A Burden Made Lighter

A Burden Made Lighter

by

Carl Indovina

Mom and Dad’s voices floated out from the front room, strange. Normally they didn’t get back from work until after five.

And then a third voice chimed in. I recognized it as belonging to Mrs. Goodwin. My parents met with the pastor’s wife from time to time to sort out their numerous marital disagreements. She spoke in calm tones that reminded me of water gently flowing over rocks.

I didn’t want to be accused of spying on them, so I stepped farther into the foyer where I could be seen.

Mrs. Goodwin spotted me first, a tight smile stretching across her triangular face. “Good afternoon, Shane. We didn’t hear you come in.”

My parents’ heads swiveled towards me. Mom frowned, all tightly pulled knots. Dad peered at me lips pursed, the look he gave me when I’d done something to upset him. Like when I ran over the garden hose with the lawnmower last summer. Or leaned my bike against his new jeep.

“I wasn’t listening,” I said, tone rising an octave higher than normal.

My parents continued to look at me, expressions unchanging, but Mrs. Goodwin beckoned me to come nearer. I stepped into the room. She shifted on the couch to better see me, tugging at her skirt as her long straight hair brushed gently over her slender shoulders. She always struck me as the image of perfectly honed grace. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen you at a youth group meeting.”

I squirmed internally. “I’ve been really busy with classes and cross country.”

She sighed at this. “Teens are so over scheduled these days, but you must make time in your life for God.”

“I’ll make an effort to come,” I said.

“Good,” she replied with an airy gesture. “The fellowship of your peers can make burdens lighter. Trust me on that.”

I wondered why the pastor’s wife felt it necessary to hand me that morsel of advice, and our brief interaction lingered with me, as I left to climb the stairs.

I stepped into the upstairs hallway, floorboards whining in complaint as though the press of my feet against them were an imposition.

No sounds of movement came from within Drew’s room. Not unusual, he typically took off somewhere with his buddy, Mikey, after football practice. Which wasn’t a source of concern for my parents. Dad often bragged about his oldest son, who earned top grades and accolades for his athletic talent.

The muffled sounds of a video game emanated from behind Mitchell’s door to my right. At thirteen, he held the positions of baby of the family and mom’s favorite pet. He didn’t participate in any sports. Didn’t have practice. And so had already finished his homework.

I slipped into my own room farther down the hall, heading over to my desk without noticing what lay on my bed. After unpacking my laptop, I dropped my backpack on the floor. Then I turned around and saw it, a bra stretched across my comforter. Pink cups shimmered faintly in the pale light from my window.

All the pieces crashed jarringly into place. I understood what lay behind the looks Mom and Dad gave me when I came into the house. And I knew that they called Mrs. Goodwin over to talk about the undergarment I hid in my room.

I stiffened, unable to breathe as panic splashed over me like an icy bucket of water.

When I slipped the bra into the gap under my bookcase, I assured myself that Mom would never find it. She would have to get down onto the floor and look under there with a flashlight to do so, and I assumed she wouldn’t search my space with such thoroughness. But I counted too much on complacency.

And Mom found it. And she likely laid everything out to the pastor’s wife. She probably told her that, at the age of five, I cut holes in a pillowcase, turning it into a makeshift dress. At around the age of eleven, she caught me trying on one of her skirts. More recently, she walked in on me while I scrolled through girls’ clothing on my laptop.

Mom locked onto these instances and held them in her mind as significant. I knew this by virtue of the way in which family members catch each other’s unspoken thoughts. Her eyes narrowed if some bit of clothing caught my eye. She stole looks at my internet search history to make sure I wasn’t browsing pictures of girls’ clothes again.

And she found proof that her suspicions about me were correct. She set it out on my bed so that I would know, and she called for a conference between herself, Dad, and Mrs. Goodwin.

When the three of them looked at me, they saw me up here strapping this thing on. That image would remain burned into their brains for some time. Shame vibrated through me at the thought of it. And my heart plucked painfully in my chest.

The bra belonged to Meredith. I hated myself for stealing it. For betraying the girl that was like a big sister to me. I took something from her that was personal and intimate. I violated her trust.

But lately, the urge to dress in girls’ clothing became like an itch. The more I ignored it, the more I writhed in discomfort.

I spotted the bra in a hamper the week before when I was working on a school project with Nathan. With simple cups and elegant straps, it looked different than the drab things Mom hung up in the laundry room. It looked like something a teen girl would wear.

The impulse to take it snaked around my heart causing it to kick wildly against my ribcage. And it twined up around my brain, so that my thoughts burned with feverish intensity. It numbed my face, palms, and fingertips. My blood roiled in my ears and behind my eyes.

I took the bra, folded it up, and zipped it into the pocket of my track jacket.

I wished I could rid myself of the urges. I wished to be like everyone else.

I crumpled onto my desk chair and buried my face in my hands as hot tears pricked my eyes. I sat like that, weeping silently, for several moments. I wanted desperately to curl up under my blankets and hide from the world forever.

I had to do something about the bra though. I couldn’t keep it here in my room, where it would serve as a reminder of what I’d done.

I thought about discarding it in the dumpster behind Giovanni’s. Or stashing it in the thick brush along the canal trail. But I worried that someone might see me. That they’d go to investigate, finding the item I’d disposed of.

Returning it. That was what I had to do. Stuffing the garment back into the hamper would undo my offense. All would be set right, and it would be like I never committed the act at all.

And I would resist the impulse to try on girls’ clothing going forward. No matter how it grappled me, I would slip free of it.

Maybe the youth group Mrs. Goodwin mentioned would distract me from the urges. Help me find the strength I needed to beat them back until they faded.

Mom and Dad would relax as time passed and they grew confident I’d been reformed, and my world would slip back on its axis. My life would spin forward normally again.

I put the bra into my backpack and headed downstairs. Mrs. Goodwin had apparently left. My parents now occupied the kitchen. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad that I could leave the house without facing them. But then I heard Dad’s voice, muffled by the wall between us. “Maybe we should buy him his own bras and underpants so he can—you know—get it out of his system.”

“Are you kidding?” Mom erupted, her words piercing me like ice spikes. “Do you expect me to bring him to Victoria’s Secrets and have him fitted?”

Heat flooded into my face at the image her words conjured. Mainly out of shame for how badly I wished I lived in a reality where it could happen.

“Besides, there’s nothing he needs to get out of his system,” Mom continued. “He just needs to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him. Because this is all just about getting attention.”

I winced at the disgust in Mom’s voice. At the disdain of her conviction that I hid a bra in my room because I felt ignored.

I fled from the house on my mission to wipe my action from the ledger.

The Worthey's porchlights glowed yellow, reminding me of fireflies and nights spent playing with Nathan in his backyard. Mrs. Worthey greeted me warmly when I showed up on her doorstep. “Here to work on homework, Shane?”

I nodded. “I need Nathan’s help with AP Geometry.”

“Don’t let him in,” Mr. Worthey called out dryly from the kitchen. “Those numbskulls never get any work done when they're together.

The ends of my mouth pulled up at his rough brand of humor. Mr. Worthey’s way of welcoming me. But then I remembered what I had stowed in my backpack, and thoughts of what I’d done squeezed my chest. Because my actions jeopardized my relationship with this family. If they ever learned of what I’d done— Well—they’d probably ban me from their home. And Nathan, the guy who'd ben my best friend since the fourth grade, would cut me off.

I would make sure this didn’t happen. I just needed to duck into the upstairs bathroom. Probably no one would even notice that the bra had strangely disappeared from the hamper and then reappeared. I wouldn’t notice if a pair of my underwear went missing for a week. Or one of my t-shirts.

Mr. Worthey came into the doorway to the kitchen. A fit man with broad shoulders and a flat stomach, he held himself with assuredness. I wished I could be like him, all the things a man should be. But another part of me longed to be like Mrs. Goodwin, a graceful creature in well put together outfits. The tight pull between these parts caused a deep aching in my chest. A pain that frequently nagged in the background of awareness.

“I’m putting a couple burgers on for you,” the man announced, unilaterally deciding I would stay for dinner. “And don’t worry, they’ll be bloody the way you like them.” He shook his head at bloody burgers, mouth twisting in distaste as he went back to work on preparing the meal.

Meredith made a loud exasperated sound from some other part of the house. A moment later, she stalked out into the foyer, gingerbread curls flouncing against her back. “Where’s my favorite bra?” she asked her mom. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

Then she saw me, mouth twitching into a half smile as she said, “Hey, Shane.”

“The light blue one?” Mrs. Worthey asked. “It’s in the laundry basket on your bed.”

“The pink one,” Meredith said like she couldn’t believe her mom didn’t know.

“Maybe it’s in that monster pile on your bedroom floor.”

“No, Mom! I’m SURE I put it in the hamper last week. So, it should be clean by now.”

I squirmed. So much for no one noticing the bra missing. Now I had to hope that they didn’t connect me with the undergarment’s strange reappearance. That Mrs. Worthey would say something like, “You probably misremembered when you threw it in there” and that Meredith would accept this explanation.

The conversation between Meredith and her mother continued, as I climbed to the second level. Nathan’s door was closed to shut out the sounds of the household, so he didn’t even know I’d come over yet. I entered the bathroom across the way and went to the corner where the wicker hamper usually stood. But I didn’t find it there. Mrs. Worthey must have carried it downstairs to sort its contents.

Great! I couldn’t leave the bra on the bathroom floor.

I would have to sneak into Meredith’s room and throw it under her bed or something. When she found it, she would decide that it got kicked under there and that she only thought she threw it in the hamper.

I left the bathroom and crept down the hall to Meredith’s door, intent on getting the deed done right away. On shedding myself of the guilt. I turned the knob and entered. Her closet remained slightly open, and a pile of dirty laundry spilled out.

It occurred to me that I should stuff the bra into that pile. So, I went to the closet and quickly buried it into the tangled nest of blouses, shirts, and jeans.

When I turned around, I saw Meredith gaping at me. For the second time that day an icy panic splashed down over me, and for a moment, I floated somewhere near the ceiling watching myself looking back at Meredith.

“Did I really just see you put my bra into that pile?” she said.

I couldn’t answer. My throat closed up, and all I could do was choke out an apology before bolting past her and fleeing from the house.

* * *

Meredith didn’t tell Nathan. Not yet. He texted, wanting to know why I left without even letting him know I was there. But my stomach still twisted itself into knots, making me sick. Because she probably would tell her parents after she got over the shock of what she’d seen.

The Worthey family had opened its arms to me. Treated me like a son. And I betrayed them. I irreparably broke their trust.

And I hurt Meredith.

When I searched the internet, I found new sources of panic. A case came up in which a guy served time for stealing women’s panties from laundromats. He’d snatched hundreds of pairs of underwear, and I’d only taken one bra. But still, Images of the police at my door popped into my mind. “There’s been a complaint against you,” they would say before placing me in handcuffs.

I told myself that the Wortheys wouldn’t take things that far, but the worry kept stinging me like an angry wasp.

And then a soft knock came on my door. Mom with a stack of clean clothes probably. I blew out air. “Yes.”

The door opened, revealing Meredith. For a moment I looked at her trying to determine if this was a trick of my imagination or if she had really come over.

“I just need to know why you took it,” she said.

A fair question. A question that deserved an honest answer. And that answer came tumbling out. “Because I wanted to try it on. I wanted to know what it felt like.”

A moment of silence passed as she considered my words. A moment that seemed to stretch on forever. “You mean—was it feels like being a girl?”

Her question sent a jolt through me. I vibrated in the aftermath of it. Because she was asking for me to admit that I dwelled on the question—what is it like being a girl. That it occupied my mind enough for me to steal a bra and try it on.

I felt I could tell her though. Even with the electrical storm flashing through my being, I saw the earnestness in her eyes. The same earnestness I always saw in Nathan. “I think so, yes.”

And then I told her the whole story. How an impulse drove me to want to wear girls’ clothes. How I tried to suppress these feelings. How I tried to be the son my parents expected me to be, but the drive to dress as a girl grew stronger and stronger.

At some point, she sat down beside me. And then she put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me in. Tears began to leak out from my eyes. Because I knew she didn’t see me as a boy who committed an unforgivable offense. She saw me as a friend who had been quietly hurting for a long time. A friend who, in his hurt, had made a mistake.

“I’m very sorry for what I did,” I told her. “It wasn’t right.”

“I forgive you,” she said, squeezing me again. “There isn’t anything that could make me stop being your friend. And I don’t want you stealing my favorite bra again, but I understand why you did it. And I accept you. Nathan would, too, if you told him.”

I sat there with her for a while noticing how it had been hard telling her my secret but not as hard as I feared it would be.

And the weight of what I shared--the pain of uncertainty over. It all lay more lightly on me now.