Parrotfish (6 page)

“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; obviously 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.

And Mom kept coming back to it like a tongue to a sore tooth. I wasn’t sure why. I knew she loved her sister, but she didn’t seem to be able to stop herself from constantly poking and prodding at her as if she were a clay statue that wasn’t quite dry yet and could still be reshaped. Every now and then, Mom reminded me of Grandma Katz, always wanting everybody to do things
her
way, but I knew Mom would pass out if I ever told her that.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry,” Mom said, grabbing the tissue box from the sideboard and slapping it on the table. Unlike Grandma Katz, Mom did usually realize when she’d hurt someone’s
feelings. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just worry, is all.”

“You never
mean
to, but you keep doing it,” Gail said, sniffling.

“I’m
sorry
,” Mom repeated. “You know I’m a worrywart. At least nursing pays well, and you’ve been at the hospital long enough to get a daytime schedule. That’s all good.”

Gail continued to glare at her.

“Let’s talk about something else entirely,” Mom said. “My problems. Angie’s problems.” Her mouth curled up on one side as she looked across the table at me.

“I don’t have any problems,” I said, taking a long slurp of tea and standing up.

“Well, I think there’s something you ought to tell your aunt. We can talk about it. You can get her opinion.”

“I have homework to do,” I said. “Besides, I’ve had enough opinions for one day.”

“What is it, Angie?” Gail wanted to know. She’d wiped her eyes and pulled herself together. “Tell me, honey.”

I’d always adored Aunt Gail, and I trusted her not to freak out on me. Still, I was already tired of the moment of revelation, seeing the weird ways people took the news. I was beginning to wish I
had a card to pass out to people. Something like
I AM A TRANSGENDERED PERSON. FIND OUT WHAT THAT MEANS BEFORE YOU SPEAK TO ME AGAIN.
But I sighed and rose to the task. “You know how you said my haircut looks like a boy’s?”

She nodded. “Do you want me to shape it up for you? I can make it look more feminine.”

Mom let out a little puff of disgusted laughter. “She doesn’t want it more feminine. The whole idea is to look like a boy. She’s changing her
name
, for God’s sake. No more Angela. My daughter is becoming some boy named Grady!” The anger in her voice surprised me. I knew she wasn’t happy about my changes, but suddenly she seemed furious.

I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t
my
fault this was happening. I was just trying to straighten things out—live the life I was supposed to live. Why was everybody freaking out about it? It was
my
life.

Gail was looking at me, confused. “What’s your mother talking about?”

“Aunt Gail, I’m transgendered, okay?” I was pretty sure a nurse would know what that meant. “I’m a male, a boy. And I want people to call me Grady, not Angela.”

“Oh,” she said, looking back and forth from me to Mom. “Well, wow.”

“Yeah, wow,” Mom said sarcastically. “Big wow. So, every time you think you’re having a hard time with that little baby, just remember this is the easy part. Someday he’ll be a teenager and all hell will break loose.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said quietly. “Thanks for your support. I’m so happy to know that you think of me as a big terrible problem!”

And of course after that I made a fast getaway to my room, punctuating my remarks with the obligatory door slam. I was glad I didn’t have to stick around and hear how shocked Aunt Gail was, how she never suspected, and all the rest. I wanted this first part to be over. I wanted Grady to be a real person, for people to know
him
. I wanted to start life over again.

I got the hot-water bottle from the bathroom I shared with Laura and filled it until it bulged. Then I crawled under the covers, hugging that rubber gut-heater as if it were my baby.

Around three o’clock, as I was staring at my Global History book, pretending to read, Mom knocked on my door.

“I’m sorry I got so mad before,” she said. “I’m working on how to feel about all this, but it’s hard.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“Well, it’s not okay, but I really came up here to tell you you have a phone call.”

“I do?” Eve was the only person who ever called me, and she’d been AWOL for a week or more. Unlike most other high-school kids, I had no cell phone and no need for one. Mom handed me the cordless phone from downstairs.

“Hello?”

“Hey, where did you go? You weren’t in TV Production.”

“Is this Sebastian?”

“Yeah. I was going to tell you about my Environmental Science project, remember? Stoplight parrotfish?”

Save me.

       SEBASTIAN: You wanna come over and see my aquarium? I have two red warthog google-fish and three blue wiggle-whammies! Gosh, fish are so cool!

       ME: Sure, Sebastian. I hope your fish have one of those little castles to swim in and out of. That’s
really
exciting.

       SEBASTIAN: Oh, yeah. I have a castle in the tank—and a mirror in there too, so they can watch themselves going about their busy lives.

       
ME: And so they get their lipstick on straight.

       SEBASTIAN: Ha! Good one!

       ME: What do fish do all day, besides eat and poop?

       SEBASTIAN: Well, eating and pooping do take up a lot of their time. And dying. Sometimes they do that too.

       ME: The old belly-up routine, huh?

       SEBASTIAN: Yeah. Oops, just lost another one!

“Are you listening to me?” Sebastian said. “The Smithsonian website says that in lots of fish, gender ambiguity is natural—especially in reef fish. I picked the stoplight parrotfish for my report because they’re so pretty, and because they change color when they go from female to male—from dull gray to bright green with a yellow stripe. Isn’t that awesome?”

He had my attention now. “What? Fish change from female to male?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. Stoplight parrotfish do. Actually all parrotfish do. And the two-banded anemonefish can change either way. Slipper limpets can change back and forth, and so can hamlets and small-eyed goby and water fleas and slime mold—”

“Fleas and slime mold. Wow, I’m in good
company. Does the hamlet fish carry around a skull and ponder suicide?”

Sebastian was quiet for a second. “I thought you’d be interested in this, but it doesn’t seem like you are.”

I sighed. “It’s just . . . I don’t know what this has to do with me, Sebastian. I’m not a fish.”

“Do you know a lot of other people who were born girls but want to live their lives as boys?”

I had to smile; Sebastian didn’t waste words. “No, I don’t, but I know there
are
some.”

“I’m sure there are, but I thought you’d like some real evidence here that you are not alone in the animal world. There are other living creatures that do this all the time. ‘Nature creates many variations.’ I’m using that line in my paper.”

When you thought of it that way, it did seem kind of amazing. “You’re right, Sebastian. I’m sorry I blew you off.”

“It’s okay,” he said, without a trace of hard feelings. “So, do you want to know more?”

“Sure.”

“Well, the parrotfish has a beaklike jaw of fused teeth, which is where it gets its name. Besides its regular teeth, it also has a row of sharp ones at the back of its throat—”

“I don’t need to know
everything
about it. Just get to the sex part.”

He snorted. “Spoken like a real boy, Pinocchio. Okay, some of the parrotfish are born male—those are called primary males. The secondary males are born female, and when they change into males, they’re called terminal males or supermales.”

“Hey, I like that,” I said. “The ones who
change
are supermales—like Superman.” I flexed my biceps, not that anyone could see my little muscles pop to attention.

“Well, Superman only changes his clothes, not his gender.”

“Okay, okay. Go on.”

“The females change into supermales in response to population density; that is, they change when there’s a need for more males. The supermales are dominant over the primary males. They apparently get more than their share of the girls.”

“Wow. And you just happen to be doing a paper on this fish?”

“Yeah. Life is full of surprises, huh?”

“Tell me about it.”

“Are you gonna be in school tomorrow? I’ll bring the pictures I got off the Web.”

Sound of me plummeting back to earth.
School. Tomorrow. Crap
. “Um, I’m not sure about tomorrow. I mean, I’m feeling a little sick.”

“Yeah, but staying home isn’t going to cure you, is it?”

What a know-it-all
. “Sebastian, how come this doesn’t throw you like it does everybody else?” I asked him. “Aren’t you freaked out by me at all?”

He barked out a laugh. “Are you kidding? I want to be a scientist and a filmmaker. You’re, like, my perfect subject!”

“So you’re mostly interested in putting me under a microscope.”
Great
.

“Or maybe in front of a camera. But that’s not the only reason. You know, I liked you before, too. I always thought you were a very cool person.”

I thought about that. At least this one weird, geeky little guy thought I was cool. It was a start.

“Okay, I’ll meet you at the lockers tomorrow,” I said.

“Come early,” Sebastian said. “I’ve got lots of pictures!”

“Hey, Sebastian,” I said before he could hang up. “Do you by any chance have an aquarium?”

“Grady,” he said, sounding a little hurt, “what do you think I am, a dork?”

T
uesday was not much less awful than Monday, especially at the beginning. The news about me seemed to have gotten around the school, and most kids just wanted to stare. People who’d never bothered to glance in my direction before suddenly needed to gawk openly. They studied my walk, they watched my face, they looked for the clues they hadn’t picked up before.