To the Manna Born: The Life of Donna

Chapter 8 — Exploring Paradise

 By Christopher Leeson 

 

 
Heels became weapons of war on Thursday.

They were the ones Glory had given her along with the green dress — an inch and a half, block-heeled. She had started practicing in them in her room the night before. They were high enough to feel wrong, making her wonder how Playboy Bunnies had survived in five-inch heels. But she was determined, and by bedtime she could navigate a kitchen and a hallway without disgracing herself.

The new skirt was shorter than Wednesday's. But Donna had gone even further. She had broken down and struggled into a pair of pantyhose, which gave her legs the same finished quality she had noticed on the girls at school who'd been dressing like girls all their lives. Then she subjected her mouth to the berry lip color again, and selected a fitted blouse from the drawer — another of Glory's contributions.

Once her day's outfit was complete, Donna came downstairs carefully, the heels precarious heels requiring her full attention on the stairs.

Early as it was, Elisa was at work on the kitchen table with her laptop. She looked up, and her eyes moved from the heels to Donna's skirt to the blouse to the lip color and back to her face. For a moment — brief and unguarded — something moved in her expression that was no longer careful neutrality. Donna caught the difference and held it in her mind like an unidentified insect specimen, turning it over and trying to read it. Then her stepmother's expression faded back into mildness.

"You'll want to leave a few minutes early," Elisa advised. "The heels will slow you down."

"I hadn't thought about that," Donna said, which was true.

She ate quickly and left early. The heels slowed her down along the way to the bus, as predicted. She arrived at the stop slightly out of breath, but boarded without incident.

She dulled over her data. There had been something in Elisa's expression that she couldn't interpret, but it meant something, and a little bit of something was more than Elisa had shown her on Tuesday or Wednesday.

More escalation was still required, but she thought she was getting somewhere.

#

Donna had changed back in her hoodie and old jeans before going to first class. But the day was an uneventful one. At the closing bell, she hurried home before Elisa showed up and went upstairs. She believed that her stepmom need the shock treatment. Accordingly, she changed into the lavender chemise, with the thong underneath and her fuzzy bedroom slippers on her feet. Then she went downstairs to get something to eat. If the morning escalation had surprised her legal guardian, this evening's variant out to be even harder to ignore.

She prepared an evening snack, but before she finished it, Elisa came in through the kitchen door, both hands toting heavy valises. She blinked to see the lavender satin and Donna's bare legs under the table.

Elisa set down her bags. "Dressed for bed already?"

"I just thought this little thing makes a great lounge outfit," Donna said. "I don't know why, but I feel so darn good when I wear it."

"I see," said Elisa, sitting down. "Is there enough pasta for two?"

Donna tried to make her disappointment at her stepmother's tepid reaction invisible. "I made a double portion. Help yourself."

Elisa filled a plate and sat across from her. She didn't have much to say — and nothing at all about the chemise. Irksome! Someone comes into a kitchen to find a girl showing off her skin and has nothing special to say about it? When Elisa spoke at all, it was about unimportant things. Donna answered in short sentences and kept watching for signs of exasperation in her stepmother's face. Nothing came.

After supper, Donna went upstairs and sat on the edge of her bed.

The chemise had been the loudest bomb in her arsenal. It should have detonated something. What now?

For a moment she simply sat there, not fuming, but analyzing. She had known, in some corner of her mind, that Elisa might not react. But knowing it in advance and experiencing it were different things. Her stepmother had looked at the lavender satin like a starlet in a R-rated movie and only said, "I see," and asked about pasta. And that was it. That was all of it.

She lay back and stared at the ceiling.

Elisa must have realized that the way her daughter was carrying on was either real or not. Is she thought wasn't real, why was she so sure about that. If she thought it was on the level, why didn't she care if she was dooming herself to perpetual girlhood. Didn't she realize how bad a thing that would be? What did a person have to do to make someone in her own family care?

Was a little bit of caring asking for much? She wasn't asking to be loved or protected or championed. She was asking for a single honest reaction — for the evidence that another person had feelings about her future that went beyond mild pleasantness. Even anger would have felt like something. Even a scolding would have been proof that her stepson was more than a houseguest who needed occasional scrambled eggs.

Donna put the earbuds into her ears. If Elisa was going to be of no help, the sleep-teacher was the only ally she could turn to. Listening dejectedly to the same monotonous words yet again, she eventually put her to sleep.

#

Friday morning’s outfit was the most extreme her small wardrobe was capable of producing, assembled with the deliberate care of a spy laying out the elements of a disguise.

She had on the shortest skirt she owned. And she was wearing the heels, with more confidence now. A fresh fitted blouse. The berry lip color. And two additions she hadn't attempted before: the push-up bra she had that had been given her with the chemise. It produced a figure she barely recognized in the mirror — it made it look as thought she had stuffed a couple of rolled-up socks under her blouse — which she didn't. But, undaunted, she applied a light touch of rose eyeshadow with a fingertip, approximating Glory's technique as best she could. The result needed work. She worked at shaping it with a tissue until time ran out and she had to go to school the way she was.

But this time she stood looking at herself in the mirror longer than usual.

The honest truth was she wasn't sure the overall effect was right. She looked more like those girls who gathered at the coffee shop after school than someone in a hallway at eight in the morning. But that was the point. She needed to light Elisa's fuse, and nothing she'd tried yet had been extreme enough to do that.

Donna found Elisa downstairs making eggs.

"Scramble mine," Donna said, before she was asked.

She ate in silence while watching Elisa move around the kitchen. For the first time in this experiment she felt the anger shift direction — not entirely outward toward Elisa. It was bopping her own nose. Four days of escalation and not a single useful reaction. At what point did a failed experiment stop being Elisa's failure and start being her own? She had been so certain that the right outfit, the right provocation, would crack her stepmother open. Instead she was sitting at the kitchen table in a push-up bra at seven-thirty in the morning, feeling slightly ridiculous And she had brought it all down on herself.

Donna put down her fork and picked up her bags.

"Have a good day," Elisa said.

"Thanks," Donna replied. She fought back the impulse to ask what Elisa thought of her outfit. She the wanted truth to come out spontaneously, like a geyser, not be hand-pumped from a reluctant well. But once the bus, staring out the window while the older boys stole glances at the shape the push-up bra had given her, she found herself wondering whether she was carrying out the right experiment.

She filed this thought without acting on it and went to school.

And, like the days previous, she changed her clothing before very many people got a look at her.

The only thing that made her feel good that day was the idea she'd come up with for Saturday.

#

Since he’d turned sixteen, Elisa had been paying Langdon a twenty-dollar weekly allowance, and had continued paying Donna the same amount without discussion. Donna had spent almost none of it since the transformation. In her dismal mood, there had been almost nothing she wanted to buy.

But there was something she wanted to buy now.

On Saturday, she took the bus into downtown. She had left the house dressed  simply, wearing a snug, stretchy pair of blue pants, a white shirt, and a knee-length brown fall coat. She also wore the calf-high boots that Glory had picked up at a rummage sale. Glory must have a keen eye for sizes, because everything she had given to Donna had fit to a tee. 

Her campaign at home make Elisa show she carried was out of bullets. Her stepmom didn't care; she'd have to get used to that idea. Instead, she had decided upon this shopping trip with only a vague objective in mind.

She had often passed Victoria’s Secret before this. As with most males, it elated Langdon to see a good-looking girl wearing lingerie — which mostly happened on the movie screen. He had passed the local store regularly, with active, searching eyes. Unfortunately, teenage boys who walked into lingerie stores to get a better look at the dressed-up manikins were treated as problems. Because of that, he had developed a method for exploring hostile territory: walk slowly past the lit window, wearing sunglasses, preferably, looking out of the corners of his eyes. He had gotten good enough at this technique that it had been a long time since the staff had found it necessary to come out and ask him to move along.

But now Langdon was living the life of someone called Donna, standing at the window openly, without sunglasses, not using the corners of her eyes, but looking directly at anything she damned well wanted to look at.

Then she went in, determined to give the place the most intense eye-balling she had ever been able to give it before.

The interior was warm and lit with tented lights, smelling of something floral — air freshener, probably — an atmosphere of femininity that was so thick that it felt vaguely oppressive. She stopped short a short distance down the aisle and stood there for a moment, orienting.

A female staff member appeared — young, professional, with the efficiency of someone trained to appear friendly. “Can I help you find something?”

“Just looking,” Donna said.

And look she did.

The girl continued her exploration of the shop with the careful attention like the discoverer of a lost land, with the deliberate, unhurried ease of someone who belonged there. It passed through her mind that this wasn’t really a scam. She wasn't wearing a sham disguise. She actually did have the right and privilege to go into lingerie shops for the simple fact that she had a girl’s body — which she hoped she would not have for longer than eleven months. The confusing idea that she was a girl but not really a girl was a combination that produced a feeling she didn’t have a word to describe.

She touched things.

And, man, did they feel good!

Donna no longer had to follow a look-but-don’t-touch-rule. She picked up a camisole in a color between ivory and blush and felt the fabric between her fingers—light and cool, like her own lavender chemise. She held a lace-edged pair of hot pants shorts against herself as if to check the size. She looked at colors with genuine interest, imagining  great-looking girls wearing such garments. As she moved through the shop, of a feeling like hunger started to grow inside her.

There was something about these playful garments that spoke of fun and naughtiness. It seemed that the designers of lingerie had deliciously evil minds. But they also had shown consummate skill in their designs.

Suddenly, it was as if a barely-heard voice was whispering, “Oh, this is paradise.”

It was so much like a real voice that it made her stop and blink.

But then she passed it off as the waxing of her overwrought imagination.

She wasn’t thinking now about her frustration with Elisa. She was thinking about what she was going to try on next. She was thinking about the satin and the lace and the colors, and about the fact that she could buy things here and take them home.

That, also, seemed like paradise.

It was like she could pick the forbidden fruit and get away with it.

Donna thought back on the pajama party and how hot the girls looked in their pretty, dinky things. But honestly, those pjs were kid stuff compared to what was on display for women the age of magazine models. There were things that made her own lavender chemise look tame by comparison.

But thinking these thoughts with intensity started her quiet inner voice speaking again. Now it was saying to her that a magazine models had nothing on her. She could wear the best of these outfits and look naughty enough to deserve an array of photos.

For the first time she was glad that if she had to be a girl for a while, she didn't have to look dumpy, like most girls did. 

And another thought also became clear.

Her mirror told her that she had a good shape and a face that was better than what some film actresses had. If she put these things on, she could get a real kick just by gazing at her reflection. She could come up close enough to touch the image. She could imagine the image was warm and solft. And nobody needed to know. Nobody needed to see. The secret fun would be hers to privately enjoy. 

The trouble was the prices. Hardly anything she saw worth having was marked under fifty dollars. She couldn’t buy much without burning through her savings.

But she wanted to take something home, and so she had to select carefully. She went back to the rack where she'd seen a short night slip she’d liked. If she wore the lavender chemise it would start looking old. She wanted to treat it special, since it was a gift from Glory. It would be better to have something else to wear in its place.

Next she checked out a manikin that had on a plaid miniskirt even shorter than the shortest one she owned. A girl wearing something like that would have to walk carefully to keep her panties from showing. And, speaking of panties, there were many thong panties on display. There was something about a girl wearing a thong that thrilled her. She couldn’t help but pick up a three-pack, red, white, and blue. 

She next took two packs of hose, which were reasonably priced. From the cosmetics section, she selected a mascara kit and an eye-shadow palette with tones that would make her eyes look great. She found a bullet-shaped lipstick containing a dazzling red paint that she held up and looked at for a long moment before adding it to her selections.

Donna would have bought even more, but didn’t want to spend herself broke. After taking the slip off the rack and asking for a skirt like the manikin was wearing, she called it a day.

On the ride home, she ruminated about being so poor. That brought to mind Elisa’s standing offer — five dollars an hour for doing useful chores around the house. That was an offer that Langdon had never taken her up on because he hated manual labor; selling drugs was so much easier. Donna disliked work just as much, but couldn’t help thinking that five dollars an hour for chores might be worth considering. Maybe next month she could buy that knockout minidress the store had. It was something that would look great on a body like hers.

Who needed a friendship with privileges if she had clothes like these, a body like this, and a full-length mirror at home?

The girl carried her selections to the counter, trying not to feel self-conscious. The woman at the register received the items with professional neutrality, folded them in tissue paper, and handed the bag across the counter pleasantness. Donna accepted the bag, said thank you, and walked out.

The girl stood on the pavement outside the shop for a long moment, listening for the quiet voice she'd been hearing. It wasn’t whispering now, but she continued as a sensed presence, a warm, low note running through her unconscious—as if it were sleep-teaching her.

Donna walked to the bus stop, in happy contemplation of her purchases. Before long, she was home.

#

Elisa was away somewhere, which suited Donna fine. She went upstairs and took the items out of the bag one by one and laid them on the bed to look at. The red lipstick. The night slip. The plaid miniskirt. The thong panties in their cellophane package. Collectively, they made her feel like she had carried home pirate gold. She could actually feel her heart beating fast.

Donna wasn’t exactly sure why she had bought these things, but they gave her the same thrill that a collector enjoys when bringing home new, rare stamps.

They seemed to radiate a spirit of "wickedness," that was a very seductive.

She put the “wicked” items in the same drawer where the lavender chemise and the other girly things, like a pirate adding new precious gold to his chest.

After that, she flopped down on her back. She contemplated putting the garments and lipstick

on and contemplating her reflection, but she was tired from shopping, and if she delayed the show, she could savor the anticipation longer. After a few minutes, she put the earbuds on again  and listened to them until dinner time.

As always, the recording said its familiar piece.

As Donna lay there, she imagined that it had an under-text speaking as the quiet voice that had advised and urged in while she was inside Victoria’s Secret. There was something about it that made her feel sleepy, warm, and patient, and in no particular hurry.

 TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 9