The Wrong Side of Pink

The WRONG SIDE of PINK
Part 1

On Madison's seventeenth birthday, her mother finally laid down the law. "Hon, don't you think it's time to see a doctor? I mean, you're seventeen years old. Where's your first period?"

Madison, who was thinking more about the sleepover she'd had (girls and boys!—and even though her parents had supervised, they'd been kind of lax in their oversight, enough that Maddie had managed to sneak some kissing in with her boyfriend) and the cool presents she'd gotten from all her friends, couldn't bring herself to muster any real concern about the topic. "Mom, I started everything else late too, remember?—I didn't start getting my breasts until I was twelve, and I've still barely got any pubic hair." Besides, not having a period seemed a blessing to her: no monthly bleeding, no cramps, no mood swings, no PMS, no bloating, no water retention. How was that a bad deal? Besides, everything else was developing—she had her hips and her breasts (big enough to be the envy of her friends), she had her long legs; in fact, she was one of the taller people in school at nearly 6 feet. She never had acne problems (another thing to envy). She was well-liked, she was popular, she was doing well in her classes, she had a great boyfriend (the inestimable Craig Rogers, one of the few boys at Mount Hill High to be taller than she), and actually—it was startling to think of this, but it was true—she was beautiful. She was one of the most attractive girls at Mount Hill. Madison Bechtel was seventeen, and life was good. How could she possibly be concerned about anything?

"I know, and that's worrying too," said her mother. "I talked to my grandma and to your Aunt Shayna, and none of them ever remember anybody having growth patterns like yours. All of us, everybody we knew, had our periods by the time we were twelve. Heck, Shayna had hers when she was nine. I remember her running in—your grandma was out at the time—I remember her running into my room screaming, thinking she was dying or something! I never thought I'd have to give 'the birds and the bees' talk to my younger sister, let me tell you!"

Madison nodded and laughed at the appropriate times. Her mother liked to reminisce this way, and Madison didn't see any harm in letting her. Connor, of course, had no patience for it—but then, he was 14 still, and not yet very kind to his parents, and destructive as only a fourteen-year-old can be.

"But that's another point," her mother went on. "Hon, what if... Well, I don't mean to be negative, but there's no point in beating around the bush: what if something's wrong with you? The whole point of your period is to facilitate 'the birds and the bees.' Wouldn't you regret it if, one day, you found out that something... I don't know, that something had gone wrong down there?—and that, when you were seventeen and your mother warned you, you ignored her, and now you were never going to be able to have children? Maddie, hon, this is your body. This is your future. Don't you think you should look into it?"

Madison sighed. "Yeah, I guess we could. What could it be, anyway?"

Her mother made a face. "Well, the only thing I've heard that matches the facts is the idea that your hymen is impermeable."

"Err," said Madison, with a nervous giggle. She had never expected the word 'hymen'—or 'impermeable'—from her mother's mouth, much less in the same sentence.

"Well, you do know that the hymen just naturally comes with holes, right? I mean, how else do you think the menstrual flow comes out?" Cassie Bechtel had always been pretty hip and liberal, sometimes more of a friend than a mother, but this... "Well, evidently, in a small number of girls, the hymen forms solid across the vaginal opening with no perforations, and the menstrual blood can just... Pile up inside you. Obviously, that's not really healthy."

Madison imagined three or four years' worth of monthly flow and then made a concentrated fight against nausea. "Umm. How would we fix that?"

"It'd be just a simple operation," said her mother. "I doubt they'd even put you under. The doctor makes a slit or two with a scalpel, and there you go. It negates the health risks... And besides, it makes things easier if—well. If you and Craig decide to, ah. Increase your intimacy."

Madison felt her face flame. Her mother was standing in the doorway, her hair cascading around her face in teased curls, and she didn't look embarrassed at all.

Mom smiled. "Oh, hon. Don't think I haven't seen the looks you give him. He is very handsome."

"Yes, but..." Wasn't there more to it than that? "That's doesn't mean I'm gonna do it with him."

"Of course not, honey," said her mother, crossing the room to her, "and I'm glad you see it that way. But... While we're getting prepared. You know?" She touched Madison's hair gently. "I still can't get over having to look up at you. I'm tall, for a woman. You're tall for a man."

Madison rolled her eyes. "Thanks, Mom."

After her mother had left to phone the doctor, Madison lay back on her bed and contemplated her life. She had the strange, unshakeable feeling that things were about to change for her. The entire veil, it seemed, had been pulled away from her eyes, and a new world lay before her: adulthood, with all its cares and worries. Her mother considered her ready to have sex. Her mother considered her ready to begin contemplating babies. Madison felt no such inclination.

It wasn't that she wasn't curious about sex. Gossip with her friends, schoolyard whispers, the Internet—been there, done that; she knew it all. She even knew how to find her clitoris. And Craig was attractive. And, though she hadn't had much exposure to it—just a few brief sessions in the backseat of his car—she knew he was well-endowed, or at least so it seemed to her. When she described his size to her girlfriends, they all assured her that he must be ginormous; but she knew (her friends all seemed to ignore this part) that he seemed ginormous to her—broad of shoulder, well-muscled, one of the few people she knew who was taller than her—and that her perceptions might not be accurate. Nonetheless, her friends assured her, Craig would know how to show her a good time.

But none of them had been there the night Nancy had called. Madison hadn't been expected it herself. True, they'd been in school together for years, but she hadn't realized that there was any deep friendship between them. Later, she found out that Nancy didn't think so either—"But you were the first person I could think of whom I could tell this to. I mean, you knew me for years." And so Madison had agreed that, sure, Nancy could come over, despite it being really late at night, and that yes, she would cover it with her parents some how. And in tears and with many fits and starts Nancy had explained how painful it had been to lose her virginity, and how quickly she had realized that her boyfriend, who had professed his eternal love not fifteen minutes before, was done with her and never coming back, and that she had given him something priceless for nothing in return. And when Nancy got back in her car and drove home at three in the morning, they were suddenly best friends.

Madison had never asked Nancy's opinion of Craig; Nancy had never offered it. But the hints were there. She knew Nancy suspected that Craig was of the same mold; and, knowing this, Madison couldn't keep her own doubts quiet.

But he's so good for me in other ways. He is handsome. And he's well-endowed. And, I mean... He's taller than me. And we're heading off to separate colleges anyway; wouldn't it be nice to give him something as a going-away present, something he would always cherish and remember me by? Madison was practical enough to recognize what a silly thought this was; but she was romantic enough to still hope for it anyway. It was an aspect of her even Nancy had never understood. Though, to be fair, Madison didn't understand it herself.

On Monday, she went to school like she always did. Craig gave her one last kiss outside the school premises—public displays of affection were restricted, after all—as he always did. She went to classes, and ate lunch with her friends, as she always did. There was nothing, on the surface, to suggest that anything was out of the ordinary.

But Nancy knew—she always did. She had round bottle-top glasses, just like Harry Potter, and scratchy brown hair, and braces that were taking their own sweet time to get things done, but the mind beneath it all was laser-beam bright. "So, what's going on that you aren't telling me about?"

Madison sighed. "We're finally getting this lack-of-periods thing checked out."

"What, the amenorrhea?"

"God, it has its own name? Yeah, that."

"And... That bugs you?" said Nancy.

Madison grappled with the words for a little while—they had never been her strong point. "I... Until my birthday, it was like... It was safe to ignore, you know? It wasn't something I had to worry about. But now..."

"And that whole territory is so fraught with significance to begin with," Nancy said. "I mean, you know: Sex. Baby-making. Marriage. Family. Menopause. God's gift of creation." Nancy was a Christian, but unlike any Christian Madison had ever met. "It's not like having a problem with your pinkie finger."

"Yeah. I just feel like... Like I'm older, you know?"

Nancy gave her a smile and said, "I know." That was one of Madison's favorite things about her, that—where anybody else would have babbled on for five minutes about how they'd been there, they understood, look at how much empathy they were showing—Nancy could just give her a smile and say, "I know," and Madison would believe her.

The other thing of any note or interest was an interesting little mishap just before lunch. Madison swung by Mr. Hodgson's room to pick up Craig like she always did—he never let his classes out on time, so it was faster than waiting for Craig to come find her. Once inside, she found Craig struggling with something in his hands, and Mr. Hodgson hovering nearby. "I think... No, wait, if you..."

When Madison got closer, the thing was a hand-crank pencil sharpener.

"Oh, hi, Maddie," said Craig when he saw her. "Sorry to— Sorry to keep you waiting, but, Mr. Hodgson here asked me for a bit of help in— In fixing this thing, and I figured I should help him out..."

"It's been teetering on the edge of a breakdown for ages," said Mr. Hodgson, who taught English. Remedial English. But then, there were other qualities about Craig that more than compensated for little issues like that. "And, today, well..." He gave an apologetic little shrug at Craig, which Madison took to mean that her boyfriend had managed to tip it over the edge. That was one of the things about Craig: he had such a boyish innocence, a way of making it hard for anyone to stay annoyed at him. Even when he pushed Madison too far, she could never hold it against him.

"Here, let me see it," said Madison, reaching over for the pencil sharpener. These models were all over the school, mostly bracketed to the wall, but with the cylindrical shell detachable so that the wood shavings could be dumped out. These particular models had the grinding-drill-bit assembly attached to the inside of the shell, which (instead of featuring a crank) had to be rotated itself to achieve the requisite sharpening effect.

It took Madison only a moment to see what had happened. The drill-bit thingies were mounted to the shell in such a way that they could be twisted off, using a tab-and-slot system like she remembered seeing from her mother's blender. Had the manufacturer not wanted to waste money on screws, or was it to facilitate maintenance? Either way, the last time the whole assembly had been inserted, one of the tabs had missed, going over the covered slot instead of under, and the other tab wasn't sufficient to hold the whole thing in place. The drill-bits had been sliding downward, away from the hole in the casing, until they were gone entirely and only a gaping black hole greeted any sort of pencil penetration. In short, there were really two problems afoot here: one was to realize how to insert the grinders correctly, and the other to fix how they'd been inserted wrong.

"Thank goodness, Madison," said Mr. Hodgson. "You're a lifesaver."

"Oh, see, I would've figured that out in a second," Craig said. "I'm not a pussy."

"It's always nice to have Craig's expertise around," Mr. Hodgson agreed. "It's like two for the price of one." He gave Madison a look that made his meaning clear. And he thanked them again and sent them on their way, and they got their lunches and met their friends, and now, while Craig explained where he had gone and why he'd gone there (with Wanda and Jessica and Hazel hanging off his every word, and their boyfriends not much better) Madison talked to Nancy.

"How come it's me that always figures those things out," she was saying now. She was glad everybody else was talking with Craig, or else she wouldn't dare bring this out in public. "I mean, isn't it supposed to be a guy thing, to be able to work out how things are put together?"

"Why, is it so wrong for you to have guy things?" Nancy said.

"Well..." said Madison. "I'm a girl."

Nancy shot her a look. "Hon, there's Disney princess, and then there's having to lie back and think of England. You can draw a line between them."

Madison tried to ignore that she was wearing her favorite The-Little-Mermaid pink T-shirt. "Well... Yeah, but... I mean..."

"It's 'cause you're a girly-girl," said Nancy without heat. "You feel like it's out-of-place because the rest of you wears pink all the time."

This was true; Nancy normally was. "I mean... What's it gonna do to my image if... If people find this out about me? What would that make me?"

"It makes you Madison Bechtel," said Nancy. "Trust me, we all have nuances that belong to the opposite sex. You know Craig likes singing in the shower."

"...No, I don't," said Madison. "How do you know that?"

Nancy snorted. "Do you know anybody who doesn't?"

"I don't," said Madison. "I can't sing."

"Does that stop you?" Nancy said.

"...Well," said Madison, who indeed not that let that stop her.

"Besides, it's not like that's the only 'guy thing' you have," said Nancy. "Girls are supposed to be good with words. Girls are supposed to be bad at driving and spatial navigation. Girls are supposed to be short."

"I'm not that tall," said Madison.

"You're like 5'11," said Nancy, who was proud to have achieved 5'3. "You're a giant."

"Yeah, and that's bad enough," said Madison. "Which is why I hide the other things."

"Why?" said Nancy. "What are you scared of?"

People would think I was a freak, Madison thought, but she said "weird" when she said it aloud.

"Why?" Nancy said again. "It's not the 1300s anymore. It's okay for women to have beards."

"No it's not," said Madison. "Remember how Lacey Warmenhoven was treated in fifth grade?"

"Okay, maybe not," said Nancy, "but it's okay for women to be men now. We wear pants. We have jobs. We get business degrees and become CEOs. If we wear our boyfriend's shirt, people think it's cute." She gave Madison a wry look. "Or, in your case, Craig's hoodie sweater."

"Yeah, but it's such a nice sweater," Madison said. "And it fits, because I'm so tall." And it smells like Craig.

"Of course," said Nancy. When it came to boyfriends and sweaters, almost all of her knowledge was theoretical, and sometimes she couldn't keep the bitterness from her voice. Madison supposed it had something to do with the bottle-top glasses and the braces.

"So, what are you eggheads talking about now," Craig asked. His arm went firmly around Madison's shoulders, drawing her close; for a moment she felt like a piece of furniture.

"Oh, just jabbering about how women don't have to be barefoot and pregnant anymore," Nancy said.

"We can wear pants now," Madison offered.

"Ha, yeah," said Craig. "Dunno whose bright idea that was, though. Women belong in skirts."

Madison gave him her best haughty glance. "Oh? And what makes you say that?"

Craig gave her a leer. "Well, in case her boyfriend wants to come up from behind for a quickie."

"Gag," said Nancy in a flat voice. Madison wasn't sure she felt much better. "Shouldn't men wear skirts too, then," Nancy continued, "to facilitate this illicit copulation?"

"To what?" said Craig, and Madison knew Nancy had deliberately used those words to confuse him. Craig topped out at two syllables per word.

"Secret fucking," sand Nancy.

"What, wear skirts?" Craig said. "No! Heck no! I'm not a pussy!"

"So you can't wear girls' clothing without being one of those," Nancy said.

"Hell no!"

"But it isn't weird if women wear men's clothes," Nancy said.

"Well..." said Craig, shrugging. "No, not really." He wandered away.

"What an interesting insight into our clothing mores," Nancy said.

"Well, he's right," said Madison. "Look at how often Craig calls someone a 'pussy.' It's a big deal for a guy to not be masculine. But it's okay for women to be."

"Clearly, one must be a pussy to wear skirts," said Nancy, still in that dry, ironic tone. "Or perhaps possess one."

Madison was on a roll. "Look at that, just think about it. It's okay for men to be manly, and it's okay for women to be manly. It's okay for women to be womenly—but it's not okay for men to be womanly."

"Heck, it's not really okay for women to be womenly either, sometimes," Nancy said. "Look at all these radical feminists who think there's something wrong with getting married and bearing children."

"Why is that?" Madison asked. "Why is it such a... Shoot, what's the word I'm looking for. Bad thing."

"Taboo? Stigma?" Nancy offered.

"Stigma," Madison said. "Why is it such a stigma to be feminine?"

"I dunno," said Nancy. "Write a paper on it."

"You don't care about it?" Madison said.

Nancy gave her a sideways look. "You know I don't care about decoding and dissecting things like that. That's all you."

"How can you not?" Madison asked. The question hung in her mind, golden and tantalizing. Because, unquestionably, it was an accurate analysis: there was a stigma in American society against being female. But why had it developed? If women were so necessary to the creation of new life (after all, you didn't see men walking around pregnant, did you?), then why was it considered a flaw or a failing to be one? Shouldn't the opposite be true?

She didn't have any answers by the time her mother picked her up from school, telling her that she had made Madison an appointment with the gynecologist, Dr. Winters, that very afternoon—her mother's OB/GYN, since Madison had never gone before. And on a warm May afternoon, Madison shrugged and went.

At first it was all the usual pleasantries: filling out forms in triplicate; handing over her proof of insurance; writing down her name; date of birth and charge card number; retorting that yes, her plan did too cover this sort of thing; look, you moron, what does your information say my deductible covers; and things like that. And then it was the usual pleasantries: how are your kids, how's the husband, oh I've been fine, you know how it is, school and college and boyfriend and so forth. And then finally they got down to business: No, I'm not sexually active; no, he's splashed on me a few times but never on bare skin, unless my hands count; well, you see, I'm seventeen and I've never had a period before, and my mom suggested...

Dr. Winters had butterfly glasses and dark hair coiled up over her head, but she had a warm smile that more than made up for these accoutrements. "Well, I'm glad you came in. Your mother's right, it is troublesome. I wish you'd said something about it earlier. But hey, now you're here, and we can figure it out."

"Well... I didn't think it was a problem. I've always been a late bloomer. I didn't get my breasts 'til I was twelve, and, well, you'll see about the pubic hair."

"A late bloomer, perhaps, but a full one as well," said Dr. Winters with a twinkling smile, "if you don't mind my saying. Aren't the boys falling over you yet?"

"Well..." said Madison. That was part of why it was nice to be with Craig: to keep people from sniffing around. She was very public about her togetherness with Craig. "I'm tall."

"So am I," said Dr. Winters, who was indeed an inch taller than Madison. She grinned. "Didn't seem to make a difference, in the end."

So Madison got undressed, profoundly grateful that her mother and Connor were outside in the waiting room. First Dr. Winters performed a thorough check of her breasts, to look for lumps or other worrisome abnormities (she said). It was somewhat uncomfortable having someone probe her boobs; it didn't feel anything like Craig's hands, the few times she'd let him touch them. Then it was into the stirrups to let Dr. Winters get a look at her delicate parts. The speculum went in and then outwards, and she wondered if that was what intercourse felt like—the stretching, the pressure. But then, she had a feeling she wouldn't be dressed from the waist up and chilly from the waist down, her legs spread in the cold air, in a room of sterile white and silver. This was by far the least intimate setting she could imagine. She realized this was probably deliberate.

"Hmmm," said Dr. Winters. "That's very interesting."

I'm not sure that's something I want to hear when somebody's looking at my private parts. "Oh?"

"Well, it's not your hymen, that much is clear; you said you're athletically active, and that's probably where it went. It's... Well, that's extremely interesting. I wonder if..."

"If?" said Madison, wishing she had a mirror or something so that she could see what her gynecologist was seeing. She tried to raise her head from her prone position, without much success. "If what?"

Dr. Winters looked at her. "Would you excuse me for a minute?" Without waiting for an answer—or taking her instruments out of Madison's nether regions—she swept out the door.

Madison dropped her head in astonishment.

Dr. Winters was back a few moments later, this time accompanied by another doctor, one Madison didn't recognize. The doctor squinted down into Madison's insides (she couldn't see, but she could hear shoes squeaking on tile, the rustle of clothing), and then rushed outside again. This time a third woman came in. This one spoke: "Good heavens, Ramona. You're serious."

"Would I joke about this?" Dr. Winters said.

Next they brought her mother in. "Mrs. Bechtel, we'd like your permission to take a blood sample."

"What?" said her mother. They were all standing around where Madison's feet were, and she couldn't see any of them. "What could you possibly need her blood for?"

"Please, Mrs. Bechtel," said Dr. Winters. Her voice was quiet. "I don't... I don't feel comfortable saying more until we have the sample, because to be honest I'm just playing out a hunch. It's more-or-less unprecedented. I'd really love to be able to say it was a false alarm and that nothing's wrong, but if..." A sigh. "Look, the only way to be sure is to take a blood sample."

"You think you know what's wrong with Madison?" said her mother.

"All I have is a hunch. But everything else lines up. Please, Mrs. Bechtel. If I'm wrong, it's twenty minutes of your life. If I'm not..."

There was a silence. Madison wondered why they weren't asking her.

"All right," said Mom. "All right. Let's see what happens."

"Hey!" said Madison. "What about me? What about what I think?" All these doctors, talking over her head like she wasn't there! And now her mother, doing the same thing— But then the brush of the alcohol swab on her arm diverted her, and then it was done.

They let her get out of the stirrups and put her clothes back on, and when they had the results back they drew her mother and brother into the examining room for some privacy.

"Mrs. Bechtel... Madison... We've got the match. It was hard to believe, because it's so— Well, the factors..." Dr. Winters put a hand to her forehead, squinting, sighing. "Look, there isn't really any way to tell this gently; it's too complicated, it's too... We ran the blood tests, we took the karyotype, we checked the genetic markers... Everything lines up. Madison, your DNA contains a Y chromosome. Genetically, you're male."

Madison stared at her.

Madison's mother stared at her.

Connor snorted. "Yeah, right. If she's a guy, what the hell are those?" He pointed at Madison's chest. "And for that matter, I know she's kind of missing things down below that you're supposed to have if you're a guy. I'm her brother, I've seen those things about her. —Or actually, I haven't seen them, 'cause they're not there. And shouldn't she have a beard or something?"

Dr. Winters mopped her face with her hands. "I can see I've done this very badly. I'm very sorry about all this—"

"Well, I should certainly hope so!" Mrs. Bechtel thundered. "Of all the— I've never— I mean... Well, what the hell is this?! Are you saying that my daughter is lacking the appropriate—the equipment, or whatever, or— Are you saying she doesn't have a vagina?"

"No, it's the uterus she doesn't have," Dr. Winters said, "and no cervix either, that was what tipped us off. Mrs. Bechtel, why don't you sit down."

"I will when I start hearing some sense!"

"I'd like to talk some sense, if that's okay with you," Dr. Winters said quietly. She sounded infinitely old and infinitely tired. "But this might be easier if you all sat down." She looked up at them with her ancient eyes.

Madison's mother and brother sat down in the only two chairs. Madison found herself relegated back to the stirrups.

"During conception, the mother's and father's chromosomes combine into a new set," Dr. Winters said. "Madison, you have 46 chromosomes, like everyone is supposed to have—23 from your mother, 23 from your father. In theory, the mother contributes an X chromosome, while the father contributes either an X or a Y—the meiosis in spermatogenesis divides along those lines, so that half of a man's gametes contain X chromosomes, and the other half Y's.

"Now, there are times when the machinery breaks down. The combining and re-combining of chromosomes is always a tricky business. You've all heard of Down syndrome: that's when a baby is conceived that has 47 chromosomes, with varying amounts of extra chromosome 21. It's not bad enough to cause a miscarriage, of course, but there it is. There's also Klinefelter's syndrome, Turner syndrome, XYY syndrome—conditions where the baby inherits too many copies of the X or Y chromosomes. There are a few recorded cases of up to five copies of X or Y. For the most part, none of these are life-threatening, though they are generally accompanied by a certain level of mental retardation."

"And that's what's going on here?" said Mrs. Bechtel. "That's what you've discovered about my child?"

"No," said Dr. Winters slowly. "That's not what concerns Madison.

"Madison was conceived with phenotype 46XY, genetically male. Now, until the fetus is about seven weeks old, sex doesn't really mean anything; it's only afterwards, when testosterone kicks in—or doesn't, if the fetus is 46XX, genetically female—that differences begin. Before that, the fetus just has what's called a 'genital tubercle,' an undifferentiated mass of tissue that can evolve into either male or female sex organs. In the presence of testosterone, this tubercle begins to evolve into the penis, scrotum, testes—the familiar male block-and-tackle—starting at the seventh week. If not, it starts developing into female genitalia instead a couple weeks later.

"That's the critical distinction: that the embryo waits for the presence of testosterone, and if it doesn't detect any, it defaults into becoming female. And that's where Madison's little quirk comes in. Madison, we haven't done any of the actual tests yet, but I'm pretty sure of what we'll find: a mutation on the X chromosome which makes you unable to respond to testosterone. And we're not going to, but if we did exploratory surgery into your pelvic area, I know what we'd find: testicles, undescended and probably unable to produce sperm, but otherwise working perfectly.

"So, during the seventh week of your gestation, your testicles started pumping out testosterone as they were meant to... But your body didn't respond the way it's meant to, because the mutation causes misformed androgen receptors which testosterone and its derivatives cannot bind to. In the meanwhile, other responses are working properly, and the little bits and pieces that would've evolved into the uterus, the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, the cervix, atrophied the way they were supposed to. Having said that, the bits and pieces that were supposed to develop into your prostate, your vas deferens, your seminal vesicles, so forth, didn't activate either.

"The end result is that, from the vagina down, you're a perfectly functional woman; the vaginal canal isn't shallow the way it sometimes is in these cases, and you should be able to safely enjoy intercourse. But you probably—almost certainly—can't have children; your gonads aren't working right that way—and even if they were, you don't have any epididymes with which to develop and store gametes.

"The condition is called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and you have the first phenotype: Complete AIS, in that you're almost totally female (except for the lack of reproductive tract, that is). Even the slow development, the lack of pubic hair, the above-average breast growth—it all lines up. But genetically you're not female. You're male—and a perfectly healthy one, too, except for this one inability (due to the mutation on the X chromosome) to respond to testosterone. Which turned you into a perfectly healthy female."

There was silence in the room for a time. Madison found herself looking at Connor's face. Mom had always said that, if Maddie had turned out a boy, she would've looked like Connor. The look on his face was probably glee at getting to hear all these sex terms flying about. She wondered what the look on her face was.

"Are there..." said her mother. "Are there... Lasting health impacts?"

"Not many," said Dr. Winters. "People with CAIS seem to have increased chances of osteoporosis—as well as testicular cancer. It might be advisable to have them surgically removed at some point. Having said that, thereafter Madison would have to take estrogen supplements. The testosterone Madison's testes are secreting now is being converted naturally into estrogen—the process is called 'aromatisation'—and after a gonadectomy, there'd be no internal hormone source."

"But... She can never have children," her mother said.

"That's the likelihood," said Dr. Winters. "The organs and glands themselves aren't enough, you need the plumbing too. Madison... Well, because of that little mutation, Madison has no plumbing whatsoever, male or female. Except the urethra. Thank God that wasn't affected."

"But otherwise she should be able to have a normal life," her mother said.

"She should," said Dr. Winters. "Under whatever auspices she chooses."

After Madison got home, she went straight to her bedroom. Her mother called her down for dinner a little later, but Madison didn't respond, and Mom—seeming to understand—didn't press the issue. Long into the night, Madison stared at the ceiling, her thoughts awhirl, her head full of the conversation she had had. Or rather, heard. It had been more of a lecture, really. In truth, it had been rather interesting, from an intellectual viewpoint as well as an emotional one. She wished school classes could be that interesting.

Slowly, almost idly, she reached down between her legs. Her vagina didn't feel any different than— Well, how would she know; she didn't have any experience with anybody's vagina except her own, and that even barely. But there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it; there never had. There had never been anything down there to make her sit up and take notice, to suggest that hey, something's really wrong down here!

Her fingers brushed over her mound, and she felt a tingle through her clitoris. That was supposed to be a penis. My penis. And my testicles were supposed to dangle down here, and... What did my scrotum turn into? My, umm, my 'ball sack.' She made a note to look this stuff up on the Internet. Assuming she could find it. She wasn't sure even Google would help her turn up a list of homologues of the human reproductive system.

She wondered what it would feel like to have a penis, testicles, a 'ball sack.' She had felt a penis before—Craig's—but only when it had been hard; she had no experience with a soft one. And to have all that dangling down, flopping about? It was bad enough having to go without a bra at times, having her breasts bouncing around; what about having things below? And especially since (or so she'd heard) the testicles were really sensitive. After all, weren't you supposed to knee a guy in the groin if he wouldn't leave you alone? At least I got spared that. Unless somebody kicks me in the stomach. Will it hurt extra if that happens?

She couldn't; it was too weird. She didn't know enough to reconstruct what should have been. All she knew was that it should have been.

My name is Madison Bechtel. I'm seventeen years old. And I...

What am I?

Home

Leave me some feedback!