“Come on, Angie. Don’t be mad at me. You’re still my friend too!”
“Oh, thank you, Eve. I’m so relieved! Where am I on the list again? After Danya and Melanie and Zoe and—”
“That’s not how it is!” She kicked her shoe into the nearest Santa, and it left a black mark. “Oops, sorry.” She knelt down to try to wipe the mark off with a glove. “Why can’t I have more than just one friend? I mean, they’re my school friends and you’re my home friend. What’s wrong with that?”
“You mean I’m your runner-up friend. When Miss America, Miss Universe, and Miss Queen of the frigging World cannot fulfill their obligations. then I’m good enough to be seen with. Or rather, not seen with.”
“Angie,” she whined, “I need friends in my own class. You remember how it was when you went to the high school for the first time and didn’t know anybody. It’s scary! I need more friends than just one !”
“Especially when that one is transgendered, right?”
Eve opened her mouth to respond, but no words came out, so she shut it again.
“You kids want some cocoa or something?” Dad said as he passed us on the way into the house. “I’m gonna take a break and make myself some tea.”
Eve’s face came to life again for Dad—they’ve always been pals. “No thanks, Mr. McNair. I can’t stay too long.” As soon as Dad was inside the house, her smile disintegrated.
The reason Eve and I hardly knew anybody when we arrived at Buxton Central High School is that we were homeschooled from first grade through our freshman years by our mothers. Mom met Eve’s mother, Susan, soon after their family moved into the neighborhood. They were both schoolteachers who had decided to stay home with their kids, and when they realized how close in age we all were, they decided to do a joint homeschooling thing, first with just us girls and then later with our younger brothers. My mom did the reading, social studies, and arts parts; Susan did the math and science. We all loved it, I have to admit. There were two “classes”: Laura, Eve, and me in one and Daniel and Charlie in the other. Since we only lived a few houses apart, we’d walk back and forth when our “classes” changed. We all played soccer and took swimming lessons with kids from town, and when we listened to their stories about public school, it didn’t sound like we were missing much. Crowded classrooms, too many worksheets, and lots of homework. We felt lucky.
I went off to Buxton last year, as a sophomore. The moms decided they weren’t prepared to do higher math, and besides, I needed more “socialization.” I think they hoped that being around boys would make me act like more of a girl. But it worked the opposite way. Seeing all that rampant girl-on-boy flirtation and boy-on-girl lust freaked the hell out of me. I couldn’t figure out where I belonged in that picture. By the end of last year I came out as a lesbian, which, as I mentioned, was just a pit stop on the queer and confused highway. Over the last six months I started reading some books and going online to GLBT sites, and my feelings started making more sense to me.
I realized it wasn’t just that I became interested in girls when I hit puberty and started figuring out sex. I was a boy way before that, from the age of four or five, before I knew anything about sex. On one of the websites it said that gender identity—whether you feel like a boy or a girl—starts long before sexual identity—whether you’re gay or straight. In my dreams at night, I was a boy, but every morning I woke to the big mistake again. Everyone thought I was a girl because that’s the way my body looked, and it was crystal clear to me that I was expected to pretend to be a girl whether I liked it or not.
But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy. So the week before Thanksgiving I cut my hair (not entirely successfully), bought some boys’ clothes and shoes (easy), wrapped a large Ace bandage around my chest to flatten my fortunately-not-large breasts (much more painful than you might think), and began looking for a new name. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I figured that if I acted like this was a more or less normal transformation, maybe other people would too. The process was nerve-wracking, but it was a huge relief to know that my appearance was finally going to match my sense of who I really was.
Eve and Laura both arrived at Buxton High this year, Eve as a sophomore and Laura as a freshman. (Laura didn’t want to be the only one left in our “class,” so the moms let her out early.) Laura had always had other girls her age from her dance classes that she hung around with, but Eve and I never needed anybody else—we’d been inseparable one-and-only friends since we were toddlers. When I came out as a lesbian last spring, it was the beginning of an uncomfortable distance between us that we tried to ignore. But it got worse when I announced the real truth.
Eve was looking at me sadly. “Oh, Angela!” She seemed to be begging for something, but I wasn’t sure what.
“I’m not Angela anymore. My new name is Grady.”
“Your new . . . what?”
“I told you I was going to find myself a new name. It’s Grady. I’d like you to start calling me that. If you plan on speaking to me at all, that is.”
“Angie . . .”
“Grady!”
“Whatever!” I could see tears in Eve’s eyes, which is how I knew she was angry; anger and sorrow were always all mixed together for her. “Why are you doing this? So people notice you? I mean, everybody already thinks you’re really weird!”
I took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. I knew I was going to have to figure out how to explain it to people. “You know, in Native American cultures people like me were honored. Before the Europeans arrived and screwed everything up, we were called Two-Spirit.”
“Since when are you Native American?”
“I’m not, but—”
Eve shook her head. “I don’t know what you want from me, Angie.”
“Grady,” I reminded her. “All I want is for you to use my new name.”
She pressed her gloves into the corners of her eyes. “You act like that’s a little thing! People are already talking about you since you cut your hair like that and started wearing men’s shirts and stuff. Now I’m supposed to tell them that my friend Angela Katz-McNair isn’t a girl anymore? That we should call her Grady and pretend she’s a boy, or a Two-Spirit, or something halfway between one sex and another? They’ll think I’m crazy too.”
“Between two genders, not two sexes. I’m fairly sure my sexuality is just plain old heterosexual male.”
Eve stared at me. “Angie, this is too confusing. I’m not like you. I need to have friends—I don’t want people to think I’m a weirdo.”
“You think I enjoy it?”
She thought about my question. “Maybe you do. At least you don’t really mind it. If you did, you wouldn’t put yourself out there like this. You’re just asking for trouble.”
“I’m just asking to be myself, that’s all.”
She shook her head. “Well, Angela was my friend, but I don’t know who Grady is! I’m sorry, but I can’t call you that in front of other people. I can’t be part of this whole thing. It’s too bizarre.”
That fast I was back to being pissed off. “So I guess it’s lucky you barely speak to me in school. My name change won’t be a problem for you.”
“I’m sorry, Angela. I hope we can still be friends—”
“When nobody is looking? Sorry, I don’t call that friends.” My voice careened into a shout. “And my name is Grady!”
Eve pulled her coat tightly around her body, as though she thought something inside might fall out. She scooted down the driveway and left me standing there, my biggest secret loose in the atmosphere between us. I’d been thinking of it as a clean rain, but obviously Eve thought it was air pollution.
I walked inside, shaking. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, looking over the newspaper.
“I have kind of a headache,” I said. “Do you mind if I stop for today? I’ll help you again tomorrow.”
“Angela—I mean . . .” He shook his head as if that would help the
right name rise to his lips. “Gray . . . Grady, you’re the only person in this house who enjoys helping me put up the decorations. You deserve some time off too.” He winked at me and went back to the paper. I should have known that Dad would be the family member who had the least trouble with my change from daughter to son. Dad was addicted to happy endings. He’d do whatever he had to to finagle one, even if it meant drastically altering his idea of his own child.
On the way to my bedroom I passed Charlie grinning maniacally and shooting his way out of another felony.
Chapter Three
By busting our humps for two more days, we managed to get all of Dad’s characters singing, skating, leaping, winking, and lying in a manger. Even Charlie was forced to abandon his joystick and remote control for a few hours in pursuit of our goal: the entertainment of greater Buxton by nightfall on Sunday. I didn’t mind physical labor, and I’d always enjoyed working on projects with Dad—just not this project. If it had been a normal year, Eve would have helped out too. She always liked being there on Sunday when we put the finishing touches on everything. She’d stand back on the street and direct us as we moved statues a few feet this way or that. She had a good eye for details. But we got it done without her this year, and it looked fine.
I peeked from the garage door windows as the first visitors arrived, and though I couldn’t hear their remarks, I could imagine.
LITTLE GIRL: Look at the Barbies! Oh, Mommy, why can’t we do this at our house?
MOMMY: Because we have a life, honey.
GRANNY: [shaking her head] I wouldn’t want to pay their electric bill.
LITTLE GIRL: I’d help you put up the decorations! Please, Daddy, can we?
DADDY: Right. Have you seen these idiots? They spent the entire four-day weekend doing this. I’d rather watch football.
LITTLE GIRL: [grumpy] I hate football.
MOMMY: [grumpy] I hate “The Little Drummer Boy.”
GRANNY: Pugh! Those teddy bears stink!
Yes, our hard work and ingenuity were certainly appreciated, at least by five-year-olds. But the worst was yet to come. Now that the outside of the house was finished, we’d have to spend the next week getting the inside ready for display. As if mixing the Virgin Mary with the Virgin Barbies weren’t bad enough, Dad liked to confuse centuries even further by turning the indoors into Queen Victoria’s parlor. As far as Dad was concerned, if it had to do with Christmas, it was all good. You might think no one in their right mind would subject their family to this, but Dad’s parents had done it to him, and he was passing the joy along to us. In fact, Dad probably became a carpenter just so he’d know exactly how to build his own house for maximum dramatic exposure.
Our living and dining rooms stretch across the front of the house, and each of them has a huge window that takes up most of the street-side wall. There are heavy curtains that pull across the windows, like you’d see on a theater stage. Which is what those rooms would become at night when the curtains were open. During the holidays we would put up a giant tree in each room and decorate it with paper chains, popcorn and cranberry garlands, and small oranges stuck with cloves. As a kid I liked making the paper chains, but now if they broke, I let Laura do the patching. The cranberries were easy, but stringing popcorn kernels onto thread is like trying to put a rope through a light bulb: Unless you’re a magician, you end up with a lot of broken pieces in your lap. Nothing went on the tree that we hadn’t made ourselves.
There were no electric lights used in the show rooms throughout the month of December, although candles, gas lamps, and two fireplaces gave off a golden glow. The fireplace in the living room had a platoon of toy soldiers marching through a miniature snow-covered village on top of the mantel. The dining-room hearth was swathed in holly branches and hung with five large stockings, made by Mom, with our names embroidered across their tops. (My old name, anyway. Maybe Mom would make one for Grady eventually.) Holly was also intertwined in the dozen wreaths that hung throughout the two rooms. Evergreen swags draped around the wall moldings, and sprigs of mistletoe hung from the ceiling. Both fireplaces were lit each evening at six o’clock and kept burning until we shut the curtains at ten o’clock. The rooms were supposed to look familiar to Charles Dickens should he happen to wander in off the street.
In order to keep things as authentic as possible, Dad didn’t like us to go into these two rooms during viewing hours unless we were in costume. Nineteenth-century costume. So every year for the past ten years no one but Dad has used the two largest rooms in the house between Thanksgiving and January first. The rest of us would huddle in the kitchen or just stay in our own rooms upstairs, refusing to become character actors just to walk to our own front door. Dad, of course, was more than willing to get dressed up every night in order to light gas lamps and tend the fires. He put on heavy tweed pants and a woolen vest with a collarless white shirt underneath, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and wore one of those flat newsboy caps on his head. Nothing made him happier.
Obviously, Dad was a frustrated actor. Or maybe a thwarted set designer or something. He loved all this theatrical stuff, the idea that he was entertaining people. Except I think he was more entertained by it than anybody else.
The door slammed behind me. Laura and the usually immobile Charlie came up to the garage-door windows too.
“Who’s out there?” Laura wanted to know.
“The Kellers. Mrs. Taylor and her kids. A bunch of people I don’t know,” I reported.
Laura grimaced and stamped her foot on the concrete. “Do we have to do this forever? It was fun when I was seven, but now it’s just humiliating. You can’t go out the door without the whole neighborhood staring at you. I’m so sick of having people walking around my house every night. Pretty soon they’ll be looking in the windows again too. It’s so stupid.”
“Hey, you’re the one who came up with the Barbies. That brings ’em back year after year,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s so bad,” Charlie said. “Except for those bears. And the music.”
“You don’t spend four days putting it all up, either,” I reminded him. “Or taking it down.”
“The music definitely sucks,” he said, ignoring me.
“I bet everybody thinks we’re just Santa’s little elves or something, all happy and gay . . .” Laura glanced at me. “You know what I mean. Like Christmas is such a big deal for us. Like we’re walking around singing ‘Jingle Bells’ all day. It’s not true at all! We have an enormous nativity set in our front yard, and we never even go to church!”
“Not to mention that Mom is Jewish,” I said.
“Exactly! I’m sick of opening my real presents in the kitchen so nobody sees that they’re made out of plastic or spandex or something from this century! We have to get Dad to stop it,” she said. “This has to be the last year.”
“Fine with me,” I said. “But who’s going to tell him and break his heart?”
“I always forget Mom is Jewish. How come she likes doing this?” Charlie asked.
“Duh, Charlie,” Laura said. “Mom hates all this—haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“She doesn’t act like it. She sews costumes and paints stuff. If she hates it so much—”
“I think she used to kind of like it at first,” I said, “but now she just does it because she can’t say no to Dad. Not about this, anyway. He lives for Christmas. He’d be miserable if he couldn’t make our house look like the last stop for the Polar Express.”
“And our living room look like Macy’s front window,” Laura grumped.
“Do you guys know those kids?” Charlie asked, pointing toward a group of teenagers clustered around the smelly bears, laughing.
“Oh my God!” Laura ducked down. “That’s Sarah and Brit and their boyfriends! They’re in my English class and I’m just getting to be friends with them. I can’t let them see me!”
“Why? Don’t they know you live here?” Charlie wanted to know.
Laura bent low and headed back inside. “I hope they don’t! That’s all I need—more news about my weird family for everybody to gossip about!” She glared at me, then sneaked back into the kitchen to hide. Poor Laura. Like Eve, she cared way too much about what other people thought.
SARAH: I would die if my parents put stuff like this out on our front lawn.
BRIT: You know who lives here, don’t you?
SARAH: Who?
BRIT: Laura Katz-McNair. From our English class. The girl who wears the purple eye shadow.
SARAH: Really? Oh, no—I thought I liked her.
BRIT: Believe me, you don’t. Her sister is that older girl who dresses like a boy.
SARAH: [sharp intake of breath] No! That he-she person? Oh, God—I feel so sorry for her!
BRIT: I know. Her whole family is obviously insane.
SARAH: That’s so sad.
BRIT: It really is, isn’t it?
“Mom told me you’re changing your name,” Charlie said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah. I want people to call me Grady from now on,” I said.
He wrinkled his nose. “If I was going to pick a new name, it would be a cooler one than that.” He started pounding on an old stool like it was a conga drum.
“Like what?” I asked.
He thought a minute. “Maybe Ryan. Or Keith. Or, no—Clive!”
“Clive?”
“It’s better than Grady.”
“Did Mom tell you why I’m changing my name?”
“Sort of. Something about how you want to be a boy now.”
I nodded. At least Charlie wasn’t having a hemorrhage over it like Laura.
“Actually, I think I always was a boy,” I said. “I just didn’t look too much like one.”
Charlie glanced at me. “You do now.”
“Well, I’m trying to now. But I always felt like a boy. So, now I’m going to start being one.”