys ignore their emotions and focus on one to achieve their goals. Girls process their emotions. The core task I am giving you will last about six months. The chores will continue, but soak up as much as you can. Learn from your mother the joy of processing your emotions. Okay? So, you won’t be in a dress, but it will be like you are in a dress.”

“But, it will be like I am in a dress?”

“Precisely!”

“You sure my Mom didn’t put you up to this?”

“I’m sure.” Doug laughed and threw a pillow at me. I giggled and threw it back.

“Frankly Samantha, your mom will teach you all you need to know by you watching her. And you can’t do that over here in my place being Samantha. You would have done the same had you been born with girl parts. It may be like what your sister Jane used to do when she was just a little younger than you by most likely playing with dolls and her easy bake oven and other toys. Boys look at girls playing and say, ‘how dull’ and ‘no action.’ Girls learn that their feelings and emotions are tied to their everyday actions and common ordinary tasks become life changing. Since you can’t go back in time, you can do the next best thing. Do it for real and have your mom teach you.”

So, on the days my mother was home and not teaching, letting her believe I was just Sam the boy, while secretly dressed as a girl, I began to help my Mom with dinner and soon other chores. Doug would follow me over and read a book at the kitchen table the first few weeks, do his homework, and watch me as I played house by, well, keeping house. Mom discovered that I enjoyed helping her prepare meals and hardly noticed that I was being a girl with her. So, little by little, as I helped my Mom more and more, I discovered Doug was right. I could watch her and learn from her how to be a woman and see the wonder in ordinary tasks.

There was one lesson I never expected from the drudgery of doing laundry. I was helping Mom sort laundry for the washing machine. It wasn’t just about hots and colds, delicate clothes and whites, cottons and synthetics, and the kinds of laundry soaps and settings that go with each. It was about family.

“Oh, that Robert! I wish he would be more careful in the potty!” Mom said.

I tossed the underwear she handed me in the hot load basket. “Why do you say that?”

Look at it she said, “Sometimes he doesn’t wipe as well as he should. His underwear can be so dirty. But he will soon learn to be.”

I looked at what I just tossed in the basket and, yes, it was filthy and smelly. “Why do you say he will learn?”

“Robert just qualified for first string on the Junior Varsity football team. And, not to put too fine a point on it, when you are hot and sweaty with a football uniform on, you get a rash in that area if you haven’t wiped well. That is what happened to your uncle Robert when he got on first string. After a game, he had an awful rash. Limped and moaned all night after he got home.”

“Oh, that’s gross. How about me?” I asked, “How does my underwear usually look?”

“Pretty good. I rarely have any problems. You take your time and clean yourself well. In fact, your underwear is the cleanest of all of us. Although sometimes you get dirty. But, I have noticed that happens when we go on a road trip to see family or go camping. That tells me you like to be in a familiar bathroom. I think that is why you are such a homebody. I wasn’t surprised you went into that nursing home to use the bathroom instead of the woods like other boys would. One other thing I like about you is that you keep a tidy room. It means I don’t have to clean it much. In fact, it lets me have more time in the other rooms of the house.” I couldn’t tell her that I often wore panties and cleaned them myself when everyone was gone out of the house. I usually put on a pair of my regular underwear, walked around the room, and then tossed into the dirty clothes hamper so it would appear that I was using them. I also kept the room clean so she would stay out of it and not discover my stash.

“And Dad and Jane, what do their clothes tell you about them?”

“Your Dad’s polo shirts tell me that he isn’t outside as much as he claims. He has mostly a desk job approving engineering projects, work schedules, etc. Here, look at his collar.” She presented one of his shirts for me to inspect. “He doesn’t have stains around the collar, see. If I notice stains show up, I know he has been working on a project outside with a crew.”

“And Jane?”

“She has short lunches at school and loves chili too much. Look at this blouse. It has chili stains from when she was chatting with her friends too much at lunch and let some chili fall on her blouse because she wasn’t paying attention. I know because I rarely make chili. I want to remove the stains, but it takes too much time. I wish she would do it instead of just leaving it to me. She knows how to do it. I taught her.”

“Can you teach me?”

“Sure.” Mom went on to show me the tools in our laundry and spent some time showing me how to clean various kinds of stains.

I came to understand it wasn’t the chore that Mom did. It was the way Mom did the chore. How she organized the house. How she looked at us. Plus, I learned the care of women’s clothes which are far more complicated than men’s clothes. After her lesson, I found that even folding clothes connected me to that person.

As I listened more over the next few weeks, I found a whole bunch of other little things she showed me that she used to read us like a book. Where dust was and wasn’t told her things. Like that Robert like to pick up and admire his many trophies but rarely read the books on his bookshelf. By the end of three months, I was even helping her clean the house by dusting, cleaning toilet bowls, windows, and vacuuming. As a result, I had learned to read my family like a book too. And, I also began to sit and pee. Clean a toilet enough times and you realize that boys really don’t know how to aim. Plus, I had decided it was time for me to get used to it.

One day, Jane looked up from her bed when I knocked on her door and found me standing in her open doorway with a basket of her clean clothes neatly folded. She fully expected me to throw it at her like I had done a year before when my mom asked me to take her a basket of her clothes from the laundry. I was mad that she took so long that day. Of course, last year I was really mad that day because everyone was home and I couldn’t dress as Samantha. Today was different though. I was being a girl, just not in a dress.

“Oh Sam, nice of you not to throw it at me this time, tell Mom thank you!” She scurried up to her door to catch the basket lest I did it again.

“She didn’t clean them and fold them, Sis. I did. I even got that stain out of your favorite blouse.” I said proudly.

“C’mon, you are pulling my leg. You do laundry? You are just a bratty little boy and you know it! Mom handed you the basket and you brought it up here to take credit for what she did, you little sneak!”

“Nope, it really was me.” I said it as sincerely as I could without raising my voice.

Jane yelled down the hallway not knowing where Mom was. “Mom, did Sam really do my laundry? I think he is lying and should get in trouble.” She looked at me disdainfully and folded her arms in a haughty fashion like she had gotten me in trouble and boy was I going to get it.

Mom poked her head out of the master bedroom door right across from Jane’s door, and said, “Yes Jane, Sam really did do your laundry. He really did get that chili spot out of your blouse too. I watched him do it all by himself. He didn’t have to do it. He didn’t have to care about your blouse either. But he took his valuable time to clean it for you and you should thank him for it. And, young lady, how about you helping around the house instead of being a lump on your bed and calling your brother names? And your little brother isn’t a brat anymore. He has become a very good helper around the house. Now tell him your sorry or you will be the one in trouble.”

“It’s okay, Jane. I deserved it. I have been a brat to you before. There was really no reason for you to believe me.” I said. I couldn’t believe what came out of me. But, it was true.

Jane fell back against the door and went limp. “Well, I guess, I am truly sorry Sam. I just didn’t expect this. I honestly didn’t know. Can you forgive me?”

“Of course, as long as you forgive me too. Can I help you put your clothes away? I’ll hold the basket while you put your things away.”

“Sure, I would love it.” She smiled at me realizing I really was not the same annoying brat anymore. “What’s gotten into you? Why are you so helpful and so different?”

Before entering her room, “Well, I started visiting the nursing home to cheer up the old people because I missed Grandpa so much. So many of the people in the nursing home miss spending time with their family who never come by to see them anymore that,” I started to cry, “I didn’t want to forget to spend time with my own family while I could. That is when helping around the house stopped being a chore I hated doing and something I needed to do.” It may have been a lie in part because Doug pushed me in to it, but it really was how I had come to feel about chores and see my home making task. It was like my mother was rubbing off on me.

My Mom was standing behind me by this point when I said that to my sister. Jane and my Mom looked at each other and melted at what they just heard. They both reached over to me and we all stood there crying happy tears as they talked about what a good little man I was becoming. Then we sat on Jane’s bed and bawled our eyes out or laughed out loud remembering our favorite Grandpa stories and how grateful we were for the time he had with us. It felt so good to let all that grief out. Good for all of us. Good for this little girl.

I don’t know how Doug saw this outcome. But, from that moment on, during the last three months of my home making assignment for Doug, my Mom, my sister and I started doing chores together and having fun. Jane pulled her fair share and even helped me in the kitchen prepare dinner so Mom could take a nap after a hard day’s work substituting. In the end, I only had a couple of days’ worth of work a week to do for the family rather than the huge amount of hours I found myself doing at the beginning of my home making task. Plus, as a bonus, I learned from Jane more about how girls acted at school because she would share gossip with me while we worked on the house. Sometimes, I noticed, she forgot I was a boy and would tell me things I didn’t know about girls. And, I didn’t find those things icky either. But, to a boy, I think they would have been.

Oddly enough, while those six months sailed by, I hadn’t notice that Robert and Doug would sometimes watch sports on television together as my progress was being observed by Doug. Doug would ask Robert to explain the games and what strategies were being used to win games. Robert liked being asked and grew to really appreciate Doug being there because he could show off to a genius what he knew about sports. And, in the end, Robert grew to admire Doug for being just a normal boy and not a ‘Mr. Smarty Pants Know It All.’

Doug and I talked one sleep over night after I was told him all that happened. I was glad to have more Samantha time again. Yet, Doug pointed out something to me I didn’t see. “Samantha, you are letting more of the real girl out. Girls understand more than men do the need for each other to be in a community. I know it intellectually as a boy from reading the literature on the differences between the sexes. But you know in your heart now. So when you told me what you said to your sister about work not being a chore, you showed your girl side and that what makes girls special. Did you notice how you, your sister, and your Mom started to share feelings after you shared yours? Think about it, even though you stood in front of them dressed as a boy, you were acting like a girl. So, you don’t have to put on a dress to be a girl, do you?”

“No, I guess not. But it would sure feel better.”

Doug said, “Easier, not better. It is important that your journey be of sound mind as well as of body. Being as comfortable at looking at life as a girl is just as important in your growth as aligning your body to match will be down the road. Clothes don’t make the girl despite a famous Latin proverb, Vestis Virum Reddit.”

What I had yet to understand is the extraordinary way Doug was weaving us all together in a tapestry of family. I only saw how he made the three of us work as a team and become a unit. As time would go one, Doug’s influence would make my family a fully functional family that could absorb a completed me and not have a hiccup.

I went to sleep thinking about what Doug was teaching me. It was something about me I had never seen. I was grateful for him now because when I started this journey, it was all about me. Little by little, I was becoming aware that my journey to being a woman is about others too. And, maybe that would be a good thing.

Copyright © 2017 by AuP reviner (revised March 2017)