History At Home

We decided that the afternoon should be spent in quiet activities in deference to my puncture. I unearthed one of the multi-sided die left from my D&D days to decide which room would start our explorations. It came up at the parlour, so we removed the dust covers, did a quick vacuum and looked at the bookshelves that were on one wall.

I should have known that if Mrs Major could fill my dressers and closets with clothes she could control something as small as a multi-sided die. There were a good thirty photo albums there, just waiting to be opened to reveal the family history.

If that wasn't enough, there was an oversize, lavishly illustrated family bible with the blank pages in the back filled with tiny, precise script. On the inside front cover was the following inscription:
 

We had found a treasure trove, or should I say that Mrs Major had guided us to a treasure trove? That book was so darned big that I let Vonda move it to a card table in deference to my wounded breast.

The doc did say to milk it, so Doctor's Orders, eh?

Setting it down with a thump, she remarked "Guess it doesn't matter if you're Christian or Jewish, those old timers loved to set down the family lineage in the back of the Holy Book. I suppose the Islamic types do as well. My mother had a Torah from her mother that goes back to the twenties - the nineteen twenties - with the same stuff, only most of it is in Hebrew."

The back pages proved to be page after page of the lineage of the descendants of the General and his wife. The whole thing was made more complicated by the fact that for generation after generation only daughters were born to every single union recorded in the book. That meant that, while the home remained continuously in the same family, the name of the family changed with each generation. In our patriarchal society we just expect the last name to remain the same as each firstborn son inherits. The whole firstborn son thing is pretty darn irrelevant in a matriarchal family.

One real find was a folder with a computer printout of the family tree, all the way back to 1824 when the General was born. Take a look at this sample of the beginning of the family tree:

Notice anything odd? There are two names for every person who married into the family. The first one is obviously male, but it is immediately followed by a feminized version of the name. Magdalena married Peter Michael but lived with Petra Michelle. Their daughter Naomi Leah married William Charles but lived with Wilamina Charlene. There were even pictures of many of the family. Here's Magdalena and Petra, not looking very happy. Life was still hard on a farm in the late 1800s

Things looked much more prosperous in the early 1900s when this picture of their daughter Naomi and her spouse Wilamina was taken.

We spent the entire afternoon looking from the family tree to the photo albums, correlating the images with the names. Cora and Millie were flappers in the 1920s:

Carrie and Millie were billed as cousins in 1940:

By 1960 or so, Sally and Ruth showed the atrocious fashion sense of the era:

Thirty years later Barbara and Bernice seem to have inherited those color-sense genes:

Patterns began to emerge: Not a single wedding photo, no smiling grooms and blushing brides. Were the generations of men who married into Mrs Major's family aware of what would happen to them? Was their love strong enough to defy the unthinking assumption of male superiority to be with the woman they loved? I'd like to think that, unlike me, they were given a choice and love triumphed.

Since most of the generations had multiple daughters, it looked like I wasn't going to have to worry about losing my ability to father a child despite outward appearances. Mrs Major must have had a practical streak - she knew that even if Rachel's Repose were to be a haven for women, there had to be someone to get those women pregnant or the family would cease to exist. It looked like I had just joined a long line of very unusual men.

I was disappointed to find no pictures of Elezibeth Anne and her husband, she was the one who disappeared on the round-the-world trip. It looked like she took the pictures with her.

"I wonder…" mused Vonda.

"What are you wondering?"

Could Elizibeth Ann and her husband deliberately gone missing so he wouldn't be affected by the curse if they lived here?"

"Now that's a very good question."

"Which will probably never be answered. Mrs Major sure seemed determined to enforce her wishes if she dragged you into the whole business."

"Unless somehow I'm related to her by some backwater path. I wonder if any of the feminized husbands ever had an affair and produced a male child?"

"Not if the family archivists were aware of it."

"Hard to picture a man with D cups seducing some woman and getting her pregnant."

"Uh, Glenda… It may be happening at this very minute."

"Oh. Did they find the implant?"

"We won't know until we see Christa on Monday. Just so you're prepared, if it has gone missing. We've been fucking like rabbits during my most fertile period."

Vonda punctuated her pronouncement with a snap as she closed the photo album and announced "I've got to pee!"

"Pick your favorite bathroom and have at it. Six seats, no waiting. If you are pregnant that might come in handy."

"I sure as hell can't wait," and she bustled off.

That sounded like a good idea, so I headed to the half bath nearest the parlour.

"Glenda!" came the shout from somewhere distant. "You have got to see this!"

"Coming!" I replied and changed course. She was standing in the doorway of the master bedroom where I had showered off the Dust Monster.

"Ho… ly… shit!" was all I could utter. Mere days before this room had obviously been used as a semi-sickroom for the old woman before she went to the nursing home. Utilitarian furniture, hospital bed, industrial type carpets, heavy, bland draperies to darken the room.

Now it was a wonderland of feminine delights. Rose patterned wallpaper, four poster king-size bed, two lighted makeup tables, comfortable chairs, what looked to be a hand-knotted carpet from somewhere exotic in the middle east. There were two massive wardrobes with matching dressers and a magnificent full length mirror.

"That tears it!" I spoke in wonder. "No way on god's green earth this could have been done since we saw this room. The only answer has to be supernatural."

"I don't think Mrs Major approved of my suggestion we spend the night at my place."

"She does have a way of expressing herself, doesn't she?"

"Do we dare open the wardrobes?"

"Do we dare not to open the wardrobes? She must be watching from up in the ether somewhere. I wouldn't want to disappoint her."

"You first."

The wardrobes were full, as were the dressers. I was certain that many of the items had been in my RV that morning. Vonda would be just as well dressed as I was, there was no skimping on her wardrobe."

"Why that foxy bitch!" I exclaimed.

"Who's a foxy bitch?"

"Mrs Major. I was noticing this morning that there weren't any corsets in the collection. I used to be partial to women in corsets. With her typical overkill there are four of them in here."

"I hope to heaven there aren't any girdles! She wouldn't be that nasty."

"So far she's been a very benevolent ghost."

"There is no way to call a corset benevolent, believe me I learned that in my youth!"

"Want to relive your youth?" I asked and she started to laugh.

"Aarrgh!" she cried. "I waited too long," and made a beeline for the bathroom, calling "Get me some new panties, will you?"

Good thing Mrs Major had stocked our new bedroom.

Interlude: The Weekend

I dedicated the weekend to sorting through all the things I had inherited with the house while Vonda returned to her studio to actually do some work for her living. There is no way to make that interesting, so this is going to be a short chapter.

Oh, yes - the new bed was quite comfortable and we had plenty of room to roll around in. 'Nuff said.

Monday: Lab Results

We waited nervously in the little exam room for Christa, who eventually knocked and came in. She looked hard at me and began to shake her head.

"I really want to throw these lab results in the trash and forget anything you two nutjobs told me."

"Is that an option?" I asked.

"No! Your mammogram came back perfectly normal. Your biopsy came back perfectly normal. Your bloodwork is perfectly normal for a woman your age except the testosterone is a bit elevated. If I hadn't seen your penis with my own eyes I couldn't tell you from a natural born woman."

"If this has you confused, Christa, just think what it's doing to me."

"Please, I'm barely coping as is. Not to be nosy, but when you two have sex everything is working normally?"

"If you're into understatement," smirked Vonda.

"Other than learning how to move with these large breasts, nothing much has changed," I told her.

"Glenda, would you object to a full body scan? I don't know if it would tell us anything but it might help."

"Why not? I'm rather curious about what's going on inside me as well."

"Thanks. Now Vonda…"

"Did they find my implant?"

"Not a sign of it. You're sure nobody removed it?"

"Not unless I was unconscious while they did it."

"I think I'm getting a headache," the doctor moaned.

"Take two aspirins and call me in the morning."

"Smartass! Vonda, are you one of the lucky ones who can dispense with your periods while you have the implant?"

"Almost. Just a little spotting once in a while."

"And when would you expect the next one?"

"In a couple of weeks. If the implant is gone I'm almost certainly pregnant."

"Don't borrow trouble. Get two home tests and do the first in two weeks, then repeat a few days later."

"I know the drill. Been there, done that."

"As have we all. Welcome to the world of womanhood, Glenda. You look like one of us so get used to it. At least you won't have to track your period like the rest of us."

"I'm coping as fast as I can. I suppose living a rootless life is a plus in learning how to be an entirely different person. You have to be flexible."

"Want to take aerobics together, Glenda?" my smartass woman said.

"Do they offer aerobics for pregnant ladies?"

"If I am, we'll find out."

"Have the nurse schedule you a full body scan and call me if anything changes. Frankly, I don't know if there's anything I can do that I haven't already done."

"Thanks for everything, Christa."

Is That Cupid Over There?

After the breakneck changes of the last week, we settled into a routine. Vonda went back to work, I called in the experts to go through the place and sort out what was valuable and what was junk, we got used to living together (we never really discussed this, we just did it) and I became more comfortable with my revised body.

After thirty-two years of being a male I found it surprisingly easy to start thinking like a female. Being pretty good looking didn't hurt and I even started to like watching the men trying to peer down my cleavage without me realizing what they were doing. I bet most of the buggers even thought they were getting away with it.

We both enjoyed cooking and we had to resolve to stop trying to impress the other with our culinary prowess. I gained about two and a half pounds during my transformation, but neither of us wanted to start gaining weight.

I went in for the full body scan. I had visions of having to strip completely and freaking out the person running the machine, but I only had to remove my bra and sandals - nothing metal on the body allowed. I got rolled into a tunnel, things went clank! and whir! and then I got rolled out. No fuss, no pain.

I was relieved.

The next day I got a call from Doctor Christa. Everything looked normal - if you can call anything about a guy with big boobs normal.

Two weeks later, we found Vonda was not going to be offered any choice about gaining weight - she was indeed pregnant.

There's an ancient phrase that gets terribly abused: It goes without saying… Neither one of us bought that idea, so we talked out just what we would do with our lives. We said it out loud: abortion was not an option.

That's when I found out that this wouldn't be Vonda's first baby. She got pregnant at seventeen, a fling at a drunken high school graduation party. The first time for both of them and it caught. The boy involved tried to deny it, but DNA tests don't lie. Her parents were disappointed that she was careless but supportive. She carried the child to term, the father was reluctantly present at the birth (at least his parents were responsible people) and they gave the child up for adoption. She doesn't even know if it was a boy or a girl and hasn't seen the father in a decade.

Having her implant disappear was more traumatic than I realized. She had promised herself that she would never bring another child into this world without careful thought.

Mrs Major's determination had changed more than my life radically. Having known each other for less than a month we were going to be the parents of a child. Almost certainly a girl child if we were right about Mrs Major's curse.

I won't call it Love At First Sight, but I had never before been with a woman who fitted so tightly as Vonda. It took us less than five minutes to decide she would live with me in the great pile of bricks I had purchased, although Mrs Major's special form of encouragement certainly helped.

We were both used to being independent and living alone, yet we found sharing the tasks of everyday living surprisingly easy. We could even talk about who pays for what without strife.

We came from decidedly different cultural backgrounds and we both had pretty much rejected that background. Well, maybe not so much rejected as just ignored. I grew up going to church on Sunday; she grew up going to temple on Saturday. I grew up in the suburbs; she grew up in a small town. I grew up as a noticeably small boy who was fascinated by how things worked and compulsively disassembled toasters and televisions while my peers were playing baseball and tossing footballs. She grew up as a noticeably tall girl who wanted to create massive sculptures and do monumental artworks.

Could we survive for more than these few weeks and raise a daughter? Put it another way: could we actually fall in love and keep that love alive long enough to raise a child?

Which leads to the next question: do we get married?

I have always felt that if you intend to commit yourself to another person you should not do a half-assed job of it. Sure, I've lived with two women for a while in the past, but neither of us had thoughts of making it permanent. We enjoyed each other's company, supported each other's work and dreams, found the sex to be downright great and mostly were going the same direction with our lives. When the end came we parted as friends and do the Christmas Card thing if we happen to remember in any particular year.

Convenience, not commitment. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I had matured enough to make a long-term commitment.

Another elephant paraded into our rooms: unless we were having sex we were two women as far as any outside observer was concerned. Vonda would be technically an unwed mother, she was only too aware of the scorn heaped on that condition. We would be a lesbian couple. There are a lot of folks that wouldn't approve us or our daughter. How do we handle that?

Vonda's answer was typical: Fuck 'em!

As the 'little woman' in the relationship I was more polite but just as emphatic: Mind your own business!

We took a couple of weeks to consider carefully, indulged in those deep sessions of pillow talk so we would be sure of our answer - then we set the date.