No one dressed in such a definitively girly way could possibly be a boy, could they?

 
Falling asleep proved harder than he had thought for Les. Despite nervous exhaustion brought on by the events of the day, he lay between the covers hovering between wakefulness and oblivion.

The noises of the household faded slowly. He heard the adult Davenports go to their room on the other side of the staircase and Kimby followed shortly into her room across the hall. The twins’ room at the end had been silent for some time.

Downstairs, Carol, Bettina, and Josie stopped moving around. In the bed below the other window, Pris’s breath became one slow sigh after another.

Outside, an animal made a noise like a drowsy oboe. Further away, traffic whispered on some road going to or from the city. In the greater distance, a moving train communicated a bass note, felt rather than heard.

The world slept.

Lying in the darkness, Les dozed off several times only to waken with a start of fear. No images accompanied his fright, formless in its power. He couldn’t fight it and at last had to surrender to a night terror that brought him fully awake, sitting up, with his hands over his mouth to keep him from screaming.

His heart thuttered like a small captured bird trying to escape the jaws of a stray cat. He got up and went to the bathroom, the peanut light under the sink casting shadows on the ceiling. Being dressed in the nightgown reminded him to sit down to pee. He even thought to unroll a length of toilet paper to wipe with, just in case Pris was lying awake listening.

What would his punishment be when his deception was found out? A trip to juvenile hall and some youth detention center, certainly. There he would likely be beaten by guards and boys alike, perhaps worse than beatings. He shuddered.

Finishing his business, he pulled both pairs of panties up, hiding his boy parts up inside him again. Then he debated whether he should flush for number one. He had spent some time living in the Colorado desert and down there, you didn’t flush for a simple number one. And flushing noisily might wake up Pris who probably wasn’t used to sharing her bedroom and bath.

He compromised by closing the lid and tiptoeing back to bed.

He lay awake between the covers for a long time. In the morning, according to Pris, he would be going with Mrs. Davenport to get registered for school. A girl’s school that Pris went to, too. Pris had already laid out a school uniform for him.

Another dress for Elle.

He’d seen the uniforms Pris had laid out. He didn’t know the words to describe it, but it was not exactly a dress. It had a plaid jumper skirt with a dark green bib. A long sleeved pale green blouse, a red bowtie, and a plaid jacket. Tall yellow socks and maryjanes completed the look. The plaid had red, green, black and yellow in it. There was also a silly looking hat with a red pompom on top of it.

The idea of wearing the uniform made Les cringe. Then again, no one dressed in such a definitively girly way could possibly be a boy, could they?

The shoes were a small problem. Pris’s older pair of shoes barely fit him but didn’t fit her at all. “I’ve got big feet,” Pris said earlier, clowning around as if she wore circus shoes. Les smiled, remembering. “We’ll buy new shoes after school tomorrow,” Pris had decided.

Les shook his head to think about how much money had already been spent on him by Maddy and the Davenports — and going to a private school? That couldn’t be cheap and in an expensive suburb, too — lots of bucks.

A girls’ school. How would he keep his secret? His stomach cramped in anticipation of the tension and stress he would be under. “Don’t throw up,” he told himself silently. In the darkness and quiet, he managed to master the urge to vomit and fell back into a fitful sleep while repeating to himself. “Don’t throw up, don’t throw up,” until it lost all meaning.

* * *

He dreamed of the short time it had just been him, his mother and his baby sister Hanna. Becky or Rebecca, his Mom-Mom, his birth mother, had left his father and they had moved to Sherman, Texas where they rented a house and the baby was sick all the time.

Elle, Mom-Mom had said, here’s five dollars, go to the Circle-K and get the baby some Pedialyte, she’s dehydrated. So Les trotted down to the freeway exit in his maryjanes and school jumper, but he couldn’t see Pedialyte on the shelves. He hunted and hunted for it but couldn’t find it.

He finally remembered that Mom-Mom had once bought Gatorade when she couldn’t find Pedialyte, so he found a bottle of that and went up to pay. Leaving the store with the bottle of pink grapefruit-flavored Gatorade in a bag and some change in his hand, three boys stopped him.

They were wearing jumpers too, but theirs were blue, and they accused him of being a sissy for going to an all-girls’ school which they could tell because of his plaid skirt.

Give us your money, sissy, one of the boys demanded. What’s in the bag, another asked. Then they took his money and drank the Gatorade and when he got back to the house, the baby had died.

But it’s not your fault, Elle, Mom-Mom said. It’s not your fault.

He relived the dream over and over. Sometimes he found the Pedialyte or the Gatorade was green or the boys beat him up before taking his money and drinking the life-giving fluid. Once they promised to kill him if they saw him again.

But the baby always died, and Mom-Mom said it was her fault and she went crazy, and the police came and took her away so she wouldn’t hurt herself.

* * *

Les woke as dawn broke through the springtime haze over the city’s more rural suburbs. Pink sky pushed back the darkness, and animal and traffic noises began to penetrate the quiet room.

Someone knocked on the door. “Breakfast in twenty minutes, bus leaves in an hour.”

Les stirred. Breakfast did not sound horrible.

The voice came again. Was that Kimby, the oldest adopted daughter? “Make a noise, so I know you’re alive.”

“Augh!” said Pris from her bed under the other window. “I can get ten more minutes of sleep if you keep quiet.”

“There’s two of you to use the bathroom now, remember?” Kimby said through the door, but then her footsteps went away.

“Elle,” Pris begged, “you can shower first and wake me when you’re done.”

“Okay,” Les agreed without thinking. Shower?

He got out of bed, pulling his nightgown down to cover his knees. A real shower? Would the water be hot? He hadn’t had more than a sponge bath in days. The shower in the motel room had been hideously unusable; even the cockroaches were mildewed.

He went into the bathroom to examine the plumbing. A large tub had a sliding door of translucent glass and a showerhead with a detachable nozzle. Rich people have nice showers, Les thought.

Quickly, he gathered things he would need from his dresser and the chair where Pris had laid out the school uniform he would wear.

He had to hurry so he could get done before Pris needed to use the shower, too. The bathroom door had no lock, so if she came in while he was exposed, the next bath he got would be in juvenile detention.

Big fluffy towels were on a rack above the laundry hamper which also contained a stack of washcloths. Soap, shampoo, and a funny, net scrubber like a big nylon flower were inside the shower already. The water got hot quickly.

Les stripped off everything, including his two pair of undies and his padded bra, and jumped in, shutting the door.

He washed grime out of his hair, enjoying the fresh floral scent and not caring how feminine it might be. Creme rinse was a luxury he had seldom had the option of before, so he used that too. The rest of the shower went quickly.

He stepped out onto the bathmat after first opening the door a crack to be sure Pris was not in the room. He wrapped one fluffy pink towel around himself, remembering to put it under his arms. He wrapped another towel around his wet hair to soak up some of the water before combing it.

He looked in the mirror, seeing himself wearing two oddly placed large fluffy towels. He smiled and shifted his position a bit to catch a glimpse of the girl he hoped everyone else would see, fresh out of her bath and looking clean and happy.