Little Miss Different: Short Story Collection [#Wattys2018]

6: Wonderkids

Content note: contains depictions of discrimination towards non-binary people and ableism

About three years ago...

There were pink glasses and purple glasses covered in flowers in a floral category labelled as 'Girl Glasses' and bright blue and red glasses plastered with footballs. Aasma turned to the young couple helping them select their glasses. "Do you have any... more unisex designs? Less stereotypical, maybe?"

"Do you not like the pretty glasses in our girls' section?" suggested the young man. 

"No, thank you," replied Aasma, politely.

"What's your name again, young lady?" said the young woman.

"My name is Aasma, and I would prefer it if you didn't refer to me as male or female," said Aasma.

The young man frowned. "You're not one of those confused people, are you?"

Aasma took a deep breath. "Excuse me?"

"You know, those men and women claiming they don't have a gender," explained the woman.

"I am non-binary, and if you don't stop calling me 'confused', I will have to leave this shop," said Aasma, polite and reasoned.

In the end, Aasma did leave the shop. They walked down the street, then got out their phone, dialled Ellie's number and put it on speakerphone.

"Sib?" said Ellie. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. The opticians said that non-binary people like me are just 'confused'," said Aasma tiredly. "And all they had were glasses fitting into major gender stereotypes."

"That's awful, sib, I'm sorry," sympathised Ellie. "Aasma, I'm in a little cafe down the road. I'll text you at the address and you can meet me there, how about that?"

"That's a really good idea, sis," agreed Aasma. "I'll meet you there."

When Aasma reached the cafe, they saw Ellie waving at them through the window. They entered the cafe and slid into the seat next to Ellie.

"I got you a raspberry frap, with the extra caffeine shot," said Ellie, sliding a plastic cup filled with a cool pink drink towards her sibling. "You sounded really tired on the phone."

"Thanks," replied Aasma, sipping the drink.

"I found an amazing video online," said Ellie. "It's this ten-year-old girl who has Down's Syndrome, talking about the discrimination and ableism her autistic sister faces."

In the video

"Hello," typed the girl in the video. "I am a ten-year-old girl, and I'm here to talk about my sister. You may notice I am typing. I am mute. You'll probably notice I look a little different than your average ten-year-old. This is because I have Down's Syndrome, which is brilliant!"

"When I was three, my mother gave birth to my sister. Three years later, she came home from the hospital with my mother shrieking about autism and normal and difficult. My father sat me down and told me that my sister was autistic. He said he was going to give money to a new autism charity to cure her."

"At the time, I had just started talking on my phone and used drawings and hand actions, so I tried to ask my father what autism was, but he ignored me. So I looked it up on my phone. Plenty of the articles were mean about autism."

"But my sister isn't a white boy in year five. She isn't obsessed with trains. She wasn't a monster, like everybody was saying."

"Then I found a small article, right at the bottom. It was written by a girl older than me who went by the alias 'Aspie-Wasp'. She wrote about how she'd been taken out of her father's care and adopted by her two mums, and about the daily ableism she faced from clubs she was in for being autistic."

"Then I realised why those articles didn't fit my sister. Not just because autism is different in everybody - some autistics do seem to fit the stereotype, but everybody goes so much deeper than what people think."

"Those articles were all written by ableists."

"But this video is written by me, for my sister. I love you, sis."

Back in the cafe

"Wow," said Aasma. "That was amazing."

"Definitely," said Ellie. "That girl's a wonderkid, just like you."