Thirteen, Fourteen... Little Boy Unseen (7 page)

He stared at me.

“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I said.

“No, not at all. That’s exactly how I feel. I was in this black hole when the accident happened. I’ve never told anyone this, but I was actually about to kill myself when the ground opened up underneath my brother’s house. I was that depressed. Being swallowed into the sinkhole was probably the best thing that could have happened to me at that point. I have started to see it as a blessing, like a divine intervention of some sort. I usually don’t believe in that sort of thing, but…I don’t know. It’s just…It has changed everything.”

I smoked my cigarette and looked at the fishing boat. It was such a relief to finally talk to someone whom I could be completely honest with. Someone who didn’t think I was crazy for thinking and feeling the way I did.

“My only problem is, I don’t know what to do with it,” I said. “I don’t know how to break out of the hamster wheel, how to escape the indifference, how to live a life that really matters.”

David smoked his cigarette as well. “Me either,” he said. “I hoped you could help me figure it out. That’s the real reason why I came here. I thought you, somehow, were the answer.”

18

“
G
OOD MORNING!”

Jeppe peeked his head over the hedge with a smile. He scared the crap out of me, and I couldn’t stop the feeling that he’d been waiting behind the hedge for me to walk to my car.

“Have a nice day at work,” he said with a cheerful voice, and then added, “Tonight, I’ll bring some chicken wings for dinner.”

I was completely taken aback. Jeppe smiled a little shyly, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was all alone in that house. But I also really wanted my family back. I didn’t want him to come over for dinner again. Still, I couldn’t really say anything but, “Okay.”

I drove off, feeling strange. Sune was going to drop off the kids, as usual, since he never had anything to do until nine at the earliest. Today, he didn’t have anything yet. As a freelance photographer, he would sometimes wait at home for hours until they suddenly called him to go somewhere. Sometimes, they would book him a few days in advance, but that was rare. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t had as much to do as he used to, and it was getting to him a little. There were entire days when he didn’t have any work to do, and he hated that.

I hoped we would get something at the paper today. We had come far on the story about the killings, but I still couldn’t get anything confirmed by the police, so I couldn’t write it. Jens-Ole thought about making one of those,
The Newspaper learns from a reliable source that…
articles, but up until now, I had refused that. I hated those kinds of stories, where you knew a lot of stuff, but couldn’t document it. So, I let the story linger for a little while, and instead decided to do a story about a couple that were building an organic house made entirely of sand on Enoe, the island outside of Karrebaeksminde. It was one of those stories with great pictures and it would be easy to write. I needed that. Jens-Ole liked the idea, and I called Sune to get him to be the photographer on it. He didn’t answer his phone.

“That’s odd,” I said to Sara. “He always answers his phone. He has to if he wants to work.”

I got a worried feeling in my stomach, wondering if there was something wrong, maybe something happened to one of the kids? I called him again, but still nothing.

“I’m gonna go home and pick him up,” I said to Sara, then grabbed my stuff and walked to my car. I drove home and rushed inside.

“Sune?”

No answer. The living room was empty, so was the kitchen. I ran upstairs, calling his name again.

“Sune?”

I opened the door to my dad’s bedroom. He was sound asleep, so I closed it again before I checked the kids’ bedrooms.

Maybe he went grocery shopping? Yes, that’s it. He went to shop and couldn’t hear his phone. That has to be it.

I left the house and drove downtown to his favorite shopping center. I walked towards SuperBrugsen, where we always shopped, when I passed the Internet Café  next to it, and spotted Sune’s bike parked outside.

“You’ve got to be kidding me?” I said.

I opened the door and walked into the darkness, only lit by the many screens. Loads of teenagers skipping school were staring at them, playing games where they were holding big guns.

“What the…?” I spotted Sune by one of the computers, and next to him sat Jeppe by another computer screen wearing a headset. They were grinning and poking each other, eating chips, and drinking sodas.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, and pulled Sune’s headset off.

“Oh, hi, Rebekka. What are you doing here?” Sune said.

“I have a job for you. Are you not picking up your phone anymore?”

Sune grabbed his phone from the table. “Sorry. I didn’t hear it,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Rebekka,” Jeppe said. “I thought I’d take him out and have a little fun. He seemed so bored at the house.”

I forced a smile. “Well, Sune can’t play anymore.”

19

E
XACTLY WHEN
their parents consulted the doctor for help, the man couldn’t remember, but he remembered going to the clinic numerous times during his childhood. He remembered driving for a long time, then sitting in a strange office furnished with a couch, Oriental rugs, and lots of plants that reminded him more of a living room than a doctor’s office. He also remembered the pictures and sculptures of erect phalluses and vaginas. But, most of all, he remembered how his sister hated the doctor. How she loathed coming to his office. How she would scream and yell every time they told her that’s where they were going.

Their parents, on the other hand, adored the doctor. The man remembered how his mother listened attentively to everything the doctor said, and how his words soon became law in their home.

As just a young boy, the man hadn’t always understand what the doctor had talked about when they visited his office, but he did remember one thing the doctor always told them. He believed
that gender identity developed primarily as a result of
social learning
from early childhood, and that it could be changed with the appropriate behavioral interventions.

“What’s behavioral interventions?” the boy asked his mother one day, shortly after their first visit to the doctor’s office, when they were alone in the kitchen.

“Don’t you worry about that,” his mother answered, and kissed his forehead. “But I can tell it’s what’s gonna help your sister. I tell you, this doctor is going to change everything for us. Your sister is in the best possible hands. Things are finally looking bright for us.”

The boy would soon enough learn exactly what
behavioral intervention
was. The doctor worked with a therapist, who had hair as white as snow and eyes so blue they looked purple. The therapist came to the house one day and watched the twins as they played in the yard. He observed them for hours, while their mother looked with anxious eyes from behind the window in the kitchen. Then, he grumbled and wrote on his notepad.

The next time the therapist arrived, he spoke for a long time with their parents before he came into the yard and called the twins to approach him.

“Let’s play a new game, shall we? I have one for you. I would like for you, Alexandra, to lie down on the grass now on all fours, then I would like for your brother to get behind your sister’s butt with your crotch against your sister’s buttocks. I want you both to do thrusting movements. Now, try that.”

Thinking it was just a game, they obeyed the therapist, while he watched them and made notes in his black book.

“Now, I want you, Alexandra…”

“I’m Alex,” his sister replied defiantly.

“No. You’re Alexandra. That is your real name. Now, I want you to lie down on your back with your legs spread, with your brother on top, and again do the thrusting movements. Now, go.”

The exercises went on and on, once a week for years, and the therapist became a regular part of the twin’s lives, not one they enjoyed much, especially not when they were one day told to take off their clothes and engage in
genital inspections,
while he took pictures. When their parents protested, the therapist simply stated that it was an important part of the treatment, since
childhood was sexual rehearsal play
and that laid the foundation for a
healthy adult gender identity
.

After that, no one questioned the therapist’s methods, since it was all in the best interest of Alex, but the boy saw how it affected his sister, how a sadness started to grow inside of her. She knew how much trouble she was to her family, how much they wanted to change her, and that sowed a seed of self-loathing that soon started eating her from the inside. Not only would she cry at night, she also started hurting herself with whatever she could get her hands on. Once, he found her cutting herself with scissors. She was sitting in her bed at night, just letting the blood run from her wrists onto the bed, soaking the sheet. Terrified, he pulled the scissors away, then grabbed her in his arms and held her tight.

“Don’t EVER do that again!”

Alex tried to pull away while crying, “I’m an alien. I am an ALIEN!”

“No, you’re not. You’re my sister. You hear me? I can’t live without you!”

“How can I be your sister? I’m not a girl; I’m not a boy. If I’m not an alien, then who am I?”

The boy had no answer for that.

20

“I can’t believe you.”

We were driving across the bridge leading to Enoe when I had finally calmed down enough to talk. Sune sat with his camera between his hands. He didn’t look at me.

“I just wanted to have a little fun,” he grumbled. “Jeppe came over and asked if I wanted to go. Geez. Calm down, would you?”

I took in a deep breath and remembered my dad’s advice.

Don’t make a big deal of it,
I told myself.
It’s not like he did anything really bad. It’s not like he cheated on you.

But it felt like it. I guess that was why I reacted like I did. I felt like he was slipping away, like someone was pulling him out of my hands. Someone younger and more fun.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to miss out on this assignment. And I hate when you don’t answer your phone. Ever since the accident, I’ve been so scared of something happening to you or the kids. I guess it’s just what happens when you realize how fast your life can change, how fragile your life is…”

I paused and thought about David. We had talked about this yesterday at the port. I was suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. I hadn’t told Sune I had been with David. It was wrong.

“Sune…I…”

I didn’t get any further before Sune interrupted me. “Sometimes you act like you think you’re my mother. I really don’t like that. It’s got to stop, Rebekka. I’m a grown man. I’m allowed to do what I want to.”

“You’re right,” I said, as we reached Enoe and drove towards the beach. It was one of those gray January days where the sun simply didn’t bother to peek out through the thick layer of clouds. It would set in the early afternoon anyway, so I couldn’t really blame it.

“I’ll get better at this, okay?”

“Jeppe even says that you…”

“Wait a minute…Jeppe?” I said. “Is that where all of this is suddenly coming from?”

“No. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Jeppe just said yesterday that he thought it seemed like you were my mother.”

“Well, stop acting like a child, then,” I said.

I stopped the car in front of a lot. The foundation for the house was almost in, and five workers were working on finishing it. I spotted a couple that I believed had to be the future owners of the country’s first sand house.

“Excuse me?” Sune said. “Who is it that takes care of the kids every morning and makes sure they get to school? Who picks them up when you’re too busy? Who does all the housework at home? Who grocery shops? Who vacuums and cleans and washes all the clothes?”

I exhaled and forced a smile as the couple approached us. I had spoken to them over the phone and arranged for them to meet us there for the interview.

“I know, baby. I know you do most of the work, especially lately, since you haven’t had so many assignments. I know you do. And I appreciate it. I truly do. I’m sorry.”

I looked at him. Our eyes locked.

“Okay then,” he said and smiled. “All I’m asking is to be allowed to have some fun now and then.”

“Got it.”

“Now, let’s shoot this baby, so I can get back to Jeppe.”

Sune jumped out of the car while I looked at him.

Get back to Jeppe?

I couldn’t help feeling that pinch of jealousy again. The guy had been in our lives for two days now, and already Sune was more excited about hanging out with him than me. I mean, of course he was allowed to have friends. I could hardly be angry about that.

I shook the feeling and exited the car. The couple building the sand house approached me and we shook hands.

“Rebekka Franck,
Zeeland Times
. This is my photographer, Sune. If you don’t mind, he’ll be shooting pictures while we speak. So, you’re building a house of sand? How on earth did you come up with that idea?”

21

“
Y
OUR ONE
o’clock is here, Doctor”

“Let him in,” the voice sounded from the intercom.

“You can go in now. It’s through that door,” the secretary said.

The man rose to his feet and walked to the door. He paused as he laid his hand on the handle and pulled it down.

“Welcome,” the therapist’s voice said as he entered.

They shook hands.

“I’m Dr. Korner. Please sit down.”

The man did as he was told and sat on the couch. He put his backpack on the floor.

“So, have you ever seen a therapist before?” Dr. Korner asked.