The Wall Crossers

So you think you are a girl?

Olivia's perspective

One day in late June, a few weeks after I had arrived in Berlin, we five co-workers are having lunch together.

During a lull in the conversation, Barb, always the one to provoke a controversy, narrows her eyes and peers at me over her Bier glass, asking, "So you think you are a girl?"

"No, I do not think that I am a girl. I AM a girl," I reply to her.

"But you have the body of a boy, Ja?" chimes in Maren (she and Barb are close friends).

"God played a bad joke on me: He made me a girl but forced me into the anatomy of a boy," I say and then sigh, picking at my food, stirring it around on my plate. I am no longer hungry.

"But isn't that how we tell a boy from a girl?... one's body?" Barb continues to press the matter.

"I am a girl in a boy's body." I have been through this discussion with others, ending in stalemate, so many times in my life.

"Do you want to be a girl?" DiDi asks looking up from her plate, and then sheepishly ducks her head and glances around at the other girls to see if she might have broken some unspoken rule.

I feel exasperated, but this is important—these girls are my coworkers and we have to work through this. After a long silence, I say carefully and clearly, "I want to be accepted as the girl that I am."

Barb breaks the silence, "And how can we prove that you are a girl?" She smiles at me in a superior way, and then sort of smirks at Maren.

Prasa, who has been quietly listening all this time clears her throat. The other girls and I look over at her. She sets her fork down, looks at each of us in turn, and then rests her eyes on Barb and says with soft words, yet words that have authority behind them, "You prove a person is a girl by accepting the fact that, if you ask her Are you a girl? and then if she should answer Yes, then she is a girl." She rests her soft, warm brown eyes on mine and asks, "Corporal Reary, are you a girl?"

Each girl at the table holds her breath and shifts her gaze over to me.

"Yes," I say softly. And then again, louder and with feeling growing like the sun breaking through stormy skies, "Yes!"

Prasa continues, "Then I say, we all say (she gestures around the table to each one present), this truth: Olivia, you are a girl, and we accept you as the girl you are."

Prasa has spoken with a tone of finality, but also a tone of respect, thus putting the matter to rest.

For a few seconds, we are all quiet, and then Maren raises her Bier and says, "Prost, Olivia!" (Cheers, Olivia!)

Then DiDi raises her Bier saying, "Prost, Olivia!"

Then Prasa raises her tea cup and says, "Prost!" and I raise my Bier with "Prost!" and we clink our glassware and hold them together, all looking over to Barb.

And Barb then raises her Bier and smiling, loudest and best of all, exclaims, "Olivia, Prost zum Wohl!" (Cheers for Good!)

We all sip our drinks, and I know: I am now one of them, equal and accepted—each of us valued, all girl hearts woven together into a common thread.

And from that day forward, until the day I left West Berlin, my co-workers called me Olivia, even in the presence of Sergeant Ellis.