Becoming Marilyn

Chapter 2

She kissed me good night kind of absently and left her wedding dress on my bed. I recognized it from the pictures in our downstairs hall. I rolled it up and stuffed it in my backpack to take to school.

I spent the day eavesdropping on girls. Their conversation had a different rhythm than the boys. They didn't interrupt each other as much and it seemed to be all about other people. Mostly boys. They liked Mack, didn't like Joe and didn't even know I existed. At the clubhouse, we went through the scene. Joe and Tom sort of knew their parts I couldn't remember the words at all. Mack glared at me like he was Shakespeare and I was wrecking his play.

'I have a costume,' I said, desperate to distract him.

'So?' Mack said.

Now I had to pull out the dress and show him. Once I showed him the dress, I had to put it on. The guys laughed and joked.

'Be serious,' I said, 'This is my Mom's wedding dress.'

'For real?' Mack asked.

I just nodded. He helped me put the dress on over my pants and t-shirt.

'You need some..." Tom put his hands out in front of his chest.

'Shut it," Mack brushed my hair back away from my face and stepped back.

"I swear I saw his eyes change as I became a different species. I wasn't Robert any more but Ophelia, a girl. The other guys were pulling the usual guy teasing, but Mack didn't say anything. Terror reared up in me, worse than the time a stray dog chased me through the woods. I tore the dress off and flung it at him and ran out of the clubhouse. We ran through those woods every day of our lives. Those paths were as familiar as my own home, but I ran like I was lost. There was shouting behind me as Mack yelled at the other two.

"I was a boy, a f*****g boy. I pissed standing up and made fart jokes. I didn't wear dresses, especially not wedding dresses. I smacked into a tree and fell to the ground. Whatever made me afraid didn't go away. Boys face their fears. They didn't cry, or run away. I should have kicked that dog, killed it with a stick. I was a boy. I punched the tree as hard as I could because there was no dog. A bone in my hand cracked and sent pain up my arm.

"Mack found me there, huddled on the ground, crying like a girl."

"I think that's enough for today," Dr. Tripp made a few notes.

"What?" Marilyn stopped cradling her right hand and took a sip of water. The hand ached like it had for months after she broke it.

"Why are you here, Marilyn?" He put the note pad and pen down.

"I need to do this before I can have the surgery." Marilyn winced at how close she sounded to tears.

"True," Dr. Tripp said, "the counseling is mandated before the reassignment surgery, but the goal is to help you identify who you are."

"I know who I am," Marilyn took a breath and banished the quaver in her voice.

"Then we will get along just fine," Dr. Tripp said. "I'll see you next week."

Marilyn put her water bottle in her purse and left the office. From the door of Dr. Tripp's building the water of Pugent Sound was visible in the distance. Clouds covered the mountains on the other side.

The bus took her up Madison to where she changed buses to get to the University.

The walk to the library left her both chilled and damp. October in Seattle wasn't as cold as it was back home in Punky's Hound's Corners, but Marilyn hadn't adapted to the almost constant moisture in the air. It wreaked havoc with her hair and made her unsure whether she was too hot or too cold. She pulled her sweater from her purse before she entered the library proper and put it one. The climate control to keep the books dry also meant cold.

She popped into the washroom and checked her makeup. There was little she could do with the hair but put it back in a pony-tail. A couple of touches and her make-up passed inspection. Marilyn fussed with the scarf until she felt it looked like a part of her outfit instead of like it hid something. s**t, she hated what puberty had done to her.

"Leave it for Dr. Tripp," she ordered her reflection, then went to do the reading for the Introduction to Social Work course with a paper due this week.

***

"So," Professor Dingman said, "Social work moved from being the action of women attempting to do good in poorer districts to being work directly related to increasing the capacity of the people to help themselves. We share with other professions the idea of Do no harm, yet unlike some professions we give value to the client's own decision. The right of the client to make their own determinations is a foundation of social work ethics."

Marilyn followed his movements from the middle of the class. The others scribbled notes, but she couldn't remember his words if she tried to write it all down. So she focused on him as he paced across the front of the class.

"What are some examples of ways in which society tries to limit a person's ability to choose?"

"Where someone lives," a black student said, "there are places my Dad could buy a house, and places he couldn't."

"Right," the professor wrote on the board, "race is an issue."

"Money is too," a girl behind Marilyn said. "You have a lot more choice if you have money than if you're poor."

"Good, class divisions."