Who do they say that I am?

Mom got my wig sorted out for me, adding a red hairband that somehow went with my other colors. I retrieved my straw bag from my own room while Mom finished getting dressed then I went outside to wait for her at the car. 

I felt more than strange, standing there wearing a dress with hair down the middle of my back—plus bracelets, earrings, even a necklace. It made me a little sad since I didn’t see any way to go back to being who I had been before. No more Audie who would grow up to be a cowboy like my Dad and my brothers.

And the worst of it was, I was doing most of it to myself. I sighed. Okay, I guess there had always been some Audrey in me along with the Audie I thought I was. But, jeez, Louise, did I have to end up enjoying so much of it?

I wanted to kick a rock or something but I knew it would scuff my Mary Janes. If I had to discover I was actually a girl, why couldn’t I be a girl more like Mom, a tomboy who had been roping steers and riding broncs with her brothers when she was only a little older than I was now.

But I’d never wanted to rope steers or ride broncs, not even as Audie. You could get seriously hurt that way. Oh, I probably would have gone ahead and learned how and maybe even been good at it, like my dad was. But now I had a good excuse not to get all sweaty and dirty. I grinned and giggled.

I poked myself in my padded bra. “I’m a princess,” I said. “I’m Daddy’s baby girl.” I squirmed a bit, saying it out loud but wow. What a relief! I wasn’t going to grow up to be all hairy and gross like Junior and Moose, belching and farting with manure on my shoes and grease in my hair. 

“Okay,” I said. “I can do this.” I skipped out to the car and back to the front door, swishing my skirt back and forth as I did, giggling like crazy. I still worried a bit about Pete and what he might say but phooey on him if he didn’t like me as Audrey.

I stopped, remembering how Pete had acted around Daphne, all moony and goofy. What if he did like me as Audrey? What if he acted like that about me? I felt all tingly thinking about it. “Two scoops,” I said. “Fudge ripple with nuts and a cherry on top!”

I glanced over toward Pete’s house. He and his family would be home this evening. What would I say to him? What was I going to wear to meet him? This was going to take some thinking about.

I walked down the walk to the driveway and looked off toward Pete’s again. I sighed. I didn’t want to lose my best friend, and I wasn’t sure I wanted a boyfriend. Well, not yet. “I’m only eleven,” I complained.

Gossip, one of the mongrel cattle dogs, met me at the end of the walk, evidently wanting a scratch and some doggie-talk. She got the name for her habit of muttering and whining while she licked your ears. She made a good distraction from thinking about my own problems.

Careful not to let her put a dirty paw on my dress, I rubbed the top of her head with a knuckle and told her she was a good girl and a good mommie since it was obvious that she was nursing a litter of pups somewhere.

Half-border collie, half-pointer, like most of the working dogs on the ranch, her curly black-and-white coat had attracted bits of hay and straw. She looked anxious as I picked some of her bedding off her but responded with a tail wag and a happy yip when I gave her a vigorous face-and-ear rub.

Collies are good herders for sheep, but cattle don’t like to be nagged about it, my father explained to me when I asked why we always used crossbred dogs on the ranch. Pointers are energetic enough for the work, with good eyesight and some herding instinct, but are less inclined to try to urge cattle onward with a heel nip, which can get a herding dog kicked or stomped.

“Cattle are not sheep. The mix-breed dogs are healthy, reliable, and more laid back about herding. Besides,” he had added, “it’s just too hot out here for a purebred collie with all that fur. This ain’t Scotland.”

I smiled, watching Gossip trot off back toward the barns, the color of her coat and her distended teats making me think of a small fuzzy dairy cow. I glanced down at my own chest, realizing that at some time in the future, I might be nursing a child of my own.

Talk about weirding out an eleven-year-old kid who used to think she was a boy. What in the world would that feel like?

Mom came out and got into the car while I stood there, blinking and wondering about my future. Wouldn’t you need to get married before you had babies? And that would mean….

I must have totally spaced out because she had to lower the electric window on the passenger side and call to me.

“Audrey? Mom to Space Cadet Audrey? We’re ready for lift-off!”

Giggling a bit about her silliness, I climbed in and buckled up.

“What were you thinking about so hard, honey?”

“Gossip,” I said, meaning the dog.

“Oh,” said Mom. “Well, I can’t tell you not to worry, but remember, it’s not what people say to each other, it’s how they treat you that matters.”

“Huh,” I said, a little confused. “Gossip has puppies. Is she going to be okay?”

“Puppies?” Mom frowned. “Oh! Yes, she does, she’s had them on a pile of gunny sacks in the shed behind the cream separator. Junior told me about them. When they get their eyes open, would you like to go see them?”

“Uh, huh,” I said. I knew they would be cute, but Mom has a strict rule about no dogs in the house. Would it be possible for Audrey to do something Audie had never managed and get a puppy to raise indoors? I looked sideways at her. With Daddy, I might have been able to, but Mom was way ahead of me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Don’t plan on playing the brat, don’t even ask. We have enough beasts in the house with your brothers.”

I had to laugh at that.

We talked about my brothers and other animals on the drive, passing through Presley without even having to stop at the one traffic light. Before we’d stopped laughing about the time Moose got his foot stuck in a half-gallon pickle jar, we had reached Rosa Morena and turned onto College Way where the school was located.

The new junior college is two miles outside of town, but Rosa Morena Middle School is all new concrete buildings built where the old college temporary buildings used to be. They’d been temporary for about thirty years until finally a bond was passed to build a new college and a new middle school,

About a dozen white and beige buildings sit around the central grassy square of the new school. A gym and swimming pool at one end are surrounded by various athletic fields and some bleachers. At the other end of the campus, a large building serves as cafeteria, auditorium, and theater. Another large building is the administrative offices.

That’s where we headed after parking the car across the street in a lot marked for visitors. Mom walks fast, and I scurried to keep up then got ahead of her and skipped up onto the curb to wait. “You never went here, huh?” I asked her.

“No,” she agreed. “It hadn’t been built yet, and Presley Elementary went all the way to grade eight, so I went from there directly to high school. Same one your brothers are going to now, across town.” I’d been there for football games and other sports my brothers played. There were a lot of shaggy old trees and some of the oldest buildings in town. It was neat. 

Not so many trees here and most of them skinny with leaves only high up. And the buildings were some of the newest around. We stopped for a moment to admire the murals painted on the multi-purpose and administration buildings. The larger one, on the cafeteria/auditorium, showed the story of Rosa Morena, the character from a novel back in the 1890s that the town and the school are named for.

Rosa was a girl in Old California who fell in love with an outlaw and died tragically, according to the story. It was all a lot of romantic goop to me before. 

But now, looking at the painting of the beautiful Rosa languishing in her jail cell looking out at the valley so lush and green—and in the distance (on the other building), there’s a posse pursuing her boyfriend—well, now, I felt a bit different.

A bit more confused, I guess. Now it did seem sort of cool to be willing to die to protect the secrets of someone you loved. Except that she did die and it turned out her boyfriend had already been killed trying to rescue her. That part still seemed dumb. Like Romeo and Juliet where everyone dies, and it’s supposed to be such a great story.

Her name was Chularosa Valverde. La Rosa Morena was her nickname, and the title of the book in English, The Dark Rose. Which is why the school colors are red, black and white, I guess. The high school colors are maroon and white. Maroon is sort of a dark rose color. Maroon, morena? Oh.

Anyway, the entrance to the admin building was not on the street side, and when we turned the corner, there was another mural visible on the front of the cafeteria. This one showed kids playing games, sitting at desks, singing and stuff. It was cool because it was kids and everything was bright colors and sunshine.

They even showed real games that kids really play like the girls playing Four Square in front of the cafeteria where there really were Four Square courts marked out with paint on the concrete. We’d had a tour of the place back in May, we being us fifth-graders from Presley, but all the murals had not been finished yet then.

I tried to stop to look at things better, but Mom tugged me along. “You’ll be seeing it often enough for the next three years,” she said. “Right now, we have to get you registered.”

She was right so we went through big glass doors into the admin building and there was a sign right there that said Registration. We went to the counter and Mom laid the paperwork she had brought from the doctors down. 

A young woman got up from a desk behind the counter and came up to us. She looked about Beth Ann’s age, though not as pretty. “Can I help you?” she asked. 

“Yes,” said Mom, which I thought was pretty confident because suddenly I was very scared and nervous. “I’m here to correct the registration for my daughter, Audrey Jane,” Mom announced.

“I see,” said the woman. “Last name, and grade?” she asked, pulling a book out from under the counter. Her nametag read Ms. Hudson.

“Jane is our last name,” Mom explained. The whole family is used to this question. “And she’s in grade six.”

Another woman at a desk further back looked up, glanced at me, then stood and came up to the counter, too. According to her nametag, she was Mrs. Wright. “Is this the boy that wants to attend school as a girl?” she asked, frowning first at Mom and then at me. 

Wow. I blinked several times, not at all expecting any such question. She’d heard about me and evidently didn’t believe I was really a girl. 

But, it’s not a good idea to frown like that at Mom without a better reason. 

“No,” said Mom, firmly. “This is the girl who has been attending school as a boy for six years because no one knew the truth. And you have been listening to gossip, haven’t you?”

Mrs. Wright glared at Mom and opened her mouth to say something else.

“Gossip has puppies,” I said, not even thinking about it. Everyone looked at me. “Behind the cream separator on a pile of gunny sacks,” I explained.

Mom was trying not to smile, but now everyone else was frowning. “Gossip is a dog,” she commented and looked directly at the woman who had interrupted with her rude question.

Mrs. Wright looked like she wanted to say something that maybe she shouldn’t, but Ms. Hudson hurried to turn over pages in the big register book she had on the counter, making noise. “Here it is,” she said. “Jane, Audrey Michael, grade six. ”Yeah, you’re already registered, honey.” She beamed at me.

Clueless, I decided and grinned back at her. Okay, the way to do this is both feet first and play up being Audrey to the hilt. I may not have dimples, but I turned the cute up as high as it would go.

“May I see,” Mom asked, reaching out.

Ms. Hudson began to turn the big book around, but Mrs. Wright intercepted, putting a hand down to keep the book from moving. “Why?” she demanded.

“Why do I want to see a public record relating to my child attending this school? Or why do you think you have any right to deny me access?” Mom snapped, after a moment of surprise. “Careful,” she added, “your answer may influence your future employment.”

Ooh, that’s the tone Mom uses when she’s reaching for a rake to chase dogies out of her garden. You never want to have that voice aimed in your direction.

Ms. Hudson pushed the book in front of my mom. “Parents check these entries all the time for accuracy, Mrs. Wright. It’s not at all unusual.”

The older woman glared at the younger woman, glanced at Mom’s expression, then retreated to her desk and picked up a phone. Mom looked at the register. I tried, but the counter was too high for me to get a good look. Even with having grown two inches in three months, I was still too short.

“I’m Jenny,” Ms. Hudson said to me, then asked, “Gossip is a funny name for a dog.”

I laughed. “Yeah, huh? It’s cause she likes to kiss your ears.”

Jenny laughed. “Have you seen these puppies, Audrey?”

“No, ma’am, not yet. They don’t have their eyes open,” I replied. I considered climbing up on a stool on my side of the counter, so maybe I could get a better look at the register, but Jenny had distracted me. “They’re going to be so cute, though. Gossip is black and white with a curly coat, and she’s a good cattle dog.” I couldn’t keep from giggling.

“I bet,” said Jenny, smiling.

“Here’s the line,” Mom said. “You see where it says Audrey and an M? That should be an F.”

Jenny glanced at me. “I see,” she said. “You’re not a boy, are you, Audrey?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “But I used to think I was.”

Jenny laughed. “I was a tomboy, too. But I never got my school records mixed up.”

I giggled again. Definitely clueless, I thought, but I liked Jenny.

“Can you fix this?” Mom asked, putting a finger on the mistake.

“Sure,” said Jenny. She moved to her desk and picked up a bottle of buff-colored Liquid Paper.

Mrs. Wright called out. “Jenny!”

“Hmm?” said the girl, looking at the older woman.

“You should talk to Principal Fuller. I have him on the phone.” Mrs. Wright held the instrument out toward Jenny.

“I’ll be right back,” Jenny said to Mom. And she put the bottle of Liquid Paper down on the counter by the book. My eyes shot open, and I stuffed my hands in my mouth, ducking down below the counter where no one could see me.

I don’t know if Jenny knew what Mom was going to do, but I did.