Stephanie’s Deal by Jennifer Brock Eleven-year-old Steven Brooks has spent one full week living as a girl. So far, Stephanie has been enjoying wearing pretty clothes and experiencing life from the other side to its fullest. In this installment, Stephanie sees some of the darker side of being a boy in frills and dresses. Not everyone understands. (There’s also some religion in here, but please don’t think I’m trying to tell you what to believe; I’m just trying to describe what some of the people in Stephanie’s church believe.)

Episode 7

Steven only had four days left, and then everything would be back to normal (well, except for the sixteen or so times he’d have to be a girl again over the course of the next six months, to prepare for being a bridesmaid in his cousin’s wedding) and he’d finally be getting his Nintendo Wii. But until then, he’s still Stephanie, and what’s on Stephanie’s mind the most right now is that in two days, she’s got a date.

Saturday morning, she played around on the computer for a while. She was trying to make sure whether the whole New Year’s Eve kiss thing was real or not. She’d been worrying about this tradition ever since her big sister Michelle had told her about it. Her searching showed that it truly was an actual tradition. Now the only question was whether Brian Somers, the boy who’d invited her to his house for New Year’s, was a follower of that tradition or not. Stephanie wasn’t quite sure if she wanted him to be.

Her mood shifted when she got a phone call just before lunch. Mom wasn’t sure who was on the line, that it was some little kid who’d asked for Stephanie. She picked up the handset from the cordless phone in the living room and very cautiously spoke into it, “Hello?”

The voice on the other end sniffled a little. “Hello, Stephanie?”

She thought she recognized the voice of her eight-year-old friend. “Robin, is that you? Is something wrong?”

Her guess had been correct, but not exactly. “Robin had to go away. It’s just Bobby now.”

“Oh, no! What happened, Sweetie?”

“Mommy had gotten her old Barbies from Nana’s house, and we were playing with them. And Daddy came in and he was all mad. He yelled that Mommy was only supposed to be making me dress like a girl until Christmas, but she’d stretched it out. I tried to say that she wasn’t making me do it — I liked my pretty dresses. But he didn’t listen.” Bobby dissolved into sobs.

“Go on. What happened next?”

“I told Daddy about the stuff your sister had said, about the doctors who can make boys into ladies when they grow up, and that I wanted to be a girl all the time. He started yelling at Mommy in the other room using words I’m not allowed to say. Then he brought me to the bathroom and made me take my clothes off. When he saw the piece of tape he got really ticked off and yelled some more at Mommy, and he made her leave the room. Then he put me in the bathtub and scrubbed so hard it hurt, with the manly sandpaper soap he uses when he gets greasy working on the car. He washed off all my pretty perfume and makeup, and took the curls out of my hair.”

“Oh, that sounds horrible! Are you still sore anywhere?”

“He hurt my ears a little when he took out my star earrings. He dressed me in boy clothes and took me to his barber. They cut off all my hair! It’s shorter than it ever was before. I’ll never look pretty again!”

“You’ll always be pretty on the inside, where it matters most.”

“Thank you. You’re beautiful on both the inside and the outside. I don’t know if I’m allowed to feel real pretty anymore. When we got back from the barber’s, all my girl clothes were gone. Mommy locked them in a trunk in the basement. Daddy was mad that she hadn’t thrown them out like he said to, but she gave him the key and said that maybe I’d get a girl cousin or something who’d want some nice things, so she kept them. Later she whispered to me that maybe we could play dress-up again in a few months when Daddy cools off, but that’s way too long!”

“That sounds really crummy, but at least she’s not making you give it up completely. Maybe you could ask her to get you a wig, so your short hair won’t be a problem when you’re finally allowed back in dresses.”

“A few months sure feels like forever. Besides, Mommy thinks she understands, but she doesn’t. I don’t want to ‘play dress-up.’ I just want to be me, and me isn’t Bobby anymore; me is Robin.”

“Are you sure? You were only Robin for a couple weeks.”

“I’m sure. It’s hard to explain, but it’s just something you know. You get it, right? Isn’t your you Stephanie now?”

Stephanie really wasn’t sure who she was anymore, but didn’t want to lose her friend’s confidence, so she told a half-truth. “Yeah. I think so. It really sucks that your parents can tell you what to do, but that’s what it means to be a kid. They can keep you from being Robin on the outside, but they can’t keep you from being Robin on the inside. Whatever you’re wearing, you’ll know who you are. And you’ll always be my Official Little Sister, even when we both look like boys and have to be secret girls. I go back to being Steven on Wednesday, so we’ll be in the same boat.”

“Thanks, Stephanie. You’re the best Big Sister a secret girl could have! I love you.”

“Same back at you, Robin. Are you going to be okay?”

“I think so. Bye-bye!”

“Whenever you need someone to listen, I’ll be here. See you later!” Stephanie hung up the phone and felt even more confused than usual. She went to her room and wept for a while about the unfairness that Robin had to deal with. She’d thought her parents were hard to live with, but that poor kid had it so much worse!

Michelle was on her own phone with her boyfriend for most of the afternoon, but when she got done Stephanie asked for her help. She figured it was time to try a new color nail polish on her fingers and toes. The red was a little too intense for her, so her sister suggested trying a pink. She made Stephanie remove her old polish by herself, which wasn’t too bad, but then she had her try doing her own toes and they came out so sloppy she had to take it all off and try again. Michelle still wouldn’t do it for her, but slowly guided her through the process. She did Stephanie’s right hand for her, but made her do the left hand herself. She went very slowly and did a fairly decent job all things considered. It seems that the trick was accepting that it would take too coats, so you don’t want to load too much paint on the brush.

While they were doing nails, Stephanie asked Michelle about her boyfriend Kurt: how they met, what he looked like, was he a good kisser, and stuff like that. Michelle showed her a picture of him on her phone, and she thought he did look kind of cute. He had a little beard around his mouth, which made her ask whether it felt weird kissing him. It was different, but you got used to it. Stephanie really liked spending time with her sister learning about girl stuff. She actually thought she might miss her when she went back to college this time. She hung out in her room for a while even after her nails were dry, and got nice and cozy on the couch with her when they watched some TV before bedtime.

Stephanie got up early Sunday morning. She wanted extra time to make sure she was dressed up appropriately for church, and maybe a little because she wanted to be at her prettiest so that Brian wouldn’t decide to change his mind and invite someone else to his New Year’s celebration instead. She wore a frilly pale pink blouse, a khaki skirt, and black tights. The pink jewelry set that her aunt had made went well with the outfit. She pulled her hair back with a headband and put a little of her brown mascara on her eyelashes, and her favorite soft pink lip gloss. Her purse matched her shiny black shoes.

She was kind of nervous going to church, and didn’t quite understand why. She shouldn’t be getting excited about seeing a cute boy; she was really a boy herself. This whole girl thing was very confusing. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It was only three days more. Wednesday morning, Steven would get to be a boy again. Stephanie wondered if it would be weird to see Brian again when she was a boy.

On Wednesday night she’d have to be a girl again and would go learn ballroom dancing. Her dance partner would be Grace’s little brother. Grace was a beautiful angel; maybe that would mean Christopher would be even cuter than Brian. And Christopher would never know about Steven, unlike Brian. So he might be even more fun. And she was pretty sure that there were no traditions about members of a wedding party having to kiss each other, so he wouldn’t be as scary as Brian, either.

Stephanie was ready early enough that she got some breakfast ready for everyone. A week of helping her mother had taught her a lot about cooking. She made pancakes and bacon and scrambled eggs for everyone, with a fresh pitcher of reconstituted orange juice and a pot of hot coffee ready for the grownups. Her mother thanked her for helping out and told her she looked very nice. Michelle even had to go back and change so she wouldn’t feel underdressed next to her sister.

Stephanie’s appearance at Sunday School brought mixed reactions. Most of them had been in the Christmas pageant and knew about Steven’s punishment, but a lot of the boys still stared. Some of the girls were supportive, though.

Stephanie made sure to find Bobby before the kids all scattered to their separate classrooms. His hair had indeed been sheared off into a severe crewcut. He was wearing a blue shirt and blue dress pants, and his face was turned down in a perfect portrait of sadness. He brightened up a little at the sight of Stephanie, and she crouched down and gave him a tight hug. She fought back a couple tears and whispered in his ear, “Hang in there, Robin.” She looked at a picture of Jesus on the wall and asked him in her heart to help Robin’s father to see what he was doing to her.

She let go and stood back up, and Bobby trotted off to his class. Stephanie had to take a tissue out of her purse and blot her eyes a little. She saw some brown on the paper and realized she was messing her mascara, so she ducked into the ladies’ room to check her makeup. It did look a little messed up in the mirror, so she wiped her eyes and took her mascara from her purse to fix her eyelashes.

While she was standing at the mirror with her mascara wand in her hand, the door opened and Mrs. Kendall, the boss of the Sunday School, came into the restroom. She had to turn and look at her twice. “Should you be in here?”

Stephanie blushed. “Sorry. I just had to fix my face, and thought this would be the best room for it. I can leave if you need me to.”

Mrs. Kendall got a weird expression on her face. “I suppose looking like you do you’d be even more out of place in the men’s room. And it’s not like the stalls don’t have doors. Just finish quickly and get to class before it starts. Remember, Dear, this is a church not a nightclub. Don’t use too much of that.” She passed Stephanie and went into a stall.

She went lightly with the wand and checked the mirror to make sure she didn’t look too trampy, although she wasn’t really sure what that meant exactly. She hurried off to class.

Her Sunday School class had the chairs arranged in a semi-circle, and she was the last one to show up. The girls tended to sit on one side and the boys on the other, not because they were told to but they just sort of naturally grouped themselves that way. Usually Steven sat on the end kind of off by himself, but the only empty chair was between a couple of girls, Debbie Washington and Elizabeth Patterson.

Debbie was a pretty African-American girl with cocoa-brown skin and nice wavy hair and green eyes that might even be natural, since her mother was a blue-eyed blonde. She wore a long yellow dress made of some kind of soft material. She patted the empty chair and said, “Sit here, Stephanie. I saved you a seat.” She had a nice smile.

Stephanie felt like everyone was staring at her as she walked across the room to the empty seat. She tried to make eye contact with Elizabeth, but she just kind of shrugged. She was dressed in a button-up shirt and dress pants, and with her short hair she almost looked like a boy. Stephanie wasn’t sure why any real girl would ever want to look like a boring boy when she could be pretty. Elizabeth didn’t wear any makeup, not even nail polish. Maybe her parents were really strict. It was a shame, really.

The class leader Mr. Walters called them all to order and started the lesson. He made Stephanie stand up and explain her punishment so the couple of kids that weren’t in the pageant knew what was going on with Steven. Mr. Walters then used Stephanie’s story as the focus of the lesson.

He had Patrick Thatcher, a tubby boy who had been teasing Stephanie the most, open his Bible and read Deuteronomy 22:5 to the class. Patrick read, “A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.” He had a big smirk on his face after reading this.

Stephanie was getting really worried. She didn’t want to get thrown out of church for being sinful. But then Mr. Walters turned out to be a good guy. He explained that this part of the Bible was rules for being Jewish, and that as Christians they didn’t have to obey any of those rules. He asked for a show of hands for everyone that had bacon or ham or sausage for breakfast, and almost everyone raised their hands. He pointed out how everyone knows that Jewish people can’t eat pigs, but Christians do. They get to pick which of those old rules to follow.

He told Patrick to read a piece from the previous chapter where it said that a son who was rebellious and didn’t obey his parents was to be stoned to death. He then got the group into a discussion where they were to pretend that they really did have to follow all those old Jewish laws. Now if Steven’s mother told him to wear a dress, should he put it on and break the law against men dressing as women, or should he not wear it and get put to death for not obeying his mother?

It was a tricky puzzle, and most of the kids said to wear the dress, since it’s better to stay alive. But being detested by God could be just as bad. Stephanie finally spoke up and said that the passage said that a man wasn’t supposed to dress like a woman, but it didn’t say that applied to kids, too. From what he knew about Jewish law, a boy would have to have a bar mitzvah to become a man, and since he hadn’t had one, he hadn’t broken any Jewish laws.

Mr. Walters was impressed by Stephanie’s ability to weasel out under the specific wording, and chalked it down to her father being a lawyer. She didn’t know about that, but she did mention that the contract she had to sign to agree to be a girl until school started was written up in very tight language, and she hadn’t found any loopholes yet. Mr. Walters said that weaseling out of God’s rules isn’t really the way to go about avoiding sin, but fortunately those particular laws didn’t apply to modern Christianity.

The discussion then went into which Jewish laws Christians do accept as useful, and Mr. Walters got into the meat of the lesson. The class went through The Ten Commandments, and pretty much agreed that they were a good basis for morality. He said that a lot of Christians like to try to keep them, but you didn’t have to. He turned to the New Testament, where Jesus kind of threw away the old rules. He read from the book of Matthew where the whole thing got boiled down to two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Stephanie found that very refreshing. It was good to know that she wasn’t doing anything sinful by becoming a girl. But since her cross-dressing started for the Christmas pageant and she accepted her date with Brian during the coffee hour after service, and she was going to have to continue through to Matt and Grace’s wedding, it seemed like a lot of what was making her be a girl was related to one church or another. So maybe there was a plan behind it all.

After church, as people were gathering for refreshments in the Fellowship Hall, Brian found her and brought her some punch again. He told her she looked cute, and she tried to look away and just kind of peeked at him through the corner of her eye. He told her he was looking forward to having her over at his house the next day. She tried to pretend that she’d completely forgotten about his invitation, but it didn’t work. He pointed at their two mothers chatting across the room, nonchalantly reaching his arm around behind her. Stephanie wanted to kind of lean against his arm, but he removed it too quickly.

But then Pastor Moore came over to the mothers and was pointing in their direction. They couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he seemed to be angry at something. Mom walked over and told Stephanie they were leaving. She gave Stephanie the keys and told her to go wait in the car while she found Dad and Michelle. Stephanie told Brian she’d see him the next day and walked out, confused.

Mom was still mad when she got in the car. Dad needed to know what was wrong, so when she was calm enough to make actual words she explained, “The Reverend saw me and Lynda talking and said that he’d heard from the grapevine that our boys were going on a date. (It’s not a date; it’s just a party and what business of his is it anyway? But that’s beside the point.) He pointed over at Stephanie and Brian flirting, like it would prove his point. He said that he felt that it was necessary for him to come over and remind us that homosexuality was a sin against God and Nature, and we needed to put an end to it right away! He got me so pissed off for getting into my family’s affairs, not his that I just had to get out of there right away.”

Class had been so uplifting, but don’t ministers outrank Sunday School teachers? Maybe what Stephanie was doing was wrong after all. She was very confused. “Does this mean I can’t go to Brian’s for New Years’ Eve?”

“Don’t worry about it, Honey. You’re going. I’m pretty sure that Brian’s mother was just as annoyed with the pastor. She even let him know that your so-called ‘date’ was even a sleepover. I may have gone a little overboard when I left, though.” Mom mumbled the end of her sentence.

Dad was concerned. “What did you do?”

“I sort of excused myself by saying we had to hurry before the stores close to get Stephanie some K-Y for tomorrow.” Mom seemed really embarrassed.

Michelle hollered, “Way to go Mom! That’s how you stick it to The Man, so to speak.”

Stephanie was still confused. “I don’t get it. What does that mean?”

Michelle said, “I’ll tell you later, Sis.”

Mom corrected her, “You’d better not. Stephanie, I was implying that you and Brian would be engaging in sexual activity at his party. I know very well that you won’t be, but I was trying to goad Pastor Moore. It was wrong of me, and I shouldn’t have. I’ll wait a couple days and apologize to him.”

Stephanie nodded. “Okay. Is the party really a sleepover, or was that pretend, too?”

“It’s really a sleepover. We’ll pack you a bag with a nightgown and a change of clothes for the next day, and send you over with a sleeping bag. That way if you fall asleep before midnight it’s not a problem, and we won’t have to worry about driving to get you late at night.”

After lunch, Stephanie borrowed one of her sister’s Babysitters’ Club books to kill the afternoon, but her Mom interrupted her reading. She was carrying a pair of Steven’s jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. “The other day you were worrying about how we were going to make you look like a boy for school on Wednesday morning and still be able to become a girl again in the evening for your dance class. There are a couple of experiments I want to try. Put these on and meet me in my room.”

When Mom left, Stephanie looked at the clothes she’d been handed. She hadn’t brought any underwear, so Stephanie would be wearing panties under boy clothes, but that was sort of a good thing. She didn’t want to break her promise, so she had to stay Stephanie for a few more days. She kept her panties and training bra on, so she still wouldn’t be returning to Steven, she’d be Stephanie dressing up as a boy. On one hand it was very confusing, but on the other it made a lot of sense. She went into her mother’s room and did a girlish twirl to show off her “tomboy” outfit.

Mom outlined her plan. “There are some things I’m not going to do today so that you can still be your prettiest for your date on Monday, but I’ll tell you the solutions. First, we’ll have to take your fingernail extensions off, but we can still keep your real nails well-groomed. Many girls your age keep their nails short. They’ll look girlish enough if we paint them. And you’ll have plenty of time to put on fresh nail polish before each of your dance classes, and we can remove it when you get home. Do you follow so far?”

Stephanie nodded. “I think so. I’ll be sad to lose my nice long glamorous nails, but it’s understandable.”

“We can get tips put back on them for when you’re in Matt and Grace’s wedding. We’ve got a couple weeks between the end of your school and the wedding, which should be plenty of time you get you a manicure.”

“That makes sense.” Stephanie really liked Grace and wanted to do her best to be a good junior bridesmaid.

“The other thing I’m going to ignore right now is your earrings. There are two ways we can deal with this. The first option is that we can just take them out and let your holes heal up; we’ll get you some clip-on earrings you can wear to dance class, and we’ll get your ears pierced again before the wedding.”

“Would clip-ons fall off if I danced too hard? I’m not sure I like that option. What’s the other one?”

“They make little transparent plastic things to put in your piercings to keep them open, for like when any of those ridiculous punks wants to have a real job. We can get you a pair of those for your ears, and then we’d just swap them for your regular earrings on dance class nights.”

“I think I’d like to try that. If those little things aren’t too expensive, can we get some and see how invisible they really are, and if they show we can go with the other thing?”

“I don’t think they’ll cost too much. I saw some online, but I think I’ll send Michelle to one of those scary places where those ridiculous punks get metal stuck in them. I just hope she doesn’t come back with more holes than she leaves with.”

“Okay. What else will you do to make me look like a boy?”

Stephanie’s mom shook her head at the way that question was phrased, but didn’t want to call attention to it. “Well those were the only too areas we won’t touch right now. But there are a couple of other things we can do. First, go wash your face. I should have told you before, but I hadn’t realized you were wearing lip gloss.”

Stephanie liked feeling pretty and didn’t really want to take off what little makeup she was allowed, but she washed her face anyway. She still saw “girl” when she looked in the mirror. Even though the bra under her shirt wasn’t padded, she still felt it there and thought she could see its contours through her shirt.

When she returned to her mother, Mom squeezed some stuff out of a little tube into her hands and rubbed them together. Then she ran her hands through Stephanie’s hair, pushing everything back. The gel held Stephanie’s hair in place, leaving a slicked-back style. It wasn’t a way Steven had ever worn his hair before, but it looked relatively boyish. Mom pointed her at a mirror and asked, “What do you think? Will that hairstyle work?”

Stephanie thought it might. Nobody really noticed Steven much at school, so he could probably get away with it. “It should be believable. I almost look like a real boy.”

Mom laughed, hoping Stephanie was joking. She ran her sticky finger across Stephanie’s eyebrows, and then took a little comb and brushed them backwards so they got bushier. It did really help sell the image as “boy.” They then went downstairs to show her father and sister. Stephanie had to put her hands in her pockets to hide her painted fingernails. The general verdict was that she looked enough like a boy to not get picked on at school.

Mom explained the rest of the plan. “So, on days you have dance class, you’ll come home and take a shower right away to wash the product out of your hair, conditioning and blow-drying to give it more body, then you can put on a dress and we’ll paint your nails before dinner. They’d be plenty dry by the time they come to get you. I think it will work. You can lead your double life without anyone catching on, just like Batman.”

Stephanie wasn’t really sure why Mom felt the need to bring up Batman again, but nodded anyway. She didn’t want to be a half-boy / half-girl for too long, so as soon as Mom said she could, she went up to wash her hair and then change back into pretty girl clothes. It helped steady her to get back in lip gloss and cologne.

Those Wednesday night dance classes would be rough days having to change back and forth twice in one day. Maybe she’d just end up going to bed a girl on dance class nights and turning into a boy in the morning. She thought that her nightgowns were more comfortable than her old boy pajamas anyway. Would it be weird to wear one every night, even on nights without dance class when she was a boy all day?