Chapter 36: The Matter of Gender

I closed my eyes and delved into Parula’s memories, searching for a specific keyword: winter. With a target, the fragmented recollections became easier to grasp, coalescing into images as cold and sharp as icicles. I saw snow, a merciless, endless fall of white that buried the city in a silent shroud. I saw the orphans, huddled together around a single, sputtering brazier in MacDuff’s drafty hovel, their breath misting in the frigid air. I felt the desperate, gnawing chill of the nights, burrowing deep into a pile of damp, musty straw for a warmth that never truly came. We had been the lucky ones, in a way. MacDuff needed us, so he couldn't let us all freeze to death. The hovel, for all its flaws, offered shelter from the wind and the snow, and the fire kept the worst of the frost at bay. We would huddle together, a tangle of shivering limbs in the straw, sharing our meager body heat to survive the night. The less fortunate, the outcasts and vagrants with no one to claim them, had it far worse. They would press together in sheltered alleyways, praying for scraps of food and a few splinters of wood for a fire, often freezing to death in their sleep. In Parula's memories, winter was a season of death. Many died from the cold, especially those who fell ill and had no money for a doctor. It wasn't just the beggars and the homeless; even the ordinary citizens of the tenements often didn't live to see the spring. I also remembered MacDuff forcing us children out into the cold on the clearer days, our hands and feet numb, to scavenge for firewood. Jared, as his prize thief, was exempt from this drudgery; his work was to provide food, a far more critical resource.

And in these bleak memories, Jared had always been there, a quiet, steadfast protector. It was his warmth that had kept the frost from Parula's lungs, his stolen bread that had kept the worst of the starvation at bay. He had given his own share of the straw to the younger children, and ventured out into the frozen woods beyond the city to gather firewood when no one else would. Parula had survived those winters because of him. He had held her while she slept, sharing his body heat. He had given her his own meager rations of food, and the stolen woolen coat that had kept the frost from her bones. It was clear that even among the many orphans he looked after, Jared had held a special place for Parula. No wonder he had held me so naturally last night. He had done it countless times before. The warmth of that memory, her memory, lingered in this body like a phantom limb, an echo of an affection that was not mine, yet one I could not deny. It made me, a stranger in this skin, feel a connection to him, a need to look at him, to reassure myself that this one small point of kindness in a cruel world was still there.

And then I realized he was staring back at me, a strange, confused expression on his face.

"What is it?" I asked. 

"Parula," he said, a hint of awkwardness in his voice, his gaze flickering past me. "That's… that's the men's changing room."

"Huh?" I had been so lost in thought I hadn't even realized we had reached the changing rooms. Ahead of me was an entrance shielded by a heavy, blue curtain. The one we had just passed was pink. The meaning was obvious, a simple binary I had failed to process. No problem, I thought. Finally, a proper bath. I started to walk forward, a thrill of anticipation running through me. And then Jared grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly firm, pulling me back.

"No, Parula," he said, a gentle confusion in his voice. "You're supposed to go in that one. I'm the one who goes in here."

"Ah? Wha-what?!" It took a moment for his words to penetrate my foggy, male-oriented brain. And then it hit me, a realization so fundamental, so world-shattering, that the grimy bathhouse walls seemed to tilt around me. I am not a man anymore. I am a girl. I belong on the other side of that curtain. In my eagerness for a simple, civilized comfort, I had completely forgotten. My instincts, my entire life's experience, my very sense of self, had led me towards the men's entrance. But that path was closed to me now, forever. I had to go… to the other side. The women's changing room. The women's bath. To me, it was a forbidden garden, a mysterious, unknown territory. To step through that pink curtain felt like a final surrender, an admission that the boy, the man I used to be, was well and truly dead, a ghost haunting a little girl's body.

Seeing the look of turmoil on my face, Jared, in his sweet, boyish innocence, completely misinterpreted my existential crisis. "It's alright, Parula," he said, trying to comfort me, a small, reassuring smile on his face. "You're a big girl now. You can't bathe with your big brother forever. It's time you learned to wash on your own."