My Foster Mom Wanted A Daughter - Book 2 Of A Series

Chapter 18 : Hope

At the lunch table each noon, Angelo couldn't take his eyes off Jason, who was almost always there with the four girls, including Marie.

Angelo watched as Jason looked at Marie with obvious admiration, holding the tall blonde girl's hand under the lunch table. Angelo assumed their thighs were also touching, and he subconsciously burned with jealousy. Not realizing this was happening, he often found himself wondering why he felt so upset and hurt around Jason.

Jason seemed to be so enamored with Marie that he never noticed anything happening around him and only once again said that Angelo reminded him of someone.

It was at the end of the second week of school, a day when Angelo and Jason got to the table before the others.

"You're here early," Jason mentioned as Angelo approached the table. "Did your class get out early?"

"Yes, just a bit. Miss Satterstein had a meeting she had to go to, so she let us out."

"Oh, must have been the same meeting for Mr. White. He let us out early too," Jason said as they both set their trays down.

Jason then looked directly at Angelo, "You know, I remember now why I thought you looked familiar."

"Why," Angelo asked with fear in his voice.

"You remind me of this girl I met a couple of times at the mall over the summer. She was so cute, and you look a lot like her," he said.

"Oh," Angelo asked, brushing his hair back with a flick of his wrist. "But I'm not a girl."

He blushed as he said that, and hoped Jason didn't notice his flushed face.

"I know. You don't have a twin sister, do you?"

"No, No sisters. No cousins around here either."

"You have the same ocean blue eyes that girl had and almost the same hair. Your facial features, unmistakable similar. Isn't that strange?"

"Yes. It is, but I can't explain it. My opposite sex doppelganger, perhaps?"

"Perhaps - - Oh here's Marie," Jason said, rising to meet his girlfriend, and Angelo sighed in relief, knowing that Jason would have longer think about him. But he wondered, how much longer would it be before Jason decided that Angelo was that lovely girl who had attracted his attention in the mall over the summer.

That night, the same as every other night, he lay under the covers in a silky baby doll nightie, even though Mary Elizabeth had forbidden him to wear girl's clothes.

Nightly, he put wild on his Denver Broncos pajamas as he went to bed. Then, waiting until he was sure Mary Elizabeth was sound asleep, he would change into the nightie. It was at this point that he would fall asleep and his dreams would become the dreams of a pretty teenaged girl.

*****
Mary Elizabeth tried diligently to treat Angelo as she did her own sons years before, but Angelo's behavior in the house seemed to make that impossible. More and more he walked like a girl, sat like a girl and even talked like a girl, using feminine expressions and inflections.

The boy seemed to take great attention to Mary Elizabeth's own dress habits, often suggesting that she wear a certain dress or skirt, or brush her hair in a particular way. In virtually every case, his suggestions were good ones, and she was noticing her own dressing style was becoming sharper and more elegant.

He pored over the fashion magazines and catalogs that Mary Elizabeth got in the mail, pointing out dresses for her. Mary Elizabeth enjoyed the advice, but she believed that his real reason for looking at the dresses and skirts was to imagine which ones he'd most like to wear.

He begged to paint her fingernails and even toenails and she loved to watch him do it. He had an intense expression as he daintily, but firmly, held her hands and feet and applied the polish. He had the prettiest hands, slender and smooth with long fingers, and he was always careful to suggest using only subtle colors.

"Mommy," he would say. "Elegant and lovely women like you need not use garish colors."

Angelo was not into overstating his femininity, she realized. He seemed to adopt feminine characteristics naturally, without any of the "campiness" or flamboyancy of many transgenders and crossdressers she saw on TV.

Michael (Heather's friend) had directed Mary Elizabeth to various websites on transgendered issues, and she now understood that many apparent males were actually "feminine" in their way of thinking and acting. "Many boys are born with a predisposition to feminine tendencies, and largely influenced by their environment, usually beginning very early in life," Michael told her.

Mary Elizabeth considered all of this carefully, soon coming to the conclusion that Angelo may indeed be a girl, trapped by boy's anatomy.

"Oh my darling Angela," she said one night after supper while he was assisting her in cleaning up the dishes. It was the first time she had used his female name since he returned from the shelter in Denver.

"Yes, mommy?" He asked, smiling after hearing her call him Angela.

"You really are a lovely little girl. I can't see how we'll ever make a boy out of you. It's never going to happen."

"Mommy, I love you," he said moving closer and putting his arms about her.

"Darling, we need to talk. I need to tell you something," she said, motioning for him to sit down with her at the kitchen table.

She reached across the table and took both his hands in hers, looking at his tiny wrists and smooth white forearms. He was so tender and dainty, she felt, that it would border on abuse if she forced him to enter the adult world as a male. Not only was his physical stature so weak, but his mind responded, she felt, as a girl's mind would. He had such gentle tendencies.

"What is it, mommy?"

"I hope the child welfare people finally come to their senses. It seems someone over there should be able to realize that there sometimes are boys like you who would be happier as girls."

Angelo smiled.

Mary Elizabeth explained that she had made an appointment with a psychiatrist to have Angelo examined to determine how real his feminine tendencies are. She said that the psychiatrist might also be able to show child welfare that Angelo truly needs to be female.

"If we can show you have true problems with your gender, backed up by a psychiatrist, " she continued, "Maybe then they'll let you explore those feelings. And, best of all, you would still be able to stay with me."

"Really mommy? But, would I have to tell this psychiatrist everything?"

"Yes, honey. That's the point of it. Don't you want to do that?"

"Oh, I'd be scared. I wouldn't know exactly what to say?"

"Just tell the psychiatrist your feelings," she said. "Oh darling, I hope you will agree to this. It's our best hope. And this was all because Heather and Michael went to bat for you with the ACLU."

"Mommy, I will. I'll do whatever it takes."

"Good. Now, go get ready for bed and I'll be up to tuck you in."

Angelo stood up and kissed Mary Elizabeth on the cheek and then asked, "Can I wear my nightie tonite?"

"Angela, my dear," his foster mother said, again using his female name. "Of course you can. I know you've been sneaking into your nightie after I go to sleep. You little scamp, you."

Mary Elizabeth felt her love, a nurturing love, continue to grow toward this child, a very feminine young lady and definitely her daughter.