What’s a mother to do?
It’s Poppa’s fault.
He insisted we have Danny when I didn’t want him.
Three kids is enough, I said, not counting the two miscarriages and that ugly thing I had when I was young and don’t want to talk about.
Three kids and they’re all growing up to be spoiled brats.
Maybe I should have told him no.
All his drinking couldn’t have helped – though to this day he says booze don’t make kids turn out that way.
Like any of us really know.
But I went and did it anyway.
I got caught up in all that romantic stuff about how it would be nice to have a small one in the house again; how it pulled people together.
And if any family needed something to pull it together ours did.
With one doing everything possible to go to jail and one paying regular visits to the local ill repute. The only one that seemed to come out reasonably normal was Big Dave, and he’s so much like his father, that’s another reason to worry. I kept waiting for when the drinking to start and to hear his wife downstairs whimpering from the beatings.
Then I started thinking that if I worked real hard I might make this kid turn out better than the rest. After three mistakes, I must have learned something.
And I did try.
I did what all the doctors told me to do with vitamins and exercises and training for the delivery.
So that when the baby came out, at least he started out healthy.
And I loved that small pink squiggling being as much as I loved anything in my life.
Yet even as I looked down at him, I knew something was wrong.
Maybe the feeling came from the way he looked at me or how he took after frilling things while his brothers ranted and raved about sports.
I wasn’t sure of anything, mind you. But I watched and I saw this odd shape grow inside of him, as if he had a second nose that started out as a pimple – though it wasn’t so obvious as that. I couldn’t point to anything in particular and say: “There! That’s the thing.”
No one else in the family seemed to notice it. At least, none of them ever said anything to me if they did.
Then Danny grew.
Never as healthy as I hoped; and not so big as his brothers.
In fact, the more he grew the more he resembled his sister, Debby.
And had it not been for the bit of mistletoe between his legs, I would have thought Debby got a little sister, not a little brother.
When I caught him at it in the attic, I knew for sure.
I heard the sound of boxes being opened and climbed the narrow flight of stairs very softly and threw open the door at the top to find him half dressed in Debby’s old clothing.
While I had saved the clothing in case Danny had turned out to be a girl, I hadn’t ever figured on him actually wearing any of them.
He didn’t flinch when I caught him. He just looked at me, grinned and asked if he looked good.
At ten years old, he looked more of a woman than I did. As if the clothing had waited for him to come along so they could fill out that something missing in him.
I was stunned. And I didn’t know what to do.
I didn’t think I could beat him enough to shake this something that had come with him in birth.
I didn’t even know what it was I was actually dealing with: sin or disease or something else.
Of course, I told him to get back in his own clothing.
But I didn’t stop him when he did it again or suddenly discovered makeup.
I didn’t even stop him later when he and his sister dressed up and went out, pretending like they were twin sisters.
I just sulked at home waiting for them to come home, knowing at least one of them wouldn’t be coming home pregnant, no matter what perverted things he did.