Parrotfish

  Ms. Unger’s tirades always scared me a little bit. She got so mad over the dumbest stuff. I just stood there watching her work.

  “Did you want something? You’re not gonna ask to be excused from gym today, are you, cowboy?” It was obvious that I’d be sorry if I did. When Ms. Unger started calling people cowboy, it usually meant her patience had been stretched thin.

  “No,” I said. “But I wanted to talk to you a minute.”

  “So talk,” she said, digging at the sole of her shoe.

  “The thing is, I’m changing my name. I’m going to the principal’s office next period to tell him about it too. I’d like people to start calling me Grady.” I smiled, hoping to appear likeable and harmless.

  Ms. Unger put down the shoe and looked up at me. She squinted her eyes. “Don’t tell me.”

  Her gaze took in the haircut, the shirt, the pants.

  “Good Lord,” she said. “You’re transgendered, aren’t you?”

  My mouth fell open. “Well, yeah. How did you know?”

  “I’m not blind,” she said. “And I’m not a math teacher—I’m a gym teacher. And you’re not the first one.”

  “I’m not?”

  She sighed. “About five, six years ago. It was a boy, though, going the other way. Mr. Gleason was teaching with me then—not Speranza.” She said the name as if it were something else she’d scrape off the bottom of her shoe. “We handled it together. Couldn’t use the girls’ locker room, but we certainly couldn’t make the kid use the boys’. She’d have been cream cheese in five minutes.”

  I flinched at the image.

  “So you want to know what room to use, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “And when we split up, do I stay with you or . . .”

  “My advice? Keep away from Coach. He’d love to scramble your eggs. Do you feel comfortable staying with the girls?”

  “Sure. I mean, I grew up with girls. Even though I know I’m a boy, I don’t exactly know how to be a boy.” I was surprised at what a relief it was to be able to talk to somebody who knew about this, who wasn’t terribly shocked by the whole idea.

  She nodded. “Okay. Well, here’s what we’ll do. I’ve got a bathroom and a shower in here, in my office. You can use them during gym class or whenever you need to during the day. I’m not in here that much anyway, unless I’ve stepped in dog crap. At least for now, stay with the girls. We’ll hope nobody raises a stink about it.”

  “Do you think they will?”

  “No way to know. Sometimes people are great. Sometimes they’re jerks. If you have any problems, come talk to me, okay?”

  “Okay.” Who’d have thought Ms. Unger would be so cool?

  “What did you say your new name was?”

  “Grady.”

  “Grady, before you put your gym clothes on, how about helping me out here?” She handed me a sneaker and a knife.

  We bent over the newspaper together and dug poop out of the soles of her shoes, which was the high point of my day so far.

  Chapter Five

  I’d been so worried about gym class, and then it turned out fine. Nobody seemed to notice that I’d changed clothes in Ms. Unger’s office. They probably would eventually, but for today it was easy. Of course, I didn’t make a big announcement about it or anything. Ms. Unger called me Grady once, and a few girls turned around to see who she was talking to, but most of them just looked right through me like they always did. We ran the track—inside—and then played volleyball as usual. Well, not quite as usual. Wearing that damn bandage made it hard to get a deep breath, and my ribs were aching by the time we finished. I wondered how long it would take for the undershirt binder to arrive if I ordered it that night.

  I was so relieved about gym class that I felt optimistic walking into Dr. Ridgeway’s office. So what if kids called him Dr. Rigid Way or Dr. No Way? He’d always been perfectly nice to me before. His secretary smiled and told me I was in luck—he had a few minutes free. And I felt lucky as I walked in and closed the door; everything was going pretty well.

  “So, Angela, sit down, dear. What’s going on? No problems, I hope?” Typical Dr. Ridgeway. He hated for there to be problems. He called himself a problem solver, but really he was a problem avoider.

  “Well, not exactly a problem, Dr. Ridgeway.”

  That made him happy—he grinned.

  I plunged in. “But there is something I need to talk to you about. I’m changing my name. I intend to start living as a boy.”

  His smile twitched and wriggled and finally fell apart. “Oh, Angela, my dear. No, no. You don’t want to do that.”

  “Yes, I do, Dr. Ridgeway. I’ve already spoken to my parents about it and they’re going to call me Grady.” Okay, something of an exaggeration. “And I want everyone at school to call me that too.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand what you’re letting yourself in for, Angela. There’s no need to go overboard. We’re a liberal community—dress boyishly if you like—but to change your name and announce it to everyone? What’s the point of that? Terrible idea.” He slammed shut the dictionary that was sitting on the desk in front of him, as though he’d just given the last word on the subject.

  I leaned back in my chair, stunned by the look of aggravation on Dr. Ridgeway’s face. Dr. No Way. What did he think was going to happen to me that was worse than lying all the time? I couldn’t go back to being a girl; even if somebody beat me up for doing this, I couldn’t.

  “I don’t really think I have a choice, sir,” I said. “I am a boy. I can’t pretend anymore that I’m not. And I don’t want to.”

  Dr. Ridgeway leaned across his desk and glared at me, almost as if he were angry. “Well, Angela, that’s just silly. Of course you aren’t really a boy. You’re probably a lesbian—I understand that. And I suppose you want to prove something by going all the way like this. Pushing the envelope, they call it. But I’m telling you, for your own good, I can’t condone it. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not a lesbian. And this is for my own good, Dr. Ridgeway. Don’t you think I know what my own good is?”

  He gave me a sad and knowing smile, the kind adults give you that makes you seriously consider homicide. “No, I don’t. Teenagers rarely know what’s good for them, I’m sorry to say. Take my advice now, Angela, and don’t tell anyone else about this. In a few years you’ll be in college, and then you can act as outrageously as you want to and no one will care. Although by then you’ll probably have forgotten all about this silliness. But for now, be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt. And I don’t want to see my school get turned upside down for nothing, either.”

  Right. That was obviously the bottom line: Don’t rock the boat. Don’t start trouble that he’ll have to deal with. I should have known.

  “So you won’t change my name on my records?”

  “No, I won’t. If your parents come in and ask me to change it, I might reconsider. But I doubt that they’re too pleased with this idea either.”

  I stood up. “You can’t stop me from telling people,” I said.

  He looked like he wished teachers could still whack kids on the knuckles with rulers. “No, I can’t. But I’m warning you, no good will come of it.”

  I felt so miserable walking out of there. Why had I expected Dr. Ridgeway to understand? Did I really think that he’d say, Of course, Grady! Let me just make a note of that new name. Good choice, by the way! What world did I think I was living in?

  Would Mom or Dad come to the school and argue for my right to choose my own name, my own gender? Mom was having trouble using “Grady” herself; maybe she’d agree with Dr. No Way that the new name would only cause trouble. And Dad hated talking to any kind of school administrator. He had some leftover anxiety about authority figures from back when he was in school. He didn’t even like talking to teachers, which was funny because he’d married one. No, it wasn’t too likely that I’d get them to stand up for me.

  As I walked down the hall, three
lunkhead bozos who thought they were hilarious came around the corner and “accidentally” crashed into me.

  “Oh look, it’s Angela Cat-Hair!” the first idiot said.

  “Oh, wow, I thought for a minute it was Angelina Jolie! There’s such a resemblance.”

  “Hey, Cat-Hair got a haircut!” One of them started messing up my hair, and I knocked his hand away.

  “Ooh, Hairball is in a fightin’ mood,” the fool said, making hissing sounds and clawing the air with his fingernails.

  When they assumed martial-arts positions, I walked away. They fell all over themselves with hilarity.

  “Bye now, Cat-Hair!”

  “Have a nice day, Hairball!”

  Ha, ha. I could hardly wait for my latest news to filter down to moron level. They’d enjoy it immensely.

  Suddenly I was feeling like a big old piece of that stuff I’d scraped off Ms. Unger’s shoe. I slunk into the cafeteria, hungry but feeling a little sick to my stomach, too. I was standing in line, waiting to get the daily slop, when I noticed the group of girls across the room looking at me and pointing. Well, Danya was pointing. Melanie and Zoe were just staring out from beneath their thick waterfalls of hair. Eve was busy examining the noodles in her soup.

  Head high, Danya strode across the room and stopped a few feet away from me. “Is it true?” she asked in a loud, shrill voice that could make dogs whimper. Talk about somebody looking for attention.

  “Is what true?” I said.

  “We heard you’re not a girl anymore. You changed into a boy named Grady.”

  The line inched forward. “You got the gist of it,” I said.

  She wrinkled up her nose as if I suddenly smelled bad. “That is so sick! I’ve never heard of anything like that! It’s disgusting!”

  People were looking at us now and whispering.

  I tried to act calm, even though I felt shaky inside. “I thought you liked boys, Danya. I thought you were a big fan of the male species.”

  “Real boys, yeah. Not freaks who think they’re boys.”

  Eve had come up behind Danya. She put a hand on her buddy’s arm. “Danya, you wanted to see my history notes, didn’t you?”

  Danya swung around and pulled her arm away from Eve. “I’m talking to your boyfriend here, Eve. How could you ever have been friends with this mutant? Didn’t you know she was weird?”

  Eve blushed. “I . . . Angela wasn’t . . . I mean, when she was a she—”

  “She’s still a she! You can’t just decide you want to be the other sex!” Danya said.

  Eve was careful not to make eye contact with me. “I know. I’m just saying, Angela never told me—”

  “You better not have a crush on this he-she person, Eve. If I find out you’ve been hanging around with this pervert—”

  “Danya, let’s go!” Eve said, then ran back to their lunch table. Zoe and Melanie followed her, but Danya stood there staring at me another long minute.

  “I better not ever hear that you tried to get together with Eve, you freak. My father is a policeman, you know.”

  By that time my hands were shaking too. “And what’s he going to do? Arrest me for cutting my hair? Or changing my name? For being different?”

  She sneered. “Different? You make the different kids look normal!” Then, with everybody in the room quiet and looking at us, she turned and stalked out the door.

  There was no way I was eating lunch after that. There was no way I was hanging around the cafeteria, either, now that I’d become the hot topic for lunch gossip. And then, as I hurried down the hall toward my locker, I felt a twinge of pain low down in my abdomen, because apparently a bad day can always get worse. Already kids were whispering about me as I passed them, maybe using the same words Danya had. Freak. Mutant. Pervert. And now I was a boy who had just started his period and was probably bleeding all over his jockey shorts. Yeah, that was normal.

  Even my own body betrayed me on a regular basis. What was I supposed to do now? Crap. I could feel the cramps advancing. The gym and Ms. Unger’s bathroom were half a mile away from my locker. By the time I ran down there I’d be a mess. And who knew if she’d have any pads in there for me to use anyway?

  I grabbed my pack from my locker and looked up and down the hall, weighing my options. There were restrooms not far away, but which one could I possibly go into? If I went into the girls’ room there might be some crazy creep like Danya in there who’d ream me out just for existing. On the other hand, if I went into the boys’ bathroom, who knew what might happen? No doubt some of those hormone cases would be thrilled to bloody a tranny nose. They’d put it on their resumes.

  No, there was enough bleeding going on already, and no place to hide, even for a few minutes. I thought of Dr. Ridgeway. No good can come of it.

  The pay phone was in the lobby by the exit. Better to huddle here and wait instead of walking the halls and displaying any possible seepage. “Mom,” I said after she answered, “I’m not feeling well. Can you come and get me?”

  Chapter Six

  As soon as I got in the car, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest, but I could tell Mom was staring at me. After a minute she said, “So, what happened?”

  “Nothing happened. I got sick. I told you.”

  “You weren’t sick this morning.”

  “Sickness doesn’t have a special time of day, you know. It just starts.” I knew she knew I wasn’t really sick, but I didn’t feel like going into any details. Admitting I had cramps seemed like an argument against what I’d been trying to prove to her. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about my talk with Dr. Ridgeway or the run-in with Danya. I could just hear her saying, I knew this would happen. Mothers always know something rotten is going to happen to you, because they’re always worried about every little thing anyway. So the one out of twenty times something bad does happen, they’re sure their psychic motherknowledge foretold it.

  She didn’t say anything else until we pulled into the driveway. Then she announced, “Gail is here with the baby. Let’s not upset her.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” I said, climbing out of the car and slamming the door harder than I intended. Jeez, Mom was the one who usually got Aunt Gail upset, not me.

  The new mother was propped in the corner of the living-room couch with pillows stuffed under her arms so the baby would be at the right height to breastfeed. It seemed strange to see Gail like that—so quiet and intent, staring down at that small, bald head as if the secrets of the universe were written there. Not to mention the fact that my skinny, athletic aunt had her shirt pulled up over her newly ginormous boobs, which were currently being used as a snack bar.

  I waved to her and said, “One second,” then hurried upstairs for some damage control before my first meeting with the babe.

  “Hey, cousin!” I whispered, sitting down gently next to the twosome. Talking in my regular voice seemed too intrusive. The baby was curled into Gail’s chest like a large kidney bean, motionless except for his sucking cheeks.

  “Hi, honey. Meet my little miracle.” Gail looked up at me and smiled, then suddenly startled. “Are you sick, Angie? You shouldn’t get too near . . .” She started to pull the baby away from me, and he flung out his arms like a contestant on American Idol appealing to the crowd.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom said. “She’s not really sick.”

  Gail relaxed, and the baby glommed back on to her breast. “Just taking some mental-health time?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “You got your hair cut,” she said.

  “She cut it herself,” Mom said. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Why’d you do that? I would have cut it for you. Don’t I usually cut it the way you like it?” Gail looked a little hurt.

  “Sure—it’s just that I wanted to try something a little different for a change.”

  “It makes you look like a boy,” she said.

  Mom and I looked at each other; obv
iously this was the way in which I wasn’t supposed to upset Aunt Gail. But the silence got longer and weirder until finally Mom was the one who said, “That’s the point.”

  But Gail wasn’t really paying attention. She was staring into Michael Eli Katz’s eyes. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she said. “I know all mothers think their babies are beautiful, but Michael really is, isn’t he?”

  We assured her he was, although I have to admit that all babies looked pretty much the same to me: puffy little bodies with squashed-up faces. She lifted him up onto her shoulder and rubbed his back until he burped and dribbled milk down her shirt. Mom got a towel to clean things up, but I was pretty sure Gail wouldn’t have cared if Michael had puked all over her. He was her little miracle. At least for now. I wondered if she’d still adore him so much once he got a personality of his own.

  When the baby fell asleep, Gail put him down in the little basket she’d brought along, and she straightened her disheveled clothing. Mom brought us all tea at the dining-room table.

  “So,” Mom said as she put a large cup in front of her sister, “do you still think you’ll be able to go back to work in three months?”

  Gail’s spine stiffened. “I don’t have a choice about that, Judy. I wish you’d stop acting as if I did.”

  “I’m just saying, now that you know what it’s like to have a baby . . . you see what I mean, don’t you, about how hard it is to leave them with strangers?”

  “Of course it’ll be hard to leave him! I know that! But Jackie is hardly a stranger. I’ve known her since high school, and she’s been running her day care for ten years—”

  “I just feel sorry for him, that’s all. To have to go to day care at such a young age.” Mom looked sadly over at Michael’s basket as if she were watching bad luck rain down on him. She must have known the effect this would have on Gail.

  “Why do you keep bringing this up? I’m raising this child by myself, Judy. I don’t have a husband—I have a sperm donor! There’s no choice. If I want to be able to feed and clothe my son, I have to work. Full-time. I knew this when I got pregnant, and so did you. It was either be a single working mother or not be a mother at all. I can’t make the choices you made, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be the best mother I can be!” The tears were running in little rivers down her face. As usual when she and my mother got on this subject.