Losing Rene?

Ch3

Within days of the meeting between Rene and Dr. Cammibal, I had begun to notice a change in him. It was as though his world had opened up and he was released into it like a winged bird being freed of his cage.

I really didn't think it was any of Dr. Cammibal's doing, instead, I have come to believe that she had aided him in finding a path that would allow a sort of coping release of the pressure he must have been enduring.

I saw him sitting on the stoop of the porch, a couple days after that first doctor's appointment and I sat down beside him. I reached to him and brushed his hair from his eyes. "Looks like we need to be getting this mop cut, wouldn't you say, Rene?"

He turned toward me and sat like that for several long seconds before responding. "Would it be okay... if I just let it grow?"

I frowned and then shrugged. "I suppose so, but aren't you afraid someone would say something eventually? My mind raced as I realized what he may be asking, but I didn't want to put any suggestions in his head. "If you want to let it grow, promise me that you'll keep it clean and combed. There is nothing worse than a guy with long, greasy hair."

"About that..." Rene began. "Would it be okay to..." He faltered, seemingly afraid to 'push' his luck.

I raised my brows. "Okay to what?"

He looked down at his fingers for several long seconds. "I don't want to go through life as a boy..."

There it was. My heart sank. "But you are a boy, Rene."

He again glanced at me. "Only on the outside. On the inside, I am a girl."

"You're only eleven, Rene." I reminded him of the obvious. "Your friends will say things."

"Please, daddy, let me be who I  want to be. Who I need to be. Who I am and always have been through out each life I have lived until now."

He had actual tears clinging to his lashes as he pleaded. I felt trapped. Standing I moved out into the sun and turned to face him. My stomach was in knots; on one hand, I was certain that he would outgrow this obsession with being female, on the other, I feared he wouldn't.

I hung my head and looked at the sidewalk beneath my feet. "Are you asking me if you can start live as a girl?"

I already knew the answer, because he had given it to me only moments ago. "You can't live like this, Rene. But if you think you must, please make this deal with me... only do so on the weekends. When Mondays get here, it's back to boy clothes."

He smiled and held out his small hand to me. "It's a deal, daddy."

His 'weekend only' eventually grew to after school as well. Within time, even Connie and her girls knew what he was doing. In fact, many of his outfits he wore outside of school had once belonged to them.

By the end of school, his hair had grown to almost his shoulders. He was using barrettes to pull back the bangs from his eyes. Had a passerby seen him playing with the girls, they would only think it was young girls.

At this point he had asked if he could spend the entire summer as a girl and reluctantly I had given in.

One afternoon, while Rene and Connie's children played in my backyard, Connie wandered across the lawn, in her hand was two small bottles of alcohol. She handed one to me, which was already open. She spoke as she took a seat next to me on the porch steps.

"How you doing, Grant?"

I swallowed a sip of pecan pie sippin' whiskey, sighed and looked out across the yard as Rene was gleefully playing with and chasing the youngest girls in a game of freeze-tag. "Am I doing the right thing, Connie?"