Parrotfish (16 page)

“Dr. Ridgeway!” Ms. Unger stamped her bare foot. “I hope you aren’t blaming Grady for this! He’s not the one making trouble—he’s just living his life as best he can. If you don’t understand the problem here, I’ll talk to someone who does. Like
the superintendent. Or maybe the newspapers would be interested in this kind of discriminatory incident. Or even the ACLU! This is certainly a civil-liberties issue.”

Ridgeway’s complexion turned chalky, and his fingers bounced nervously on his desk. If I’d known Ms. Unger was going to turn out to be a saint, I would have made sure to get every speck of dog crap out of the crevices of her sneakers.

“Oh now, calm down, Ms. Unger,” he said, his voice shaky. “Of course I see the gravity of the situation. It’s just that . . . well, children can’t be expected to understand these things. I mentioned to Angela—um, Grady—that she, or he, might do better to wait until he was older to address these issues. A child like Danya—”

“I’m not a child!” Danya said. “And anyway, my mother says it’s creepy too. You don’t just decide to change your sex!”

“Gender,” I corrected her. She glared.

“It’s the job of schools to educate children, is it not?” Ms. Unger said. “I think Danya—and maybe her mother, too—could use some educating.”

Danya sat up very straight in her chair. “How dare you say anything about my mother! She’s the vice president of a company! You’re a gym teacher!”

Ms. Unger looked like she wanted to dropkick Danya the length of a football field, but No Way motioned with his hands for us to settle down. “I do agree with Ms. Unger that some punishment is in order here.” He cleared his throat. “How about this? Danya, you’ll have detention after school for the rest of this week.”

Danya grumbled.

“Three days’ suspension,” Ms. Unger said calmly. “And it goes on her permanent record.”

“It’s not up to you!” Danya said, making an ugly face at her.

“Three days’ suspension or I go to the newspapers,” Ms. Unger said. “The rest of the students need to understand the importance of this.”

No Way fidgeted. “Well, I don’t know, Ms. Unger, that seems a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

Ms. Unger stood patiently waiting.

“Fine,” he said, sighing deeply. “Three days’ suspension, beginning now. I’ll call your mother.”

Danya jumped up. “What? No! You can’t call my mother!”

“Well, your father then.”

“You can’t call him, either!” And then, something I never thought I’d witness: Tears slid down Danya’s cheeks. “You can’t suspend me! You don’t understand—my parents think I’m—I
can’t
be suspended.”

“Well, you are, cowboy,” Ms. Unger said. “Get used to it.”

No Way turned to Ms. Unger. “You and . . .
Grady
may leave now. And I would appreciate it if you’d put some shoes on, Ms. Unger. It sets a bad example for the students to see you dressed like that.”

Ms. Unger swung the pink shoes up and plopped them down on No Way’s desk. “Right. I’d hate to corrupt any of these fine minds. Danya, you can pick up your lovely dress in my office when you return on Friday. I’ll be looking forward to having a little chat with you!”

For the first time I could remember, the smug, satisfied look that normally coated Danya Seifert’s features was gone. She slumped back down in her chair, her complexion gray, looking like any other scared kid whose parents were about to be told the bad news.

I didn’t know what to say to Ms. Unger as I followed her back down the hall.
You’re my hero
seemed a little too gushy, even if it was true. I picked up my book bag in her office and made an attempt.

“Thank you for doing this, Ms. Unger. I don’t know what I would have done . . .”

She shook her head. “No big deal, Grady. Thing is, you’re going to need more support than
just mine. How are your parents doing with it?”

“Okay. I mean, they had a hard time at first, but they’re getting better about it. And I have friends here at school, too.”
Well, one anyway
.

“That’s great.” She opened her desk drawer, took out a piece of paper with an address on it, and handed it to me. “I’ve been doing a little research for you. There’s a GLBT group for teenagers that meets in Barrington a few times a month. That was the closest group I could locate—you might want to visit it sometime.”

“Thanks. I might.” I put the paper into a side pocket of my bag. “I’m actually not doing too badly, you know. I mean, most people don’t hate me the way Danya does . . .”

“That girl hates herself. People that mean are uncomfortable in their own skins. Which doesn’t excuse her behavior in the least.”

“Yeah.”

“You need a pass for your next class?”

“No, I’ve got lunch.”

“Okay. Be careful, Grady.”

“You mean because kids will tease me about this?”

“I mean because Danya will want revenge.”

S
ebastian and I had planned to walk to his house after school. We knew it would be a weird day, and we figured we’d kick back with a movie and some pizza. He’d gotten
Ghost World
,
Living in Oblivion
, and a French movie called
Ma Vie en Rose
for me to choose from. He’d seen them all already and obviously liked the idea that he was educating me. The French movie (“My Life in Pink”) was about a little boy who liked to dress in girls’ clothes. I wanted to see that sometime, but after a day like the one I’d just had, a dark comedy with Steve Buscemi seemed more appealing.

As we walked out the main entrance of the school, I saw Kita standing alone at the bottom of the stairs. Sebastian saw her too, and the possibility of sneaking by her without a word was lost. Not that I didn’t want to speak to Kita—of course I did—but just seeing the back of her head from ten yards away made my stomach knot up like a
bag of pretzels. Hadn’t I had enough stress for one day?

“Hey, Kita!” Sebastian called out as we came down the stairs.

She swung around, her hair flying out like a dancer’s dark skirt. “Hi, Sebastian,” she said. “I was waiting to talk to you two—well, mostly to Grady. I heard about what happened today.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess everybody’s heard by now.”

Kita narrowed her eyes and made a fist. “Those stupid girls,” she said. And then, as if she’d summoned them, two skinny girls in jeans that barely hung on their hip bones ran over to me.

“Excuse me,” the braver of the two said. “Could I ask you a few questions for the school newspaper?”

I hesitated and Kita jumped in. “What kind of questions?”

“Um, well, like . . . are you planning to have a sex-change operation?” She stared at my crotch while the other girl made nervous noises in her throat.

“Well, I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I’ve thought about it, but it’s a big step. Maybe when I’m older—”

“Wait a minute—why is the school newspaper asking people such personal questions?” Kita wanted to know. “This isn’t school news.”

But my interrogator ignored her. “Well then, we were wondering, um, you know . . . I mean, we don’t really get it. You know, how you
do
it. A boy who’s not really a . . . you know, boy.”

Kita and Sebastian and I stared at one another a few seconds, trying to make sense of the question. She wasn’t really asking me
that
, was she?

“What is it you need to ‘get’?” Kita asked them, her voice thick with disgust. “Are you really asking Grady how he has sex? I bet you aren’t even
on
the school paper, are you? You’re just a couple of nosy brats!”

The girls stared at her as she exploded. “Has anybody ever asked
you
that kind of question? Do you prefer big biceps or big dicks? Come on, girls! Don’t you want to tell me all about your personal sexual choices?”

I think the brave girl swallowed her gum. “Jeez,” she said. “Chill.”

I stepped in front of Kita, partly to fight my own battle and partly so she wouldn’t break the little people in half.

“Nobody ever knows what goes on between two people when they’re alone, do they? All you
know is what they tell you—and most people don’t tell. What I am is a person who’s capable of loving other people. That’s all that matters.”

Both girls turned around and stumbled off, looking embarrassed.

Kita grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Grady, that was great,” she said. “You told them, those creeps. What’s wrong with people like that?”

I took a deep breath and shrugged. “They don’t like me, I guess.”

“They don’t have to like you,” she said loudly. “They just have to mind their own business!” Between the two of us we’d attracted a lot of attention. Kita noticed me looking around uncomfortably.

“Listen, I have my mother’s car today. Let’s get out of here—go get coffee or something. I want to talk to you. Oh, and you too, Sebastian. You should come too.”

But Sebastian already had his escape plan in place. “Oh, I’d like to, but I promised my mother I’d go to the library and pick up this book right after school. They’re holding it for her and she’s really anxious to get it. You guys go get coffee. You can come over to my place afterward, Grady.” He took off after the bogus book before we could protest.

A lot of kids saw me getting into Kita’s car, and
I wondered what they were thinking. Kita was the definition of cool at Buxton Central High School. Not the kind of cool that cares about being cool, but
real
cool. Being seen with the local oddball might damage the reputations of certain pseudocool kids, but because Kita couldn’t care less what people thought, it probably just enhanced her standing. What it might have done for me, I had no idea.

We didn’t say much in the car—Kita drove carefully, and I wrote a little scene in my head.

       GUM GIRL: So, like, how do trans . . . whatever-you-ares . . . have sex? I mean, ’cause you’re so abnormal and all.

       ME: Well, sex for us abnormals is very strange, as I’m sure you can imagine.

       GUM GIRL: Ooh, yes, I’m imagining it!

       ME: First of all, we have to be in the same room with the person we’re having sex with.

       GUM GIRL: [writing it down] Right. In the same room . . .

       ME: And it really helps if we like each other a lot.

       GUM GIRL: [still writing] Like . . . each . . . other . . .

       ME: And then we touch each other’s bodies in places where it feels good.

       GUM GIRL: Feels . . . good . . . Hey, wait a minute.
This doesn’t sound any different from regular sex!

       ME: Really? I had no idea you normal folks did it that way too.

       GUM GIRL: [suspiciously] Have you ever even had sex?

       ME: Well, no, but I can imagine!

Kita parked in the lot behind Java King. As we walked in, the arm of her peacoat brushed against my down jacket. You would think with all those layers between us, I wouldn’t even have noticed. You would be wrong. We ordered and took our drinks to a table in the back of the store.

Our butts had barely hit the chairs when Kita said, “That’s what’s wrong with guys like Ben and George, our big athletic
heroes
, dressing up like ugly girls and speaking in falsetto voices. It makes a joke out of something really serious.”

“Gender dysphoria,” I said, supplying the term they used on the online sites.

“Right. And that opens the door for the kind of cruelty Danya specializes in, or the insensitivity of those so-called newspaper reporters.”

“I guess people feel threatened,” I said. “So they make fun of the stuff they don’t understand.”

Kita shook her head. “How do you stand it,
Grady? How do you deal with people who are such idiots? Don’t you get furious? Don’t you just want to . . . to hurt them back?”

I thought about it. “People like those stupid newspaper girls are annoying, but it only really hurts me when somebody I care about does something crappy to me. I never liked Danya to begin with, so I can’t get too worked up over her nastiness. But I’ve been really mad at Eve Patrick, because we were best friends practically our whole lives until she started hanging around with Danya. Now she acts like she hardly even knows me.”

“That’s terrible, Grady. I’d never speak to her again if I were you,” Kita said.

“Well, but then she was the one who told me about Danya’s plan today. She saved me from gross humiliation, so I guess I can’t really hate her anymore.”

Kita sighed and sipped her coffee. Her eyes were looking in my direction, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing me anymore. “It’s always more complicated than you want it to be, isn’t it? You want to be totally mad at somebody, but it’s hard when you used to like them so much.”

“Are we talking about Russ now?”

“No. Well, yes, I guess we are.” She smacked
her cup down on the table. “He’s so aggravating. One minute he’s a sweet guy, all what-can-I-do-for-you-Kita, and the next minute he’s completely selfish. He hurts my feelings and he doesn’t even realize he did it. He’s such a
guy
!”

“But girls can be hurtful too. Look at Eve. Look at Danya!”

“Yes, but girls
know
when they’re being mean. Russell just walks all over me like it’s his birthright. Like my plans or thoughts couldn’t possibly be as important as his. Or like I’m his mother and he’s getting away with something. It makes me crazy.”

“I guess some guys do act that way. My little brother is kind of like that, but I don’t think my dad is. Maybe they grow out of it.”

As soon as I said that, I thought of my mother putting up with Dad’s Christmas fuss all these years and him not really registering how much she hated it. As much as I adored my father, and even though he was usually nice about it, I had to admit that in our family he always got the last word. Was that sense of yourself as leader of the pack, as the one who was always right, programmed into men at the factory? And if so, did I have it? It didn’t seem so. Maybe I’d have to rethink my placement on Sebastian’s gender football field.

I pulled my mind back to Kita’s troubles. “You know, Russ is basically a good guy. I think he does respect you, but maybe he doesn’t know how to show it.”