Chapter 19 Chapter 18: The Inquisition
A profound, gut-wrenching sense of being out of place and out of time consumed me. I was convinced that every single person on that crowded hopper knew my secrets better than I did. Their sideways glances felt like accusations. The simple summer dress Silver had loaned me, a gesture of kindness that now felt like a cruel joke, was a disastrous choice. The soft fabric, meant for a slighter frame, strained across my new, unfamiliar chest. My large, tender breasts pressed tightly against the material, and my nipples, hard with a mixture of cold and acute anxiety, stood out like bullets against the cloth, announcing my change to the entire world. Below, the bucket-like shoes slapped against my heels with every slight movement, a constant, humiliating reminder that nothing fit. Each second on that hopper was an eternity of exposed vulnerability.
By the time the vehicle shuddered to a halt at my street corner, my watch read five past ten. A cold dread solidified in my stomach. I was late. I erupted from the doors and ran, my ridiculous shoes half-falling off with every clumsy, galloping stride, the dress clinging to my new curves in a way that felt obscene.
I skidded to a halt at the garden gate, my breath coming in ragged, taut gasps. And there they were. My parents, standing on the pristine front step like a welcoming committee for my impending doom. And with them, a stranger; a Polli with a severe haircut and a crisp, professional jacket. Professor Liza.
My mother’s eyes initially slid over me, a look of faint annoyance for the disruption. Then it happened. I saw the exact moment her brain reconciled the frantic, dishevelled figure with the child she knew. Her eyes widened, her jaw went slack, and a hand flew to her mouth before she cried out, a single, sharp stab of a word: “Nanda!”
The sound was like a gunshot. My father and Professor Liza turned in unison, startled by the jolt of her voice. My father’s face cycled through confusion, disbelief, and then a storm of pure, unadulterated horror.
My mother, ever the diplomat even in total collapse, was fighting a desperate battle for control. Her smile was a rictus grin, a terrifying mask of politeness stretched over sheer panic. She looked me directly in my terrified eyes, her own screaming a silent plea for me to not ruin this.
“Professor Liza,” she said, her voice trembling with the immense force of her composure. “Please meet my er…”
She faltered, the word Polli dying before it was born. She couldn’t say Nate. The linguistic trap of my existence yawned open before her.
“...please meet Nanda.”
My mother ushered us all into the living room with a brittle, forced efficiency. I think she did it as much to have something to do as to be hospitable, always the practical healer, trying to mend a situation with tea and routine when the foundation itself had just cracked.
The room was set with a painful veneer of normalcy. A fresh pot of leaf steamed gently on the low table beside a plate of my mother’s famous homemade bro-she, the buttery, herbal scent filling the air with the ghost of a perfect family life we had never actually lived. The comfort it was meant to offer felt like a taunt.
Everyone sat around the spread, the silence thick and uncomfortable, broken only by the clink of a cup against a saucer. It was Professor Liza whose crisp, academic voice finally cut through it.
“Hello, Nanda,” she began, her tone professionally warm yet laced with a keen, analytical curiosity. “I am Professor Liza. I’ve been looking forward to our little meeting. Your mother and father have told me so much about you.” Her eyes scanned me from head to toe, and a faint, puzzled frown creased her brow. “But I must say, I was expecting to meet someone very different. Your mother had only just mentioned that you’ve started your Nate cycle…” She paused, letting the implication hang in the fragrant air. “And I can see that my information must be incorrect, for you are very much the Polli.”
“But Nanda was a Nate yesterday,” my mother hissed, her voice a tight wire of confusion and defensiveness. She looked from the professor to me as if I were a science experiment that had just boiled over.
Professor Liza’s eyes gleamed with intellectual fascination. “Yes,” she said slowly, a smile playing on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “We seem to have an interesting dilemma here.”
She retrieved a sleek notepad from her leather bag and clicked her pen, the sound unnaturally loud in the tense room. “Now, Nanda,” she said, directing her question at me but her gaze already shifting to my parents, anticipating their intervention. “When was your last gender cycle?”
My father chirped up, eager to provide data. “Nanda won-his game in Dieball just yesterday!” he said, the misplaced pronoun landing like a small, painful stone.
My mother nodded vigorously, adding her own evidence. “Nanda was a Nate yesterday. We’re certain of it.”
Professor Liza scribbled frantically on her waiting notepad, the pen scratching out a record of my impossible reality. “And you are a full Polli today, Nanda?” she verified, though it was clearly a rhetorical question.
My mother answered for me again, her voice straining with a mix of pride and panic. “Yes, but you were, a Nate yesterday, were you not, love?” The “love” was sharp, an anxious plea for me to confirm their sanity.
My father spread his hands in a gesture of utter bewilderment, appealing to the professor’s authority. “You see the problem, Doctor?”
The conversation carried on this way; a dizzying tennis match I was not allowed to play. Professor Liza would loft a question in my direction, and before I could even draw a breath, my parents would volley back an answer, sometimes defending their observations with fierce certainty, other times subtly belittling my own experience of my body as if I were an unreliable narrator in the story of my own life. I sat silently between them, the subject of the discussion but utterly voiceless, a Polli who had been a Nate, a problem to be solved, and a child who had suddenly become a fascinating dilemma.
“And your parents say you are 22 years old,” Professor Liza stated, her voice cool and measured as she consulted her notes. She looked up, her gaze sharp and impersonal, like a scalpel. “A good few years older than the normal Trembling age, yet it evades you?” The words were technically formed as a question, but her tone left no room for a response. It was a clinical observation of a fascinating malfunction, a puzzle to be filed away for later study. The way she said "evades you" made it sound like a personal failing, a milestone I had stubbornly refused to meet.
For a while, the room fell silent again, thick with an anticipation I didn't share. I felt completely removed from the farce playing out in our own living room. As if I was a specimen under glass, my life reduced to a set of irregular data points. The scent of bro-she, once comforting, now felt cloying and false. I was unsure whose turn it was to speak next in this scripted performance about me, a performance from which I was utterly excluded.
Again, my father almost shouted, his voice too loud for the confined space, bursting with a nervous energy that was equal parts hope and anxiety. “Yes, Doctor! Exactly! Nanda has not had the… the Trembling…” He stumbled over the word, as if saying it too loudly might jinx something. “…and we had so hoped you could help.” His plea was directed entirely at the professor, as if I weren't even in the room to be addressed directly.
Professor Liza gave a tight, efficient nod, already moving on to the next practical step. She didn't look at me; she looked at her diary, a more reliable text than my own body. “I think it would be best to have you come down to my clinic, Nanda.” It wasn't a suggestion. Her pen hovered over the page. “Let’s see… Monday. 9:00.”
Before the sound of her words had even faded, my mother’s voice cut in, smooth and final, accepting the terms on my behalf. “Thank you, Professor Liza. That would be fine, Nanda will take Monday off.” The appointment was made. The problem was being handled. And once again, no one had thought to ask me.