Chapter 2
Mia
I was lying in a bed. Someone was asking my name.
I tried to answer.
Mia. My name is Mia.
When I spoke, my mouth felt like it was gripped within an iron vice. I couldn’t make my lips form the right shape, and my own name turned into a mush of unrecognizable sound.
Everything hurt. Even thinking seemed to hurt. Something bad had happened. The memory was vague, hanging just at the very edge of my mind like static. I reached for it, hoping it would give me answers.
For one brief moment, I recalled the image of flames, and the feeling of fire searing across my skin and smoke choking my lungs.
I flinched. That memory couldn’t be right. It hurt too much. Surely, it was just a nightmare.
The memory slipped away, and the pain disappeared with it.
Yes, that was right. There was no fire. In fact, I wasn’t lying in a bed at all.
I was…
I was…
I was sitting in a small chair in front of a large desk. One of the legs was shorter than the others, causing me to wobble every time I moved. My feet barely touched the floor, so no matter how still I tried to stay, my legs still swung in the air.
Each time the chair tipped, it made a neat little clicking sound against the linoleum floor.
Tip, click.
Tip, click.
It was like a game, seeing how long I could balance before the chair tipped again.
Tip, click.
The simple distraction meant I didn’t have to focus on the other people arguing in the room.
Their voices were too loud, especially the woman sitting in the chair next to me.
She was moving around a lot more than me, gesturing and waving her arms when she spoke, but her chair didn’t rock like mine did.
Maybe it was because she was a lot bigger than me.
For a moment, my brain stalled like a broken engine when I realized how much taller the woman was than me, even sitting down.
Why? I wasn’t particularly short.
Then I caught sight of my reflection in the window across the room.
Oh right. I was just a kid, barely seven years old, and the woman was my mother. She was an adult, so of course she was bigger than me.
How could I forget that?
Tip, click.
I stopped thinking about it and focused only on keeping my uneven chair balanced beneath me.
“Ma’am, you must take this seriously,” the man behind the desk said.
I looked over at him. I knew this man, just like I knew my mother.
He was…
He was…
Memories came back to me in a rush of understanding, too quick to process all at the same time.
Right, this was the principal at my new school. I’d just started first grade. After only a couple of days of classes, a note had been sent to my mother asking for a meeting, which led us here.
No one had told me what the meeting was about.
I didn’t remember doing anything bad. Ever since starting school, I’d been on my very best behavior.
Until now, I’d been home schooled, and I’d been looking forward to finally meeting other kids.
But now, my mom was angry, so I must have done something wrong.
“It’s fine,” my mother shouted at the principal, not for the first time. “He’s fine. You drag me in here saying that you have serious concerns about my son, and all you want to talk about is his clothes. This whole thing is a waste of time.”
I looked down at myself.
My clothes?
What was wrong with them?
This was the outfit that mother had picked out for me this morning. I’d even been very careful not to spill anything on it because I knew that always made her mad.
Had I accidentally ripped something during recess?
I’d fallen when one of the other kids tripped me near the swings.
I nervously patted my hands over my knees where I remembered hitting the pavement. I didn’t feel anything ripped, but maybe there was a problem that I just couldn’t see.
“Ma’am,” the principal said again, not quite shouting but very close. “Your son’s clothing is in violation of our school’s dress code.”
Dress code?
I knew what a dress was, and I knew what a code was, but in my seven years of life, I’d never heard these two words put together before. It clearly meant something special.
Codes were a type of secret.
Was there a secret dress that I was supposed to wear?
That wasn’t fair.
If it was a secret, then how was I supposed to know about it?
My mother also looked upset, so clearly she found it unfair as well. She crossed her arms and harrumphed in that way she always did when he knew she was right.
“It is not. I checked your dress code, and this clothing meets all of your rules.”
The principal took a deep breath and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose the same way that mom said I should do whenever I got a nosebleed.
Was the man hurt?
He didn’t seem to be bleeding. Maybe the pinching off the blood worked just like mother said it would.
When the principal spoke again, he didn’t shout this time, but his words were clipped and short like they’d lost a few letters on the way out of his mouth.
“Your son’s clothing may meet the dress code for female students, but I shouldn’t have to tell you why this is inappropriate.”
The principal gestured at me with one hand.
I followed that gesture, looking down at myself again, trying to find what was wrong with my clothes that seemed so obvious to him.
The flower print skirt. The white shirt with the little pink buttons. The black shoes with the big gold buckle. The white lace socks.
Yep, everything was the same as usual.
Beside me, my mother stood up and slammed a book down on the principal’s desk.
“There is nothing in your school’s dress code about clothing specifically for girls and boys. See.” She pointed at something in the book. “Right there. Clothing is simply listed for all students.”
The principal didn’t even look at what she was pointing at and simply pushed the book aside.
“Some things don’t have to be written out.
They are understood. Most people already understand that it is inappropriate for a boy to show up to class wearing a skirt.
It’s distracting for the other students.
Now, this can all be settled easily if Mia simply wears more gender appropriate clothing from now on. ”
“But…”
My mother looked over at me, her eyes large like they got when she hadn’t slept for a while.
“But those are my child’s clothes. Mia picked them out.”
She sat down in her chair but leaned so far over against mine that her weight pressed down on my armrest.
Tip, click.
My chair shifted toward her.
“Right, Mia? You like your clothes, don’t you?”
Did I like my clothes?
No one had ever asked me that before. It was a strange question. Mother always picked out my clothes and told me what I had to wear. She said this was something all moms did. Whether or not I liked the clothes had never come up before, so I’d never even thought about it.
Her hand landed on my arm, squeezing just hard enough to get my attention. She didn’t say anything, but she stared at me with those too-large eyes. The tired eyes that meant she needed to sleep more.
Oh, right. I remembered now.
No one had ever asked me if I liked my clothes, but mother had once told me what to say if anyone asked that question.
Now that I knew the right answer, I relaxed and put on a big smile.
“Yep. I love my clothes. This is what I want to wear.”
The principal asked a few more times, but each time I stuck to the right answer. I never knew why adults were always repeating themselves like that. Once they had an answer they should ask a different question, but the principal just kept asking me the same things about my clothing.
Eventually, he gave up, and my mother and I were able to leave. I never went back to the school after that. I returned to home schooling, just as I had before. It was lonely, not being able to play with other kids, but at least there weren’t any adults asking repetitive questions.
Second grade was home schooled just like first grade. As was third, fourth, and fifth grade.
By then, I was tired of only having my mother for company. I wanted to make friends like I saw other kids having on the television. Sixth grade was the start of middle school. Surely, that could be a great chance for me to try again at a whole new school.
Maybe this time the staff would be better, and the principal wouldn’t ask so many questions.
By now, I was starting to understand that my way of dressing wasn’t normal.
None of the kids on the television dressed like me.
Only girls wore skirts and dresses. Never boys.
I didn’t really understand why, but I knew that in order to go to school I would have to fit in with the other kids and their “dress code”.
So, I saved up my allowance and bought myself my first outfit on my own.
A “boy” outfit. I showed it to my mother the very same night I bought it.
I thought she would be happy at how easy it was.
One little change would mean I could go to school.
I still didn’t understand why the clothes were important, but if wearing pants instead of skirts and dresses was the only thing standing in the way, then it was an easy change to make.
I didn’t think my clothes mattered that much.
Yet, the moment she saw me standing there in my new outfit with the price tags still attached, her expression immediately fell. All the light left her eyes, instantly turned them into lifeless dark voids in her skill.
“No.”
The word was quiet. Her lips barely moved when she spoke, but I heard every letter as if it was hammered directly into my ears.
“But, if I wear this, I can go to school,” I tried to explain. “Apparently, it’s what boys wear.”
“No,” she repeated, louder this time. “You’re not… you don’t…”
Some of the light returned to her eyes, but it looked wrong, wild, like the flicker of a lightbulb that was about to go out.
Standing up, she started pacing the room.
“No, you don’t wear that. Mia… those aren’t Mia’s clothes.”
Before I could question her again, she disappeared into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. Through the thin walls of our house, I could hear her footsteps as she paced, along with the faint sound of weeping.
I changed back into my usual clothes, pushing the new outfit I’d just bought to the back of my closet where it couldn’t do any more harm.
It wasn’t the first time mother had gotten upset, though it did seem to be the worst. Every time before, I just had to wait until morning, and then everything would go back to normal.
Yes, just wait until morning. Then mother would see me back in my proper clothing, and whatever upset her would be gone.
Except, I didn’t see her in the morning.
Or ever again.
The next time I opened her bedroom door, she was…
She was…
I couldn’t remember what I found in her bedroom.
It must have been scary. I remembered screaming, but then…
Nothing.
There was a funeral that almost no one attended. No one would tell me anything. All they would say was that my mother was gone.
They also kept staring at my clothes with strange eyes, but I refused to change.
Changing my clothes had made mother so upset that she went away.
After the funeral, an important looking person who claimed to work for the government said I was going to live with my father.
I didn’t want to live with my father. I’d barely ever met him, and the few times I had met him, he and mother ended up arguing.
I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want to think about funerals, or moving somewhere else, or clothing. I didn’t even want to think about my mother. It all hurt too much.
I just wanted it all to stop.
As if someone had hit a pause button, the memories playing out around me suddenly froze and crumbled to dust, leaving me in darkness.
It was peaceful in the dark. No strange questions or unpleasant memories. I couldn’t even feel my body anymore. Everything was quiet.
No, wait. It wasn’t quiet. I could hear someone speaking. The voice was soft at first, as if very far away, but the more I listened the closer it grew until it seemed to be speaking right next to my ear.
“It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day.”
I knew those words. They were familiar. I’d heard them before, many times, though I couldn’t remember where.
So, I listened to the voice tell me a story. Each word was new but brought with it a sense of familiarity and comfort, like meeting an old friend for the first time.