None of the Above (5 page)

The next day, the world was the same. Nothing about me had changed, either. Yet everything was different.

On the ride to school, I listened to Faith and Vee carefully. When Vee made fun of Larissa Jermain's blouse because it looked “mannish,” I squirmed in the backseat. I felt a jolt go through me when Faith cooed over how she wanted to get the new MacBook Pro, the “girly” one. And when they mentioned Sam, going on and on about how many receptions he'd made in the last football game, my heart constricted in my chest.

I knew I needed to tell Sam. I vowed to myself that I would, soon, when I knew how.

But what would I say, I wondered, as he sat down next to me at lunch with his usual haul of two cheeseburgers, three Powerades, a salad, and a large basket of fries. He slid his tray over so I could share his fries.

I gave him a weak smile hello and nibbled at my tuna-fish sandwich. Aunt Carla had made my lunch. She always put too much mayonnaise in it, though I didn't have the heart to complain.

“So, Andy is gonna throw another party Friday night,” Sam said, dipping three fries into his ketchup at the same time before shoving them into his mouth. “We should go, since we missed it last time. Remember to bring your bikini. The hot one? I think it was purple.”

The purple one was a string bikini, and I'd worn it over the summer at the annual Spartan Car Wash. Had the thousands of drivers who passed me been able to see the faint bulge of my testes? I knew there was no way they could possibly know what was inside me, but my stomach did a somersault anyway.

Sam dug into his cheeseburger and downed it in three bites. “Man, do I need to let loose this weekend. Coach has been kicking our ass in practice.”

A couple seats away, Bruce glanced down. “Stop whining like a pansy, Wilmington, and remember to bring your balls next week.”

I blanched, and put my barely eaten sandwich back into my paper bag. I lurched to my feet.

Sam looked up at me. “You feeling okay?” He had just picked up his second cheeseburger.

“Yeah, I'm fine. Just feel like I might be getting a stomach bug, that's all.”

“Want one of my Powerades?” he asked, holding up the still-wrapped bottle.

“That's okay. I'm going to run to the nurse's office and see if I can get Tums or something.”

“'Kay. Later.”

I never made it to the nurse's office. Instead, I went to the second-floor girls' room and sat in a stall until my stomach settled, listening to the rhythm of doors opening and shutting, of water running and the hand dryer blowing. I read the graffiti on the wall from top to bottom. I wasn't too surprised to see a big B
RUCE
T
ORINO = ASSHOLE
in red Sharpie, but I was a little peeved to see that someone had written
AND
VR
IS A BITCH
underneath it in ballpoint pen. I tried to scratch it out, but the lines were too deep.

Now that we had a diagnosis, my dad had begun to troll the internet. When I got home from school Wednesday he was sitting in front of the computer with a half-finished cup of coffee. Next to him was that day's pile of printouts that he had specially highlighted for me.

“Krissy, did you email the support group yet?” my dad asked, tearing himself away from the screen with some difficulty.

“Not yet.” I unzipped my book bag and hauled out my homework. One of the first things my dad had printed out for me was the AIS-DSD Support Group website. Supposedly
they had an email list, and meetings. I couldn't imagine what they talked about. Hoo-hoo Dilation and the Care and Maintenance of Your Testicles?

“You should do it, honey. It'll be good for you. I already heard back from the parent support group.”

“Dad!” It was so typical. He always forgot that he was not the one with the disease. Or syndrome. Or whatever it was.

“It's all right if you're not ready to contact anyone yet, though. Linda said that you just need to know that they'll be there when you need them.”

“Who's Linda?”

“The doctor who's the leader of the parent support group. Her daughter, Maggie, is in her twenties. She just got married and is going to adopt a baby girl.”

Because she couldn't have her own baby, I thought. It was selfish to think that adoption wasn't as good. I knew that. But it didn't change the way I felt, the gaping hole I could actually feel in my belly, as if I'd been the victim of some organ snatcher. Except I never had a womb to begin with.

“Krissy, promise me you'll at least look at the website. You don't have to email anybody. But they have a whole section for girls who have just learned their diagnosis. It'll help. I swear.”

I looked up at my dad. Since I'd started high school, with both indoor and outdoor track, and year-round training, we hadn't seen much of each other. He'd been switched to a six a.m. shift a few years ago and always went to bed at nine, so
when I had late track practice we were ships passing in the night. When I did see him, I never really looked at him. I was surprised to see that his wrinkles had gotten deeper, the creases around his lips there even when he didn't smile.

I could do this for him.

I closed my World History book, not taking my eyes from my dad. “I'll go up and look at it now.”

It turned out that my dad was right. The internet was hope.

There was a group of women smiling at me from the landing page of the support-group website. I clicked on the
JUST LEARNED
tab with Frequently Asked Questions, the first of which was, “Am I really a girl?”

The answer was: “Yes you are, really!”

I know it's not possible to hold your breath for a whole week, but when I read that line, it was as if I released a breath I'd been holding ever since Dr. Johnson had broken the news. It was only when I saw the answer on the screen in plain black and white that I started to think that maybe my life wouldn't fall apart after all.

There were other questions that I hadn't even formulated in my mind, and more answers. I felt tears prickle in my eyes when I read the very next one:

What do I tell my partner, family, friends?

Nothing today; wait until you're fully informed, and then gradually share when it's safe and you're ready.

That part was less helpful. What did that even mean? How could you tell when it was safe? It wasn't like people went around with tolerance meters that you could monitor, or signs saying, “Welcome, hermaphrodites!”

Down at the bottom of the page, there was a picture of a girl holding a brown-and-black terrier. Or maybe it was a stuffed animal—I couldn't tell. The girl had blond shoulder-length hair, and a great smile. Underneath the photo there was a letter from the girl, from a real, live girl with AIS who lived in Maryland. Who had recently gotten married. Who was in medical school. And who welcomed me to her “sisterhood” and offered up her contact information if I had any questions.

My dad never asked for much. So I opened my email.

Subject: New Diagnosis

At that point I stopped. Who was I supposed to address the message to? There was no contact person listed. I finally decided to not even put in a salutation.

Hello!

My name is Kristin. I am 18 and was diagnosed with AIS a week ago. I saw your information on the AIS-DSD website and was interested in joining the support group. I live in Central New York and would
love to know if there are any other teens in the area.

Thank you for your time,

Kristin Lattimer

I read the message over once, twice, three times. Did it sound too formal? Was I supposed to give them my address? I typed in the Support Group website and scoured the “Contact Us” section, but it didn't say anything about giving them my address. So I put in my phone number just in case they wanted to contact me. And with a deep breath, I pressed Send.

For the next hour, I hit Refresh every five minutes, until I got bored and started looking through the mountain of research that my dad had collected.

When I used to babysit a lot, before track became a year-round training thing, my favorite activity to do with kids was puzzles. I loved getting down on the floor with them, teaching them what a corner was, and what it meant for an edge to be straight. There'd be that aha moment when things clicked, when they'd start getting that you could rotate pieces, match colors and patterns.

My life had been one big puzzle, except I never knew it. As I flipped from page to page, reading about AIS and what it meant, everything started to make sense: Why I never got my period—I didn't have a uterus. Why I never had a problem
with acne, and why Sam had thought that I'd gotten a Brazilian wax—something about how my messed-up hormones prevented zits and pubic hair. Why it had hurt so goddamn much my first time—my vagina was too short because my organs didn't develop right.

My body missed an exit.

So I was stranded in no-man's-land.

Or more accurately, no-woman's-land.

I got about halfway through my dad's stack before I started feeling restless. It was dinnertime, anyway, so I bounded down the stairs with more energy than I'd had in a couple weeks—since Homecoming, really.

“Dad! I did it! I emailed the support group.”

My dad was still hunched by his computer. When he turned around there were tears streaming down his face.

“What's wrong? My God, is something wrong with Aunt Carla?”

He shook his head, and I was shocked to realize that the expression wasn't one of fear, or anger, or sadness. It was an emotion that I would've never thought to have seen on his face.

Relief.

He waved me over to his computer. He was reading what appeared to be a magazine article, with a really detailed picture of AIS anatomy. I looked at the diagram, wondering if I was missing something, and then looked back at my father.

“Dad?” I said.

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed his eyes.

“You don't have a cervix.”

“Huh?”

He pointed to the diagram with a trembling finger, and I looked closer. No uterus. No cervix.

I was never going to die of cervical cancer like my mom.

And that's when I started to cry.

The first couple of days after my diagnosis, my alarm clock would go off like it always did and I'd stumble to the bathroom half asleep. Then there'd be a moment—as I was brushing my hair or going to the bathroom, for instance—when I remembered that I was a hermaphrodite, or intersex, or whatever people chose to call me.

The day after I realized I would never die of cervical cancer, though, I woke up knowing what I was. It had settled into my bones, heavy and uncertain.

It wasn't supposed to be a running day, but I pulled on my tracksuit anyway. Some people eat comfort food; I take comfort runs.

Sam was probably already awake, doing strength training in his basement, but I didn't call him. Having him there running beside me would only muddle me up even more.

If there's anything more head-clearing than the air at five in the morning in late October, I've never experienced it. I've always loved running in the cold, loved how my sweat evaporated right away when I ran. The way the wind made my cheeks rosy and smooth, and how I could see my breath scar the air. The cold always made the track faster. Harder on the knees, but quicker on the rebound. I never lost races in the cold.

You also tended to overthink less when it was close to freezing outside: Don't look at a problem from so many angles that you lose sight of the real issue. Don't worry about how your boyfriend will react to your being a hermaphrodite, when you might never be ready to tell him what you really are.

As I ran back home toward my neighborhood, the early birds started coming out. Mrs. Davidson was a nurse, and her silver Camry was the first car I saw, rear lights glowing like demon eyes in the blackness of predawn. My dad wouldn't be far behind—he usually got ready for work while I was doing my cool-down stretches.

I jogged up to our front porch, stepped inside, and in the warmth suddenly things felt less clear.

The coffee table was still a mess of highlighted printouts. The handout that Dr. Cheng had given me on vaginal dilation lay on top, along with the unopened kit. I'd finally read it the night before. It assured me that dilation “can feel a little strange at first, or unpleasant, but after a short while most women and girls can dilate quite easily.” It gave a link to a YouTube video
that demonstrated the dilation process, and described a specialized stool called a “bicycle seat” so you could do it hands-free, in case you wanted to do schoolwork or email while you were growing your own vagina.

The whole thing made me feel queasy. I shuffled the pamphlet to the bottom of the pile when I heard my dad's footsteps on the stairs.

“Morning, Dad,” I said, reaching above the fridge for the cereal and putting it on the table. I sat down in front of my laptop, opened up my mailbox, and saw:

Subject: Fwd: New Diagnosis

My heart stopped. I clicked on the email.

Hi Kristin,

I am so glad that you emailed me! I would love to speak with you and answer any questions you might have about your diagnosis. When is the best time to talk?

Yours,

Maggie Blankman

“Dad! I got an email from someone in the Support Group!”

“How about that?” he said, brightening.

I wrote Maggie a quick email telling her it'd be fine to call
anytime after seven at night.

All of a sudden, I didn't need any coffee. I wolfed down my Raisin Bran and did some thigh stretches while leaning against the kitchen counter. “Dad, is it okay if Sam and I go out tomorrow night?” I knew it'd be fine, but I always liked to tell my dad my plans ahead of time.

“I'll see if any of the guys want to come by and watch the Rangers game. You go have fun.”

“Love you.” I pecked him on the cheek and sprinted up the stairs to take my shower.

“We're on for tomorrow,” I told Sam at lunch.

“Sweet! It's gonna be awesome. It's Richardson's turn to be DD, and she's gonna bring her parents' van.” Sam leaned down to whisper into my ear, and a flutter went down my spine. “I've been thinking about you every night.”

The flutter expanded, settling nervously in my belly. I faked a smile. “Me, too, baby.”

It wasn't a lie. I had been thinking of him, too. One of the Frequently Asked Questions on the AIS-DSD Support Group website was:

Can I be sexually active?

Yes, and we're here to help give you support on how to be healthy, active, and fulfilled in and out of your bedroom. . . .

They didn't go into specifics. Maybe the people in the Support Group knew that I was
this close
to running away from the whole thing, screaming, “TMI!”

There was way too much information, but I could understand how my dad could get addicted to all the research, because the alternative was to be adrift.

Alone.

“Earth to Krissy?” Sam said impatiently.

“What?” I'd zoned out.

“So Vee's gonna start the circuit around seven, so maybe seven fifteen at your house? Don't forget the hot tub.”

The flutter curdled into a ball of dread. I hadn't.

As I waited for AP English to start, I swiveled back in my chair to ask Jessica Riley if she'd been to Andy's post-Homecoming party.

She shrugged and twirled one of her curls around her finger. “Quincy and I stopped in for a little while, but we ended up meeting my sister and Darren at Carmella's. I promised my mom I wouldn't take her to a party with alcohol.”

“That's nice of you.” I pressed on to the real question I wanted to ask. “How big was the hot tub? Could a lot of people fit?” Maybe if I waited long enough, there wouldn't be room for Sam and me. Then I wouldn't have to worry about the bikini after all.

Jessica laughed. “I'm pretty sure it's only supposed to hold
eight people, but there were at least a dozen in it when we were there. It was a total group grope.”

Not what I wanted to hear. Before I could respond, Darren leaned in from across the aisle. “Did I hear my name taken in vain?”

“Yeah, I was telling Kristin that my sister thought you danced like a Muppet on crystal meth.”

Before I could tell Darren that she had said no such thing, he flashed a smile. “Sweet! Exactly what I was going for.”

On the way home that afternoon, as Vee and Faith debated whether to wear jeans or miniskirts to the party, or just wear a dress over their bikinis, I wondered how they would react if I told them. After all, there was almost nothing we didn't know about one another. I knew that Vee couldn't stand it when people laughed at her and wasn't above white lies to protect her reputation. I knew that Faith was so afraid of hurting other people's feelings that she never made decisions except by committee. And the two of them? They knew that I was horrible at keeping secrets, and that I had the fashion sense of a blind nun.

That summer's Spartan Car Wash had, in fact, been the first time I'd ever worn a bikini. My mom would have sooner slit her wrists than parade her prepubescent daughter around wearing a two-piece, and after she died it wasn't like my dad and I spent quality time bonding over what kind of swimwear I'd have each summer. The suit that I brought to the car wash at Hanna's Quick Stop had been a freshman-year summer-vacation
gift from Aunt Carla, who had used some Kohl's Cash to buy it when she realized I'd outgrown my previous suit. It was a black two-piece, but not the sexy kind. The tankini top covered my entire midriff, and the bottom was cut like boy shorts.

Vee wrinkled her nose when I pulled out my suit in the back office that was our impromptu changing room. “Seriously? Boy-cut is so, like, five years ago. Why don't you try one of mine?” She had brought four bikinis. I'd chosen the purple one because it had a little more
substance
than the others. At least the top part was padded. The one that Vee wore looked about as thick as a sheet of two-ply toilet paper, and wouldn't have worked for me because I had a little more going up top than she did.

Until I stood at the side of Route 30 during rush hour, I hadn't actually thought about how wearing a bikini is basically like being in public in your bra and panties. But we got a lot of donations. We also inspired an op-ed piece in the
Observer-Dispatch
decrying “the objectification of impressionable young women under the pretense of school spirit.”

“Hey,” Sam said when he read the piece. “There were some hot cougars out there objectifying
me
. Why didn't they write about the poor, impressionable young men?”

“Whatever,” said Vee. “If you've got it, flaunt it.” She let me keep the purple bikini.

Stressed out as I was about Friday's party, it took me a while to dig through the summer clothes stored under my
bed. Eventually I found both Vee's suit and the one from Aunt Carla. I shut my door and put on the bikini. I stood in front of my full-length mirror and stared at my groin. With the right lighting, you could see two little shadows that didn't quite belong there—my hernias. I coughed just like Dr. Johnson had told me to, and something just above my bikini line jumped under my skin, like that moment in horror movies right before the alien pops out of the person's stomach.

I tore off the bikini, disgusted with myself. It was just a matter of time before I disgusted Sam, too. Instead of trying on Aunt Carla's suit, I pulled on a pair of sweats and a thermal top. Then I curled up in my bed, and thought up some excuses for not going to Andy Sullivan's party.

Somewhere in between “I've got the stomach flu” and “My dad grounded me because I flunked a math test,” my phone went off. I panicked, thinking that Sam was the last person I wanted to talk to, but it was an unfamiliar number.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, is this Kristin?” a woman's voice asked. It was a good voice.

“Yes. May I ask who's calling?” I answered automatically. My mom had drilled that one into me when I was five.

“This is Maggie Blankman. From the AIS-DSD Support Group?”

Holy crap, I'd forgotten. “Oh, wow. Thanks for calling.”

“Of course; my pleasure.”

There was a moment of silence as I panicked. Was I supposed to have prepared questions?

“Nice to meet you,” Maggie said after what was probably only a few seconds, though it felt like hours. “You said in your email that you just found out last week?”

“Yeah. My ob-gyn figured it out when I went in for my first appointment. How about you?”

“My family found out about my AIS when I was six. Of course I was really young, so they didn't tell me all the details of AIS right away. My mom's a doctor, so she spent a lot of time when I was little slipping in stuff about different types of anatomy, and how adoption wasn't unusual. She finally told me the truth when I was sixteen. I was lucky I was able to find out about it gradually. It's rough having to find out everything at once like you did.”

“Yeah.” I felt a pang of jealousy. She'd known for so long. There was another silence. Over the line, I could hear the strains of a Sarah McLachlan song.

“How's it going?” Maggie asked. “Do you have any questions?”

Did I have any questions? My mind roiled with them, but it was like shooting a moving target—I couldn't pin one down.

“So . . . what am I?” I asked finally.

She knew what I meant right away. “You're a girl. You can do everything every other girl can do except get your period and give birth.”

I wasn't sure about that. Everything? I had to screw up every ounce of my courage to ask the next question. “What about sex? I tried a couple of weeks ago with my boyfriend, and it was a disaster.”

Maggie made a sympathetic sound. “I'm really sorry about that. When you know about it beforehand, you can do things to get yourself ready.”

I grimaced a little at her euphemism. “I know. My doctor, she . . .” I struggled to say it out loud. Over the phone. To someone I'd never met, even if she was in medical school. “I've read all about . . . dilation. But it seems so creepy.”

“I can totally understand, but you get used to it. Supposedly, it's not that different from using a tampon. ”

I stifled a giggle. My mother would roll over in her grave.

“Remember,” Maggie said, “you might not even need to do it for long. Some of us don't have to do it at all.”

My cheeks flushed, and I felt a wave of warmth throughout my body, but not because of the subject matter. Because she had used the word
us
.

It was one of those times when you don't realize how lonely you are until, suddenly, there's someone by your side. My eyes prickled, and I started sobbing, my breath coming out in shuddering gasps.

Maggie misunderstood my tears. “Kristin. I know it seems strange, but a lot of perfectly normal XX women have to dilate, too, for a ton of reasons. . . .”

“No, no,” I said, laughing. “I'm not sad-crying. I'm happy-crying. It feels so amazing not to be alone.”

“I know what you mean.” She took in a deep breath. “This really is a sisterhood, you know? You should always feel free to call me, but there's a senior at the U, Gretchen Lawrence. She only lives an hour away from you. I'll email you her information.”

After we hung up, I blew my nose and rifled through the stack of papers that my dad had brought up to my room. I drummed the little white cardboard box with the dilators, and read Dr. Cheng's handout one more time.

I booted up my computer and typed in the URL for the YouTube link from the pamphlet. A still shot popped up of a middle-aged woman with short blond hair sitting on a couch in what looked to be her living room. You could see her dining table in the background, and a family photo on the end table.

It was all very civilized.

The video was fascinating, in a disturbed kind of way. They had found the woman with the most reassuring voice on the planet to demonstrate their product. She had classy hands, too, that made the dilator look less like a sex toy and more like, well, actual medical equipment.