I guess all girls are excited over their first brassiere, but I was even more so because it meant that not only was I becoming a big girl, but because I wasn't really a girl to begin with, it meant that I was at least becoming one.

After a little more than a year, I was already bigger than most of the girls at the academy. It also meant that Grandma had to buy me a lot of new clothes which was the most fun because they weren't little girl clothes anymore. Even though I thought her tastes were a little old- fashioned sometimes, I still got a very nice wardrobe with a lot of yummy blouses and some swell skirts that fitted real tight around my hips. That surprised me too because I was so excited over my bosom (Grandma slapped me for calling them "breasts" one time!) that I never noticed how my hips had gotten bigger. Anyway, I also got my first long dress then too. You see, I had been invited to play at a concert -not as real concert artist, but as a young student. But it was a for- mal concert nonetheless and all us girls had to wear long dresses. We bought a long white taffeta dress with a full skirt. It had a strapless top which I was excited about, but Grandma made me wear the fitted jacket that went with it. Anyway, when I took my bow on the stand, I thought Grandma was going to bust a stay.

Of course, there was still a problem and the following summer that was solved. We went up into Maine—and Grandma surprised me when she told me about it, because it was a place where girls go who get— well, everybody knows about it, so there's no point in talking about it.

I must admit I didn't enjoy it at all—not any part of it because it was all very painful and I had to lie in bed for several weeks and they wouldn't even let me move. The only thing that made it bearable at all was that Grandma had brought me a record player and every piano album she could find. That—and the single thought that had brought me to this place: when I went back to Boston that fall-I would really be a girl.

Life changed so much for me after that! Of course, you might expect it to, but really it all seems so symbolic now. In reality I had been a girl for years before that. To be sure, the changes if such they were— were brought about by the hands of a doctor, but they all happened about the right time, so to speak, and in the end, nothing was changed, save a problem had been solved.

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