While Cori and Terri rush off to school, Aunt Joan stays home with Bobby while he recovers from his injury. Today is the day he finally gets to change back into his boy clothes. Will Aunt Joan start treating him more like a boy now? More importantly, how will Bobby feel now that he's no longer wearing Cori's pretty clothes?

Bobby's Rainy Day Adventure
Copyright 2006 by Heather Rose Brown

CHAPTER X

"Aunt Joan, you think maybe I should go to school anyways?" I was surprised a question like that would come out of my mouth. I would have never asked to go back to my old school if I had any chance at all of getting away from it for a whole day. My new school was a lot different. Nobody had teased me for being a sissy. What was even more surprising was how quickly I had made new friends.

Aunt Joan frowned, but it seemed more out of concern than anger. "Sweetheart, you know the doctor said you should stay home at least a day to give your sprained ankle a rest." She turned away from me and shouted down the hall. "Let's go, girls! You're going to miss the bus if you don't get out there soon."

I was a bit startled by how loudly she could shout, but to my surprise, not frightened. While Mom hardly ever raised her voice, I was used to being afraid when my father yelled, since it usually meant I'd done something to make him upset . . . again.

Terri raced down the hall, braking just in time to avoid crashing into Aunt Joan. "Sorry about that, Mom. Cori and I were talking and lost track of the time."

Aunt Joan smiled at her older daughter before handing her a small paper bag and kissing her on the cheek. "So did talking to your sister help you feel better about your daddy?"

"I don't know if how I feel about him could change, but I am feeling a little better. I really appreciated you and Cori talking to me." Terri surprised her mom with a quick hug around the neck before running down the steps and out the front door.

It was hard not to giggle at Aunt Joan's dazed look. She quickly recovered and grinned at me. "And what do you think you're giggling at, Bobby?"

I managed to get control of the giggles, but I couldn't help smiling. "I'm sorry, Aunt Joan. It's just I don't think I'd ever seen anybody so surprised by a hug before."

Aunt Joan's grin eased into a soft smile. "It was a very nice surprise. Some days I don't think I'll ever understand teens. I just wonder what I'm going to do when both of my girls are that age. Speaking of which . . . Cori!"

Almost as soon as Aunt Joan shouted her name, Cori ran out of the hallway, chattering into a cell phone. "Oh yeah, that sounds great!"

"Cori, what are you doing with Terri's phone?"

Cori pulled the cell phone from her ear. "She said I could use it, Mom." Cori held the phone to her ear and nodded a couple of times. "Yeah, Mom's right here. Hold on and I'll ask her."

Aunt Joan had that special look most parents have when they're getting ready to decide whether or not they're going to let you do something. Both of my parents were good at that look, although lately one of them always seemed to argue when the other had made a decision. It had gotten to where I'd avoided asking either of them anything just so I wouldn't have to see them fighting.

"Um, would it be okay if Rhianna and Tess came here after school for a sleep-over?"

The handle of the plastic lunchbox Aunt Joan was holding squeaked when she folded her arms and looked down at her daughter. "Have they asked their parents yet?"

"Well . . . no, not yet. I wanted to ask you if it was okay first."

Aunt Joan scratched at her chin with her free hand. "I guess that will be all right, if they ask their parents, and if their parents say it's okay."

Cori squealed and hugged Aunt Joan around the waist. "Thank you, Mom!"

"You're welcome, honey. Now I want you to say goodbye, turn off that phone, and promise me you won't use it at school."

Cori pulled away from her mom and held the cell phone to her ear again. "Hey, I gotta go. Yeah, see you at school." She then hit the end-call button, folded up the cell phone, and slipped it into a side pocket of her backpack. "Okay, no more talking on the phone, and I promise to give it back to Terri at lunch."

Aunt Joan smiled and kissed Cori on the forehead before slipping the lunchbox into her daughter’s hand. "That's my girl."

Cori shifted her backpack onto her shoulders and then hugged Aunt Joan again, barely missing smacking her mom in the back with the lunchbox. "Thank you so much, Mom."

"You're welcome, honeybunch. Now get your butt out to the bus stop."

"Okay." Cori turned to me and waved. "Bye, Bobby. I hope you're foot feels better." Before I could do more than wave back, Cori bounced down the steps two at a time and ran out the door.

* * * * *

It was unusually quiet in the living room after Cori left. Aunt Joan eventually broke the silence. "So, would you like some help getting changed, sweetheart?"

I pulled myself into more of a sitting position on the couch, wincing a bit when my sprained foot slipped off the pillow, and looked down at what I was wearing. Even though I was hurting, seeing Hello Kitty on my chest made me smile. "I guess I probably should be wearing something more than a t-shirt, even if it does go down to my knees."

I noticed a soapy, baby-powder scent when Aunt Joan sat on the armrest near my head and wondered if she always smelled so nice or of she had somehow found time to take a shower before waking everyone else up. When she rested a hand on my shoulder, I looked up and saw a smile that made me feel like I'd just been wrapped up in a warm, fluffy blanket. "Actually, that's one of Cori's nightshirts, Bobby."

"What's a nightshirt?" It felt like a silly question as soon as I asked.

"It's sort of like a nightgown, but it's styled more like a long t-shirt." Aunt Joan's smile didn't change at all when she answered, making me wonder if there was anything I could say that would surprise, annoy, or shock her.

"Ah, okay. Well, I'd better go change. I'd feel kinda funny wearing a nightshirt all day." What I was wearing actually felt very comfortable, but I also felt a little weird wearing something that was almost a nightgown.

"I think I understand." Even though she had only nodded and spoken a few words, I had the feeling that, somehow, she really did understand. "Well, the clothes you'd worn to school yesterday are clean. I took them out of the dryer last night and put them on Cori's dresser after you went back to sleep."

"Oh cool!" I swung both feet out from under the covers and was painfully reminded why I was staying home after I felt a sharp sting in my sprained ankle. Doing my best to ignore the ache, I carefully stood up, and balanced on my good foot.

Just as I was about to hop into Cori's room, the hand Aunt Joan had on my shoulder slipped down to my arm. I felt panicked for a moment. It hadn't been that long ago when my father had grabbed me there and tried to pull me out of a wheelchair. It was the gentle playfulness in Aunt Joan's voice that calmed my jittery nerves. "Hold on there, missy . . . ermm . . . I mean, mister." She seemed just a tiny bit flustered for a second. "I mean, Bobby. I can't have you walking around on that sprained foot."

"Aunt Joan?"

"What is it, sweetie?" She had her hands under my arms and probably would have picked me up if I hadn't interrupted her.

"Would it be okay if I walked?" I felt like I'd spent a lot of time being carried around lately. Terri had carried me out to the car when I'd been going to see my mom in the hospital and to the front door when my father had brought the police officer to take me home. Aunt Joan had also carried me around the hospital almost all night when I'd sprained my ankle.

Even the doctor who fixed my ankle picked me up, and you could probably count Cori too when she carried me from her closet to her desk chair. Getting carried around wasn't exactly a bad thing. Being held like that, especially by Terri and Aunt Joan, made me feel very safe and protected, but I was starting to miss getting around on my own.

Aunt Joan pulled her hands away and looked at me with an embarrassed smile. "Of course, sweetheart. Do you still have the crutch I found for you last night?"

"Ummm . . . somewhere. I thought I'd leaned it up against the arm of the sofa."

I began hopping around on my good foot, looking for the crutch. Aunt Joan stopped me with a touch on my shoulder. "Stay right there, sweetie. You don't want to fall and make your ankle worse."

Bouncing around wasn't really making me feel any worse . . . at least not a lot worse. I had gotten used to being expected to do things on my own, but it was nice to have someone helping me out. I was just a little worried about getting too used to it, especially if my father found a way of taking me away from my mom.

While I had missed my father over the summer, being able to spend time with just my mom had been nice. I was almost getting used to the idea of there just being the two of us. Then she got into that awful accident. It was so scary thinking of her being stuck in the hospital with all those tubes and wires attached to her. It was even scarier thinking about my father trying to take me away from her.

As I tried my best to believe my mom would be out of the hospital soon and stop thinking about what life might be like with my father, Aunt Joan looked around the side of the couch and picked up a small aluminum crutch from the floor. After handing it to me, she sat behind me on the couch and held me by the waist, helping me keep my balance until I got the crutch under my arm. "You sure you're going to be okay, Bobby?"

I took a few careful steps away from the sofa, leaning the weight that would have been on my sprained ankle onto the crutch. "I think I'm gonna be okay. Thank you for showing me how to do this last night."

"You're welcome, sweetheart. Cori has a small pail next to her hamper. When you get changed, you can toss your Goodnites in there."

I was so glad I wasn't facing Aunt Joan, because I could feel my face warming with embarrassment. I had almost forgotten what I had changed into last night so I wouldn't wet Cori's bed again. Even though it had been a busy morning, it still seemed weird to forget something like that. "Errr . . . okay, Aunt Joan. I . . . umm . . . I better go change now."

As I headed down the hall toward Cori's room, there was a loud knock on the front door. A few seconds later I heard Aunt Joan open the door and start talking to someone. I hobbled down the hall a little faster. I really wasn't ready to face a stranger at that moment.

* * * * *

After I closed the door to Cori's room, I stripped off the nightshirt and tossed it into the hamper. What I had left on really didn't look like a diaper. At least, it didn't look like anything I'd seen a baby wear. It felt more like I was wearing thick underpants. Maybe I was just kidding myself, but it did seem easier to think of the Goodnites like that.

As I looked, I noticed something was a bit different. I seemed . . . flatter. I made my way over to the mirror on the back of Cori's closet door and felt an odd giddiness when I saw my reflection. The Goodnites really did make me look different. I felt a tiny, long forgotten spark of hope and quickly pulled down what I was wearing.

I gritted my teeth, determined not to cry again, when I saw everything was still there. Instead, I turned away from the mirror, pulled the Goodnites the rest of the way off and tossed them with all my strength at the pail beside the hamper. The pail wobbled a bit when it was hit, but to my surprise, the Goodnites had made it in, making the lid to the pail spin around several times.

Normally, I would have felt proud of myself for making a shot like that, but at the moment, I just felt miserable. Even though I was supposed to be using the crutch, I hopped the few feet from the closet to the dresser and looked at my neatly folded clothes. Before, they were just clothes; today, they were boy clothes.

I didn't cry as I started getting dressed . . . just barely. That is, I wasn't bawling and there weren't any tears, but there was all the aching you feel inside just before you cry. When I was wearing everything except for my sneakers (they hadn't made it to Cori's room with the rest of my clothes), I took a deep breath and hopped back over to the mirror. It was time to get over my silly wishes and see myself for who I really was.

"Gah!"

"You okay in there, Bobby?" Aunt Joan’s shout sounded like it was coming from the other end of the house.

"I'm okay," I shouted back. "I was just . . . surprised by something." Seeing someone else in the mirror can be pretty surprising. It wasn't actually a different person I'd seen. Just for a second, I thought I'd seen a girl in the mirror. I just saw me after that, but the feeling of seeing a girl was still there. I frowned at my reflection. The girl in the mirror frowned back, looking angry, confused, and just a little bit afraid.

I was finally wearing boy clothes again. Why wasn't I seeing a boy? Was it the hair that made me look different? Was there something else? This was too weird . . . too confusing. I'm not sure how long I stared at myself, trying to make sense of what I saw and felt, before I heard a knock on the door.

"Is it okay if I come in, Bobby?" Her question was a bit muffled coming through the bedroom door.

It took me a moment to pull myself away from the mirror. "I'm all dressed. C'mon in."

Aunt Joan held up my sneakers as she walked in. "I'd forgotten to bring these up with the rest of your clothes. You probably should avoid wearing a sneaker on your sprained foot for today. If you feel funny just having one on your good foot, I think it would be okay to go around in your stocking feet today."

"I ain't wearing stockings . . . am I?" I actually looked down to check, but all I saw were white tube socks.

"No, sweetie. Stocking feet just means you're wearing socks without shoes." Aunt Joan adjusted my shirt, although there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. "This top looks very pr--" Her jaw snapped shut on the last word. "I mean, it looks very nice on you."

"Were you gonna say, 'pretty'?" It wasn't hard to guess what she had stopped herself from saying, but I still needed to hear her answer.

Aunt Joan nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, Bobby. I've gotten so used to it just being me and my girls, it just slipped out."

"It's okay." A question popped up into my head, but it took a while before I had the nerve to ask. "Do you think I look pretty?"

"I think. . . . I think we need to sit down and talk." Aunt Joan held my free hand and had her other hand in the middle of my back as she helped me hobble over to Cori's bed. After she sat down, she pulled me onto her lap, and sat me sideways. With Aunt Joan still wrapped in her fluffy blue bathrobe, it felt like I was sitting in the lap of a giant teddy bear. The ache in my ankle I had been getting from hopping around felt a little better when she carefully propped my sprained foot up on Cori's giant, fluffy pillow. "Sweetheart, before I answer, I need to ask a couple of questions."

"Okay. What'd ya need to ask?"

"Last night when we were alone at the hospital in Doctor Chung's office, you said that you felt like a girl. Was that because you think only girls can be pretty?"

"I. . . . I dunno." I hung my head, unable to look Aunt Joan in the eye and hide what I was feeling at the same time. I began chewing on my thumbnail.

Aunt Joan slowly moved my hand away from my face with one hand and lifted my chin with the other. Her eyes sparkled in the morning sunlight coming through the bedroom window. The sadness in her smile almost made me forget the pain and confusion I was feeling. "I realize this is hard, Bobby. If you don't want to say anything, it's okay. If there is anything you want to say, and I mean anything, I promise it'll be all right to tell me."

I tried to swallow my nervousness, but my throat was too dry. "When I was little, I didn't think I was a boy. It wasn't like one day I'd said, 'I ain't a boy; I'm a girl.' It was more like more like when I thought of myself, I'd see me as fitting more in with girls than boys."

"So you liked playing with girls more than boys?"

"Well, yeah, especially with my cousin Cassie."

"And you didn't like playing boy games?"

"Not exactly. I liked climbing trees and playing in the dirt and riding bikes and stuff like that, but I didn't like playing like the boys played. I felt more comfortable playing like the other girls played."

"You said, 'other girls.' "

"Umm . . . yes?" For some reason, I had the feeling I'd been caught at something. I just didn't know what that something was yet.

"That sounds like you consider yourself to be one of the girls."

"I do. Or at least, I did before the -- you know -- birthday party."

Aunt Joan pulled me close and held me for a few minutes before she spoke. "I remember, sweetie. That must have been pretty hard."

The ache in my chest became a cold stone that sank into my stomach. "It was, especially at first. My father never lost his temper the way he did that day, but he did seem to change. He wouldn't hug me or hold me any more and he got rid of anything that he thought was too girlish."

Aunt Joan stroked the back of my hair. "Sounds like it was a painful change for you, Bobby. In what other ways did he change?"

"Before, he was a lot gentler with me. He smiled more at me. He'd even played house with me and stuff like that instead of trying to make me do boy stuff. In a lotta ways, he was an awful lot like my mom back then."

"Did he feel like a mommy?"

I imagined my father dressing like my mom and giggled a little. "No, I don't think I ever thought of him as a mother. But when he changed, it was like he was suddenly covered with ice." The stone in my stomach seemed to get colder when I thought of the change.

"What made him feel like he was covered with ice?"

I leaned my head against Aunt Joan's chest. The sound of her heartbeat calmed the shaky feeling I got when I tried to think of an answer. The warmth of her arms as she wrapped them around me helped to melt what I'd been feeling in my stomach. "He . . . got colder and harder, and it felt like I could see the person I'd known under the ice, but I couldn't reach him."

I shuddered at the thought of my father being trapped like that. "Sometimes, probably when he wasn't paying attention, I could feel how he still loved me. It just felt like his love was coming through that thick layer of ice. I hated knowing he was there, but not knowing how to reach him. I think that's probably why I'd tried so hard to do what he asked and to believe what he told me was true."

Aunt Joan was quiet for a few seconds. I could hear her heart beat a little faster. "What did he try to tell you?"

"He told me lotsa things. Being able to be with him when he'd sit down and talk with me felt special, even when he'd get upset at the questions I'd ask. Some of what he'd say was hard to listen to, like when he told me 'bout how boys and girls are different and how I could never be a girl 'cause I got . . . boy parts."

Aunt Joan pulled away from me a little and looked down at me. "So, what did you think when he told you about the difference between boys and girls?"

"Mostly, I was confused and frustrated. I guess maybe I still am a little. When I'd asked him to explain the differences, he just seemed to get upset or something and I never had the nerve to try asking anyone else. I was frustrated 'cause he told me I could never be a girl, but he wouldn’t explain why."

"Did you feel different after he told you that?"

"Not really. I tried to make myself believe I was a boy 'cause I knew my father wanted me to, but . . . I just couldn't."

"Well, you know what I think?"

I was too afraid to speak, so I just shook my head. After sharing something I'd kept secret for so long, I was too scared to try imagining what she thought.

Aunt Joan pulled me close again. "I think you're a very pretty girl."