Friday, November 9, 2012

Bathroom Monologue: Engendered



It took him a moment to see Sky. She sat as far from the door as she could, tucked into the far corner, hunched and hugging her sides so that she was hidden behind a stool. It loomed over her, a makeshift wall keeping him away. He respected her stool-wall, affording her the length of the room, as though afraid he’d infect her. That was stupid, of course, because she was already infected – and had infected him. His right arm throbbed from the battery of shots.

The door swished closed behind him, cutting off the bustle of administrators, all preoccupied with hundreds of other cases. It comforted him to shut out all the bodies under sheets out there. He focused on Sky not watching him, her eyes directed at her peppermint green skirt. She’d sewn it with Lita, and colored her white tennis shoes green with a magic marker so they’d match. He realized he knew more about how she was dressed than how he’d dressed himself – and that was perhaps part of why he didn’t understand her. Sky was only even a ‘she’ to him today because of how she’d dressed; if it was jeans and a sweater, Sky would be a ‘he’ to him now. It was an imperfect system for dealing with a question he couldn't ask.

He put his back to the door and slid down to almost eye level with her from across the room. He asked, “Can I tell you a secret?”

Still, Sky wouldn’t look at him. She preferred to examine the flaking grey paint on her stool, careless that she only had half an hour left this way. So he confessed.

“I was always afraid you didn’t like me. I was sure you liked your mom better, which is fine, because I like her better than me too. That’s why I married her.” He smiled, and she didn’t, and he spoke a little faster, “But when we first met, and I called foster care – you were so mad at me all the time. It was only Mom who saw that you thought I didn’t want you. I did. I do. I love having you. I was just petrified that your birth parents were looking for you, and then, that I wouldn’t be a good enough father. You were never a pain. Those nights we stayed up playing Fallout, you in my lap, being so good at picking everything up, then making me fight the mutants, until you fell asleep? I loved that. Even the time you wet your pants, and thereby mine. You got so mad when I laughed, but I laughed because I loved having you. The things I do come off wrong sometimes. It’s part of who I am.”

He found his hands climbing his shins, rubbing at his knees. Where had he picked up that habit? Maybe from his father.

Sky was holding her knees with her little hands, as though to make sure they wouldn’t get away. She wanted Mom – she’d been calling Lita ‘Mom’ since the day they’d found her behind their bakery. Of course she wanted Mom, rather than this man she’d never once called ‘Dad.’ Something between his lungs and guts felt sore.

“And I’ve always respected your secret. It’s yours, and you get to tell who you want. Mom never told me, and I’ve never asked her to. If you feel like a girl today, you’re a girl. Tomorrow you can be a boy. Tuesday, you can be both. Wednesday, neither. Thursday to the end of time, you’re whatever parts of whatever feels right. You’re who you are. When I first met her, Mom was the biggest tomboy I’d ever met, while wearing sugar-pink bows, and the longest skirts I’d ever seen,” and he gestured to his legs, mime-signing for the skirt Lita had helped her sew, but it failed to translate and he had to keep rambling, “I wish she was here now, but she’s too far away, and we don’t have enough time. Hedinger’s Disease, Honey—”

She twitched, and he knew it’d been a mistake. Some days she lit up for pet-names, and others ‘Sport’ or ‘Sweetheart’ or ‘Captain’ landed on the wrong spot. Now she burrowed her face down, hiding it against her knees. It took a magnitude of will not to push across the room and drag her out of here, but that was the wrong thing he could do, even though she was dying by minutes.

“Sky,” he called to her as softly as he could. “At least seven children from your class have this disease, and so do both of your teachers. Probably everyone in the school has it, and that means you almost certainly do too. It’s very serious, but it acts very differently in… you see, when it gets up inside a girl, it… and, in… You see, they can’t give you just any set of shots. It has to match or it will only make the disease go faster.”

Every time he blinked, he saw one of the people dead under white sheets on gurneys in the halls outside, blood spots demarcating the sex they’d been. At least two short sheets, two kids – one a boy, one a girl, either or both kids that Sky could have known. Could have seen on her way into this room, as she fled from nurses demanding she tell them which she was.

He crawled on his knees to her stool, canting his head in a silent prayer for her to look at him and see what he meant, even if he couldn’t say it. “I always thought you hated me because, maybe, you thought I wanted you to pick, or to tell me what you ‘really’ were. I know some adults are ugly to you about that, but… you’re not simple to me. I don’t think you’re one hidden word. This disease – listen, whatever your body is, that’s just what it is. You’re whatever you feel. I wouldn’t even ask for this much, and I wouldn’t take it from you. This is your choice, and I know it’s too big. But it doesn’t take away whoever you think you are. It’ll just help us keep this disease from taking you away from me. So… please.”

He fought not to sigh at himself. Any doctors in the vicinity would think he was an idiot for talking this long. Even Lita would have dragged Sky out the room by now, but he didn’t have the same relationship. He wasn’t even ‘Dad,’ and such a man could not simply drag you down a hall and expose your soul to a stranger with a needle. His left hand rose as though to defy his conscience, to grab for her, and his right caught it by the wrist. He was fiddling with his cuffs when Sky stirred.

She rolled on her heels, narrow spine rising against the corner of the room, fingers rubbing over her knees and tucking her skirt behind them. So ladylike, so like Lita. Then one hand wove around the legs of the stool and clasped his left wrist, fingers so small they scarcely wrapped halfway around.

She tugged, and he rose around the stool, letting her draw herself to his side. Her whole front was feverish against his calf, but her dress was dry. The only moisture on her face was a trickle of tears and snot, and she murmured in her raspy voice, “Okay, Daddy.”

He could have run a hundred miles with her in his arms. He only had to go eleven doors down, but he remained standing, sometimes pacing for the rest of the day. After her shots, and after she was cleared, and after he signed a reckless number of forms, she paced with him in their shared observation room, and asked him why so many boys liked khakis. He hadn’t even realized he’d worn those today.

35 comments:

  1. Oh my. I hadn't realised I had been holding my breath until I finished this John. Thank you. Powerful indeed.

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    1. What a wonderful first reaction to get to this. Thank you very much.

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  2. You've layered in so many threads of emotion here, John. I'm not surprised you needed the extra space.

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    1. I got a little panicked after the first draft came in at 1,300 words. Just don't see how it could be split in half - I'm no Solomon. Thank you for the kind words on my many words - I'm relieved it landed.

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  3. Definitely worth the extra verbiage. This was a great emotional piece, the desperate attempt to reach out and finally making the connection.

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    1. Definitely part of what I was aiming for. I was worried there might have been too many moving parts in this, and I'd just gone blind to what really functioned. So it all clicked for you, Larry?

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  4. Didn't even notice the extra words. I think it was needed. I really liked this one.

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    1. So glad this is the popular reaction so far. Thanks for helping set me at ease, Theresa. Did anything in particular lead you to really liking it?

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  5. Thirteen hundred and twenty-eight words to be precise. Very unusual,utterly compelling piece. But we expect no less.

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    1. I had a bit of a discussion on Twitter yesterday about whether to post this as a #fridayflash, given that it isn't really a flash, though about the shortest short story. Popular opinion was to give it a shot anyway. I'm very relieved to see people responding well to it. Between the length and all the potential sore spots it touches, I feared it'd either break positive or hard-negative.

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  6. very glad you held out for the story's full integrity

    marc

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    1. And thank you for voting on Twitter to keep it this way. I'm relieved it seems to have worked out!

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  7. Extremely imaginative and very engaging, great intensity in the man's attempt to gain her trust. Then she is utterly accepted for what she is, what everyone, particularly children hopes for.

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    1. I could definitely use a few more such acceptances in my life, but then, who couldn't? Thank you for the kind words, Alison. So glad it engaged. Did anything in particular strike you as imaginative?

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  8. John, I was riveted reading this, and was amazed to find that it ran to over 1300 words, The moment where she calls him "Daddy" brought a tear to my eye.

    A very emotional, and very well written piece.

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    1. Couldn't ask for a better reaction to the 'Daddy' line than that. Thank you very much, Steve!

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  9. I didn't notice the extra length at all. Nicely done.

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  10. I didn't notice any extra words. Perfect! So many emotions.

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    1. Thanks Sonia! Any particular emotions it stirred?

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  11. Very powerful, John. This one hit me very hard in relation to a lot of my own paranoia about how I'd handle any number of parental situations I sometimes imagine, some more serious than others. Excellent piece.

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    1. As a non-father who is likely to never become a parent, even I wonder how I would handle the things that conflict and hurt children. I can only hope I'd come from as well-meaning a place, though more successfully executed. I think these anxieties are in most of us.

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  12. You captured my attention with the character, what was wrong. At first I suspected some sort of zombie virus. I'm interested, but I confess that I'm not really sure what's happening in this story. Can she/he change her/his sex?

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    1. So, possible spoilers here.

      I wondered how that element would land for people, and if I did a questionable enough job that you couldn't tell, I'm tempted to let you decide and make that a personal canon. If anyone else sees this comment, I'd recommend skipping it if you don't want to ambiguity spoiled.

      But if you want where I was writing from - Sky is a gender-questioning child. Some times she associates female, sometimes male, sometimes non-gender. She has a biological sex, but her adopted father doesn't know what it is - Sky has only shared it with her adopted mother. It's part of the awkwardness (or a result of the awkwardness) between parent and child in this relationship.

      Sorry that didn't come through as clearer. Perhaps another hundred words or digression would have made it explicit?

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    2. The questions of gender, both for Sky and for her adoptive father came through very clearly to me and was, I think, what created the tension for me.

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    3. I think what threw me was he didn't know her gender. Combined with the medical crisis, I thought maybe the gender physically changed as a result of the disease.

      Thanks for the explanation!

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  13. John this was excellent, you intertwined various depths of emotion. You sparked the readers curiosity as to what this disease might be. But most of all you showed the element of patience a parent has for their child and the how that patiences is rewarded. Very nice. well done!

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    1. A little funny that I demonstrated that patience when I hate kids, right? Thanks so much for the warm reception, Helen. Very glad to have evoked so much for you.

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  14. Just read your "spoiler" -- interesting, I thought she was some sort of hermaphrodite who could change, um, let's say "plumbing" at will. Sort of like the people in The Left Hand of Darkness, but with more control. And that somehow this way of being was spreading to people, but was lethal to them but not Sky.

    What I found cool about this narrative is that even though it gives the back story about what the narrator knows, it's mostly about him admitting what he doesn't know.

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  15. "The things I do come off wrong sometimes." That describes me quite well.

    Even though it wasn't from Sky's perspective I could feel the turmoil of emotions inside her. Very well done.

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  16. John, I had to stop reading midway to prepare myself to go through the emotions you've so brilliantly layered. This is one very well written story that hits deeply, and I had no problem with it being longer, given the fact I often overstep the limit of a flash.

    As Steve said when Sky says "Daddy" it's a very emotional moment, very real and pure. It made my heart skip a beat. Thank you for this story.

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  17. I didn't notice the length at all, John. Fantastically written. I don't know that I would have forgiven you a cliffhanger ending on this one, though. At least in as much as whether or not Sky got the medicine. That's how much I was wrapped up in her character. Incredibly well drawn piece.

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  18. Beautiful stuff, John. I zipped through this at a rate of knots - the word count never an issue.

    I assumed that Sky had a physical issue (rather than a psychological one), where not being of either sex had saved her from the disease which had taken so many others.

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  19. I didn't even realised this WAS over the limit - it read just fine, like any shorter would have been to short change it. Wonderful stuff.

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  20. Outstanding. This is how complex social issues should be represented in fiction: not as social justice "after school specials", not as soapbox rants, nor even as tearful anecdotes, but as layered, nuanced dilemmas that cut through politics and bias to show us the messy, beautiful, inevitable truth.

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