"A Punishment I Will Never Forget"

[patticakes]

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Introduction

My mom resented me from the very moment I was born, and persisted through my early adolescence.  The reason for her rancorous attitude toward me was simply because I was born a boy. Throughout her unplanned pregnancy, she prayed to have another girl, so that my older sister, Sheila, who is a year and nine months older than I, could play well together, share clothes, and most importantly, be able to support each other during the physical and emotional challenges inherent to puberty, and to maintain their strong bond as mature adults. So, when the delivery nurse announced triumphantly "It's a boy!" my mom exclaimed, "I can't fuc*ing believe it!" Naturally, she didn't mean it in a positive way; on the contrary, she was quite dismayed.

My mom had been happily married to a loving man, who was over the moon when she gave him the glorious news that she was pregnant, after the trauma of having had two miscarriages.  Unfortunately, Dale, passed away just three months later from a pulmonary embolism.

Nine months after giving birth to Sheila, my mom met a male stranger in a bar. That brief episode, which played out like a scene from an old Hollywood "B" movie, I will leave to you to imagine. I will cut to the chase and tell you that she never saw him nor heard from "Jim" again after that night. Being the louse that he was, he rose quietly in their hotel room before sunrise while my mom was fast asleep, got dressed and slithered away. The S.O.B. was so inconsiderate that he never left a note thanking her for a good time, never mind leaving cash to pay the $150.00 hotel bill. Needless to say, my mom was upset for being played for a fool; however she was far more infuriated when she learned three months later that she was pregnant. After a thorough investigation, her notion of suing him for child support was futile, unfortunately, as there was no way to find him: every piece of information he provided during their drinks at the bare was totally fictitious.

During the months preceding my birth, my mom decided to devise a "Plan B" in the event, Heaven forbid, I would be born with XY chromosones.  Her well-thought-out ruse was to raise me as a girl until a few months before I turned five and would be enrolled in kindergarten. She told me years later that had home schooling been legal at that time, she would have continued her ruse until I was well into my teens.

Her first step in executing her plan was to choose a gender neutral name for my birth certificate.  She name she chose was Devon, the traditional female variant of the popular Devin male name.  So, her first effort to emasculate me was in gear, which included dressing me in a pink onesie for my trip home from the hospital.

Greeting me when we arrived was my mom's sister, Marilyn, and her two daughters, Kimberly, age four, and Rebecca, age eight.  They had been babysitting Sheila while my mom was in the hospital. My aunt was so thrilled to learn that my mom's wish to have another baby girl had come true. The two of them were so close all their lives that my mom had no qualms of conscience about disclosing "Plan B" to her sister.

For the first four years of my life, as far as I knew Sheila and I were sisters. Neighbors and their young children whom we played with didn't think any differently. With our matching Shirley Temple hairstyles and pretty dresses, other women whom my mom met casually when out shopping would easily take for granted that we were sisters.

Following such encounters, my mom would chuckle as the three of us went about our way, enjoying her ruse and banishing the thought that it would not be long before she would need to put her deception to rest and face reality:society norms would have her no choice but to commence, as she felt "the loathsome task" of raising a boy. Unfortunately for me, as fate would have it, I would be her scapegoat and bear the brunt of her child-bearing misfortune.