Born That Way (9 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

The therapist says to call him John, not Dr. Clyde, like Mom told me. He works for the same agency as my mom. She's been there almost a year, since she graduated from university. John has been there longer, but Mom says he's younger than her and he's not her boss and he specializes in adolescents. He looks like a sea lion. He's got no neck. I know I'm not supposed to make comments on someone's physical characteristics but John's are kind of hard to miss. And since Mom always says that exercise is an important component of good mental health, I find his condition worrisome. But it also explains to me why Mom has been on a diet ever since she started her job. She says getting overweight is an occupational hazard when you're a therapist and you make your living sitting on your butt listening to people's problems all day. She must have taken one look at John and called Weightwatchers right away.

John has diplomas on one wall and very bad kid art on another. There is one especially pathetic drawing of what is probably meant to be a unicorn: it's something like a horse with four unjointed legs so how it moves I have no idea, and there's a bright yellow spike sticking out of its forehead at an angle that would ensure the poor creature would never be able to graze. Well, maybe in fantasy-land unicorns don't have to eat.

John wants to know what grade I'm in and how I like my teachers and what my favourite subjects are. It's like we're both pretending we don't know why I'm there, but that's okay with me and I relax until he asks if I have any pets.

“Well, yeah, sort of,” I say.

“A dog? Cat? Hamster?”

For each one I shake my head. He goes on for a while: rat, iguana, guinea pig, but finally gives up.

“I have barnacles.”

“Well that's unusual. More than one? A family?”

I figure he's probably pretending, that Mom has told him about everything, and he's treating me like a dim-wit. I say, “Barnacles are crustaceans. They don't have families.” And then because we might as well get down to business I add, “They're hermaphrodites.”

“Well who would have thought?”

“With very long penises.” This is inappropriate but I want to see how he responds.

He nods thoughtfully. “Well, I guess if you're stuck in one spot . . . .”

I sit back and cross my arms.

“You going to clam up now?” says John.

I look at him blankly.

“That's a joke—you know: barnacles, clams.”

“Clams are mollusks, not crustaceans.”

“True enough.”

I swing my feet under my chair. I don't know what I'm supposed to say now and he's looking at me as though it's my turn.

“So what brings you here?” he asks eventually.

“My mom.”

He clears his throat. “Anything I can help you with?”

“I don't think so.”

“It's not easy being the kid of a therapist.”

“Psychoanalyst,” I correct him because Mom has stressed the distinction.

“Even more so.”

He probably isn't supposed to say something like this, which makes me like him just a little. “Puberty,” I offer.

He purses his lips. “Very difficult stage, from what I hear.”

His tone is ironic but I'm not sure if he means he's read about the problems in therapy journals, which would be okay, or if my mom has talked to him about me, which would not be okay.

I sit. He sits. We are both waiting but I know I can out-wait anyone. All I have to do is start thinking about horses and I'm off in another world. Kansas has promised me I can start taking lessons on Electra as soon as her riding ring has been built. I told her I thought I'd rather ride Hambone (formerly Nickers) but she didn't think that was a good idea. He's still what she calls an unknown quantity and he's kind of dominant for a gelding and may need a more experienced rider, at least in the beginning. He might be safe after he's been tuned. Obviously I couldn't tell her that I've ridden him already. Electra . . .

“I can help you, Sylvie” says John.

“I don't need any help.”

“You've got a problem.”

“Not really.”

“I think you do.”

I don't know if an adolescent expert can look at someone and know that they're bisexual. If he tells me I'm bisexual I'll die. Or I'll leave. I wonder if it's breaking a law to get up and leave in the middle of a therapy session, and whether he can grab me and bring me back in. But even if it isn't illegal, what would my mom say. Would it embarrass her if her daughter was a failure at therapy?

John steeples his fingers and leans way back in his chair. With his weight the chair better be made of specially reinforced materials. “I think your problem is . . . ” and he pauses, dropping his head until his lips meet his fingertips, then he whispers, “your mother.”

“My mother?”

“If nothing else, your problem is that your mother is worried about you. And I can help you with that. I can help you get her off your back.”

Behind John is his desk and on it is a telephone. One of the lights is flashing. He must have the phone on mute so we can't be disturbed. My feet have stopped swinging so I wrap my ankles tight around the chair legs. I don't like it that he's criticized my mom—even if he's right. Electra is quite small, she's only thirteen hands tall. She's chestnut with four white sox and a blaze. Kansas says she's Arab/Welsh and very very smart but that she likes kids, especially light ones like me because she's very fine-boned so she won't give me any trouble and I'll learn a lot from her. And she loves to jump, which I'm not too sure about right now but maybe by the time I—

“I'm thinking we could even do our next session with your mom here. Or better still, with your mom and dad. Generally this is my preference, I tend not to think of problems as being inside people, more I think of them as being between people.” He gestures to the middle of the carpet, as though problems could be happening out there in the middle of the room. And I'm not sure how, but I still think he's being critical of my mom. It's like he has a point to make that has nothing to do with me.

How am I going to get out of this? I know what my problem is. My problem is that I want a horse, I've wanted one since I was born and I'm not going to be happy until I have one. But if I tell him that and he thinks the same way Mom does and then wants to talk to me about how a horse is a substitute for conscious masturbation I'll die. I'll crawl under the carpet and die. They'll cart my body out on a stretcher and I will never ride again, let alone have my own horse.

“Well, it's up to you.” John shrugs as though it doesn't matter to him, but I know that it does.

I try to picture Hambone but I can't. There's just John, sitting in his over-sized swivel chair, stroking the little bit of beard he has on the place where his chin should be, rocking ever so slightly back and forth.Waiting.

I mumble, “Okay,” because this seems to be the only way to get out of the room alive.

“Okay?” He sounds surprised. Or maybe terrifically pleased.

I nod.

“I'll set it up, then,” says John. “You, me, Evelyn and your father. It'll be great.”

What have I done to my family?

Mom drives me home. She says she doesn't want to be intrusive about the session so she won't ask what we talked about but she does want to know if it went all right. She wants to know what I thought of John. I tell her he was okay. Then I tell her that John is going to talk to her about setting up an appointment for a family session. I think it's better coming from me, then she won't be taken by surprise tomorrow at work.

“A family session?” she says. “He thinks there are problems in the family?”

“He says problems happen between people not inside people.”

She sighs. “Well that's one way of looking at things.” She isn't pleased.

Mom waits until after dinner before she reminds Dad that I had my appointment today, then she tells him that John wants a family session.

“John?” says Dad. “Wasn't he that cocky little guy at the Christmas party?”

“Well, hardly little,” says Mom.

“Short,” says Dad, “but . . . ”

“Tony,” she cautions. “He's Sylvie's therapist.”

“Right,” says Dad. “But I thought he worked exclusively with kids. I thought he did art therapy and that sort of thing.”

“Me too,” says Mom. “That's what he used to do. Maybe he's been to a workshop. Maybe he's into family therapy now.”

“There's nothing wrong with our family,” says Dad. “Is there Snookums?” He puts his arms around me and lifts me right off the ground. He's wearing the aftershave I got him for Christmas and I press my face in hard against his neck.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I'm searching for Electra. There is a herd of a hundred chestnut horses with white socks and I can't find her because they all look alike which means I'm a pretty inadequate horse person since I can't tell them apart. I try to remember the particular shape of the blaze on her face and whether it went above her eyes or faded to a snip between her nostrils, but it's no use. And then I see Nickers; she ambles up to me and I'm so happy to see her that I kiss her on the nose, then leap on her back even though there's no saddle, and that's when I realize I must be dreaming and I don't quite manage it right and accidentally wake myself up.

I lie in bed because the alarm won't go off for a few minutes. It's a school day so there's not much to look forward to but Kansas says I can drop by on my way home if I don't have anything else to do, like therapy appointments. She thinks those are funny. She says I'm the most normal kid she's ever met, but I haven't told her everything. I don't want to tell her I might be bisexual in case she worries this means that I might fall in love with her.

Maybe I should have asked John how I can tell if I'm bisexual or not. Maybe he would have kept it confidential. Or maybe not. My mom says some things that are discussed in therapy cannot be kept confidential because of the law though mostly these things have to do with abuse and self-harm. I don't know how bisexuality fits into that. I don't even really know why I'm thinking about it so much all of a sudden. Unless it's because of the barnacles.

My alarm goes off. I change out of my pajamas then ride my bike to the beach and back. I change the barnacles' water and watch their tentacles for a minute. I still can't see anything that looks like it might be a penis which frankly is a great relief.

Mom and Dad still aren't awake, so I do a few stretches, then put the Pony Club manual on my head and measure myself against the edge of the door. There's been very little progress. To be completely accurate, there's been no progress at all.

At school, we have a substitute teacher for math, which is great because for once I won't have to deal with Mr. Brumby. However the substitute isn't prepared, so she tells us we can read or draw or do whatever we want, so of course everyone goes crazy. I haven't brought a book to read, so I try to drown out the din by drawing, even though I'm lousy at it. My drawings aren't much better than the ones on John's wall, though at least I get the joints in the legs. I know other girls in my class draw horses too and often they end up with prettier art but it's rarely realistic. Or even if they get the horse anatomy fairly accurate, they put the saddles too far back and never put throatlatches on the bridles.

At lunch everyone's still wound up and I know this is exactly the sort of situation where they find someone (like me) to pick on in an extra-merciless way. I decide to avoid the cafeteria altogether, and take my lunch bag to the far corner of the grounds and eat my sandwich sitting under a tree. When I finish, I notice that one of the tree branches is within my reach, so I grab it and have a really good hanging stretch. I hold on a long time until my hands start to ache, and then I close my eyes and hum to distract myself from the pain and extend the stretch as long as possible. When I open my eyes, standing in front of me are Amber and Topaz with three girls from their fan club and Logan Losino. They're not wearing jackets and Amber and Topaz have sleeveless tops on and their bra straps are showing. It's like they think developing breasts is something to brag about and not something personal that should be kept private, which is what I'm going to do if it ever happens to me.

“Hey monkey,” says Amber, “did you fall out of your tree?” The girls all giggle.

“Pygmy chimp,” says Topaz. Apparently this is hysterically funny.

I don't know what to do. My mom always says to ignore kids like this but if I walk away it will look like they've won and maybe they'll throw a rock at the back of my head. My dad says to fight them with humour. Being under pressure, all I can come up with is a weak joke.

“Better a pygmy chimp than a gorilla,” I say and then laugh to show that I'm kidding and that I haven't taken offence because truly I would rather be a pygmy chimp than a gorilla.

“Who you calling a gorilla?” says Amber. She steps menacingly towards me but Logan Losino grabs her arm.

“Oh leave her alone,” he says. “She's not hurting anyone.”

Amber whirls to face him. “Says who?”

Logan bows his knees and holds his arms out from his sides and hoots. “Says me, and I'm the king of the jungle.” He hops up and down, gorilla-like.

Amber laughs and shoves him on the shoulder. He staggers backwards and falls, a bit too easily from what I can see, but everyone is laughing now and trying to pick him up but he keeps hooting and falling and I make my escape. I feel exactly like Tootsie, that poor pony that none of the other horses liked. I wonder if the girls in my class can tell that there's something wrong with me and that's why I'm so unpopular. Maybe I've been wrong blaming the change in my social status on the arrival of the Wonder Twins. Maybe it's the arrival of puberty that's done it and the differences between me and everyone else are finally becoming obvious, or even subconsciously obvious. The only one who hasn't noticed is Logan Losino. I feel a warmth in my chest when I think about the way he came to my rescue. Logan Losino. Maybe he still likes me a little.

The rest of the day drags. I keep an eye on my watch all afternoon. When the bell goes and we're dismissed I'm out the door like a shot, before Amber can set up an ambush. I unchain my bike and pedal off to Kansas.

I'm almost run over by a gravel truck loaded with dirt exiting her driveway. It worries me that the gate is open until I notice the fence is finished so there's a separate paddock beside the driveway. I can't see any horses though. On the other side of the barn an excavator is digging out and leveling off the field where Kansas is going to put the riding arena. There's a huge hole in the field, kind of like a sunken hockey rink.

Kansas is supervising. I've never seen her so happy.

“Hey Sylvia! Look, I'm trading topsoil for footing! Can you believe it? I'm going to save thousands!”

“Oh. Great.”

“You know what a good all-weather outdoor riding ring costs? Ten thousand dollars. Mine is going to be half that. Can you believe my luck?”

“Wow.”

I guess I don't put enough enthusiasm in my voice because she says, “You okay? Have a bad day?”

I'm afraid to say anything because suddenly I know that if I open my mouth I'll cry.

“Hey, how about you come back to the trailer and help me make a pot of tea? I could use a break, I've been supervising all afternoon.”

I leave my bike leaning against the barn. Each of the horses is in a stall and I say hi to Hambone before I follow Kansas around to her little trailer. It's about the size of the entrance hall in our house.

“I inherited this too,” says Kansas climbing the metal steps and opening the door. “It was my dad's. When he died I got everything—his travel trailer, his truck, and a whole bunch of money the sneaky old codger had squirreled away. That's how I could afford to buy this place. Well, that and my lifetime savings of two grand.”

“You had savings? My dad says that all young people have these days are debts.”

“I'll have you know I had savings as well as two horses. Though probably the horses cancel out the savings.”

I step inside behind her and she points me to a table with corner bench seats. I slide in. There isn't much room. I have to shove over a basket full of clean, folded laundry.

Kansas fills the kettle and puts it on the stove. She turns on the burner, then peers under the kettle. “Damn. Pilot light's gone out again.” She turns off the switch and gets a box of matches from a drawer; she strikes a match, turns the switch, pokes in the match and there's a blue poof as the gas ignites.

She rinses the teapot and throws in two tea bags. “I don't have herbal. Do you drink black tea?”

“Oh sure.” This is sort of true. Auntie Sally lets me have black tea. Mom says it's full of stimulants I don't need.

There's a pamphlet on the table in front of me. I don't want to look like I'm being nosey so I read it upside down:
U.S. Dressage Federation Guidelines for Arena Construction.

From a tiny cupboard over the sink Kansas extracts two mismatched coffee mugs, which she puts on the table. “What do you take in it? Milk? Sugar? Cookies on the side?”

She's better equipped than I imagined she would be. I tell her milk for my tea, and cookies would be good. I'm expecting something nutritious like oatmeal raisin but she produces a pack of digestives and slices open the plastic with a carving knife.

“Don't suppose you know anywhere around here I could get some limestone aggregate?”

My heart races. I remember her telling me in my dream that we all need limestone fortifications. These crossovers from my dreams are exciting but also scary, and I can't talk to her about it because in my dreams she has warned me against making bridges. I have to be careful. If I accidentally conjured up a unicorn here in the daytime I'm sure my head would explode.

“What do you need limestone for?” I ask very quietly. I'm hoping that the word limestone isn't a bridge because she used it first.

“What?” she says, so I repeat myself, but louder this time.

“I need limestone aggregate as a base for my dressage arena,” she says.

“Can't you Google it?” I'm looking around her trailer, mostly to be sure a unicorn hasn't popped up anywhere, but also for her computer.

“No room for a computer in here.”

“You've got room for a laptop. Or a BlackBerry.”

“Actually, Sylvia, I don't believe in computers.”

I stare at her. She couldn't have told me anything more shocking. My perfect Kansas. “How do you look things up?”

She points to the pamphlet on the table. “I read. I take out books from the library.”

Well, maybe she doesn't understand computers, maybe that's the problem. “The library has computers. Someone could show you how to use them.”

“I suppose,” she says with bland disinterest. She pulls a phone book out of a thin drawer beside the sink. “Maybe the yellow pages will tell me who has limestone.” She flips through some pages. “What do you think I should look under?”

“I don't know. Google always knows. You put in anything and it figures it out for you.”

“I guess I'm just a technological dinosaur,” says Kansas. She stops leafing. “Here—
Trucking
. Hey, the guy who's taking my topsoil should know. He's bringing pit run to fill up the hole, he'll know where to get limestone for the next layer.”

I am trying to imagine a life without computers, where you have to look things up in books and get advice from people you don't know. “You can come and use our computer, Kansas. I can help you look things up.”

“Thanks, but that's not necessary. I need to get this ring finished, build my business and start conditioning the horses for the show season. I don't have time to sit in front of a computer.”

Of course, without computers I also wouldn't be so confused. I wouldn't have found out about hermaphrodites or bisexuals. “But if you have high-speed you can watch on-line videos of horses for sale. And performances on YouTube.”

She shakes her head.

“Or you could write down what you need to know and I could look it up for you and bring you the answers.”

The kettle whistles and Kansas fills the teapot. Steam covers the inside of the windows of the trailer. She doesn't wait for the tea to steep, like Auntie Sally does. Kansas stirs the teabags around in the pot with a spoon, then squeezes the bags against the sides, pushing out all the caffeine and tannic acid. “Come on,” she says, filling the mugs. “Let's take our tea outside and watch what those guys are up to.”

But by the time we leave the trailer the guys have shut down their equipment and gone home. The excavator sits in the middle of the hole in the ground looking like a big dead insect.

Kansas balances her mug of tea on top of a pile of dirt and hops down into the hole. There's some water seeping in from the walls. I don't want to follow her because I'll get my shoes too muddy. Kansas is having a great time in her rubber boots. She runs over to the excavator and climbs in the cab and wiggles the control levers. She yells back to me, “I've always wanted to drive one of these!” She's like a big kid.

I stand and sip my tea until she clambers back up out of the hole beside me.

“Let's go put the horses out, they've been in their stalls all day,” she says.

I want to put a halter on Hambone but Kansas won't let me.

“You can take Electra. I'm still working on some dominance issues with old Hambone. He thinks he's the herd leader. Actually he's more like a dictator.”

“I thought stallions led herds.”

She cups a hand beside her mouth away from Hambone and whispers to me, “He thinks he's still a stallion. Probably he never saw the post-surgical report after he was gelded.”