Born That Way (8 page)

CHAPTER TEN

The pasture where Nickers lives has been transformed. There's an entire new barn on the knoll in the middle. There's a real gravel driveway where the ruts in the grass used to be. Power lines run from a pole at the road to another one halfway down the driveway and then attach to the front of the barn. An orange extension cord snakes around the side of the barn and plugs into a travel trailer that I can barely see from the road. The three lines of saggy barbed-wire fencing that used to go around the perimeter have been replaced with five lines of taut white cord on upright posts; hanging off the top line is a bright yellow notice warning that the fence is electric. Posts are also in for a fence line that will create a large paddock off to the side of the barn, but the fencing hasn't been hung yet.

But the problem is that the old wooden gate rails have been replaced with a new metal pipe gate, and hanging on it is a plastic sign which says
Livestock at Large
and under that a smaller handwritten sign on cardboard which says
Keep Gate Closed or Die.

I stand staring at the sign. What am I supposed to do? How do I enter without opening the gate? I could crawl through the pipes but there's no way I can shove my bike through and I don't want to leave it out by the road where someone could steal it. And I'm not going anywhere near that electric fencing.

That's when I hear Kansas yelling from the barn. “Come on in, Sylvia! Just be sure to close the gate behind you!”

Kansas is busy brushing Nickers, who is tied to a ring in the alleyway, when I roll up on my bike. The other two horses are out grazing. I lean my bike against the barn.

“Hey,” says Kansas. “I wondered when you'd get here.”

So she's been expecting me. Maybe she remembers being in my dreams even though Taylor doesn't. I don't want to ask her about it though, because she had warned me not to build bridges. If mentioning a name from the real world during a dream is a bridge, then talking about dreams in the day time would be more like a multi-lane overpass. I should probably let her bring it up. She seems to know everything.

“This horse hasn't been brushed in months. Look at the crud in this coat!” She uses a plastic brush to scratch at the mud caked on Nickers's legs.

“Doesn't that hurt?”

“Naw. He likes the attention.”

“He?” I was sure Nickers was a mare, though maybe that was only in the dream version. I didn't think dreams worked that way, mixing things up so badly, especially when Mom said the purpose of dreams was to sort things out.

Kansas stops brushing and indicates up under Nickers's tummy in front of his hind legs. “See? He's got a sheath. That's usually a dead giveaway that it's a gelding. Unless there are testicles attached, which there are not in this case. Thank goodness.”

I have a good look under Nickers's belly at his sheath.

Kansas stands behind the horse and lifts his tail. “Here's another way you can tell. Have a look here then we'll go look at one of the mares.”

We stand together and inspect Nickers's backside. Kansas slides her hand down between his legs and makes a fist. “Testicles would be down here somewhere.” She looks at me. “How old are you again? Is this okay, to be talking about stuff like this?”

“My mom's a psychoanalyst. She's made sure that I know all the theory already.”

“Fine then. Let's go look at a mare. It's important that you can tell the difference between mares and geldings and stallions because they have to be treated differently and they react differently too.”

We leave Nickers at the barn and walk into the field to find another example. “This is Electra.” Kansas points up under the belly. “See, no sheath, just little nipples tucked way back there.”

I crouch down and have a good look up under Electra who continues to eat grass as though it is no problem at all that we are examining her private parts. It's a bit weird about her name; I remember Mom talking about an Electra complex. Maybe it's a common thing. Maybe it's a coincidence and there are lots of horses named Electra.

Kansas holds up her tail and I have a good look there too.

“What about the other horse?” I'm kind of afraid to ask. What if it's a mare and her name is Evelyn? Or a gelding named Freud? Or worst of all, a hermaphrodite named Tootsie?

“Photon,” she says. “Same as this one. A mare.”

“You don't have any hermaphrodites here then?” I don't know why I ask this, whether it's from relief or I want to show off.

“You're way past me on this one, Sylvia. What the hell is a hermaphrodite?”

“It's an animal that has both male and female reproductive organs.” It feels good to be an expert, or at least to know more about something than the nearest adult, but I don't want to make the same mistakes that the adults usually make by over-explaining things, so I'm not sure how much detail I should go into. “There's a hermaphrodite pony in England.”

“No kidding.”

“And my pet barnacles are hermaphrodites.”

“You have pet barnacles?”

“Yes. They're part of my guerilla marketing campaign to get my own horse.”

“What's gorilla marketing?”

I correct her pronunciation, but gently, because it occurs to me that Kansas is the first person I've met who is older than me and doesn't have to be a know-it-all all the time. Then I explain. “Like soldiers sniping from the jungle and taking people by surprise with new information.”

“Hmmm.”

We have left the mares and are on our way back to the barn and Nickers. The sun has come out and feels warm on my back. I can hear frogs croaking from the ditch by the road and the smell of fresh horse manure wafts up from the grass. It's a perfect day.

“So you're pretty serious about owning your own horse some day?”

“Oh yeah.”

“How long have you been working on it?”

I sigh, probably a bit dramatically, but it's also how I'm feeling—totally relieved to be talking about this with someone who understands. “I feel like I've been campaigning my whole life.”

“Well I know what that's like,” says Kansas. “I figure I was born wanting to be around horses.”

“Me too.”

“It's a disease,” says Kansas.

I summon a serious expression like Dad does when he's joking around. “An incurable disease.”

“Fortunately,” adds Kansas.

Perfection upon perfection.

“We'll have to see what we can do to get you to your goal,” says Kansas. “Though I don't know anything about guerilla marketing. What's the situation with the parents?”

“They weren't born this way. I must have inherited a recessive gene. My grandpa used to have horses in Saskatchewan.”

“Is he on side then?”

“He says he'll buy me a horse when I grow as tall as his shoulder.”

She stops and assesses me. “Any chance he's a midget?”

Anyone else saying this and my feelings might be hurt, but I know she's not teasing or being mean. She's being realistic. “Nope. I do stretching exercises all the time and try to eat lots of protein.”

“Good thinking.”

“My dad says Grandpa is an interfering old goat.”

“Bad sign. What about your mom?”

“She thinks it's a stage.”

“Still? A life-long stage?”

“Something to do with my sexual development.”

“Oh lord. Not that old sausage.”

Back at the barn she hands me a comb and directs me to the knots in Nickers' tail. She brushes, I comb, Nickers stands there with his head down, his eyes half-closed, and rests one hind leg.

“You know, Sylvia, owning a horse is a big deal. They are expensive to keep and they are a lot of responsibility. So for a lot of people, just being around them is enough. They don't have to own a horse. They take lessons, they ride horses that belong to other people, they take them to horse shows, even win fancy ribbons . . . .”

I shake my head. This is not the picture I had in my mind.

“Well, it's not my idea of fun either,” says Kansas. “It sounds too much like dating other people's husbands.”

This isn't how I would have put it, and reminds me uncomfortably of Mom's theory about me wanting to marry Dad. I don't say anything.

Kansas carries on as though she's in another world. “For some of us, horse ownership is about having a relationship with these animals.” With her fingertips she strokes the horse gently around his eye. “Right, Hambone?”

“Hambone? You named your horse Hambone?” I was sort of prepared that his name wouldn't really be Nickers, but Hambone is much worse than anything I might have imagined.

“No, I didn't name him. He came with this name. Actually he came with the property. The mares are mine, but I inherited Hambone.”

“Can't you re-name him? Is it bad luck, like re-naming a boat?”

“I don't know about bad luck. But he knows his name. How'd you like it if I re-named you?”

I think about all the names people have for me. What difference could one more make? I shrug.

“You don't like your name?”

“It's not cool, like Kansas.”

“I thought Sylvia was the name of an ancient nature goddess.”

This is what Bernard had said at Mom's hair salon, but at the time I thought he was crazy. It's different when Kansas says it. “Really?”

“Sure. I read about it once.” She returns to brushing, creating clouds of dust as she breaks up the dirt. “Though Hambone is his barn name. His real name is from Shakespeare.”

My stomach turns. Somehow I know what's coming next.

“His registered name is Prince Hamlet.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I get home I lock my bike in the carport and notice Dad in the back yard working in his greenhouse. This is something he tends to do when he and Mom have had what Mom calls a difference of opinion, so I'm not sure about going in the house right away. Mom will be in there being quiet, “thinking things through”, as she puts it. I decide to take my chances on Dad. He might be grumpy or he might need me to cheer him up.

I push open the plastic-covered door. The air is thick with moisture and earth smells. Dad is peering at a geranium.

“Hey,” I say.

“Oh. Hi, Sylv.” There's a strained smile on his face.

“Are you in trouble?” I say it playfully because it's a family joke—him going to the greenhouse instead of the doghouse when Mom's upset with him.

He doesn't rise to the joke. “Well I was for a while, but that was straightened out.” He still isn't smiling properly. “I think you better go in and talk to your mom.”

His tone is downright ominous. I check my watch. “I'm not late am I? I said I'd be back for lunch and it's not even one o'clock yet.” My heart is thumping like crazy and my palms are sweating.

“No, it's not that. Go see your mom.”

Oh this is big trouble. What have I done? I didn't leave out any more sea water for people to drink. I didn't let the barnacles die and smell up the house. I didn't put any poison in the French toast. “Aren't you coming in?” I'm hoping for back-up, though I don't know why exactly, because the situation could as easily go the other way and I'd end up with two against one, the one being me. They have a parenting rule about “no piling on” but it doesn't always turn out that way.

“I'll be in later.”

He isn't looking mad. More sad. Embarrassed. Something.

I catch sight of my bike on the way back to the house. I wonder about unchaining it and flying back to Kansas, but this is a fleeting fantasy. Sooner or later I will have to face the music, whatever it is. Maybe it isn't about me. Maybe one of my parents has a fatal disease. Or they are getting a divorce.

There is a tuna fish sandwich waiting for me on the table when I arrive in the kitchen. There are pickles in it, and I can see extra mayonnaise dribbling out the side. She's made it exactly the way I like it best. What is going on?

Mom is trying to look happy but I can see the effort it is taking by the way her lips quiver in the corners. This is very confusing. Am I in trouble or not?

“Hey. What's up?” I try to sound innocent, which I am, though I don't feel like it.

“Nothing, Sylvie.” Not Honey, not Sweetie, not Cookie or Cupcake. This is very bad. “Eat your sandwich. Then I thought we could have a talk.”

I don't know how I can eat a sandwich when my stomach is literally tied in a knot, but I sit down and nibble on a crust. A chunk of celery falls out from between the pieces of bread and lands in a puddle of tuna juice on the plate. I figure I can eat the celery, it won't be dry like the bread, it won't stick in my throat and choke me to death, so I pick it up and shove it in my mouth and chew.

Mom has turned her back. She is wiping down the already immaculate counter tops. Then she grabs a box of baking soda from the cupboard, half-empties it in the sink and starts to scrub.

I swear it takes me twenty minutes, but I finish the sandwich and half the glass of milk and then Mom says we should go in the family room.

She takes me to the computer. She opens the web browser. And clicks on the history tab. And scrolls down.

There are all the sites I visited last night. The ones I was mostly too tired to read but clicked on them anyway.

“Do you want to talk to me about this?” says Mom.

I am so frozen by the apparent seriousness of the matter that I can't think straight, and have no idea whatsoever what I should be saying.

“You can't deny it, Sylvie. I've already talked to your father so I know that it wasn't him visiting these sites.”

Well of course not, he has no interest in guerilla marketing or barnacles or ponies.

“Not that you have to talk to me. If you want to talk to someone else, that will be fine, I can find a professional, one of my colleagues perhaps, or if you prefer I will find someone for you to talk to that I don't know.”

Some kind of crustacean expert I am thinking. But then I think about how sneaky that whole guerilla marketing stuff is and that maybe it's worse than sneaky maybe it's downright dishonest and I shouldn't have been doing it and now she's found out, it was the last stuff I looked at on the net and now she's disappointed in me.

I hang my head. “Stephanie told me about it. She's studying it at university.”

“Are you telling me you have no personal interest in these topics?”

“Well no, not exactly.” I'm not sure this is the right time to come clean on the details of my marketing campaign.

“You can trust me, Sylvie. I'm aware that puberty can be an extremely confusing stage, and I also know that sexual preference is determined very early. Your Uncle Brian—.” She stops abruptly and I take a peak up at her. Her face has gone all red. She sniffs, takes a deep breath, lets it out, and starts again. “I don't mind that you are searching for answers, but the internet may not be the best source of information. Nor for that matter is someone taking a first-year psychology course.”

Okay, I must be really slow. So this has nothing to do with marketing campaigns. It's one of these puberty things. I review the sites listed on the history screen. Surely she can't think I'm a hermaphrodite—she's my mother, she's seen me naked. She must think I'm bisexual. I wonder briefly if there's any advantage in letting her think this, anything I might be able to use to get my own horse. But then I think, gee, this is my mother who knows me better than anyone. Could she be right?

“Mom, do you think I'm bisexual?”

“It doesn't matter what I think,” says Mom. “What matters is what you think.”

“I don't know what I think.”

Mom reaches over and pulls me tight into her. “Sylvie, we will love you no matter what you are. We won't try to change you. You're perfect just the way you are.”

I can feel her quivering against me. I hate it when she gets emotional like this. It reminds me of the way she used to be, before she went back to school and became a psychoanalyst. When Uncle Brian died she cried for weeks.

This is such a big deal to her, and I don't get it. Everything has become way too serious and out of proportion. It's time for a joke.

“What if I decide,” I start slowly, “that I am . . . ,” I pause like Dad would for comedic effect, “an equestrian?”

Mom stiffens against me and then says the scariest thing I've heard all day. “I'll find you a therapist.”

First gymnastics, then hi-lights, now this. She's right about one thing: puberty is a very confusing stage, even for someone who isn't there yet.