Over the years, kindergarten homework had gotten more … Rosie said “intense”; Penn said “asinine with an emphasis on the ass.” When Roo was in kindergarten, there was playing with blocks and in the sandbox. There was learning to sit quietly on the rug and listen to a story. Now Claude had kindergarten homework of his very own. On this second night of school, it was to draw a picture of himself and write a sentence about what he hoped to learn this year. Claude’s sentence was “I hope to learn about science including stars, what kind of frogs live in Wisconsin, why oceans are salty, air currents and other winds, and why peanut butter is not allowed at school.” Penn marveled at his youngest son. So many children seemed somehow to age the littler ones more quickly, like some kind of obscure Einsteinian law of physics. Claude’s picture was of the whole family, and Penn could not decide if it was wonderful or alarming that, assigned to draw himself, Claude drew them all. Penn and Rosie and Carmelo stood with lanky arms around one another’s lanky shoulders, heads grazing the clouds just above them, the blue of the sky creeping occasionally over the outline of their faces so that their cheeks were smeared with the firmament. In front of them, sitting crisscross-applesauce all in a row in the grass, were five brothers: Roo’s hair curling out wider than his body; Ben’s glasses owling huge, dark eyes straight off the page; Rigel and Orion with ears unfairly cocked at right angles from pointy, parallel heads. And small in the corner—because he’d run out of room? because he got lost in his overlarge family? because he felt insignificant in the face of the vastness of the universe?—Claude had drawn himself in his tea-length dress with ruby slippers and wavy brown hair down to the ground, held back off his face with a dozen barrettes that snaked colored ribbons in all directions, cascading over his brothers, over his parents, over the clouds and the trees and the grass and the sky, a small, windblown child in his own personal tempest, puzzling over air currents and other winds and his place in the world, which, it struck Penn, was right about there, right where he’d imagined it. Penn’s concern over the drawing subsided into the high teens.
The picture went without comment by Miss Appleton except for a hastily penned and not very convincing “Nice work!” plus a sticker of a grinning check mark (because, Penn wondered, actually making a check mark was too much effort?). So did the lunch purse as long as it didn’t contain peanut butter. And Claude, for his part, merely changed clothes four times a day: PJs to a dress when he woke, then into school clothes after breakfast, then back into a dress and heels and jewelry when he got home, then back into PJs before bed.
Saying good night one night, smoothing the hair back off Claude’s forehead, listening to him tell them sweetly, sleepily, about his day, Rosie squeezed Penn’s hand for support and took a deep breath. “Does it make you tired, all that changing of clothes?” she asked gently.
Claude’s forehead wrinkled. His tiny shoulders shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“You know,” Penn said carefully, so carefully, “you could wear a dress or a skirt to school if you wanted. It would be okay.”
“No it wouldn’t,” said Claude.
Rosie felt her eyes produce actual tears of relief that Claude didn’t leap at this chance immediately. But she persisted anyway. “Sure it would.”
“The other kids would make fun of me.” Claude’s eyes were full too.
“That’s true,” Penn admitted. “They would. But that would be okay. They wouldn’t mean it. They would make fun of you for a day or two then forget all about you and make fun of something else.”
“They would never forget. They would make fun of me every day forever.”
“We would help you,” said Rosie. “We could think of things to say back. We could think of ways to ignore them.”
“We could not.”
“We could talk to Miss Appleton.”
“Miss Appleton doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she does!”
“No, she thinks I’m weird. And if I wear a dress to school, she’ll think I’m really weird.”
“You wouldn’t be weird. You would be you in a dress. Smart, sweet, kind, funny you in a dress. It would be okay.”
“No,” said Claude, “this is okay. Real clothes at home, school clothes at school. I can just change.”
That “real” reverberated around in Penn’s brain until it was deafening. “Well that’s okay too, of course. But you should be able to be who you are, wear what you like. The other kids, your teacher, your friends, everyone would be fine. Everyone loves you for who you are.”
“No one but you,” said Claude. “No one but us. We are the only ones.”
We are the only ones. This was the part that haunted Rosie, hunted her. It supplanted quite a few other concerns to leapfrog up to number three or four. Rosie was gratified that Claude felt so supported at home. Rosie was horrified that Claude felt so precarious outside of it. But Rosie was also used to conflicting emotions, for she was a mother and knew every moment of every day that no one out in the world could ever love or value or nurture her children as well as she could and yet that it was necessary nonetheless to send them out into that world anyway.
Rosie’s number-one concern was: what would make Claude happy?
Penn’s number-one concern was: what would make Claude happy?
But happy is harder than it sounds.
Halloween
So Claude changed clothes, his parents worried and did a lot of laundry, and a couple months of kindergarten passed without further incident. With five kids in school, Rosie took more day shifts at the hospital, worked fewer nights. Penn put more DN words on pages. They weren’t always good ones, but they occurred, and that was something. The weather turned cold. The air smelled of snow, the house of fires in the fireplace and soups on the stove. There was a lull as everything froze over, froze in place.
For Halloween, Roo wanted to be a pirate which was easy enough, and Ben wanted to be Roo which was easier still, and Rigel and Orion wanted to be conjoined twins which they practically were anyway. Everyone waited for Claude to say he wanted to be a princess or a mermaid or Miss Piggy. But Claude could not decide what he wanted to be. It was breakfast conversation for many chilly weeks running.
“Everyone else was a pumpkin in kindergarten,” Rosie offered. For a few years there, they’d gotten away with passing costumes—or at least costume ideas; often the costumes themselves did not survive the day—to the next brother down. “You would be the cutest pumpkin.”
“I could knit you a stem,” Rigel offered, “or a leaf, but the orange part would take forever.”
“I could make you a policeman,” said Orion. “Or a fireman. Or a fisherman. I have supplies for all of those.”
“Police officer,” Rosie corrected. “Firefighter. Fisher … person? Mariner? What do you call that?”
“Girls don’t fish,” said Roo.
“Sure they do,” said his father.
“Not for a living,” said Roo. “And Claude is a man. So if he were a police officer, he would be a policeman.”
“Claude is a boy, not a man.”