One in Every Crowd (2 page)

I HAD A SEX CHANGE ONCE, WHEN I WAS six years old.

The Lions pool where I grew up smelled like every other swimming pool everywhere. That’s the thing about pools. Same smell. Doesn’t matter where you are.

It was summer swimming lessons, it was a little red badge with white trim we were all after: beginners, age five to seven. My mom had bought me a bikini.

It was one of those little girl bikinis, a two-piece, I guess you would call it. The top part fit like a tight cut-off t-shirt, red with blue squares on it, the bottoms were longer than panties but shorter than shorts, blue with red squares. I had tried it on the night before when my mom got home from work and found that if I raised both my arms completely above my head too quickly, the top would slide up over my flat chest and people could see my … you-know-whats.

You’ll have to watch out for that
, my mother had stated, her concern making lines in her forehead,
maybe I should have got the one-piece, but all they had was yellow and pink left. You don’t like yellow either, do you?

Pink was out of the question. We had already established this.

So the blue and red two-piece it was going to have to be. I was an accomplished tomboy by this time, so I was used to hating my clothes.

It was so easy, the first time, that it didn’t even feel like a crime. I just didn’t wear the top part. There were lots of little boys still getting changed with their mothers, and nobody noticed me slipping out of my brown cords and striped t-shirt, and padding, bare-chested, out to the poolside alone.

Our swimming instructor was broad-shouldered and walked with her toes pointing out. She was a human bullhorn, bellowing all instructions to us and punctuating each sentence with sharp blasts on a silver whistle which hung about her bulging neck on a leather bootlace.

“Alright, beginners, everyone line up at the shallow end, boys here, girls here, come on come on come on, boys on the left, girls on the right.”

It was that simple, and it only got easier after that.

I wore my trunks under my pants and changed in the boys’ room after that first day. The short form of the birth name my parents bestowed me with was androgynous enough to allow my charade to proceed through the entire six weeks of swimming lessons, six weeks of boyhood, six weeks of bliss.

It was easier not to be afraid of things, like diving boards and cannonballs and backstrokes, when nobody expected you to be afraid.

It was easier to jump into the deep end when you didn’t have to worry about your top sliding up over your ears. I didn’t have to be ashamed of my naked nipples, because I had not covered them up in the first place.

The water running over my shoulders and back felt simple, and natural, and good.

Six weeks lasts a long time when you are six years old, so in the beginning I guess I thought the summer would never really end, that grade two was still an age away. I guess I thought that swimming lessons would continue far enough into the future that I didn’t need to worry about report card day.

Or maybe I didn’t think at all.

“He
is not afraid of water over his head?” my mom read aloud in the car on the way home. My dad was driving, eyes straight ahead on the road. “He can tread water without a flotation device?” Her eyes were narrow, and hard, and kept trying to catch mine in the rearview mirror. “Your
son
has successfully completed
his
beginner’s and intermediate badges and is ready for
his
level one?”

I stared at the toes of my sneakers and said nothing.

“Now excuse me, young lady, but would you like to explain to me just exactly what you have done here? How many people you have lied to? Have you been parading about all summer half-naked?”

How could I explain to her that it wasn’t what I had done, but what I didn’t do? That I hadn’t lied, because no one had asked? And that I had never, not once, felt naked?

“I can’t believe you. You can’t be trusted with a two-piece.”

I said nothing all the way home. There was nothing to say. She was right. I couldn’t be trusted with a two-piece. Not then, and not now.

THE FABRIC OF THIS MEMORY IS FADED, its edges frayed by time.

The young girl who lived it is now just a ghost inside of me. I can remember only her bones; the skin and flesh of her are brought to me in the stories of others. Mothers, uncles, and aunts remind me of the kind of child I was then.

There was the smell of Christmas everywhere, I do remember that, pine trees and wood smoke and rum cake. The women smelled of gift perfume, the men of new sweaters.

Everywhere were voices, maybe a dozen different conversations woven together in the rise and fall of talk and laughter that is the backdrop of all my mind’s snapshots of my family then, a huge room full of people connected to me by their blood.

I was sitting almost too close to the fire. Iced window panes separated us from the bitter white of winter outside. Everyone I’d ever known was still alive.

I was about four years old.

Both of my grandmothers sat in overstuffed chairs next to the fireplace, talking, a trace of Cockney, and a hint of an Irish lilt, respectively.

I sat on the thick rug between them, rolling a red metal fire truck up and down my white-stockinged legs, making motor, gear-changing, braking noises. Listening.

“You should have seen the fuss this morning, getting her into that dress. I tell you, Pat, I’d’ve never stood for it from any of my girls. You’d’ve thought I was boiling her in oil, the way she was carrying on. She wanted to wear those filthy brown corduroy pants again, imagine that, and she knows we’re going to mass tonight.” My mother’s mother clicked her tongue and sent a stern glance in my general direction.

“That was what all my boys were like, Flo. Really, if you could have seen me the day that portrait on the wall there was taken, I swear I didn’t have a nerve left for them to get on. Like pulling teeth, you know it was, to dress those four.”

“Well, you’d expect it from the boys, you know, it’s only natural. But her, I don’t understand it. Her mother always liked to dress up, and never a speck of dirt could you find on my Norah … look here, come here you.” She curled an arthritic finger at me.

I stood up reluctantly and dragged my feet across the carpet toward her, hoping for a good spark.

“Look, see what I mean? Look at her knees, how does she do it? It’s only been a couple of hours, and there’s only snow on the ground out there. I couldn’t find any dirt right now if I went out looking. Here, let me fix up that zipper …”

My small fingers shot up to intercept her, and a rather large bolt of static electricity flashed between us. She pulled her gnarled hand back for a moment, and then brought it down on the back of mine.

“What a nasty thing to do to your poor old gran! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Now, run and fetch us both a rum ball, and for the love of Mary, don’t get it all over the front of you.”

I looked over to my other grandmother, at the shadow of an evil smile which pulled at the corners of her mouth. She winked at me, and motioned for me to be off.

“See what I mean about her, Pat? I’m worried sick she’ll turn out to be an old maid. What happens when she starts school? Look, now … she even walks like a little boy …”

“You’re far too hard on her, Flo,” came the voice of the mother of my father from behind me, laced with just a hint of annoyance. “She will be just fine. She just walks like that. That’s just how she walks.”

SHE WAS NEVER THAT GOOD AT FRISBEE, but it wasn’t about that for me. Her summer brown legs bent with a grace I could never possess, and her straight black hair swung unbraided, always a strand or two across her face, in her mouth.

Her palms were lighter than the backs of her hands, and often she would lay them in the place her hips would be one day, plant both feet in the dust, and throw her head back when she laughed.

She was doing just this the day we found the money. Her Frisbee throws were unpredictable and wobbly, and this one had arced sideways into the juniper bushes that lined the parking lot next to the parched park we were playing in.

Nothing is as dry as July dust in the land of the midnight sun, so I almost missed the brown leather wallet laying in the dirt.

“Valerie, come look here. Look at this.”

“I don’t want to look at bugs. Come on, throw it here.”

She saw the look on my face and went silent, looked down into my hands.

A rectangle of worn calfskin with a brass bill clip inside, pinning down a wad of American bills. I stuffed it into the waistband of my shorts and we ran down to the edge of the river, under the cover of willows.

Eleven one hundred dollar bills, two twenties, four ones.

“One thousand, one hundred and forty-four dollars.” Valerie was perched on the balls of her feet, her teeth shining white behind chapped lips. “We have to take it to the police station,” she whispered.

“The police? Are you crazy? We could buy practically anything with this.”

She shook her head, a wrinkle creasing her forehead. “Our parents would take it away anyhow. The police.” She said this like there was no other option.

“We could hide it for a while then, in the fort. We could save for our educations.” I appealed to her practical side.

“If we take it to the police, and they can’t find whose money it is, then we can keep it. We could be heroes.” She raised her eyebrows and rubbed her palms on her shorts for emphasis. “Rich heroes.”

It was settled then. I never once thought to argue that it was I who had found the money. I had no name for what I felt for her; we were nine years old and I would have done anything she wanted.

“You fucking did what?” My father was chewing his pork chop with his mouth open.

My mom slapped his arm, right above where his shirtsleeve was rolled up to. “You did the right thing. I’m really proud of you girls, and so is Valerie’s mom.”

My father looked at me like he couldn’t figure out just where he had gone wrong.

The policeman shook his head as he filled out the form. “Well, he was probably an American.” This guy was sure to make detective. “No ID, huh?” He narrowed his eyes at us, beads of sweat on his forehead.

We shook our heads simultaneously.

“Beginning of summer, probably on his way up north. To Alaska,” he explained, as though there was a multitude of destinations for tourists to choose from. “There’s a chance he’ll check in on his way back down. No one claims this in six weeks, say, then you two are in the money.”

We spent that money over and over in our heads for the rest of the summer. Valerie wanted a camera, and an easel and paint set. “No cheap stuff. The kind of brushes with horse hair in them.”

I wanted a BMX with chrome pedals, and a microscope. “Maybe a chemistry set, too. And walkie talkies. One for me, one for you. We could talk on them late at night. And a rowboat.”

“Cowboy boots,” she added, swinging in the hammock, a piece of straw between her front teeth. “Red cowboy boots.”

It was the ninth of August. We had seven days left.

The next morning, the phone rang at exactly eight o’clock. I was eating puffed wheat and listening to “Seasons in the Sun” on the radio that sat between the toaster and the plant on the lemon yellow counter next to the window. My mom was filling the kettle, and held the phone between ear and shoulder, motioning silently at me to turn the music down.

“She’s right here. I see. Okay, I’ll tell her. Thank you, officer.” She uncurled the phone cord with her forefinger and hung it up. “Someone claimed the wallet. He’s downtown, he wants to give you two a reward. I’ll drop you both off on my way to work.”

We sat side by each in the back seat of my mom’s Tercel, silent and lead-bellied under our seat belts. Valerie smelled like Irish Spring soap and toothpaste. I had forgotten to even brush my hair.

He looked like a caricature of a tourist come magically to life. The buttons of his polyester print shirt strained to hold his belly inside his khaki shorts. He even had waxy hairs sticking out of his ears. He shook our hands, his moist palms unnaturally soft. “Here’s my little heroes,” he wheezed. He patted us both on our heads, mussing our hair and smiling at the cop behind the counter. “Let’s head across the street and get you girls your
re
-ward.”

He stood perspiring in the service window of the Dairy Queen. “What’s your favourite flavour of milkshake?”

“She likes strawberry, chocolate for me,” I piped up. Talking to strangers was my job. Explaining why we had done what we did to parents was her territory, but strangers were my area of expertise.

“Too early for milkshakes,” she whispered to me, as he pulled out his billfold and handed over the four singles. I shushed her. Surely this was just the first phase of our reward.

But ten minutes later we sat alone at the bus stop, the change from our milkshakes stuck to my palm, for bus fare. He had told us what good girls we were and hopped into his motor home. His wife had waved over her knitting at us from the passenger seat. The TravelEase edged back onto the road.

“I hate South Carolina. Never going there.” Valerie spit in the dust and tied up her shoe.

My dad was still at home when we got back, strange at this time of day. He was smoking an Export ‘A’, drinking tea, and reading
Shogun
. We tried to head straight into my room, but he looked up and cleared his throat.

“Whoawhoawhoa. Where’re you two going?”

Valerie picked idly at a scratch on her thigh; I stood on one leg, then the other, waiting for the inevitable.

“Didja get your
re
-ward?” He split the word in two, like someone from South Carolina would.

I nodded almost without moving my head. Valerie shrugged.

“Welllll…?” His one eyebrow raised, his hands perched like spiders on the wooden table.

“We got milkshakes,” Valerie said softly.

My dad turned his right ear to us, played with a make believe hearing aid.

“He bought us both milkshakes,” I blurted out, the sweetness of chocolate already halfway back up my throat.

“Small or large?” he crowed, slamming both palms flat, slopping tea onto his paperback.

“Large ones.” The bottom of Valerie’s jaw stuck further out defiantly, her brown palms returning to her hips.

My dad laughed from deep in his belly at us both, and reached for his smokes. “Well, I hope it went down good, because that was the most expensive fuckin’ milkshake you’re ever gonna drink.”

Twenty years later I realized we had, in fact, spent that money on our educations.