Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Growing Up Girl ❯ Chapter 1

I was born on a Tuesday night. There was a storm outside. A very fierce one. That alone could be seen as an omen of the turbulent times to come. Even my birth was difficult. My mother went through hours of labor without any pain medication on the kitchen floor of our house, only my father there to help her. The storm had wiped out the power on the entire block, residents were warned to stay inside due to the high winds and hail and tornados that had been spotted nearby. So my parents stayed inside.

The birth had not been easy; I know because I've been told the story many times. In the end, though, I came into the world and was wrapped in a blanket by happy father and handed to my crying mother. "It's a boy," my father had whispered lovingly, wiping off my head with the blanket. How those words would haunt me for the remainder of my life.

He'd always wanted a son. My mother had always wanted a daughter.

As I steadily grew up, I was told this story many times: how I was brought into the world. Sometimes my father would tell me with a bit of regret in his eyes, like having a child had tied him down. My parents had always imagined they'd be young forever and would travel the world. My mother would tell me with hurt in her eyes, remembering the pain of it all vividly. I often felt regret that I'd been born.

My father brought me a bright red truck for my third birthday. I remember blankly staring at the bulky plastic object as it sat in my lap on the living room floor. I gave it an experimental roll on the shag carpet in front of me. My father smiled as I looked up at him.

"Baby doll?" I asked timidly. I was a quiet child.

His eyebrows lowered. I remember this being one of the first times my father looked at me with anger in such a way. Many more were to come. "Boys don't play with dolls." His voice was bland and flat as he tried to control his emotions.

"Wanna baby doll." I stared sadly at the truck as it sat motionless in front of me. I knew I would never touch it again as I picked it up and toddled my way into my bedroom. I put it in the closet and never took it out again.

Preschool was a horrible time. My hair had grown out a bit and I wanted to wear barrettes on my first day. I snuck into the bathroom and grabbed a few of my mother's hair clips and put them into the front pocket of my coveralls. On the way to the school, my mother mentioned that I needed a haircut. We'd go get a haircut after school. I shrank into my seat in fear.

The classroom was an uncertain place for me, but I gladly left my mother behind to wander inside, over to the toys. I pulled a plastic doll out of a large toy chest and clung to it lovingly. My first time holding one. A girl came up beside me and took out another doll and clung to it the same as I did. "What's yer name?"

"Duo," I said in my squeaky child voice.

She stared at me. "Is that a boy or a girl name?"

I gave it a moment's thought. "It's a girl name." She smiled at me and told me her name was Hilde. We sat down on the floor to play with our baby dolls. My mother's shadow loomed over me. I clung tightly to the doll. She snatched it from my hands and threw it into the toy box.

"We've told you before: boys don't play with dolls!" I knew she was furious with me. I slouched down as far as I could, staring at the floor in shame. Hilde got up and wandered away from me. "Don't let me catch you doing that again." She left to go speak to the teacher, who nodded in understanding. Then she left.

I took the barrettes out of my coveralls and clumsily clipped them into my hair as best I could.

Later that day, after the teacher took notice, she told me I had to remove them, or my mother would be mad. I refused. At the end of the day, she came to pick me up and was once again angry as we got into the car. I was happy that she was mad enough not to take me to get my hair cut. I didn't like the reaction I got from my father, though, as he took me over his knee and spanked me angrily, until I was sobbing and trying to squirm away in fear. He pushed me off of his lap onto the floor and stomped out of the room, leaving me to pull my pants up in shame.

The worst part was, I didn't even know what I'd done wrong. I was confused as hell.

It was weeks later before my mother took me to get my hair cut. I was shaking in fear, anger, and sadness the entire time. My mother noticed. "Son, you're just getting a haircut. It won't hurt."

"Don't want a haircut," I whispered shakily, stroking one hand through the length of it. It reached down to my shoulders and just slightly lower.

I ended up with a near buzz-cut. I cried the entire way home, curled up in the backseat. I refused to tell my mother what was wrong.

We went shopping for clothes before kindergarten began. She refused to let me have the pink shirt with a picture of a sparkly horse and rainbow on the front. I wasn't even allowed to go into the girl's section. I stared longingly at the bright, beautiful colors as I was dragged past.

Shopping for shoes was bad. I spotted the most wonderful pair of white sandals with pink plastic flowers stuck to the sides. I picked them up and held them lovingly. "Mommy, can I have these?" I was so excited. They were beautiful. They were perfect.

She looked at them for a moment before lowering her eyebrows in anger. "Those are girls' shoes, son." She picked up a pair of black sneakers from the shelves containing the boys' shoes. "Why don't you try these on?"

I got angry. For the first time I can remember, I got angry at her words. "I don't want those. They're boy shoes."

She was getting angry, as well. "You are a boy, Duo."

I burst into tears. "I am not!" I stamped my foot incredulously and gripped the shoes in my tiny hands.

"Yes you are. You're not a girl!" My mother got steadily more angry as I persisted. She clenched the small sneaker tightly in her hand and glared at me.

"I am so a girl!" I didn't realize what had happened to me as I leaned back against the shelves, my face burning. The shoes I loved so much had been stolen away from me and the tears rolled silently down my cheeks. I looked sadly up at my mother. She glared back at me.

"Try on these goddamn shoes, Duo." I sat down and silently did as I was told. We ended up buying the black sneakers.

Kindergarten was slightly different from preschool. As soon as I got off the school bus, I saw Hilde. I ran up to her excitedly, my tiny, near-empty backpack bouncing against me. She saw me and gave me a hug. "Hi Duo."

Hilde's mother looked down at me strangely. She had given her child a ride to school and was going to help her find her class. "Is this your friend, Hilde?" She nodded happily. Her mother knelt down in front of me. "Where's your mommy, little man?" My hair was still cut short.

"She's home."

Hilde's mother took my hand and led me into the school. Hilde and I both had the same class. I was ecstatic. We both rushed inside to play with the toys. Spotting a plastic kitchen set, we decided to cook plastic eggs and bacon on a plastic stove. Hilde picked up a doll. "We're gonna play house. You're the daddy and I'm the mommy."

I reached for the baby doll. "I wanna be the mommy."

She pulled away. "Boys can't be mommies. Only girls are mommies."

"I'm gonna be a girl when I grow up," I said proudly. "Let me be the mommy just once."

She reluctantly handed over the doll. I made a great mommy.
The teachers in my classes were usually confused as to whether I was male or female. Duo was a strange name for any child to have. It was androgynous to the extreme. Throughout kindergarten, all the way to 2nd grade, everyone called me a girl, except for Hilde, who knew what my body was really like.

"My daddy says you're gonna be a fairy."

We sat together outside on the playground, eating our lunches at the picnic tables. "He did?"

"Yep!" She nodded and took a bite of her bologna sandwich. I ate from my plastic bag of potato chips. "He also said you were a faggot."

"What's that mean?" I'd never heard the word before in my life, but I would become quite familiar with it in the coming years.

Hilde looked thoughtful. "I think it's like a fairy, only bigger."

"Aren't fairies really small? With pretty wings?"

She nodded. "Yeah, but some are bigger than those."

A boy who was not in our class came up beside me, hands on his hips. He was bigger. I knew immediately that he was older. "Are you a boy or a girl?" He looked angry.

I stared into my bag of potato chips. He pushed my shoulder roughly. "Hey, I asked you a question, dummy."

I frowned and ate another chip. He gave up and walked away.

Hilde stared at me sadly. "Why didn't you tell him you were a boy?"

I crumpled up the empty bag in my tiny hand. "Because I'm not."

The first time I tried on girls' clothes, I was nine. My mother had been folding laundry when she got a phone call. She went to her bedroom, leaving the basket of clothes sitting on the floor in the living room. I glanced up from watching "My Little Pony" and caught sight of the clothes inside of it. They were my mother's. There was a pair of underwear and a skirt sitting at the top. Without thinking, I grabbed them and ran to my room, holding them to my chest like a great treasure.

Pulling off my knee-length shorts and my Batman underwear, I slipped my legs quickly into the panties and pulled them up. They were far too big and practically fell off of my hips unless I kept my legs closed. I could see the small bulge of my genitals in the mirror as I looked at myself. I opened my legs and tucked everything back between them. It was the happiest moment I'd ever experienced in my life as I pulled the skirt up around me and carefully buttoned and zipped. I tucked my shirt into the skirt and pulled at the back to make everything tighter.

I felt so beautiful, and so very right.

It was ruined when my mother came into my room, carrying the phone and asking if I wanted to talk to grandma. She dropped the phone in horror. It thunked heavily on the floor as she took a step back. "Jesus Christ, Duo! What the hell are you doing?"

I released the skirt. It fell down around my ankles, showing her the low-riding panties. When she noticed them, she covered her eyes and turned from the room. I heard her sobbing in her bedroom. It continued until my father came home.

That night, I got one of the worst beatings of my life. I was sent to a military school the next week.