The Answer to Everything (8 page)

The only question was, could I get Eldrich to believe it?

John received an astonishing number of responses to the flyers. Total strangers would go to the website and bare their souls. It was crazy. Not surprisingly, theanswertoeverything.org attracted its fair share of interesting individuals—everything from a conspiracy theorist/UFO enthusiast to a self-trained exorcist. There were a few New Age granola types and some sad cases who just needed someone to talk to, but also a reasonable number of seemingly normal humans, people with jobs and friends and families who were obviously looking to fill some kind of void. John, of course, thought it was a big joke and disdained them all. He didn’t even bother reading most of the posts. He wasn’t interested in their comments, confessions or stories, even though he had solicited them. He was interested only in collecting their contact info and getting them to the point where they would show up for a “meeting.” He figured that once they had gathered to hear Eldrich speak, his little Church of Eldrich would be born and he could start collecting tithes.

I think he purposefully didn’t read the posts because it helped him keep his distance. I read them all. I’m a curious person. I found them fascinating. And while I couldn’t relate
to most of the people who wrote in, I did feel empathy for them. There were a few I especially felt sorry for. Like this one woman, Heather, who was in a lot of pain, and who I came to really like. It was Heather’s posts that prompted me to write one of the flyers and paste it up around town. John uses this to paint me as some kind of cynical early partner in his escapades. But it was never my intention to take advantage of these people. I wanted to help them!

Heather

Well, I’m back. And since I’ve come this far, I guess I’m going to tell the rest. Then I think I’ll sleep for about three days. OK.

The first six months were normal. Perfectly, wonderfully ordinary. We had a healthy baby boy with all his fingers and toes. Seven pounds, two ounces. We called him Thomas Owen, after Paul’s maternal grandfather and my dad. The breast-feeding was tricky. I couldn’t make enough milk and we had to supplement with formula, but that was the worst of it. Even the fatigue wasn’t so bad. Thomas was a good little sleeper. And I remember it as being an entirely calm and joyful period. We were surrounded by friends and family, and both Paul and I were over the moon with happiness and pride. I think the overriding feeling was just complete and utter contentment. We finally had our sweet little baby. A real family of our own. Life was going to get better and better, and our love would grow stronger and stronger.

Then things started to change. I noticed it long before Paul did, just in the things that Thomas reached for or even looked at. It sounds ridiculous but nobody knows a baby like its mother, and Thomas wouldn’t even
look
at the toy cars and trucks that the other baby boys were so keen on and that Paul
kept buying or building for him. If you put a toy car in his hand, he would drop it and reach for my necklace or earrings. Even before he could speak and tell me in no uncertain terms who he was and what he wanted, it was plain to see that he preferred pretty things, girly things—jewellery, dolls, anything frilly and especially anything pink. He wouldn’t even look at
Bob the Builder
when Paul put it on, but if
Angelina Ballerina
was playing, he would stare, mesmerized, at the TV. And he preferred the company of girls. Right from the beginning. In the park or with the neighbours’ kids he always gravitated to the girls. As soon as he could crawl, he’d crawl to the girls. He had no interest in the boys at all. Paul, of course, hated all of this. He accused me of “sissy-fying” our son. That’s the term he used. He said I was making Thomas gay, although the word he used was “homo.” As if you could make a toddler that way. Thomas was who he was when he was born. I wasn’t encouraging him to like the things he liked. But I wasn’t depriving him of those things, either. If he wanted to play with my necklace, I let him. If he wanted to crawl over to the girls, I didn’t stop him. Secretly I thought that’s what it was with Thomas. That he was going to grow up to be that way. But that was before he could talk. As soon as he started talking it became clear to me that something else was going on. Long before anyone else sensed or acknowledged it, it became obvious to me that God had heard my prayers and answered them. God had given me the little girl I’d asked for. But as some kind of cruel rebuke, He had put her in the body of a boy.

Of course, Paul didn’t want to accept it. He didn’t believe me when I finally broke down and confessed to him about my
prayer in the nursery that night. He said it was nonsense and that I was crazy. He said I wanted Thomas to be a mama’s boy, that I was trying to make Thomas gay. If only Thomas had been gay! Everything would’ve been so easy. So different. I’m sure that over time Paul would have come to accept a son who was that way. He loved Thomas more than anything in the world—at least his idea of Thomas. But Thomas was not gay.

He started talking early. At six months he was saying “Dada.” At ten months, “Mama.” By the time he was sixteen months old, he had quite a lot of words and could make simple sentences. I remember that right from the beginning when I would say “Good boy!” Thomas would say “No, Mama. Good
girl
.” He insisted from the time he could speak that he was a girl, and anybody with any sense could see that it was the truth. Before he was even two years old he would get cross and sulky when we referred to him as “he.” He used to unsnap his onesies so they would look like dresses instead of pants. He would sit under the dining-room table and hold the tablecloth over his head to pretend he had long hair. He’d do that with his bath towel too. And make skirts with it.

Of course, Paul despised this behaviour. Over and over again he would explain to Thomas the difference between boys and girls. Boys had penises; girls didn’t. Case closed. When Thomas realized that this was true, that he had “the wrong body,” he became very sad and withdrawn. Imagine waking up tomorrow with your own brain in the wrong body. That was how Thomas woke up to the world. It confused him. And it made him very unhappy. It was horrible to see. He just didn’t quite believe it. I think he really believed that it was going to
change. When I asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said he wanted Santa to take away his penis. I would find him clawing at it, trying to tear it off. It was crazy and scary. And the older he got, the worse it got. I was afraid he was going to get his hands on a knife. I couldn’t watch him every single second. But I had to. There was no more grabbing a quick shower during the day anymore, or even running down to the laundry room. I was too nervous.

We took Thomas to his pediatrician. I won’t say his name, but everyone in the community loved him and thought he was the best. He was my sister’s kids’ doctor. She adored him. And to be honest, for the first couple of years when everything was run-of-the-mill—vaccinations, colds, ear infections—he was perfectly fine. He told us that Thomas might have a condition called gender identity disorder, and that Paul was right, that we had to convince him he was a boy. He said it would be easier for Thomas in the long run if we could get him to accept the biological fact that he was male. He said that most kids with this condition come to their senses and grow out of it, but that if their parents indulged their delusion, the kids would just be worse off and confused beyond repair. He told us to get rid of anything girly that Thomas could get his hands on, and to only allow him boy toys and clothes, and boy TV shows. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and I trusted him.

Do you want to know how to make a child miserable? Take away everything that child loves, including the playmates of his choice. Then, if you’d care to see complete misery lapse into depression, weight loss, sleep disruption and self-mutilation—biting
up and down the arms was how Thomas expressed frustration—tell the child they have to behave in a way that is entirely unnatural to them at all times. This was Thomas’s life in the months after Doctor X’s proclamations. It was horrible. Punishing. I couldn’t bear to see Thomas suffer, and I couldn’t bear the anger and tension and rage that had taken over our home. Paul and I were constantly at each other’s throats. I would hiss at him for being too harsh. He would hiss at me for being too lax—which was any time I wasn’t treating my four-year-old son like a macho construction worker. Every time I snuggled Thomas, I was glared at as if I were doing something illegal and harmful. It was horrible. And I came to the conclusion that it was wrong. It was just plain wrong. Depriving Thomas of everything that he naturally wanted was depriving him of something vital that he needed. Paul didn’t agree. He would say, “You don’t give a kid ice cream for supper just ‘cause they clamour for it. You give them what’s good for them, ‘cause you know better.” It sounded reasonable on the surface, but it wasn’t a proper comparison. It wasn’t like we were depriving Thomas of some bonus thing like candy or treats; it’s like we were depriving him of
all
nourishment. And, anyway, if your child refused to eat what was “good for them” and was starving to death before your eyes, you
would
give them ice cream for dinner. You’d give them anything to keep them alive.

But I was an idiot. A fool. I was under the thumb of the doctor and my husband and my sister, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have been proactive. I would have done research. And I would have left. I would have taken Thomas to Toronto and started a new life. In
Toronto we would have been OK. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I started sneaking around, sneaking around with my own son. When Paul was out of the house, I would let Thomas be Emily—the name he had chosen for himself when he discovered that “Thomas” was strictly a boy name. He learned this from Thomas the Tank Engine, on TV. Emily was the girl train. So Thomas wanted to be Emily. And because I couldn’t stand to see my child wither away before my eyes, I decided to let Emily be herself for short periods of time when nobody was around. At first it was just an hour a day. I’d let her call herself Emily and allow her to play openly with some of the things we had hidden away. But after I saw what a difference it made to her physical health, I started giving her more and more time. It was like watering a plant that’s been neglected. I saw my child coming back to life.

Eventually, I decided to let Emily be herself whenever Paul wasn’t around. It was our little secret. The secret world of me and my sweet daughter. The best moments of our lives. I bought her a Barbie doll and started making clothes for it. I taught her how to knit. We would hide everything in the bottom of a garment bag that hung in the back of my closet. For Emily’s fifth birthday, I promised I’d take her to get a dress—a real one, not one of my blouses tied at the waist with a bathrobe belt. There was a terrible snowstorm the night before, but she was so impossibly excited that I decided I would dig out the car and we would inch our way to Walmart. Of course, she picked the pinkest, frilliest dress they had. And I bought her matching pink shoes. I can tell you honestly that I’ve never seen a person happier about anything in my whole entire life.
As miserable and withdrawn as Thomas was, that’s how joyful and exuberant Emily was—equal and opposite. She was practically bouncing out of her car seat on the way home. And the second we got in the house and made sure the coast was clear, she jumped into her outfit and ran to the mirror, where she stayed for the longest time, staring at herself. Her honest self. It was a big moment for her. She wasn’t playing dress-up with Mommy’s clothes. This was the way it was supposed to be. A little girl, dressed like any other little girl. And with her soft curls and dainty features, she looked just like any other girl, except even sweeter and more beautiful.

She said, “Mommy, take a picture of me!”

She wanted to preserve it. She wanted proof of the thing that was being denied. The real and true thing. And so I did. And then we heard the front door open. Paul’s noon inspection was cancelled because of the storm. So we stripped off the dress and shoes, and I jammed them in the closet while Emily pulled on pants and a sweater. Then we flew downstairs, where Paul was waiting with a special birthday present for Thomas—two NHL steel hockey nets for the backyard rink. And he tried not to look totally peeved when our child just scowled at the gift, and he bundled up Thomas and took him outside to help shovel the snow off the rink, even though Emily really wanted to help me bake the birthday cake—an activity that was, for her, obviously prohibited. And the rest of the afternoon was the typical tense charade, and I expect everything would have gone on as usual if I hadn’t forgotten to erase the photo of Emily from the camera. But I was flustered and I did forget. And when I carried out Thomas’s birthday cake—white and
blue icing only, no flowers—Paul was waiting in the dining room with the lights dimmed and the camera in his hands. And he turned it on and saw what was there.