I unfolded the one that wasn’t pink...

Another Country -22-
Erin Halfelven

In the trailer, I pulled the blinds and checked to make sure no one outside could see in. I opened the roof vent and left the window in the little bathroom open a bit so some air could move. It was warm in the trailer, but not hot really. Then I put the plain brown bag on the bed and sat next to it for a while.

The usual afternoon sounds penetrated the aluminum walls of my Trailer of Solitude. The distant roar of jets at the air base. A car going by on the highway two blocks away. Birds in the neighbor’s sycamore tree. The tiny refrigerator in the kitchenette cycled. Nothing required anything from me.

I opened the bag.

The chemise came out as if waiting for me. I’d already tried wearing one, and this one looked similar, a darker color and with little half-sleeves instead of straps. I shook it out and laid it on the bed. Opaque. Practical.

A smaller bag inside the bag held the bras, one a sort of beige or buff color, lighter than the chemise, the other a very pale…pink. I unfolded the one that wasn’t pink and held it by the straps and looked at it.

It looked like a bra. Okay, I had probably looked at a lot of bras in the Sears catalog, which was one of the places a kid my age could look at nearly naked women. I’m not sure why I looked at such things, it was sort of expected. This one didn’t have a woman inside it.

Mom wanted to know how it fit so she could tell Nadine, and if it didn’t, then they would pick out a different one, and I would still end up sitting on the bed with a bra bought just for me. I pulled off my shirt.

The mirror on the bedroom door was at an odd angle because I hadn’t closed the door but I’d kind of developed a skill of not looking at mirrors without my shirt on since things had started happening on my chest. I could see enough without trying that I could recognize the logic of wearing a bra to make things not stand out so much.

I didn’t have to like it, but it made a kind of sense.

I figured out the bra mostly by logic and partly by accident. There was a moment where I had it on backwards and another moment that I don't need to describe, and then it was on correctly and I stood there with my arms at my sides and looked at the ceiling instead of the mirror.

It didn't hurt. No twinges or pains anywhere. I’d half expected it to hurt, to pinch or at least to feel like something being done to me, but it mostly just felt -- there. Present. A thing that was there now.

I made myself look at the mirror, standing a little sideways in order to judge the…minimizing effect.

The doctor had used that word, same as Mom. Looking at the mirror I understood what they’d meant, less projection, no pointy bits sticking out. It made sense but I was standing there looking at myself in a mirror and I was wearing a bra. I pulled the chemise on over it.

I couldn’t really see the bra through the layer of opaque fabric but I still knew it was there. I pulled a t-shirt over everything and checked to see how that looked.

I looked like me. That was a relief, the extra layers didn’t really show. You couldn’t see any straps or pointy parts. The shirt hung a bit closer to my body, static between it and the chemise? Maybe.

I sat back down on the bed. I frowned at the mirror. I wished I felt more confident in what I saw there, but it did seem to be an improvement.

For now. Until maybe the doctor could do something for me. But what if he couldn’t? What if…? I didn’t want to think about it.

* * *

A few minutes later I heard Mom close the door to the kitchen and the crunch of her step on the gravel. She knocked and I told her to come on in.

“Does it fit?" she asked before she got all the way in.

“It fits fine," I said.

She closed the door and looked at me in the bedroom down the short hall. “Can you stand and turn?” she asked. “Or come here, where I can see better?”

I elected to stand and turn. If I had had a full set of leather luggage handy for someone to guess the price of, I could have waved at it. I finished turning and looked back down the hall at Mom.

I should have known she wouldn’t be satisfied. She motioned me to come closer, so I walked into the kitchenette. “Turn again, please,” she said.

I did, still without the luxury set of travel bags, so I gestured at the tiny refrigerator. Sixty-seven, ninety-five, Bill, I mentally guessed.

“I think it’s working,” she said.

I took a breath and nodded.

"Do you want to go to school for the afternoon?" she asked.

I thought about the hallway outside my locker. I thought about fourth period, which was PE and for which I now had an excuse to avoid. I thought about the girl who sat behind me in English and was nosy about everything in a way she thought was a compliment to herself.

"No," I said.

Mom nodded like she'd expected that. "Okay. Do you want lunch? You barely ate."

"I had two tacos."

"You barely ate," she said again, but she didn’t push it. She considered giving me a hug, and both of us thought that I would not appreciate it enough. I stepped back, and she went out and into the main house.

I heard her say hello to someone, but realized she was talking to one of the little alligator lizards that are all over our backyard. They’re all named Gerald for some Mom reason.

I went back to the bedroom and looked at the bag still on my bed, but I didn’t want to try on the pink bra to see if it fit, too. They were the same size, and I knew the color would not show under the opaque chemise. I put the bag and the bra inside it away in my dresser.

Then I lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling and thought about Mrs. Gorman, the music teacher, who ought to know better but seemed to remember me as a girl. I tried to figure out which finger went on which hole on the recorder for playing an F.

I still didn't know.