“So how do you become a boy?”
I found myself studying her with an intensity I rarely applied to children. She had my sister’s eyes, the outline of her face followed the same exact lines, but the way she carried herself was undeniably different. It was in the grit stuck between her fingernails, the defiant soldier-like puff of her chest and the way she looked at me directly in the eye with as much genuine curiosity as there was what could have been envy. She had the ready-to-pounce springiness of an anxious young lad.
“What a silly question!” Maureen, my sister, interjected from across the table. “Why don’t you go find Will and Mason?”
“How do you become a boy, uncle Tom?”
I pretended to poke at a slice of bacon with as much idle disinterest as could be mustered while having a watching parent breathe down my neck. In truth I was hooked. “Why would you want to become a boy?”
“Because girls are all about dress up and throwing pretend parties and pretend this and pretend that and boys get guns and swords and arrows and they get to build forts.”
“What’s so bad about dress-up? when I was your age I loved pretty dresses.” spoke her mum while inserting a knife into a fried egg.
“So you would become a boy just to get guns and swords?”
She nodded. The look in her eyes was as noticeable as ever.
Maureen was using her fork to stir the ruptured yolk with mashed potatoes. I could see the eyes staring at me from the back of her head
“Silly girl!” I would say. “What’s there to like about guns and swords? If you’re born a lady then you’re a lady or a lad a lad. Always been that way! Now cease these silly thoughts and go find your cousins!” and I would watch as the glow in her eyes went out like a candle and gray over.
But that’s not what I said.
“Well, I think that’s a neat little thought you have there. While I can’t make you magically pop up in boy’s skin, I think what’s more important is that you see yourself as one. In fact, I think that’s all there is to being a boy, that you see and carry yourself like a young man, and as long as you still believe in that part of yourself, in time people would start calling you a lad.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Maureen’s hand give a little tremor, barely noticeable to maybe even his husband but I knew exactly where to look after all these decades under the same roof.
When Anna had left the room and was most likely out of earshot she turned to me. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Why not?”
“You might give her ideas.”
“I don’t see why that’s a problem.”
“I’d like her to stay a girl.”
“Your daughter would say otherwise.”
“what good is there to be a boy anyway? when we were her age you and James and Charles would go hunting and one of you would be bound to come back hurt and crying.”
“You can’t blame her. You ladies have been allowed to vote for only what? Ten years? If I were her I would want to be a boy too.”
“You can’t expect her to understand that!”
“Doesn’t change my point.” I said, spearing my own egg.
“She’s just a child. Don’t entertain her silly ideas.”
“Didn’t seem silly to me. You should’ve seen your daughter. Deadpan serious.”
“I still don’t want you telling her stuff like that.”
