My life was destroyed when my husband died. Since then, I’ve been just moving through the days with little purpose. Then my juvenile delinquent nephew was dumped on my doorstep. And we began to move into new lives, together.
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
I don’t know what they expect of me; how in the world am I supposed to care for Steven when it’s hit or miss that I can take care of myself? I’ve already written out all my guilt and sorrow over Debbie’s death so I’m not going to hash it out all over again. Except that this morning I got a certified letter from her lawyer, a Thomas Ketchum, and there were two letters inside, one from the lawyer and a super-sealed one from Debbie. I teared up looking at the little lines she’d made on the flap; when we were girls it was our little secret, to know if anybody opened our letters.
The lawyer’s letter said I’m the only next-of-kin and the beneficiary of Debbie’s will, and I’m going to have full care and custody of Steven when he gets out of the hospital. That creep Debbie had married was long gone with no family; our family is gone and it’s only been Debbie and me since ’03 and yeah, I knew I was next-of-kin but what the hell am I going to do with a fourteen-year-old boy? The lawyer Ketchum blah-blahed on about funds set aside for me and for Steven and everything and I figured, what the hell, he’d be eighteen in three years so maybe I can tough it out and then kick him out.
Right. Well, I’m going to crawl into bed with Debbie’s personal letter. She’d lasted two days in the hospital–her own hospital!–before dying, and wrote it then. Probably heavy stuff and I’ll be bawling my head off and damn that drunk driver for killing my sister!
God, I don’t believe it! I’ve been thinking about Debbie’s letter for every second of the whole day. It’s still not enough time to digest all the shocks in it. I was going to copy it in this journal, but there’s too much there; I’ll tuck it in the end flap but this is the gist of it. Part history, part confession, and all of it painful to her to write and to me to read. She’d started by explaining that she knew she was dying; she was a nurse and could tell. She knew what drugs could be given her to keep her lucid and strong enough to write this lengthy letter and had badgered her …former co-workers–doctors and nurses–to keep her awake to write and then let her die in peace. There was some rambling in the letter here and there but even without the accident, it was written by a woman in mortal pain.
Steven’s been a shit. He’s been truant, his grades are Ds and Fs, and the whole bit–smoking cigarettes, smoking dope, drinking. He’d been busted twice for shoplifting, and once for vandalism. He was arrested for beating up a homeless guy but there was not enough evidence so he was let go. And he was only thirteen then! It was like he’s trying to outdo his father in criminal macho stupidity. I told her Dave was no good! Mark told her, God bless him and keep him safe, and she told him she knew it. She knew it, she knew it, she knew it but she stayed with Dave until he cleaned out their savings and split. Probably in Mexico, or he’s in a landfill somewhere. I vote for the landfill.
So Steven is not just coming to live with me–he’s a junior thug. And he’s going to live with me?
That was the shocking first part of the letter, and after wading through her apologies I got to the even more shocking part. Debbie had tried all sorts of counseling and internet help groups and was at her wit’s end but had made a decision and the decision was …to feminize Steven. Her own son! She planned to turn him away from the bad road he was headed and onto …well, who knows what road? I know that she had the smarts to do what she planned. She was always the smart one, my pretty little sister. In the two years since Mark died I’ve come across so many things that he’d taken care of, that I have no clue about, and often I’ve wished I was as smart as Debbie. Except that I married a wonderful, caring man and she married a criminal shit …
Debbie had already acquired the things she needed, and she wrote that she’d gotten another nurse friend of hers to go to her house and box everything up and send it to me two weeks after she died, so it should arrive soon. Inside would be pills and CDs and even an instruction booklet. She joked about it being a kit ‘to build a softer, gentler Steven’ and had assembled the items from the internet and her hospital over the last year and had started the pills months before the crash that killed her. She had been waiting for Steven’s school year to end to ‘go onto the next step’–whatever that was.
There were things in the letter to guilt-trip me into following her last instructions to me, and she apologized for not having told me about the money. And that was the third shock in the letter: Dave was a professional criminal who had been stealing and scamming for years, and his final theft was to clean out their bank account before disappearing. But Dave wasn’t the only sneaky one. Debbie had ‘come to her senses’ about Dave long ago, shortly after Steven had been born, and only stayed with Dave for the sake of the boy. A son needs his father, she reasoned, never dreaming that the father would be such crap and the boy would turn out no better. She said that if she’d had a daughter she would have had no qualms about leaving Dave years ago–and that’s what got her to thinking. If Steven weren’t ‘a chip off the old block’, then Dave would have left sooner. If Steven had been a mama’s boy, or a sissy–or better yet, a girl–Dave would have split. Whenever Dave was back from one of his schemes, he’d overcompensate by taking Steven out to do ‘guy things’ like ballgames and such, swaggering and bragging and making Steven idolize him. And Steven seemed to be idolizing Dave right into the life of a criminal.
So Debbie had snooped around and found traces of Dave’s ‘earnings’ here and there–a stray bank account slip, a backpack stuffed with cash in the back of the closet because he got home too late. She helped herself to a bit here, a bit there, over the years, reasoning that it was money that Dave would give Steven, right? Only she knew that Dave kept everything and doled out just the amounts she needed for food and rent and clothes and even then he complained, the shit.
Over the years she’d set up a bank account unknown to Dave, and gathered what she called her ‘nest egg’ as a cushion for when Dave did what he ultimately did–clean out their joint account and vanish. She’d been allowed a few thousand to keep but Dave had ‘explained’ that ‘she had a job, didn’t she?’ and let’s face it–he didn’t care about her or Steven. Thank God she had the nest egg and thank God Dave had never discovered it or what she’d done; that was the benefit of taking a little at a time.
The only thing was …Debbie had a feeling that Dave had not gone to Mexico, except metaphorically. She had terrible guilt that other bad guys had killed Dave, and that she was responsible. She’d thought that he’d been unusually successful and was surprised at the amount of money she’d found in a suitcase he’d brought home. Maybe it was greed, she wrote, but she figured the percentage she took was still small, even though it was quite a sum. As near as she could figure out, Dave had been holding the money to transfer it to somebody else. The shortfall was noticed, Dave had to clean out the family account to try to make up the difference, and perhaps he didn’t go to Mexico after that–Debbie thought that the bad guys had killed Dave, to teach others a lesson not to cross them. It was all the stuff out of a trashy novel or soap opera except that it was all real and had happened to my sweet, long-suffering little sister Deborah.
The lawyer’s letter had made reference to an account being set up for Steven’s care; I’d kind of glossed over it at the time in my shock about having to take care of Steven. I really hadn’t given him any thought. Debbie had carefully filtered reports of him over the years so they were bland updates and nothing had ever stuck out. Mark had made a comment about Debbie having her hands full in a couple of years, back when he’d tried to talk her into moving in with us. We’d been struggling to get the inn going and it might have been the best thing for all concerned, but Debbie had gently refused. I wonder now how much of that decision was because she was pilfering money from Dave to stockpile for Steven?
Then Mark died and I fell apart and the inn went to shit and I’m slowly rebuilding it and myself and now, Oh, God; poor Debbie!
I can’t write anymore.
Okay. Got things to work out. Steven arrived today by something they call a ‘cabulance’–God, I hate words jammed together like that! It’s a long-distance ambulance transporter thing. Anyway, they came up the road from the lake and suddenly it was all descending on me–the reality that inside that thing was my nephew Steven, the mini-Dave. I felt gloom drape me like a cold fog.
He’s still recovering but is past the point of needing constant doctoring. Both legs, several fingers, and his pelvis were broken, and his face was mashed and rebuilt. The macho jerk had not been wearing a seatbelt and shouldn’t be alive, but he was, and severely messed up, maybe for life. The cabulance guys had a bunch of things with them, including a special bed-frame thing so he could pull himself up, and crutches and a wheelchair and basically all sorts of invalid goodies, a small gym bag, and a laptop.
I don’t know how I’m going to take care of the inn and Steven. I just had another girl quit, complaining about the pay, and the few that stay are holding on by their fingernails out of loyalty. There are a few locals who still dine here out of loyalty, too, and although we haven’t had all six cabins booked since last year, I pray to God that this season will pull us back to where we were.
But now I have a smashed-up fourteen-year-old punk to deal with.
Okay, got him settled. He was kind of dopey from whatever they gave him for the long ride, but it wore off and he seems to have two settings: genuinely in pain, and being a shit. I can’t see any traces of the cute little boy I vaguely remember from a dozen years ago, before Mark and I moved here to start our B&B. Steven had been a little cherub, curly blonde hair and apple cheeks and smiles and kisses for his Aunt Donna–he’d called me ‘Andonna’–and I’d seen pictures over the years, of course. He was small for his age, and thin like Debbie–Lord knows where she got the strength for those long hours as a nurse–and maybe he overcompensated for his size, as well as trying to emulate his father, the big successful thief.
Steven is still small, at least judging from fourteen-year-olds I’ve seen at the lake, and has very long, very thick dirty blonde hair. He keeps it back in a ponytail, low on his neck, and it reminds me of old photos I’ve seen of Gregg and Duane Allman, of the great Allman Brothers Band, which was probably the rocker look he was going for. It certainly couldn’t have been easy for him in school–or out of school–when he was as small and small-boned as he was. He probably overcompensated with macho swagger.
But now Steven is whiny, complaining, demanding, and exasperating all at once. I realized that Debbie had had hundreds of patients just like him over the years. I’d once asked her about that–never dreaming that my own nephew would be one of them–and Debbie had said you can’t take it personally, you have to let it roll off you. She said you kind of step outside yourself and ‘shine it on’. So I had to do that with Steven, and actually, it makes it easier to do what I guess I have to do …if I’m going to comply with my sister’s last request.
And, God help me, I’m honor-bound to comply.
Debbie had started Steven on the pills months ago. There were just one-a-day type vitamins, supposedly, and Steven was used to them. So I held up the two little jars and said, ‘Remember these?’ and he’d just nodded and taken his daily pills. He took other pills, too, for the pain and to balance things while he healed, and had no problem taking medicine. Only …these pills were an androgen blocker and female hormone, Debbie’s letter explained carefully. One a day of each. There were a lot of things in the package that had arrived yesterday, from Debbie’s nurse friend. Besides the pills, there was a jar of powder to mix up in orange juice or fruit juice once a week; I was to tell him it was a protein shake.
The CDs in the box were interesting. They were from a company in Albany, New York, that did hypnosis, self-training, type of CDs. There was a brochure and they had things to help lose weight, quit smoking, become more assertive, and so on. Do they have one to mend a broken heart from the death of a wonderful husband? I wondered, but no, they didn’t. And they had a line designed to ‘socialize’ rambunctious young men. Reading the brochure closely, I realized there were a lot of code words in the literature, and Debbie had said in her letter that it was her intent to feminize Steven. She meant to instill in him some of the traits typical to females, talking and observing rather than bragging and acting out; to replace the macho competitive instinct with the feminine instinct for sharing and healing, and a host of other personality traits. I noticed that the CD company didn’t say anything about pills or powders; obviously that was something Debbie had added.
Well, my sister always knew a lot more about things than I did. I’d gone for the silly Liberal Arts degree specializing in Literature and not become a teacher, so I was the fool. She’d targeted Nursing right from the start–even as little girls playing with dolls, she was often a nurse. God, I miss her!
So if the pills, powders, and CDs are my sister’s last bequest to her child and last request to me, I’m going to honor them. I think I’m going to dedicate this journal to the ongoing Steven story.
What a jerk! I’d been talking with Tina, one of my two waitresses, who was quitting. I was trying to talk her out of it and I think she was wavering. She’d been groped by Ed Sanders, one of the local fisherman, one too many times and had dumped coffee on his crotch. I’d calmed Ed down but Tina was another matter. Steven rolled his wheelchair into the room without me hearing him and Tina stared at him a little too hard because of his face.
The doctors said that the face has been rebuilt successfully and there will be no scarring; they’d managed to–it’s icky to even think of it!–remove his skin in his hairline, peel it down and do the reconstruction they needed and then put the skin back with the sutures up in the hair. But it had left Steven with a baby-smooth, pulled-taut face like some Beverly Hills dowager’s plastic surgeon had pulled too tightly. It gave him a creepy look but the docs said the skin’s natural elasticity will loosen enough in time to make him look more natural, but his face might always look slightly taut.
So Tina stared and that pissed off Steven, I guess, because he sneered, ‘Nice tits, babe!’ and that was the final straw for Tina. She spun on her heel to me, took off her small black apron and said, ‘Sorry, Donna, but I quit!’ and that was it. I turned on Steven and told him never to talk to a woman that way again, and he just kind of went, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and waved a hand and wheeled out of there.
Okay, if I had any reservations about mellowing out this macho jerk, they’re gone now!
With Tina gone, I’d had to waitress for Valentine’s Day. Thank God the locals still consider us a romantic place, because we were jumping! And my feet and back paid for it, because I haven’t waited tables for years. My hat’s off to Tina and all the other girls I’ve employed, because it can be hard work. And then the poor things sit around, night after night, with nothing to do when we’re slow.
But I’m sore and I had a good long soak and while I was there I thought about getting the CDs going. Two ways: The first is to buy him an iPod. I was surprised that he didn’t have one already, actually; I thought every kid had one. Heck, I even have one, although I don’t listen to it too much. Anyway, the instruction booklet had a way to set up the iPod on iTunes so the programming–the stuff from the CD–gets installed as an EQ setting, and so no matter what the person listens to, it runs through that fake EQ setting and the subliminal stuff gets mixed in.
The second way is while sleeping, and that’s a bit trickier but with better results. As sore as I was today, I went into town to the Radio Shack and got the stuff the instructions recommended. I picked up other things, as well, of course; gas is way too expensive for single-purchase trips! Steven was out on the deck, his wheelchair tilted back. It seemed like the best time, so I went into his room and mounted the speaker under the bed the way it said to, and plugged the transmitter into my little CD player. I put on some Sting and went back to Steven’s room; I could hear the music so it worked, and I followed the directions about lowering the level. Then the actual CDs had a disk with a single track on it to test; I started it and all I could hear was a slight sighing sound, like a small breeze moving leaves. I went back to my room and for some reason wrote down the word ‘orange’. Then I turned the page of the booklet and it asked if I’d written the word ‘orange’! Chills went down my spine at how quickly and easily I’d been manipulated! But it had worked–man, how it worked!
I’m in bed now, writing this. Steven’s been asleep for about an hour and I’m about to turn my lights off, so I’m starting my CD player, with the first full disk installed. It will play for nearly an hour and a half, enough to go through a sleep cycle, apparently. And I play that one for a week, on to the next, and so on.
We’ll see.
Wow. Wow! It must be the CDs, because the last two days, Steven’s actually been human! The instructions said that the first noticeable changes will be less aggression, more willingness to help, and other nice personality traits. It’s been only four nights, but Steven was bearable yesterday, and actually helpful today. I’ve been making his meals, of course. Breakfast has been scrambled eggs and a toasted bagel, lunch has been a sandwich–ham or turkey, usually–and soup, and dinner a salad and fish or chicken. The kitchen whips them up for me, usually. But this morning, Steven asked if he could help make breakfast. Since he’s in his wheelchair–he’s supposed to get out of it soon–he couldn’t really do anything in the kitchen, but it was nice that he offered.
Steven’s doctor visit. Dr. Samuel Bunting, an old name for a fairly young guy. He checked Steven’s vitals and living conditions and said everything looked great but he needed to move onto crutches. We worked with Steven until the doc said he was okay for crutches on his own and that was that. He did warn to keep Steven out of the sun while healing for two reasons; his skin was ultra sensitive because of the suturing and trauma, and also ultra sensitive because of some of the healing medications. That reminded me that it was time for Steven’s second protein shake. He stood, shaky, on his crutches while I made it and we chatted and he was almost pleasant, but got very tired after drinking the shake and went back to lay down. He was gently snoring when I passed so I figured, what the heck, and ran the CD program. I stood listening for a tiny bit–I didn’t want to start writing ‘orange’ everywhere!–and went to work.
Had a staff meeting; I’m down to Don and Eduardo as cooks, Bonnie and Carole as hostesses/waitresses, and of course, Tim. Tim is my rock; he had worked for the previous owners, and is a combination handyman, groundskeeper, and all-around good guy. He was a recovered alcoholic and lived in a small cabin off the curve of our six cabins, with the tool shed right behind him. Tim knows everybody and everything and where all the bodies are buried, and is the sweetest guy. When Mark had died and I’d kind of flirted with the bottle, it was Tim who convinced me to not take the dive into drinking. One of these days I’m going to find out his real story, but I value him too much as a friend as well as a worker to intrude.
Steven’s first day with a tutor. Kind of a stiff guy from the nearest high school, who moonlights as a private tutor. Roy Haynes is his name, and I pointed out that he had the same name as the great drummer. Nothing. Blink-blink. Hope he knows his subjects better than he knows American jazz! His face was impassive when he met Steven and afterwards he–the tutor–said that he’s ‘woefully lacking’ in his knowledge and ‘it’s going to be an uphill climb’ to bring Steven up to speed, meaning where he should be as an eighth grader. Well, Debbie’s letter had warned me.
After the tutor left, I went to ask Steven how it went. He had fallen asleep on his back–he naps all the time and needs to, for the healing–and his shirt was kind of pulled aside on his chest. To my amazement, his nipples were bigger than a typical boy’s, and there was a very slight swelling that was only visible from my angle. It looked like the months of Debbie’s pills were taking effect! It’s going to make life interesting …
I came back later and he was on his laptop, the one possession that had come with him besides some scraps of clothes. I had asked about his clothes at home but he’d just shrugged and said there was nothing he cared about. Immediately after Debbie had died, I’d had to fly back to her place and clean it out and boxed up what I thought needed to be kept and donated the rest to charity. I’d boxed up his clothes, too. Everything had been shipped to a storage unit the inn kept for old furniture and fixtures, and was still there. I was waiting for the day when I felt strong enough to sort through the items of my sister’s life. But since Steven was living in a bathrobe and a couple of t-shirts and very baggy, Velcro-ed jammies, I hadn’t pressed to get his clothing.
Steven was working on iTunes on his laptop, loading up his iPod. As a sort of ‘welcome home’ present, I’d given him a $50 gift card and he was depleting it with a vengeance. I was glad that he’d have some music to listen to, and was glad that I’d gotten the fake EQ program installed before handing it over; now he’d be used to the sound through that filter. I’d check from time to time to make sure that EQ setting was still selected, but Steven didn’t seem to care about sound quality as long as it was loud, if the sounds from his laptop were any indication.
I got his attention and he paused the track and we chatted. When I asked about the tutor, he just shrugged. I told Steven that I am going to be a hard ass about him doing the work; he’s got to get up to speed and some of the things he’d been into when he lived with Debbie were absolutely not going to happen here. I put on my sternest face and he either got the message or knew enough to give me the impression he did; probably the latter.
Steven’s getting around on the crutches better, but learned it’s dangerous to get frisky in the kitchen. One crutch hit a wet patch; he went down fast and hard and he actually shrieked with the pain. I got him back to bed and gave him a protein shake to wash down his pain meds and after whimpering for a while he fell asleep. It’s strange looking at him; when he’s asleep his face is angelic. I’d written a few weeks ago that when he was little he had looked cherubic; now he looks that way again when his tight face relaxes in sleep. I helped wash him last week and saw the stitches in the hairline; they’re almost like a face lift. But he’s so lucky he’s not disfigured. Quite the opposite–he’s almost pretty.
It looks like the ‘girl meds’–as I call them in my mind to differentiate between them and the ‘pain meds’–are kicking in. I mentioned seeing the gentle swell of a breast when he was sleeping. It could be the healing process, or the enforced indoor time, but his skin is marvelously smooth and clear–where it’s not scarred and healing, of course. The doctors did a great job on his broken legs; they weren’t compound fractures, thank God, but a lot of hairline fractures so nothing poked through his skin. I’m not sure how they got in to work on his pelvis; I did notice sutures an inch or so above his …well, what would be his butt-crack if he was a plumber! I haven’t seen his genitals, so I have no idea what’s going on there.
But the big change has been Steven’s demeanor. He hasn’t snapped or been surly for days and days. It was like the best day that he had, and the next one and the next one are just like the best day. He’s not high or giddy; he’s just not an asshole–and believe me; that’s a big difference!
End of Part 1
It looked like the ‘girl meds’ were kicking in. I could see the gentle swell of a breast when he was sleeping. It could be the healing process, or the enforced indoor time, but his skin is marvelously smooth and clear–where it’s not scarred and healing, of course.
But the big change has been Steven’s demeanor. He hasn’t snapped or been surly for days and days. It was like the best day that he had, and the next one and the next one are just like the best day. He’s not high or giddy; he’s just not a jerk–and believe me; that’s a big difference!
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
Some news–Steven is tolerable. Yay! More than tolerable, actually. He actually crutched into my office and said he was going a little crazy; was there anything he could do? From Debbie’s letter, I have a feeling he’d never said those words before. He was all caught up on his schoolwork–and that itself speaks volumes. He said I should call him ‘Steve’; no surprise there. As to what he could do, I asked if there was anything that he knew how to do, since his previous school history was so dreadful. He said the only thing he knew were video games and ‘some web design’. I asked about that and he seemed to know what he was talking about. I showed him the website for the inn and he had trouble keeping a straight face. I told him that I had put it up in the months after Mark died and I was …kind of distracted. To my surprise, he got tears in his eyes and said how sorry he was, poor me, he never meant to hurt me and went in for a hug!
As I patted him on the back and thanked him, I realized that he was on the second CD. I was supposed to change them once a week, but since he was half-drugged with pain meds some of the time, I’d decided to do two weeks per disk and move on from there. Of course, he was also getting the CD stuff through the EQ setting on his iPod; there wasn’t anything in the instructions that said it was one or the other, but he could be getting a double dose.
I couldn’t tell how much of Steven’s personality change–from Debbie’s description–was the girl meds or the CDs. Or finally being away from Dave’s influence. But right then I felt that Debbie had been on the right track. He wasn’t smoking, drinking, or hanging out with punks, sure, because he was still crippled. But he was smiling, he was positive, he was helpful, he was caring, and he was doing well with his schoolwork, according to the tutor. In fact, Mr. Haynes told me yesterday that he’s beginning to think the problem wasn’t Steven; it had been Steven’s school just ‘didn’t know how to teach’. I think he implied that it was also because of his superior tutoring capability, but I also knew that these particular CDs contained a bunch of positive-reinforcement programs, including anti-smoking, healthy eating, and attention-focusing programs to get work done. As well as whatever were in them that Debbie had custom-ordered.
I set Steve the task of making our inn’s website ‘cool’, with a list of things that I wanted viewers to have access to, but had never known how to install. He frowned when he saw the pictures on the site, some snaps I’d taken and scanned, and said we needed more. He said he’d take them because he knew what we needed but didn’t have a camera. I made a note to ask around for a good quality digital camera.
After he left, I jumped on the website for the CDs. I don’t know why I haven’t done that until now! I looked at everything they offered and quickly realized that Debbie had custom-ordered a full ‘mix’. That’s why she’d added the things like the anti-smoking program. There was a code number stamped on each disk that seemed to be her account number. I tried to access that but there I didn’t have enough information to open her account, so I sent an email to them explaining the situation. I was concerned because the next disk had a warning on it. If I understood correctly, the first two discs were sort of general purpose behavior-modification programs. But the third disk was the jumping-off place, where we ventured into Debbie’s custom design. I sort of had no choice but to follow her last request and forge ahead with the CDs, but I wanted to know what to expect. The boilerplate on the website said I’d get a response within 24 hours.
My other concern was about Steve’s girl meds. He’s seeing Dr. Bunting tomorrow, and I’m worried that he’s going to see the softening of Steve and check closer. If so, they’d probably discover the girl meds in him. So I’d better come up with some alternate excuses if that’s the case …
A major day! First, Dr. Bunting arrived in the morning and just focused on the fracture sites, legs, pelvis and fingers, and the sutures in Steven’s scalp. Nothing about the chest; he did blood pressure and pulse at the wrist and a stethoscope on the back and man I was breathing easier when he closed up his bag! The best news was that Steven was healing fine and Dr. Bunting gave me a list of things to watch out for, but without them appearing, Dr. Bunting didn’t need to return. He’s going to email me some physical therapy materials because he wants Steven to start working the muscles that have been slack during all the recovery.
I have to think about this some more, because I was so elated when Dr. Bunting said he wouldn’t need to come back that I actually thought, ‘Yay! Thank goodness!’ and then wondered why I was so happy. Okay, relieved because I wouldn’t be accused of dosing my nephew with girl meds, and there was also the fact that I am doing what my sister wanted. I’m doing what my sister would have done if a drunk named Art Howard hadn’t T-boned Debbie’s car and killed her. So on the one hand I had a kind of Holy Task, a charge from beyond the grave, so to speak, because Debbie definitely knew she was dying when she wrote that letter imploring me to proceed with her plans.
The other thing is, well …Steve’s a whole lot easier to take now and it’s only been, what, barely six weeks since he got here? But Debbie had already started him on the girl meds sometime last year; I don’t really know how long he’s been on them. Long enough to start developing breasts, and for some reason I find that really, really touching. I’m …I was Debbie’s big sister, and I remember that she came to me first when she was budding, before she told Mom. I helped her with her first bra, and I still remember the day she ran into my room and shouted–quietly, because Dad was home–‘I can jiggle!’ with such ecstasy. And now it looks like I’m going to go through that experience again with her son …very weird, and definitely going to get weirder.
But I’m touched, and surprised that I am. I don’t know yet how far along Steve is going to go, but I’ll support him every step of the way. After all, he is my only living relative.
About ‘how far along Steve is going to go’ …it might be quite a distance. I got an email back from the CD people asking for clarification about Debbie’s death. When I checked my email just before bedtime, I saw that they’d gotten back to me. Apparently they’d done an on-line search that verified that I was Debbie’s sister and verified that she was dead. They supplied the log-in information to me and told me I could change it if I wanted–and then they detailed the complete plan that Debbie had ordered. I almost fell on the floor for two reasons. First, it was incredibly detailed–and extensive–and second, because it had cost her over $5,000! Before her letter, I wouldn’t have believed that she had that much money, or that she would consider changing Steve the way she wanted, but now I know that she had the money she’d been pilfering from Dave all of those years. That reminds me; the lawyer had said something about ‘another account’ that was being transferred; that must be her secret account. I’ll have to call to verify that.
Reading the full report of Debbie’s order, it was all I could do to keep my eyes in my head. The company was amazingly thorough with their instructions–way more than the introductory pamphlet in with the CDs–and I noticed that they had a legal disclaimer not unlike the manufacturers of guns and ammo. ‘We only make the guns and bullets; if you choose to put the bullet in the gun and shoot somebody, it’s not our responsibility.’ Oh, and, something that meant, ‘We make these things for ‘adult entertainment purposes’ only, and we’ll deny all knowledge that you were going to do what you were going to do when we made them for you to do it.’
I had a zillion questions when I was done, and my sister can’t answer me. Does she still want me to follow this to the letter? How much legal trouble would I be in if it were discovered? Was it really for the best for Steven?
As soon as I asked; I realized I already know the answers. Yes, lots, and probably. Not the best Trifecta for pleasant sleep …
Got the damn taxes filed, so that’s a relief. And so depressing to take significant business loss deductions! But Tina came back to ask for her old job back, and I didn’t care about whatever story she had. It’s a small inn on a small lake near a small town and I’ll take anybody I can get. Besides, I always liked her. She’s had the Real World slap her ‘upside the head’ as some around here would say. She was a Golden Girl in high school, the head cheerleader going steady with the star quarterback, Darryl McClure. Only thing was, Darryl wasn’t good enough for a college scholarship, and he’d never worried about his grades because he was the Big Man On Campus. Tina was sweet but not terribly smart; she was focused on a wedding ring, babies, and a life with Darryl. Well, she’d gotten the ring, the babies had yet to appear–thank God, I think–but Darryl was spending more time with his buddies hunting and fishing–or drinking–than with Tina. So I welcome her at the inn anytime. Besides, it never hurts to have a pretty blonde girl in the restaurant!
I’ve been doing some experimenting with Steven, using the CD instructions as a guide. And I’ve got to remember to call him Steve; maybe it’ll be easier to think of Steven the patient and Steve the new guy. Of course, if the CD people are to be believed, Steve may be a new something but ‘guy’ might not be the best description …
The instructions have suggestions to reinforce the ‘lessons’ being instilled in the sleep cycles. Things to talk about that are normal, everyday topics that normally a fourteen-year-old boy–or any normal male–wouldn’t be talking about. It was a way to reinforce the lessons and to test how firm the new connections were. The instructions described it as ‘re-wiring the hard-wired brain’. I realized that Steve’s brain chemistry was being slammed in a new direction by the girl meds, and the CD lessons were designed to establish new, feminine connections rather than leave the subject (Steve) adrift. I’m not saying that very well; but as I understand it, without the CDs, Steve–or any guy soaking up girl meds–would start to freak out. ‘Why do I love pink?’, for instance. Okay, that’s a silly one, but, ‘Why am I crying all the time? Boys shouldn’t cry!’ is a better example. So the CD lessons are like, ‘Crying is good; it’s an emotional release. You feel better after a good cry. It’s a silly macho belief that boys shouldn’t cry. It’s perfectly natural, so relax and let the tears come; you’ll feel so much better’ or words to that effect. Then when Steve cried, I could reinforce it with, ‘There, there, honey; have a good cry. You’ll feel better afterward.’ That’s the kind of reinforcement they meant.
So, the experimenting. I tried colors, coming into Steve’s room–knocking first, of course–with two blouses on hangers and a white camisole on. I asked him how the website design was coming and he said fine but he really needed photos to place. I’d forgotten to tell him that Tim has a line on a digital camera that should work; we’ll get it tomorrow or the next day. Then I frowned and held up the hangers like I didn’t remember I was holding them. I said something about being so scatter-brained lately. I was meeting with a new meat supplier this afternoon and wanted to look nice. Which did he think looked nicer? And I held up the two tops to the side, and then one at a time over my chest. He studied them critically and said the lavender was much prettier with my eyes by itself, but the dark green would look more business-like if I was wearing a blazer. I asked what color blazer and he said brown, maybe a tweed. I thanked him and told him he had a great eye for color.
And at the meeting I wore the green with a brown tweed blazer and slacks and got a thumb-and-forefinger ‘OK’ sign from a grinning Steve when I passed by him afterward. I’m certain that Steven-before-the-accident wouldn’t have said anything about the blouses or colors.
Oh, and the meat supplier wants too much for steaks, but I’ll get poultry and pork from him. Maybe.
I got a hell of a scare today. Two of them! A strongly-built older woman appeared in the parlor and announced she was Carla and where was Steven? I had no idea who or what she was but it turned out that I’d missed an email from Dr. Bunting. He’d attached some Acrobat files of exercises for Steve but also that he’d arranged for a physical therapist to begin regular visits to work with Steve because Dr. Bunting was concerned about muscular atrophy. So Carla was the therapist.
She’s German, or at least from Hamburg originally, and lives in town now, near the hospital. She has a patient lakeside, old Charlie MacGregor, who was partially paralyzed in a fall he took when he was shingling his roof two springs ago. Swinging by and having PT with Steve is very convenient. She has a German accent still, although she said she’s been here twenty-two years. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell why or how she got here. She says things like, ‘haff’ instead of ‘have’, and called him ‘Stiffen’ until he said to call him ‘Steve’, and it still comes out half-way between, ‘Stiff’ and ‘Stef’. He didn’t mind.
He did mind what she put him through; I could tell it was painful and I heard him whimper a few times. ‘Ranch off motion’, Carla said. I was confused until I translated it to mean ‘range of motion’; she had to test Steve’s current limitations and made careful notes so she’d know what to work on next session, in two days. She was very thorough and I felt that he was in very good hands. Literally!
Steve was sleeping with a heavy pain pill that Carla had dispensed at the end of the session, so I gave him another hour of the CD. Meanwhile I got a call from Debbie’s lawyer, Thomas Ketchum, and that was my second shock of the day. The extra account that he’d turned up was just a school account set up back in third grade for Steven, one of those things where the kid brings pocket change or lawn-mowing money once a week? It contained a grand sum of $14.63. Ouch. I was so hoping it was the pilfered money that Debbie had supposedly stocked away, because my regular bills were drowning me and now I had Steve to care for as well. Debbie’s insurance and their combined medical insurance was paying for things so far, but I wasn’t even sure if they’d cover Carla’s PT visits. Funny joke came to mind: I could call Carla ‘the PT Bruiser’, like the car. Okay, maybe not so funny.
Mr. Ketchum did say that there was one troubling item, and other than that, Debbie’s estate–such a wrong word for her situation–was complete. Ketchum had a safe-deposit key but no indication where it belonged. He was sending out inquiries to local banks but so far had gotten negative or unresponsive replies, but he’d continue. I guessed that the key must be to the secret stash, or Secret Stash, I should call it. So it might be lost forever; I knew that every year, thousands of safe-deposit boxes around the country are opened by the banks because of lack of rent payment, or dormancy, or whatever. I surely didn’t want the Secret Stash to be one of them!
This must be the shocking season, for me, anyway. Carla appeared for her PT session, and after medicating Steve she asked to meet with me. At first she told me exercises that she wanted me to have Steve do between sessions; she circled the ones on the pages I’d printed out from Dr. Bunting. Then she sat there silent and frowning. Something was on her mind, and she finally apologized for being blunt, but asked if I was aware that Steve’s body was feminine? I didn’t have to feign my shock–only it was about her noticing, of course, but how could she not?–and Carla went on to describe his physical situation.
She went silent for awhile, looking at me, and then asked point-blank, was Steve being given female hormones? I side-stepped at first and said, shame-faced, that ‘I discovered that his mother had started him on the pills last year sometime’, never mentioning that I was continuing and hoping that Carla would drop the subject.
There was some silence again, and Carla nodded and then came the big shock. She said that she had no problem feminizing males, if they desired it or required it. She pointed out that we routinely spay and neuter pets and geld horses and actually approve of the gentling, so why should we be so squeamish about neutering male troublemakers? I stared at her; I think my mouth was actually open. Then she gave me a direct look. I felt like a bug under a magnifying glass. She asked if I was continuing the process. I sighed and dug around in my drawer and pulled out Debbie’s letter and handed it to her, saying that I’d received this after her death and it was all news to me.
I looked out the window towards the lake and thought that Carla was going to turn me in to the sheriff, I was going to lose the inn, lose Steve, and might as well put rocks in my pockets and walk out into the lake and be done with things. I caught a glimpse of movement; Carla was folding the letter and putting it on my desk. I turned back to face the music, and found her nodding.
She said she understood and congratulated me for continuing with the process, to not be deterred by small-mindedness or political correctness. She told me to remember I was doing it out of love, love for Debbie and love for Steve, the newer and better life that Steve could have. She said she would not report me or Steve’s condition and would recommend a change of doctors. Dr. Bunting was an orthopedic surgeon and concerned with the setting and healing of broken bones. They were healing well, and Steve could be passed off to a general practitioner. She knew of a woman who would fit the bill for the hand-off, and would understand the delicate situation, and might even assist. At the very least, she could be counted upon to keep him healthy and keep herself quiet.
I was so relieved that I teared up. Carla patted me on the back in a surprisingly awkward manner, and told me that she knew of two other males in the area that were being ‘gentled’, as she put it. For some reason, my mind flashed that Darryl McClure would be a great candidate, for Tina’s sake. Carla was in her frowning thoughtful mode again, and we stood there in silence. She licked her lips and then asked how far along was I determined that Steve go?
I was struck that she used the exact same words–‘how far along’–that I’d thought about. The words were vague, because they never said how far along what. The path? The road? Away from what? And towards what? But I knew now, once the CD people cleared me for Debbie’s custom program. My sister had planned that my nephew would become my niece. So, looking Carla in the eye, I answered her question. ‘All the way’, I said. She nodded and then said that she would tailor the PT along those lines. She explained that she would not work on muscle groups prized by males, and would structure the exercises so Steve would get fit but not bulk up. We looked in on the sleeping Steve before she left and she nodded and pronounced him, ‘a good candidate’, both physically and from what she’d learned about him in Debbie’s letter.
Okay. I’m writing the rest of this the morning after last night. Does that make sense? This is what happened yesterday night.
After Carla left, I found I was shaking with relief and anxiety and guilt and everything all rolled up into one. I got a bottle of my favorite Chardonnay from our meager cellar, and curled up in my favorite comfy clothes to watch a DVD of While You Were Sleeping, one of my favorites. I was two glasses into the Chard and feeling kind of smiley when Steve knocked and came into my bedroom, swinging gingerly on his crutches. He saw the wine, the movie, and asked if he could join me. I said yes, but first I had to do something. Well, I had to pee, but then I quickly made a big mug of hot cocoa for him, and grabbed some extra pillows from our linen locker. I propped them up against my headboard after setting down the mug, and got ready to help Steve climb on.
Steve was wearing his Velcro scrub things that he usually wore and nothing else. He was hesitant and I realized that I was in a light pink shorts and cami sleep set with my old yellow robe. I asked if he’d like a robe for warmth; he said, ‘Yes, please’–something else he probably hadn’t said a lot last year!–and I pointed to my closet, directing him to an old pink chenille robe. He sort of cradled it in his hands and put it on with a smile that quickly turned to a frown when he looked down at himself. It did look odd, the comfy, cheerful robe against the green utilitarian scrubs.
So it was time to test the CD lessons, I suppose. I gently said I might have something that might be more comfortable …
Steve said, ‘Yes, please’ again and I almost teared up at how meek it sounded. I didn’t believe that he’d go for a nightgown, but I remembered an old Rolling Rock Beer t-shirt I might still have, a huge light green thing with a V-neck that I’d used as a sleep shirt a few times but felt too collegiate and had put it away. I held it up and saw him smile. He said he was too young for the wine so he was probably too young for the beer t-shirt, too, but, he teased, if I’d vouch for him ...I smiled and handed it to him. To my surprise he immediately removed the robe and made to undo his scrubs with me standing there. I pretended I needed to pee again and went into the bathroom to give him time. God, I wondered, just how far along–that phrase again–is he? I flushed the unused toilet, washed my hands, and came out.
Steve stood there in the beer shirt and robe, balancing on his crutches. The hem of the t-shirt came down to mid-thigh, leaving his poor battered legs bare. He gave me the strangest look and said that he liked the shirt; the Velcro scrubs were too confining and scratchy and sometimes kept him awake. I thought the colors were quite nice, too, but didn’t mention it.
I helped him onto the cocoa side of the bed and climbed back on my side. I toasted him with the wine and said, ‘A pleasure to have you here, Steve.’ To my surprise–I say that a lot–he smiled and said, ‘Stef. I am Stef, you haff to remember,’ in Carla’s accent. We both laughed and got on with the movie; he hadn’t seen it so I restarted it and made sure I didn’t drink too much more. Only half a glass, really!
Partway through the movie there’s a touching scene with the family–several, actually–and I felt Steve lean his head on my shoulder and sigh. It was a happy, contented sigh. When Sandra Bullock’s character felt betrayed towards the end, Steve gripped my sleeve tightly, and at the end, he was openly crying. As was I, from the movie–even the zillionth time!–and from the wine, and from the relief of how things were going, and from the sheer happiness of sitting here on my bed with Steve. Who hugged me after I helped him off the bed and back onto his crutches, and said shyly that ‘it was okay if I wanted to call him Stef’ and I said I’d be glad to. After getting him back to his room and into bed–he really didn’t need that much assistance; his bed is much lower than mine–I brushed his hair back from his face and for some reason said, ‘Good night, Stef; I love you’ and kissed his forehead and I actually meant it and then he knocked me out by saying, ‘I love you too, Andonna’–the name he’d used for me when he was little! I almost couldn’t see my way back to my bedroom for the tears!
End of Part 2
After getting my nephew back to his room and into bed, I brushed his hair back from his face and for some reason said, ‘Good night, Stef; I love you’ and kissed his forehead and I actually meant it and then he knocked me out by saying, ‘I love you too, Andonna’–the name he’d used for me when he was little! I almost couldn’t see my way back to my bedroom for the tears!
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
Okay, I wrote that all in the morning. Here’s the rest of the day. And, oh my God, what a day!
I tested things when I walked into the kitchen mid-morning to find Steve eating a half a melon and some toast. I said, ‘Good morning, Stef’ and he smiled happily at me. I rubbed the back of his head on my way out of the kitchen and said we should look into getting his hair cut. He almost choked on his food and said that he liked it long. I leaned back in the kitchen and said, well, okay, not cut it short, but maybe take off the split ends? Maybe a little style? He nodded, relieved, and I went to find Tim.
Tim had stuck a post-it by the coffee maker, where he knew I’d see it, that said he had the camera. I found him thatching a portion of our small lawn area and he was glad for the break. He handed me a black canvas camera bag and said we could keep it a week if we needed. If we damaged it, we owned it and would have to buy a new one, so handle it carefully. I don’t know who he got it from.
Back in the kitchen, Steve was just rinsing his dishes so we sat down and discovered quite a nice Canon camera, a Rebel something or other that made Steve’s eyes go wide. He looked in the bag and said everything was great and he’d get right on it. I carried the bag for him while he got dressed.
On the matter of Steve’s clothes …
His clothing had been boxed up at Debbie’s house and was now in a storage unit in town. I knew that it was mostly grubby jeans and black t-shirts with grunge rock band logos or insulting statements. I particularly remember one that said, ‘What the fuck are YOU looking at, asshole?’ and knew that I wasn’t going to return that shirt to him. But he hasn’t needed many clothes so far because he was sleeping and crutching around between his room and the toilet. Now that he would be in public areas, shooting pictures for the website, it was a different matter. But I didn’t want to just rush out to the storage unit and get all of his old clothes back. And the CDs seemed to be working so well, so when Steve came out in the blue scrubs–he has three sets that we rotate washing–I told him that we’d have to look into finding some other clothes for him.
Steve asked if I had anything, and shyly said that the Rolling Rock tee had worked out pretty well. I decided this would be one of those CD reinforcement-testing things. I led him into my bedroom again and selectively sorted through my clothes. I knew exactly what I was looking for, and exactly what I was passing up, of course. Obviously I didn’t go to my lingerie drawer, and there are a few items of Mark’s clothes that I saved–but I wasn’t going to bring them out, either. I have an old stash of t-shirts and plopped a bunch of them on the bed for Steve to root through. Then I thought of drawstring pants and found nearly a dozen candidates. Most were girly pajama bottoms but I also remembered some loose cotton pants from a trip to Cancun that Mark and I had taken, and I put them on the bed, too.
I made to leave but Steve asked if I’d stay, because he had something to talk with me about …I sat on my vanity bench. Steve looked at me, swallowed, and pulled off his scrub top. I didn’t have to fake the gasp I gave when I saw his breasts. For that’s what they are; they’re beyond budding and into blossoming. That term had always made me giggle; I remember the old show and the announcer saying, ‘Tonight–on a very special episode of Blossom’. I did say, ‘Oh, my!’ and Steve nodded. His voice was thick when he said he didn’t know what was happening. I said, ‘Oh, sweetie, it’s probably just an imbalance, you know? Your whole system is out of whack–I mean, you were hit by a car–and teenagers are a chemical soup anyway. You know; you’re happy, you’re sad, you’re happy and sad …’
Steve giggled a little bit–but it was a giggle–and then said that ‘they’ really didn’t belong, did they? I looked him in the eyes and said, ‘No, not for most boys, I guess’ and we held the look for a long time. Then Steve looked down and said, ‘Out of whack …maybe …but, Andonna …I kind of …I kind of like them …’
I couldn’t help myself; without thinking I said, ‘Oh, sweetie!’ and launched myself off the bench and hugged Steve. Over and over I said, ‘It’s okay; it’s okay. You can like them …they’re very pretty.’
He said, ‘Really? You think so?’ and I said, ‘Oh, Stef, they’re so very pretty!’ and he gulped and said, ‘So …it’s okay?’
I said, ‘What’s okay?’ and he blushed furiously–I realized that his face was mending because this was the first blush since the facial surgery–and, beet-red, he said, ‘Can I …can I keep them?’
He gulped again and said, ‘I mean, can we …not tell Dr. Bunting? He might make them go away …’
I asked gently, ‘And how would you feel about that?’ and Steve, bless his heart, said, ‘I’d miss them. They’re part of me, now. I want them.’
I asked, ‘What about Carla?’ even though I knew what she’d said.
Steve said, ‘She’s seen them and just shrugged. She’s okay with them, I think.’
Time for truth. I was still hugging Steve but we’d managed to get near the vanity bench, so I sat, but kept both hands on his arms. I slid them down until we were holding hands, still looking in each other’s eyes. I said, ‘Steve–’ and he smiled a little and said, ‘Stef!’ and I smiled back and said, ‘Stef …they are pretty. And no, we don’t have to tell Dr. Bunting, and I think you’re right and Carla is okay. But I’m going to ask you a couple of questions now. You don’t have to answer me right now if you want time to think things over, okay? Alright. You’re saying that they’re pretty and that they’re part of you and you want them …’
Steve nodded, wide-eyed. I went on. ‘But you can’t keep calling them …them. You have to put a name to them. Oh, I don’t mean a name like Elvis or something,’ and he giggled and I chuckled with him and it was a lovely moment and then I continued. ‘But Stef, you need to …to honor them by saying what they are. I think it’s very important that you do that, that you acknowledge them that way.’
We continued to look at each other, holding hands, and the universe was still and quiet, just the two of us in the moment.
He swallowed and nodded. ‘Breasts,’ he said raggedly. ‘They are my breasts.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, they are,’ I smiled. ‘Thank you for that. I think it’s important because we need to be honest with each other, you know?’ I brushed a lock of hair from his face. ‘You’re all I’ve got. You’re my family now, and I’m yours.’
He nodded and solemnly said, ‘Just the two of us against the world.’
I smiled and said, ‘Maybe not against the world; how about ‘just the two of us in the world? A world that we make, that we get to decide who we’re going to be?’
Steve nodded, and I had a shocking thought that I’d never had before–and I immediately confessed it. ‘Stef, all my life I’ve been defined by other people. Sometimes that’s good, but sometimes you fall into …a category or stereotype or something …I went from a college student to a young bride to a widow in just ten years. And I haven’t known what to do with myself, who I wanted to be. But I know now, that I want to be your aunt. And protect you and help you grow healthy and into a wonderful person.’ I chuckled and shrugged. ‘And I want my inn to be successful!’
Steve laughed at that, a pretty, lilting sound that was nice to hear, and he nodded again. ‘I want to help you, Andonna, and I’m sorry I’m so banged up–’
I put my fingers to his lips–I’d never noticed the gentle curve of them before–and told him to hush; it wasn’t his fault, but it was a time for us both to discover who we wanted to be and not who we were. It sounded kind of mushy and New Age-y to me, but Steve nodded. Then he shivered–he was still topless, wearing only the scrub bottoms–and I saw his nipples harden to the chill. So they’re reactive already, I thought. I hugged him again and rubbed some warmth into his shoulders and said I was overdue for a phone call–true, actually–and to help himself to whatever of my things he wanted to wear. It had been a chilly morning but was warming up, I told him, and I’d be back after my call and we’d see about the photos.
I had to call a local farmer who might be a good source of greens, better than the grocer that supplied in past years but who was retiring. We finished that call and I was just double-checking email when the lawyer, Ketchum called. The safe-deposit key had been identified by a fluke; the bank where it belonged was being taken over by a larger bank and all files were being fine-tooth-combed before the transfer. An alert young staffer was matching up depositors and Debbie’s name had pinged something that linked to the notice of her death. The staffer followed it up and found that Ketchum was handling the estate and called him, out of the blue. It turned out the bank was in the next town from Debbie’s; she’d been leaving no chance that Dave might return–from the dead?–and search local banks if he found the key.
Ketchum said documents were going back and forth and that it should all be sorted out by tomorrow, but that I was required to sign a release for him to obtain the box’s contents in my behalf, or I could do it myself. I vaguely remembered something about lawyers being legally required to report suspicious …things to the law, and I knew that if I knew my sister, Ketchum was likely to find several thousand dollars and maybe some other stuff and might be forced to alert the police. So I told him that I would fly out as soon as I could and open it myself. I made it sound like a ritual or something, rite of passage, whatever, that I wanted to do for my sister.
Damn; I hope there’s enough in there to cover the cost of the ticket!
I walked back into my room and was startled to find Steve sitting on the vanity bench, waiting for me, because I’d been thinking so hard about booking the flight. And I was startled that he’d chosen a yellow t-shirt that said Cancun on it, and the white linen drawstring pants. I had worn that combination in Mexico! He was wearing flip-flops that he’d found in my closet and said he hoped I didn’t mind. I smiled and told him that he looked great but that I’d recommend against flip-flops and crutches. But, hey, I did have some other choices, and I produced some old sandals from the back of the closet and held them out. I noticed he was looking at my other shoes, particularly the section of my shoe rack with flats. I improvised and said, ‘Naw; these tie around the ankle but might not be that sure-footed as an actual shoe’ and I looked at the flats and I looked at Steve and he looked at me and I said, ‘Which ones?’ and he said, almost squeaked, ‘The light brown ones?’
I took the brown pair of flats and said, ‘These are really nice, a great choice, but I hope they fit …’ and to my amazement, they pretty much did! They were a little big–a tiny hit on my ego there–but with the natural linen color of the slacks, they looked great. Plus, for some reason Steve’s instep looked really nice, dainty, almost. I could hear him breathing shallowly as I slipped them on his feet and patted his ankles. ‘Very nice’, I said. To lighten the moment, I joked like a salesclerk, ‘And we have these in a dark brown and maroon, on sale.’ He chuckled.
No, he didn’t. He giggled, and it was musical and natural and I giggled with him and it was another lovely moment. My heart clenched, thinking how my sister should be sharing these moments with Steve.
Steve stood up on his crutches, looking down at his feet, slowly and stiffly holding his leg out to see his foot and then the other leg. ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked nervously and I said, ‘Not at all, sweetie!’ and hugged him. And for the first time–maybe it was the t-shirt–but for the first time, I could feel his breasts against mine. I was a little startled–or a little more startled–and covered it by asking what he’d like for outerwear since it was still nippy out? Also to cover his …breasts and the woman’s tee he wore, but I didn't say that. I tossed him a heather gray hoodie; he zipped it up most of the way and he was ready. Well, after I brushed his hair several times. It was marvelously thick and long.
I carried the camera bag as we crutched around. He shot so many pictures, the interior, the exterior, the deck, the view from the deck, and after awhile was obviously tired and wobbly. So much so that Tim, who was trimming bushes, dropped his clippers and ran to us to steady Steve on his crutches as I fought the other side. ‘There, there, young ‘un, I got you,’ Tim said gently, gave me an unreadable look, and then we both helped the exhausted boy back to his bedroom. We lay him on the bed, and he thanked us as he unzipped the hoodie.
Desperate to get Tim out of there before he saw Steve’s chest, I smiled big and thanked him and began pulling Tim out of there. But Steve called back, ‘Tim? Thank you so much. I probably would’ve fallen back there.’ Steve had risen up on his elbows, his small breasts straining against the tee. Tim just nodded and said, ‘Any time …but you’re going to be healthy so there won’t be another time, am I right?’ That earned a smile and nod from Steve who dropped back onto bed. I said I’d be back and closed the door.
Tim and I walked silently back outside; the dinner crew was just arriving to start prepping for the few reservations we had. We walked past the deck and back to the fallen clippers. Tim turned to me. ‘I have a few questions, you understand.’ I nodded. He said, ‘You are my boss, and it’s not my place, but …’
I put my hand on his upper arm and said, ‘Tim, you are my rock. I consider myself lucky to be able to pay you to stick around and help me.’
He frowned and said, ‘It’s not that. It’s what I do …You and Mark …sorry to bring it up, but you and Mark reminded me of me and Sophie. And cancer got her, too.’ He swallowed and I had a lump in my throat. ‘I’ve been worried about you, since Mark …and …well, I’m worried about you.’ He looked towards the inn and I knew he was looking towards Steve’s bedroom.
There was nothing else I could do. I told Tim of Debbie’s letter, of Steve’s already being on the pills, the reasons I’ve continued them, Debbie’s custom-programmed CDs, and so on. I told him the doctor didn’t know, the therapist did, and I didn’t know where it was all leading.
‘Yes, you do,’ he said softly. ‘Steven is becoming Stephanie.’
I hesitated and then nodded, feeling so guilty that I wished the earth would swallow me up.
‘How do you feel about that?’ he asked, still in a gentle tone, so I told him that I felt guilty as hell in principle, but I was learning that Steve was a better person–and seemed happier, too–and then I told him about watching the movie last night.
Throughout it all, Tim nodded here and there, listening carefully. Then he said, ‘Hear me out, okay, Donna? Don’t …jump to conclusions about anything I’m saying, but …hear me out.’ I nodded and he asked, ‘I have a few questions for you, and just take them one at a time. Don’t answer one and say, ‘But ..’ okay? Just the one question, one answer. Alright. You’re turning a boy into a girl without his knowledge. It’s the ‘without his knowledge’ part I’m asking about. How do you feel about that?’ and I restated my decreasing guilt and the positive signs I was noticing.
His face was neutral. ‘There will be no chance of returning to being a boy if you continue. Do you understand that?’ I paused, and then nodded. He sighed. ‘Donna, you will have a young girl, without years of living as a girl, training to be a woman in the world. Are you prepared to take that on?’
I was surprised that I hadn’t truly thought of it that way, in such matter-of-fact terms. Then I knew the answer; it was a strong feeling. I nodded briskly and said that I was prepared. And that I was worried that it was for purely selfish reasons, but I was looking forward to it. ‘Oh, Tim, if only you could have seen Stef last night! And we just got along so great …’
‘Stef, is it?’ And I explained about the nickname and he chuckled. ‘And you won’t always get along so great; every teen girl begins to resent her mother–or the nearest thing, which would be you.’
I hadn’t thought about that but flashed on my own teen-girl rebellion, and I said sadly that it was true but based on what I was seeing, compared to the boy described in Debbie’s letter, Steve would be and already was much happier.
Then he floored me with something I’d never even considered in the slightest. ‘Donna, do you think it’s possible that …maybe Debbie was wrong? That Steve wasn’t as bad a kid as she said in the letter?’ I pointed out that his grades were atrocious, but I hadn’t checked the police for his juvenile record, but the truancy and fighting were included in his school report. Tim thought silently a moment and then said, ‘Donna, I’m certainly not going to tell you what to do. And I’m not going to tell you what I’m going to do, until I have a talk with …Stef.’ He smiled at me, picked up the clippers, and returned to his clipping.
I was kind of shell-shocked when I returned to Steve, who was just slipping into sleep but roused when I knocked. I asked him if he wanted me to get his things to change into to sleep and he shyly asked if he could have the Rolling Rock shirt? I smiled and got it and helped him change and for the first time I saw his pelvic area. ‘You don’t mind?’ he’d asked, before removing the linen pants. I’d said no, but stifled a gasp for two reasons. There were sutures all over his hips, and huge bruises going from the purple to the sickly yellow and brown, and I gasped also because there was a little tiny penis only two inches long, maybe. I looked up and found him looking at me as he handed me the pants and I swallowed. I apologized for my staring. ‘I know you were terribly injured, but seeing the sutures, and thinking about how much pain you were in–that you are in …oh, sweetie; I’m so sorry for you!’
‘That’s okay, Andonna. I just …’ His pretty face twisted. ‘Any time I hurt real bad I think about Mom and I ...God, I hope she never felt any pain …’
My eyes brimmed with tears and I gulped. All I could do was gently squeeze his shoulder. Then I said, ‘Excuse me? You’re ready for sleep and I’m keeping you waiting’ and left for my bedroom, my eyes blurry.
I came back as quickly as I could with the Rolling Rock shirt–and several panties. I laid them on his bed and said, lamely, that he ‘might want to consider’ …and left it at that. He gulped and pointed at a yellow pair of tap-pants and said ‘those look comfortable’ and I smiled and said, ‘Oh, they are!’ and I took them and kneeled down; he put a hand on my shoulder and stepped into them and then I let him pull them up. Still sounding lame to my ears, I said, ‘They should be loose enough for comfort and not irritate your sutures, and warm enough …’
He just nodded and said, ‘They feel wonderful, Andonna. I think …I’m going to sleep now.’ I told him that I’d check on him later and bring him dinner when he felt like it, and as I pulled the covers up, he said sleepily, ‘Feels good. Can I have …a nightie …’ and was out. How much of that was him and how much were the CDs, I don’t know.
I went back to my office, thought deeply about things, and then put on the next of the CD set. He’d had the last disk for about a week and a half. Thinking about how wonderful last night was, laying on my bed with my …niece’s head on my shoulder as we watched the movie, made up my mind. I pushed Play.
In the evening, Steve was sitting in bed and I brought him soup and sandwiches and we talked about While You Were Sleeping and how much he’d enjoyed it, too. I kissed him on the forehead again and went down to the restaurant. One of our reservations hadn’t shown up but two walk-in couples were a bonus and I watched over my sad little empire and wondered how I was going to keep it all together.
In the evening, Steve was sitting in bed and I brought him soup and sandwiches and we talked about the movie we’d watched and how much he’d enjoyed it, too. I kissed him on the forehead again and went down to the restaurant. One of our reservations hadn’t shown up but two walk-in couples were a bonus and I watched over my sad little empire and wondered how I was going to keep it all together.
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
I’m writing this on the plane back home. I think I said, oh my God at the start of my last entry; let me just say for this entry: Omigod! Omigod! Omigod!
With that out of the way …
It was the strangest thing when I left for the airport–I found that I was missing Steve already. I was going to pay through the nose for the quick ticketing, but Lawyer Ketchum did a bit of fast talking and got me the special Bereavement Fare. I arrived and took a hotel shuttle to the Hilton, where I was met in the lobby by Thomas Ketchum, a very tall, thin gentleman, prematurely bald, who could be anywhere from thirty to seventy. He seemed pleasant and professional, driving me to the bank as he told me the legalities of what was about to happen.
At the bank, I presented my passport and driver’s license, swore a statement for a notary public, and a manager who was the vice president of the bank and Mr. Ketchum and I proceeded to the vault, the box was removed after we both inserted our keys, and then they discreetly left me. I opened the box.
And thank God there was a chair or I would’ve hit the floor. There were some items on the top that were unexpected; two prescriptions for Steve’s girl meds as well as two large bottles of them–what looked like a total of two or three years’ worth, actually–and a folder with the full information from the CD company and some more CDs, as well as some articles from the internet on the …process of feminizing a boy.
But under those items there were stacks and stacks and stacks of money. I had brought a lightweight day pack for whatever I found in the safe-deposit box, but it would only fit the non-currency items. I didn’t dare count it all right then, but I stuck my head out and quietly said, ‘There were a lot of …official papers’–with Ben Franklin and presidents on them, I thought!–and ‘Did they have a file box they might spare? And a roll of packing tape?’
I had the safe deposit box closed when there was a knock and Mr. Ketchum handed me the box and left, and as fast as I could I transferred the stacks of bills into the box as well as the bottles of pills. I pulled out one stack for my purse and then sealed the rest up with the tape and carrying the box under one arm and the backpack over my shoulder, I left after signing a last bit of paper. Mr. Ketchum drove and was polite enough to not ask, but I told him there was a bit of cash, some of her old medication, and some odds and ends of documents. I just hadn’t expected a safe-deposit box so large and he said that while I was in there, the bank manager had mentioned that he remembered at least once when Debbie had arranged for the next-larger size of box, on the way to the one that she’d had last. It stuck in his mind because she wasn’t a regular customer of the bank, was living in the next town, and she seemed a bit scared. She had told him that she wasn’t doing anything illegal; she was in a bad marriage and when it fell apart, she didn’t want some of her family’s items–particularly some of her mother’s jewelry–to fall into her husband’s hands.
Pretty much true, I told Lawyer Ketchum. Except I didn’t tell him that our mother never had any particular jewelry. He just nodded at my confirmation, made an offhand comment about ‘How sad some marriages turn out’ and was satisfied.
I asked for a detour to a UPS store, and wrapped the box in brown paper and sent it to myself, praying all the necessary prayers. I really couldn’t think of any other way. I’d thought of buying a small suitcase and checking it as luggage, but the horror stories of Homeland Security pilferage deterred me. Then Mr. Ketchum–after asking if I’d like anything else, any services, a tour, anything–drove me back to the airport. I consolidated the contents of the daypack into my carryon and tucked the pack away.
Once aboard, I read through the internet materials and the CD company info. I learned a great deal more and was particularly glad that Debbie had researched name and gender changes for official documents; there was a lot I needed to know. I was surprised to discover that the CDs included with the company info weren’t backups as I’d thought, but a continuation of the discs I already had, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I read the full possibilities of the set.
I went to the lavatory, taking my purse, and sat on the closed toilet to examine the stack of money I’d removed from the box. It was a combination of larger bills and I was only at halfway through when I thought I’d taken too much time in the toilet, so I popped it back in my purse and left. But I’d already been at $1900 …
So I’m writing this now and will digest things afterwards.
There’s no place like home. Cliché, cliché, but so true for me. My heart soared when I saw the sparkle of the lake under the moon and felt like I’d been gone a week instead of one day. I could only have done it because of the time difference, but I looked in on Steve before I went to bed.
He was sitting up in bed, at work in his laptop, wearing the Rolling Rock sleepshirt and I joked that I’d ‘have to get a six-pack’ for him. He blushed slightly and hugged me and said he’d missed me and I found myself choked up. I asked what I’d missed; he’d nearly finished the website that day but he’s going to show me tomorrow because he knew I was tired. Oh, and he’d had a nice chat with Tina, of all people.
So I plopped into bed and didn’t surface until nearly noon today.
Sorting through everything in the mail and email, I got on with the business of running the inn. We have about a month before things get hot enough and if there’s any chance of a profitable season, the long-range weather forecast looks promising.
In passing, Tina welcomed me back, and then came back and lowered her voice. ‘Um …I was talking with Steffi yesterday …’
Steffi? I thought; but I just nodded.
Tina went on. ‘I’m not quite sure …this is really embarrassing.’ I told her to go ahead and she said, ‘I can’t quite tell if Steffi is a boy or a girl …’
My mouth twitched in a smile while my brain ran through all sorts of possible answers. Finally I said, ‘Does it matter? Do you like Steffi?’ and Tina nodded and smiled. ‘She’s great! And so banged up …’ Then her face went funny. ‘If she’s a girl, I mean …’
I just smiled and nodded and said, ‘I’m glad Steffi has a friend.’ It really wasn’t an answer but she took it to be one.
She thought about it a second and smiled and nodded once, smiling. ‘Yeah!’
I went to Steve’s room. He was doing some leg stretching exercises that were on that sheet I’d downloaded from Dr. Bunting. His face was reddened from the exertion and there was a fine line of perspiration at his hairline and on his upper lip. For some reason it was cute; maybe it was the determination on his pretty face.
For his face is pretty; there’s no two ways around it. He’d been delicate before the accident, but the facial reconstruction and now the tighter skin stretched back into place had left him …like somebody from the movies, but I couldn’t think who.
It clicked into place. His face was now somewhere in between Kirsten Dunst and Anna Paquin in her blonde mode. There was a cute upturn to the corners of his mouth and his eyes were large and quite pretty. No wonder Tina was confused!
Suddenly the implications of a cute teenage niece began whirling around but I kept my voice neutral when I asked how he was doing. He was glad to have an excuse to end his exercise, I think, leaning back on his bed and sighing. It was going fine, he said, but it was easier having Carla move him around. I suggested the exercises might be hard to do on the soft bed and they should be easier on the floor; I said I’d hunt up an old yoga mat of mine. He nodded, and then slid off, grabbed his crutches, and asked me to follow him to where his laptop was on the desk.
I studied him; he wore baggy gray sweats that had the elastic cuffs cut off, and a small red t-shirt that didn’t quite come to his tummy. I’d told him to see what he could find in my room and he’d found some old workout clothes of mine, also from my yoga days. There was a tiny dab of sweat right between the mounds of his breasts.
When he sat at the table, he tucked his hair behind one ear with his fingertips; a typically feminine gesture. Then he began telling me about my new website as he clicked around the screen, and his free hand gestures were distinctly feminine. Not effeminate; there was nothing of the gay hairdresser cliché. They were the movements of a girl’s hand describing her work. How the heck did the CDs get that across–or was this already in Steven, waiting to come out?
The work was amazing, and I told him so. It was far beyond not only what I’d had but beyond what I’d hoped for, and he’d anticipated several potential problems with my original design. He’d provisionally set up links with search engines and places I’d never even thought of, like the Chamber of Commerce, AAA, and others. It was an incredible job and I couldn’t sing his praises high enough. Listening to them, he tucked his hands between his legs, knees together, and blushed happily.
Impulsively I hugged him and said, ‘God, I’m feeling terrible that I never really knew you all these years.’
He accepted the hug and then said, seriously, ‘You wouldn’t have liked me. I didn’t like me.’
I did the usual, ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not so’ but he nodded and basically told me what a shit he’d been. So I said that it was a terrible thing, losing Debbie, but if we were to find one good thing out of it, at least he was finding himself.
He frowned. ‘But who am I?’
Still leaning on the desk, I reached out a hand; he raised one to mine and I was holding his fingers. ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘Who do you want to be?’ I was shocked to see that his eyes were brimming with tears.
‘I don’t know!’ he gasped out, breathing shallowly to try to keep from crying.
Without thinking, I said, ‘Aw, baby, don’t cry’ but not ‘baby’ like an insult, but like ‘sweetie’ or ‘honey’. Whatever; the tears spilled down his pretty cheeks and I was hugging him again. I helped him up to his crutches and walked with my hand on his shoulder back to the bed, where he sat, dangling his legs over the edge, sniffing.
‘Andonna, I don’t know what’s happened to me,’ he wailed.
I thought for a moment and said, ‘Can you tell me what you think is happening?’
There was a long moment and then he said, ‘I think I’m …turning into a girl. At first I thought, like you said, it was a hormonal imbalance from all the medicines and the accident and surgeries and all …’
I gave a non-committal grunt.
‘And I’m kind of …’
‘In a holding pattern,’ I suggested. He looked at me and I said, ‘You know, like planes circling an airport, not sure where or when they’re going to land?’
He frowned, thinking. ‘Holding pattern …yeah, that’s me,’ he nodded.
It seemed time. ‘I just ran into Tina. She said to say hi. She seems to like you. How did you run into her?’
‘Carla came for a session and I guess Tina was coming to work, and then after Carla left I was looking for Tim to return the camera. I got all the pictures I needed. And Tina was taking something to the dumpster, I guess, and we got to talking.’
After a pause, I said, ‘Tina called you ‘Steffi’ and I was confused at first.’ That earned a blush and downcast eyes. Steve had to swallow and then said, ‘Uh, yeah, there was …some confusion. She heard Carla call me ‘Stef’, you know how she does, and thought she’d misheard it, I guess, or she’s the kind of girl that goes for cute names …I don’t know. But when I came back inside, she said, ‘Bye, Steffi’.’
‘How did you feel about that?’ He looked at me. I said, ‘You didn’t correct her.’ I also thought, ‘And you didn’t tell her whether you were a girl or a boy’, and I realized I didn’t know what Steve had been wearing; that might also have tipped the scale.
All Steve said was, ‘Um ….’
So I asked, ‘Sweetie, what do you want me to call you? I know we kind of kidded about ‘Stef’ because of Carla, but now Tina’s met you as Steffi, and so I think I need to know, who do you want to be?’
There was another ‘Um’ and then, fearfully, he looked up at me and said, ‘Steffi’s okay.’
I decided to press. ‘Only okay? Shouldn’t you have a name you like?’
And he swallowed again and so quietly that I could barely hear, he said, ‘I liked it when she called me Steffi. Like …Stephanie.’ He looked like he was about to bolt–pretty hard on crutches.
‘Sweetie,’ I began and then stopped. Why was I tip-toeing around? He was full of girl meds for probably a year now, the CDs were working amazingly, and I found that I was responding to this new person, so totally unlike the unlikable proto-thug he was before.
‘Sweetie,’ I began again. ‘I need you to talk to me and tell me your true feelings. Not what you think you’re supposed to say, or what society thinks you’re supposed to say, or what you think I want to hear. Can you promise me to do that? Whole truth, honestly?’
He frowned and nodded. ‘I always …I always try to tell you the truth, Andonna,’ he said.
‘I know, sweetie, and I also know that there was a time …well, when you didn’t tell the truth, right? And …stole? And cut school?’
He nodded again, blushing with shame. ‘I was …different then.’
I hugged him. ‘And you are different now. You can be anybody you want to be. Do you understand?’ He nodded but I said, ‘Let me say it again slowly. You-can-be-any…body …you-want-to-be. Now …do you understand?’
There was a long pause, a stillness in the room and only our breathing and heartbeats. Then he nodded. ‘I understand, Andonna.’
Then I asked again, ‘So …who are you …who do you want to be? Please tell me, sweetheart. Tell …yourself.’
He hung his head, frowning as he thought, and then quietly said, ‘I was a boy named Steven. Steve. I was …a punk. I didn’t like being …what I was, but I thought I had to be that guy. I know I hurt Mom, and I think that’s worst of all. I’ll never get a chance to tell her I’m sorry. To make it up to her.’ He inhaled raggedly. ‘I don’t know why or how I’m the way I am and I don’t care. I like myself right now, and it’s all so new and scary and …’ He looked at me, searching my eyes, my face. ‘You really won’t be upset with me?’ I solemnly shook my head ‘no’. He rolled his lips in and sighed deeply. ‘Andonna, I think I’m becoming a girl. A girl named Stephanie, Steffi, Stef …and I like it. I want it to happen! I don’t know how or why and I don’t care!’ he said again. ‘I want to be Stephanie!’
The sob that burst out of him startled us both and I hugged him. I kissed his forehead. ‘I love you, my beautiful niece, Stephanie.’ Another sob, this one of joy and release, broke forth and he hugged me tighter and cried and cried and shook and I soothed him and stroked him and kissed the top of his head and let him know it was okay.
I brought him a dinner later, that really great chicken and wild rice dish that Eduardo makes, and sat with him. After the crying jag this afternoon, he’d slept and I didn’t have any qualms about triggering the CD, since I know now that he wants to become a girl. Whether it’s because of the positive reinforcement or everything that has happened to him has unlocked some inner being, it doesn’t matter to me. I feel confident that I could discontinue the CDs and he’d still feel the way he does. The girl meds are a different story; that’s a physical thing but now after the pills and prescriptions I found in the safe-deposit box, that wasn’t a worry. We’ll continue on this path.
We’d agreed that I’d call him Steffi or Stef, and he would be introduced to the everyone as my niece Stephanie. He’d been freaked at first but I told him that Carla already knew, Dr. Bunting was out of the picture, and that hopefully Carla would connect us with a doctor who would help. He smiled when I told him that Tina would be relieved that Steffi was a girl, and then his face clouded. ‘There’s so much I don’t know,’ he said sadly. I pointed out that the accident was a good excuse, and on his confused look, I told him that if he didn’t mind the occasional look of pity from people, we could put it out there that besides the damage to his face, there had been some brain trauma and there was some memory loss. That way things could be explained as ‘not remembering’, not ‘not knowing’. When he realized how it gave him an out for not knowing things that every girl would know–and would be suspicious if another girl didn’t know–he smiled and said he could handle the pity looks. He was more concerned about his body.
I spoke with him, seriously, about that. I said, from what I remembered and what I understood, that he’d always had a feminine body and he reluctantly agreed. I told him that it was unknown whether his body would have changed if there hadn’t been the trauma of the accident, and he admitted that his ‘boobs’–and how wonderful that he’d been able to handle that term so quickly!–had been swelling a little bit before the crash.
‘There! You see?’ I said, relieved that he’d noticed so everything wouldn’t be seen as post-crash, and therefore possibly my doing. It seemed to settle his mind; his body was becoming a girl’s and he was already disgusted with his macho ways. I felt a lump in my throat; Debbie didn’t have to die to accomplish her goal of Steven’s transition; it sounds like he was ready to accept it.
As long as we were talking about bodies, I brought up his. I spoke first about the need for bras. He was both embarrassed and excited–the same as every young girl when ‘mom’ talks to her about bras. I told him I had some ideas along those lines and we’d talk about it later, but not much later because if the photo-taking and Tina-meeting is any indication, he may still be on crutches but he was getting mobile.
Talking about bras naturally led me to talk about panties and I did it on purpose because it was time to talk about genitals. I asked him what he thought about his penis and he shrugged and said, ‘It doesn’t belong there’ but it seemed a kind of an ambiguous answer so I left it. Plus, it reminded me that I need to go over the CD instructions; I think the next disk addressed genitalia. So I brought up the matter of wearing a skirt, and was surprised that he didn’t have the expected qualms about wearing a skirt, but was concerned that his legs were ugly from the accident. Such a typically feminine response! I assured him that he was healing beautifully and as the swelling was receding, I could tell he had nice legs. He blushed happily at that.
On impulse I went to my room and found a ruffled-sleeve white cotton nightgown, a shortie with matching panties. Without a word, I handed the folded pile to Steve, took his dishes, kissed him on the forehead and left.
Good thing I did, too, because Dan Armitage had too much wine with his birthday dinner and Shelly Armitage had her hands full trying to quiet him down. I took over from a grateful Bonnie and restored order, getting Dan into the passenger seat–why do drunks demand to drive?–and wrote off the last bottle.
Back at my office, I studied the CD instructions, the disks I had and the disks that had been in Debbie’s safe-deposit box. It looks as though the disks so far have been designed to make a boy kinder and gentler, basically. There wasn’t anything that indicated they were designed to make a boy use the fluid, graceful hand gestures that Steve had when he’d shown me the website. But it seemed that the next disk in the sequence, and beyond, were specifically designed–and customized to Debbie’s specifications–to ‘redirect a typical male’s thought process along feminine lines’, as it stated. Since I’ve already figured out that they soft-pedal everything to avoid either outlandish claims or lawsuits, I knew that ‘redirect …the thought process’ means to change a boy’s mind to a girl’s mind, as much as the system can.
But Steve hadn’t heard these CDs yet! I have no doubt that the person I was talking to this afternoon, crying with and hugging, had a girl’s mind and emotions. I’m still holding off in my head using feminine pronouns until we pass the ‘fail-safe’ point of no return for boyhood–but I’m pretty sure we’ve already shot way past that. Well, this next CD might be further reinforcement of Steffi-the-girl. I think Debbie kept these separate because she, too, wanted to be sure it was right for her child. And besides the urging in her letter, I have absolutely no evidence to go on that Steven would be better off being Steven–but several hopeful pieces of evidence that Steven will be better off being Stephanie. Even how quickly and easily Tina wanted to be friends …
Friends! How could I have overlooked friends!
Even though it was late I knocked gently and heard Steve tell me to come in. He had almost been asleep and was sitting up slowly, slightly painfully. He wore the nightgown and the bare arms and ruffled straps looked so …right against his shoulders. The gentle swell of his breasts in the bodice was right, too, and I had a flash of wonder how this could ever have been a boy.
I said I was sorry to bother, but I’d just had a thought and before I spoke again, Steve said, ‘I’m so sorry, Andonna; you’re going to hate me.’ I misunderstood and said, ‘Not at all, Steffi! If I didn’t think you should wear the nightie I wouldn’t have given it to you! I just didn’t expect you to look so pretty in it!’
Steve startled and said, ‘What? Oh, no; I don’t mean about the nightie, and thank you, and …thank you-thank you for what you just said! It’s …really nice.’ He seemed to lose track. ‘No, you’re going to hate me because I gave the camera back to Tim and I just remembered a shot I don’t have and I’m so stupid that I didn’t think of it before, and we’re going to have to get the camera back, and I just …I just wanted to get the site up and running for you; I’m so sorry,’ all in a rush.
It was my turn to say ‘what’ and then I laughed and said, ‘I misunderstood. And I’m glad you like the nightie. The camera’s no problem; I’ll grab Tim tomorrow. What was the picture you remembered?’
‘Um …this is kind of mean to say …’ I said to go on, and Steve said, ‘I really think you need a shot of the restaurant really full, you know? And candles and everybody dressed nice, and the waitresses moving around and everybody happy. You know, to show ..’ He trailed off but I finished.
‘To show that we’re actually a successful restaurant?’ I chuckled. ‘God, we just missed it; we were pretty good on Valentine’s Day. No telling when the next big holiday is; I’ll have to talk to Tim about keeping the camera or maybe getting one of my own. And maybe we’ll just have to bite the bullet and stage it.’ He looked questioningly and I said, ‘Invite everybody we know to a free dinner and get the shot–’
‘They’ll all need to sign releases,’ Steve said. ‘I think that means we will have to stage the shot; it’d be terrible waiting for the next holiday and maybe filling up and maybe getting the shots and then have somebody refuse to sign the release.’
An idea broke and I grinned. ‘You’ve just given me a great idea, sweetie! I was going into town tomorrow to talk to Len at the Chamber of Commerce on a zoning thing, but I also want to hit the Elks, Kiwanis, whoever. Maybe we can host an awards dinner or something, and if not, we’ll just invite friends like your original idea.’
Steve, bless his heart, said, ‘That was your idea, inviting people. I can’t take credit for it. But I’ll design around the shot,’ and he went on to describe the page layout, leaving a box for the picture but filling it with a sample menu that he would move later. As he talked, I watched and listened. I watched his graceful gestures, with flat hands, delicate extended fingers, and how he flexed his wrists, and I listened to the …I guess it was the melody of his speech, how it rose and fell and damn it, he sounds like a girl and there’s no two ways about it. And we haven’t even gotten into the really girly parts of the CDs!
Then I remembered why I’d come. ‘Steffi, with all this talk about inviting friends to the photo shoot, and how Tina seems to want to be your friend, I suddenly thought–what about Steven’s friends back home? I’m sorry I never thought of them before.’
His pretty face clouded, and his jaw set. ‘That’s because there aren’t any, not really. There are guys I got high with, guys I stole stuff with …’ He looked like he was about to cry and a shudder rippled through him.
Without thinking I said, ‘Those are guys Steven got high with, stole with; not you. You’re a different person now, remember?’
He looked at me, his eyes brimming with tears, and said, ‘You think so? You really think so?’
I smiled warmly and said, ‘I know so’. He looked doubtful, so I said, ‘Those were things and people that a boy named Steven did and hung with. A punk with no future except addiction and jail. I’m looking at a pretty girl named Stephanie who is smart, compassionate, and has a bright future in web design, or marketing, or restaurant management, or anything she puts her mind to.’
He stared at me and gulped and said again, breathlessly, ‘You think so?’
Again, I said, ‘I know so’ and then sat on the foot of the bed and looked at him. ‘So …no friends back home who might want to know about Steven?’ He shook his head no. ‘And no friends here,’ I said, ‘yet. Well, then start with Tina. And she’s like eight or nine years older than you,’ I mused. ‘Well, you seem mature …now.’ That earned a raised eyebrow so I explained. ‘When …Steven first arrived, he was a whiny pain in the ass. I know you hurt–he hurt–but still, not a nice guy. But now …doesn’t it feel better being you? Being Stephanie?’
He nodded again and then spoke haltingly. ‘And the weird thing is …I’m not …working at it. I’m not …trying to be something I’m not. Steven always seemed like …a character I played, like a TV actor.’ He frowned. ‘No, that’s not true. I didn’t know it for a long time. Only in the last year or so, and then I was so caught up in …what everybody expected Steven to be. What I thought my dad had wanted me to be.’
I didn’t want to get into the subject of his father, so all I said was, ‘But what about what your mom wanted you to be?’
He nodded but looked downcast with shame. ‘I was …awful to her. That’s why I’m so sad that I can’t apologize to her–’ His lower lip trembled and he sniffed. ‘Oh, God, Aunt Donna …I feel so terrible about that! Poor Mom!’ and he began blubbering. It was indicative of his torment that he’d called me the formal ‘Aunt Donna’, I thought as I moved up the bed to hug him and shush the tears. Then he said something that shook me. ‘Maybe this is what Mom wanted me to be,’ he said, waving his hand at himself and his nightgown. ‘I know I should have been a girl, I should have, I should have. Then all our problems wouldn’t have happened.’
I said, ‘Sometimes that’s not always the case; you might have a whole different set of problems. But I know what you mean, sweetie; what you’re trying to say. So if you think you should have been a girl, if you think your mom wanted you to be a girl, and you seem to be pretty much along that road …what’s your hesitation?’
With big, red eyes, he said, ‘I don’t want to disappoint you.’ I looked at him and asked how and he said, ‘By being a sissy, I guess ..’
I couldn’t help it; I chuckled. ‘Oh, sweetie; that’s …geez, that’s so far off the mark!’ He was a bit freaked by my outburst, so I explained. ‘Look, to be a sissy, you have to be a boy. Right? I mean, boyish girls are tomboys and girlish boys are sissies, right?’ He nodded. ‘But if you’re a girl, you can’t be a sissy, because you’re not a boy, right? I mean, you can be a real girly-girl, all pinks and lace and frills and ‘ooh, I can’t get my nails chipped! Don’t touch the hair, don’t touch the hair!’
Steve burst out laughing at my impression, which I’d done with a high voice, my hands up, fingers out and waving around. He calmed and I said, ‘Look, I’m a girl–or I was–and I think it’s the best thing you can be. I wouldn’t want to be a male. Oh, some of the things they can do, sure, maybe a little jealous there, but to spend 24/7 stuck inside that body with those thoughts? Couldn’t cry, couldn’t hug, couldn’t …feel? Nope,’ I shook my head. ‘I’d be more disappointed if you tried to become somebody you aren’t. If you’re Steven, be Steven. If you’re Stephanie, be Stephanie.’
I looked at him seriously; he returned the look and then nodded. ‘Okay, Andonna.’
I took the chance and said, ‘So I’m guessing you’re …Stephanie?’
He nodded, tentatively.
I said, ‘Okay, that’s it! I’m going to lay down a ground rule. So far it’s the only one, so we’ll call it Rule Number One. You ready?’ He nodded and I declared, ‘Rule Number One is this: Choose. Make your choice, Steven or Stephanie, but stick to it. None of this tentative stuff. None of this maybe a boy-one-day, girl-the-next. None of this …‘ooh, I don’t want her to think I’m a sissy’ or anything like that. There’s pluses and minuses with both choices, and most of us never get to choose, but you do, so choose. But you can’t go partway. If you choose to be a boy named Steven, we’ll talk to the doctors about whatever they can do to remove your breasts and bulk you up. I don’t think they can do anything about your skeleton so you’ll always be shorter than the other guys.’
Steve had flinched when I said ‘remove your breasts’ and had a look of distaste at the last point I’d made. Good; I’d wanted him to; that’s why I’d said it that way. All he said was, ‘Or?’
I nodded. ‘Or you choose to be Stephanie, a girl, with all the pluses and minuses of being female in what is laughingly called ‘a man’s world’. But not partway,’ I said. ‘There’s no shame in being yourself. Don’t hesitate on anything because you think it’s too silly or too girly or too …whatever. For instance, don’t do something like wanting a doll but be afraid to ask because you think I might think you’re a sissy. You’re a girl that wants a doll, so of course ask for one and we’ll get one. Or more,’ I grinned. ‘But commit, whichever you choose.’
There was silence after that, and quietly he said, ‘I’ve chosen.’
I was silent.
‘I already knew. I mean, I already made my choice, and I told you already. I want to be a girl. I want to be your niece. You said, ‘no shame’. I’m sorry; I was worried you might think I’m a sissy. I mean, I do have …this thing between my legs, but …no shame. I’m committing. I’m a girl. I’m Stephanie.’
End of Part 4
I said, ‘Okay, that’s it! I’m going to lay down a ground rule. Rule Number One is this: Choose. Make your choice, Steven or Stephanie, but stick to it. But commit, whichever you choose.’
There was silence after that, and quietly he said, ‘I’ve chosen.’ His voice was soft. ‘I already knew. I mean, I already made my choice, and I told you already. I want to be a girl. I want to be your niece. You said, ‘no shame’. I’m sorry; I do have …this thing between my legs, but …no shame. I’m committing. I’m a girl. I’m Stephanie.’
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
After I finished my huge entry in last night’s journal, I lay in bed thinking about everything, and how he’d said, ‘this thing between my legs’ and I realized that had to be part of the problem with his own acceptance. This morning I went to the internet materials Debbie had assembled and then some recommended websites so I had an idea how to proceed there. Then it was shower and dress-for-success time, and I was running late. I passed Mr. Haynes, the tutor, making a left turn on Frederick but I didn’t honk or wave or anything. Steve had brought his grades up to Haynes’ satisfaction and been pronounced ready for school next year. And that made me think about the paperwork to get Stephanie enrolled but with Steven’s new-and-improved grades, and paperwork made me think about my meeting with Len at City Hall.
We discussed the zoning hassle–an environmental initiative from townsfolk wasn’t sitting well with lake folks and some of them had asked me to speak on their behalf. Then we got onto other topics and he introduced me to a couple of old fellows and by early afternoon, I had solid leads on the service clubs in the area maybe having regular functions at my inn.
I was about to drive home when I suddenly remembered that Steve had, basically, no clothes. At this point I wasn’t going to produce his boy clothes so I went to the storage unit, removed the Steve boxes and dropped them off at Goodwill. It felt curiously liberating to do that. Next, I went to the big new Target out on the Interstate. Being a local small business owner, I felt like a traitor not patronizing the other local small businesses, but I needed the variety and anonymity of Target.
It surprised me how excited I was at the prospect of shopping for a teen girl! I had to remember to get a measuring tape on Steve but right now I had my own clothes that he’d worn to guide me. And everything still had to be loose while he healed so tight fit was not an issue. Except maybe for the tops …the way he filled out the t-shirts he’d been wearing was cautionary! After much thinking and going back-and-forth, I settled on a couple of capris as well as several of the loose pajama pants that girls wore, brightly colored and with cute patterns. The heck with heather gray! So I added a pink hoodie. And with a further ‘what the heck’, I picked up a single denim miniskirt. I got several three-packs of white camisoles, A-cup bras (just guessing, here) and colorful panties. I bought several nightgowns and one pair of sateen pajamas in lavender. Furry, backless slippers, black and white ballet flats–using the flats of mine he’d worn as a guide and these were stretchy, anyway–and a pair of girl’s sandals that looked like they’d tie securely.
Getting the sandals made me think of toenail polish so I went to Cosmetics and said I was getting some stuff for my niece when she visited–not too much of a lie–and what were the most popular cosmetics? I left with two sampler kits of makeup and nail polish, great for experimenting! Then I thought of hair supplies and got some scrunchies, hair bands, brushes, and a barrette assortment. Hand mirror. Hair dryer. Then I sprang for a genuine makeup mirror like I’d always wanted, with a light around it. Shampoo, conditioner, body talc, girls’ deodorant …anything else?
Standing in line the second time–I did two trips at different registers so I didn’t look too conspicuous–and idly looking at magazines, I checked out, loaded up, and drove all of a hundred yards to the new Barnes Noble superstore. I bought one of every teen-girl magazine I could find, and was really proud of myself for thinking to pull out all the ‘blow-ins’ that magazines have. I use them for bookmarks, usually, but I took one of each magazine because they were subscription forms.
I was heading home and had another brainstorm. I swung off my route and went to the county library. My account was still good from the days when Mark and I were reading a lot, and I threw myself on the mercy of the librarian, who was a stranger. I told her my fourteen-year-old niece was coming to visit and I had zero fourteen-year-old girl materials to entertain her. She recommended several books, most of which were already checked out, and several DVDs, most of which were in, by luck. I checked out the legal maximum and then headed home.
And there was the box, sitting by the front entryway with the day’s mail stacked on it. Tim had signed for it and carried it in for me.
I decided to put the box in my office and not think of it until after I’d deluged Steve with my acquisitions. The box looked unopened so the money should still be there, I figured, and if it was gone there was little I could do about it–but I’d hate to lose the medication. Today’s shopping madness had been paid for by the stack I’d removed from the box’s contents, and knowing it had barely put a dent in the stack, I felt a whole lot better when I went in to find Steve. He wasn’t in his room so I quickly moved all the items there.
He was in the tiny living room part of my living quarters, idly going through the TiVo channels. He wore his scrub pant bottoms and a lime green tank top that I’d forgotten I’d had. His hair was brushed straight back and then up into a high ponytail. He smiled when he saw me and then blushed.
‘I’m sorry; after our talk it kind of looks like I haven’t committed.’ I asked what he meant, and he sheepishly grinned, ‘Girl from the waist up, boy from the waist down!’
I laughed and said, ‘How about girl from the waist up, injured girl from the waist down?’
He laughed, too, a happy silvery sound, and said that was better. I told him I didn’t fault him on anything he wore because he didn’t have anything. I made sure to say that ‘Steven’s clothes’ were lost with the house and contents being sold, even though he’d said he didn’t want anything. He shrugged.
I said, ‘As soon as Carla thinks you can stand it, all the crutching around, you and I are going shopping.’
He said, ‘Okay,’ but without much enthusiasm one way or another.
‘No, you don’t get it,’ I smiled. ‘Shopping …you know, like what girls do?’ and his face lit up and he said that would be wonderful. Then I said, ‘But you are going to need some things to tide you over until Carla clears you.’ He nodded. I casually said, ‘So I picked up a few odds and ends for you today; dropped ‘em off in your room.’
He thanked me and asked if there was anything I needed him to do. I actually had an answer and told him to start researching the best digital camera that fit the minimum he would require for shots for the website. I said it’d be a tax deduction for the inn, but not to go overboard. He told me the camera he’d used was close to $1000 with lenses, case, and tax; I asked would any $500 cameras match it? He said he’d start investigating.
I didn’t push him going into his room; I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I went to see how the evening prep work was going; everything was chugging along. I saw Tim in the distance, looking out over the lake and smoking a pipe; his daily ritual when work was done, if the weather allowed. On the other hand, I remember rainy days when he was out there in a sou’wester, as well! I went up to thank Tim for signing for the box–telling him it was some of Debbie’s memorabilia–and then thanked him for the camera and said that I think I might buy one for the inn to keep.
He nodded and then said, ‘Girl.’
Brilliantly, I said, ‘What?’
And Tim said, ‘Girl. Pretty convinced of it, too.’
Oh, he meant … ‘Steffi?’ I asked and he nodded. I said, ‘Wait a minute; do you mean you’re pretty convinced of it or she’s pretty convinced of it?’
He thought for a moment and turned and grinned. ‘Both!’
Just at that moment I heard a slight commotion and saw a very happy girl crutching towards me. She still wore the lime tank top but had colorful yellow patterned PJ bottoms, black flats, and the pink hoodie. ‘Couldn’t lose her in a blizzard,’ Tim commented under his breath. She came up as fast as the crutches would allow and right into my arms, almost knocking me over. ‘Thank you-thank you-thank you! God, Andonna! Thank you!’
Tim said, ‘Andonna?’ and I said, ‘Her childhood name for me, Aunt Donna,’ and he looked at me strangely. She was hugging me and said, ‘I know none of this matches, but I was trying things on and I just had to thank you!’ I kissed the top of her head and said, ‘Careful, honey. It can be treacherous out here. I’ll be in to see you in a moment.’ She squeezed me tight and headed back to the inn.
‘A-yup. Girl’, Tim grinned, nodding his head once with finality.
When I entered Steffi’s room, I said, ‘You have got to learn some color sense!’ and she laughed. I have to think of her as ‘her’ and ‘she’ because that’s what she is. She put down the booklet she was reading, hugged me again and looked perfectly natural, and more-color-coordinated, in a light blue camisole and dark blue patterned pajama bottoms. There was a bit of ruching at the bodice of the camisole and her breasts filled it nicely. I immediately apologized for my ‘color sense’ crack and she said she realized it had been a horrible outfit but she just so wanted to thank me, for the clothes, and the magazines, and the DVDs and the makeup and she was overwhelmed. She went on and on about how I shouldn’t spend the money on her; she knew it was tight and had to be devoted to the inn, and all sorts of nice things like that. I told her to relax; her mother had set some money aside for her and I’d spent it on her.
I asked if she’d tried everything on; whatever didn’t fit I’d exchange. On the way to her room I’d grabbed some items from my room so I put them to use: A scale, a measuring tape, and a notepad. I had Steffi stand on the scale and balance while I removed the crutches momentarily, then returned them and noted the weight, and then got all the measuring tape numbers. I didn’t know or remember at the time how ‘normal’ they were for a fourteen-year-old girl, but they seemed right in the zone.
She shyly pulled down the top of her bottoms to show me that she was wearing the yellow panties from the three-pack. I smiled and said, ‘I actually have some advice for you on dealing with your …with …’ and she waved a hand and asked, ‘My boy-bit?’ I nodded and she grinned. ‘Actually, I just call it the ‘bit’. And I think I know the advice because I was surfing the internet today, after class.’ I was glad she’d put that in. ‘And you read about ‘tucking’?’ I asked and she nodded. ‘Tucked away …for good!’
However, there were two items she hadn’t tried on, the skirt and a bra. I knew I’d have to tackle them with her, so when she was seated next to me on her bed, I said how pretty she was, and the camisole straps looked so delicate against her shoulders …but she really had to start wearing bras. She hung her head, blushing, and I said, ‘Hey! That’s a good thing! Every girl wants to hear that!’ She said, ‘I know, and I promised to not worry about seeming a sissy, but …you know …’
I’d guessed right on the bra pack, according to her measurements, so I hugged her and opened the three-pack, picking a burgundy bra–they were also yellow and lavender–telling her that the bra straps would be visible with the camisole straps, and I knew that girls were allowed to show their straps now and often wore contrasting colors. She nodded; she knew the fashion.
I said, ‘This is a wonderful, sweet, almost sacred moment between a mother and her daughter. Your mother …can’t be here, so I’m honored to be able to share this with you, my pretty niece.’ It was the exact right thing to say and put her in the right frame of mind.
Solemnly, her eyes huge, she pulled the camisole over her head, her breasts springing free. They had a little jiggle now–more than time to start a bra!–and were very nicely shaped. I still remember how mortified I was when mine came in like little cones …but they evened out, of course. Steffi and I locked eyes and I smiled and handed her the bra; she put her arms through the straps and I went behind her and did the clasp, then I turned to her front again, keeping our eyes together, and I slowly reached in and cupped her breast and plumped it properly in the cup. Her eyes widened slightly when my fingers touched her skin, but as her breasts settled, she smiled. Then I pulled here and there and tightened the straps slightly, placed my hands on both shoulders and pulled her to me. I kissed her forehead lightly and then hugged her. Her breasts felt significantly larger and firmer than our last hug!
Steffi experimented with the feel of the bra, turning this way and that and putting her arms up. Then, still wearing only the bra and PJ bottoms, she stood and moved again in place, and then tried crutching a few feet and then back to the bed where she picked up the camisole. She moved to the full-length mirror in the corner and studied her reflection in the bra, and then put on the camisole and studied herself again. She smiled and nodded once and came back to the bed.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, as if examining the statement. ‘I look …like a girl …’
I chuckled and said, ‘Yes, and a very pretty one, too!’ and she giggled slightly, out of nerves. I figured she was at her most vulnerable and most susceptible, so I held up the skirt. ‘The next step,’ I said.
She frowned. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready …’ and I blustered, ‘You can say that to the woman who just fondled your boobs?’ and she burst out laughing and then nodded, biting her lip.
She rolled her hips and dropped the PJ bottoms and I almost gasped at how cute she looked in the bikini panties. There was absolutely no trace of ‘boy-bits’; she was well and truly tucked away. Plus, she had hips, and I remembered that her pelvis had been broken and I’d wondered how it would affect her figure. Positively, it looks like.
I handed her the skirt and helped her step into it, and guided her fingers to the zip in back. She smoothed out the front with her palms, gave a nervous giggle, and said, ‘Well?’ She saw my face and sat down quickly, saying, ‘I’ll change …’ and I shook myself out of my shock and said, ‘Why? No! What are you talking about?’ and Steffi was on the verge of tears when she said, ‘Your expression …’
What a fool I am! She’s so vulnerable and I’ve got to get better control of my facial expressions! I waved my hands. ‘No, no, no!’ I protested, and apologized that she’d misunderstood. I told her why I’d been so shocked. The doctors had been brilliant, doing microsurgeries to repair the broken legs and left almost no evidence. I could see little half-inch groups of sutures here and there but I know they’re the self-dissolving kind. With the right lotion and judicious tanning time, they should be nearly invisible. I had been stunned because her legs were beautiful–she was beautiful!–and she had looked so much like my beloved little sister in the way she’d stood in that skirt …
We were both crying when we hugged that time, and it took us a bit to get it together. Then she crutched over to the mirror and turned this way and that, studying herself.
In a very small voice, she said, ‘Do I really look like Mom did?’
Quietly, I nodded and said, ‘Very much so. You might even be a little cuter. She was kind of a beanpole there for awhile.’
‘I look like Mom …’ she breathed to herself.
I realized that it pleased her tremendously, and maybe made up a little for not being able to apologize to her.
To lighten things up, I teased, ‘Well? Ready to admit that you’re a babe?’
She turned back to me, blushing with shy happiness and said, ‘Do I really look okay?’ and I assured her she looked better than okay, but now it was lesson time.
The first thing I did was give her Skirt-Wearing 101: Keeping her knees together, smoothing it behind her when she sat, smoothing it out in front when she stood, keeping her knees together, how to get into and out of car seats and deep couches, and keeping her knees together.
Then I decided, what the heck, and removed my blouse, exposing my plain-Jane white bra that I’d worn under my business suit. I removed it and rubbed where it felt good, explaining that wearing a bra could be painful after a long day. Then I showed her how to put on a bra, turning my back so she could see how I held my hands to do the clasp. Then I removed it, and showed her the around-your-waist-backwards style of quickly doing it, showing how I cupped my breasts into place. I also showed her the bend-at-the-waist-to-let-things-hang-properly position. And that was about it. I told her that on our first shopping spree we’d see the bra fitter first. She had no idea there was such a person, and I grinned and told her in a deep voice, ‘You have much to learn, Young Skywalker. Young Miss Skywalker.’ And we burst into laughter.
Then my pager went off. I had to see to something in the restaurant so I dressed quickly and left my happy niece. We’d had some very late arrivals to check into a cabin–car trouble on the way to the lake–and my crew was already shutting down the kitchen, so I bribed Don with an extra Saturday off and he got things ready. I gave the couple menus to select a late supper so it would be prepared while I got them checked into their cabin. They’d paid for the smallest one but I gave them the option of the larger, nicer and more expensive one for no extra charge, but it’s the farthest walk from the restaurant because of its privacy. They looked at each other and smiled tiredly and accepted. I told them I’d come get them when dinner was ready.
Then I had an idea and grabbed Tina just as she was pulling on a coat and asked if she’d mind taking a dinner tray to Steffi? Her face tightened a little and I thought she was still uncertain about Steffi but she said she would if I called Darryl ‘to see if I could keep her a little longer’. I readily agreed and she rolled her eyes. ‘God, I feel like I’m thirteen and have to check in with Mom or the Principal!’ she said, so to lighten her mood, I said, ‘If you feel like you’re thirteen, that’s cool, because Steffi’s fourteen!’ and she smiled and went to see Don. I made the call and Darryl sounded a little drunk and said, ‘What about my dinner?’ and I said I’d send something home with Tina, how was that? What a jerk, I thought as I hung up, and placed the order with Don, who waggled his head like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah; now what?’
I got the couple to their cabin and then went back to the kitchen and selected a wine for the dinner, on the house. What the hell, I thought. Of course, then I realized that this couple’s lateness was costing me one day of Don, a cabin upgrade, and a Riesling. At this rate I’d have happy customers all the way to the poor house. Then I remembered I still had that box on my desk …
The couple squared away and Bonnie taking care of them and the shut-down after, I went back to my office but on the way I heard girlish giggles from Steffi’s room. I knocked and went in and they sat on the bed with the nail polish sampler open. Tina was doing Steffi’s toes.
‘Look, Andonna!’ Steffi cried happily, holding up her splayed fingers and wiggling them. They were a deep burgundy. Matches the bra, I thought.
Tina turned to me, brush halted mid-air and said, ‘It’s okay, isn’t it?’ I said sure and told her to stop by the warmer on the way out to pick up a dinner for Darryl and it soured her expression. She nodded and bent back down to finish Steffi’s toes.
Steffi picked up on the mood change and said, ‘God, I’ve gotten you in trouble, haven’t I? I’m sorry!’ and I said no, it was my fault because I’d asked Tina, and Tina never took her head up but grumbled no, it was her fault because she’d married a prick. I told her that she hadn’t married a prick; she’d married the star quarterback and she said, ‘Yeah, but all the football padding hid a prick.’ Then she realized how it had sounded and looked quickly at Steffi and said, ‘I mean …’ and all three of us burst out laughing and the sour moment passed. And had somehow become a delightful girl moment.
While Steffi admired her nail polish, Tina said, ‘I can’t believe a girl your age doesn’t have pierced ears! God, honey; how can you stand clip-ons?’ I jumped in and said that my sister’s husband had had some strange ideas and not allowing Steffi to pierce her ears was one of them. And after he was gone, my sister just hadn’t followed through, yet …Tina said that she could do it. I was thinking of a needle and potato, but she said, to my surprise, that she was learning cosmetology and had a piercing-gun and a lot of other stuff besides.
I said it would be wonderful if she wanted to, and then had a thought. ‘Do you need anybody to …practice on? Makeup or hair and things? Because …’ and I looked meaningfully at Steffi, who got it, and bounced up and down. ‘Please, Tina? You want to practice on me? That’d be great! Please?’ Tina looked doubtful and said, ‘But Darryl wants me to come right home …’
Damn that …prick, I thought! On the spot, I said, ‘How about this? If I …reassign you from time to time to care for my invalid niece–at least that’s what I’ll tell Darryl–and that you not only stay on the clock but I’ll throw in a bonus to compensate for lost tips?’ She blinked and said, ‘But I don’t make much on tips …’ I grinned and said, ‘So much the better! I’ll tell Darryl that I’m compensating for the tips that you and I know have been pretty scarce. So you bring home the same amount of money each week. But anything above that amount, you keep for mad money for yourself!’
Tina looked from me to Steffi and back to me, her smile bursting out as she put it all together. ‘Really? You mean it?’ I said I did and the deal was settled. She’s going to bring supplies tomorrow and start leaving them in her car so Darryl doesn’t see her cosmetology things go in and out of the house. And I said I’d pay for everything she used on Steffi, of course.
I left the girls alone for a bit and felt wonderful about how things were turning out. The wonderful feeling lasted until I was back in my office and saw the bundle of CDs. They were the ones that Debbie had custom-ordered. I read and re-read the documentation and stared at the ceiling. If I’d understood correctly, everything up to now was not gender- or sex-specific. Some anger management, good study habits and prioritizing and that sort of thing. Nothing about being feminine–that was the next set.
Yet Steffi was feminine–the very proof were the girlish giggles from Steffi and Tina down the hall. It was jarring to even think ‘Steve’ anymore. And even Tim–and I consider Tim the pinnacle of prudence and insight–pronounced Steffi a girl.
I was wiggling the stack of CDs in the air as I thought. If my sister’s purpose in taking the drastic action with Steve was to gentle him, job done. Ditto if it was to make him considerate and polite. The medication and the CDs accomplished that. I’d complied with my sister’s wishes, even though I thought it was wrong at the outset.
That bothered me; it was one thing to continue her program, her project, and figure out that I felt wrong about doing so. It was quite another to feel wrong about it right from the start, but to go ahead anyway. Sure, I talked myself into ‘she must have known what she was doing’. I talked myself into ‘she’s a mother, she’s a nurse, she knows best’. I talked myself into ‘don’t upset the apple cart’. And a teeny, tiny bit of myself also thought anything would be easier to deal with than the sullen jerk that arrived.
I will always feel guilty about that teeny, tiny, very selfish part–on top of the whole moral quagmire I put myself in, with that first pill and that first push of ‘Play’.
But as to my sister’s plan to feminize her son–proven by the custom CDs I was fanning myself with–I kinda sorta have to also say, ‘job done’. Steven is gone. The boy is gone. I have a niece named Steffi now–Stephanie, I’m pretty sure, for good now–and so there’s no need to go on with these CDs. The way I’d written ‘orange’ that first test still scares me. Perhaps Debbie had the custom set made if there was no gentling in Steven by this point. Well, I was tired feeling guilty about the whole thing. I’ll gladly trade that guilt for the guilt I feel at how much I love this niece of mine!
I collected the first set of CDs, the ones already played, and rubber-banded them together in a separate stack from the customized ones. Then I wrapped a big band around both CD stacks and put the whole damned thing in my bottom desk drawer and locked it. I’m not going to use any of them, unless I see a drastic alteration in Steffi, like sleep problems, anger, whatever.
But I’m not going to discontinue the medication. I don’t know anything about hormones, but I do know that any medication taken as long as Steve and now Steffi has, is systemic now, and if suddenly removed, things could go out of whack. Come to think of it–I don’t really know exactly how long ago Steve started them! So Steffi’s system really has to be analyzed by a doctor. I’m going to try to find a specialist and get Steffi there and confess the whole thing–the meds, I mean; I’m still too freaked and guilty about the CDs–and we’ll see what the doctor wants to do about the meds.
In the meantime, I’m going to work as hard as I can to help my niece be the girl that she seems to be becoming–a happy, productive person with a bright future. And she’s so darned sweet!
I went back to check up on the girls; Tina left a little after that, and after the girls hugged, I hugged Steffi when she emerged from her bathroom in a new nightie, her face shining clean and moisturized. I gave her a sleep braid and recommended we get her to a hair salon right after the bra fitter, and as I turned out the light, I thought about how extremely far she’d come in just one day. It was like an actress working for twenty years to become ‘an overnight success’. I was so proud of her.
And right after I finish this incredibly long entry, I’m going to watch the moon’s reflection on the lake for a bit, and think about Steffi and the new life I want to share with her.
Her. My niece. Definitely!
End of Part 5
Right after I finish this incredibly long entry, I’m going to watch the moon’s reflection on the lake for a bit, and think about Steffi and the new life I want to share with her.
Her. My niece. Definitely!
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
I never thought I’d be doing daily entries, but so much to report …
I got up earlier than usual, had a quick light breakfast, and locked myself in my office. First to come out of the box were the pills; I’d checked the internet about long-term storage and a cool, dry place was recommended so they went on a top shelf of my bookcase. It was a corner that had always felt cool-ish to me; something about the way the air circulated in the room. I put them behind a photo of Mark and me on our honeymoon. I looked at his precious face for a long moment, thinking again bitterly that he was taken from me too soon, and how much we’d wanted kids, and how much he would have loved the girl Steffi was becoming. I knew that Mark was open-minded enough to accept her transition. God, I miss him!
Then it was time for the stacks of cash. I was overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed, still! Back at the bank, in the shock of discovery and the flurry to get the money in the box, I hadn’t paid any close attention. It was just grab and stack, grab and stack. I knew that the stack I’d stuck in my purse had over $1900 in it, so I started there and pulled it out to count again, minus the amount I’d spent on Steffi’s things. It took awhile because the bills were in no order or denomination; a couple of twenties and a hundred, a fifty, three hundreds in a row, and so on. When I was done, it had added up to $2850, an odd amount. I pulled a stack from the box and it was the same denominational mess and was $3800, and the next one was $3125, so I’d learned three things.
First, the stacks were tossed in when they were about ‘so’ thick, regardless of the amount. Second, it was insanely time consuming with my calculator to add up all the odd denominations. Third, it was, as they say, a shitload of money and was going to take awhile to count.
Since I don’t have a bill counter it seemed the best way to proceed was to open each stack, not bother counting, and just sort the bills according to denomination. But since it was going to take time and require space, I needed a way to cover them. What if Eduardo came up to complain about the quality of vegetables in the day’s delivery, for instance? If he saw the money, at the very least he’d want a raise! The unsorted bills would stay in the box under my desk, and I worked out that I could cover the stacks with a desk drawer, upside down, so I emptied the contents of one and used a screwdriver to take off one of the rails. I figured I could cover the bills quickly and the whole thing would look like I was working on the drawer.
Then it hit me–how quickly money messes up your mind! Here I was like a thief, figuring out ways to cover my, well, not ill-gotten gains, but still …But I consoled myself that this money is for Steffi’s new life and my sister’s dream and final wishes, so I was justified being cautious. Still, the whole ‘hiding’ thing leaves a very sour taste.
Then it was the repetition of mechanically grabbing a stack, removing the rubber band, sorting through like a deck of cards in denominations and on to the next stack. Fortunately, it was rare to find anything under a twenty. When a stack got tippy I decided to count through and band stacks of $1,000, which would be fifty twenties but only ten $100. I worked methodically and part of my brain was reeling. Just how crooked was Dave? Was this drug money, or hush money, or payment for a kill, or from a bank robbery, or what? I remembered an old line from a movie that money doesn’t care–if you use a hundred dollar bill to buy medicine for a sick child in Africa, the bill doesn’t care that it came from a bank robbery in Chicago. People care, but the money itself didn’t.
It took me hours but by noon I’d finished my computation, after consolidating as I went and then consolidating further once the box was empty and stacks opened. I sat back and stared at the result. Not counting what I’d spent for Steffi, it added up to $163, 760. My brain locked up, going ‘omigod, omigod, omigod!’ I knew that this was Debbie’s running-away money for her and Steven, and so now I dedicated it to Steffi, as I’m absolutely certain Debbie would want.
So now I was faced with storing the cash. I thought of a bank but knew any account would bring the IRS and I couldn’t properly explain the money. A safe-deposit box was an option, but still there was all of that back and forth that could draw suspicion. God, the subterfuge a lot of money demands! I had a twinge of conscience about the IRS because Mark and I had always been scrupulously honest, but I was pretty sure that if I declared it, in my zeal to be honest, the money would be confiscated as being ‘dirty’. And, damn it–that was money my sister wanted her child to have!
Then I thought of a safe of my own; I’d always been concerned about the cash on hand from the inn. Although most customers used credit cards, there was still enough cash laying about that we kept in a small safe in the meat locker. It was awkward and too many people probably knew about it by now. I went online to Office Depot and Staples and checked the prices and sizes of safes that could fit the pile of cash and a little to spare, and they were surprisingly affordable, as against a single year’s rental of a safe-deposit box. I placed my order and charged it to the inn as a business expense. In the meantime, I put the money back in the box, taped it back up, and stuck it under my desk with another box on top. I repaired the drawer and put everything back and went to lunch.
I found that I was washing my hands thoroughly. The whole thing was making me feel unclean.
A hundred and sixty-three grand–Debbie, Debbie; what the hell was Dave up to, and how did you not get caught? Suddenly I realized that if she had managed to squirrel away that much money without Dave even noticing, how huge were the sums that were actually passing through his hands? Then I thought of her resolve to finish nursing school, and her decision to change Steven, and I knew that her steely determination allowed her to steal from a thief. Once again I was in awe of my little sister. And a little afraid of her, in retrospect.
At lunch I saw Steffi; she’d woken and dressed in new khaki capris and a yellow sleeveless v-neck shell. She wore a bra and had brushed her hair out and straight back, held in place by a headband. She looked absolutely fresh and girlish and happy. I reminded her that Carla was coming and she nodded and said she’d be changing into ‘her sweats’, the ones I’d given her, but that she knew she had to dress well now that she would be in public areas, even if only the staff could see her. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness and realized I’m going to have to have a blanket statement for the staff, some of whom were new but some, like Don and Bonnie, had been with the inn when Mark and I bought it. Since we were alone, I asked if Steffi had any trouble with the ‘cover story’ being that Steven and Stephanie were fraternal twins and that Debbie and Steven had been killed in the crash and Stephanie the only survivor, terribly hurt, including the ‘head trauma’ story to cover lapses.
Steffi frowned a bit and said, ‘I know you don’t like lying. I’ve …lied a lot already and I don’t like to do it. But this cover story …it works, I think. It fits for people that might have heard you talk about your nephew Steven over the years. And I like it because, in a way, Steven did die in the accident.’ She gave me a look of determination, much as her mother’s looks that I’d just been thinking of. I leaned over and squeezed her hand. ‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ and she squeezed back and said, ‘And my aunt’s niece!’ I had a thought and quickly went to find Tim and brought him into our little dining area.
‘Tim knows about Steven,’ I told Steffi, ‘and he’s okay with it. Right, Tim?’ and bless him, he smiled and said, ‘You look quite pretty today, Steffi’ with such a warm grin that even if I didn’t love this old man before, I sure did now! Steffi blushed and thanked him, and I told Tim that we had a cover story for the staff and people in town and tried it out on him. He listened critically and said, ‘Only one thing missing. Steffi is beautiful, smart, and a wonderful person. How have you not told folks about your lovely niece before?’ We both thanked him for his compliments but he was right. Then I realized that about the only things I’d ever said about Steven, in response to a letter from Debbie, were things like, his grades weren’t good or he was becoming too much like his father. Tim nodded and said, ‘That’ll work, if you think about it. Think of Marc Antony’s speech about Julius Caesar … ‘the good oft lies interred with their bones’. You didn’t mention Steffi’s good grades and such because she was overshadowed by Steven’s shenanigans. How’s that?’
He looked closely at Steffi and she blanched and then nodded. Tim said to her, ‘Steffi, I know all about you. I’m the only one besides Donna here that does. I want you to know two things. First, that I fully support who you are becoming, what you’re trying to do with your life. And second, that I will never betray you.’ He looked at me and said, ‘I think most folks will come to me if they’re confused. You know, pull me aside and say, ‘Didn’t she have a nephew?’ It was smart to bring me into the loop, so to speak. Hey, Steffi; you’re a computer whiz. Photoshop and all?’
Steffi nodded, surprised at the sudden question. Tim chuckled and said, ‘And you’re also thinking, whoa, the old gardener knows about Photoshop?’ He glanced at me. ‘Your aunt might tell you that I’m not quite as rustic as I look.’ Steffi blushed and said, ‘Sorry’, and Tim said, ‘Don’t worry about it. So, in your spare time–after your homework is done, young lady–’ He waved a finger, grinning, ‘–you might want to take any old photos you might have and see if you can’t Photoshop young Stephanie into them.’
The look of amazement and that ‘of course!’ moment on her face was priceless. Tim nodded and said, ‘Got weeds to get to, you’ve got Carla coming in ten minutes, and Donna …good job,’ he grinned and squeezed my shoulder as he passed.
‘God, I love that man,’ I said after he left. That made me think and I said, ‘Sweetie, you’re already aware of two not-so-great men. Your father was charming and handsome, but he was a criminal and deserted you before …’ And without blinking, Steffi said, ‘Before they killed him.’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘You know this? I mean, for sure?’ Steffi nodded. ‘I overheard Mom. I thought you knew.’ I didn’t, but managed to hide how stunned I was. She tilted her head. ‘On second thought, Mom might not have told you. See, he was gone for months and months and we figured he was, you know, on the run.’
‘Mexico,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘It was a …what do you call it …what’s that word? God, Haynes would have a field day …’ She sat up smiling. ‘Euphemism! Mexico was a euphemism for wherever Dad ran to and laid low. But Mom got some calls from some people and …’ Her sunny mood collapsed suddenly. She looked down at the table, took a drink of juice, and her voice was very small. ‘They got him–I don’t know who they are; I don’t think Mom did–they got him in Los Angeles and ‘Soloed’ him. Mom found out it was a thing from the James Bond movie Goldfinger.’ We watched it one night and she explained it.”
‘My God, the guy in the car!’ I suddenly remembered. ‘He’s a trivia answer, because there was a TV show, um … The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in the Sixties, and the hero was Napoleon Solo, but the first guy named ‘Mr. Solo’ was a bad guy in that Bond movie!’ Ah, the things you pick up playing Trivial Pursuit!
Steffi nodded. ‘The guy in the movie was a bad guy, but he wasn’t totally bad, or wasn’t bad enough, maybe, because if you remember, he walked out on Goldfinger and said he wanted nothing to do with the plan. They shot him in the car and then took it to be compacted in a junk yard.’
I remembered the scene–Mark had loved the Sean Connery Bond movies–and my eyes were wide. ‘And you think that’s what happened to Dave?’
‘I know that’s what happened to him,’ Steffi said gloomily. ‘Mom got a confirmation, and we lived in fear that they’d come after us. And she was just starting to relax when …when she died.’
My God, the implications, I thought. Poor, poor Debbie, carrying all of that spiritual weight! Suddenly I realized that her decision to turn Steven into a girl had even more implications, especially with the stolen hundred and sixty grand in the bank. I bet she was afraid that the guys that got Dave would come after her, and she was planning to disappear with her new daughter …
Carla was due any minute, so I said my piece. ‘Honey, we got sidetracked there and thank you for telling me about Dave. And, um, I’m sorry. He was your father. So back to what I was saying about bad guys, or ‘not-so-great’ guys. Um …okay, Dave wasn’t a total bad guy, like Solo. And there’s Darryl, Tina’s husband, who is souring and getting worse after a golden promise. And I think he hits her, too.’
‘I’m pretty sure of it …just some things that she didn’t say,’ Steffi nodded, her jaw tightening. ‘Bastard! She’s so sweet!’
‘That’s my point, sweetie. Those guys are on one end of the scale of Men. At the other are guys like Tim, and Mark, my husband. Really absolutely wonderful human beings and real men that you can depend on and love and …’ I waved my hand in the air, out of words.
She looked at me so openly, so trusting, and so lovely. In a soft voice, she said, ‘I know you miss him so much it hurts. I’ll see these …shadows of sadness pass over your face and I know you’re thinking about him. I’m sorry, Andonna.’
The simple sincerity brought tears, but I sniffed them back, thanked her, and I was also amazed at her observation–Steven wouldn’t have noticed my pain and wouldn’t have put it so poetically. More to think about later, I decided …
I finished with, ‘You’re a girl now, and a very, very pretty girl, and boys are going to be interested in you. How you feel about that is something for another time but I know how they’re going to react once you’re healed and up and around. Basically, just–’
Carla was at the front so I stood and finished quicker than I’d wanted. ‘Basically, just be on your guard. Know that there are all types of males out there, some wonderful and some not so, and …oh, hell, we’ll talk about this later, maybe. Go get changed into your sweats and I’ll get Carla.’
I let Carla in and told her Steffi was changing. Then I chuckled and told her that already there was a very different patient waiting for her. I told her that she was partly responsible for naming her because of her accent, and thanked her for it. She smiled and nodded and handed me a slip of paper with the doctor’s name and number, the one that she recommended to handle Steffi’s situation.
When we got to Steffi’s room, she had the gray sweats and sleeveless yellow top; I hadn’t noticed it was cropped and how cute her tummy was getting. Her hair was up in a high, girlish ponytail and of course she still wore the burgundy nail polish. Carla took it all in and said, ‘Vood you prefer I call you Stef or Steffi, young lady?’ and Steffi said, ‘Either is fine. And thank you, Carla. For everything.’
Carla nodded and smiled as she turned to me; I could tell she was pleased. She told me that after exercises she was going to start Steffi–she said the name–on walking without crutches. She would look for what she called ‘touch-points’, like the edge of a desk or a bureau. Steffi would never be more than two steps away from a touch-point to support her should her legs give out. Carla would move things as needed on a temporary basis until Steffi’s legs got stronger. I approved. She said Steffi would move around–and Carla meant into the inn itself, the kitchen, and so on–from touch-point to touch-point, sort of like Tarzan swinging from vine to vine.
‘Can’t I be Jane, instead?’ Steffi said, cracking us up.
Carla grinned. ‘No, you vill be Stephanie, Queen Off The Chungle!’
I left them to their work. Later in the afternoon I saw Carla move a hallway armoire a couple of feet sideways and marveled at her strength, and then out came Stephanie, Queen of the Jungle, grinning hugely as she maneuvered through the halls. Carla got her back to her room and left a pain med with me ‘chust in case’
I finished up on the phone with the doctor, managing to get an appointment tomorrow–amazingly–just as Tina knocked at my office. I told her that business was probably light tonight so she could hang with Steffi as long as she wanted. If I needed her in the restaurant, I’d come get her. I planned to make an announcement tonight about her helping Steffi.
Steffi was tired but lit up when she saw Tina, who seemed to lose her cares when she saw Steffi. She was sitting on the bed, obviously tired, but grinned and raised her arms and Tina moved in for a hug. I left them to it and went to make my announcement. I gathered everybody, including Tim, excluding Tina, and said I had two announcements, one just to bring everybody up to speed and the other was new. First, I told them the new cover story about my niece, a fraternal twin, being the only survivor of my sister’s crash, and so on. I said her physical therapist was working with her on getting off the crutches which meant that she’d be much more present than the last couple of months. Some of them had met her or at least seen her, and some had only heard of her, but pretty soon she’d be working, maybe hostessing, wherever I could use her depending on her strength and ability.
The second announcement was that Tina had met her and the two had hit it off. ‘Let’s face it; she’d rather hang with Tina than her old aunt,’ I joked, pretending to grumble, but they nodded, understanding. I told them that Tina would be on the clock and ready to jump in at a moment’s notice, but that she would not be sharing in any tips–which brought small smiles to my wait staff. Everybody more or less understood the situation with Tina and Darryl, and agreed that helping to take care of Steffi was probably a good relief for Tina. I thanked them for that, and said that Steffi’s doctor also thought it was good she had someone closer to her own age to help her recovery.
Then I dropped the final piece into the puzzle, or mini-bombshell, or whatever. I explained that Stephanie had severe facial injuries and reconstruction and that there had been some brain trauma. Not brain damage, I stressed. But the trauma was such that her brain had some short circuits that needed repairing.
‘You’ll find that she doesn’t seem to know some things she should know, or rather, did know,’ I explained. ‘Those are areas that just need to be reconnected.’ I told them that she couldn’t remember if her ears were pierced or not, for instance, knowing that Tina was probably piercing them as I spoke. Everybody understood and said they’d be patient with her, and Tim spoke up and said that he’d probably spoken with Steffi the most, besides Tina, and take it from him–she was a wonderful, smart girl who survived a horrific fatal crash. She wasn’t fragile, just mending. And ‘real easy on the eyes, too!’ he grinned, and the meeting ended on that positive note. Job well done, Tim!
I was pleasantly surprised that we had a bit of a rush on dinner; I was tempted to get Tina but I did the hostess duties, freeing up Bonnie to waitress, and we got through it. Once it was slow again I went up to see how Steffi and Tina were doing. It was a repeat of before; I heard the giggling even as I knocked. Inside it was also a repeat, but different. They were at Steffi’s desk; Steffi sat hunched at the desk, applying eye makeup and studying herself in the new makeup mirror I’d just bought. Tina stood, leaning and watching as she was teaching. Steffi turned to me with a huge smile.
‘Andonna! Look!’ she cried happily as she pulled her hair behind her ears. ‘Do you like them?’
True to her word, Tina had pierced Steffi’s ears, which now sported the traditional gold studs. The difference to Steffi’s appearance was subtle yet definitive; she looked even more feminine.
‘I lectured her on hygiene and gave her some disinfectant. Hope it’s okay,’ Tina said.
I assured her that it was, that I approved, and that it looked lovely. I complimented her on the makeup technique; it looked like they’d bypassed the typical teen girl thing of raccoon eyes, since Tina was older and was studying cosmetology. Of course I knew Steffi would get into makeup; I’d bought the kit after all, but I wasn’t prepared for how great she looked. She looked sixteen or even eighteen; she did not look like a fourteen-year-old boy that was becoming a girl, or for that matter like any typical fourteen-year-old girl, either.
I told Tina that it was an incredible job, but there was about an hour left on ‘her shift’, keeping to her regular work hours, so maybe she could teach Steffi a less glamorous look, something for a young teen girl during daytime? She nodded and grinned. I quickly told Tina about the speech I’d given to the staff, and warned Steffi that she was not to abuse the privilege Tina had. If she was needed in the restaurant, that’s where she would be, no matter what the girls had planned or how lonely Steffi was. She hung her head and said, ‘Yes, Aunt Donna’ like a Good Little Girl and it was hard for me to keep a straight face.
Back in the restaurant things were slowing so we ended on time and on the way back I came upon Tina and Steffi. Steffi was walking slowly, with the touch-point system of Carla’s, and Tina had her crutches with her. Tina said Steffi had wanted to get moving, and I think she wanted to be seen with her new earrings and makeup, too. She looked lovely; Tina had got the makeup exactly right. And I noted that Steffi wanted to be seen in a public area and was wearing the denim skirt, showing her long, pale but very shapely legs. She also wore a fuchsia camisole with thin spaghetti straps, and I could see she wore the lavender bra.
There was a soft gasp behind me and I turned to see Bonnie and Eduardo, staring at my pretty niece. Eduardo turned and playfully slapped Bonnie’s shoulder. ‘And you said she was a boy! ’ Bonnie grinned and said, ‘I may have misunderstood …’ and I realized that this had been perfect timing on Steffi’s part, as well as establishing Tina’s validity being away from the restaurant and helping Steffi–because walking slowly and carrying the crutches, this looked more like physical therapy and not the fun the girls had been having earlier. I did the formal introduction and was quite proud of how secure Steffi seemed to be. I hugged her and told her not to overdo it; better to head back to her room and Tina had to go home, which brought a sad cloud to Tina’s smiling face.
Poor girl. I was so blessedly lucky with my husband. I had an inspiration that might bring a smile to her.
‘Tina, Steffi and I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. She’s only got casual wear here; why don’t the three of us go see if I’ve got something for her to wear that’s a little bit more …first-time-meeting-your-doctor-y, maybe?’
I was thinking specifically of an outfit I had but Steffi might balk and I thought Tina might persuade her. We trooped into my room and I pulled a couple of things out that I didn’t hold much hope for. Tina was saying that a blouse was better than a top because her hair would get messy taking it over her head, which I knew and planned for Tina to say. I didn’t want to be the pushy parental figure; I know there’s going to be plenty of opportunities for that in time.
Finally I suggested the outfit, which was a white pointelle skirt, to mid-calf, that had a cute bolero jacket. Tina loved it and I think Steffi did, too, because I knew she was self-conscious about the damage to her legs–but they’d looked darned good in the denim miniskirt tonight. And the doctor’s going to see her naked, but modesty is modesty and I know she is still so fragile. I said that normally a sleeveless shell would be nice for the outfit, but we sorted through blouses and found a sleeveless pale green sateen that I thought I’d lost. I really have to spend some time getting reacquainted with my closet, I thought. After Mark died I was so lost and didn’t care how I looked or dressed. It was only the routine of running the inn that kept me going.
Strike that. Truth be told, Tim pretty much ran things and made it look like I did it; he was my rock and I was a sobbing mess for so long …
The sandals I’d already bought worked with the skirt and jacket so we were set. Tina asked some sensible and frightening questions. She asked about Steffi’s purse and jewelry. Perfectly sensible; even in the terrible accident, a girl’s purse would be retrieved and kept with the patient, right? And she would have had her daily jewelry on, the assorted bracelets, rings, and necklaces that all teen girls wear. Perfectly sensible, and it frightened me that I hadn’t thought of it before, and wondered what else I’d missed. Steffi gave me a stricken look and I said the original hospital–not the one around here–had screwed up and her purse and wallet had gone missing and we’d filed a report to get them back. Her jewelry was removed for surgery, of course, and put in her purse, so we knew they were together at that point, but after that …I shrugged. ‘Hospital security got a black eye on this one. They’re bending over backward to explain how it happened, but there’s a ninety-day period. Then they have to pay the value of the items to us.’
Tina bought it completely, and grinned. ‘That’s when you get to stick it to ‘em, and tell them about the diamond brooch, the platinum necklace, the Rolex …’ I grinned back and said, ‘Tina, I may have to rethink this association. You might be a bad influence on my niece!’ and we both laughed.
Meanwhile Steffi was trying the clothes on and looked wonderful. I could tell she was exhausted and in some pain from her long day of walking without crutches, so Tina and I quickly approved her look and helped her undress and led her back to her room. She got ready for bed while I filled in Tina on a couple of things that had been said tonight in the restaurant, but we both feel that Bonnie and Eduardo would spread the news of the assistance that Tina was providing. I paid Tina and about then Steffi came out of the bathroom, ready for bed, so pretty in her nightie. The girls hugged and Tina left and I hugged and kissed Steffi goodnight.
I love my niece!
End of Part 6
I paid Tina and about then Steffi came out of the bathroom, ready for bed, so pretty in her nightie. The girls hugged and Tina left and I hugged and kissed Steffi goodnight.
I love my niece!
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
I just sat down to write this and saw my last entry. It’s true, it’s true. What a sweetie!
Okay. We got up and showered and ate in our robes, Steffi with her damp hair still wrapped in a towel, and then went to dress. She managed to get a pretty good re-creation of the everyday makeup that Tina had shown her. She decided to wear her hair in the high ponytail because it was a thick, un-styled mane any other way. At least up it was girlish and cute and out of the way. I think she also wanted to show off her new earrings!
On the drive to the doctor’s, I could tell Steffi was nervous; she had no idea how nervous I was, despite Carla’s assurance that the doctor ‘vas knowlech-able’, in her words. This was the first time that Steffi could really see her new surroundings, and reminded me of a puppy in a car, looking every which way at all the new sights. I gave her a running commentary and it took the edge off our nerves.
The doctor’s office was in a newer part of town. A software company had relocated nearby and there had been a spurt of growth. The utilitarian outside was countered by her lovely office, all earth tones and small fountains and a sense of Fung Shui without being overly-Asian or New Age-y. Dr. Elizabeth Hastert turned out to be a white-haired patrician, almost the female half of Marcus Welby, I thought. She had an elegant posture and even before I saw the diplomas in her office I could tell she came from both Money and Ivy League. Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Mass Gen, and Bellevue Psychiatric. That’s some hard-core doctoring, I thought!
She met with both of us and it was just general pleasantries. I think she wanted to size us up a little before proceeding, and show us that she wasn’t the boogieman. Then she buzzed for an assistant to take Steffi away; she was going to give blood and urine, be weighed and measured and all of that. It was also an opportunity for us to talk as adults without Steffi hearing.
Once Steffi was gone, Dr. Hastert gave a grim smile and said, ‘So, what’s the truth of the matter?’ I verified we had doctor-patient confidentiality, and launched into my tale. I’ve been so worried about what to say and what not to, but I knew that I had to tell her pretty much everything except for the CDs. Steffi didn’t know about them; Debbie’s letter–which I’d brought–didn’t mention them specifically, and there didn’t seem to be any brainwashing but rather a …releasing of the girl within Steven. And I hadn’t played the really feminizing CDs, anyway. Also, I didn’t want to mention that it appeared that Debbie was also disguising her child to ‘make a run for it’. That took a little dodging, that I rationalized as ‘not medical’ information. Meanwhile I hopped all around with pronouns …
Condensed, I said, ‘I don’t know all of the dynamics between my sister and Steven; Steffi’s still pretty traumatized about the death of her mother. But there seems to be an inner girl that Debbie wanted to free, or at least get in touch with. I don’t know when, but sometime last year she began giving either androgen blockers or estrogen or both, as vitamins. She didn’t tell Steven or maybe she did; Steffi’s made no reference to it and I’m still tip-toeing around their relationship until she’s stronger. I was shocked that it was going on and had no clue, but since the doctors that patched her up after the accident didn’t seem to find anything wrong, I thought I should continue the dosage her body was used to, while I sorted it out. I probably should have immediately sought medical help but it seemed secondary to her healing, and coming to grips that everything she’d known was now gone.’
I felt I had to go into the truth about Dave a little bit. ‘This is a hard thing to discuss, but I think you have to know this: Debbie’s husband was a professional criminal. Not like a crooked used-car dealer; I mean the real, veteran professional criminal like you see in movies but not so glamorous. I don’t know what he did and I’m not sure Debbie did; she certainly didn’t know anything about it when she married him. It was always ‘Regional Sales’, with some traveling. But he stripped them of virtually everything and disappeared and the police and everyone seems to think he’s dead. But not declared dead, officially, yet. Not legally dead. Anyway, things were screwed up and after the accident I flew back and managed to get some of Debbie’s things for storage, but a lot of stuff was gone and the house was a rental and the owners had sent their possessions to charity. It’s a terrible epitaph for my hardworking sister. When my husband died she tried to be helpful but didn’t have the money to come care for me, and she obviously had her hands full.’
The doctor was neutral and taking notes.
‘So once Steffi healed to the point where she wasn’t just laying in bed in pain, we got to talking about it. She knows she was a boy but says that she’s really a girl and wants to live as a girl. I’m treating her as a girl and that’s pretty much it. I hope I’ve done the right things, and I hope that you can help her.’
‘Help her to do what?’ Dr. Hastert asked.
‘Either help her to live the life she wants, or …I guess, help her live the life she needs. And heal her as best you can.’
The doctor considered me for a moment and then asked, ‘Mrs. Everton, I understand you had limited contact with your sister’s family over the years, but you did see Steven when he was younger. Would you say that he was a normal, healthy boy?’
‘Normal?’ I frowned. ‘Um …I’m not sure I know what normal means at that age.’
The doctor said, ‘Well, did he roughhouse? Run around? Was he into sports, hang around with other boys?’
I thought for a moment and said, ‘Not really. I mean, he may have been on his best behavior because I was visiting; I don’t know. But those don’t seem like things he was into; Debbie never mentioned them. I kind of remember him reading a lot.’ I tried a grin. ‘I mean, he was no Tom Sawyer but he might have read about him!’
The doctor made a note and said, ‘Can you recall any activities or discussions you may have had? I realize it was a long time ago.’
I said, ‘No …discussions, not with Steven. Debbie mentioned around that time that Dave was getting frustrated with Steven not being, I guess, his idea of a son. I remember Debbie being glad because …’ I paused, and the doctor waited. I had to go on. ‘It was about the time she learned that he wasn’t a salesman, but a crook. A professional thief, mostly. It’s likely that Dave was looking for ‘a chip off the old block’, you know? A son to follow in his father’s footsteps? But he wasn’t getting that from Steven. So if Steven wasn’t growing up like his thief of a father, don’t you think she’d be pleased?’
Her only response to that was to purse her lips as she wrote. ‘Did you have any sort of interaction with Steven when he was younger?’
I had to work at remembering. It was painful to go back to a time when Mark was first showing symptoms of his cancer, and yet my trip to Debbie’s was already planned and he wanted me to go. We thought we had years together …
Getting past that sad memory, I recalled my visit. ‘Steven showed me the books he was reading, you know, children’s books. And he drew a lot, some coloring books ….’ I frowned as a memory surfaced. ‘He showed me his coloring books, too, and as I think about it, they were …you know how boys just go rub-rub-rub with the crayons but girls sometimes outline and then color carefully inside the outline?’ The doctor nodded and I did, too. ‘I just remembered–just flashed on the memory–of the contrasting outlines he used, because of the pretty colors. Hmm …Oh, and he helped Debbie a lot around the house so as we–Debbie and I–were talking, he’d be there. You know, making dinner or doing the laundry, that sort of thing.’
She finished a long set of notes and then looked at me when she asked the next question. ‘In your opinion, back when you visited and met young Steven, as an observer, not as an aunt …would you say he was effeminate?’
I frowned. ‘It’s hard to …filter out now from then, but I’d have to give a qualified ‘sort-of’.’ The doctor remained impassive and I went on to explain. ‘I didn’t really put it all together back then, but looking at it now, and as I’m telling you, I’m thinking like a check list, ‘Hmm …not like his father, spent most of his time with his mother, no other friends known, cooked, did laundry, shared stories from books, did the coloring books …’ I shrugged. ‘And he was small, you know? Not skinny, not scrawny like he was under-nourished. He was just …petite. God, I never thought of him in that way before–with that word–but it fits. He was petite, and he was sort of delicate. I don’t mean he bruised easily; I mean he had, like …little bones. Like his mother. I towered over her when we were growing up.’ Happy memories and the shock of her loss both hit me at once but I gulped and soldiered on. ‘So add all that up and he would seem to fit the category or definition of effeminate, for a boy, I mean. But was he swishy, limp-wristed, pardon-my-word-choice–faggy? No, he was …’
She caught me just as I’d caught myself. ‘He was …what?’
‘Um …I’m not shading this; it’s only coming to me as I talk to you now. I’d …I’d have to say in retrospect …I didn’t think of it at the time, but looking back I’d have to say he was like a girl. Like her daughter. But not an effeminate boy. Look, girls aren’t effeminate. There’s no imitation or affectation involved, no pretense, no acting. Some little girls hunt and fish and ride horses and some are girly-girls and don’t get past My Little Pony. But you wouldn’t call them any of them effeminate. They’re just …girls.’
‘So you’re saying that Steven was girlish?’
‘Not girlish. Not girly, either. Not in the sense of acting like a girl. He was just my sister’s six-year-old, you know? But looking back–even without Steffi being in the other room–with how small and quiet and helpful he was, and doing the cooking and laundry and just spending time with his mom and me, I’d have to say that Steven was more of a typical six-year-old girl than a typical boy of that age. I don’t think I can explain it any better; I’m sorry.’
Dr. Hastert actually smiled. ‘You’ve explained it excellently; thank you. They should be done with Steffi; let me check.’ She buzzed somebody and a little later Steffi came back in and sat down. It was my time to leave the room. I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and a smile and went out. I’d brought some back issues of a restaurant industry magazine that I hadn’t had time to read. I got through them but still the time dragged. Finally I was called back in, going in with the nurse who handed a file to the doctor. I gave Steffi a smile of encouragement as I sat; she leaned over and whispered, ‘I don’t know if I did okay or not,’ and I squeezed her hand. ‘Just what I was gonna say,’ I grinned, and she squeezed back.
The doctor continued to read the file, flipping up pages, and said casually, ‘When did you start letting your hair grow, Steffi?’ and Steffi answered, ‘Almost two years ago. I was …I thought it would make me look like a rocker and maybe the guys would leave me alone.’
The doctor nodded. ‘Did it work?’
And Steffi looked sheepishly at me and said, ‘No, I still got hassled.’
The doctor then said, ‘When you realized the rocker thing wasn’t working, why didn’t you cut it?’
Steffi looked at me again, and said, ‘Because I liked it. It made me feel …’ and she looked at me, frowning, and back to the doctor.
I looked at the doctor but said to Steffi, ‘Steffi, honey …maybe you shouldn’t look at me before answering. Even I think it makes you look coached or something.’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, her eyes wide. ‘I wasn’t …Doctor, I wasn’t coached! It’s just …this is all so new, to be answering these kinds of questions, and I’m sharing with my aunt …’
‘I understand,’ Dr. Hastert smiled. ‘So you were talking about not cutting your hair, because it made you feel …what?’
‘It made me feel more …me.’
The doctor nodded and made a small note.
Steffi and I looked at each other and shrugged.
She closed the file, sat back and looked at both of us. My stomach was in knots. The first thing she said was that Steffi’s hormone levels were right where they should be. In fact, if Dr. Hastert were to prescribe hormone therapy, she would have prescribed just those hormones at just those dosages. She fully appreciated the research Debbie had done, and said she’d been thorough. She looked at me and then squarely faced Steffi.
‘Your life will be full of hurdles, but there is one major hurdle we have to get over if we are to proceed. This will come as a shock to you, but I will not consider taking you as a patient–no physician will–without you being aware of …certain information.’ Steffi and I looked at each other worriedly, and she said for the doctor to go on.
Dr. Hastert said, ‘As near as I can tell from the information I’ve received, your mother began dosing you with hormones approximately eighteen to twenty months ago. A combination of medications, one that would block any development as a male, and the other to …well, jump-start your development as a female.’ She paused.
Steffi just sat there. My brain was screaming that I wanted hit a Pause button, grab Steffi and run for it.
The doctor said, ‘Your mother ended your chance at a male puberty and detoured you into a female puberty. From what you’ve told me, this was done without your knowledge.’ She looked at me and then back to Steffi. ‘And your aunt has continued the process. I understand that it was your mother’s dying request to her sister, your Aunt Donna, that she continue the procedure. Your aunt was trapped by not knowing about the situation, her respect for her sister’s wishes, and what seemed like your …tendency along those lines.’ She frowned, unhappy with her word choice. Before she could continue, we were both startled by Steffi’s next statement.
‘I know,’ Steffi said, matter-of-factly. While we stared, she went on, as simply as if she was telling us a recipe. ‘Mom didn’t say ‘I’m going to turn you into a girl’ one day. And it wasn’t like the very first pills I took, I wanted to put on a dress. It’s been a long, gradual thing. But Mom and I had been talking–my aunt doesn’t really know this–and she knew I was unhappy. Heck, my grades, the stealing, getting beaten up–who would be happy? But it was more than that. I did tell her one night, after she and Dad had another huge fight, I told Mom that I should have been her daughter.’
We stared. The doctor looked at me and she could tell this was news to me. She said to Steffi, ‘And what happened then?’
She shrugged. ‘A little later I got new ‘vitamins’. But the way Mom watched me I could tell they were something special and I realized what they must be. She was so worried when she looked at me, so finally, I said, ‘Mom, it’s okay. I want this.’
‘Did you want it?’ I asked. ‘Or did you just say that so Debbie–your mom–wouldn’t look so worried?’
‘I don’t know,’ Steffi said. ‘Or, I didn’t know at the time, not in so many words. But, I’m not stupid. I knew what was happening to me, what we were doing–together–and I thought about it at night, when I began to notice things changing, my body, I mean. And I didn’t just like it; I wanted it. I remember one night saying to myself, ‘Bring it on!’ and thinking about the cheerleader movie, you know? The same name? And being a cheerleader and just …’ She shrugged. ‘Bring it on. I was kind of worried the doctors would notice, you know, after the crash? And try to make me be a boy. I was worried that they might have done something to me. And when Aunt Donna gave me the same pills, I knew that …you know, whew! I was going to be able to continue.’
‘Continue?’ Dr. Hastert asked.
Steffi nodded. ‘Continue on to becoming Stephanie.’ She looked at me. ‘I’m so lucky to have Andonna–Aunt Donna–who understands. Or even if she didn’t understand, she followed Mom’s wishes. Because they were both of our wishes.’ She finished and looked complacently at us.
Dr. Hastert stared at her, stared at me staring at Steffi, and then bent to make more notes. ‘Mrs. Everton, do you have a sufficient quantity of those pills to continue?’ I said yes, for a time, without going into details. ‘I’d like you to bring me two or three of each at your convenience. Then I’ll prescribe the same, possibly alter the dosage depending on how Steffi’s doing.’ She smiled at Steffi. ‘That is, if you two will accept me as her doctor.’
I said, ‘You mean you want her for a patient?’ and she nodded and smiled. ‘You two have already done most of the heavy lifting, so to speak. You’ve leapfrogged over what usually takes years. Steffi is very close to the developmental norm for girls her age. She’s a little on the low-ish side of the curve but that will work out in time. As for the formalities, Bridget in my office will handle all the paperwork; she’ll have a packet of things for you at her desk. Now, then, you two …’ She steepled her fingers. ‘Time for a couple of questions that may be easy to answer or may be hard or impossible to answer at this point. In our one-on-one talks, you’ve both given me answers but it’s important that you both make your feelings known, to me and to each other.’
‘We’re ready, doctor,’ I said.
Steffi added, ‘And thank you, Dr. Hastert.’
‘My pleasure, Steffi,’ Dr. Hastert smiled. ‘Okay, Tough Question Number One. Steffi, do you want to fully, completely become a girl, living as a girl and as a woman for the rest of your life?’
‘Absolutely,’ my pretty niece answered confidently.
‘Mrs. Everton, are you prepared for that?’
‘Absolutely, doctor,’ I smiled.
‘Tough Question Number Two: Steffi, what about the status of your penis?’
Steffi grinned. ‘That’s one of the easy ones! I want it off. I told Andonna this; it doesn’t belong there. I don’t really feel like it belongs to me. It’s just something I pee through but …I want it removed. I know you’re talking about ‘the surgery’,’ she crooked her fingers in air-quotes, ‘and yes, as soon as possible. I want a vagina. I want my vagina. I want the vagina I was cheated out of at birth.’
I’d never thought of it that way before, and marveled at her succinctly phrasing–and the daily torment she must be in.
Dr. Hastert nodded. ‘This question may be premature at this point, but I might as well ask it. Tough Question Number Three: Steffi, what about boys?’
Steffi frowned slightly. ‘I don’t have any experience there, yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m attracted to them. That got to be …sort of a problem at school,’ she blushed. ‘Almost got killed because of it. But I wasn’t gay; I mean, I didn’t want to be a boy with them; I wanted them to want me as a girl. One boy, especially …I wanted to be his girl. And it was all so …’ She shuddered and in a quiet voice, ‘…awful.’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ I said without thinking. ‘I never knew!’ I reached over and squeezed her hand again.
Dr. Hastert said, ‘Steffi, last step. Not a question, but a statement from you. I need you to tell me–and your aunt, and yourself by saying it out loud–exactly what you want. Out of me, out of life, whatever.’
Steffi nodded, bowed her head for a moment, thinking, and then raised it and in a clear voice said, ‘I want to become a girl indistinguishable from any other, naturally-born girl. I want my breasts and my vagina and all the good and the bad that being a woman in the world means. I want to live everyday for the rest of my life as a female with no reminder or thought of being male. I want to fall in love with a wonderful man …like my Uncle Mark, and marry him and have his babies. Well, adopt, I guess. And I want to die an old, happy woman.’
I had a lump in my throat at her declaration and nearly lost it when she mentioned Mark. I stifled the sob and dabbed my eyes as she continued. It was a lovely, lovely statement. It seemed to move Dr. Hastert, who for once didn’t write anything down, but sat smiling and nodding. Then her smile grew bigger.
‘Then let’s make it happen,’ she said calmly.
End of Part 7
Steffi declared in a clear voice, ‘I want to become a girl indistinguishable from any other, naturally-born girl. I want to live everyday for the rest of my life as a female with no reminder or thought of being male. And I want to die an old, happy woman.’
‘Then let’s make it happen,’ Dr. Hastert said calmly.
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
Unbelievable, how it went with Dr. Hastert! Thank you, Carla, and God bless you! We left for lunch while the lab work was processed, and I went straight to a Bennigan’s that had opened since the last time I was in that area. We were seated and ordered before it dawned on Steffi that she was out in public fully dressed as a girl. She gave me a strange look as we both realized and then we laughed. It was a wonderful moment to watch her blossom, to watch her accept that she was a girl in the world now–a pretty girl in the world.
I was still stunned by the appointment. There had been that shocked silence before we realized that the doctor had accepted my story, her story, our story …no, that’s not right. It makes it sound like we were lying when we weren’t. Well …I did the ‘sin of omission’ by not mentioning the CDs. It was a sort of lie, but then again, the feminizing CDs hadn’t been played. Setting aside for a moment how feminine Steve-now-Steffi has become, the CDs seem to have resulted in a kinder person with a good work ethic. Since the CD documentation didn’t mention any feminizing in the CDs already played, I don’t think any doctor, when medically evaluating a patient, would care that now the patient can study better. That would seem to be more the province of a psychiatrist. So I didn’t feel that I’d lied to Dr. Hastert.
But had Steffi lied? Or at least embroidered the situation? At some point I realized I’d have to ask Steffi if she really knew about the hormones. I’d already learned that she’s very, very smart and might have instantly put two and two together, realizing that the doctor would not allow anything to go one step further if she thought Steven had been turned into a girl without his knowledge.
While we ate–at a corner booth out of the way; I’d requested it from the hostess–Steffi told me of her experience, her first time with the paper-gown-and-stirrup-chair. She had about the same emotions all of us females do, exposed like that, but with the added shame of having male genitals dangling between her legs. She loved when the doctor inspected her breasts–because it seemed to validate her femaleness–and hated when the doctor inspected her penis–because it seemed to validate her maleness. But Dr. Hastert was coolly professional, treating her genitals with the same calm detachment as when she looked into Steffi’s eyes with the little penlight. All I could say was, ‘We all hate it and endure it; just remember that even Dr. Hastert has to climb up on one of those things!’ and we giggled because neither of us could quite picture it.
When we were together again with the doctor in her office, Dr. Hastert had explained some of the test results that had just come back, that all supported the assumption that at some point for some reason–maybe in the womb, for example–Steven’s body and mind were more inclined to be female. By a large margin, actually; perhaps even without any blockers or hormones, Steven’s female inclination would have been apparent. The delicate child I’d remembered from my long-ago visit now made perfect sense. So now Steffi would remain on the hormones, since her body was used to them. Debbie’s nursing skills (and any doctors she’d sought advice from) had the dosage correct so far. The main thing now was ‘socialization’; as soon as she healed to the point where she could regularly be out and about, it was time for Steffi to enter the world. She needed to meet girls her own age, develop friendships and eventually that special BFF relationship so vital to girls. She needed to learn to interact as a girl with boys. And she needed to start thinking of her future life as a girl and woman.
Dr. Hastert went on to tell us that there would be all sort of legal hoops to jump through, which surprised me; I hadn’t thought things through fully. The doctor was well-practiced in things; the only unusual complication was our relationship. Dr. Hastert pointed out that first, I had to get legal guardianship. I had just assumed that with Debbie gone I assumed guardianship. What a bozo I am!
Once the legal guardianship is established we can go for the name change that will officially welcome Stephanie Everton to the world! Steffi had told me on the way to Bennigan’s that she didn’t want her father’s name anymore and for some reason didn’t want our maiden name, Bridger. But to keep Mark’s name and memory going, I’m delighted she wants Everton. And it will simplify things when we’re both introduced to people as ‘the Evertons’.
School records? I had no idea how to do that; thank God it was in the paperwork from Dr. Hastert’s secretary. So, guardianship, name change, school records. And then on with our lives …
Watching her eat, I was struck by how …feminine she is. Naturally. The doctor’s question about Steven being effeminate didn’t have any meaning. How she handled her fork, tucked hair behind her ear, used her free hand to gesture while she talked …how much was her and how much were the CDs? And could they affect, I don’t know …I guess you could call them ‘motor functions’, bodily movements, whatever. I couldn’t see how you could subliminally make someone use their hands a certain way.
Suddenly I realized what it was. The CDs didn’t make Steffi’s gestures feminine; the CDs allowed her to remove or get around the mental block of how a male was supposed to gesture and act. The CDs released the inner person, perhaps. I realized in a flash how the process actually worked: If a customer ordered a set of ‘Stop-Smoking’ CDs, for example, it was because they wanted to quit but something else was in their mind–besides the nicotine addiction–that was preventing them from fully quitting. The CDs couldn’t make somebody start to want to quit; but they would allow the person who already wanted to quit to get around the block and the desire to quit would seem stronger. It was always there, but blocked.
In the case of ‘feminizing’ CDs, it would be similar. If the listener’s inner person wanted to be female–or was female, in their core identity, the CDs would allow them to express it openly. If the inner person were a male, with naturally masculine gestures, there probably wouldn’t be any change. I hadn’t really seen Steven gesture or move for years but I imagine he sort of ‘butched things up’ without consciously thinking about it, because he’d been worried about his size, and the bullying, and trying to match up to his father. And Steven had been fighting Steffi’s emergence even though she hadn’t had a name at that time.
That was the hardest thing to wrap my head around–how it would be to have one nature inside of you and do everything you could to mask or deny that nature, and be faced with a lifetime of lying to yourself, keeping yourself hidden. And if psychologists are right, all of that might be happening without even being conscious of it happening. No wonder you might start acting up, getting in trouble, letting your grades slip. So for whatever conscious or unconscious reasons Debbie had, whether she knew she was freeing her trapped daughter or she’d just decided to eliminate her unruly son, she had acted in the best interest of her child.
And as stunned as I’d been to hear Steffi calmly, rationally explain her past to Dr. Hastert, it felt like truth. It seemed to connect the dots, fill in the missing blanks, whatever metaphor. Maybe I wanted to believe it was true–that Steven was transgender all along, acted out to over-compensate, and perhaps persuaded his mother to begin his transition to female–because it let me off the hook, so to speak. I’d thought Debbie was forcing girlhood on him and, to my shame, I continued her program. Knowing that there was no forcing involved was a relief but can’t really expiate my guilt. But at least I didn’t damage my niece!
Wow …so much to think about!
After the doctor’s it was Mall Time. Steffi was understandably nervous and excited. I was concerned about her strength and walking ability and was keeping an eye on her for signs of tiring, but her excitement was giving her new energy. Still, we moved slowly due to the crutches and to keep from exhaustion, and I forced her to sit several times on those little couches. I’d use the sitting time to talk about our next target.
As I promised, it was time for the bra fitter. I’d called while Steffi was in with the doctor so she was expecting us. This is a rite of passage for all daughters and mothers, or for us, nephews and aunts (?). I’ve got to just forget ever thinking that; Steffi is my niece. And always has been, really. The fitter, Mrs. Gonzalez, was excellent with a ‘bedroom manner’ even sweeter than Dr. Hastert. She was almost grandmotherly and took the nervous girl under her wing. Steffi said she’d like me to be present, not to check up on Mrs. Gonzalez but to share in the ritual. I gave her a warm smile and observed.
Steffi removed her bolero jacket and blouse and bra, covering her breasts with her arms and slipped on the light silk robe she was handed. Then Mrs. Gonzalez measured carefully and wrote everything down and flipped through a thick binder of catalogs and then had Steffi choose some bras that she liked. She chose three and Mrs. Gonzalez left us alone for a moment and returned quickly with a handful of bras and had Steffi try them on, one at a time, tugging here and feeling there and writing down some more. Then she came back with another handful and by the time she was done Steffi had half-a-dozen styles that fit beautifully. Now it was a matter of us going into the racks and picking the same style in the right sizes and in the colors she wanted and pretty soon we had a shopping bag full of lingerie. Steffi had bras, panties, camisoles, and some more nightgowns.
We took the bag to the car and I told her that Claire’s was next. Her ears were now pierced, thanks to Tina, and it was time for her to pick up earrings and other jewelry to her taste. She also liked scarves, it turned out, and a wide variety of bracelets and bangles like girls her age. Some hair accessories, too. Fortunately the things from Claire’s took up little space so we didn’t need to haul them to the car but continued to shop. I told Steffi that she’d have more fun with Tina and any girls closer to her own age, but since it was the two of us, I was going to do the ‘mother’ thing–or at least the ‘hip aunt’ thing–by focusing on the fundamentals. Let her come back with Tina for the kicky miniskirts and cute tops thing; she’ll get a better feeling for girlhood.
The next major visit was the salon. The reason for the trip to Claire’s first was that we were early for the salon appointment I’d made. As we slowly walked across the mall, I told Steffi what to expect and how to act. When we got there, I gave them the ‘my niece is growing out of her tomboy phase’ speech and the staff understood and led her away. I decided to have a quick manicure as well so I was in the salon. They did all of their magic and I was reading a magazine, admiring my pretty nails and wondering how long they were going to last, when this vision was led out. They had cut and styled her hair; it was still past her shoulders but not much more, but best of all it was so becoming! It had been cut for a side part with sexy sweep of bangs, and was textured and bias cut at the ends in a very hip, very cool, very whatever-they-call-it look. She was very attractive and looked older than her fourteen years. They had also shaped her eyebrows into delicate, feminine arches that erased any lingering trace of Steven.
So, on to essentials. A good purse. Some leotards and workout clothes. Belts. Several shoes; flats, sandals, what we used to call ‘tennis shoes’, and some serious black dress pumps with a 3’ heel. That made me think of ‘dress-up’ clothes, the kind that a couple of young girls wouldn’t shop for on their own. We picked up a more formal sleeveless white sheath, actually; and managed to find what will no doubt be the first of many Little Black Dresses. She was so cute in it, and turning this way and that in the three-way mirror, I think for the very first time she saw herself as a sexy girl.
I’m going to have to keep a close eye on this one as she grows up!
Walking through the mall on crutches had been agony for her and I’ll bet the first thing she wants to do when she’s strong enough is hit it again! It was more than enough for one day, one emotional rush after another. Finally, exhausted and deliriously happy, we returned home. I was surprised that we had a brisk dinner crowd; Tina was working tables and Steffi was disappointed that she couldn’t come see her new goodies, but I told her if there was a slow period at the end of the night I’d see if I couldn’t get Tina up to her for a little bit before she headed home to Darryl. Steffi hugged me and said, ‘Thanks, Andonna! You’re the best!’ and I wondered how long that’s going to last!
There were some messages waiting for me; one was from Dr. Hastert saying that the more thorough tests confirmed her original diagnosis and to call for scheduling regular appointments. She also gave me the name of ‘a good lawyer’ to handle the documentation changes. The second call made me glad that I had just received the name of ‘a good lawyer’. It was from the State Patrol in Debbie’s home state; they wanted me to call tomorrow. I’m hoping that it’s something simple, about the accident or something, but it cast a pall on what has been otherwise a wonderful, wonderful day.
Well, yesterday was madness; and today wasn’t much better. I spent nearly all the time on the phone. It seems that when vendors want to change their contracts, or their products, or their schedules, or anything …they gang up and do it at the same time.
And then this thing with the State Patrol …
It was a fishing expedition, pure and simple. I think they’ve learned something and the lieutenant somebody-or-other didn’t want to come right out with it. Something about Dave. After what Steffi had told me about ‘Mexico’, I’m betting they found his body, or at least have an idea what happened to him.
I feel terrible; I found myself praying, ‘Please, don’t let Dave be wanting his son back!’
Court date for the formal guardianship. I guess I passed with flying colors. The judge said he wished every family case could be settled so simply. On the other hand, something–just a feeling–makes me hope he isn’t around for the name change. Steffi wasn’t in court; she was ‘Steven, bedridden while healing from his injuries’. I was worried that it was almost perjury but Aaron Summerfield, the lawyer, assured me that there was a procedure and everything had to be by the book, and B couldn’t be done until A was done–and don’t even think about C until A and then B! So that’s the little dance we had to do, according to Aaron. First, Donna gets Steven, then Steven becomes Stephanie, then Donna gets Stephanie. And then all documents get revised.
So I’ve got Steven–on paper, now–and then we had lunch, and then Steffi showed up and yes! we were in another court and Steven became Stephanie and then that same judge granted the revised guardianship and Steffi’s stuck with me, now! Aaron said that he’d prepare everything for the school records, and was applying for a passport as well, since it would be easier while the whole document revision process was active.
As to the other …interesting news, the State Patrol–a Captain with the dashing name of Velasquez this time; at least I’m moving up in the ranks–finally laid his cards on the table. From what I’ve read, a high percentage of crimes are solved not through detective work or even CSI gadgetry, but through coincidences that point to the solution.
A tail light. It all came down to a tail light.
A cop did a routine traffic stop on a car with a faulty tail light. The driver pulled over but his partner panicked and shot the policeman. The officer survived, but the shooter didn’t survive the gun battle with police six hours later. Police react faster than light when one of their own is attacked. Once the shooter was body-bagged and the driver taken into custody–this is fun, like writing a novel!–it was discovered that the tail light was faulty because the body inside the trunk was rubbing against it. I got a chill just writing that! The driver admitted they were a disposal team and eventually admitted to years of such activity. Once he was broken, he was very helpful in listing dates and individuals and locations. It led to an auto junkyard (among other businesses such as a landfill and a tannery–yuck!) being raided and certain vehicles being inspected for DNA, often from the bloody leakage from the compressed car.
They found Dave. It was just as Steffi had overheard–right out of Goldfinger! The State Patrol and local police now officially listed Dave as a murder victim and went on with the expanding case. But I was notified as the only next-of-kin for Debbie. Captain Velasquez had no interest in me or Steffi or our situation, but he said there might be something with the insurance company, if there was a policy. I told him I had no idea if there was or not.
But the really great news is that Steffi is walking, pretty well unaided! Thanks to Carla’s touch-point system, Steffi knows about having convenient handholds and I’ve watched her move around; she’s never more than two steps or so from something to hang on. But today she walked out into the back and talked with Tim, and there were no handholds or touch-points for fifty feet or more! She walks carefully, afraid of a stumble, of course, but there is a grace to her motion and a gentle sway. I have a hunch that once she’s fully healed and walking in heels, she’s going to be one very sexy fifteen-year-old! Because Dr. Hastert–who is actually her primary physician now; did I mention that before?–says that by midsummer Steffi should be fully healed and building muscle strength so when her birthday rolls around in September, she’ll be good to go.
Tonight was important. I’ve been talking with Steffi about working around the inn, earning money, and I’ve been trying to get her out of her bedroom/office. Her website for the inn has been getting easily three times the hits than before she re-did it, and she says she still needed the full-restaurant shot and thought a staff shot would be nice, too. But she’s gotten two nibbles from local businesses that wanted her to design their sites–never dreaming she was a fourteen-year-old convalescent!–and she’s certainly going to be making money. In fact, more money than I would pay her but she needs socialization, Dr. Hastert says at every appointment.
Steffi is still shy but had a fantastic time with Tina at the mall two days ago. The girls–I keep calling them that even though Tina is, technically, a married woman–had a field day and came back with my imposed limit of $200 in purchases, but had spent very wisely and Steffi had a growing closet and finally had typical teen clothes. They giggled their way back home, through putting things away, and right up until the time that Darryl showed up. He’s never come here before, but did that night and started yelling that she was supposed to be home getting his meal ready but instead she was cutting work and fooling around and did she even have a job?
This was an ugly, public scene, and I saw Tim appear out of nowhere and head for Darryl but he caught my eye and I put up a hand; Tim held point while I walked up to Darryl and simply said, ‘Follow me’ and walked to the far corner of the property. He followed since I was the source of a substantial part of his income. When we were a distance away, still under the eagle eye of Tim, I turned and folded my arms and stared at Darryl for a moment. He was getting ready to bluster but I off-footed him by starting conciliatory.
‘Darryl, you have a right to know why Tina was not working tonight.’ He stopped his build-up and blinked at my gentle tone. ‘I know things are tough for a young couple starting out and I’m very lucky to have Tina as an employee.’ He nodded, uncertain. He was sure I was going to yell and give him one of those ‘how dare you!’ lectures.
I said, ‘I don’t know what Tina has told you about my niece …’ I trailed off, raising an eyebrow. He shrugged and shook his head, saying, ‘Didn’t know you had one.’
I nodded. ‘My sister’s child. My sister and nephew were killed by a drunk driver at the end of the year, and Steffi–she’s Stephanie–was the only survivor but was critically injured. She’s been recovering for months and is only now able to walk unaided.’
‘That’s a bummer. I mean, about your sister and nephew,’ Darryl said.
I knew that one of his in-laws had been seriously injured by a drunk driver years ago and I was counting on that.
‘Thank you, Darryl. But Steffi is living with me, now; since my husband Mark died, Steffi and I are the only family now; we only have each other. But I’ve got an inn to run, and a pretty good restaurant, and I’ve got my hands full.’
‘I can see that,’ he nodded.
‘Tina’s a very good waitress, and a very good employee. Well, Steffi was working on her crutches with her physical therapist–she’s really good but really expensive–and Steffi and Tina met. They seemed to hit it off, and because Tina’s such a great girl, for the first time Steffi came out of her depression after the accident. And the doctors said the depression was affecting her healing.’ Okay, so I was lying freely. But I got another set of nods from him.
‘So, Darryl, I made the decision. This was my doing. I asked Tina if she would, you know, be a friend to Steffi, because she’s way closer in age to Steffi than I am. And I’m her aunt so I have to be like her mother, too, and girls need a friend, even if it’s only to bitch about how their aunt is riding them.’
He actually chuckled at that. Plus, I think using the word ‘bitch’ softened him up.
‘I pay Tina her salary, same as if she’s working, and I pay her the share of the tip money that she would earn if she was in the restaurant. Do you understand that? She loses absolutely no money by helping my niece. She earns what she would earn waiting tables. And I don’t keep her any longer than she would if she were waitressing. Plus, we’ve had busy nights and she waits tables, and we’ve had nights where she waits tables, things slow down, and I’ve asked her to at least look in on Steffi and cheer her up.’
He nodded. ‘She’s always been real good about that. When my mom got sick, it was Tina that kept her company every chance she got.’
‘She’s a very, very good person, Darryl,’ I said.
I was quiet then, as everything I’d said and the pleasant explanation sank in. Once I saw that it had, I changed my tone, becoming the bitch I’d mentioned and taking some pleasure in it.
‘She’s better than you deserve,’ I said coldly. ‘If you’re going to treat her like a slave, like a work horse and then like your own personal whore, then it’s best that you two divorce and you get out of her life. Right away.’
‘Wha-what?’ he gasped, blinking, totally blind-sided.
I pressed on. ‘You were the golden boy in high school but you just weren’t good enough or smart enough for college. And it’s turned you mean. You blame Tina and life in general for the fact that you never worked hard enough to make it. So every day is a pity party for you. You try to keep those high school days going with your buddies, drinking and fooling around, and it’s just a way to avoid growing up and being a man. And they probably tell you what you want to hear, reinforcing your own pity. So, Darryl, the question is to you. Can you stand up for yourself? You work for your dad’s car dealership–when you work. Would anybody else hire you? Can you get a job? Can you hold a job?’
He reacted like I was hitting him; little shocks snapped his head back and I continued the attack.
‘You can’t even make dinner for yourself? You need Tina to do it? Are you one of those mamma’s boys that have everything done for them? Wait, I know your mother. She’s a good woman and she’s probably despairing that she raised such a selfish, immature boy. You’re hurting your mother, and you’re hurting Tina, but she’s so good and so strong she doesn’t say a word or let on, but I can tell. I can tell she goes home to an ungrateful, complaining lump of a husband that she once loved and believed in but now feels a deep sadness and disappointment for. And, no, she hasn’t said a word against you or about you. She’s that good a person. You showed strength and promise on the football field a few years ago. How about now? It’s not football, it’s life, and you’re losing the game. So either let her go; divorce her and let her find a real man while you drink with your high-school buddies. Or man-up, grow up and be the kind of man and husband that will make Tina and all the rest of us proud to know.’
I started walking back, leaving the stunned Darryl staring after me, and turned after three steps and raised a finger. ‘And if you come onto my place of business and residence again raising a ruckus and affecting my customers and employees again, I will have the sheriff arrest you for trespassing. Am I clear, young man?’
He was so shocked that he could only nod, open-mouthed.
I said, ‘Good. Now go wait in your truck. I’ll send Tina out at the end of her work shift.’
‘That’s okay …she drove her own car. I’ll go home …tell her …tell her I can microwave something …’
On the way back to the inn, Tim came out of the shadows. ‘Felt pretty good, didn’t it?’
I shivered and blew out some air and said, ‘Yeah, but I was scared.’
Tim nodded and said, ‘Not out of the woods yet. Once he’s had time to think about it, if he’s really sour deep-down, he’ll take it out on Tina.’
My eyes widened in shock and fear. ‘God, Tim! I was so full of myself I didn’t think of that! If he lays one hand on her, it’ll be my fault!’
He said, ‘Donna, I was about to head to my place and see what the heck I’ve TiVo-ed tonight. Maybe I’ll take a moonlit drive.’
I realized he was going to follow Tina home and wait outside her house, in case there was any problem with Darryl. I’m so grateful for Tim! I squeezed his arm and thanked him and went inside. I told Tina that I was sending her home now. I told her that I’d given Darryl ‘what for’ and her eyes widened and she suppressed a giggle. ‘Bet that would have been fun to see!’ she said, but I told her I was worried he might turn on her. So I ordered her–not just suggested, but ordered, on pain of termination–to call me tonight once she knew everything was okay with Darryl. If things weren’t okay, and she couldn’t speak freely because Darryl was listening, she was supposed to apologize for ‘dropping the salad’. Either way, I’d call Tim’s cell phone and say she’s being forced so she needed help, or things were fine and come on home.
Thank God, she called later and said they’d had a long, quiet, sad talk, and he’d gone to bed–sober–and she was going to get ready for bed. I thanked her and told her that Steffi and I loved her and to be safe. When I called Tim to come home, he said he had a good book and a decent flashlight and was going to stay for awhile longer just to make sure. I told him he was one in a million and got a lump in my throat at his quiet strength.
So, back to tonight. After a bunch of calls, we got the Kiwanis bunch in for a retirement dinner and absolutely packed the place. As the reservations were coming in, I went to Steffi’s room. She was working at her computer, looking like a teen girl with homework. She wore khaki capris and a light blue camisole and that high ponytail again. Except now it doesn’t look like a horse’s mane because of her new hairstyle. I told her she had a task: She had one hour to shower and put on makeup, dress and be at the hostess station. I held a hanger with an outfit, a long black skirt with a high slit and a white silk blouse with a high collar. I told her black shoes; the pumps if she could–I know she’s been practicing in them in secret!–and she would hostess. Steffi stared at me; we’d talked about this but she probably never thought the day would come. I turned back and grinned, ‘Oh, and you are on the clock. See you at seven,’ and left her.
She was downstairs in fifty minutes. And she was stunning! Tina had taught her well; her makeup was more dramatic than her daily wear Her hair was piled up on her head, making her look not only older but timeless, like a blond Gibson Girl or something. It worked very well with the high collar, and I knew that wives would nudge their husbands’ eyes away from Steffi’s cleavage. I’d had the skirt ready for her in her size and it fit like a glove, and she was taller by wearing the pumps. She’d even added smoky pantyhose, even though I hadn’t specified it.
‘What do I do?’ she asked after I was done complimenting her. I took her through the procedure, checking the name on the list against the available seating. Tonight it was a piece of cake because we were closed to the public for the Kiwanis group, so there would be no waiting. Steffi would cradle the menus in her left arm and guide them to their table–she’s already familiar with our table numbering system–hand them their menus and tell them the name of their waitress, Bonnie, Carole, or Tina, and wish them a pleasant dinner and return for the next guests. I was worried about all the walking but she pointed out that every chair was a touch-point for her so I relaxed.
And she was fantastic, gliding like royalty with guests in her wake. I saw her once take the tiniest of bobbles on the way back from a table–even I have the occasional trouble with heels–and she placed a hand on the back of an occupied chair, leaned over the table and with a huge smile asked, ‘How’s everybody doing here?’ They nodded and smiled and she came back up to the hostess podium, holding on and flexing her ankle. What she’d done at the table was so smooth and professional I was in awe. How does she know this stuff?
What Steffi didn’t know was that Tim had the camera that we’d originally borrowed, and was taking pictures. Unobtrusively, without a flash, and then later, in a dark suit and tie that I didn’t know he had, he went through the tables asking if they’d like ‘a commemorative picture of this wonderful night?’ and then he’d use the flash. At the end of the night after the last guest left, I plucked Steffi from the chair I’d exiled her to–she was so dedicated that she would have walked her feet bloody if I hadn’t ordered her to sit down–and got everybody together for a group photo. Tim had set up a tripod so he could get in them, too.
Just before she went to bed, Steffi called me into her bedroom and showed me the uploaded photos. Despite her protests, I chose a busy restaurant photo that showed our stunning hostess, and a group photo that had her prominently featured as well. I think her protest was pro forma, because I could tell she was proud of her work. I hugged her and told her how very proud I am.
God, I absolutely love that girl!
End of Part 8
Just before she went to bed, Steffi called me into her bedroom and showed me the uploaded photos. I chose a busy restaurant photo that showed our stunning hostess, and a group photo that had her prominently featured as well. I hugged her and told her how very proud I am.
God, I absolutely love that girl!
Selected entries from the Journal of Donna Everton
Two momentous occasions to report. Three if you count Carla pronouncing her work with Steffi at an end; her healing has been rapid and Steffi has shown the self-discipline to continue exercising without supervision. We’ll miss her, and I’m indebted to her for finding Dr. Hastert for us, who also found us our lawyer, Aaron. Working with him has been a dream; he’s handled everything so smoothly. And he’s so nice and I can’t believe somebody hasn’t grabbed him and married him yet.
I’m getting distracted. Two occasions. The first was that Tina came over–it was her day off–and announced that Darryl had quit the car dealership and taken a job at the new Home Depot in town. He said it was entry level but he wanted to work for people that didn’t know him, and that he’d have to prove himself through his own work. Tina said she didn’t know what I said to him ‘that night’, but it seems to be working. Darryl’s hard at work now, to prove himself to Tina–and to himself.
The second occasion is also due to Tina. In the middle of this early hot spell, on her day off, Tina marched up to Steffi’s room and ordered her to get her bikini on, damn it! She browbeat Steffi into gooping up with sunblock and had brought three bikinis for Steffi to choose from, but, damn it, she was going to wear one of them! Steffi gave a lame excuse about needing to finish up a website, and then another lame excuse about ‘what about my scars?’ but Tina and I had talked about this day. I’ve already checked with Carla and Dr. Hastert and they both said it was time Steffi got some sun.
When she came out, she was–as she so often is–simply stunning. Pale, yes, but curvy in all the right places. They had flip-flops and towels and sunglasses, and iPods and magazines in beach bags. Tim had recently cleared and cleaned the beach for the season, and I quickly made up two sipper bottles with ice water and away they strutted. There was nobody else on the beach, but I thought if there had been any males around–other than Tim–they would have gotten whiplash. Tim watched their cute little butts wiggle and then turned and grinned at me and gave me a thumbs-up.
I went back inside thinking about that thumbs-up. Since Tim knew Steffi’s secret and Tina still didn’t, the sign had been a tribute to Steffi’s development …her development, I should say, but also to this week’s visit with Dr. Hastert. She’d mentioned a procedure once that could ease Steffi’s fears of discovery. After all, she still does have a penis. Her testicles have been up inside her abdomen for months now–I hadn’t known that but learned about it from the doctor–but there still is the ‘boy-bit’ and I know she hates it but has to wait.
So Dr. Hastert’s procedure came up again–I brought it up–and it didn’t take much convincing for Steffi to go for it. We scheduled an extra-long visit, and in the little surgical suite off Dr. Hastert’s office, she did some magic to a stoned Steffi. It involved manipulation of the penis and empty scrotal sacs, a surgical glue gun, a catheter, and Twilight Sleep, for obvious reasons. I brought the numbed and drowsy girl home and got her to bed, but that night she excitedly pulled down her panties and showed me …well, what looked like her vagina. From even a foot away there was absolutely no doubt she looked perfectly female. Standing legs apart with no dangling boy-bit, she did a little shimmy and everything looked great. I got closer, and closer, and closer, and was stunned that only when she used her fingers to gently pull things apart, once I was about six inches from her groin …only then could I tell that her anatomy was different–but not really different from all the varieties of vaginas I’d seen over the years. And when she pulled her panties up, she was absolutely indistinguishable from a naturally-born girl!
Which meant that she has the confidence to wear the tiny pink string bikini bottoms–and skimpy top barely holding her increasingly-full breasts–that Tina brought. It was going to be a glorious summer for her, and that procedure pretty much eliminates any fear of discovery.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it! Aaron asked me out. I freaked. No other word for it; I freaked out, on so many levels. He knows about Steven and Stephanie, obviously, so that’s not a problem to him. He’s been our lawyer in the documentation hearings but is not my lawyer, per se. I’ve still got Larry Newman in town for my legal affairs with the inn and Aaron says he’s a very good guy. Aaron said the documents are all in place so there’s no more business between us. And so he asked me out.
Mark had been my world. The world itself was better because Mark was in it. And when that God-damned–and I mean it that way–that God-damned cancer took him from me, from the world …I died, too. I really did. I was dead to the world, and I think I’ve written that it was largely Tim that brought me back from the blackness. Tim’s gentle, patient wisdom got me functioning again. But I was marking time, just occupying space in the world, until my sister died. Then I was so alone …until Steffi came into my life. However twisted or weird the circumstances that transformed my distant, miserable, juvenile delinquent nephew into my pretty, vivacious niece …I was fully back in the world now. Mark is not a memory, fading. He’s still strong in my heart and soul. But I’d already come to deal with my life with him–and losing him –as Then. This is Now. My new life with my niece is Now. And with her I have a …I guess I’ll call it Yet To Come. Like in A Christmas Carol.
And then in the middle of my Now, Aaron Summerfield asks me out. Steffi could tell. That girl …I don’t know, is she telepathic? But out of nowhere, one day, she said, ‘I think Aaron’s gonna ask you out. You should go out with him, Andonna.’
I pointed out that: A) That was my decision, and B) She was crazy.
Well, I’m eating crow because he asked me out.
And I said yes.
Which led to all the self-doubt. Oh, God; should I do this? Can I do this? What am I going to wear? Oh, God, what if he tries to kiss me? And that instant, the instant that I thought that, I could tell I was okay. Deeply terrified, yes, but okay. Because if I was thinking about a kiss from him–and I am–then I’m healing. Maybe not healed yet, from the wound of Mark’s loss, but I’m healing.
Finally got contacted by some dweeb with Debbie’s insurance company, two days ago. He went into a droning explanation about the policy, contingencies, exceptions, exclusive clauses, non-inclusive clauses–aren’t they the same thing, I thought?–and this and that and finally that a certified letter was on its way, just a routine; please sign and return for disbursement, blah-blah-blah, thank you for your time and good-bye.
Today the letter came …well, a thick sheaf of papers in a stiff white envelope that I’d had to sign for. My eyes began glazing over by the second paragraph. Aaron came over for a picnic so I asked him whether I should involve Larry Newman in it and Aaron said he’d take a look. Truth be told, I was a little miffed at first, because the document seemed to suck him right in. Things have been going nicely between us after that first date, when I’d been so nervous that I giggled the whole damn night. And we were going to take advantage of my owning my own beach to have our first casual date …and here he was poring over this damn letter.
Finally he looked up with his business face. ‘Donna, they’re trying to screw you. This is only the tip of the iceberg, but if you sign this back, they keep the berg and you get a couple of ice cubes.’ I thought he was exaggerating and he pointed out it wasn’t what they were saying, it was what they weren’t saying. And then offering me a buy-out ‘to save me time, effort, and expenses at this trying time’. It was silly boilerplate, because it pertained to my grieving, my mourning period–which certainly didn’t apply to my sister’s long-time-dead criminal husband! I asked Aaron if it was a conflict of interest for him and he said to ease my fears, he recommended that I turn it over to Larry but he’d like to be there to brief him. I knew that Larry didn’t know about Dave and Debbie so I figured it’d be okay.
The picnic got underway and it was heavenly, sitting with him and just chatting, and as we packed up, we were folding the blanket together and came towards each other with the ends of the blanket and I kissed him, just a peck, a quick thank-you without thinking. He was startled, and I realized what I’d done, and then dropped the blanket and I was in his arms and our lips met and …that was that.
I guess it really would be a conflict of interest now, because Aaron is ‘my fella’!
That’s the term a grinning Steffi used, smug because she said she knew it all along. Maybe she did; that girl’s a wonder. She’s tanning nicely and there’s no scarring; the doctors were that good. Her legs are stronger; yesterday I saw her actually try ascamper on the beach, her cute round butt barely covered by her new bikini. After that first timid time on the beach, she and Tina have gone to the mall and now Steffi has a growing collection of bikinis. One maillot, I think, but no thongs yet, thank goodness. Only a matter of time, though …
Also got the first routine letter from what will be Steffi’s school in the fall. We had a little debate about that; she said maybe she should continue being tutored. She tried to be rational and reasonable in her arguments but I know that it’s just fear. Fortunately she’s been spending time with Tina at the mall, among other teen girls, but I’m beginning to feel guilty about how much time Tina is spending here, but I know she genuinely loves Steffi. And Darryl’s being more understanding as he’s working on his new self, so I should relax.
We had a fantastic Fourth, great business and lots of happy customers. And tired staff, especially after the cleanup the next day. There had been a barge offshore with fireworks, but people brought their own–even though they weren’t supposed to–and left spent sparklers and whistlers and packaging all over our beach. We got it all bagged and then Tim and I–with Steffi–hosted a barbecue for my small group of employees and their families.
And what do you know? Eduardo’s son is a very attractive sixteen-year-old, a baseball and debating team star, and he couldn’t take his eyes off my niece. And I could tell that she was interested, by how clumsy she was. And giggly. And finally I pulled her aside and said, ‘Daniel is a very nice boy. You’ve been very helpful here and deserve a break. And I know he loves corn-on-the-cob, and root beer. So here’s a plate and a cold can from the bottom,’ I said as I pulled it out of the cooler and handed it to her, gently spun her and gave her a little push towards Daniel, who stared at her, his eyes sparkling in our campfire.
I may regret that little push, but Daniel is a good kid, and the doctor said she needed to socialize …
I saw them later in the evening, walking the water’s edge, hands in pockets and chatting. So far so good. Steffi feeling good about herself as a female will be so important when she goes to school, and I did sort of win that argument; she’s going to public school this fall.
Aaron arrived, apologetic at being later than he wanted but had a deposition to take. Or give. I’m going to have to learn more legal terms, because, well …I think Aaron’s going to be around for awhile, and that suits me just fine. We sat on the back porch, in that huge hanging swing, watching the night on the water, and Daniel and Steffi walked out of the darkness. He’d removed his hoodie and placed it around her shoulders; her arms were folded under her breasts in the way of cold females everywhere. Other than that, they weren’t touching. There’s room on the huge swing, and Aaron sat on one end so I snuggled up to him–as if I needed an excuse!–and patted the swing next to me. Daniel gallantly held a hand; Steffi took it and lowered herself as if she’d done it all her life. I felt Aaron squeeze my shoulder in acknowledgement; he’d seen it, too.
The four of us swung slowly and chatted a bit; Daniel said that down the far end of the beach, they’d found a bird that was trapped in the wire from a cheap Catherine’s Wheel. He’d been worried about bites, but Steffi had immediately kneeled down and freed the bird, gentling it with soft words, and then held it lightly in both hands and told it to go home to its family. She released the bird on the sand and stood back and after an experimental flutter, the bird took off. I could tell by the tone of Daniel’s voice that he was proud and intrigued and maybe already a little in love with Steffi. For her part, her eyes were large and luminous when she looked at him.
Daniel had his own car and would drive himself home; Aaron and I excused ourselves and said goodnight. But we’re not dummies; we went into the kitchen and I made us some cocoa. After awhile we heard a car start; we looked at each other, worried, but then Steffi came in, her arms still crossed, and sat down. I poured a cup of cocoa for her and set it in front of her, gently squeezing her shoulder.
‘Wow,’ she said, as in a daze.
We were both silent. Steffi looked at us. ‘Is it like that for you two?’
I looked at Aaron and something inside me …tipped. It slid into place. This was right, the three of us sitting here. This was–maybe–my new family. I reached over and took Aaron’s hand, and looked into his eyes. ‘Yep,’ I said, grinning. ‘Wow’.
Aaron made a show of thinking hard and said, ‘After much cogitation, I would have to stipulate: Wow.’ We all giggled at that and I truly could not remember the last time I have been so relaxed and happy.
Our family …
The next morning–today–was a regular work day for everybody. Steffi spent hours on her new laptop–did I mention the Hostess present I got for her at that new computer superstore?–but now she could be found anywhere. Tim had put up something he called a router–the two of them have been thick as thieves lately, only presenting me with shopping lists–and so our inn and all the cabins have Wi-Fi. And once Steffi tested them all, we advertised that service on the website. It was funny for a time, when she was testing the range; I’d come out and ask, ‘Anybody seen Steffi?’ and Bonnie would say, ‘I think she’s in Two’ and Tim would say, ‘I saw her headed towards Six’.
Today I found her on the hanging swing and I’d been doing calls all morning and went out with some ice tea for a break. We rocked gently; Steffi quietly tapping away and me sipping, and then I realized she’d stopped typing and was staring at the water.
‘I wish Mom could be here,’ she said almost under her breath.
‘Me, too,’ I said.
She might have thought she’d insulted me–she hadn’t–but she quickly said, ‘I absolutely love being with you, Andonna. I just wish Mom didn’t have to die; it’s so nice here and everything and I just …I just wish she was here with us to enjoy it.’
‘Me, too, Stephanie,’ I said, using her full name in a loving way.
After a time she said, ‘Do you think she’d be okay with me? You know, okay with …how I am?’
I was surprised she said that. Hadn’t she already told Dr. Hastert that she knew her mother was trying to change her into a girl? Had she been fooling both of us? She read my mind, as usual.
‘Mom was …hoping I’d turn out okay. Better than Steven, that’s for sure. She never got to know–I never got to tell her–how much better I could be. I never got to show her how much better I am …’
Gently, to not upset her, I asked, ‘How much of a girl did you tell her you wanted to be?’ Awkwardly phrased, I know, but it worked.
Steffi frowned–and even that she does prettily. ‘See, the thing is …or was …that I was such a–jerk.’ She’d been about to say something stronger. ‘I knew that I was a girl. I told this to Dr. Hastert; I don’t think I ever told it to you, but I knew that I was a girl by the time I started pre-school. Or pretty well guessed, but definitely knew it by kindergarten, when they put boys over there and girls over there.’ She nodded once, firmly. ‘Knew it then.’
She hadn’t been lying to the doctor! I didn’t want to disturb the flow, so I just nodded and said, ‘Hmm’.
She looked out over the lake. ‘But the boy I was …the guy I pretending to be …if I came right out and told Mom that I wanted to be a girl, back then, she’d try to figure out what angle I was working, with that look of hers.’
‘I know that look,’ I smiled softly, sadly. ‘Kind of a head-tilt, slightly squinting?’ Steffi was smiling and nodding. I said, ‘And that thing with her mouth …’
Steffi chuckled. ‘Like she’s tasting something sour! Yeah. That look. When I was …lying and stealing and stuff, I learned quickly to recognize that she hadn’t bought the lie. And the thing is …being a girl was so important to me that I couldn’t risk getting the look and having her dismiss the whole thing. So I …worked her. Like a con. I feel crummy about it, but …it had to be done.’
She’d sighed sadly after she’d said the last part; it was like the sigh and sound of somebody telling about their decision to have their dog euthanized.
I asked, ‘How’d you do it?’
‘I tried the reverse thing once, like yelling, ‘What, are you trying to make me be a girl?’ and she’d just asked about picking up my room or something. Something trivial. And then one of the nurses she worked with, a guy I ran with wanted to grab her purse …We’d already …’
Now her pretty face was twisted with agony. ‘We’d already hit a couple of purses–bagging the bags, he called it.’ She dropped her head and shook it. ‘I was getting deeper and deeper, and hating myself more and more …’ Her head rose with a sniff. ‘Anyway, I told him to hold off because I knew her and he stormed off and I talked with her a little bit because she’d seen me, and the conversation moved around to the right point and I got to kind of …nudging her into the mindset.’
‘The mindset?’
She nodded. ‘To feminize me. For Mom to, I mean. I couldn’t think of any way to get the information directly to Mom. I’d already done a bunch of searching on the internet but I couldn’t very well lay a stack of printouts on Mom’s lap and say, ‘Read these, get these pills, and I can begin to be your daughter’. It just took a long time, a lot of little nudges. And, ultimately, I think she knew.’
‘She knew? Or you’re not sure? Did she say anything?’
‘It was one of those weird things where, you know something, I know you know something, and you know that I know that you know …on and on, round and round, but you never openly say it. But she was freaking, because–‘
Suddenly she turned to face me directly and her voice changed. ‘You know she was getting set to run, don’t you?’
I nodded slowly.
Steffi relaxed. ‘It wasn’t Dave so much–and I’m calling him that instead of Dad to put it from her point of view. Dave was gone and back and gone and back and then gone …but there were guys after that. We were pretty sure our house had been broken into–searched, I guess–at least twice, although nothing was missing. And there were phone calls all hours, guys at the door looking for Dave, cops at the door looking for Dave, and all the time we just said he was off on a sales trip.’
My throat tightened, thinking of my poor sister. I’d thought they were living a quiet life alone; I’d even thought that maybe she was just paranoid and Steven wasn’t the problem that she made him out to be. But purse snatching? And he’d only been, what, eleven or twelve? And the harassment? Searches? My sister had been holding out against a siege! No wonder she’d planned to run with Steven.
From all that Steffi had revealed, I realized that Debbie hadn’t openly discussed Steven becoming Stephanie because things were moving faster and out of control. I realized her plan must have been to give her child what she knew her child wanted, but keeping quiet about it and timing it so they could disappear as the pills made their presence known. Once they were safely away they could sit down and have a mother-and-new-daughter discussion about Steven’s feminine nature. The main thing was to slip away as unobtrusively and quickly as possible–and the drunk driver had killed her before she could. But she’d taken her last strength to write me the letter, only she hadn’t been able to tell me everything. And then she was gone.
I thought it all through as we slowly swung, looking across the lake and into our own hearts. At last, I smiled and gently answered Steffi’s original question. ‘Honey, she’d be absolutely delighted. Delighted isn’t even a strong enough word for it. She’d be deliriously happy, and so proud of you.’
There was a long silence and then Steffi’s voice trembled as she said, ‘I want to make her proud.’
I told her that she makes me proud, and she looked at me and then back at the water.
After a time, she said, ‘Thank you. I love you, Andonna. And I don’t know if I’ve ever said anything to you for …what you’ve done for me. But, thank you; thank you.’
I told her, ‘You’re welcome. And I love you, too.’
It was a lovely shared moment and, of course, things got wacky about an hour later. I got a call from Larry Newman, my attorney. He seemed both angry and laughing at the same time. He had information about Debbie’s insurance policy. Actually, it was a joint policy with Debbie and Dave. I’m not sure, but from the way Larry described it, Dave had done something pretty wonderful. He’d used his knowledge of scams and empty contracts, as well as his criminal nature detecting the weasel-y nature of the insurance company and choosing them specifically so he could exploit their weasel-y nature through loopholes and actuarial probabilities. Larry was angry at what the insurance company had tried to pull with that letter they wanted me to sign, and laughing at Dave’s audacity at taking on the company–but on his own terms.
There’s a wonderful old film classic called Double Indemnity, about a wife who takes out an insurance policy on her husband. She seduces the insurance guy who writes it and they get a ‘double indemnity’ clause where the pay was double if the husband died a certain way …on a train somehow, I vaguely remember. The wife convinces the insurance guy to help kill the husband that way and they’d split the money. Great movie.
As I understand it, what Dave had done was push for similar clauses. Insurance policies are based on actuarial tables that calculate the probability of this type of accident or this type of death under that circumstance. You’re more likely to die in a car accident than in your bathtub, for instance, although bathtubs are danger zones, apparently. Anyway, Dave was a criminal and knew that at any time he might be jailed or killed, so he’d found a way to insert a clause for ‘incarceration leading to income loss’, believe it or not. But since the insurance company thought he was a traveling salesman, they allowed a clause about death more than 100 miles from home. They allowed a clause if he predeceased Debbie. He found enough little loopholes here and there that he could exploit.
I’m thinking that Dave got this policy early in their marriage, in the good times, and he wanted Debbie protected and taken care of if anything happened to him. Well, it did; it just took years to shake out the truth. And it was that faulty tail light that started the shaking. The upshot of it all, according to Larry, is that the insurance company owes Dave and Debbie’s beneficiary $500,000. Half a million to her sister Donna–me! Steven was not named a beneficiary, which shocked me at first but Larry showed the original policy date to be a year before Steven was born. All these years the policy lay dormant. I learned from Aaron that things would have gotten very sticky if Steven were named in the will, since there wasn’t a Steven anymore. Larry only knew about my niece Stephanie so I didn’t even breathe the name Steven around him.
Larry was going full-press on this one to get the money as soon as possible, because he was outraged that they’d tried to get me to sign away the whole deal without informing me of the sum. He’s going to have fun taking them on. Stunned, I told him to ‘go for it’.
Okay, this will be the last regular entry because I’ll be out of the country–we’ll be out of the country. Things have been moving fast. The insurance company caved almost instantly once Larry pressured back, and two days ago my account was wired over $400,000, after fees and taxes. I paid Larry with a smile and a thank you kiss, and there was a flurry of bank business to take care of.
It took some persuading of Dr. Hastert, but she finally agreed that even though it’s been a shockingly short time, Steffi meets all the physical and emotional criteria for sexual reassignment surgery. The only problem were the Protocols in place that required living full-time as a girl for a full year before moving on, and no genital surgery until eighteen. That would mean three more years until the operation could occur that we all know she’s going to get, that we all know she wants, and that we all know she deserves.
Reluctantly–or at least pretending to be reluctant–Dr. Hastert made it known that she knew a surgeon in Thailand who was one of the two or three best in the world. There was no compunction about patient age, only the patient’s ability to pay. Thanks to Dave, her father, taking out that crazy policy, I had the money to pay for my niece’s surgery. The timing was right for recovery, and Dr. Hastert, playing the ‘just hypothetical’ game, made the call and set things up.
The huge plus for me was that Aaron surprised me by saying he’d come along, if I didn’t mind. I was hesitant at first because I didn’t want to distract from Steffi, but she cried, ‘Are you nuts, Andonna? Of course he can come. I want him there. You want him there, and I hope nothing happens but if it does, we might need a good attorney. And I’ll be unconscious for awhile and you’ll get lonely. And think of what you’re saving in long-distance telephone costs!’
So that decided it. I’m leaving the inn in the capable hands of Tim with a clear conscience. Since we’ll be gone for weeks, our cover story is that we’re going to Indonesia, not specifically Thailand, for a short tour, but that Steffi got one of those debilitating Asian diseases while on the tour and had to be hospitalized and had to heal enough to fly back. She’ll have enough time to recover and be ready for school. Tina will miss Steffi and isn’t quite clear why we’re taking a vacation in the middle of the summer, but I think she’s okay with it. She and Darryl seem to have reignited their marriage; I think his confidence is building; he’s a department manager already at Home Depot and he did it all on his own.
Tomorrow my beloved niece-who-was-my-nephew and I will start the first of several flights. Aaron will drive us but is coming a day later, due to a trial date. Steffi has packed everything and I’ve just kissed her goodnight; she was so pretty in the yellow babydoll set Tina found for her. This will be her last night sleeping as a boy-girl in her room. A month ago I removed the hidden speaker and yesterday I had the bright idea of putting new labels over the CDs, making them look like they’re a dry business accounting lecture series. They’re all in a sealed bag in the back of my safe. To my relief, there was no change at all in Steffi with the discontinuation of the sleep-listening. Everything points up to the releasing of the girl that was always there, rather than the imposition of a girl onto a boy. I’ve spent enough hours with Dr. Hastert to have a clear conscience about the CDs–although I never breathed a word of them to her–and I have absolutely no doubt that this upcoming surgery is the right thing for Steffi.
When we return next month, I know that my new-found love for Aaron will be stronger, and that our growing sense of family will be strengthened by the certainty that my niece Stephanie is my niece. She will be able to fulfill her mother’s dream for her, and her dreams for herself, as the true beneficiary of her mother’s last wish: To fully be the girl she was always meant to be.
The End