-5-
Benton Academy
Benton Academy was a private, mostly white, mostly protestant, Christian school that only allowed the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie of Benton to become students. The academy had started off as a segregation academy. The academy had started when a group of Benton's leading businessmen decided that they would not send their children to the newly desegregated public schools. Among those businessmen had been my grandfather Sherman Potter.

Anyway, it was a rainy, foggy, Monday and the bright, alluring lights of the Metro Center lingered at the edge of my mind. I felt ill at ease, the events of the last few days were starting to weigh on me a little. My mind felt like a bunch of puzzle pieces that somebody had just dropped on the floor.

Now, I did not fit the mold of your average Benton Academy student. And to be honest that's fine with me. Now, not fitting the mold of your average student, I tended to spend my one hour of self-study alone in the school's library. Like I said before I was something of a writer and something of an aspiring artist.

And though I had taken some art-classes over the years, none of my success had come from those teachers, who mocked and belittled my talents. Who had told me time and time again I was wasting my talents on something as trivial as comics. Who had taken great delight in defacing each of my drawings with red ink. One day when I become successful, I will come back here and rub it in their face.
Now, I'm sure you're asking yourself how did I learn to draw? Well first I started by trying to mimic what I saw on early morning anime. I would draw from memory scenes from various shows. I think I started drawing Pokemon and then moved on to trying to copy the art style of Sailor Moon. I had to be around twelve at the time. I remember I would spend hours upon hours trying to nail the art style.

And well written. Writing came later, you see Mom was concerned that I was not spending enough time reading and so around the time I was getting into Pokemon she discovered that a series of small, easy to read Pokemon books had been published. And well she brought me the first one, and told me, if I was to read the whole book, write a five hundred word essay on it and bring it to her, she'll buy me another one.
That summer, I followed the adventures of Ash Ketchum from the humble beginnings in Pallet Town to halls of fame and fortune at the Indigo Plateau. And then beyond to the Orange Islands. All the while I'd refined my own art style and discovered my own voice as a writer.

If the Pokemon novels had given voice to my muse, then the many guide books that gave advice to novices just learning how to draw manga that had been translated from Japanese to English had given credence skills as an artist. Those books did not come cheap, they often ranged from twenty to thirty dollars a piece. With the more advanced books costing upwards to a hundred or so dollars.

Unlike the Pokemon novels, I had to buy those books using my own money. Money I'd earned mowing the neighbors lawns on one hundred and fifteen degree days. Or by busting my butt deep cleaning the house from top to bottom. Or picking up extra shifts at the family owned fish house or helping when I could at the family owned general store. That was on top of the countless hours I spent refining my craft, well both crafts, drawing and writing.

That is why each follower I picked up on DeviantArt or each comment somebody left on my fanfiction on Fanfiction.net felt like a small, private victory.

Anyway this rainy Monday afternoon I found myself spending my period of self-study roaming around our school's library. I was searching for new words, like I said I was an artist and a writer and well I wanted to build up both my artistic skills as well as expand my vocabulary. And what better way to learn new words than sitting down and reading the whole Merriam-Webster dictionary. I was working my way through the “T's” this afternoon when I stumbled upon one word that just struck me.

Transgender adj.
Of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person was identified as having at birth.
I paused and then reached into my backpack. I then wrote that line down word for word. It looked like this.
'Transgender adj. Of, relating to, or being a person who gender differs from the person was identified as having at birth – Merriam-Webster dictionary'

And then as an after thought I jotted down the following note.
'I might have a body of a woman, but I have a soul of a woman. - Aoi Futable'
I then paused and took a deep breath. It seemed I was finally getting a good look at all the puzzle pieces that had been scattered across the table.

At that moment the bell sounded. Bringing a premature end to my research. But now, at least I'd figured out two possible puzzle pieces. I mean having figured out two possible puzzle pieces was a start, it was not the best start in the world. But then again I had to start somewhere.
End of Chapter Five

-6-
Albert Sidney Johnston Memorial Library

Benton had only one public library, and it was located downtown, across the street from Sunflower. Sunflower was a regional chain of grocery stores that dotted the lower Southern states, and the library was named after the Confederate general who had command Confederate forces during the Battle of Benton. Albert Sidney Johnston himself was a native of Benton, his family having arrived the second wave of settlers- some fifteen years after the first.

By then, the settlement had grown from a small collection of thatched huts along the muddy banks of the Big Black River into something resembling a modest hamlet. Census records from that period are scarce, but the few I managed to look at showed the town had a population of roughly six hundred people. It boasted a hotel, a hardware store, three general stores, an Episcopal Church, a Baptist Church, a Methodist Church, a blacksmith and several saloons. And last but not least a post office.

This was back when Benton served as the county seat of the newly formed Yazoo County, before the seat was moved some thirty miles away to the village of Manchester, which shortly changed it's name to Yazoo City. The name Yazoo was chosen to honor the river that flowed beside it. Not long after, the Johnston family arrived and cleared several hundred acres of land, forming a massive, sprawling estate they named Belle Bends Plantation. Situated along a bend in the Big Black River, the plantation produced so much cotton that it maintained its own private wharf.
Before you ask- yes, the Johnston family still owns Belle Bends. Yes, they still farm the land. And yes, the wharf exists, though today it serves as a private fishing pier. River traffic as long since dried up, and cotton is now moved primarily by truck or by rail. A short-line railroad runs downtown Benton to Belle Bends Plantation and several other plantations in the area, carrying cotton back to town to be ginned.

I know this because the line runs directly through my backyard. I also know this because my father is the president of the local bank, the Bank of Yazoo, and the Johnston family keeps most of their land money there.
Why is this important?

Because a cadet branch of the Johnston family eventually donated their townhouse to the then-thriving village of Benton. That house-the old Johnston residence-became what is now known as the Albert Sidney Johnston Memorial Library. Its claim to fame being one of the oldest public libraries in the state of Mississippi. The building sits on four and a half acres of land that formed something of a triangle.
Within that triangle stands the Johnston Memorial Library, the Main Street Middle School, a statue erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, and a fountain. Now that you have a good idea of were I am, it's time to tell you what I'm doing. I'm conducting a bit of field research. At the moment, I have one guidepost-one word. I need more, and that need has led me here.

The library is the only place in town that offers unlimited access to a complete set of encyclopedias. It also provides limited access to a new thing called the “Word Wide Web,” which is suppose to house all the information ever collected by humanity. At least, that what our science teacher told us. I sometimes imagine that one day this “World Wide Web” will connect the entire world, and that people will spend countless hours of their days surfing it. Perhaps it will even change the way we view the world around us. Or maybe it will fade out and be forgotten altogether. But if that ever happens, the people providing it will have to stop charging by the hour- which I know will never happen.
And yes I have dipped my toes into the internet. My dad owns a computer, and I'm sometimes allowed to use it. Our school even has a computer and I sometimes use that. I just don't feel safe researching this stuff using the family's computer, I mean I barely feel safe enough using it to post my artwork. Or the weird fanfiction stories my mind often conjures up.

Also my Uncle Cliff, once told me that someday there would be something called A.I., which stands for “Artificial Intelligence,” and that it would help humanity achieve enlightenment and fundamentally change how we think and interact with the world. To me, that sounded like the kind of cheesy science-fiction idea that came from the crock-pot mind of Steven Spielberg.
The library was also a safe place. And here, in a quiet little reading room surrounded by dozens of hardbound copies of a dozen different dictionaries, I began my search. I was going to take the first word apart, word by word, starting with gender.

Gender n.
The behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
I quickly wrote that down on a loose sheet of paper. Then I leaned back in the chair, folded my hands behind my head, and gazed up at the ceiling.

Gender, according to the dictionary, referred not just to biology, but to the behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits associated with one sex. The word associated caught my attention. It suggested proximity, no permanence.
As I closed my eyes, I found myself recalling the lessons that had been drilled into me by my late grandfather before his untimely passing. Lessons that still echoed in my ears. Lessons such as, “Boys don't do dishes. That's women's work.”

Or, “A man's got to stand on his own two feet to make it in this world.”

And my personal favorite was always, “Spit on it and rub some dirt on it.”

And then the one he was most famous for: “Nobody was holding, my God damned hand when I stormed the beaches at Normandy with a backpack that weighed around one hundred pounds, clutching a M1 Garand in my trembling hands. I also never asked for absolution for those twenty three Nazi bastards I killed on those cliffs.”

I opened my eyes.

I had a ton of homework that needed to be completed. But I felt another key had slipped into my pocket. Which was good enough for me.

End of Chapter Six