Melissa’s Web
A major part of the narrative involves the story told in the beloved classic, Charlotte’s Web. A school production is at the heart of this involvement and while Melissa desperately wants the role of the titular spider, it is George who is cast as the more famous character from the story, the pig named Wilbur. A web of intrigue woven between Melissa and her friend Kelly to alter the universe ever so slightly and is the sight of her biological son George so fully inhabiting the role of the female spider Charlotte that is the issue of contention disrupting conversation between mother and son/daughter. But even that cold divide isn’t enough to throw a damper on Melissa’s triumph:
“Neither Mom nor George mentioned the play that evening, but once George was up in her room, she twirled around and around like a spider dancing on a web.”
Boys and Girls
In the world of gender dysphoria, gender confusion, gender expectations and gender conventions, certain words can inspire something close to terror in those young people born with a penis, but not necessarily born male. If you’ve ever wondered why a grown transgender woman routinely use the word girl to describe herself, it may very likely be related to the fear they felt while still routinely viewed a boy. Growing up for such people does not carry the same sense of excitement as it does for most kids because while a boy can pass for a girl relatively easily, it inevitably becomes much more difficult for a man to pass as a woman.
“Ms. Udell patted George’s shoulder. ‘Don’t ever lose that, George, and I know you’ll turn into a fine young man.’
The word man hit like a pile of rocks falling on George’s skull. It was a hundred times worse than boy, and she couldn’t breathe.”
The Play’s the Thing
The Charlotte’s Web thing is not really that big a deal, structurally speaking, but it is a very big deal for the boy known as George who is really a girl named Melissa. It basically changes everything. Well, not really, of course, because people are still people and that has to be dealt with, but for the girl named Melissa, yeah, it is the biggest of deals:
“The play passed by quickly, and yet it seemed to George as though she had been onstage since the beginning of time, as if she were born there and had only now found herself where she had always been.”
A Talking Spider
It is not just Melissa for whom Charlotte is a kind of a big deal, however. One of Melissa’s classmates is loathsome little boy named Jeff who is not shy about expressing his distaste for the whole idea of a spider capable of speech. But when dissing Charlotte as a “stupid, freaky spider” because she violates his sense of nature and order by talking, he is really hating on anything that intrudes upon that narrow lane down which his unhappy life is speeding. The boy named George is just as much Charlotte for Jeff as the spider is for the girl named Melissa. Just in completely different ways.
God Versus Fate
In the confusing world of incipient transgender revelation it is not unusual for certain events in the past that were simply the result of everyday actions to seem to take on a much greater symbolic meaning. Some people may believe that God is working against the interest of trans people, but fate seems to be counterweighting the almighty’s clearly limited powers every single day. A boy named George suddenly develops a taste for magazines aimed at girls and, well, destiny is taking shape already in Melissa’s construction of her timeline:
“The very next weekend, she had found the denim bag at a yard sale for a quarter. It was just the size of a magazine, and had a zipper along the top. It was as if the universe had wanted her to be able to store her collection safely.”
