The kindergarteners were unfazed. Very little is unalterable as far as five-year-olds are concerned. Very little doesn’t change. One day those squiggly lines in books transmute into words. One day actual pieces of your mouth start falling off. One day your beloved resolves into a kind of ratty stuffed animal, and for the first time in your life, you feel fine about leaving him home. One day, like magic, you can balance on two wheels. That one day you could be a boy and the next become a girl was not out of their dominion.
But the older kids had some questions. And they did not always ask them kindly. On the playground at recess, third-graders demanded, “Why are you wearing a dress?” Eight-year-olds pointed at Claude in the cafeteria and sang, “Boooooy girrrrrl boooooy girrrrrl,” like police sirens. Fellow fifth-graders sneered at Rigel and Orion, “Your gay little brother is so gay.” And when Claude tried to jump rope or use the monkey bars or the slide, there was a constant barrage of “Are you a boy or a girl? Are you a boy or a girl? Are you a boy or a girl?” from kids older and bigger and stronger than he. Because he didn’t know the answer, he said nothing. And because he said nothing, they kept asking the question.
Claude decided it was too cold to go outside at recess anyway and spent it alone in the library instead. Claude was content to eat lunch on his lap in the bathroom. But after a few times, the nurse told him her bathroom was only for going to the bathroom in, not for eating lunch in. So Claude went back to the little boys’ room.
Miss Appleton kept him in from recess one day to ask, “Where are you going to the bathroom?”
“I’m not going to the bathroom,” said Claude. “I’m going to the library.”
She took a deep breath. “When you go to the bathroom, where do you go to the bathroom?”
“Where I always go to the bathroom.”
“In the boys’ bathroom?”
Claude nodded. He knew he’d done something wrong; he just didn’t know what it was.
“Why are you using the boys’ bathroom?”
“Because I’m a boy?”
She took another deep breath. “Then why are you wearing a dress?”
Claude was confused. They’d been through this. “I like to wear a dress.”
“Little boys do not wear dresses.” Miss Appleton tried to channel her usual patience. “Little girls wear dresses. If you are a little boy, you can’t wear a dress. If you are a little girl, you have to use the nurse’s bathroom.”
“But little girls use the girls’ bathroom,” said Claude.
“But you’re not a little girl,” Miss Appleton said through her teeth.
At the end of the day, Victoria Revels called. “We are happy to treat your child like a girl if that is what he believes himself to be,” she began.
“Not happy,” Penn corrected. “Legally obligated.”
“Both,” said Ms. Revels. “But it cannot be just on a whim.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning if he thinks he is a girl, he has gender dysphoria, and we will accommodate that. If he just wants to wear a dress, he is being disruptive and must wear normal clothes.”
“I’m not sure either Claude or I or even you understand the distinctions you’re making up as you go along here,” said Penn.
“It’s confusing,” the district representative acknowledged, “for Miss Appleton and for the children and clearly also for Claude. No one knows how to treat this child. Do we say he or she? Does Claude line up with the boys or the girls? Why is his hair still short? Why hasn’t he changed his name?”
“Aren’t there girls in the class with short hair?” said Penn. “Aren’t there girls in the class who wear pants?”
“The point,” said Ms. Revels, “is that we can treat your child as a boy. Or we can treat your child as a girl. But we cannot treat him as … well, I don’t even know what else there is.”
“That might be the problem.” Penn had been online. He’d read and researched. He was starting to be an expert here. “He might be both. He might be neither. He might be a boy in a dress or a girl with a penis. He might be one for a while and then another. He might be gender variant. He might be genderqueer—”
“Not in kindergarten he is not,” she interrupted. “He cannot be all of the above in kindergarten, and he cannot be none of the above in kindergarten. In kindergarten, a child can only be a he or a she, a boy or a girl. Kindergartens are not set up for ambiguity.”
“Maybe they should be,” said Penn. “The world is an ambiguous place.”
“Not for a five-year-old. For a five-year-old, the world is very black and white. It’s fair or it’s unfair. It’s fun or it’s torture. There are not disgusting cookies. There are not delicious vegetables.”
“But there are,” said Penn, “even for five-year-olds. Claude hates cookies with coconut. He loves broccoli. He does have a penis, and he does need to wear a dress. It would be simpler perhaps if these things weren’t true, but they are. For all your kids. Surely some of the little girls in his class play soccer after school, and surely some of the boys play hopscotch. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
“It may be a good thing,” said Ms. Revels, “but good or bad, we can’t accommodate it. He needs to decide one way or the other. He needs to … pardon me, but he needs to move his bowels or get off the pot.”
“In the nurse’s office,” added Penn.
“In the nurse’s office,” said Victoria Revels.