She entered a 4th of July pageant!

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"Okay Jude, suck it up!" my Momma said as she zipped up my red-white-and-blue leotard.

It was a little tight. I felt like I was going to bust out of it.

"You're going to have to lose some weight," she said. "You're gettin' a little pooch in the belly."

"Gee, thanks, Momma!" I said sarcastically.

I protested that she bought it a little small, but to know avail.

"Jude, you're on stage in five minutes," said Miss Moultrie, my twirling teacher and pageant coordinator of the Little Miss Firecracker Pageant.

Yeah, you heard that right.

The Little Miss Firecracker Pageant, which was part of what my mother calls Linville's "Americana" of the Fourth of July.

Credit Barbara Jean Miller for wanting to put her "little Janegirl" front and center as part of this lovely event during the holiday festivities.

Yup, she thumbed through the rule book.

"There's nothin' in here that says a contestant can't be a boy," she said at a meeting of the pageant committee.

"I don't care if things like that ain't done like this in Tennessee!" she shouted at one gray-haired mother.

The pageant committee backed down after she used words like "sue," "ACLU" and "national media coverage."

Instead, there is a spread on me on on the front page of the Smoky Mountain Gazette today in a pageant dress, in curls and makeup.

"Now, everyone knows Jude is the littlelist drag queen in east Tennessee," my mother's boyfriend, Lloyd, told her as he lay the paper down on the coffee table in our double-wide trailer.

"Don't listen to Lloyd," Momma said as she worked on my makeup in my dressing room. "You're my child! You should never be ashamed of who you are!"

"But Aunt Liza says I'm going to Hell," I said as she finished brushing my hair.

"Don't you mind that snake handlin' bitch," Momma said. "Now get up and let me take a look at ya!"

She admired her work. She proved her friends wrong when she said she could put my hair in curls. My face was caked with makeup and dark red lipstick.

"And it doesn't show," she said of her work between my legs. She used ice to shrink my small "pecker and balls" even smaller and taped it down. She learned her technique from a story about female impersonators about how to "tie the package."

I rolled my eyes when she said I was all set for the swimsuit competition.

She did such a fine job, she vowed to take me to pick out bikinis at Wal-Mart after the pageant.

"No more ugly boy suits for the rest of the summer."

I adjusted my leotard before walking out on stage. I pulled down my leotard a little to make sure my butt cheeks wouldn't show. I wore cowgirl boots and they clopped when I walked on stage.

There were a couple of jeers, and some laughter.

"Look at that little queer," someone shouted.

"Get off the stage, faggot," another one said.

I tried to block it out. Once the music started, I was able to do so.

My baton routine was to Katy Perry's "Firework."

I pranced around on stage, and did a few tricks with my baton, throwing it up high and catching it. And twirled it while I tried to kick my legs high.

To my surprise, the audience loved it.

"She's ... I mean he's really good!" I heard one lady shout when I finished my routine.

I curtsied when my talent routine was done.

Kaylie, one of my friends who was one of the Mountain Darlins with me, gave me a hug when it was over.

I have to admit, I was a bit relieved when it was over.

"You did so good!" Momma shouted. "You made your Momma proud."

"Jude, you did really good," Miss Moultrie said. "Your hard work paid off."

"Thanks," I said.

She was the one who helped me with the routine. Don't know what I would have done without Miss Moultrie. She encouraged me throughout the pageant and told me to ignore "ugly" comments.

"You've been a little trooper," she said when I walked off the stage after doing my little walk in a swimsuit.

She knew about my feelings about being different. She also knew I wasn't entirely comfortable sometimes with my mother's efforts to put me out front and center.

"You know, Miss Moultrie, I do think this is a little fun," I said before I entered my dressing room for the final part of the competition.

My mother helped me into my dress.

"Oh my God, I can't believe how beautiful you look," she said, showing me my reflection in the mirror.

Not to brag, but she was right.

"Go out there with your head held high," she said. "No matter what anyone says, you're my beautiful child, baby girl."

I gave her a strange look.

"What?" she asked.

"That's the first time you called me your baby girl," I said.

"You don't like it?" she asked.

"No, it's fine," I said as I walked back out on stage.

I was a little nervous, afraid I'd hear more jeers.

There were none.

And much to my surprise, I was named third runner-up out of the 16 girls in the competition.

My friend Kaylie won first place.

"There'll be other pageants," Momma said as I came back to my dressing room.

Other pageants?

Well, OK, I'm actually cool with that.
 

 
 

 

Author's note: This is the third in a series, with the Spangled Leotard and Little Miss Firecracker.

My Momma has never been one to back down from a fight.

Not Barbara Jean Miller, no way.

"You can put your boy in a skimpy outfit for a Christmas parade," Bobby Joe Frederick yelled at her. "You can even dress him up in a dress and enter him in a beauty pageant. But as long as I'm school board president, you will NOT enroll your SON in school as a girl."

"Amen, brother, preach it," were the words of a preacher from a small church sitting in the front row.

I kept my head down, and tried not to tear up.

"Yeah, we don't want know queers runnin' around in her schools," said another person in the audience.

"My child ain't no queer, she ain't no freak," Momma replied. "She's a special child, and you people need to SHUT your MOUTHS!""

"This meeting needs to come to ORDER," said Dr. Bill Colburn, our superintendent.

"I'm not going to sit here and allow a boy to run around in a dress in our school," said Kristie Mays. "I'm not going to allow someone to force their beliefs on my children about how they should except gays and trannies."

"Isn't it the other way AROUND?" Momma shouted back. "I'm not tellin' you how to raise your children, so don't tell me how to raise MINE!"

"Quite frankly, I think she needs to be reported to child services," Bobby Joe said again. "Besides, I think she's forcing that child to dress as a girl."

"SHE IS NOT!" I shouted. "LEAVE MY MOMMA ALONE!"

Suddenly, everyone turned around to look at me.

I blushed. I shrank in my chair.

I suddenly wished I could be invisible, which was kind of hard since I was wearing a bow in my hair, a pink dress and white sandals.

"Child services has already been to my house, I have you to know Mr. Frederick," Momma replied. "They know I'm a good momma to my kids."

People turned around and looked Mrs. Morgan, who was in charged of child services in Crockett County.

"It's true, went there myself after Pastor Jones filed a complaint," she said. "The house was clean. Kids looked healthy and happy. I talked to the child extensively, and the child insists he is not being forced to dress up like a girl. The boy needs a therapist, but we have so many other children who have worse problems than Mrs. Miller's children."

"She talked about Jude as if Jude were some kind of it," my granny told Momma.

"Can I address the board?" Miss Moultrie asked.

I had no idea she was even at the meeting.

"Heather, you may," Dr. Colburn said.

"I've had Jude as one of my twirlers since right after Jude could walk," Miss Moultrie said. "Jude's a different kind of child. Mrs. Miller may be kind of forceful, but if you spend enough time around Jude, you know that Jude is not a typical boy. I've found very little difference behavior-wise between Jude and the rest of the girls I teach. And I don't put my girls in skimpy outfits, Mr. Frederick, thank you very much!"

The crowd grew quiet. Dr. Colburn told the crowd that he had long discussions with the board's attorney, Mr. Mercy, before coming up with his recommendation to the board.

"I understand people's Christian beliefs, I consider myself a very good one," Dr. Colburn said. "But we're walking a fine-line when it comes to federal funding. And some of the comments made tonight by our school board members could put that in jeopardy. I will encourage Mrs. Miller to have her child see a therapist, but I would recommend granting her request. I will allow for children to transfer from her class if their parents are uncomfortable with the situation, within reason."

*****

I went out in the hall and waited with Granny while the board made it's decision.

"You were a brave little lady in there," a young woman said while I was getting a drink from the water fountain.

"She's not usually like that," Granny replied. "She's usually quiet and shy."

"Well I think it's a good thing you let your voice be heard," said the woman who introduced herself as my homeroom and math teacher, Amy Fitch.

"Nice to meet you Miss Fitch," I said.

"You look very pretty in pink," she said. "I'm sure we're going to get along just fine."

Just then, the doors of the meeting room opened.

Mama emerged, surrounded by television and newspaper reporters.

"I told them not to mess with Barbara Jean Miller!" Momma said joyfully.

"You're the most famous tranny in all of Tennessee," my brother Isaac said. He had stayed in the courtroom with Mama.

"Isaac Leon Gill, what a horrible thing to say about your sister," Granny said as she hit him in the head with her purse.

"My family, I really love them, yes I do," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Oh, I'm sure they're really OK," Miss Fitch said as she put around my shoulder.

"Oh, you don't know my family," I said.

*****

Judith Marie Miller.

Those were the words I wrote on the yellow notepad in the courtroom.

"You can write more girly than that," Momma said.

"I don't know, I think it's right pretty," Granny said of my chicken scratch.

Mamma made me write my name over and over to get used to it.

There was no one fighting us in court today. Momma got me dressed up in a white and green dress with a white bow in my hair as she took me to the Crockett County Courthouse to see Judge Parker.

She had come to change my name. Jude Tyler Jones would no longer do.

Judith was my great-gramma's name. Marie was Granny's middle name.

"And your daddy ain't never paid you no child support, he ain't never paid you no mind," Momma said. "You ain't no Jones. You're a Miller like your Mamma."

Miller was her maiden name. She changed her name back to Miller after her last divorce.

"And since you ain't got nothin' to do with that good for nothin', Jones ain't your name anymore, either," she said.

Judge Parker approved Momma's.

"You can still be called Jude," Momma said. "But you're official name is Judith!"

Judith was an OK name, I thought. It was the same name of the baby from The Walking Dead.

Yeah, I might be a girl now, but I still liked zombies.