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Unusual Punishment: Conclusion By Norman O. Johnson Part Six: Life Sentence Electrodes were glued to my forehead, my right forearm, and the top of my breastbone. "Is your name Karen Lauterbach?" asked my investigator. He was a stocky SBI man with a flattop and a well-trimmed moustache. The moustache looked rather good on him. "No," I said. This was the preliminary phase. I was supposed to reply 'no' so they could test how the lie detector's needle would bounce if I told a deliberate lie. "Are you a student at Ida-Cynthia Watkins Girls' Reformatory?" "No." "Do you live in North Carolina?" "No." I was lying on my back and had a good view of the ceiling. I couldn't see the needle on the lie detector. He paused for a moment to check the readout. "Okay, hon, we're ready to start the actual test. Do you know a girl named Heather Amundsen?" He was talking about Trey. "Yes." "How do you know her?" "She's my roommate." "Is she a member of the Mary's Girls gang?" "Yes." "Were you having dinner in the big dining room on the night of the poisonings?" "Yes." "Did you see Miss Amundsen there?" "Yes." "What was she doing?" "She was serving us our desserts from one of the dessert carts." "Did she serve the faculty and administration people as well?" "I don't know." And in truth, I didn't. I wasn't watching when Ms. Hunsucker got her fatal vanilla pudding. Why should I have watched? I didn't know what was going to happen." "How did you find out Chief Hunsucker had been poisoned?" "Everybody started talking at once about what was going on up on the stage, which is where the faculty and admin people ate. I saw Ms. Hunsucker running off the stage, like she was about to puke or something. Then rumors starting flying. Everybody was saying, don't eat the pudding." "Did you eat your dessert?" "No, I was about to take my first spoonful, but I put it back. Lots of girls didn't eat theirs. Nobody wanted to take a chance." Without looking up from his readout, the SBI man changed the subject. "Are you a member of a group of students who call themselves Mary's Girls?" "Yes." "Are you an officer or leader of this group?" "Yes." "Is it true you are the Number Two person in this group?" "Yes." "Do you know Maria Angelica DiCarlo?" "Yes, we call her Angel." "What is her position in the gang?" "She's the leader. I've never heard her called any formal title." "Are Mary's Girls a gang?" "We say we are, yes." "Is it true Mary's Girls are an affiliate of the Gangster Disciples gang?" "No, not really. We just say we are to intimidate people." "Then your gang are NOT Gangster Disciples?" He looked at me for the first time, skeptically. I was telling the truth. Once she got to know me pretty well, Angel had confided in me that we weren't really affiliated with a national gang. "No. A lot of people say they're in gangs who aren't. There's a mystique about it. People who say they're in a gang, but don't really belong, are called 'dubs'. We couldn't get away with it on the outside." "I wasn't born yesterday, Miss Lauterbach. I've dealt with gang members before. And it's true. A lot of kids say they belong who don't." He looked across the stream of unrolling lie detector paper at me. "Are you aware that eleven members of Mary's Girls work in the kitchen and serve food?" "No, sir. I knew one or two of them. I didn't realize we had that many." "Has Miss DiCarlo ever said to you that Mary's Girls were planning to do any kind of harm to Chief Hunsucker?" "No." Technically speaking, that was true. I remembered Angel saying 'those two bitches are going to pay', meaning Security Chief Hunsucker and the Principal, but she didn't say Mary's Girls were going to make them pay, nor how we would do it, if we did. "Did you hear or overhear any other student in your gang saying the Chief was going to be poisoned?" "No." "Or killed in any other way?" "No." Technically speaking, that was also the truth. "Did you hear or overhear any student outside your gang saying the Chief was going to be poisoned?" "No." That was a lie to protect Daria. Daria had mentioned poisoning, but only as a speculative point. If the SBI ever found out the word "poisoned" had crossed Daria's lips, they would not hear it from me. Anyway, I had no grounds to suspect Daria of involvement in the poisoning, so my lie served the truth. The questioning continued for a while longer, without any information being smoked out of me. There was nothing to smoke out of me anyway. As I removed the electrodes, the SBI man took out a cigarette pack. "Mind if I light up?" he asked. "Why not? You're the only one with a gun." He laughed easily, drew his first puff, and blew an elegant smoke ring. "Nice one," I said. "Won the heart of my first wife that way," he joked. "Now she's after me to quit. I'm down to a pack a day, so I reckon I'm makin' progress." He lowered his cigarette, and eyed me closely. "How'd you like to get your tally-whacker back, girl?" I picked up the ironic tone of his last word. "I'd love to, of course," I said indifferently, with a shrug. That was the biggest whopper I'd told all day. "'Cause if you cooperate with this investigation, you could get a few months whittled off your sentence. You'll be peein' standin' up again a hell of a lot sooner if you do." He raised an eyebrow and grinned, as if we were two guys sharing a secret. "I don't know anything." I shrugged again. "Oh, I believe you, honey. You passed the lie detector test." He leaned forward again for emphasis. "But if you should happen to overhear somethin', well, it just might shorten your sentence just a tad." My gaze met his. "No comment," was all I said. He looked disappointed, and a little bit surprised. "We're finished here, Miss Lauterbach." He looked away and took another puff. "Call in Miss Peterson on your way out." "Actually, no, we're not. We haven't discussed the rapes at all." Through the blue smoke I could see how startled was. "Rapes? What the hell are you talkin' about?" "Rapes. Chief Hunsucker and Principal Helen Martindale are both rapists." He looked at me like I was out of my mind. "Honey, how does a woman rape somebody?" "With a strap-on, of course." He nodded. "You're talkin' about a dildo." "Right. They would take girls who were fighting and put us in the solitary cells in the basement as punishment. Then in the middle of the night, they'd take us somewhere and rape us with strap-on dildos. They raped me twice. The second time, they fucked me through two different holes." He wasn't convinced. Cops hear a lot of wild stories. I fished through my purse, found three word-processed sheets, and handed them to him. "There's a written account of all I can remember. They used a BioConcentrator to wipe out our memories." "They ain't supposed to have a BioConcentrator. Only hospitals can have those." "They have one, somewhere on the grounds of this school." He was still looking suspiciously at me. "You're tellin' me them BioConcentrator things can wipe out somebody's memory?" "They used the BioConcentrator to make minor body changes in the girls' bodies," I explained. "Some short-term memory loss is a side effect, but how much you forget is unpredictable. They were counting on us not remembering anything. Some of us do remember something." "What changes did they make to your body, hon?" "They put the hymen back in, so I couldn't prove I'd been fucked, but I knew I had anyway, because my cunt was sore, just like any other girl after her first screw." That remark caught him in the middle of taking another puff. He snickered, then coughed. "Well, girl," he said when he recovered, "if you was a virgin in this place, you was one of the few." He'd read my file, and he knew very well I came here as a virgin, and the very special reason why I was one, but he was the kind of guy who just can't resist a joke like that. I wasn't offended. After months of being derided as a "freak bitch," the local slang term for a temporarily feminized convict, I had a hard shell. "Oh, I was a virgin all right. You've read my file. My cunt was two hours old when I got here. Maybe younger than that." He gave me a long thoughtful look. I could see the wheels going around in his head. "What specifically do you remember, Karen?" he finally said. "I remember finding myself tied naked to a bed. Ms. Martindale comes up with nothing on but a strap-on, climbs on the bed, and starts fucking. Then there's a gap in my memory. Next, I see the Chief on top of me and feel her fucking me. She's complaining about what a bad lay I am. I haven't even gotten to the second session yet." I was getting impatient with him. "It's all in those papers, officer. Just read them." He was looking over what I'd written. "Tell you what, Karen. I'll look it over, and pass it up the chain of command if I think there's anything in it." I noticed he was calling me by my first name now. "Are we finished here?" I asked. "Yes, Karen, we're done. Send in Miss Patterson on your way out." So the session hadn't been a waste of time after all. On the way out of the interrogation room, I said, "Yo, Shug, you're next." Shug came in, looking bored by the whole idea. Mary's Girls were prime suspects, because so many of us worked in the kitchen. I didn't know how much Angel knew about it. As the head of the gang, she was a prime suspect. They sweated Angel heavily, calling her back for several sessions, but they couldn't get anything out of her. ### I left the security office in main building, where the SBI agents were conducting their investigation, and walked across the campus to the dormitory. I light drizzle of rain started to fall when I was almost to the dorm. I walked faster to keep my hair from getting soaked. I showed my ID to the SBI man at the door, and entered. Ever since the poisoning death of Chief Hunsucker, the State Bureau of Investigation was all over us like maggots on a dead rat. Principal Martindale had ordered the entire school to attend a memorial service for the Chief. At the service, Ms. Martindale was dressed all in black, complete with veil, like a widow. She gave a sickening eulogy for Hunsucker, and paid tribute to Chief Hunsucker's noble career in public service, and to her great affection for the girls who were in her charge. There wasn't a wet eye in the chapel, except hers. We reform school girls all sat there and stared back at her with loathing while we hoped for the second round of revenge. When I got back to my room, Trey wasn't there, but a bunch of girls, including Squeak, Keyboard, and Angel, were sitting in the room watching some news show on Trey's portable TV. One of my well-behaved roommate's privileges for accumulating all those merit points was to have her own TV. I knew why she wasn't here. The SBI was questioning her too. The girls were all in a happy mood. Angel was pacing up and down the floor. Her face lit up as she saw me. "Martindale's history, Nylon!" she cried out to me. "Oh yeah? What happened to her?" I asked. After that lie detector session, I was eager for some good news. "The State Legislature's investigating her for using too much money. The school's power bill is too high, 'cause she's not supposed to have a BioConcentrator here." I was ecstatic. This was the best news I'd had in a while. "So has she lost her job yet?" "Not yet, but it won't be long," said Angel. She laughed triumphantly. I was ecstatic. This was tremendous news! I sat in my chair and watched as the news anchor discussed the "late-breaking scandal at a state-run girls' reform school in Wake County" with a newswoman standing in front of the State Capitol. "Mrs. Lauterbach testified some students have given her written accounts of suffering sexual torture at the hands of guards and administrators of the school, in which this unauthorized BioConcentrator was used." My heart leaped. I knew in a second what had happened. Mom had testified before some legislative committee. That big law firm over in Charlotte she worked for had lots of connections with influential legislators. I was proud to have done my part. I was the one who passed along those "written accounts" to her. "How did they use the BioConcentrator to torture the girls sexually, Penny?" asked the news anchor. "Well, Roger, the testimony which Mrs. Lauterbach delivered to the committee is quite sordid," said Penny the newswoman, making a face. "The students accuse Miss Martindale and the recently deceased Security Chief of the school, Miss Rachel Hunsucker, of sexually abusing them with various, er, sex toys, but not the BioConcentrator." I laughed. "They can't say 'dildo' on TV." "They claim," Penny told Roger, "Miss Martindale and Miss Hunsucker used the BioConcentrator to wipe out the girls' memories so they wouldn't testify." "Can you do that? Can you use a BioConcentrator to wipe out someone's memory?" "Yes, Roger. Virtually any BioConcentrator session will cause some short-term memory loss. But it's not easy to control how much memory you can wipe out, and some of the girls claim to remember something." "Penny, how is Principal Martindale reacting to these charges?" "She denies everything, Roger, and she has vowed not to resign her post if indicted." Penny the newswoman disappeared from her half of the screen. The news anchor looked solemnly into the camera and said, "The legislative inquiry into these various charges of torture and misfeasance at Ida Cynthia Watkins Girls' Reformatory is on-going. WRAL TV news will continue to follow this story as it develops." It would be best to have Miss Martindale tried for rape, and maybe that would still happen, but nailing her for improper use of the taxpayers' money was a start. "What's dis thang called Legislature?" asked Squeak. Keyboard explained to Squeak what a legislature was, adding that there was also one "back home" in British Columbia, Canada. Once in a while, Keyboard did something to remind us she was from Vancouver. "I thought you was from China," said Squeak. "My parents are from Hong Kong," Keyboard explained. "The whole Wei family left just before the Commies took it back, and settled in Vancouver. My mom and Dad and the kids came down to North Carolina to open a restaurant three years ago. I do miss Canada some times." That same night, I phoned home to thank Mom for coming through for me. I'll never forget what she said. "Never come between Mama Bear and her cubs!" My seventeenth birthday was very soon. My parents, my brother George and my sister-in-law Shelly would be coming up to the school to visit me. It would be quite an encounter for them. They knew all about the changes in my body, but they weren't prepared for the changes in my mind. ### Daria and I were lying together in her bed, with my arm around her, just as I had embraced many other girls after sex, in the old days when I was named Kevin. We were staring idly at the ceiling and discussing weird spiritual stuff. "So here's the really kinky one, Daria. You're gonna freak when you hear this," I was saying. "I'm lying in bed with a gender-bent former male," she joked, "who's now my Lesbian girlfriend. It would take a lot to make me freak." "In Genesis chapter one it says God made Man in his own image, male and female." "I've heard that before." "The Hebrew word that's usually translated 'man' isn't the word that means 'man as opposed to woman.' It's the same word they use for the human race for humanity. Which, oddly enough, is Adam. It's only in Genesis 2 that Adam becomes the name of a man. There are other places in the Torah, Deuteronomy for instance, where Adam is the word for human being or humanity." "So in Genesis 1," said Daria, "you have a male Adam and a female Adam. The female Adam is Eve, right?" "No! That's where the kinky part comes in. The first human being was both a man and a woman at the same time: four arms, four legs, two heads, two sets of genitals, everything." "There's a Greek myth that says that," Daria added. "Oh, really?" "Yes, Zeus divided them in half so they wouldn't climb up Mount Olympus and overthrow the gods." "That's interesting," I replied, "but we'll get back to it in a minute. Anyway, we read in Genesis 2 that Adam's lonely (now it's a person's name) so God puts him to sleep, yanks out a rib, and makes Eve out of it." "I read that somewhere too." "The rib wasn't just a rib. It was the female half of the double-sexed original Adam. God sliced him down the middle." "Once again," Daria said. "Zeus did that, but for a different reason." "Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff in the Midrashim." Midrashim is the plural of midrash. A midrash is an addition to a Bible story to clarify certain points. The rabbis developed them during the Roman Empire and shortly after its fall. By about 600 AD they became canonical, and were incorporated in the Talmud, the vast compendium of Jewish religious, legal and ethical lore. "What's the point of this midrash, anyway?" Daria asked. "Genesis 1 seems to contradict Genesis 2, because in the first chapter man and women are created at the same time, but in Genesis 2 at different times. This Midrash gets around this by saying that maleness and femaleness, but not distinct men and women, were created in Genesis 1, then divided in Genesis 2." "What does it mean for you?" "I was created both male and female, male first, female second. It was God who remade me as a female, Daria. The juvenile court was just His instrument." "You really don't want to be a guy any more, do you?" "No. I used to count the days till I get switched back. Now I'm dreading it. I don't like the idea of my budding womanhood being obliterated. I'd resist it if I could." "You may get your wish. The FDA is debating a ban on using the BioConcentrator for sex changes." "Really?" I was elated. "Yeah, I could get you the clipping," said Daria. "Turns out the women it creates have a higher risk of breast cancer, and the men it creates have a higher risk of prostate and testicular cancer. It was in the N-and-O on Friday, I think." The N-and-O was the Raleigh "News and Observer," the capital city's daily paper. I laughed a little. Then I sighed. "Man, life really does happen while we make other plans. I get to be a girl, Daria, but my transsexual brothers and sisters are out of luck. They were all looking forward to perfect sex changes, voice, skeleton, height, everything. They could have become indistinguishable from born women and born men. Now they have to go back to the old hormones and surgery treatment." I knew how it felt to be trapped in a body of the wrong gender, because that was how I felt during my first couple of months as a girl. Those feelings were only a bad memory now. "Yeah. It's good for you, but it sucks for them." Daria turned toward me and propped her head up under an arm. "You know what I think? I think you always wanted to be a woman. All this compulsive chasing of girls was a flight from your true feminine nature. And this revulsion you felt right after you changed? That was just self-loathing and denial." "That may be it, Daria, but I'm not particularly interested in the psychology of all this. I do know what I want, though." "I can't remember where I read this, Karen, but a wise man once said each of us has a little bit of everybody deep inside." A few months later, I quoted that to my brother Steve, who told me the name of that wise man. He was Walt Kelly, a very famous cartoonist who created the "Pogo" comic strip in the middle of the last century. Steve loves old comics. "At least you're up-front about who you really are and what you really want," Daria continued. "I'm the biggest poser in the world. You'll notice I wasn't wearing my green jacket today. That was my Daria pose. I have nothing in common with the cartoon Daria except my misanthropic style. Daria was an ethical person and I'm a thief. My self-styled radical opposition to the super-rich was just an excuse to defraud and exploit people who were no richer than my Mom." "That's a big step forward for you, Daria," I said. "I'm proud of you." She settled down on her pillow and looked at the ceiling again. "You can call me Darla if you like. I succeeded in getting Daria accepted as my gang nickname, but that's just another part of my general phoniness." I tried to encourage her. "Well, you're not talking like a phony now." "To change the subject completely, there aren't going to be any more smoking sessions. My supplier and I decided it would be too dangerous, with all the SBI agents all over the place." "Believe me, Daria, that requires no further explanation." She lay there in silence for a few seconds, before dropping the bombshell. "My supplier was Maggie Bowman." "Bowman?" I echoed. "Assistant Security Chief Bowman?" I was dumbfounded. "Yes. That Bowman. Since the end of the Hunsucker dictatorship, she's Acting Chief." "Damn! Bowman's dealing pot. That is TOO weird." "Reality check, Karen," Daria said. "I work both sides of the street. Soon after I got here, Bowman found my stash. Hunsucker called me into her office and offered me a deal. In return for not busting me for drugs, I would get my weed through her. In return, I would pass along information to Bowman about gang activity." She drew in a long breath before continuing. "That's my dirty little secret, Karen. I'm a fink." I gasped. "Holy shit, Daria. Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me." "Then keep this secret too, please. Bowman and I made another deal after Hunsucker died. The pot business would end, and we would both keep our mouths shut about it. If Bowman fingered me, I would reveal she helped Hunsucker drag the rape victims into that secret room." I remembered something. "That's right! Bowman was the other guard. I saw her and Hunsucker dragging you and Keyboard in." "So Bowman and I each have the goods on each other," Daria concluded, "and everything's cool." "Are you still an informer?" "No, that's over." "Did anybody get busted as a result of the information you passed along?" "Nobody in the Fillies or Mary's Girls. I protected you guys, because it was good for business." I put a reassuring arm around her, and kissed her on the cheek. "I don't blame you for any of this, Daria. You were blackmailed into it at the start. I know what it's like to be caught in a situation you can't get out of." ### Things moved rapidly in the next few days. Ms. Martindale swore not to resign if indicted. In early February, after three days of hearings, the legislative committee turned its information over to the Wake County district attorney's office, and Ms. Martindale was indicted for misappropriation of Department of Corrections funds. Ida-Watts wasn't supposed to have a BioConcentrator. State Law said only hospitals could have them, but there was one in the basement. A bunch of guys with tools came to dismantle it. Legally, Ms. Martindale was doomed. Immediately upon indictment, she resigned in order to prepare her defense. She said she was confident of getting her career back once her name was cleared. The Department of Corrections sent us a new principal immediately. The SBI called Trey and Angel back for several rounds of questioning, including lie detector tests. Angel also shared the story of her being raped with them, which corroborated the second time I was raped. For the rest of the time we were both at reform school, I worried about what would happen to Daria if Bowman broke the vow of silence. I worried less, though, when the SBI gave up trying to solve the Hunsucker case and left, after eight days of treating Ida-Watts like an occupied foreign country. So far as I know, the poisoning death of Chief Hunsucker has remained unsolved to this day. A few days after the agents left, I was returning from my last class. Just inside the dorm, I passed six or seven girls going the other way. They belonged to Las Muchachas, a small all-Latina gang of only about four or five rooms on the first floor. They were a tight-knit group. Though most of them could speak English pretty well, they used Spanish among themselves as a secret code, and as a way of bugging outsiders. They all said the same thing as they passed me. "Muchacha siempre!" "Muchacha siempre!" "Muchacha siempre!" Girl forever. I immediately guessed what this was about. The FDA had made its ruling, as Daria predicted they would. There would be no switching back now. I was happy. Adios to Kevin. He was a sleaze. Fuck him. All his good qualities lived on in me. But as for all those men who would be women, and women who would be men, it was a bitter blow. When I got to my room, I found most of the royal entourage there: Angel, Trey, Shug, Squeak, Princess, and Keyboard. Keyboard was wiping her eyes. They all looked at me like I was a grieving widow. Angel stepped forward and handed me the N-and-O. It was opened to page 3. The headline at the top told me my future: "FDA BANS 'SEX CHANGE RAY'." I sat at my desk and looked down at my school uniform, with its B-cup sized bust under my blouse and Little Karen lurking beneath my pleated skirt. This body, which had been on loan to me for nearly a year, was now mine. It was MINE. I would spend the rest of my life as a woman. This was wonderful. This new body that I had come to love and enjoy would not be stolen from me after all. I looked up at my friends and smiled. "Fine, so I'm Karen for good. This is the gender I like best anyway." "NO!" Keyboard squealed like a wounded animal. "NO! What about Kevin? I've been waiting for Kevin to come back." "The good parts of Kevin are still in me, Keyboard, but I'm not a guy in a girl's body. I am a girl now. This is the real me. We can still be friends." "Don't give me that bullshit, Karen!" Keyboard wasn't yelling now, but she was starting to cry again. "I'm not like the rest of these girls. I can't have you as a Lesbian. I want you to be Kevin again, a wiser better Kevin. He just died today." She ran out of the room. The next person to speak was Princess. "The Lord don't close a door without openin' another one, Nylon. Be a strong, brave daughter of Israel, like you been doin' up till now." "Princess, duh!" Angel snapped. "The reality just hasn't sunk in yet." Angel turned to me. "Listen to me, Nylon. You---are a chick---forever. Forever. You'll be an old lady holding your head like this." She drooped her head to show the effect of osteoporosis. Then she looked at Princess again. "We need to get out of here. We don't want to be in the way when she starts screaming bloody murder and throwing furniture out the window." She led the way out of the door. Soon Trey and I were alone. "You're sure?" Trey asked. "You're sure you can, like, live this way?" "Yes, Trey, I'm sure. We haven't discussed this in a long while, but this is what I want to be." "Isn't there, like, some way to sue?" "I'm sure somebody will sue, Trey, but that costs money and will take time. Even if the suit wins, I still don't want to be a guy any more." Trey looked back at me in astonishment. "No way! Every girl in the world envies guys. Even I do. They don't have periods. They get to walk home at night alone. Nobody rapes them. And you know more than a girl, like, ever wants to know about rape." "Trey, once I got over my initial shock, I started liking the new me. I like it more and more every day. The further away in time I got from Kevin, the less I wanted to go back. Now, I'm happy being a girl." Trey looked skeptical. "Don't you at least miss your cock, Karen? That's the one thing guys hate to lose more than anything else." "No, Trey, I don't miss my dick and balls. I don't need 'em. I don't even need 'em for sex any more. All Kevin's good qualities I still have. But he was also a selfish, inconsiderate jerk who used people. I hate that I used to be him. Fuck him. Let him die." Then I thought of someone else. "Poor Tyrone." I shook my head. "If he hadn't killed himself, this would've done him in." Trey looked out the window, then back at me. "Okay, Nylon, if you say so. I just hope you, like, never change your mind about that." ### Mom, Dad, my brother George, and his wife Shelly all met me on the weekend of Valentine's Day in the Common Room on the second floor of the dormitory. I gave my mother an especially warm hug. Although I was four inches taller than she was (six inches in the old days), she was a giant among women here today. She was the hero of the hour with her testimony at the legislative hearing. When we parted, she looked up at me with those large brown eyes of hers (which I've inherited) and said, "My goodness! How strong and healthy you are." Thanks to Phys Ed class workouts, the low-fat recipes of the school kitchen, and my racquetball sessions with Angel, I'd lost weight in my tummy, hips, and thighs, and developed some muscle tone in my arms. I was a husky tomboy, a hearty athletic girl. Without false modesty, I think I looked good. "That's right, Miriam," said my Dad. He chuckled uneasily. "Our boy Kevin is in good health today, all things considered." He shook his head sadly. The gender issue would come up at some point. Three of them were carrying wrapped presents, and Shelly had a cake box. Dad suggested we open the presents and have our cake first, because, as he put it, "we have a lot to talk about here today." They all sat on one of the sofas. I pulled up a chair facing them, closest to my Dad. The cake was placed on the coffee table in front of them and beside me. It had "Happy Birthday, Kevin" written on it in frosting, with seventeen candles. They sang the birthday song for me. It was very strange for a girl, even a girl like me, to hear "Happy Birthday, Kevin" sung in her honor. I made a wish that this family would accept me as their daughter. I blew out the candles. As we were cutting the cake, Dad said, "You're still our son Kevin no matter what happens." His tone was reassuring. One of the least imaginative gift ideas in the history of the universe is a new sweater. I feel sure that millions of Americans of both sexes accumulate dozens in the course of a lifetime. I got two that day. Dad gave me a turtleneck. Shelly gave me one with a V-neck cut, clearly designed to show some cleavage. "Oh, Shelly," Dad groaned, "why did you have to give him such a feminine sweater?" "He can give it to Good-Will in a few months," Shelly joked. "Or United Jewish Appeal," I replied. "Steve can't be here," said Mom. "He's working all weekend on some big project for that software company whose name I can't remember. But he sent you this book." I unwrapped it and read out the title. "Sexing the Body, by Anne Faustino-Sperling." Dad rolled his eyes. "Steve's always sending you these gender books, Kevin. Honestly, sometimes I think he wants a sister." "I thought 'Gender Outlaw' by Kate Bornstein was a great book," I replied. "By the way, Dad, Mom, George, Shelly, I have an announcement to make. I like being female. I'm your daughter Karen now. I still love you all for what you are, and I want all of you guys to do the same for me." "What!" My Dad almost shouted the word. George's mouth fell open, and he stared at Dad. Mom closed her eyes, pursed her lips, frowned, lowered her chin, and shook her head sadly. Shelly's large blue eyes grew twice as wide. She sucked her lips in, which is what she does when evaluating something. My father was the next person to speak. "Kevin, you've been brainwashed or something. This isn't the real you! It can't be! You're my youngest son. We used to go fishing together, I took you to karate lessons---" His voice trailed off suddenly. "Dad," I said softly, "I want to do that again. I'd love to go camping and fishing with you and Mom and my brothers like we used to do." I turned to my mother. "Mom, every mother wants a daughter, doesn't she? Well, now, you have one." "No, no, Kevin, please, don't go there." She was shaking her head briskly now, looking right through me with those large brown eyes. "Every mother wants a daughter, sure, but not this way. Not at the cost of one of my sons!" "Brain damage!" George slapped his knee, as he always did when he had an insight. "Brain damage caused by those BioConcentrator treatments. We're playing with fire with this new technology. We're only beginning to find out what long-term health problems, including mental health problems, it can cause." "George," I broke in, "they left my brain alone. The only thing they did to my head was wipe out all the facial hair." George gestured impatiently back at me. "This is the Unified Field we're dealing with here. The fundamental force in the universe, Karen. Oops!" "George, please!" Dad cried out, almost shouting. "Don't humor him. Don't call him Karen!" He looked past Mom and George at Shelly. "Shelly, you're the family shrink. What's your opinion of this?" Shelly smiled at me before replying. "Karen is the best authority on how she feels and what she really wants." Struggling to keep his voice down, Dad looked back at her and said, "I just asked this family not to call my son Karen." "Please, Dad, I know it will be hard for you at first. But this is my life and my future we're talking about here." He regarded me thoughtfully. "Kevin, you feel very guilty about the way you treated your girlfriends back in, uh, the old days, don't you?" I nodded. "Yeah, Dad. I was a sleaze, and I'm sorry." He leaned forward. "You don't have to punish yourself by being female for the rest of your life." "Dad, punishments are supposed to hurt. Being a girl doesn't hurt me. It feels good. It feels like the real me." My father looked at the rug. "Oh, my God," he said quietly. "We've lost our son." He looked up at me, very sadly. "I've been afraid something like this would happen since the Chanukah visit. You just seemed so damned comfortable acting like a girl." "Kevin," said Mom, "you're not permanently stuck like this. The Attorney Generals of eleven states, including North Carolina, are going to sue the FDA so you can change back. Speaking as a lawyer, they've got a good case." It was my turn to frown. "If the courts overrule the FDA, and approve sex changes again, then it better be voluntary, because if they turn me back into a guy and I don't want to do it, it's a violation of my rights." "Rights are the issue in the upcoming suit," said Mom. "States' rights, because feminization is in the law codes of eleven states. Your right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment, too. Leaving you stuck in a female body for life is a cruel and unusual punishment." "Making me switch back to a guy when I don't want to be one any more is also cruel." "Kevin," said Dad, "I've done some reading on this gender thing too. One of the things everybody agrees on is, if you don't like your birth gender, you start feeling it when you four or five years old. You don't wait till your teens." "That's why I think it's brain damage," said George. "Nobody knows how to repair a brain and replace the information that was in the damaged brain tissue. A human being is not a computer." "Your brother Kevin isn't a transsexual either," Dad insisted. "He's just in denial, that's all." "Kevin," said Mom, "we remember what a state you were in when you first came out of that machine. Surely you must remember that." "Yeah, Mom, I remember that." I nodded. "But a whole new side of my personality has emerged in the last few months. I still have Kevin's good qualities. His musical interest, his scientific interest, his love of racquetball. Dad, remember how I used to go all-out to win on the racquetball court? I'll be the family tomboy." "I always loved to hear you play the piano," said Mom fondly. "Please call me Karen, Mom. Karen's my name now. I'm your daughter Karen, and I love you." I looked over the whole group sitting there on the sofa, from Shelly at one end to my Dad at the other. "I love you all. Why can't Karen be a part of this family?" Mom took out a tissue and wiped her face. "We all love you too. Kevin, Karen, whatever! We just want you to be happy. We're just not convinced this is what you really want. It's all so sudden." "Sudden?" I snickered. "I've have five months to think about this." "Then please, son, think about it some more," said Dad gently. "Once the lawsuit's resolved, you'll have a chance to go back and be what God made you. It'll be easier on all of us, even you, I think, if you take it." I reached forward, took his hand in mind, and gave it a firm but affectionate squeeze. "Okay, Dad, I'll think more about it. It's not exactly a subject I can avoid, is it?" It wasn't much of a joke, but I started laughing. He did too. Then all five of us were laughing. The tension drained out. I wanted to hug my Dad and give him a kiss, but he still thought of me as his son, and it would freak him out. So I didn't. "Do you still want to go into biological research?" he asked me. "Sure! I'm something of a biological oddity myself." Dad grinned. "Kevin," he said, choosing his words carefully, "I think you need some counseling. I'm not saying you're crazy or sick or anything, but it's very important for you to be absolutely sure this is what you really want, and why." Mom brightened up at this. "Shelly could talk to him." Shelly was a psychotherapist specializing in gender issues, which was getting to be a big issue for shrinks. Mom thought highly of her daughter-in-law. Besides, Shelly would counsel members of the family for free. I stepped forward and took both my Dad's hands into mine. Looking down at my hands holding his, I thought for the first time in months how much my skeleton had shrunk from that BioConcentrator treatment. "Dad, I have no objection to talking about this with Shelly. It'll be good for me. But like it or not, the law says I am your daughter for now and at least the immediate future. I expect to enjoy it. Please, accept me as your daughter. Please be proud of me." Even though I'd known my Dad for all of my seventeen years, I couldn't read the expression on his face. "We all love you," he said. "We want the best for you. This is a difficult thing for this family to accept, and especially difficult for me. Give us time to sort out our feelings." I noticed he'd avoided addressing me by name. That was a step forward. Mom looked at me gravely. "Karen, honey, why did you tell us there were no gangs at this school, when you were one of the leaders of a gang? Why didn't you tell us the truth?" "Because the truth is, Mom, the gangs here aren't real gangs," I explained. "The security is too tight for prostitution or drug dealing or anything else that real gangs do. The gangs here say they're affiliated with the Crips, or the Bloods, or the Gangster Disciples, but they really aren't. It's also true on the street. There's plenty of kids out there who 'throw signs.' That means they wear gang colors, but they're not really in a gang. They just do it to be tough. There's a mystique in being in a gang. That's why they do it." "Well," said Dad, "if these gangs aren't real gangs, that still doesn't explain why you joined one." "I would've got my ass kicked by everybody here if I didn't," I replied. "My girls, Mary's Girls, watch each other's backs. I didn't invent the system, and it'll be here long after I'm gone. You just have to do what you have to do to survive." "We're very concerned, uh, Karen," said Dad, "that you've fallen in with some disreputable people." "These girls started off on the wrong path," I said, "but I think some of us are gonna take the hint and straighten their lives out. I know I will." I laughed quietly, more to let out my growing tension than for any other reason. Nobody spoke for a few seconds, but the silence was so heavy it seemed like many minutes. Dad spoke first. "You know, Karen, when your mother and I saw you over Chanukah, I was struck by how much you resembled your great-aunt Maxine when she was younger. I've got some old pictures of her." Dad had just called me Karen twice. I liked that. It was progress. "Dear Aunt Maxi," said Mom fondly. "Some of your father's relatives didn't like me at first, Karen, but Aunt Maxi was my best friend in your father's family." Dad turned to Mom and smiled broadly for the first time that day. "Your best friend except for me, of course," he said. "Of course, dear." Mom patted him on the shoulder. "One of mine, too," I said, "I remember how much I loved to have her come over and baby-sit when I was a little boy." On that note, the party came to a close. It was the strangest birthday party I'd ever had. It was also strange to hear myself using the words "when I was a little boy." Had I really started out in life as a little boy? It seemed unlikely, like a dream. ### One day in late February, after three weeks of avoiding me, Keyboard sat down beside me at dinner one night. "I'm over you now, Karen," she said. "You know how it is. I had a crush on you, and I had to just stay away from you for a while till I got over it." "I understand. Is everything cool now between us?" "Sure, we can be friends now," she flashed her nicest smile, then turned serious. "I need to explain something to you about myself. I grew up in a traditional Chinese family where my Dad and my brothers didn't listen to what my Mom or I had to say. A traditional Chinese man won't take seriously anything a woman says unless she's very old. My Granma could say something, and he'd listen, but not me. I couldn't even understand her most of the time, 'cause Granma only speaks Contonese. So when I heard about the BioConcentrators, I thought, 'Cool! I want a boyfriend who used to be a girl. He'd take me seriously. He'd care what I think and feel.' And when I met you, once I got over my anger at what you did, I was all, 'There he is. When he becomes his real self again, he can be the boyfriend I always wanted.'" I could see some of her old enthusiasm flashing in her small black eyes. "A guy who used to be a girl isn't the only kind of guy who'll care what you say," I argued. "Yeah, I know," said Keyboard, digging at her meat loaf with her fork. "Maybe it wasn't very mature of me to have a kinky thing like that, but there it is. That's where I was. I just want you to understand." "Thanks for being open with me, Keyboard. I know we'll always be friends." "We can start making music again now," she said. "I'm out of my Bach period now. I've discovered Mozart. Ever tried to play 'Rondo alla Turca?'" "Never heard of it." "Sure you have! You probably know it by another name, like 'Turkish March.' It's got a real fast tempo. I like the challenge in that." "Oh, yeah, 'The Turkish March.' So it's called 'Rondo alla Turca' in the original German?" She laughed. "No, silly, Italian! Don't you know anything?" "Just kidding." Part Seven: What a Long, Strange Trip It Has Been! At the end of March, with Winter Quarter over, Darla's sentence was up. As she was packing her things to leave, I stopped by to say good-bye. "Darla," I said, "I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. More than anyone else, you were the one that showed me how to enjoy being a woman." I put my right arm around her shoulders and drew near to her cheek. "I don't mean just sex here. You taught me what love means. You are the first girl in my life I ever deeply cared about." Darla grinned and look up from her half-filled suitcase. "I thought I was starting no-risk sexual liaison with the weirdest chick in school," she said, "but it turned out to be a growth experience for both of us. It wasn't until the gang war that we realized how much we meant to each other." We exchanged our good-bye kiss, with a bit of tongue and some ear-nibbling, but no tobacco taste. Darla wasn't smoking any more. Not smoking anything, if you know what I mean. "What happened to your trademark green jacket and pleated black skirt?" I asked. "Packed away somewhere. I don't wear them any more, for the same reason I asked you to start calling me Darla, my real name. I'm not Daria. I'm not 10 per cent as cool as she was, nor as wise. All this obsessive fan shit was just holding me back." She'd also had her hair cut shorter. I'd always loved her magnificent mane of red, but the new style looked good too. "We'll keep in touch by letter or telephone. The old-fashioned ways," she said. "Email won't be an option for me for a while. Mom won't let me anywhere near a computer." Darla would finish high school with home schooling, like a lot of other gifted kids I know. ### "Graduation" was local Ida-Watts girls' slang for leaving the school. However, in June, Angel, Princess, Trey and Shug literally graduated, with high school diplomas. Princess, Trey, and Shug were planning to apply for jobs at a certain business in the entertainment industry over in Durham. Shug was hoping to tend bar there and go to beautician's school in her spare time. Princess and Trey were planning to work there as "dancers." They weren't talking about ballet. They became the kind of dancer who wiggles stark naked in some drunken dude's lap for money. I don't have a moral objection to that. What bothers me is the lack of a well-defined career path. Trey told me she probably wouldn't go to college, but was interested in taking some computer courses in between lap dances. I wished her well. Trey had a good head on her shoulders. Angel was planning a trip to Mexico, alone. She wouldn't tell anybody why. Angel and Princess had broken up right before the end of Spring Quarter. They wouldn't talk about it. Princess would only say that Angel was "talking crazy." I shuddered at the thought of that mysterious trip to Mexico. Was Angel going to be a mule for the international cocaine racket? It was absolutely out of character for her, but why else would she go to Mexico? As of this writing (late September), I still don't know. Angel did admit to me that she hadn't been doing herself a favor by making me and Trey do her homework for her. During Summer Quarter, the Wake County DA's office decided to indict former Principal Martindale for assault because of her rapes of students at the school. Apparently state law didn't recognize that a woman could rape anybody. The DA's office sent someone out to depose me. They were contact with the other witnesses, too, including Keyboard and Wanda Jean Lassiter and the girls who had left the school. The case didn't go to trial until many months later, however, long after I left Ida Cynthia Watkins. Angel's graduation meant I was now the leader of the Mary's Girls gang, the first white girl in the history of the gang to hold that position. The other gangs ribbed us for accepting the leadership of a white girl, but there was no dissention in our own ranks. I'd fought for my girls during the lapse of the gang truce, which had earned me their respect. Other gangs were careful now to abide by the truce. As a result of the Hunsucker incident, Mary's Girls had a reputation as the gang that would kill you if you got in their way. My most important task as gang leader was maintaining the gang truce. It wasn't hard. Everyone remembered the chaos that engulfed the school when the truce broke down. The second most important item on my agenda was finding a successor for myself. I had to move quickly on this, since I had only one quarter left of my own sentence. Then I met Roxanne, a new girl, a feisty kid with close cropped hair and a knowing grin who already had the nickname "Rocky." The gang allowed her to keep it. It seemed appropriate. She was reluctant to join at first. She hated gangs because they deal in drugs. She was at Ida-Watts because she and two other kids including her boyfriend had mobbed a drug dealer and given him a severe beating. Before we gave her a beat-down, I had to persuade her that Mary's Girls wasn't really a gang. Our affiliation with the Gangster Disciples was just something we used to frighten the other gangs. Protecting ourselves was the only real objective of Mary's Girls, besides friendship. Then Rocky was cool about it. She was from the street and knew about dubs. She used her sense of humor to keep a cool head in tense moments. During the beat-down, after she'd taken a hit, she'd roll her eyes, snicker and say, "I didn't eem feel dat." That impressed me. Keyboard and I showed her some of our self-defense moves, but it turned out she already knew a lot. She had the leadership potential I was looking for. By Fourth of July weekend, I had enough confidence in her to make her my Number Two, the heiress to my throne, so to speak. With Trey gone, Keyboard and I became roommates. The hours I spent practicing Mozart piano compositions with her at the school's electric organ are some of my happiest memories of the school. I couldn't handle the fast parts of "Rondo alla Turca" no matter how hard I tried. Keyboard's fingers flew. She mastered the piece. Her dream was to be a concert pianist some day. I hope she achieves that. During Summer Quarter I took swimming, and wore a navy-blue one-piece suit with the Ida Cynthia Watkins insignia on it. My swimming teacher gave us some diving lessons, which I disrupted by doing a cannonball from the high board. That earned me 10 demerits for disobeying a teacher, but cemented my reputation as cool. I thought I looked good in that one-piece, so when I left the school, I paid for it and took it with me. It was my only tangible souvenir of my year at Ida-Watts. It's boxed up in my closet now. I never wear it. I'd prefer most people didn't know I'm a former Reform School kid. Darla, as "Daria" was now known, came to visit me twice on weekends during Summer Quarter. She was being home-schooled now, and was spending a lot time with a new artist friend named Nicole who was an art major at UNC-Chapel Hill. (Chapel Hill was the university town where Darla's family lived.) Darla showed me a lot of drawings and sketches Nicole had made of her, including a couple of rather tasteful nudes. I could see what was coming. I wouldn't be the first convict to lose my girlfriend during incarceration. I didn't tell Darla about my suspicion. I figured she'd tell me when she was ready. If I was wrong to suspect her, I could have a happy surprise. During Spring and Summer Quarters, I had several counseling sessions by phone with Shelly. She said I didn't fit the transsexual profile, and therefore she would normally expect me to be very dissatisfied with living as a female. However, that was obviously not the case. She said some people's gender identity might be more flexible than others. As she saw it, I had always played the hand I was dealt. At birth I was dealt a male hand. The BioConcentrator had shuffled the cards and dealt me a female hand. Instead of folding (like Noodle, for instance) I was playing it. I shared with her the insight I'd gotten from an old but good book that my brother Steve had given me, "Gender Outlaw" by Kate Bornstein. Kate Bornstein is a San Francisco-based actress and playwright who use to be known as Al Bornstein. Bornstein says that masculine and feminine, gay and straight, maybe even male and female, are just roles. Some of us are flexible enough to play more than one role in a lifetime. Anyway, that's the message I got out of it. Shelly and I agreed that the best way for me to cope with my situation was to have fun with it, and make it work for me. I also had a very significant heart-to-heart talk on the phone with Mom. We grew closer than we'd ever been, now that she finally had a daughter in the family. She warned me that once I left reform school, I would face a complication that I'd never had to deal with so far in my brief life as Karen: boys. "Do you have any idea how pretty you are?" Mom asked. "You're gonna have to fight off the guys." "Boys don't intimidate me, Mom," I told her. "I know them way too well for that. Used to be one, you know." She laughed. I laughed a little bit. "You know, Karen, your father and I had a talk about you. He told me he loves you and always will, no matter what you decide in the end. He said it was hard losing a son, but having you as a daughter is a lot like having his Aunt Maxine back in the family again. He said he didn't realize how much you looked like her until you became a girl." "Oh, that's sweet, Mom." I couldn't say anything for a little bit. The moment was just too special. I reached for a Kleenex and wiped a happy tear off my cheek. "You tell Dad for me I love him and I hope he's not ashamed of me." "He's not ashamed of you. He said to tell you he'll enjoy having a daughter in the house. It'll make the family complete." "What a cool guy my Dad is." I was getting all mushy and sentimental. "Oh, there's some good news about your father," said Mom. "He got a job as an assistant professor at NC State. We'll be moving to Raleigh next year." "That's cool, Mom. I don't want to go back to Charlotte anyway. I might run into people who remember Kevin and catch all kinds of hell from them about, well, you can imagine." "State won't be able to bring him in until Winter Quarter, so you'll be living with George and Shelly till next January." "That's okay too." I had grown much closer to Shelly in recent weeks. I thought of something else. "But Mom, what about your legal career with that Charlotte law firm?" "Oh, I figured out long ago I'd never make partner there. I just wasn't willing to put in the 80 hour weeks they required. There's a new law firm in Raleigh that handles a lot of intellectual property cases, what they used to call copyright law, with a special focus on Internet-published materials. I've got my eye on them. I may be working there in a few months. I may never make partner there either, but it's an exciting branch of the law to be in right now." "This is great news, Mom. I hope it works out for you." "By the way, Karen, your father and I have talked about you being a closet Lesbian in Senior High, and how hard that can be. So, we've talked it over with Shelly and she's agreed to home-school you while you're living with her and George." I'd never been home-schooled, so I had no idea how that worked. "But Shelly has a day job." "She'll give you something to study in the morning and evaluate your work in the afternoon. In the end, you'll take a test and get your High School diploma." "That's okay." I wasn't very enthusiastic about home-schooling, because I would be isolated from kids my own age. On the other hand, I still considered myself a Lesbian, and I knew how homophobic high school kids could be. So I went along with it. Public school had never challenged me anyway. The course work at Ida-Watts was even easier. At the end of Summer Quarter, I had an interview with three psychologists to evaluate my emotional state. The State wanted to know how the "freak bitches" were coping with the fact that they would remain female for an indefinite period. I convinced them I was emotionally stable and looking forward to the rest of my life as a woman. I also had my last heart-to-heart chat with Rabbi Hirsch, and showed him how well I was coping. "Karen, I don't understand the psychodynamics of this," he said. "By now you should be bursting with rage at your condition, but you're not. My best guess is you've undergone permanent personality changes as a byproduct of all those BioConcentrator treatments, including two treatments you weren't supposed to have. But you're making it work for you, and that's admirable." "Rabbi," I said, "I don't care about the psychodynamics. Maybe you were right when you said I feel guilty about the way I used to treat girls. Maybe you were right when you said it's brain damage caused by the machine, which is also my brother's opinion. Maybe my girlfriend Darla Rothstein is right when she says it's what I've always secretly wanted. Maybe my sister-in-law, who's a therapists, is right when she says I don't care down deep what gender I am, and I'm just playing the female hand I was dealt. Maybe they're all right. You've studied enough psychology to know how complicated people can be." "That's right, Karen. I have. So what do you think is the answer?" "I think it's a miracle. I asked God for strength and wisdom to get me through this year, and he gave me more strength and more wisdom than I asked for. He gave me the power to grow in a whole new direction. Remember that prayer where we say to God, 'Day by day You renew the work of creation?" Well, God recreated me." Rabbi Hirsch shrugged elaborately. There was something very Old World, very East European, about the way his arms and shoulders moved. "Maybe that IS the answer," he said. With his help, I picked out a new Hebrew name for myself. Every person of Jewish faith has a Hebrew name in addition to the one on the birth certificate. As Kevin my Hebrew name was Chaim, meaning "life." It also sounds a little bit like Kevin. For my new name I chose Keren Chava. Keren means "beam of light." Chava is the original Hebrew form of Eve, the first woman, the woman made from a man's rib. I think of Kevin as the rib from which with God's help I created the new me. Chava also means "life-giver," which links it with Chaim, providing continuity. Instead of a last name, we have a "son of" or "daughter of" preceding the father's Hebrew name. Many modern Jews add the mother's name as well. My Mom is not the sort of woman to be overlooked. So I am now the daughter of Michael and Miriam, and my complete Hebrew name is now Keren Chava bat-Michael ve-Miryam. ### On the Friday before Labor Day weekend, the time finally came when Keyboard's and my sentences were up. We sat together on one of the sofas on the Second Floor Common Room with our luggage stacked around us and waited for our rides. "I have a lot of feelings about this place," said Keyboard. "It was a mean and nasty school and I'm glad to be gone." She smiled. "But I made some good friends here too. You're not the only one, but you're the best one." The smile faded. "We might not see each other again for a long time. My Dad has decided to send me back to Vancouver to live with my older brother and his family. He's decided there are too many bad influences for me here in North Carolina. But the main reason is, my crime brought dishonor on the family name, and he'd rather have me back in Canada where nobody knows about it." She handed me a piece of paper. "That's gonna be my address. There's a huge Chinese community in Vancouver. Many of them are from Hong Kong like my parents." She smiled again. "It would be way cool if you could come and visit me sometime. There's a lot for tourists to do and see in B.C." "B.C.?" "British Columbia. I can tell you're no Canadian." I immediately got my address book out of my purse and wrote down George's mailing address for her. Yes, I was carrying a purse now. It was a very small one, made of leather with a very long strap, and designed to hang from the shoulder. It was the butchest looking purse I could find in the mail-order catalog. I was wearing my usual dyke suit, like the one Noodle had worn. But it was too warm for a turtleneck sweater. I was wearing a light blue T-shirt underneath. "Thanks," she said. "I hope to have Internet access soon through my brother's home computer. I'll write you and let you know how to contact me." "Cool." Soon after that, Keyboard's brother showed up. He was a thin young man in his mid-twenties who resembled his sister in the face. At least I thought he did. I'm not very good at telling Asians apart. Keyboard introduced us. His name was Wellington Wei. "Very pleased to meet you," was all he said to me. I noticed a touch of British accent in the way he spoke. He avoided looking at me. He thought I was one of those low-life Americans who'd led his sister into thieving ways that dishonored the family. Alexis and I shared a last hug and a sisterly kiss on the cheek. Alexis and her brother carried away her luggage, and I was alone. About a half-hour later, Mom and Dad and George and Shelly showed up. I was sorry Steve couldn't be with them. He had played mentor to me on the gender question by lending me books, even he'd only had time to visit once. They were keeping him very busy at that software company. Dad walked up to me and took both my hands in his. He beamed at me like he was the proudest father in the world. Then he turned to Mom and said, "Miriam, isn't our daughter beautiful?" My eyes filled up with tears. Acceptance! I couldn't say anything. I just hugged him like my life depended on him. When I could finally say something, all that came out was, "I love you, Daddy." They all hugged me in turn. Only now did I notice what great huggers we Lauterbachs are. Shelly, too. While Shelly and I were sharing a hug, she said, "I was raised in a house full of boys, and so were you, Karen. Neither of us had a sister, but we can be the two tightest sisters-in-law in history, starting now." As we came apart, I looked into Shelly's large blue eyes and said, "I am SO looking forward to that, sis." The family gathered up my luggage and we all walked downstairs together without saying much more. By chance, Mom and Dad led us through Mary's Girls territory to reach the stairway. I passed three or four of my gang sisters on the way and was able to say a last good-bye in passing to them. Shelly smiled at them. George, Mom and Dad ignored them. They all regarded the gang girls as low-class. I resent that. For the most part, these girls did come from impoverished backgrounds, and they had started their lives on the wrong path. I suspect many of them probably returned to hustling on the streets, to the crack house, and to the kind of boyfriend that stole cars, sold cocaine and beat the shit out of his "bitch" whenever he felt like it. But I also believe that some of them took the hint and went on to better things, jobs that earned them money legally, education and training that would lead to jobs that weren't dead ends. Victories like that can be won only one person at a time. As Dad drove us away from the school grounds, I took a look back at Ida Cynthia Watkins Girls' Reformatory. Like Keyboard, I had mixed feelings. It was a hell hole, a place of violence and sexual torture, but it was also a place where I learned a great deal about loyalty, friendship, honor, and love. It was also the place where I began to claim my destiny as a woman. In all those ways, it had been good for me. How did I feel about the old me, about Kevin? I think that, if I had to turn male again, I would be a good man, a kind and considerate man, a far better person than when I first went under the BioConcentrator. That was the purpose of temporary feminization. But I will never become a man voluntarily, because I have started growing in a different direction. Dad piloted the car onto U.S. Highway 70 westbound towards Raleigh, then onto the Inner Beltline, which took us around the capital city and onto Glenwood Avenue. Glenwood Avenue led us up into the North Raleigh neighborhood where George and Shelly's house was. George and Shelly were having the rest of us over for lunch. Theirs was the house I would live in until Dad and Mom could relocate to Raleigh. I was on the road to womanhood. I knew it would be a pleasant destination. While w