Kathleen Winter - Annabel

“In girls, yes. Every month. But in your case we don’t know how often.”

“Can it get out now? New stuff?”

“We’re hoping” — Dr. Lioukras had eyes you could see uneasiness in right away — “that with new medication, it will stop.”

“But if it didn’t stop, would it get trapped again?”

“You would have to come in again, like this time, if it happened. You would need another gynecological intervention.”

So it was with names — suture, true hermaphrodite, menstrual blood, gynecological intervention — that the doctor had done his best to acquaint Wayne with the story of his male body and the female body inside it. Dr. Lioukras was not happy with the talk. He had wanted it to be about life, and possibility, not blood and stitching and cutting. He had to remind himself that the work of a surgeon is poetry of a kind, in which blood is the meaning and flesh is the text. Without his work, he told himself, many people would be buried early among the stones on Crow Hill, over the slow, cold inlet, and would feel no more joy, or life, or love.

Now, after the operation, Wayne felt the power of names in a new way. His father ate his evening toast, sometimes with a kipper. Jacinta crocheted. They did not look outside at the night. Wayne tried to remember a time before he knew the word for sky . You explained away the mystery of the night, he thought, by naming its parts: darkness, Little Dipper, silver birch.

His mother did not find her little white knife. Wayne wished he could find it for her. He was glad after supper when he saw her open her tin of crochet hooks. The tin was oval, and decorated with a woman in a white robe.

“How have you forgiven me?” She broke a piece of new green wool for the edge of a hat.

“For what?” Wayne liked watching her make something. Treadway was pouring a bucket of cement down three weasel holes he had found in the root cellar.

“Keeping the secret.”

Though Dr. Lioukras had told Wayne the name of his condition, the family had not discussed it. They had come home and resumed their old life, as if everything was ordinary. “You let me order my bathing suit,” Wayne said.

“The suit” — Jacinta laid her hook on the hat — “was such a small thing. That was nothing compared to not telling you.”

“You gave me the Niblets box to hide the suit in. And now the suit’s getting too small. Dad’s the one who didn’t say anything. The dog…” Wayne had never been able to love the dog Treadway brought home the day he dismantled the Ponte Vecchio. He wanted to love the dog but he couldn’t, and he blamed his father. “The dog deserved love.”

“I know. Love gets blocked if you dam it. Your father builds dams in his sleep. He doesn’t know he’s doing it.” Wayne had a dog he could not love though he wanted to love it, and Treadway had a son he could not love though he wanted a son and he wanted to love that son. Father and son suffered from backed up, frozen love, and this ate Jacinta’s heart.

“I’m going,” Treadway had finally announced, “to give that dog to Roland Shiwack before I go trapping. Since no one here feeds it or gives it water besides myself. Roland offered me seventy-five dollars for it. You can use that while I’m gone.”

Working the hat edge, Jacinta said, “If I’d told you all the times I knew you were my daughter…”

“Tell me now,” Wayne said with such eagerness she lost her stitch count. It had not occurred to her that Wayne would want to hear about those times, as if they were beautiful stories. It had never entered her mind that the countless lost moments could be recovered by speaking about them.

“Tell me about when I was a baby.”

“I don’t know if I can remember individual times.”

“Can you remember any? Even one?”

“Well, I used to rock you in my arms and you had a green blanket and you looked like a little baby girl for sure.”

“I did?”

“And I sang you lullabies with the word girl in them.”

“Like what?”

“I can’t remember them, Wayne. Mothers forget things. Everybody expects them to remember everything. I guess I sang “Dance to Your Daddy.” That was one my dad knew.”

“Sing it.”

“Well, it goes, ‘Dance to your daddy, my little laddie, dance to your daddy, hear your mammy sing.’ If you’re singing it to a baby boy. And if you’re singing it to a baby girl you sing, ‘Dance to your daddy, my little lassie.’ And the rest is the same.”

“Did you sing lassie ?”

“I couldn’t sing laddie . That was the thing. You and I were alone and no one heard. I felt if I didn’t sing to the part of you that was a baby girl she would feel so lonely she might get sick and die.”

“Are there any more verses?”

“Well the rest is, ‘You shall have a fishy on a little dishy. You shall have a kipper when the boat comes in.’ First it’s a kipper, then it’s other kinds of fish, and you keep singing it until you run out of kinds of fish or the baby girl is asleep.”

“What other kinds of fish?”

“You shall have a bloater. Then a mackerel. There were all kinds of fish, Wayne. I sang all kinds of fish you can’t get here. Fish they had in England, where the song came from. Fish I heard from my dad.”

“What other times was I almost a girl?”

Treadway came in then and said, “That should fix him.” He meant the weasel. Wayne was shiny-eyed, waiting for his mother’s next revelation, but he didn’t get it that night. Memories of when Wayne was a girl became a secret conversation held while Treadway prepared for his winter on the trapline.

“Your feet were slender,” Jacinta said as Treadway packed his World Famous bags and his caribou pouch in the yard.

“Are they still?” Wayne peeled his socks off.

“Certain parts of you were so feminine I used to think people were going to stop me on the road and tell me they knew you were a girl.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, Wayne. Kate Davis for one, I guess. What mother can remember everything?”

“What parts, then?”

“What?”

“Parts. You said parts with an S on it. Other parts of me that were like a girl.”

“Before you started taking all the pills.”

“Then I wasn’t like a girl any more?”

“Not as much.”

“But before then, what parts?”

“Your face. Your whole face. I don’t know why the whole town couldn’t see what I could.”

“Because you were my mother and they weren’t.”

“I guess.”

“And they weren’t looking.”

“Maybe.”

“My clothes were boy’s. And everyone called me Wayne, except for one person.”

“Thomasina was the only one.”

“Annabel.” It was the first time Wayne had said the name out loud to anyone but Thomasina. “Mom?”

“What?”

“Are they going to let Thomasina come back and teach us?”

“I don’t know if she wants to come back, Wayne.”

“How long did Miss Huskins suspend her for?”

“Miss Huskins didn’t suspend her, Wayne. The Labrador East School Board did.”

“How long for?”

“A month.”

“That’ll be over soon.”

“But sometimes when there’s a break, a change in the way things are, even for a little while, it’s really a chasm.”

“Like the Gulch?”

“Yes. The change is only for a month, or even a week or a day, but it breaks something. It breaks the pattern and things aren’t the same.”

“I love Thomasina.”

“I know you do, Wayne.”

“I hope she comes back.”

“I know.”

“Mom — could you call me my girl name?”

“Annabel?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”