Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [220]
“Not that we know of,” said Milton.
“When did your parents immigrate?”
“Nineteen twenty-two.”
“Do you have any relatives still living in Turkey?”
“Not anymore.”
Luce looked disappointed. He had one arm of his glasses in his mouth, and was chewing on it. Possibly he was imagining what it would be like to discover a whole new population of carriers of the 5-alpha-reductase mutation. He had to content himself with discovering me.
He put his glasses back on. “The treatment I’d recommend for your daughter is twofold. First, hormone injections. Second, cosmetic surgery. The hormone treatments will initiate breast development and enhance her female secondary sex characteristics. The surgery will make Callie look exactly like the girl she feels herself to be. In fact, she will be that girl. Her outside and inside will conform. She will look like a normal girl. Nobody will be able to tell a thing. And then Callie can go on and enjoy her life.”
Milton’s brow was still furrowed with concentration but from his eyes there was light appearing, rays of relief. He turned toward Tessie and patted her leg.
But in a timid, breaking voice Tessie asked, “Will she be able to have children?”
Luce paused only a second. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Stephanides. Callie will never menstruate.”
“But she’s been menstruating for a few months now,” Tessie objected.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Possibly there was some bleeding from another source.”
Tessie’s eyes filled with tears. She looked away.
“I just got a postcard from a former patient,” Luce said consolingly. “She had a condition similar to your daughter’s. She’s married now. She and her husband adopted two kids and they’re as happy as can be. She plays in the Cleveland Orchestra. Bassoon.”
There was a silence, until Milton asked, “Is that it, Doctor? You do this one surgery and we can take her home?”
“We may have to do additional surgery at a later date. But the immediate answer to your question is yes. After the procedure, she can go home.”
“How long will she be in the hospital?”
“Only overnight.”
It was not a difficult decision, especially as Luce had framed it. A single surgery and some injections would end the nightmare and give my parents back their daughter, their Calliope, intact. The same enticement that had led my grandparents to do the unthinkable now offered itself to Milton and Tessie. No one would know. No one would ever know.
While my parents were being given a crash course in gonadogenesis, I—still officially Calliope—was doing some homework myself. In the Reading Room of the New York Public Library I was looking up something in the dictionary. Dr. Luce was correct in thinking that his conversations with colleagues and medical students were over my head. I didn’t know what “5-alpha-reductase” meant, or “gynecomastia,” or “inguinal canal.” But Luce had underestimated my abilities, too. He didn’t take into consideration the rigorous curriculum at my prep school. He didn’t allow for my excellent research and study skills. Most of all, he didn’t factor in the power of my Latin teachers, Miss Barrie and Miss Silber. So now, as my Wallabees made squishing sounds between the reading tables, as a few men looked up from their books to see what was coming and then looked down (the world was no longer full of eyes), I heard Miss Barrie’s voice in my ear. “Infants, define this word for me: hypospadias. Use your Greek or Latin roots.”
The little schoolgirl in my head wriggled in her desk, hand raised high. “Yes, Calliope?” Miss Barrie called on me.
“Hypo. Below or beneath. Like ‘hypodermic.’ ”
“Brilliant. And spadias?”
“Um um …”
“Can anyone come to our poor muse’s aid?”
But, in the