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“Joe” I asked in a tremulous voice filled with hesitation.
“Yes, what is it, Pip?” Joseph Edmund Gargery asked in his usual calm and measured voice of kindness and decency.
“I’m…not really a Pip, to be honest” I responded at last, “Never have been and never will be”.
“What do you mean, old chap?” Joe asked with a touch of whimsy in his voice mixed in with genuine curiosity.
“I’m…not really a boy” I responded back, “I’m honestly more of a girl, Joe. Always have been and always will be”.
Joe chuckled to himself softly, like a fire dying down to its embers in the middle of a wintry night. All around us, the winds of winter howled their terrible dance on this twenty-eighth day of December, racing up and down the marshes like wild horses bolting all throughout the Great Plains over in America and refusing to be corralled even by their Mother Goddess who lived upon the moon. Our own house was fortunately very well-insulated against the cold and the darkness, for my sister had spent something like a fortune buying the finest indoor heating and air conditioning in all of the County of Kent. However, my mind was still drawn strongly to the rolling fire roaring in the fireplace like a strong old lion protecting his den and his cubs from external intrusions.
“So Pi-“ Joe said.
“Please” I said back, “Call me Pen. It’s short for Penelope. Penelope Isabella Pirrip”.
“Okay, Pen” Joe sighed with a smile and contentment, “So how long have you known you’ve been a girl for?”
“All of my life, really” I responded, “Ever since I was, like, four, and saw Miss Wopsle moving through the street in her beautiful dress. II always knew I wanted to look like that, all beautiful and wondrous and magnificent, like a true gentlewoman. And then when I went to Miss Havisham’s this weekend, and I met her young nephew Simon, I saw how he went all about fully as a boy despite being born with all them female parts…and that’s when II myself realised that, even though I have all those male parts they associate mostly with boys, I was in fact a girl and always had been and always will be”.
Joe smiled a soft and world-weary smile, looking down at me with soft brown eyes like the father that I had never truly had. I wondered for a while about what my own mother and father would have thought of my newfound sense of self and status, and how my brothers Alexander and Bartholomew and Abraham and Tobias and Roger all would have thought if they could have seen me in my new sense of awakening and purpose. I did not want to tell Joe all that much about my future plans, for they all involved abandoning the forge here in Saltmarsh and pursuing my own destiny in some new country or another or maybe even just in Big Old London, I was not very sure, to be quite honest. All I knew for certain was that I was not destined to waste my life away in Saltmarsh, Kent, toiling away at a forge at all hours of the day and striving to make even a pitiful allowance from whatever my creations could earn from a meagre little amount of paying customers. Rather, I was destined to become an artist or a poet and create great and wonderful works of literature and poetry and painting destined to astound and astonish and bring joy into the whole entire world. Ultimately however, I was quick to decide that my true love and calling was in the arts of music, for I still remembered quite vividly the excellence with which our uncle Cornelius Gerald Pumblechook used to play upon the piano to replicate the works of such composers as Beethoven and the Bachs and Mozart and Handel. I’d always been a little quicker to pick things up by ear than by eye, if I’m being honest to my readers as well as to myself. I learned the names of my lost ancestors from reading them aloud unto myself night after night as I made my secret pilgrimages to the churchyard to connect with those dead hearts who were my sole and only loving family. Were they still watching over me right now, I wondered, those five lost brothers who had died in a house fire so shortly after I was born? Did they hope that I would succeed and thrive, bursting out of the current confines in which I was so disgracefully imprisoned? Did they dream with me and hope for a better escape into new and fertile lands of life and imagination, sharing my mental visions of bursting out of the walls of my small town of Saltmarsh like a strong young apple tree or an orange tree growing outside of the confines of its original garden? I held fast in my heart the hope that they did so and still do so up in those vast regions of distant space wherein the Seraphim dwell singing the praises of the Almighty Them who created all things through a big bang in some ancient garden. I swore there and then that I would make something of myself beyond the fences and gates and cows and cattle of Saltmarsh in Kent. I was a girl destined for achievement and greatness and I would stop at nothing either in Heaven or on Earth herself to achieve this vision and my dreams.
I felt almost like singing a big darn Disney production number when, all of a sudden, Mrs Joe came home from her shop job in a rage at some customer or another who had been rude to her at work that morning. I could tell she practically wanted to get Tickler out on all our backsides.
“Georgiana, please!” Joe begged, “You’ve got to be calm for Pen and for me! Please!”
“I am calm!” Mrs Joe snapped back, “And who’s Pen?”
“Your sister” Joe answered back.
“I don’t have a sister!” Mrs. Joe retaliated.
“You do, actually” Joe said, “Pip’s actually a girl, you see, and her name’s Pen or Penny, depending on her mood”.
“Okay, fine!” my sister practically spat out, “If it keeps her out of trouble like what happened in the churchyard with those convicts, then I shall accept all of this foolish little roleplaying!”.
At that moment, I breathed out a sigh of relief, for I was previously so afraid of what she might do to us that I had hidden in the cupboard and lain there in an attempt to fall asleep and be able to ignore the whole entire situation.
After that, we had a rather awkward and staid dinner wherein we tried to ignore the issue of my gender for as long as possible as we tucked into our burgers and tried not to look at each other. After dinner, my sister got up and stretched herself before going off into the living room and sitting down upon a sturdy old sofa to watch one of her favourite sitcoms from the 1950s or the 1960s. Indeed, she was so invested in her corny old laugh track that she did not even seem to notice that there was a ringing at the doorbell as a message was slipped through the door slit. Joe was quick to pick it up and give it to me, making sure to tell me that I was not to open it until I was safely ensconced in my room and could hide it from Mrs. Joe. And so that was exactly what I did as ii lay around in my pyjamas thinking about the elation I felt at finally being open about this deep and buried part of myself with someone who I trusted more than anything else in the whole of the entire world.
I opened the letter as soon as I was sure my sister was asleep, and began to read its contents:
“My dearest little girl,
I hope that this letter finds you in good health. I have been watching you from afar for a good long while, now. And I can see how you feel frustrated and trapped with your small village existence in an AMAB body. So I have decided to help you out a little. The town pharmacist, a man named Clarence Trafalgar, is someone who secretly deals in drugs and potions that can help you and people like you discover and come into their truest selves. Once you come to the age of fourteen, ask him for a drug named Provis. It’s something that can really do wonders for you. Think of it as if it is like a potion from a storybook or the wondrous lamp that produces the marvellous blue comedian Jinn from the movie you love so much. Trust me, my child, that once you become who God has meant you to be, you will set the world on fire. So please, my daughter, go forth and be wondrous.
-A friend of yours.
P.S.: I am not Simon Astor Havisham or his aunt Abigail Eleanor Havisham. You must look elsewhere if you wish to know who I am”.
And with all that having been read, I smiled softly unto myself and closed the letter before putting it beside me on the night table. I knew at that moment that my future was stretching out before me ready to be grasped. I swore at that moment a big elaborate oath about seizing control of my own destiny and making myself into a woman of greatness before I suddenly began to yawn and then I gradually began to drift off into the land of sleep with Little Nemo of Slumberland, waiting for a new life to begin at last.