Michelle Alfano - The Unfinished Dollhouse: A Memoir of Gender and Identity

UNFINISHED

DOLLHOUSE

UNFINISHED

DOLLHOUSE

A MEMOIR OF GENDER

AND IDENTITY

BY MICHELLE ALFANO

Copyright 2017 Michelle Alfano

This edition copyright 2017 Cormorant Books Inc.

This is a first edition.

The poem A letter to the girl I used to be cited on page to is by Ethan Walker Smith and is used with his permission. 2014, 2017 Ethan Walker Smith.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777 .

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund ( cbf ) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

Alfano, Michelle, , author

The unfinished dollhouse / Michelle Alfano.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

isbn 978-1-77086-498-6 (softcover). isbn 978-1-77086-499-3 ( html )

Alfano, Michelle, .. Alfano, Michelle, - Family.. Authors, Canadian (English ) st centur y Biography.. Parents of transgender childrenCanadaBiography.. Transgender childre n Family relationship s Canada.. Mother and chil d Canada.. Autobiographies. i . Title.

ps8601.l37z46 2017 c813 .6 c2016-907302-5

c2016-907303-3

Cover photo and design: angeljohnguerra.com

Interior text design: Tannice Goddard, bookstopress.com

Printer: Friesens

Printed and bound in Canada.

cormorant books inc.

10 st. mary street, suite 615, toronto, ontario, m4y 1p9

www.cormorantbooks.com

For River

through which all things flow

Contents

o

The Unfinished Dollhouse

In the Valley of the Groovy Girl Dolls

Clothes Make the Man (or Boy)

What Every Girl Learns

Unmasked

Girls Who Are Boys Who Like Boys to Be Girls

Taking Down Peter Rabbit

Summertime Sadness

Juliet Squared

Let the Light In

A Girls Glory

Pierced

Summer in the City

One Job

If I Was Your Girlfriend

Shes a Girl with a Problem

The Bad Girl

In the Year of Falling Apart

A Voice in the Night

Where Your Children Are

My Heart is a Volcano

Meditations upon Concession Street

Una Regina Senza Re

A River Runs Through Me

Like a Bomb Went Off

In the Mens Room

The Worlds Smallest Jean Jacket

Purge

My Kingdom of Three

The Night Is My Nemesis

Buon Giorno Principessa

Ash Wednesday

Untagged

Shes the Man

There Will Be Ink

Oh Sonny Boy

A Girl Like Me

Turning On and Tuning In to Trans tv

We All Have Our Mice

A Tale of Two Families

Just a Brilliant Disguise

The Year I Came Out

On Chaz, on Caitlyn

Caged

Back to School (or Not)

On the Job

Welcome to My Fortress

One of Our Own

The Soul of this Room

One Last Thing

Finishing the Unfinished Dollhouse

A Post-Script

A New Vocabulary

Acknowledgements

About the Author

AUTHORS NOTE

For the first third of this book, I refer to Frankie as she, although he was already self-identifying as male. As Frankies gender identity evolves in this journey, the reader will see a notable shift in the use of personal pronouns pre-revelation about the transition and post-revelation. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent as well as some of the guilty.

The Unfinished Dollhouse

o

when our daughter frankie turned four, we bought her a dollhouse the kind that you had to assemble. Her father Rob and I purchased it from a quaint shop on the tony part of Mount Pleasant Avenue in North Toronto that specialized exclusively in dollhouses and dollhouse accessories. I felt excitement in purchasing it for her. I thought she would be as enchanted with it as I am with all things small and delicate. It came in a flat, plain wooden box. It had to be built in the same manner as a real house: piece by piece. Floors,walls and partitions, windows, roof, then painting the walls, filling the house with the furniture the beds and the tables, the tiny stove and the refrigerator, making it a home.

At Frankies fourth birthday party, surrounded by our family, Rob and I openly disagreed about how the dollhouse should be put together and designed. Rob said we should build it, but let Frankie do whatever she liked with it in terms of painting and decoration. I was horrified by this suggestion. She was only four, I argued. She would just slap paint on it haphazardly. It would be a mess.

I saw the dollhouse as something else. I envisioned neatly painted walls of blue or periwinkle with ivory trim like the old Victorian house I imagined we would live in one day. White framed windows on the exterior. Small, neat chairs and tables of cherry wood. A kitchen, a living room, bedrooms, all waiting to be inhabited by a family of three mother, father, daughter, with more children to come.

Rob wanted Frankies creativity to flow unimpeded. I wanted the dollhouse to conform to a fantasy I had about dollhouses pretty, neat, organized, a perfect life in miniature.

Frankie displayed no interest whatsoever in the construction or design of the house. For weeks, Rob and I could not agree as to how to proceed. After three months, we just didnt. The dollhouse would never be constructed. Was that a sign that Frankie would be different from what I desired for her, from the girl I had wanted her to be? Was it also a sign that there would be no second child as I had always hoped for but could not conceive? When Frankie showed no interest in the dollhouse, I pinned my hopes on the imaginary future siblings who would, hopefully, soon come. They did not.

The dollhouse remains hidden in the closet of the middle bedroom of our Victorian house in Riverdale. Frankie never asked for it after it was first presented to her. I havent opened up the box to see the contents since that first day at the party. Life and indifference got in the way.

In the Valley of the Groovy Girl Dolls

o

i had no doubt when I was pregnant that I would have a little girl. I longed for one and had done so for many years. I was superstitious enough having experienced a miscarriage a year before Frankie was born that I didnt have a single article of clothing or toy in the house before the birth. In my culture, thats tempting fate, spitting it in the eye and daring it to defy you. The unadorned room cleaned, painted, and primped and the crib were ready, but little else. I had definitely decided with Frankie there would be no pink in her wardrobe (at least none purchased by me) but still I was inundated with very pretty pale pink sleepers that I couldnt resist as gifts.