Take a Lemon

“Should we start with heel-walking lessons, Marsh?” Tina suggested.

“Not just yet, Teen,” I told her. “I need to collapse. I don’t think you realize how stressful all of this is for me, and without a guitar, I don’t have my normal way of coping. I’m just going to toss on a pair of jeans and veg out for a while.”

“A pair of what?”

“Um, jeans? You know, pants made of denim?” The look on her face told me I’d said something wrong again. “No jeans? Marsha doesn’t wear jeans?”

She shook her head, so I threw open my closet door and looked. There were plenty of skirts and dresses, but as far as I could tell, not a single pair of jeans or slacks, or anything else. Not even a pantsuit, which at that point I would have considered a reasonable compromise. In hindsight, I probably should have expected that. I couldn’t remember my mother or sister wearing pants, and as Chad had reminded me, Marsha was noted for consistently wearing skirts. We’re kind of a traditional family, and it had just never occurred to me how that guided female clothing in our household. At least it meant no miniskirts. Looking back, it occurred to me that Mom and Tina had always worn their skirts long, and that’s what I found in my closet as well. If I had to wear them, at least I didn’t have to worry about immodesty.

Tina seemed to sense my mood. “What’s wrong, Marsh?”

“This is already a lot harder than I was expecting, Teen. I don’t know, I guess I was thinking that it was just going to be like my old life, only with boobs.” I stopped myself and looked at her. “Is ‘boobs’ alright for me to say?”

She shrugged, so I continued. “Now, it’s like I’m being hit all at once, with girly clothing and different friends, and my bedroom looks like it belongs to a stranger. And that’s just in the first few hours. I need a break, a timeout. I just want to catch my breath and do something familiar for a bit. I thought that I could get into familiar clothes, and read a familiar book. Anything that would make me not have to think about being Marsha. I mean it’s been nonstop. I feel as though I’ve been through the wringer, and it’s only been an hour or so since I found out. I’d take a nap, but I’m not really tired. Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, I’m reminded that I’m in a stranger’s room, a stranger’s life. My body doesn’t feel right, not when I walk, not when I sit down. These clothes…” I sighed. I was whining, and that felt inappropriate and girly, too. “I want to drop out of character, to be myself again. Only that doesn’t seem possible.”

“What can I do to help?” Tina asked.

“I don’t really know. This isn’t like a play, where we can sit backstage and take off our costumes during intermission. We don’t even get an intermission in real life. I said that I was going to keep it up until after Christmas break, but I’m going to need some way to cope, some way to be ‘off-stage’ from time to time.”

“I know. Why don’t you come into my room, so you won’t be reminded of this one?”

It was a terrific idea, and I said so. Her room would reflect her personality and needs, and should be at least somewhat familiar to me.

“And you can tell me about what it was like for you to be a boy,” she added.

“You really want to hear about that?”

“Sure! You are my… well, I hope my sister, but sort of also my brother, even though I don’t really have one. It could be interesting.”

“I think that would be a great idea, Teen.”

I hadn’t paid attention when we had been there a few minutes earlier, but her room was pretty much the way I remembered it. Whatever the changes in me, whatever the influence of Marsha instead of me, Tina seemed largely the same, even if her memories weren’t. That surprised me, and bothered me just a little. I’d like to think that I had a lot of influence on my little sister, but maybe I’ve always overrated my own importance. At any rate, I was grateful for that now.

“So what’s it like?” she asked, as she settled on to her bed and offered me her chair.

“That’s kind of hard to answer, Teen. After all, it’s all I’ve ever known – until this morning.”

“OK, what would be useful to tell me?”

So I told her about my guitar, about how elated I had been to receive it, and how I’d sort of taught myself to play from instruction books and DVDs until Dad had realized that I needed more. I told her about my guitar teachers, how the first one was into really wild stuff that would have horrified Mom and Dad. You might have thought my family straight-laced, but we knew about some really seedy things. I told Tina about my third teacher, who had actually made it for a few years as a rock musician, and how he’d warned me not to try it as a career. Fortunately, I’d never planned on it – grandpa had given me the same speech. He’d had a lot of fun touring when he was younger, but had had a job in his own father’s business to fall back on.

Tina was particularly interested when I told her about my girlfriends; apparently, Marsha had only dated two other boys besides Dirk, and neither for any length of time. Tina had always liked hearing about my dating adventures, and now I got to tell her the same stories for the first time. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was on the verge of corrupting the innocent. With Marsha’s own example before her, Tina hadn’t really thought too much about sex, except as a theoretical possibility. In fact, while she was very attracted to boys – something I hadn’t realized before – she found the whole idea of the sex act a bit disgusting, an attitude I had no intention of changing. But she could live vicariously through my experiences. Doubly vicariously, since I was currently in no position to repeat them, even if I’d had the opportunity. I hesitated telling her too much detail. Marsha was clearly a virgin (which was very much a relief to me), and I wasn’t sure Tina could handle hearing about a brother who had slept with more than half a dozen different girls.

It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but by accepting being Marsha until the end of the year, I had just given up on Lee Ann. I didn’t know how that would play out when I changed back – would I find myself already dating her, without knowing what kind of history we had together? Or would some other guy have swept down in the meantime and stolen her heart? If she had dated the same guy for three years, maybe she would decide to take a bit of breather and not commit to any one guy, and I’d have a chance for the second half of the year.

And… I was used to having girlfriends. In fact, I don’t think I’d gone more than about a month since freshman year in high school without a date. Marsha didn’t seem to be as much of a love addict as I was, but really, how comfortable was it going to be for me not even to approach a girl for two-and-a-half months? Trying a lesbian relationship seemed more than a little extreme, and it would probably have been way out of character for Marsha, even if I had had any idea how to go about it. These were thoughts really better not shared with my sister – not yet, at any rate.

Mom came in while we were talking. Fortunately, it was easy to hear her coming upstairs, so there was no danger of her overhearing something I wouldn’t have wanted her to know about. But she poked her head in and said, “I’m going grocery shopping, girls. Do you want anything?”

“I’m almost out of nail polish remover,” Tina answered. “I can’t think of anything else.”

“Nail polish remover. Got it. Anything for you, Marsh?”

I had absolutely no idea, not having checked my room since I woke up. If she’d offered last night, I might have asked her to pick me up some shaving cream, but that didn’t seem appropriate this morning. I could well be out of all kinds of things, but I doubt that I’d be able to tell without my sister’s help anyway. At any rate, I had a week, and if Tina spotted something missing, I could always go shopping myself later.

So I just said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”

“OK, I’ll be back in a bit. Marsh, would you like to cook dinner with me when I get back?”

“Sure, Mom.”

The invitation usually meant that she wanted to talk with me, not surprising given that I had been away at school for the past couple of months. And of course, I was a reasonably competent cook, having learned when Dad left and Mom had needed us to help pick up the slack. Presumably, she expected Marsha to be as well. Again, it would probably be more or less familiar to me – or at least as much as anything was going to be, now.