To the Manna Born: The Life of Donna
Chapter 7 — Operation Outrageous
By Christopher Leeson
Langdon had never felt a strong affection for his stepmother Elisa. The best he could say was that there had been no particular reason to hate her. She had even served a useful function as a legal guardian — which he'd needed to keep the social service busybodies from institutionalizing him — and had done the job with the decency that public opinion and law required of her. At least she wasn't the sort of stepmother that Cinderella had. When Elisa held unwanted opinions, she generally didn't push them too hard.
But her stepmother had never found her way into Langdon’s heart, either. Up to now, he felt no injury upon realizing her lack of positive feelings. She had done the job that fate had foisted on her. She was still doing that job. But beyond the requirements of the parenting task, Elisa’s heart seemed to be elsewhere.
The impact of it surprised Donna.
The doctor had been clear: if she liked girlhood too much, if she stopped fighting the feminine situation that the magic had imposed on her, the reversal next year might not work. For that reason, she needed to hold the line. She needed, at minimum, someone to remind her to hold that line. And Elisa, who had found her in a lavender chemise and thong and lip gloss and pink nail polish at midnight, had only said, “You look beautiful,” and gone back to bed.
No warning of danger. No reminder that Langdon’s manhood was at stake. No uncrossable line was drawn.
It sounded less like considered acceptance than a warning that Elisa's heart was out to lunch.
And the more she thought about it, the worse her misgivings grew. Elisa was doing her parenting job as decency required. But her obligations would obviously end when Donna turned twenty. After that — whether she had reverted to Langdon or was still Donna — she'd be on her own. The property Langdon owed to Langdon at his majority might or might not be paid if Langdon no longer existed. Everything seemed to depend on what kind of person Elisa really was inside. Emotionally, Elisa's investment in their relationship had always seemed minimal and, so far, showed no signs of growing.
The idea of emotional poverty hurt. It hurt more than Donna would have expected, and the unexpectedness of feeling hurt by it was its own uncomfortable data point. It wasn't that she and Elisa had ever been close. Usually, they found one another annoying. But Elisa’s presence had at least kept her from feeling totally alone. But if that buffer was illusory, then she was, in fact, totally on her own in a situation that was almost more than she could take.
Donna mulled this over for two days. Then, instead of simply writing Elisa off, she came up with a plan to give her the ailing relationship one more chance.
It would be one more chance to prove for Elisa to prove that she actually cared.
The plan had the clean logic that Langdon had always applied to problems confronting him. If ordinary girlish behavior couldn't wrest a reaction from her stepparent, she would have to escalate. Her idea was to dress and behave in ways totally opposed to the doctor’s instructions. She would do things the doctor had explicitly warned against. Her eyes and ears would then monitor Elisa's face for a response. A stepmother who cared about the outcome of her stepchild’s “mistakes” should not be able to go on speaking in detached platitudes. She would say something. Warn her. She would draw a line.
And if she did, it would mean that her heart had a living birdie in it. It would mean Donna was not entirely alone.
Donna formulated the plan over the weekend with methodical preparation. By Tuesday morning, she set out to start Operation Outrageous.
#
Donna set her alarm a little earlier for that morning. She combed out her hair and used a holder to maintain a small, upswept section, while leaving the rest loose around her shoulders, the way it naturally lay. Then she put on the blouse and knee-length skirt selected the night before, and slipped her feet into the girliest-looking shoes Elisa had bought for her so far — low-heeled, strapped, unmistakably feminine. Finally, she applied lip gloss, the way that the girls at the pajama party did.
Once she’d put herself together, Donna stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror. She had made herself look like an ordinary schoolgirl. Nothing extreme. But it surprised her to see how very different she looked from the covered-up person who had been boarding the bus for weeks.
Despite the strange impression she drew, she told her reflection that she was still in control. This was an experiment. Wearing a different outfit was not the same as accepting a female identity.
Then Donna went downstairs.
Elisa looked up from the kitchen counter where she was making breakfast. Her wide eyes moved over Donna — the blouse, the skirt, the shoes, the lip gloss — and something shifted briefly in her expression before snapping back into careful neutrality.
"This is a new look for you," she said. "Are you going to school like that?"
"Yes," Donna said, keeping her voice flat and factual. "I'm tired of that old outfit. Clothes are just clothes. What do they matter?"
Elisa looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she said mildly, "Fine. You're free to wear whatever you want. In a year from now, maybe we'll find out that clothing was never all that important."
"Fine," Donna said, her jaw tense. These were not the words of concern she had been hoping for. If she turned out to be wrong a year later, would she do more than shug and say, "I guess I was wrong"?
The girl picked up her school bag and the gym bag, prepared in advance.
"What's in the bag?" Elisa asked from the kitchen.
"Gym clothes," Donna said, and left.
#
The gym bag in fact contained her hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. On the school bus, several of the other kids gave her new outfit interested looks. She let them gawk while keeping her face neutral and her eyes forward. She owed none of them any explanation.
At school, she went straight to the girls’ bathroom, changed back into her usual jeans and hoodie, and wiped off the lip gloss with a paper towel. Then she went to first class sporting her usual look.
While Mr. Torres droned on about Twentieth Century fiction, Donna thought about her experiment. Its first data points were hardly satisfactory. Elisa had merely said, “Fine.” Elisa hadn’t stomped her foot or drawn a line. How could she be so cold about a subject as important as this one?
To shake her out of her complacency, escalation was required.
#
Got up even earlier Wednesday so she could don an even more provocative outfit. She wanted to look like she was going all the way girlie.
Today’s skirt was noticeably shorter than the last. Tuesday's lip gloss had been pale and hard to see. Now Donna chose to wear a deep berry lipstick, a gift from Glory, who frequently shared her rummage sale shopping with her.
Donna was new to makeup, and the results of her paint job were unimpressive. But time was short, so she decided it was good enough and went downstairs.
Elisa looked up from her coffee when Donna entered the kitchen.
"Good morning," Elisa said.
"Morning," Donna replied, waiting for a reaction. But none came. Her lips were berry red, and her knees were showing. How could she possibly say nothing about it?
The girl finished her oatmeal and ate her toast standing next to the toaster on the counter. Still watching Elisa out of the corner of her eye, she still saw no reaction. Donna clenched her teeth in frustration. Didn’t the woman have any feelings at all?
When her coffee was finished, she picked up her bags and left.
#
In the school bathroom, Donna again changed back. It added to her bad mood to find that the berry lip tone was considerably more resistant to a paper towel erasure than had been Tuesday's gloss. It left a faint stain at the corners of her mouth, forcing Donna to apply more soap and elbow grease. Then she hurried into English class looking like her usual self.
Slumped at her desk, she could hardly hear what the teacher was saying. Her thoughts were fixed on Elisa's patient tolerance for bad behavior. Donna was determined to attack it even harder.
#
On Thursday morning, Donna escalated by slipping into high-heeled shoes.
She'd put on the block-heeled shoes that Glory had given her along with the green dress. They were subtle yet intentional. She had briefly practiced walking in them the night before. She could now get where she was going without disgracing herself.
And the new skirt she'd pulled on was even shorter than Wednesday's. She even swallowed her pride and struggled into pantyhose, which added tone to her visible legs. And with no better choice on hand, she once again put on the berry lipstick. A sharp-looking used blouse from Glory’s rummage sale hoard replaced her plain shirt.
Donna took care descending the stairs, lest the heels make her fall.
Elisa, seated at the kitchen table with her laptop, looked up at the unfamiliar footfalls. Her wide eyes traveled from her daughter’s footgear to the shorter-than-ever skirt, to the colorful blouse, to the bold lip color, and back to Donna's alert eyes. For a moment — brief and unguarded — Donna thought she saw something new in her mom's expression. But before she could interpret it, it faded back into mildness, vanishing like the morning mist when the sun comes out.
"You seem to be unsteady in those shoes. You ought to leave a few minutes early, in case they slow you enough to make you miss the bus," Elisa said.
"I hadn't thought about that," Donna grumbled.
The girl ate quickly and left early. She arrived at the stop slightly out of breath and barely in time.
On the ride in, Donna kept thinking about Elisa’s expression. She didn't know yet what it meant, but it meant something, and something was better than her reaction on Tuesday or Wednesday. But why did she refuse to say anything?
Maybe, Donna thought, if she ratcheted things up even more on Friday morning, Elisa would finally be shocked enough to say what she was thinking.
#
For Friday, Donna determinedly put together the most extreme outfit that her small wardrobe could produce.
She selected the shortest skirt she owned — a real miniskirt from the rummage sale stuff. It was as short as the ones the hot girls at school usually wore. She wished she had higher heels to put on, but she didn't. Nor did she have a blouse better than the one from the day before. Ditto for the berry lip color. To do this dress-up game right, she realized she would have to go shopping.
But she did have the push-up bra from the pajama party. She wasn't prepared for the extreme change it afforded. With that skirt and that bra, she looked like a totally different person. Or at least one who had stuffed rolled-up socks under her blouse.
She almost lost her nerve and took off the bra, but her resolve held firm. After all, she only had to wear it to the girls' room. Instead, she enhanced herself further, putting on some rose-colored eye shadow that Glory had provided.
When it didn't look right on her, she tried to shape it using a tissue until the clock hand forced her to set out to catch the bus.
Donna ate fast and left the house, unsure about the total effect of her costume. We worried that she looked more like the girls who gathered at the coffee shop after school than what they wore to class. But that was the point. She was desperate to get a reaction from Elisa. If what she had on didn't do the trick, nothing could.
Elisa was making eggs when her daughter came downstairs. This time Elisa didn’t even look back at her. “Fried or scrambled?” she asked from the stove.
"Scrambled," Donna said.
She ate and watched Elisa move around the kitchen. She must be able to see her now, but still she didn't say anything. Not even the way the hemline rode up when she was sitting forced a rise out of her. What was going on inside Elisa's head? she wondered.
Didn't she care about her at all?
Finishing her orange juice, Donna put down her fork, stood, and picked up her bags.
"Have a good day," Elisa said, looking at her with eyes that still conveyed no special opinion.
"Thanks," Donna said. She paused with her hand on the doorknob. She was fighting back an impulse to ask her stepparent what she thought of her fashion choices. But asking for opinions would be wrong. The reaction she wanted had to come unprompted from the heart, or else it would tell her nothing.
#
On the bus, Donna knew the older boys were looking at her and her bra-enhanced blouse. It embarrassed her, but she screwed up her courage and decided their opinions were outside her research scope.
At school, she went to the bathroom and took out the jeans and the hoodie and held them in front of her.
She stood looking at them for a moment longer than she needed to. If Elisa didn't care how she looked, why in hell should she care how the kids at school thought she looked?
But the part of her that was Langdon revolted at the idea of spending a day at school wearing a miniskirt.
So she hurriedly carried out the change of clothing. With equal speed, she removed the lip gloss and eye shade, then went to English class well covered up.
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 8
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