“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.