Jacilynn was trying very hard to keep her emotions down today. The minutes slipped by far to fast for her. Although their regular school had let them out for the holidays yesterday today Jaci and Dottie were attending the Barbie Princess Charm School meeting.
Dottie was thrilled to be wearing her 'magic' dress for the whole day. Even though it really was just a copy of the famous Barbie movie uniform. Not the one at the end but the standard one at the beginning. Jaci wore a simular outfit. The plaid skirt with the small sash of the same material as the skirt but the pattern was at a contrasting angle.
The white silk blouse with its tiny pearl buttons and puffy short sleeves hidden under a purple vest that hugged her every curve. Jacilynn and Dottie were dressed identically to their class of 33 other girls all in matching uniforms. Most wore their hair like Jacilynn did with a small scrunchie holding a small section of hair in a tail on one side. Others such as Dottie whose hair was shorter had an assortment of hairstyles reminiscent of the movie. Dottie looked more like Portia if she was a blond.
Jaci had even asked Dottie to hold her book above her head and walk a bit as a bit of a tease. As an icebreaker it got everyone in class to giggle as Dottie could not keep a straight face.
For most of the day the two girls had spent it learning how to walk like a lady, dance like a lady, and talk like a lady. Now they were trying to have tea like a lady. Most of the classes were easy for Jaci and she did not know why. Dottie seemed to struggle with some of the classes such as walking. Jaci could balance 3 books easy while Dottie only had the one on her head for a minute or two before it fell. Some of the other girls couldn't even do that so she was not alone.
Jaci tried to keep her emotions in check but as the day wore on she would snap at people for no reason. She got admonished more than once by the snobby teacher for her behavior. Dottie for the most part looked at her with concerned eyes. She did ask once but Jaci brushed her off, perhaps a bit rudely.
As the day wore on there was time to mingle and Jaci found a place of silence to herself to reflect. She knew what was coming. It had happened last year and the year before that. She knew in her heart it was not really her fault but what was going to happen would make her lose the small family that really seemed to actually see her. It had happened before twice now. It hurt as it made Christmas a stiffed or painful affair for Jaci.
As she though back she had not really ever had a real Christmas that she could ever recall being as fun and joyful as others made it out to be. What was the fun of being given a stupid boys suit with the too small neck choking her? What was the fun in scratchy itchy socks and pants that you were forced to wear all day long while other girls your age or younger got to wear such pretty dresses that looked so fun and comfortable to wear?
Before long the break was over and she had to join the other girls in the large classroom now devoid of any desks and music being pumped in. It was a classical music that the teachers wanted them to learn to waltz to. They showed each of the girls how to step, how to move, how to swing. It was actually a very good workout. However if she heard another"Glide just like Jacilynn does" She would scream.
She was not the girl everyone seemed to believe she was. She should not be used as an example. It was wrong all wrong. She twirled to her left.
"Young man that is not for you! Only girls wear dresses and you are a boy!" she heard her mother say to her with that yelling whisper. She twirled to the right and skipped like a swan. A tear running down her cheek.
She could still see the cute dresses sitting on their little padded hangers at the store. All she had done was stop to touch the enticing fabric between her fingers. Her mother had grabbed her arm painfully and dragged her over to the mean man with the stupid suits.
"How many f**king times do we have to go through this shit*Blank* Your my god***m son and you will be a man when you grow up! Enough of this girly nonsense. Come here!her father pointed to his knee with that huge hand of his. She shouldn't have run but she did. She ran to hide under her bed in her room. Crying as she was right now. She could still feel the rough hands on her bare arm as he yanked her out from under the bed with enough force to snap her small wrist against the bed's box spring.
"Jacilynn! That's enough you can stop dancing now.. are you okay sweetie?" The concerned voice of the teacher that had inadvertently grabbed the same wrist that was broken 3 years before. She let out a smile cry of pain and the woman dropped her wrist like it was molten lead.
"It's nothing. I just got a little to involved in the lovely dance." Jaci tried to lie her way out of it as she felt the tears on her cheek.
"Are you sure? If there is something you want to talk about I'm willing to listen." Listen. Her parents had said they would listen but they never did no matter how many times she had tried to explain what she could only feel. They told her she was wrong or confused.
"Yes. I'm fine really see." And she put on a smile just for the teacher. The teacher hesitated for a moment before she smiled her own smile and patted her shoulder before walking away. It had taken an enormous effort to not flinch at the patting.
Dottie looked at Jaci with eyes far older than she from across the room. Jaci finger waved to her sister hoping she could pull it off. Dottie waved back but her face was still stone.
The trip home Jaci fretted in the front car seat looking out the window the whole time not seeing anything. She couldn't look to the family she had grown to love knowing the small ugly part of her was growing. She would loose them just as surely as she had lost the love of all the others before them. If she looked she would burst into tears at the pain of the loss that was sure to come.
Once back at home with Tante Drea the two girls had sat through a tough dinner. It was pizza and both girls usually enjoyed it. Drea could sense there was trouble of some sort with both girls but not what. They talked but it was emotionless explanations of what had happened that day.
When they had finished two pieces each the girls help Tante dispose of the paper plates and napkins. Jaci had wiped down the kitchen table while Dottie checked the counter. The leftovers were put into the fridge for the next day.
Dottie retreated to her room to practice more of the dancing she had had trouble with while Jaci watched for a few minutes. The more Dottie danced the more Jaci started to get angry. She didn't say anything but her face more than showed it even if Dottie didn't notice. Jaci fled Dotties room. The pain was growing along with an anger she had not had for a very long time. The anger grew as Jaci stomped down the hallway to her own room. Once inside she opened the door to her closet and got really angry at all the girly finery there. She pulled it all out bending a few hangers in the process.
They were all wrong! Boys did not , could not wear this stuff! Her wrist felt limply to her side as she pulled open the drawers of her dresser and removed all the girly stuff in there as well. It wall went into the pile of discusting stuff on the floor. Her once broken wrist was twitching and spasming as her heart pounded harder and harder as the anger and adrenaline built.
Jaci snarled as she removed the clothes she was wearing and threw those on the floor near the bed. She pulled all the fluffies and the bedcovers onto the floor as well. She was angry and couldn't think straight anymore. She was a boy and shouldn't be allowed in such a room. Bad boys like her did not wear nice clothes. Bad boys like her did not play with dolls. Bad boys did not do fun things.
Standing naked she pulled the one male item in her room a pair of jeans too small for her and held them to her heaving breasts. Her angry turned and she let out a bone jarring howl of pain. Then everything went blank greys to her.
The Panic Before Part 2: A Jaci and Dottie Story: Dottie tries to help.
Dottie got out of bed and practically floated to her closet.
Today, she was allowed to wear her “magic” dress, a Barbie Charm School dress, and she took it off its hanger, hugged it, and swung it around humming. Then she carefully laid it out on her bed and skipped over to her dresser.
She rummaged through her underwear drawer, until she found the prettiest panties she owned, and threw them onto the bed on top of the dress. Then she found a cami to wear over her training bra, and a pair of nylons, and put those four items on top of the dress and went back to her closet.
She slipped out of her nightie and the panties she wore under it, and put them in a clothes hamper, and grabbed a robe to wear to the bathroom.
It was a beautiful kimono style robe, royal purple in color, and she relished the feeling of the silk on her skin for a moment before running to the bathroom to have a shower and get as pretty as she could.
Once clean, powdered, bathroomed, and dressed, she joined her sister on the short walk to school, once again marveling in the magic of the dress - how it seemed to lighten her weight to the point where she felt like she barely touched the pavement as she walked.
She got to school, and relished the ohs and ahs from the other girls, and spent most of her non-class time giggling with Jenn, which would have seemed impossible not long before.
She remembered how she met Jen when the latter girl was throwing tampons at Dottie’s sister Jaci, which resulted in Dottie jumping the girl and trying her level best to pound her.
A visit to the principal’s office thereafter was when the relationship changed, as Jen had said, “See that's what annoys me most about you. You are not even trying and are such the perfect girl. You are so lucky that you will be able to one day give birth and you want to throw that all away. I would kill to be able to have babies."
Dottie had been beyond shocked at the girl’s statement, as she had sometimes felt the same way about her sister, but then she remembered what had cured her of any jealousy of Jaci.
“You’re jealous of Jaci? You’d want to be her? Would you still want to be her if you knew what her parents had done to her, trying to make her into a boy? Would you still want to be her if you sat by her bedside and listened as she screamed and cried and begged for mercy and said she’d be a good boy if only they would stop? Would you want to be her if you saw her completely unable to wear pants, because they bring on flashbacks so bad she shakes? Would you still want to be her then?”
Dottie then took a shaking breath and finished, “And you think you’re the only girl who cant have babies? I cant. I cant cause I was born with boy bits and no matter what, even if they make me look like a girl on the outside, I wont ever have a womb. And sometimes, that hurts so much I cant even describe it. So there.”
Eventually the principal had made the three girls work together on a project where they had to make a presentation on the other’s lives, and Dorothy and Jenn bonded and became good friends, and even Jaci forgave Jenn as well.
Now, Dottie had to say goodbye to her friend and go to the charm school class, and it was on the way here that her own happiness fog lifted enough to realize how much trouble her sister was in.
Jaci had been grouchy all day, snapping growling like a bear woken too early, but Dottie had just put that to a post-period kind of mood, but now as she walked to the class she wondered if it wasnt something more serious.
By the time the charm school classes were over, Dottie no longer had any doubts, and struggled with what to do - Jaci’s flashbacks could be horrible things, and she felt terribly helpless to help her sister through them.
Not that Dottie didnt know a thing or two about flashbacks herself, and it wasnt long ago that it had taken both Jaci and their Tante Drea to calm her to the point she could sleep as she had been triggered by the realization that she might in fact like boys.
She shuddered at the memory, but shoved it aside in her concern for her sister grew after they had gotten home.
And then she heard a scream from Jaci’s room, and rushed in to find Jaci had piled everything she owned including the charm school dress into a pile, and sat naked on her bed screaming as she held onto a pair of boy’s jeans much too small for her.
Dottie was panicked. She called out for Tante, but was afraid to leave her sister in such distress, and tried to talk to her.
“Jaci, its me, its Dottie. Its gonna be all right.”
“Goway.”
“Cant. Love you too much. Please let me help.”
“You cant help. Nobody can help. I’m a freak!”
“If you’re a freak so am I.”
Dottie began to strip herself to her underwear, to drive the point home and maybe shock her sister back to reality.
“See? I’m a boy who wears girl’s stuff. I’m a freak too.”
Just then Drea came into the room, saw the two girls in a state of undress, but realized questions would have to wait as the pain in Jaci’s eyes was too large a concern to worry about much else.
She grabbed Jaci and held her as tight as she could, and Dottie hugged her from the other side, and they held the crying girl until at last her tears stopped.
Much later, in Tante’s bed in their nighties, Dottie used the example of her fear of boys to get her sister to open up as to what triggered this attack - a fear that since her birth family had rejected her, the family she made with Dottie and Tante would also end with them rejecting her, a fear that seemed to have grown stronger the closer to Christmas it got.
Dottie cried at the thought of ever rejecting her sister, and Tante held her tight, and Jaci’s fears subsided, at least for the moment.
Drea was wise enough to know that only time would show little Jaci that her new family would stay together, that together, they could face anything, from Jaci and Dottie’s past, to whatever life threw at them in the years to come, and the bonds they forged with each other would only grow stronger through each crisis they overcame.
But for tonight, she was just glad this crisis was over with, and she went to sleep feeling the heartbeats of two little girls on either side.