Christopher To Christina: An Answered Prayer

4. Reborn

The next day Mom came back from shopping with several bags.  She had obviously gotten more than just one dress. I was beside myself with excitement. 

THIS WAS IT!!! 

My escape was at hand. 

Sure enough, instead of taking the shopping bags into her room, as she would have ordinarily done, she took them all into my room, and we opened them there.

Little girls' panties (Mom thought I was still too young for a bra, but she did promise I could have a training bra for my next birthday) , a little blouse, little white and pink ankle socks, a skirt, some blouses, another skirt, a yellow dress trimmed with white lace, and a pair of little black patient leather shoes with a single buckle across the top.

Slowly, my hands trembling with excitement, I put some of the things on. I chose the yellow dress for my debut. I already wore my hair fairly long, so Mom only had to comb it back and put a yellow ribbon in it. 

She said a girl my age shouldn't be concerned with wearing makeup yet, but she did put a little of what she said was mascara, on my lashes.

Finally she was done fussing over me, and I looked in the mirror. I thought I made a pretty convincing girl, as long as the person looking at me had never seen me as a boy.

Mom gave me a little kiss.

"My little girl!" she exclaimed.

"Wait! I can't call you Christopher like this. That would never do. You need a new name. Have you thought about it?"

I hesitated.  Suddenly, "Giselle" seemed ludicrously exotic for the simple, pretty American girl I currently appeared to be.

"Well, come on, sweetheart.  Surely you've thought of a name for yourself.  You can't go on being Christopher."

I didn't have another name to fall back on.  Finally, my hands behind my back, my eyes downcast, in a tiny voice--a little girl's voice, if I had realized it--I whispered, "Giselle," and turned red as a beet.

One of the reasons I love Mom so much was that she never laughed at me. Even then, with this ridiculous answer, which I'm embarrassed to remember, she didn't laugh.

"Oh, Dear, that's a, that's a llovely name," she said.  "If that's the name you want to take, then . . . we'll uh, well go with that."  She paused.

Her face scrunched up. 

"But you must remember," she continued, "you're an American girl, not a European one, and people
might find you a little more . . .well, convincing, if you had a more common
American name."

"I know, Mom," I replied.  "Giselle was a dumb idea.  Let me think about it some more." 

I had no idea what I would come up with.

"All right, you gone it some thought," Mom answered.  "For the time being, I'll just call you Christine, which is pretty close to Christopher.  And once you've settled on a name you want, we'll change it then. Deal?"

"It's a deal."

As it turned out, I stuck with Christine instead of trying to find a better one.  In fact, I was too busy being a girl to worry about details like names, so from that day, the 20th of July, I answered to Christine. 

Christopher Taylor had been born
on the 14th of December, but Christine was born on July 20, and from then on I thought of July 20 as my birthday.  That fact alone should have been enough to tell me this was going to be for keeps.