ALL NOVEL 7. The List (Amy)
I ran my fingers through my hair as I stared at the scrapbook on the coffee table again. It didn't really give us any answers. Instead it felt like it led to more questions.
We still didn't know what Tess's granny wanted from the goddess person. I could make some guesses, but they'd only be guesses. It didn't seem like there was any way to find out what we needed to know.
I leaned forward and started looking through it again, and Tess leaned closer as well. She was still fascinated by this look into her granny's life, and I couldn't blame her for that.
Most of the things in the book were self-explanatory, but there were a few I was curious about. When I got to that newspaper clipping about the snow storm, I asked "Do you know what the significance is of this? Something about the storm, or maybe the date?"
"I'm pretty sure that's when my mom was born," Tess replied. "Her birthday's February sixteenth. That article was printed on the seventeenth but it's talking about a snowstorm the day before? I'm guessing they saved it because mom was born in the middle of a blizzard. Or something along those lines."
I flipped back through the pages to the airplane tickets and checked the date on those again.
After a bit of mental math I said, "So assuming a standard nine months, your granny got pregnant in May, summoned the goddess in June, then left Ireland in July. I won't pretend I know a ton about Ireland, now or in the sixties, but I can guess being a single mother in some rural town wasn't a great situation?"
Tess sighed as she sat back on the sofa. "No, it wasn't. My mom told me the story once. I was trying to do our family tree, and I asked her what she knew about her dad."
After a short pause she explained, "What I got from my mom, what she got from granny, was some guy forced himself on my gran. Apparently he was someone important or special? He denied he did it, and that was that. Granny was a nobody, just a young commoner. Everyone turned a blind eye to her situation, meanwhile she ended up carrying this guy's child. Basically her options were go spend a year in a convent or something so the neighbours wouldn't know she was pregnant, then give the child up for adoption? Or stick around and be a single mother where everyone would look down at her and blame her for getting pregnant. Granny didn't like either of those options, she decided to keep the baby but left the country."
I could tell by the emotion in her voice that Tess had a lot of anger about the situation, and I couldn't blame her. It made me angry too, and I didn't even know any of the people involved.
"I'm sorry," I told her. "It's a shitty thing and I hate that it happened to your grandmother. It might be what she asked the goddess for help with though? I mean, it can't have been easy for a young woman in rural Ireland to just up and move to a new country. It's great that she had a friend with her, but even at that I'm sure she could have used some extra help."
Tess sighed, "Yeah. You're probably right. If nothing else she could have asked for money so she could afford to move away."
After a moment she frowned and added, "I'm tempted to call my mom and ask her some of this stuff. I mean she never once mentioned anything to me about Amy Sullivan, but this scrapbook makes it pretty clear that Ms. Sullivan was practically a second mother to my mom? Like the woman helped raise her, yet I've never heard a peep about her!"
She looked and sounded angry again, but a second later she sighed and apologized "Sorry Amy. My mom hasn't been very understanding or accepting of me, and it just feels very hypocritical now considering it looks like she was raised by a lesbian couple."
"I'm sorry," I told her. "It sucks that she's not accepting, and yeah I can see how that'd be really confusing if she was raised that way."
We were both quiet for a few moments after that. Eventually Tess commented "This doesn't really help us figure out what happened to you though, does it?"
"Not really," I shook my head. "Here's a thought? What if you tried summoning the goddess again? Maybe it'll work properly and we could ask her what's going on?"
She shook her head, "The ritual only works if you do it at midnight of a full moon. That was last night. We can try it again, but not till next month."
"Damn," I frowned. "So it might work, but we have to wait a whole month to find out... In the meantime I've got to figure out how to deal with my roommate, family, job..."
"I'm sorry Amy," Tess looked upset and stressed again.
I shook my head, "It's ok Tess."
She stared at the scrapbook and journal again, but didn't make a move to pick either of them up from the coffee table. And I wound up sort of staring into space for a few moments as I tried to figure out what to do next, and wondered if there was anything we'd missed or overlooked in all this stuff.
Tess spoke up after a few minutes, "It feels like we've actually accomplished nothing at all here. Maybe we should make a list or something, like figure out what exactly we're trying to do? Then we can break it down and take it a little more methodically."
I frowned as I thought that over. I couldn't see how making a list would help or change anything. Then again I figured it couldn't hurt, and maybe she had a point about approaching the whole thing with a little more thought and planning. I couldn't deny that so far today I'd been a lot more emotional than usual.
"Ok," I sighed. "I guess the number one question is, why me? How'd I get dragged into all this?"
She picked up her notepad again and turned to a new page. She wrote down a big number one and circled it, then wrote out my question.
I thought for a moment, then continued "Second thing, how and why has other stuff changed? Like my clothes, and my ID? And the thing with my roommate, how'd that happen?"
"And along that note, will stuff like that keep happening?" I added.
Tess continued taking notes, she marked my question about clothes and ID as number two. My question about Mike was two-A, and my question about if it'll keep happening was two-B.
After a little pause, I said "Third thing I guess is how do I deal with my family? And my roommate. And what do I do about work? And just, everything in general? Like, turning into a girl overnight's going to take some explaining right?"
That was all added to the list. Dealing with family was number three, Mike was three-A, work was three-B, and 'everything in general' was question number four.
Tess looked up at me with a questioning look, probably wondering if there was anything else I wanted to add to the list.
I felt my cheeks colouring slightly as I thought about the questions I wasn't asking. We already established that I didn't want to be changed back, so there was no point adding that to the list. As for why I got turned into a girl in the first place, the answer was pretty obvious when I allowed myself to think about it. If the goddess was secretly granting my wishes or something like that, being a girl was the thing I wished for most. Even if I was in denial about it.
And it was hard enough admitting that to myself, there was no way I was ready to say it out loud. Not yet at least. I knew sooner or later I'd have to do it though. Maybe not with Tess, but at some point I'd have to talk to my parents and my sister, and I'd have to tell them I was trans and that I was happier like this than I was as a guy.
I still had a truck-load of emotions about that too, and that war in the back of my mind was still going on. It was a lot quieter now though. Mostly it was just arguing about how this shouldn't have been done without any warning or consent, rather than demanding it be fixed or undone.
That just left one other thing. I was still blushing slightly as I said, "I don't know if this is number five, or like four-point-one, but um... I guess I also need to learn stuff like how to actually be a girl? I don't know, like make-up and what to do with long hair and how to dress pretty? I'm sure there's lots more stuff I'm clueless about."
She frowned, "None of that is specifically 'how to be a girl'. You can learn to do make-up if you want to wear make-up. And you can learn some fashion and style tips if you're into that. Learning how to look after long hair isn't much different than short hair. All that can apply to guys as much as girls, though I'll concede make-up is more common with girls than guys. Not the other stuff though."
Having said that, she still added a number five to the list. Rather than 'how to be a girl' she wrote down 'women's health etc.'
She looked back up at me and asked, "Was that everything?"
I thought for a few moments, then nodded "Yeah I think so? For now anyways."
"Ok," Tess said as she looked over the list. "I can help you with the last thing. And I can help you with make-up and stuff like that too, if you want. The first and second things are going to be the biggest. Third and fourth things... I don't know how we'll deal with them either, but I'll do my best to help."
"Thanks," I said. "I'm not ready to deal with number five yet, and I don't really see how we can tackle three and four without knowing the answers to one and two..."
She frowned, "I guess. I have a feeling even with those answers it's still going to be a struggle dealing with your family? Like, explaining your magical transition is going to be tough whether or not we know how you got involved with the Goddess."
"Yeah," I blushed at her calling it my 'transition', even if it was accurate. "Good point."
I drained the last of my water, then set the empty bottle down on the coffee table. As I did so, I noticed the clock under the TV. Between all the fainting and freaking out and having lunch and talking and researching, I'd lost track of the time.
It was after five o'clock, and I started to think about heading home. It felt like Tess and I had covered as much as we could today, and neither of us had any new ideas or insights lately, apart from making a list. I didn't like giving up, but I didn't think we'd make any more progress tonight. And I was kind of tired of dealing with it, and I figured Tess probably felt the same.
Plus it was getting close to dinner time and I realized she probably had things of her own to do. She'd basically spent her entire Saturday looking after me and helping me with my problems. I didn't even know if she had a job or something, maybe she worked tonight for all I knew.
As for me, I'd more or less come to terms with the fact that I was a girl. I certainly didn't want to go back to being my old self again. So I just had to figure out how to deal with the fallout from all of that, and Tess already promised to help.
It wasn't stuff we were going to solve right now though. At best she could help corroborate some of the impossible parts of the story, but that probably wouldn't help much anyways. Nobody in my family knew her any more than they'd know me now.
I'd definitely be in touch with her again soon, probably tomorrow, but I figured for tonight at least I may as well head back home.
Tess was sort of looking at me, as if waiting for me to say something. She probably noticed the thoughtful look on my face as I was sitting there next to her.
"So um, I think I might head home now. It's been a long day, I'm kind of tired, and it feels like we've done everything we can do right now in terms of figuring this stuff out."
She frowned, and I realized with surprise she looked like she didn't want me to leave.
