Magnolia Blooms & Sakura Petals
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

-4-
Who is Heather Elizabeth Croft?

A few days ago I think I had an epiphany. I think I decided on a whim that my real name was not “William Alexander Croft” but instead it was “Heather Elizabeth Croft.” A revelation I'd not dared to share with anyone in fear of being laughed at or at worst being put aboard a south bound train to Chamberlain Hunt, a private military school that was located in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Some one hundred and fourteen miles south of Greenville, Mississippi.

Instead I decided to file it away in the back of my mind. Now, once again I found myself leering into the glowing screen of my family's computer while in the background the closing theme of Inuyasha played. The song was called “My Will” and it was both hauntingly beautiful and soul crushing melancholic at the same time. Once again, I'd stayed up late and burned the midnight oil as I once more entered into fearsome, ruthless melee combat with my dreaded arch-nemesis, the evil and cunning, Lord Writers Block!

But instead of locking arms with and penning him to the ground, I found myself searching the confines of my soul for answers. If I was really a girl named “Heather Elizabeth Croft” then I had to know who she was? I decided to answer all questions that were bothering me by first writing down all I knew about her. I figured every spare, scrap piece of information I could come up with would be useful as I tried to sort through it all and try to make sense of this massive puzzle that was dropped on my lap.

I knew she enjoyed reading Shojo manga, like Fruit Basket and Ouran High School Host Club. She also enjoyed reading Maho Shojo or Magical Girl anime's like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Magic Knight Rayearth. Those were her favorite, but she would watch everything that aired on Adult Swim and on Saturday Mornings. She was the kind of girl who would work from dawn to dust to earn extra pocket money. She was the kind of girl who was just coming into her own.

She was a girl who wanted to write, who wanted to draw, who wanted to reach out and touch the world around her. She was also a girl who was suffering from writer's block. And that writer's block scared her witless because she felt that the only talent that God had seen fit to give her was withering on the vine. She was a girl that was filled with self doubts, a girl who kept comparing herself to others and always found herself coming up short.

She was the type of girl who not only loved to read, but needed to read. Who felt reading was more than a way to pass time, but was a way to broaden her horizons, she needed to read like a fish needed water to breath. Who's favorite bedtime stories had been The Chronicles of Narnia and The Chronicles of Prydain. Those bedtime reading sessions had been more than bonding time to her, more than a shared sense of adventure between a tired, overworked mother who was going through a terrible and messy divorce. They had been a gate-way into a world she could only dream of.

A child who was still struggling to understand why she was struggling to read and write, while her peers sailed passed her and left her eating their dust. Those stories, beloved by generations of children and adults, had laid the foundation of the desire to write.

To share her own stories, to chase her own voice, they in short had laid the corner store for her desire to write her own stories and breathe life into her own creations.

And six years later she had answered the calling of the craft and since that faithful moment she had known a minute of peace or tranquility. Instead she had known only heartbreak, doubt and frustration at her lack of success while again her peers seemed to excel.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to wheel myself away from the computer desk.

“What if?” I paused and stood up and walked across the room. “What if I tried to write a story.. about a boy who is really a girl trapped in a boy's body. Or a Pokemon Trainer who is really a girl trapped in a boy's body..”

I could feel the gears starting to turn inside my head as I spoke the words out loud.

“Of course I'll have to do field research, get my hands dirty..” I said, taking a deep breath. “It's one thing to play a girl in a video game, it's a totally different thing to live as a girl.. not only to dress as a girl, but to dress, think, and act like a girl.” I paused as I folded my hands behind me back.

“It would require me going out into the world as a girl.” I paused. Then I remembered a little Latin I managed to retain from last year's Latin class. Yes, I knew a little Latin. Why? Because I'm going to a private Episcopalian Academy.. The academy was named after St. Stephen's, St. Stephen's Episcopal Academy was the premier private academy in the Yazoo Delta and was modeled after Sewanee: The University of the South. It was very “High Church” with students required to attend chapel daily. The Services were sung and clouds of gray incense often floated among the rafters.

“Alea iacta est.” I muttered under my breath.

I knew if I followed this path I would be torn between everything I knew and loved. I knew plainly that even though Mississippi was changing. With the advent of the Internet and the opening of the new Nissan Plant in far away Canton that new and exciting ideas were being injected into the state. The Mississippi I knew was not the Mississippi my great uncle William A. Percy knew, the Klan no longer ran the state. The schools were no longer segregated.

But there were still elements of the “Old Guard” around, enough of them anyway to cause trouble for me. And yet, I felt I still needed to walk that lonesome road. To walk through the hills shadowed by danger and death. To brave the perils of this world, because I felt that by only enduring the hardships this journey will entail could I really write at the level I wanted to write.

End Chapter 4