Seattle Press on Line

Sex Change

By C. P. Kempton

Oct 11, 2001 -- When my uncle, Domenico, emigrated from Sicily in 1904 he wound up in Colorado where in quick succession he acquired a farm, married my mother's older sister and fathered eight stalwart field hands.

I spent a good part of my first nine years on that farm. In addition to school vacations, holidays, and weekends, my aunt took over my care whenever my mother, who was considered "delicate," was under the weather. This arrangement suited me to a tee. I loved the hustle and bustle of a household in which everyone was too busy to worry or fret over a couple of non-productive kids.

My cousin Gus, who was ten and a year older than me, was my soul mate. We were inseparable. Everybody referred to us as the Siamese twins.

After breakfast, wearing overalls, flannel shirts, and battered old hats, my uncle and his older sons harnessed the horses and headed for the fields. During the long summer, Gus, who was too young to do a man's work in the fields, was on his own. After, that is, doing the chores required of farm children, me included.

My job was to throw corn to the chickens and gather the eggs. Gus and I both had to wash the mud off the turnips and carrots for my female cousins who tied them in bunches with burlap twine for the market. Gus also had to fill the coal scuttle for the black iron stove in the kitchen. By the end of the day the coal dust on his hands had found its way to his face, and along with the other dirt our adventures stirred up, all you could make out were his teeth and the whites of his eyes. I wasn't much cleaner. My aunt, calling us in for supper, threw up her hands when she saw us and vowed to make us eat in the barn if we didn't mend our ways.

Gus and I never disagreed about anything. If I wanted to visit the furry, yellow baby chicks and fondle and coo over them, so did he. If he wanted to hang around the cows in the barn so did I. We liked the sound their big teeth made crunching the crisp hay and the way their swishing tails tormented the flies buzzing around their haunches. We giggled with delight at the steady plop, plop of steaming cow pats as they hit the barn floor.

We got the same urge at the same time to go to the orchards to gorge on apples and cherries. Or we'd visit Old Blue--named for his eyes--a gaunt, spent old mule who was living out his last days in a comer of the farmyard. He allowed us to climb onto his sagging back and sit until we got bored, which never took long since, with his head hanging down to his knees, he stared at the ground and never moved a muscle.

Our favorite place was the pigpen. We were mesmerized by the superbly dirty creatures snuffling and oinking, grunting and squealing as they rolled in the mud or wallowed in their food trough. We were awed by the splendor of their filth, taking it all in with silent and profound respect. "Hey, look at the two-legged pigs," my uncle sang out when he and his sons came back from the fields at the end of the day to find us hanging on the fence enclosing the pen. The jeers and whistles this remark inspired in my cousins fell on deaf ears. We were in heaven.

Only two places on the farm were forbidden, the irrigation ditch and the bull pen. We lost interest in the ditch when, after many attempts, we found we couldn't budge the metal barricades that controlled the flow of water from the creek to the fields. The bull pen was another matter. We were warned over and over never, ever, to bother the bull. He was not only dangerous, he was a serious investment, fattening my uncle's purse by keeping his own and his neighbors' cows in calves.

We went often to stand outside his pen at the far end of the cherry orchard to marvel at his size and power. Now and then Gus would try to entice him into action by throwing cherries at him or jumping up and down while yelling, "Hah! Hah!" One day while performing this frustrating exercise Gus said, "I think we're too far away. Bulls don't see too good, you know. I'm going to open the gate and go in a little ways. You stand by the gate and hold it open for me."

"No!" I shrieked. "Your father will kill us!"

"Don't be so dumb," Gus said. "He won't find out. Don't you want to see this dumb old bull do something?"

I did, naturally. So, moving cautiously, we slipped the bolt on the gate and I held it open while Gus advanced. Slowly, carefully, he took a few steps forward. Then closer. The bull just stood there glaring at him with his red eyes. Gus stood where he was, not daring to go any closer.

"Come back!" I yelled, impatient, tired of holding the heavy gate. "Come on. He's not going to do anything."

"Wait! Gus began to prance wildly back and forth, flapping his arms, shouting. "Run! Run!" I screamed, abandoning my post at the gate.

I heard Gus' steps pounding after me, and the muffled thunder of the bull's hooves. Together Gus and I reached the first tree and, thanks to long practice, hurled ourselves into its branches, wrapping our legs around them, holding our breath in mortal fear.

On the ground below us the enraged bull snorted, stamped, and trotted around the tree. After a few turns he stopped, trotted off a little way and ran back to butt the tree trunk with his massive head. Again and again the bull backed off and ran to batter his head against the tree. Finally, with a dazed shake of his head, he staggered off.

It grew dark. Although we no longer heard him we were afraid to get down, sure that the bull was hiding, waiting to devour us. At last, exhausted, about to drop to the ground like ripe fruit, we heard voices calling our names and the sound of feet tramping across the field. We cringed in fear hearing Tom, the eldest of my cousins, shout with a terrible oath, "The bull's out!"

The men cried out in alarm. With lanterns held high above their heads, they ran to and fro among the trees searching for our mangled and bloody remains. The glimpses we caught of the men's faces under the swaying lanterns filled us with dread and foreboding.

They began to move off to search father afield and we heard my uncle say, "Never mind the bull. We'll have to come back with the horses in the morning. We have to find those damn kids." The men moved off and as their voices grew fainter I began to scream hysterically and Gus began to whimper.

The men came running back. They had to pry our stiff fingers off the branches. Gus was placed on my uncle's horse and I on Tom's. Silently we were carried home.

That night my aunt and uncle went into the parlor and closed the door. When they came out, my aunt, grim and silent, filled the big wooden tub with hot water. I was scrubbed down and made to sleep with my cousin Jenny in a real bed. No more fun-filled nights in the attic with assorted cousins stretched out on the mattresses filled with dry com husks that popped and rattled with every movement. No more jokes, giggles, and a last comforting warning from my uncle before we slipped into our innocent, unblemished sleep.

The adults decided that Gus, with mischief on his mind and time on his hands, needed more to do. While he raked the chicken yard and scoured milk cans at the outdoor sink; fetched and carried for everyone else, my aunt held me captive in the house. In addition to all her other work, she took on the job of turning me into a girl. I was made to sit near the kitchen stove where she could keep an eye on me. It was time, she said, to begin preparing myself for my future as a wife and housekeeper.

Sulking, I listened to her lecture about the virtues of thrift while I pulled the stitching out of what seemed like a million dusty flour sacks. I had to help her as she boiled and bleached the "Globe Mills" logo out of the sacks and then wash and iron them. Saying there was no need for a thing to be ugly if a little work would improve it, she made me learn how to transfer a pattern to one comer of each and every one of those cursed sacks and then embroider them with hundreds of uneven cross stitches.

After supper we sat, my aunt darning socks and I embroidering. Her occasional words of praise were wasted on me. She had ruined my life, and all for a bunch of silly embroidered dishtowels that, as far as I could see, didn't dry the dishes any better than the plain ones.

C. P. Kempton moved to Seattle in 1988 when she retired after a lengthy career at Caltech. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she writes stories about her background mainly to entertain and inform her children.

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jessica	Oct 19, 2003	lindsay
i think you are a very smart person


bob	Nov 08, 2003	ohio	driver
i don,t thank its rong to have a sex change i wen,t one but can,t aford one i relly wen,t to be a women.