Regan blinked. “So something is wrong with me.”
“No, honey, no. There’s nothing wrong with you. That’s what all those tests told us. That we were going to have a perfect, wonderful, absolutely beautiful daughter. There was nothing wrong with you then, and there’s nothing wrong with you now. You are the way nature intended you to be. Horse-crazy and not very interested in math and too fond of cauliflower for any ten-year-old girl.” Maureen forced her tone into something light and airy, hoping to coax a smile from her daughter.
Regan’s expression didn’t change. “So what is it?” she asked.
Hugo sighed. “One of the tests we ran came back with some concerning results,” he said. “It meant running more tests. More invasive tests. One of them gave us a snapshot of your chromosomes.”
“And?”
“And your chromosomes are XY, instead of the XX the doctors expected to see when they ran the tests. You have what’s called androgen insensitivity. That’s why you haven’t started puberty yet. It’s why you may never start a standard female puberty on your own. If you hadn’t shown signs by the time you turn sixteen, we were going to take you to see Dr. Gibson and discuss artificial hormone treatment.”
“Sixteen?” demanded Regan, scandalized. The other girls were already starting to shut her out for being babyish and not maturing as quickly as they did. Sixteen was halfway through high school. Sixteen was practically an adult. If she had to wait until she was sixteen to experience things some of them were experiencing now, at ten and eleven, she’d never catch up. They would leave her behind forever, and none of them would look back to see if she was following. They’d forget about her.
Something else her father had said clicked into place, flooding her mind with a painfully bright white light. “Chromosomes?” she squeaked. “Aren’t those the things that say whether you’re a boy or a girl? I thought only boys had Y chromosomes. I’m not a boy. I don’t want to be a boy!” Her voice, which had started out reasonably soft, grew louder with every word, until it was peaking and spiking like it was about to break.
“You’re not a boy,” said Maureen soothingly. “If you feel like you’re a girl, then you’re a girl. You’ve always been our daughter. You’re just also part of a small percentage of the population who are considered intersex, meaning your body has its own ways of regulating things like hormone production. Some intersex people are more clearly a blend of what doctors would consider male and female attributes; that wasn’t the case with you. There was no surgical intervention or modification after you were born—not that your father and I would have approved that if the doctors had wanted to do it. You are exactly as you were meant to be.”
Maureen’s words were calm and measured—too measured. Regan scowled at her.
“You’re my mother,” she said. “You’re supposed to be making me feel better and helping me understand what’s wrong with me, not—not reciting some Wikipedia article you memorized as soon as I got old enough to start asking questions! You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“We are, pumpkin, we are,” said Hugo, and sat next to her. “But you’re right: we’ve had years to prepare for you to start asking questions, and that means we’ve played out this conversation in our heads a hundred times. It hasn’t always gone well.” He laughed wryly and shook his head. “But it’s always gone. So this is hard for us too, just in a different way.”
Maureen sat on Regan’s other side. “Sweetheart, what matters most is that you understand there isn’t anything wrong with you. You’re exactly the way you’re supposed to be. Some things may not come as … easily … to you as they do to other girls, and some things may need a doctor’s help to happen, but you’re perfect. There’s no right way to be a girl. You’re going to have a wonderful, perfectly normal life, and all this silliness about wanting to start puberty before fifth grade will seem like a childish obsession that was better off outgrown.”
“Why are girls starting puberty so early, anyway?” grumbled Hugo. “I don’t remember any of the girls needing bras before they were thirteen, and now it’s like some sort of a race.”
“It was always a race, dear, it was just a race you weren’t running,” said Maureen. “Ten is young, but it’s not that unusual. There was a girl in my class who was wearing D-cups by the end of third grade.”
Hugo shuddered. Regan, who didn’t fully understand what that meant, just frowned.
“There’s really nothing wrong with me?” she asked.
“Really,” said Maureen.
“Really-really,” said Hugo.
“I was born this way, and there’s nothing you can do to change it?”
“We wouldn’t change it if we could,” said Maureen. “You’re perfect. You’ve always been perfect, and you always will be.”
Regan, whose ideas of perfection were closely linked to conformity, didn’t say anything. She sat silently as her parents hugged her, first separately, and then together. She twisted her hands in her lap, tangling her fingers like the roots of a tree, and blinked back the tears threatening to spill over and run down her cheeks. She didn’t want to cry in front of her parents. Only babies cried in front of their parents, and she wasn’t a baby.
“Was there anything else you wanted to ask, sweetheart?” asked her father, letting go and leaning away from her, so he could see her face. He could see the brightness in her eyes, but he didn’t call her on it. This was all a bit overwhelming for him, and it wasn’t his body under discussion. It was understandable that she’d be a little upset.
“No, Daddy,” she said, with a shake of her head. Then: “May I be excused? I have school tomorrow.”
“All right, pumpkin,” said Maureen. “Brush your teeth before you go to bed.”
“Yes, Mom,” said Regan, and slid off the couch, heading for the stairs. She didn’t look back.
Her parents exchanged an anxious glance. “Did we do the right thing?” asked Maureen.
“We agreed to tell her as soon as she was old enough to notice that something was different,” said Hugo. “She noticed, she asked, we told her. I think it went about as well as it could have gone, all things considered.”
Maureen sighed and leaned against her husband, closing her eyes. She wanted him to be right. She wanted everything to be all right. But she kept seeing the shock and betrayal on Regan’s face. They had kept secrets from their daughter. Whether it had been for her own good or not, they had done it, and now they were going to face the consequences.
Upstairs in her room, Regan turned on her computer, bringing up Wikipedia. “Intersex,” she typed, and began to read.
She was still reading an hour later, when her father knocked on the door and told her it was time to turn off the light. Her eyes were dry as she kissed his cheek and climbed into bed. Her mind was whirling, and she thought she’d never be able to fall asleep, but when Hugo flicked off the light, it was as if he’d flicked her off as well. She fell immediately into a deep and surprisingly untroubled slumber, which lasted all the way until morning.