Parrotfish (11 page)

The assembly was over a few minutes later, and everybody managed to pull themselves together enough to head back to class. I turned off the camera and unhooked it from the tripod, trying to look remarkably busy in case anybody felt like saying anything to me.

I could tell Russ was a little uncomfortable, but he tried to finesse it. “Man, I told you those two are crazy. They’ll do anything.”

“Yeah, that was
so crazy
,” I said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

He bent down to wind up the extension cords, but then turned back to me. “You didn’t . . . I mean, you shouldn’t take it the wrong way—”

“How is he
supposed
to take it? Is there a right way?”

Kita had run up the bleachers and was standing behind us, fuming. “That was the stupidest, most insensitive thing I’ve ever seen!”

Russ made a face at her. “Oh, come on, Kita. It was funny.”

“
Funny?
You know they know about Grady—the whole gossipy school has been talking about nothing else all week. Don’t they have a brain between them? This was offensive on about ten different levels.”

I stared at Kita, trying to pretend I hadn’t just tripped and fallen into the deep dark mine shaft of love from which escape is impossible. I finished breaking down the tripod and handed it to Russ, who had the electrical cords over his shoulder and the camera in his hand already.

“You’re way off base, Kita,” Russ said. “This isn’t about that. It was just for laughs. You take things too seriously.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending them, Russell!”

Russ was getting pissed off now too. “I’m not defending them! I don’t even think they need defending!”

“Well then, you’re as thickheaded as they are!”

Russ grunted. “I’m done listening to this, Kita—you’re nuts. I’m going back to the TV studio. You can stand here and gripe to Grady if you want, but I don’t see the problem. It was a
joke
.” He hiked the equipment onto his shoulder and took off down the bleachers at an angry clip.

“Not a very funny one!” she called after him.

“Unfortunately, I think 99 percent of Buxton High would disagree with you there,” I said.

“Buxton High,” she said scornfully, “should get a clue. I’m sure it was meant to be offensive to you, but I think it’s insulting to all women when guys parade around like that, acting like we’re no more than jiggling body parts. I can assure you that George Garrison with sock boobs does not equal
me
!”

Then, almost before I knew it had happened, Kita put her arms around me in a fleeting hug. “And they don’t equal you, either, Grady,” she said. “You have more courage than a whole football team full of those idiots.” Then she stomped down the bleachers and disappeared, taking my adoration with her.

F
or the rest of the day I had the feeling people were staring at me even more than usual, as if they were trying to scope out my reaction. Sebastian, of course, met me at the door of the TV studio, ready to recap every thought he’d had since the morning’s drag show.

“What kids are saying is that they don’t think George and Ben’s act had anything to do with you,” he told me. “The party line is that it was just for laughs, guys have done this for years, what’s the big deal, et cetera. But the fact that people are discussing it means it
is
a big deal. You’ve made them think about it. Well, not all of them, but at least the people who are capable of thinking.”

“I’m thrilled,” I said as I searched the uneditedvideo shelf for the footage we’d taken that morning.

“Russ has the videos,” Sebastian said, pointing to the editing machine against the back wall where
Russ was already ensconced. Fine. He could edit this one all by himself. I could live without seeing George and Ben shaking their fake hooters again.

“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Sebastian asked.

“Not a clue.”

His eyes got slitty, and I could tell this was going to be more than just a casual thought or momentary idea. No, the way Sebastian was spreading his hands before him in a descriptive swath promised a full-blown theory. “What if,” he began, staring into the distance, “you put the most macho guy you could think of—say, Sylvester Stallone or somebody like that—on one end of a football field, and the most feminine woman you could think of—say Paris Hilton or . . . Jennifer Lopez—on the other end . . .”

“You could sell a lot of tickets to that game.”

He frowned at me. “What I’m saying is that if you had everybody else on earth lined up in between them according to how masculine or feminine they were, there would be a lot of people in the middle of the field, you know? Not everybody would be standing next to Sly or Paris.”

“Can I stand next to Jennifer?”

“You know what I mean.”

“This is a very big football field, Sebastian.”

“I’m speaking metaphorically, Grady.”

“And who gets to decide how masculine or feminine everybody is?”

“You decide for yourself.”

“Most people would lie. They’d try to clump up around Sylvester and Paris.”

“Well then, some greater force would decide. The Great Scientist Who Knows Everything would decide.”

Wouldn’t that be perfect? Everybody exposed, turned inside out like me, on an enormous, metaphorical football field. I smiled and nodded. “I like it, Sebastian. Your brain is warped in a very interesting way.”

“I know,” he said, returning my smile.

SCENE:

The Feminine End of the Football Field

       PARIS: Jenny, you need to move over, hon. I’m supposed to be right here, at the very end.

       JENNIFER: Well, that’s not what I heard, sweetie. I’m at the end—you’re second.

       PARIS: [smirking] I don’t think so. I’m blond.

       JENNIFER: And flat as a board. You’re about a thirty-two double A, aren’t you?

       DANYA: [pushing her way to the goalpost] Get out of my way, you two. My father is a policeman!

       
PARIS: Who are you?

       JENNIFER: You’re not famous!

       DANYA: Are you kidding? Everybody in Buxton knows who I am!

       THE GREAT SCIENTIST WHO KNOWS EVERYTHING (no body; only a sweet, genderless voice): Danya, my dear, you don’t belong at the end with Paris and Jennifer.

       DANYA: The hell I don’t.

       THE GREAT SCIENTIST WHO KNOWS EVERYTHING: See? With that mouth, I’m putting you down by Stallone.

       DANYA: [as she disappears into thin air] No-o-o-o-o!

       PARIS: Wasn’t she on
What Not to Wear
?

       JENNIFER: [slipping past Paris and handcuffing herself to the goalpost] Entirely possible.

I pulled my hat tight around my head to walk home—it had gotten colder since yesterday, and the wind was whipping into my face. Mom probably would have picked me up if I’d called, and Sebastian would have happily followed me home again, but I really wanted to be alone for a while to think about all this stuff. Like, where would I be on the gender football field? Obviously not on the Jennifer Lopez end, but not close to the Sylvester
Stallone goal either. On the fifty-yard line? And if I was in the middle, what did that mean? That I was both male and female, or neither? Or something else altogether?

What made a person male or female, anyway? The way they looked? The way they acted? The way they thought? Their hormones? Their genitals? What if some of those attributes pointed in one direction and some in the other?

And some of this stuff had to do with the way you were raised, right? It’s not as if we’d managed to stamp out stereotypes in this culture. In many places sugar and spice were still considered the opposite of snails and puppy-dog tails. When I decided I was a boy, I realized that if I wanted to pass, I’d have to learn to walk differently, talk differently, dress differently, basically act differently than I did as a girl. But why did we need to
act
at all? A quick look around Buxton High provided numerous cases of girls acting like girls and boys acting like boys—and very few people acting like themselves. Eve was a perfect example: She’d been a great girl until she hit Buxton, but now she was a high-pitched, low-self-esteem, capital-G Girl who couldn’t relax and be Eve anymore.

So maybe it was silly for me to try to be somebody else’s idea of a boy. I didn’t need to swagger
around and punch guys in the shoulder—that wasn’t going to prove anything. There were still people who didn’t succumb to the stereotypes. Sebastian certainly didn’t punch or swagger, and he was a boy, although one who couldn’t get a date to the Winter Carnival dance.

And why was changing your gender such a big honking deal anyway? People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they’d resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world—even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren’t supposed to change? Who made that rule?

While I was marching along the sidewalk thinking about all this stuff, even though I was angry about a lot of it, I also felt pretty good, better than I had in a while. It was that hug from Kita that had done it. Just the fact that someone as fabulous as Kita Charles understood me and was on my side made me feel strong again. And Sebastian helped too, I had to admit. Maybe, eventually,
everything would be okay again. There were still people who liked me, no matter what gender I claimed to be.

I was just about to open the kitchen door when Mom threw it open and came barreling out.

“Oh! I just left a note on the table for you and Laura,” she said. “I’m going to the hospital. Gail called—Michael is sick.”

“Really? He’s so little,” I said, following her to the car.

“I know. Gail’s scared to death. He has a fever, and he’s been vomiting all day.”

“She’s a nurse, though. Shouldn’t she know what to do?”

“When it’s your own child, you’re too flustered. You can’t think clearly.” She climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Can I . . . can I come with you?” I said. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to go, but I did.

“Well, I guess,” she said. “Here, you drive. I’m feeling pretty jumpy myself.” She climbed back out of the car and tossed me the keys.

As I backed down the driveway, I noticed two red gift boxes lying on the lawn, obviously blown off the roof sled. I pointed them out to Mom.

“I wish the whole damn sled would blow down,” she said. “I wish Rudolph would blow a
fuse and his legs would break off at the knee.”

“Mom!”

“Sorry. I’m not really in the Christmas spirit this year.” She stared out her side window.

“How come Dad still puts this stuff up every year? I mean, we’re all pretty sick of it. Couldn’t you tell him . . .”

She sighed. “Apparently, I can’t. Even when my poor mother was alive and horrified that her Jewish daughter was living in the Christmas House, even then I couldn’t ask him to cut back on the extravagance, the decking of every possible hall with the biggest boughs available. He loves doing it so much—entertaining the whole town. Everybody but
us
.”

I had the feeling that Dad’s decorations were only a small part of Mom’s current lack of cheer. It was mostly about me and the ripple effect I seemed to be having on everyone around me. Since I couldn’t think of anything to say to make her feel better, we drove the rest of the way in silence.

As soon as we got to the hospital we saw Joanne, Gail’s friend who’s an ER nurse. She told us Michael had been admitted to the Newborn Pediatrics Unit and pointed us in the right direction.

“It’s probably just a virus,” Joanne said. “But
they’re going to keep him overnight and hydrate him. You can’t be too careful with a baby.”

When we got to the room, Gail was bent over a hospital bassinet in which Michael seemed to be whimpering himself to sleep. Lying in that big crib with an IV taped to his tiny hand, Michael appeared even smaller than I remembered. Gail looked up when we walked in, and tears started pouring down her face in what were obviously well-worn trails.

Mom gave her a hug, and then I did too because I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Gail said, her voice a wail. “After all the kids I’ve treated in this hospital, I still never imagined my own child in here.”

“We saw Joanne downstairs,” Mom said. “She said it looked like a virus. He’s only staying overnight as a precaution.”

Gail shook her head wildly. “You don’t know. I’ve worked here for sixteen years. I can’t tell you how often it
looks
like something simple, but then suddenly the fever spikes, or the white blood count drops, or—”

Mom put her arm around Gail and led her to the one comfortable chair in the room. “Sit down and take a deep breath, honey. You know too
much for your own good. Most of the time, if it looks like a virus, it
is
a virus. You’ve said that to me a million times since my kids were born. When I was scared to death about a swollen throat or a weird rash, you’d tell me, ‘Don’t panic!’”

Gail looked up at Mom warily through the glaze of tears. “Yeah, but you usually panicked anyway.”

“I know, but I was always the high-strung sister—you were the cool, calm one.”

“That’s because I never understood what it was like when the sick child was your own. I’ve never been this frightened, Judy. I feel like I’m losing my mind!”

Mom leaned down and held her hand. “I know.”

Gail stared mournfully at the tiny body sleeping behind the bars. “I never understood before how overwhelming it is—the love a parent has for a child.”

Mom nodded. “You can’t explain it beforehand.”

“If I lost Michael, I couldn’t bear it. I think I would lose myself!”

“You aren’t going to lose him,” Mom told her sternly.
“He’s going to be fine.” But when she straightened up again and turned to me, she was crying too.