“That’s one way to look at it,” the principal said with a smirk. “Erica was born as Eric and wanted to be a little girl, so his, um, her parents let her dress the part and do her hair like a girl and everything. And I had no problem with any of it. I see no difference between a boy dressing up girly and a tomboy dressing like a boy. I don’t care which of my students play with dolls and which ones play ball. Might be a phase. Might not be. Don’t care. My job is to educate and to run a school where no one discriminates or bullies.”
The teacher nodded, understanding the principal’s sentiments.
“Anyway, at one point, the parents, who had been helping this kid with her ‘transition’, come into the principal’s office. They start telling us how their daughter is still biologically a male and how she needs to be an adult before she can have reassignment surgery. Now, at this point, we had already agreed to refer to Erica with female pronouns and the school had policies against bullying same-sex couples at dances. We supported all of it. But then, the parents tell us that they want Erica to be able to use the girls’ restroom. This is after telling us that she is still biologically a male. Call me old-fashioned, but I always felt that the men’s room sign was based on body parts. That’s why there’s a urinal in one and sanitary napkins in the other. The parents kept saying that if she is forced to use the boys’ room, it would encourage bullying, as if a kid with a penis using the girls’ room would make the other kids more tolerant of her.” The principal scoffed at the idea. “Hey, if I was thirteen and all I had to do to peep in the girl’s locker room was wear a dress to school, I would have done it. I did it for my fraternity later!”
The principal could tell from the look on the teacher’s face that she did not agree with everything he was saying. So, the principal decided to stop cracking jokes and get to the point.
“They got a lawyer, tried to sue the school and even went so far as to get her birth certificate changed to say that she was female. That was how they won the case. The school couldn’t do jack if her birth certificate says ‘female’. Point is, I had to deal with a female attorney who was just as bold and pig-headed as Carrie Wynn-Jacobs and when I didn’t agree with everything she said, that woman dragged my name through the mud. She painted me out to be a bigot on the local news, just because I was insistent on something that may be construed as a hygiene issue. Should have sued them for slander, but I just packed my things and moved here, stayed with some friends, found another job.”
“So…you’re comparing this autistic kid who thinks she’s a lizard to a transgender kid?”
“Yes. Unorthodox behavior where the rights of the individual should be respected over the comfort level of others. Same difference.”
“But autism is a neurological disorder…”
“And when doctors stop calling it gender identity disorder, I will rethink that comparison. Bottom line, I have dealt with people like Carrie before. They will make an issue out of anything to get their name in the paper. Mark my words. As nice as I was to that opportunist, she is not going to sweep this under the rug. She’ll be back and it will be on the news! It’s just sad that she to use her daughter to do it.”
Three weeks later, the principal saw Carrie. She was standing in front of the school and it was on the news. Snapshots of Liz sticking to the wall were broadcast with interviews from Carrie, the teacher and the principal. Carrie did not badmouth the school, but rather talked about how cooperative the school was in regards to this matter. She told the viewing audience that she had lobbied for Liz’s birth certificate to be stricken from government records, as a way of renouncing her daughter’s humanity for “the way she truly is inside”. This could have given the school perfect legal grounds to expel Liz from school, being that having a valid birth certificate was part of her initial registration, but fearing more legal attacks and bad press, the principal just let it slide.
Carrie got to once again feel the thrill that she felt in her youth, fighting against an established institution or two for someone’s rights. And, as the principal had perceptively pointed out, her daughter’s mental health issues were the soapbox that her mother used.
***
Ever since her mother had been on the news, Liz got a lot more attention from kids at school. Some of them would climb the tree that she normally spent recess in to talk to her. She would always be polite and converse with them, but never came out of the tree. She felt far more comfortable talking with her classmates if they were hanging upside down from an adjacent branch, which a few of them actually did.
And, of course, there were bullies, emboldened by the fact that Liz was now something of a public figure in the community. A few days after Carrie’s first appearance on the news, a group of girls started throwing rocks at Liz as she hung from her favorite tree. The leader of this motley crew, the one who yelled “ready, aim, fire” was Ashley, a girl that Liz already knew to be a bit of a show-off in class. She was always bragging. Bragging was pretty much a second language for Ashley. But Ashley was also a tomboy. She was always rough-housing with the boys and climbing trees herself. But perhaps her parents were in denial about this, because she always showed up for school dressed in the prettiest, laciest dress. Her hair was always beautifully styled and curled, with a bow that matched the dress, until she started rough-housing with the boys. Liz wondered if her parents were rich and had a hair salon in their house because she always showed up for kindergarten without a hair out of place.
No sooner had a few rocks hit the tree and rattled branches around Liz’s perch than a young boy ran over to the tree. Liz also knew this boy from class. His name was Marcus. His hair was messy and his shirt was dirty from wrestling in the sandbox with a few other boys
. “Leave her alone, Ashley!” Marcus shouted, making her first name sound like an insult.
“You’re sticking up for that freak?”
“No,” Marcus replied, reaching into his pocket and pulled out something. “I’m sticking up for lizards.” With one flick of his wrist, Marcus threw a grey salamander onto Ashley. It landed on her shoulder before quickly crawling up into her hair. The scream that escaped from Ashley’s lips could be heard all the way down the street. Marcus was surprised that it didn’t set off any car alarms. The members of Ashley’s rock-throwing mob started to laugh as the well-styled bully dropped to her knees, desperately swatting at the slippery lizard that was trudging through her hair with its sticky toes. Her crimson hair was soon sticking up in all directions, like she had just been electrocuted.
“Get it off me! Get it off me! Get it off me! Get it off me!” Ashley shouted in rapid succession, her voice getting higher and higher each time. “Get it off me!”
“See?” Marcus said to Liz, looking up at her from the ground. “She’s afraid of your kind.”
Liz smiled. Marcus had been watching her in class long enough to realize that she rarely smiled, so he took her smile as an invitation to start climbing the tree. Sitting next to Liz on the branch, Marcus opened his hand and showed Liz a handful of small rocks that he had collected. As soon as Ashley had gotten the salamander out of her hair, she was pelted mercilessly with small, stinging rocks from above that caused her to run back towards the parking lot with frizzy hair and ripped nylons.
Marcus was proud of the fact that he had made Liz laugh. Up until this point, the nicest kids in Liz’s class just stayed away from her, which was fine with Liz. At least they weren’t calling her names and throwing rocks at her. But Marcus had actually taken the initiative to break down the wall that kept Liz inside of her own head most of the time. And she thought he was pretty cool.
***
When Jason and Carrie first got married, they agreed that Jason would be the bread winner and doing activist work would be Carrie’s job. In Jason’s mind, that spelled out two words, “house” and “wife”. Jason comes home from work to a hot dinner every night and listens t
o his wife tell him which oppressed minority or endangered species that she tried to save today. That was his plan, one that he hoped would last him for the rest of his life.
Jason was getting fewer and fewer hot meals ever since media outlets, local television and radio shows were offering his wife interviews, but he always came home and tried to spend as much time as he could with his daughter. Carrie was in an area of the house that had been designated her office. Jason could hear her fingernails tapping away at the keys of a laptop. She was so focused on what she was typing that she didn’t hear her husband come into the house.
Jason was a dentist. And the television in the waiting room of his office, which was usually tuned to daytime talk shows and news broadcasts, showed images of his wife and daughter all day long. The local shows on which Carrie had been interviewed had been picked up by national ones. Footage was shown of Carrie insisting that what Liz had was not autism, but an evolutionary leap forward. This “leap” had created a lizard trapped inside a human body, she claimed.
“I know mothers are proud of their kids, but this is ridiculous,” quipped one cast member of the popular talk show ‘The View’.
“How many bumper stickers do you think she has on her van?” asked another. “My kid is an honor student. My kid is an evolutionary leap forward.”
Of course, Jason felt the sting of these comments, as people in his own dentist waiting room started scoffing. Leaving his wife to her writing and running up the stairs to his daughter’s room, he found Liz bouncing a tennis ball off of the wall in her room. When Liz turned and saw her father standing there, she smiled from ear to ear. This was an unusually emotional reaction for someone with Liz’s unique condition, but it lifted Jason’s spirits as he sat on her bed and asked her about school. She was in a good mood and this made Jason happy.
When Carrie finally emerged from her office, she apologized profusely to her husband for not having dinner ready. They all agreed to order Chinese food. Fifteen minutes later, it was delivered, but Carrie could not even wait that long to tell her family the exciting news. A large New York publishing firm had offered her a quarter of a million dollars for the first three chapters of a book about her life, up to and including discovering Liz’s unique condition. This would mean more publicity for the cause, including book signings and more national talk shows.
“Honey, you do realize that Liz can’t be in front of a big audience,” Jason said in between crab rangoons. “You’re trying to bring awareness to her condition, but her condition includes social anxiety.”
“She doesn’t have to go on camera,” Carrie replied. “I’ll keep her away from crowds. I’ll make sure of it. This is about me.”
“Really?” Jason replied, embarrassing his wife about the brutally honest thing that had just slipped out of her mouth.
“My campaign. You know what I mean…”
“Well, if you’re going to write a book about someone with species identity…condition, you might want to interview Dr. Blazi.”
“Ooh! Good idea!” Carrie said, wiping sweet and sour sauce off of her face as she got up off of her chair. “I’ll call him right now.”
It was after 7pm. Dr. Blazi’s office was closed, but Carrie had his cell phone number. Normally, Jason would not be bothered by the mother of his child having the private cell phone number of their daughter’s pediatrician. No decent father would. However, seeing his wife talk to Dr. Blazi on his private number at night reminded Jason that his wife used to date Dr. Blazi when they were in college. That memory pricked his ego and caused him discomfort. Why did I suggest that she call him? Jason asked himself with frustration. I guess I was hoping that a doctor could talk her out of exploiting our daughter like this.
Looking over at Liz, who was silently looking down at her plate while chewing on some chicken fingers, he started reminiscing about the day that she was born. It was a far more positive thing to think about than what his wife was doing. Jason then reaffirmed his promise to himself that he would protect his daughter, even from her mother’s blind ambition, at all costs. Before hanging up the phone, Carrie made arrangements to meet Dr. Blazi in his office the next day, when Liz was in school and her husband was at work, for an interview.
***
Dr. Blazi was sitting in a room surrounded by white cabinets, leaning back in a chair, thumbing through some medical records and preparing for some future appointments when Carrie was led into this room by his secretary.
“Carrie! Great to see you! Have a seat!” Dr. Blazi said, pointing at the chair in front of him. As Carrie sat down, she saw few newspaper clippings about her legal action against her daughter’s school. They were sprawled out on the doctor’s desk. “I see you’ve made some ink lately,” Blazi said, playfully drumming his desk with a pen. Carrie smiled, flattered that Dr. Blazi had been paying attention to her campaign. After all he was the one who shed light on Liz’s condition in the first place. “Nice to see that family life hasn’t killed the tiger,” ‘Tiger’ was Carrie’s nickname in college, a reference to the ruthless nature of her activism, her attacks against systemic injustice. Carrie was flattered that Blazi remembered that too.
Carrie reached into her purse and pulled out a notepad. The questions that she wanted to ask Dr. Blazi about his experience with species identity condition were scribbled inside. But Dr. Blazi had something different, yet strangely connected, that he wanted to show her. He opened a large, square refrigerator behind him and pulled out a cylindrical glass canister. This canister was filled with a bubbly, orange chemical.
“What is that?” Carrie asked.
“Remember the kid that I told you about, the one who believed that he was a baboon?” asked Blazi. Carrie remembered. “Well, this is the fruits of our labors, the years of study we did on him and his brain. Thankfully, we got him to donate his body to science before he was ripped apart by a couple of alpha males in his own adopted herd.” Carrie still didn’t understand what Blazi was talking about. “Studying that young man’s brain chemistry allowed us to come up with a list of protein strains that human beings have in common with different animals. Some of my colleagues wanted to use this knowledge to make soldiers more deadly. Cross-species genetics, they called it. But since there is no foreseeable way of reversing genetic alterations, no one volunteered for the experiments.”
“Experiments for what?” Carrie was still confused.
“This serum can blend animal DNA with a human’s, creating…something different,” Dr. Blazi said with sincerity. “This particular serum is created from the DNA of at least fifteen species of lizards, combining the parts that they have in common with human DNA. And like I said, it’s not reversible, so it’s perfect for someone who is currently living as a lizard and wants to do so more…outwardly.”
“This stuff can change someone into a lizard?”
“More of a hybrid,” Blazi answered. “So they will still be themselves in a lot of ways, but have a body that is more compatible with the way that they feel inside.”
Carrie just stared at the canister, her brain racing with possibilities. This could be the logical next step in Liz’s development. Anyone who had mocked her for insisting that Liz’s obsession with lizards was something more could see how happy she was living as a lizard in a fuller capacity. And imagine what a striking image that a half-human, half-lizard girl would be for the cover of her book. This genetic serum might just be Carrie’s ticket to the top of the best-seller list. That would mean more talk shows, more media exposure for herself…and for Liz’s condition. But there was one problem.
“Jason!” Carrie blurted out mid-thought. “I assume you would need parental consent for something like this. I mean, Liz is five. And Jason will never go through with it.”
“Actually,” Blazi said, sliding a legal form out from underneath a paperweight. “I really only need one parent.” Sliding the form closer to Carrie, Dr. Blazi
placed his hand on top of hers, looking at her with a warm smile. “Carrie. Please. You know how much I care about her, but this is something that people need to know about. I find it very hard to believe that species identity confusion isn’t more common than we know about. People are afraid to come forward. You can change all that.”
Carrie truly believed him, a man who had truly been there for Liz ever since she was born. She pulled a pen off of his desk and stared blankly at the form, nervously tapping the desk yet again. Every single possibility that might come from this decision raced through her head. She looked back up at the doctor and returned his reassuring smile before signing the consent form.
After picking up Liz from school, Carrie told her that they were going to Dr. Blazi’s office, but they would not be there long. Liz seemed nervous, asking if she could just stay in the car. When Carrie told her no, Liz dejectedly followed her mother into the doctor’s office. Carrie grabbed her hand, trying to both comfort her and make her walk faster.
Dr. Blazi came up with a cover story for the experimental military drug that he was injecting Liz with. He told Liz that he was going to give her an injection that would make her less nervous when she was around people. That sounded good to her. She realized that was something that she could use, especially considering how she was feeling now. Earlier that day at school, she made plans with her new friend Marcus to meet him in a nearby park after dinner. She didn’t know if he would bring friends from his neighborhood, but that made her nervous to think about.
Marcus also lived outside the school district of the kindergarten that they attended, but he was about halfway between Liz’s house and the school. He was always sneaking out of the house, past his parents and the butlers that were assigned to take care of him, to ride his bike through the woods. They rarely caught him. This is how he planned to get to Jenner Park to see Liz.
Thinking about her new friend, Liz braved the prick of the needle as Blazi injected her with the orange serum. Putting a bandage on her arm and giving her a lime lollipop, Dr. Blazi commended her for being such a brave girl. She hopped off the table and left with her mom. Carrie looked back at Blazi as she left the room. He reassured her with a smile and a nod.