RANSVESTIA

blouse, and of course, the undies, every weekend all day Satur- day and again on Sunday, after church. The plot of it was that she made sure I wasn't going to run off on my own during the day, but would say home where she could keep a reproachful eye on me. And it worked. I didn't think too much of this, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Anyway, it didn't make a whole lot of difference, except that she seemed to think that just because I was wearing girl's clothes I should do girl's work. Not that I did anything much different than I ever did - cleaning my room, helping her with some things, doing dishes. Most boys do those things. But she seemed to get a kick out of calling my regular chores "girl's work" and she made it worse by making me wear an apron, all day long. That got to me, because it was that extra something that made it all seem like I was well, I don't know quite how to explain it. See, it's like this: as she said, since I had the skirt and blouse, and so on, I should wear them "to get the wear out" and that didn't particularly change my status. But wearing an apron was like a badge of femininity. It changed everything, so that I was very self-conscious.

And of course, the idea that as long as I stayed in the house, no- body would see me, was blown out the window the second weekend. You know why because Mrs. Rosalia came over, like she usually does, on Saturday, to enjoy a morning of telling my mother how sick she was (like a horse, she was sick), and my mother would enjoy herself by alternately telling Mrs. Rosalia that she wasn't half as sick as she herself was - and furthermore, she was a poor widow with a child to bring up. When mother got through with that, Mrs. Rosalia would start in with how lucky my mother was not to have three chil- dren like her three daughters who had all gotten married and didn't even think of their poor old mother - well, you know how it goes. It was the bright spot of the week for both of them. Anyway, Mrs. Rosalia was lying, not only about her health, but about her daughters, because they had all married pretty well - one had even married a doctor and they all lavished a lot of affection and gifts on their mother. I must say this about Mrs. R. — she liked my mother a good deal, and had insisted on staying in the neighborhood when she could have moved out into the suburbs with one of the daughters, just to stay near my mother. And she never bragged about the things her daughters gave her - she was embarrassed sometimes (like when she got a color TV), because she didn't want to hurt mother's feelings. Mrs. Rosalia was as fine as they come.