Jane -11- Gossip (Patreon)

Baby Audrey —the doll, not me— got an honored place on the bed next to my giant plush duck who I had named Myron Mallardo. They would be best friends forever, I just knew it.

Then Mom let me pick out my own clothes for going to school registration. No pressure there. Sigh.

Well, I’d had a shower last night but I put on my other bra, the one I hadn’t worn yet. Going without a bra is really out of the question, already. I’m not big there, but things are so tender.

Clean panties, too. I still look like a boy between the legs but I’m just a kid and the evidence is sort of tiny. For some reason, I felt annoyed at Marcie, an older girl I hardly even knew.

Some very thin socks decorated with lace, my flat oxford shoes with the fake buckles. I buffed those, they had gotten a bit dusty. Mom said I should never put a real shine on them, girls’ shoes shouldn’t be too shiny. Huh, wonder why?

I decided on a dress. Jump in with both feet, Beth Ann had said. The sundress with the big blue flowers, bell-shaped short sleeves, and full skirt. Mom and the salesgirl had both said I looked sweet in it. Looking sweet is good for a girl unless you’re in a fairy tale being chased by a giant.

I added my necklace with the blue stone and my unicorn charm bracelet. We’d gotten two more charms for it at Nordstrom’s: a silver stetson and a gold heart. The gold heart would come apart into two charms, one of which you could give to your best friend. But I couldn’t imagine Pete wanting to wear it.

I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that, except for my hair, I looked like any other girl on the first day of going to middle school. Even messy from sleeping, my haircut didn’t look so boyish, just short. 

The sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach might have been a twinge of horror for my situation, but any sensible person would be a little afraid, wouldn’t they? I was going to march into school and tell a bunch of grown-ups that I was a girl now and they should treat me like one.

Oh, yeah, no pressure.

On the “both feet” principle, I had agreed to wear my wig, so I got it from the stand in the closet and went looking for Mom for help putting it on.

Her bedroom door wasn’t closed so I walked right in and discovered her there in just her panties and bra, trying to decide what she was going to wear.

“Oop!” I said and backed out quickly.

“Audrey?” Mom called. “It’s okay, come on in.” She came to the door to find me half-way back down the hall. 

The guys were all out of the house. Dad had gone up the Big House to meet with Mr. Fordyce, and Moose and Junior had already left for Curry Valley Union High, also in Rosa Morena, but starting a day earlier than my middle school. Lee Junior drove the older of our F150 pickup trucks, with Morgan riding shotgun for his first day of high school. 

Most days I would probably ride with them instead of taking the twelve-mile trip on the bus but today, Mom was going along to help me register. As the new me. 

And here I had walked in on her in her undies. I had already blushed more in the last three days than anyone should have to in a lifetime but I knew my face was redder than manzanita berries.

Mom turned to go back into her room, motioning that I should follow. She laughed, “Just us girls here, right?”

That’s what it meant that she had not bothered to close her door with all the males out of the house. I sighed and followed her into her room.

“That blue looks so good on you,” she commented. “Should I match or contrast?” She surveyed her closet.

“I dunno,” I said. I still had the wig in my hands but was afraid I might start shredding it from anxiety so I put it down on her dresser. “Are you going to wear a dress, too?”

She seldom wore dresses or even skirts but she nodded. “I thought I would. In solidarity, if nothing else.”

“Solidarity?” I repeated. 

“Togetherness,” she clarified. “Showing that I’ve got your back.”

“Are you… going to need to have my back?” I asked, remembering how Dad said Mom was bold instead of brave. Full speed ahead and don’t stop for torpedoes. I bit my lip, worrying about the torpedoes.

She shrugged. “Who knows? I put a call into Mr. Lemuel’s office a few minutes ago, but he wasn’t in. His office wasn’t even open.” She snorted. Garret Lemuel was the Fordyce Ranch attorney.

“Huh?” I said.

Mom pulled out a green and blue dress and held it up against her. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Uh,” I shook my head. “The stripes are too wide and the blue is too close to mine. The patterns would clash.”

“Too wide, huh?” she mused. “You aren’t saying that I’m getting fat are you?”

I giggled, knowing she was teasing. At five-foot-six, Mom weighs about 125 pounds, fat only by super-model standards.

She grinned at me and pulled out another dress. This one had a lot of small violet flowers with blue, green and brown details. The vivid colors would not have worked for me but they brought out her dark coloring and made her gray eyes bluer.

I nodded. “I like that one.” The weirdness of recommending dresses for my half-naked mother had faded a bit. How could that be?

Mom put the one dress back and slipped the other one on. “This one zips in the back with a little hook at the top,” she said, turning away. “Get that for me, would you?”

I did so, suppressing a tiny giggle. The mother-daughter bonding of it all just suddenly seemed hilarious.

She turned around, commenting, “I can reach that myself, but it’s awkward to fasten without seeing….” She saw my expression. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t help it, I had to giggle. “Are we going to end up dressing alike? I mean, like to go to church or…something?” I had trouble imagining it.

She laughed. “Probably not,” she admitted. “You look great in pastels, and they always make me look badly embalmed.”

That did it. We hooted like owls and staggered around like drunks, eventually falling into a mutual hug.

*

Mom got my wig sorted out for me, adding a red hairband that somehow went with my other colors. I retrieved my straw bag from my own room while Mom finished getting dressed then I went outside to wait for her at the car. 

Gossip, one of the mongrel cattle dogs, met me at the end of the walk, evidently wanting a scratch and some doggie-talk. She got the name for her habit of muttering and whining while she licked your ears.

Careful not to let her put a dirty paw on my dress, I rubbed the top of her head with a knuckle and told her she was a good girl and a good mommie since it was obvious that she was nursing a litter of pups somewhere.

Half-border collie, half-pointer, like most of the working dogs on the ranch, her curly black-and-white coat had attracted bits of hay and straw. She looked anxious as I picked some of her bedding off her but responded with a tailwag and a happy yip when I gave her a vigorous face-and-ear rub.

Collies are good herders for sheep but cattle don’t like to be nagged about it, my father explained to me when I asked why we always used crossbred dogs on the ranch. Pointers are energetic enough for the work, with good eyesight and some herding instinct, but are less inclined to try to urge cattle onward with a heel nip, which can get a herding dog kicked or stomped.

“Cattle are not sheep. The mix breed dogs are more laid back about herding. Besides,” he had added, “it’s just too hot out here for a purebred collie with all that fur. This ain’t Scotland.”

I smiled, watching Gossip trot off back toward the barns, the color of her coat and her distended teats making me think of a small fuzzy dairy cow. I glanced down at my own chest, realizing that at some time in the future, I might be nursing a child of my own.

Talk about weirding out an eleven-year-old kid who used to think she was a boy. What in the world would that feel like?

Mom came out and got into the car while I stood there blinking and wondering about my future. Wouldn’t you need to get married before you had babies? And that would mean… 

I must have totally spaced out because she had to lower the electric window on the passenger side and call to me.

“Audrey? Mom to Space Cadet Audrey? We’re ready for lift off!”

Giggling a bit about her silliness, I climbed in and buckled up.

“What were you thinking about so hard, honey?”

“Gossip,” I said meaning the dog.

“Oh,” said Mom. “Well, I can’t tell you not to worry, but remember, it’s not what people say to each other, it’s how they treat you that matters.”

“Huh,” I said, a little confused. “Gossip has puppies. Is she going to be okay?”

“Puppies?” Mom frowned. “Oh! Yes, she does, she’s had them on a pile of gunny sacks in the shed behind the cream separator. Junior told me about them. When they get their eyes open, would you like to go see them?”

“Uh, huh,” I said. I knew they would be cute, but Mom has a strict rule about no dogs in the house. Would it be possible for Audrey to do something Audie had never managed and get a puppy to raise indoors? I looked sideways at her. With Daddy I might have been able to but Mom was way ahead.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Don’t plan on playing the brat, don’t even ask. We have enough beasts in the house with your brothers.”

I had to laugh at that.

*

Rosa Morena Middle School is almost all new concrete buildings. About a dozen sit around a central grassy square. A gym and swimming pool at one end are surrounded by various athletic fields and some bleachers.

At the other end of the complex, a large building serves as cafeteria, auditorium and theater. Another large building is the administrative offices.

That’s where we headed after parking the car across the street in a lot marked for visitors.

Mom walks fast and I scurried to keep up. “You never went here, huh?” I asked Mom.

“No,” she agreed. “It hadn’t been built yet and Presley Elementary went all the way to grade eight, so I went from there directly to high school. Same one your brothers are going to now, across town.”

We stopped for a moment to admire the murals painted on the multi-purpose and administration buildings. The larger one, on the cafeteria/auditorium showed the story of Rosa Morena, the character from a novel back in the 1890s that the town and the school are named for.

Rosa was a girl in Old California who fell in love with an outlaw and died tragically, according to the story. It was all a lot of romantic goop to me before. 

But now, looking at the painting of the beautiful Rosa languishing in her jail cell looking out at the valley so lush and green—and in the distance (on the other building), there’s a posse pursuing her boyfriend—well, now, I felt a bit different.

A bit more confused, I guess. Now it did seem sort of cool to be willing to die to protect the secrets of someone you loved. Except that she did die and it turned out her boyfriend had already been killed trying to rescue her. That part still seemed dumb. Like Romeo and Juliet where everyone dies and it’s supposed to be such a great story.

Her name was Chularosa Valverde. La Rosa Morena was her nickname, and the name of the book in English, The Dark Rose. Which is why the school colors are red, black and white, I guess. The high school colors are maroon and white. Maroon is sort of a dark rose color. Maroon, morena… oh.

Anyway, the entrance to the admin building was not on the street side and when we turned the corner there was another mural visible. This one showed kids playing games, sitting at desks, singing and stuff. It was cool because it was kids and everything was bright colors and sunshine.

We went through big glass doors into the admin building and there was a counter right there that said, Registration. We went to the counter and Mom laid the paperwork she had brought from the doctors down. 

A young woman got up from a desk behind the counter and came up to us. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Mom, which I thought was pretty confident because suddenly I was very scared and nervous. “I’m here to correct the registration for my daughter, Audrey Jane.”

“I see,” said the woman. “Last name, and grade?” she asked, pulling a book out from under the counter. Her nametag read Ms. Hudson.

“Jane is our last name,” Mom explained. The whole family is used to this question. “And she’s in grade six.”

Another woman at a desk further back looked up, glanced at me, then stood and came up to the counter, too. According to her nametag, she was Mrs. Wright. “Is this the boy that wants to attend school as a girl?” she asked, frowning first at Mom and then at me. 

Wow. It’s not a good idea to frown at Mom without a good reason. 

“No,” said Mom, firmly. “This is the girl who has been attending school as a boy for six years because no one knew the truth. And you have been listening to gossip, haven’t you?”

Mrs. Wright glared at Mom and opened her mouth to say something else.

“Gossip has puppies,” I said, not even thinking about it. Everyone looked at me. “Behind the cream separator on a pile of gunny sacks,” I explained.

Mom was trying not to smile but now everyone else was frowning. “Gossip is a dog,” she commented and looked directly at the woman who had interrupted with her rude question.

Ms. Hudson hurried to turn over pages in the big register book she had on the counter. “Here it is,” she said. “Jane, Audrey Michael, grade six. ”Yeah, you’re already registered, honey.” She beamed at me.

Clueless, I decided and grinned back at her.

“May I see,” Mom asked, reaching out.

Ms. Hudson began to turn the big book around but Mrs. Wright intercepted. “Why?” she demanded.

“Why do I want to see a public record relating to my child attending this school? Or why do you think you have any right to deny me access?” Mom snapped, after a moment of surprise. “Careful,” she added, “your answer may influence your future employment.”

Ms. Hudson pushed the book in front of my mom. “Parents check these entries all the time for accuracy, Mrs. Wright. It’s not at all unusual.”

The older woman glared at the younger woman, then retreated to her desk and picked up a phone. Mom looked at the register. I tried but the counter was too high for me to get a good look.

“I’m Jenny,” Ms. Hudson said to me, then asked, “Have you seen these puppies, Audrey?”

“No, ma’am, not yet. They don’t have their eyes open,” I replied. I considered climbing up on a stool on my side of the counter so maybe I could get a better look at the register but Jenny had distracted me. “They’re going to be so cute, though. Gossip is black and white with a curly coat, and she’s a good cattle dog.” I couldn’t keep from giggling.

“I bet,” said Jenny, smiling.

“Here’s the line,” Mom said. “You see where it says Audrey and an M? That should be an F.”

Jenny glanced at me. “I see,” she said. “You’re not a boy, are you, Audrey?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “But I used to think I was.”

Jenny laughed. “I was a tomboy, too. But I never got my school records mixed up.”

I giggled again. Definitely clueless, I thought, but I liked Jenny.

“Can you fix this?” Mom asked, putting a finger on the mistake.

“Sure,” said Jenny. She moved to her desk and picked up a bottle of buff-colored Liquid Paper.

Mrs. Wright called out. “Jenny!”

“Hmm?” said the girl, looking at the older woman.

“You should talk to Mr. Fuller. I have him on the phone.” Mrs. Wright held the instrument out toward Jenny.

“I’ll be right back,” Jenny said to Mom. And she put the bottle of Liquid Paper down on the counter by the book. My eyes shot open and I stuffed my hands in my mouth, ducking down below the counter where no one could see me.

I don’t know if Jenny knew what Mom was going to do, but I did.