Chapter 10 - A New School and A New Show

Ursuline Academy was everything I hoped it would be. Eventually. Of course I had to get through being the new girl, which I thought wouldn't be too hard. After all, I was able to stand up in front of a few hundred complete strangers and convince them I was a cute little orphan for several nights. Stage fright? Me?

Yeah, me!

It made a big difference because I couldn't go backstage after a couple of hours, change my clothes, then become Danny again. I was Annie.

Forever.

Having Aileen as a friend helped. In fact, she was my official mentor to help me get adjusted to the school. Naturally there were some rich bitches among the students, but they didn't move in the circles where I found friends. The classes were challenging, but I thrived on the challenge.

As far as anyone there was concerned, I was just another girl among all the other girls. Naturally, the teachers knew I was trans, but I didn't notice anything different about the way I was treated. Which includes getting my behind chewed when I got into trouble. You'd be surprised at what a bunch of eleven-year-old girls can think up.

Or maybe you wouldn't.

Well, there was one sticky spot - phys ed. And bathrooms, places where the lack of clothes could be a problem. Phys ed wasn't bad, this was a high end school and there were separate enclosures for showering and changing if you were too shy to run around naked in front of the other girls. Or too overly equipped, shall we say.

That's how I got to be friends with Janine. She's in a wheelchair, so she usually uses the 'family facilities,' which is another way of saying the handicapped toilet. Since the family facilities are built for only one person, there was no problem with anyone getting upset with the tranny in the toilet; not that anyone there would have been so gauche as to actually say anything bad about transvestites. I just used the one-holer if it was convenient. If it wasn't I just did my thing like any other girl.

Janine was an interesting person. She was in a car accident when she was four years old and she's a paraplegic, her legs were amputated just above the knees. She's also one of the most determined people I have ever met; nothing stops her. I wasn't at the school very long before we both had to pee at the same time, so we met at the bathroom door. She let me go first because it takes her a while to transfer from her chair to the toilet and she didn't want me to turn yellow waiting for her. Yeah, she actually said turn yellow. I was in a hurry so I took her up on it.

I just plain didn't know what to think. Even though she was in my class, I had not really talked to her before. In fact, I had never personally met anyone who was physically handicapped before, so I didn't have any idea how to act around her. I finished my business while wondering just what to say to her. Turns out I didn't have to say anything, she zipped through the bathroom door as soon as I cleared it. I just kind of stood there and tried to decide if I should go or wait for her to come out.

My indecision saved me, before I could figure out what to do she was back and introduced herself. We went to lunch together and it was the start of a friendship. She thought it was really cool that I was an actor and I thought it was really cool that she played on a wheelchair basketball team. I had never heard of such a thing.

So I invited her to our next performance and she invited me to come and see her play basketball. She and her teammates are crazy as loons - the things they do in their wheelchairs scare the panties off me. I was sure somebody was going to get killed. She needed the seatbelt in her chair, believe me!

(That's not Janine, but an image I found on the web that really gives you a feel for what wheelchair basketball is like.)

 
Naturally, I joined the chorus, I loved to sing. Janine was there with me, she had a nice voice. Her upper body strength was great because she had to move herself with her arms. She also had phenomenal lung capacity, that girl could hold a note while I was turning blue from lack of air.

While waiting for the chorus rehearsals to begin, Janine would fool around on the keyboard and I just kind of started to sing along with the tune. Mrs Johnson, naturally, encouraged us to sing together and we spent quite a bit of time at her house where she had her piano to use. I didn't play an instrument, but Janine certainly could.

It seems faintly embarrassing now, but we really liked the songs from the Disney movies, so that's what we started singing. There is something really satisfying in singing with your girlfriend.

I also joined the dance group - Aileen would have killed me if I didn't. I didn't take part in any after-school sports, having been warned that that was a fast track to problems for a transgirl.

I started to feel a bit guilty, having to split my time with my dancing friend and my singing friend. Naturally, Janine couldn't dance and Aileen didn't like to sing. The solution became obvious when I noticed a flute in Aileen's bedroom.

"You play that thing?" I asked.

"Not lately. I'd rather practice dancing than playing."

"Really?"

"Really."

"I have an idea…"

"The Good Lord protect me and keep me!" she replied in her phony Irish accent.

"I'm not sure even She could manage that. You're too clumsy."

"Clumsy! This from the girl that still can't do a double hop and land facing the right way."

"Seriously, you play any Irish tunes on that thing?" (We eventually did expand our music from Disney songs.)

"Faith and begorra, as if I could get away with playing hip-hop."

"Maybe I could improve my double hop if you were playing hip-hop."

"Don't press your luck…"

"There are a couple of songs Janine and I want to sing but they really need something besides piano accompaniment. As a trio we could both dance and sing."

"It's been a while…"

"So play something for me."

Naturally Aileen was minimizing her talents. She sounded pretty good to me. That was the start of the Sassenach Ladies. Sassenach is a mildly contemptuous Gaelic term for the English. I may have looked Irish with all this red hair, but Janine was blonde and Aileen was the only one who could really claim a strong Irish heritage. Besides, since nobody knew what a Sassenach was it was a cool-sounding word to get the attention of an audience.

 

However, I didn't join the Drama Club. Now, that might seem odd since I loved acting, but I was just too busy to do anything more. You see, I was starring in the Periactus Players spring show. It was almost like the Universe was telling me that I was fated to be feminine.

It happened this way. A week or so after I started at Ursuline, Dad came home from a board meeting for the Players. Since it was a dinner meeting, he got back before I had to be in bed, so he took me aside and talked to me.

"I think you're going to find this humorous, Annie." he started.

"Oh?"

"Well, the Board has decided on the spring show."

"Cool! What is it?"

"Another musical, since Annie did so well."

"Sounds good. But you didn't tell me what musical is is."

"I'm getting there. They also want you to play the lead role. They figure you got so much publicity for them they don't want to waste their star power. But they were a little bit nervous about asking you."

"What? Why?"

"Because they want to do the Secret Garden and the lead is a girl named Mary."

"You're kidding!"

"Nope. They were a little worried about asking a boy to play a two girl's roles in a row. They were a bit shocked when I explained why you wouldn't have any problems with playing a girl."

"You're right - that's funny!"

"Almost like the muses are on your side, eh?"

"I guess this time we can drop the 'D.' from my name in the program."

"So we can. You're on board?"

"Did you have to ask?"

"Actually, yes. Not that I had any doubt about your answer, but you're the one to make the commitment."

"Right, but let's not use that word 'commitment.' Sam already thinks I need to be committed because I'm Annie."

"Then we shall say you have accepted the part."

"Good enough, Daddy."

"It still seems odd to have you calling me 'Daddy' after eleven years of being 'Dad'."

"Better than some of the things Kate has called you."

"Don't remind me. I still have two years before you are a teenager. Two teenage girls in the family is asking a lot of your poor, benighted father."

"Just wait until you have to buy me a ball gown for the award ceremonies."

"You aren't ready for the Oscars yet, young lady."

"Whaddya mean? I'm ready for them anytime!"

"Back to business, Annie. Do you know the story?"

"Not really."

"I'm sure we have the book around somewhere, it's a classic. Give it a read sometime soon. It's a challenging part. Mary starts off as a spoiled brat of an orphan - remind you of anybody?"

"Daddy!"

"Anyway, she was raised in India by parents who die in a plague so you get to do a sort of British-Indian accent to start off with. She gets dumped on her weird hunchback uncle in England and his even weirder doctor brother. They live in a haunted house in the middle of nowhere. The brothers aren't really aren't thrilled by the whole thing. Neither is Mary, who is a spoiled brat.

"The housekeeper hates her, too, and the place is full of ghosts. But she's a plucky little lass who wins everybody's hearts and cures all the ills of her family while singing a merry tune.

"There are lots of great character parts; the weird brothers, the grumpy maid, a crotchety gardener, and a mystic type who teaches Mary to talk to animals.

"Oh yeah, she finds a disabled cousin that everybody is hiding and a secret garden. She and the cousin bring the garden back to life along with all her relatives and she turns into Miss Mary Sunshine. At the end of the thing she's speaking in a pure Yorkshire accent, by the way."

"You're kidding!"

"It's a beloved children's classic. Oh, and it's a musical. You'll love it, you get to wear lots of fancy dresses and frippery. Veddy English, don'cha know?"

"They'll think I'm Irish with this red hair."

"No brogues allowed. Think tea and crumpets. Or maybe tea and chutney since she came from India."

"Chutney?"

"We'll have to go out to the Taj Mahal for dinner so you can taste some chutneys. They're an Indian condiment sort of halfway between jelly and relish."

"I think you're making all this up just to get me going."

"Read the book, it's all there except the songs. I can't imagine how someone who reads as much as you do managed to miss the Secret Garden."

"Who else is going to be in it?"

"We haven't decided yet. There will be auditions in a few weeks.

"I think you may be a shoe-in for the part of the weird uncle."

"Out! Bedtime! Begone!"

"I love you, Daddy." and I gave him a kiss.

 

Daddy wasn't kidding, it was all there except the chutney and the ghosts. I got excited about the role, it called for a real range of characterization. I suppose I should have identified with Mary, a girl that loses her entire family and becomes an orphan, but I never really felt like an orphan. My birth parents were just pictures in an album, my real parents were right there in the house with me. Of course my birth parents died before I was old enough to remember them and Mary's died when she was my age. That makes a difference, I suppose.

I have to confess that having my parents encourage me to act like a spoiled brat was pretty cool, I liked that part a lot. I did get annoyed with how the book had such stereotypical portrayal of disabled people. Having a friend in a wheelchair like Janine, I was outraged that anybody would want to hide a child just because he might end up handicapped.

OK, I was eleven years old and still saw the world in absolutes much of the time, but I was determined that when the Periactus Players staged Secret Garden we would make the portrayal of Colin realistic and not a stereotype. That's how we ended up having my friend Janine help with the rehearsals. It took a lot of talking on my part to convince the powers-that-be to have her help, but I was real good at talking.

I sort of wished we could have her take the Colin role, but that wouldn't work. First, the role calls for a boy, but as far as I was concerned that didn't make much difference - after all, who was playing the Mary role? The real problem was the role called for Colin to be healed and start walking again, which Janine was not going to be able to do. Besides, she wasn't interested in being on stage.

Some people are just weird, but I still liked her. Besides, Janine had noticeable breasts, not much good for playing a male role.

 

Chapter 11 - Wardrobe Fitting

Soon it came time to do the costume fitting. Mrs Garibaldi, our wardrobe mistress had me and Mom come in early. Mom had that look she got when she had something up her sleeve, but she wasn't going to tell me what. Mrs G was nervous and I wondered what was going on, she was usually so - shall we say? - definite about anything to do with wardrobe. Perhaps the Queen has spoken! makes it clearer as to how Mrs G approached things.

"Annie, there's something we need to cover for this role."

"Yes, Mrs G?"

"Mary is a bit older and more mature than Annie was, you know."

"Sure, Annie is more a kid, Mary is really different."

"Right. Well, the dresses I have in mind need you to have, I mean, they're designed for a girl that has a bosom."

"You mean I get to have breasts?"

"Exactly."

"That's great!"

Wow, did she look relieved.

"It's sort of a sensitive topic, especially considering that you're… uh…"

"I'm trans, right? Don't worry, Mrs G, I've been getting a bit jealous of some of my friends at school who have started to develop."

Hey - I was sophisticated. I had been surfing the Internet about boys who wanted to be girls, even if I wasn't absolutely positive that was me. I could sling the jargon as well as anyone by then. Sometimes it made adults a bit nervous, but that didn't bother me one bit.

"Then you won't mind if we ask you to wear some enhancers for the show?"

I looked over at my mother sitting there grinning at me. Now I knew what she was hiding.

"Mind? I've been trying to figure out how to ask my folks about falsies."

Mrs G winced at the word 'falsies' but I was excited.

"How soon can we get them?" I asked.

"How about… now?"

"Cool!"

"Your mother was kind enough to supply me with the correct size, so I have a new bra for you, even if it's anachronistic. Women didn't wear bras back then."

"Huh? What did they wear?"

"Proper women were corseted, and had their bodies twisted into all kinds of ridiculous shapes to please fashion. It's a good thing you're living now, it would have been very hard to be cross-gender before bras and silicone breasts were invented. Back then corsets simply provided a shelf for a woman's breast to rest on while squeezing her insides inside out."

"But I don't have to wear one?"

"No, we're not going to be that authentic in period costuming. You won't have to wear sixty-three petticoats and a dozen camisoles. Our dresses will zip up the back so you can change quickly. It would take hours to change if we tried to use period clothing."

"That's good, I guess."

"You certainly wouldn't want to dress like they really did."

You can check a film clip on You-Tube and see just what they had to put up with. I did and Mrs G was right!

At the time it didn't make all that much difference, all I could think of is that I could have breasts, breasts like the other girls were getting. I eagerly took off my shirt and put on the new bra. Mrs G handed me the forms and I put them in the cups. They were only size A, but on my skinny young body they looked just about right. I skinned out of my jeans and Mrs G helped me into the first dress. Not what I would have wanted if we were going shopping, but it did look like the illustrations in The Secret Garden.

Mrs G fussed and pinned until she was satisfied, then I took it off and put on the second one. Different colors, but much the same design. More fussing and pinning - fortunately no pins stuck me - Mrs G was a professional. Then one more - this one for the scene where Mary sees all the ghosts. It was all ethereal and white and floaty. I loved it. I had to wonder where the ghosts in the musical came from as they weren't in the book, but if the ghosts let me wear this wonderful dress I wasn't going to ask too many questions.

The fitting done, I asked Mrs G "Do I get to keep the…" and I gestured at my filled bra cups. I didn't want to say 'falsies' again because Mrs G didn't seem to like the word.

"They're yours, dear. After all, your mother bought them for you."

I scampered over and hugged mom, ignoring the fact that I was only wearing my bra and panties.

"Happy, Annie?" asked Mom.

"Yes!!!"

Did she even have to ask?

"There is only one problem, though."

"Rut-roh!" I quoted the words of one of my favorite cartoon characters. "What problem?"

"We're going to have to take you shopping for new bras."

"Some problem!" Sometimes mothers can be a pain! Too bad we had already eaten dinner, no McDonalds but I suppose having breasts made up for it.

 

I didn't realize it then, but that was a watershed moment in my young life. Up until I had seen myself in the mirror as a young woman with a visible bust, I had simply been content to live as a girl because it let me go to Ursuline. Boy or girl didn't matter all that much to me until then; if girl equaled Ursuline then I'd be a girl.

After having been a girl for a few weeks I was starting to realize that I had more friends and was happier than I had ever been. When I saw Mary in the mirror I suddenly realized that I wanted to be a girl. I enjoyed being a girl. It was no longer me playing a part, it was me being me.

Being surrounded by girls on the cusp of womanhood - developing figures, getting their first periods, starting to notice boys in a whole new way - I realized that that's just who I wanted to be. And my mother was about to take me shopping for my first bra that wasn't just to get me used to wearing a bra - it was actually needed because I was going to have breasts.

Breasts just like a girl. Suddenly it seemed unfair that I had to use falsies and couldn't have my own real breasts just like a real girl.

Some of the stuff I had read on the Internet that didn't really make sense because I was so young now fell into place. All this stuff about doctors and hormones and whatever was now personal. It was at that point that I realized I would never want to go back to being Daniel. I was Annie deep down in my being.

Mom was surprised at just how excited I was to be buying my new bras. That night I couldn't force myself to take my new bra off, I slept with my forms hugging my body and dreamed of being a real girl.

 

Little did I know that my parents weren't doing much dreaming. My liberal parents, determined to raise kids without gender stereotypes, had begun to realize that theory and practice were two very different things. Mom and Dad later told me that they spent a long time discussing what they should do with their son who was a daughter. What was best for me? What was best for them?

I was blissfully unaware of their turmoil, but they did have several sessions with Doctor Phil without me, trying to learn and decide what was the best course. The answer boiled down to: be supportive and then wait and see.

Now that I'm a parent I know just how hard it must have been for them. I count myself lucky that I had such wonderful people as parents.