Woman
You never learned how to be a woman, that's the problem.
You'd climb trees with the boys, using your gangly legs to shimmy up faster than any of them. Footraces on the beach were a breeze, and you delighted in digging tunnels and making mud pies.
Sure, it meant a slap when you got home and tracked dirt into the house, but a slap couldn't wipe that grin off your face.
At birthday parties, you'd be the only girl. Your mother would make you wear party dresses with black Mary Janes, and the frills would sometimes slow you down in a sack race. But for the most part, you reigned supreme. The boys idolized you, and you'd get regular marriage proposals on the playground.
Then, something on earth shifted, the day Mary Berger came to school wearing a training bra. You gathered around her with the other girls, intrigued and bewildered.
What exactly was she training for?
Suddenly, the boys were boys, and they made it clear that you were a girl. They chased Mary around the playground, trying to snap her bra. You watched with a furrowed brow, knowing full well that if you were running along with them you'd be able to catch her.
But you were you and they were them, and the solitude gave you more time to read anyway. The library wasn't far from the B&B, and you devoured every Hardy Boys book you could get your hands on. They had Nancy Drew, too, but you didn't like the way Nancy had to brush her hair before solving crimes. Come on, Nancy, get some perspective.
You were eleven when your own breasts began to appear, and that's when the real trouble started. Your father, once oblivious to your presence, started paying you quite a bit of attention. He'd let you watch TV with him - previously unheard of - as long as you sat in his lap while you watched.
Maybe it was a good thing, you reasoned. Now that you were older, your dad was more like the other dads - taking you fishing, hiking, camping. The two of you pitched a tent in Yosemite, and you pretended you were asleep when he started touching your chest.
You tried walking differently, to hide the swells of your femininity. Bringing your shoulders forward helped a lot, as did swaggering like the men in those John Wayne movies. The boys at school stayed away, but your dad didn't.
Just like a lollipop, he whispered one night, pushing you to your knees. It's just like a big lollipop.
You dropped your voice down an octave and bought big, baggy army jackets from the Salvation Army. Found a sports bra that nearly flattened you, and wore it daily.
Then he announced one night at dinner that you were going to become a woman that weekend, and your mom nearly dropped the tray of artichoke hearts.
You spent the next three days trying to figure a way out of it. You told Mrs. Cooper, your homeroom teacher, but she just smiled and said "becoming a woman" meant starting menstruation. Surely you'd misunderstood. You jammed a chair under your doorknob at bedtime Saturday, and huddled under your bed all night.
In the morning, you ventured out of your room to be met with an odd smell. Like that old skillet that hung on the kitchen wall, only stronger. Your mother was sitting in the hallway, her eyes fixed and vacant. Your dad was right outside the door, waiting for you even in death.
And so it was that you didn't have a mother anymore, didn't have a model of what a woman should be, or do, or say. Sure, there were foster parents, but the mothers tended to turn up their noses at your boyishness, and the fathers tended to be anything but fatherly.
But there was schoolwork; always schoolwork. Science made sense to you, and it helped to be concentrating on something that had absolute rules. There was pressure, and velocity, and you knew quite a lot about those already.
In college, the world shifted again. Suddenly there was something about the boys around you, boys on the cusp of manhood, that became appealing. At your roommate's urging, you started wearing tank tops and smearing on blue eye shadow. Lost your virginity at a frat party and cried afterwards, freaking the guy out.
Truth was, you were relieved he'd touched some body parts that your father hadn't had the chance to reach.
There were two guys your freshman year, four your sophomore year. Nine your junior year, until you finally decided they'd rubbed your dad clear off your skin. It was a relief, a palpable relief that you could smell and taste. Your roommate tried to give you more tips, something about swinging your hips and not walking like a lumberjack, but you waved her off and dove further into your studies. Got into grad school and moved back to the west coast, even managing not to shudder when the plane landed in San Francisco.
You ended up falling in love by accident. You didn't even see it coming. Sure, he was cute, and smart, and one hell of a kisser. But you were a realist, and you'd taken freshman psych. It was the thrill of secretly dating a teacher, that's all it was.
Until one day he was gone, and you were curled up on your bed crying, and you couldn't remember the last time you'd cried.
But there was work, and there was. work, and that's what your life would be. There were wife beaters and child molesters on every corner, and you kept catching them, over and over. You saved a generation of little girls from being pushed to their knees, and that almost chased the nightmares from your head.
He called you up one day, out of the blue. Said he needed you, and you didn't know in what capacity, but you were packing your bags even as he stammered into the phone.
And no, there wasn't romance, not for quite a while. But there was friendship, real friendship, in the form of three silly men your age and a brazen blonde a few years older. There were wild cases that stretched your brain, and awful cases that stretched your heart. And in the end there was him, standing at your door one day, offering everything and nothing but himself.
He must not have realized you'd never learned to be a woman. You didn't know how to bake cookies or knit scarves, and you sure as hell didn't know how to iron. But it worked out okay, because he'd cook, and you'd do the dishes, and he knew how to touch a part of you that had eluded all the other men.
But now it's gone a bit further, and you don't know what to think, how to act. What does a woman do in this situation? You've never been a crier, or a shrieker, and there's something wrong about him being the one down on his knees. You never learned to be a woman, and you don't know what kind of cut it is, how many carats. You know you could predict the way the light refracts when it hits the diamond, so you concentrate on that, and not on the fact that you're going to have to wear a white dress and panty hose.
He calls your name softly. There's love in his eyes, and fear too, real fear. You nod your head and he grins in relief, slipping the ring on your finger. Holds you close and murmurs into your hair about how you're the woman of his dreams. He whispers endearments and promises, and he makes you feel safe.
Even still, after he falls asleep that night, you sneak out of bed to jam a chair under the door. Just in case.