Dawson's Creations Literary Journal

By Mariana Chajon

Her zipper clips bounced on the top of her bag. They moved in sequence to the beat of seconds; ticking in minutes of breaths, counted in. They didn’t know how to count to a minute without catching their breath.

The zipper clips kept bouncing, and their sound could be used to trace the steps of two young adults walking a street that wasn’t Saint-Catherine (but if it was, you could’ve seen me, because you work on Tuesdays, somewhere on Saint-Catherine street).

Their shoes were dirty, but not once did she look down at them. They could’ve been clean. The laundromat they passed held stories of somebody else, but she felt she was a part of them as she heard them, because in the seconds and the breaths that they couldn’t measure in a minute, the words were directed to her: they were hers.

Since it was almost the end of October, and it was cold (even though I didn’t feel cold, and that morning I grabbed my lightest jacket), the breaths with words that couldn’t be measured in minutes that were directed to her seemed to trace currents of air, and wash away.

As he washed away his words on stories of somebody else at the laundromat, his zipper clips were on the left side of his bag. They didn’t make noise; they couldn’t trace back his steps.

Her bag was always heavy, but in the past couple of days it felt oddly light, so she walked on, past the laundromat, leaving her stories behind.

But more stories became hers and suddenly they became one, of her own.

His dad brought him into the church they passed by years ago and told him there was no god (I didn’t bother to capitalize).

So they kept walking leaving a trail of sesame seeds as they chewed on bagels that weren’t warm.

Oddly spaced, their steps were measured, not by minutes, but by two 20/20 visions reading street signs.

Every step they took, they could see clearer.

They knew where they were going, but they didn’t know where it was. They didn’t know where they were going.

A thought settled in one of them, like a feather falling down from the sky. They crossed the street in the ease of steps and zipper clips clipping, both sides of the street stared at each other’s eyes waiting to be noticed, but the dirty shoes kept walking in an oddly spaced sidewalk, and they didn’t turn their heads around.

Thirty seconds might have passed, as that is all they could have counted in the space of an hour.

The street was dusty, and the bagels they were eating rained sesame seeds and gathered dust.

Reflective windows.

It wasn’t a windy day, but for some reason the dusty street turned into dusty bagels, that turned into minuscule specks in their eyes. For the thirty seconds they could count in an hour, they closed their eyes.

Restaurant signs decorated the street with alliteration.

His tongue sounded like a prosody teacher as he named the businesses on the single street they walked in.

(In the end, we reached the theatre in time for the play).

By Anonymous

Living as a man had been stifling, like constantly trying to squeeze into a hole that wasn’t meant to fit her in the first place. The inside of her head had been man up this and stop crying that, and a whole lot of what the fuck are you doing every time she had so much as thought about — well, gender. 

But living as a woman — or trying to, at least — is different. It’s better, in a lot of ways, Jack tells herself. It still feels wrong, for lack of a better word, less “claw-at-your-skin” and more like a stone lodged in her throat, the irrational, suffocating feeling she hasn’t quite learned to quell that she’s deceiving people. Most of the time she can swallow around it and move on.

She picks at the corners of her press-on nails until she can see the edge start to pop up. Naomi smacks her hand, a quiet thwhip noise as she does.

“Stop that,” she hisses, nudging Jack in the waist. “We can trim those later if you want, but leave them on. They look good.”

And she is right — they do look good, Jack supposes. She stares down at the coffin-shaped acrylics and frowns. It’s not that she dislikes the way that they look or even the way that they feel. At most, she maybe feels like it might signal to other girls that she’s straight like Naomi is — which Jack very much isn’t. Surprisingly, she finds defining herself as a lesbian more difficult to wrap her head around than defining herself as female. But on the whole, they make her feel good. They look feminine, and in that way, function as a constant reminder of her gender to herself and everyone around her.

When Naomi had first gifted her the set, she had said that even when she was fourteen and hated herself, hated her body and the puberty she hadn’t wanted, had been years away from getting hormones — being able to look down at her own chippy black nails made her feel better. It’s one of those things that trans girls just have to do.

That’s what she tells her, at least, and Jack doesn’t have it in herself to really disagree.

“Over here.” Naomi taps on Jack’s shoulder, her weight shifting almost imperceivably as she leans back. She’d brought her to the monthly meetup of a local trans organization — she doesn’t go to the meetings themselves, of course. Jack had asked her why, at some point, and Naomi had just scrunched up her nose and quietly muttered something about the ‘atmosphere’. 

This is her second time here with Jack, though. They’re at a bar, and there seem to be lots of members of the organization proper. Naomi knows most of them already, and Jack figures eventually she’ll get up the courage to make a friend or two of her own. For now, they stick close together.

“You see that girl behind me?” Naomi gestures with a tilt of her head to a girl standing a few feet away from them. “And how those stripes make her look even taller?” Her voice is low and careful, barely audible over the rest of the chatter. She clicks her tongue. “Vertical stripes make you look slimmer, and taller, while horizontal stripes make you look broad and short.” She turns to Jack, giving her a once—over. “You might be able to work with horizontal stripes since you’re already tall. The danger with horizontal is they make your shoulders look big.”

Jack nods. Makes sense. 

“And she contoured her jaw all wrong; just look at how it draws more attention to the sharper parts. You remember what you were doing earlier, where you don’t blend down your chin? That’s what that looks like when it’s worn out.” Naomi spins in her barstool, turning around briefly to grab her drink. “Don’t listen to youtube tutorials by cis women, Jackie. They’ve never had a mannish jawline. They speak only lies.” She giggles, and takes another sip.

Jack nods again, sliding her fingers in between her knees, anxiety building in her chest. What Naomi is saying all makes sense, and Jack knows why she says it, too — knows she has a strong jawline and a flat chin, her nose a bit too big. The years she spent as a teenager, where she had worked out in an attempt to look less like a scrawny high schooler, had broadened her chest and shoulders. At the time, she’d believed it might make her feel less shitty about her body. In hindsight, she regrets it. But otherwise, Naomi says, otherwise she has soft features. That will help her, apparently. Naomi says she can’t wait to be able to get facial feminization surgery herself.

“You’re lucky you have me.” She sighs as she reaches over and sets her cheek on Jack’s shoulder. “It’s been so nice, having you to talk about stuff.”

Jack blinks. She hadn’t thought Naomi was happy to have her around at all — was more convinced she was a burden than anything actually, up until that moment. There are so many basic things she’s had to teach Jack just for her not to make an embarrassment of herself, trying to exist in public.

“Oh, don’t give me that face.” She smiles, leaning her elbow onto the bar. “It’s hard to find people, you know, who get it. Even when it comes to other trans women, it’s just — ugh, like half the time. And then there are the trans guys and I don’t even — who would want to be a man? Being a man sucks. Imagine wanting testosterone.”

She pops her hand over her mouth, quickly glancing off to the side.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I probably shouldn’t say that.”

Jack nods back, but she’s not really listening. Maybe, she considers, looking down, the reason she dislikes the nails has less to do with the result and more to do with the implication that she has to wear them.

“Excuse me, is this taken?” 

The girl in the striped shirt from before smiles at them, gesturing to the stool next to Naomi, and Jack’s breath comes to a halt. She hadn’t really thought — or maybe just hadn’t quite realized until now — the person her and Naomi had been talking about is a real human being. A flesh-and-blood person, who’s probably not that far along into her transition, and probably in almost exactly the same situation that Jack is herself, except — she didn’t have another trans friend to bring to this. No one is going to tell her that her shirt looks awkward, no one will teach her how to minimize the breadth of her shoulders or pick out just the right shoes that swallow her feet to a more palatable, womanly size, and guilt boils through Jack from head to toe, but —

Naomi doesn’t even blink. “Go ahead,” she smiles, sweet and charming as ever, and the girl sits, oblivious.

“You should settle on a more feminine name sometime, Jackie,” Naomi comments, nursing her drink as she turns her attention to their conversation again. “It’ll help.”

Jack doesn’t really appreciate how factually the sentence is presented, and yet knows deep down that she’s still right, even if something about it doesn’t sit properly. Even though she likes her name. Knows no one will ever take her seriously if she just gives up and settles.

She shrugs, uses her thumb to flick off the faux nail that’s already peeling off her index finger, and watches it go skittering under a table.

By Chaily Bitton

I remember excruciatingly long summers in my childhood. Hot summers, red hot.  There was always a camping trip, even though we all hated camping. I suppose it was the principle of camping: family time. The running around on the bare grass and the smell of horribly burnt barbeques. The high pitched sounds of my cousins and I tripping and stumbling all over one another.  The river that flowed through all the tents, the river that was filled with the most agonizingly cold water. That pinching cold water that reminded you you were still alive, still breathing in this suffocating heat.  That cold that reminded me of the dead. 

No one was ever truly dead in my family. Physically they were gone, but their memories, the ideas of them, were so vivid. So alive. As a child, it sounds absurd, but I never really thought of my grandfather as dead. We would sing for him on his birthday, and make his holiday cards with glitter and stick figures with an arm and a half. To me, his gravestone was a home like any other. I’d even sit at the edge of the grave as if I was sitting on his lap.

He was, in a way, this godly ominous being. Unfamiliar territory. The feeling of having a grandfather has always been unknown to me, but what’s strange is that I didn’t feel a strong connection to my father’s father, which isn’t to invalidate him or his significance, but with my mother’s father, it was different. There was always this unspoken connection between him and me, a vulnerability bestowed on me because I had his name. And I always searched for more from him. I wanted to be like him. The gold chain with the life amulet, the high cheekbones, and the gap in his teeth. For my birthday I was given a chain, but mine was smaller and softer. My cheeks aren’t full, but there’s a gap between my teeth, so small, but it’s there. Almost like a remnant of him. Throughout my childhood, I looked for things like this. He was quiet like me, he smiled a lot, like me, but this was only a fraction of who he was, only a memory of good. To me, as a child so innocent, so pure, he could have done no wrong.  

I remember tapping softly on the window of my mother’s living room, my knuckles cool to the touch of the frosty glass.

 “Look at me, look at me,” I whispered lowly, a sound too shy to be heard. My tiny hand unclenched and leaped forward in a soft wave. The veil of the curtain wrapped around me,  hugging me, enclosing me between the shade and the window. There he stood, tall and dark. His smile, charming and welcoming, full cheeks so satisfied with red; you would think he was still living.  His arm was welcoming. He was exactly as I had always seen him, how I’d always expected him to be. 

“Who are you waving at?”  My mother crept up beside me.

“He’s there, can’t you see him? There, look, he’s calling to me. Reaching for me.”

My mother, unfittingly, played along, with what I now look to as childish antics, and crouched beside me. 

“Who?” She asked again, and I rolled my eyes, because how could she not see him?! He was tall and regal and, not to mention, her father. I reached for my brother, who was sitting on the floor, and asked if he could see him too. He could! He too started waving alongside me.

“Who are you two waving at?” My mother laughed loudly. We waved in such synchronicity, it was like something out of a horror movie.

“Papi,” we both said in unison, and at that moment, her laughter stopped. After I looked at her face, I turned back to the window to see no man, but an empty street. He had gone away. 

It’s funny that we would use such a familiar name for someone who was essentially a stranger, but he really wasn’t a stranger. And as I grew more and more, I thought my curiosity for him and his life would die out, but it’s only gotten stronger. 

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” my mother had always said to me. His real life was like a secret shared between a few people in my family. There was one time we were sitting in my aunt’s living room, talking about a DNA test for Ancestry. My mother refused. 

“I wouldn’t like to find out I have a couple of long-lost siblings somewhere around the world.” I was maybe eleven, or twelve. I sat there and didn’t even think before saying, “Why would Papi cheat on Savta?” (Savta means grandmother in Hebrew.) Looking back, it was such a juvenile response. But this was a reflection of how he had been perceived to me: this holy entity.

My aunt looked at me, then at my mother, then back at me and said, “there’s a lot of things you don’t know.” I grew tired of this response, for my curiosity was only growing.

It was at this time that I had discovered a tactic.  The drive back from Long Island, New York to Montreal, Canada was a gruesome six hours. Six hours spent between just the two of us. It was at these times that my mother would be most vulnerable with me. I don’t know if it was the distraction of driving or the idea that we were truly alone, but she opened up to me most at these times.

This was the first time she had told me her father was an addict, and about the not-so-good days. The enthralling gossip within the bundle of siblings: which sibling fought with the other, which brother slept with which wife. I was sworn to secrecy, but I was twelve. This news was only the surface. When my mother first told me my grandfather was an addict, it was more of a warning for me, and she had told me it was cocaine. She thought that if she told me he was actually addicted to heroin, I would somehow be afraid of him. My mother so badly wanted my perception of my grandfather to be pure; she clung on to that memory of him. As did all my family. 

We were back in New York,  sitting around the table. Just my aunt, my cousin, my mother, and I looking through photo albums. When we’d move on to videos, someone would cry. The first time I saw my grandfather in a video, I cried. It was more of a surprising cry, a cry of  “I can’t believe he was actually real.” 

As we sat there, engulfed in our mothers’ pasts, we came across a photo of my grandmother and my grandfather’s brother, Edmond.  My cousin reached for it, recognizing the man he had visited this summer. 

“He has a funny way of drinking wine.” He chuckled and put the photo down, turning to my mother. “Have you noticed?”

My mother shook her head and mumbled, “No. I haven’t spoken to him in a while.” I looked at my mother, then at the picture, and then back at my mother.

“Why not?” He responded curiously. I knew the reason, and it became clear that neither mother was prepared to elaborate. My mother does not speak to her uncle anymore, because when my grandfather was selling drugs and doing heroin, my great uncle would cross the street and pretend he knew nothing of his little brother. But my cousin didn’t know that.

There was a tension-filled silence until I jokingly cheered, “I know all the secrets,” and my mother laughed because I was very aware of her father’s past. My aunt, however, much like the rest of my family, was not. 

“Oh, that’s so cute that you think you know!” My aunt laughed. She probably didn’t mean for it to come off as condescending, and I wasn’t offended anyway. None of my family could possibly imagine that I knew my grandfather was a heroin addict because that would taint the figure that has been presented to all the grandchildren.

I love him because my mother loves him, and I love my mother unconditionally. But perhaps because I  am not blinded by a child’s unconditional love, perhaps I can see my grandfather for who he really was. The cold water that still haunts me to this day pierces me and allows me to see the dead more clearly. I saw him as more than just a memory of someone else. I understood that this man was an addict. That he lost his mother, clinging to her grave as a young boy, and was beaten by his father. But I also saw that this man had anger deep inside him. He could be harsh and abrasive and aggressive; he would not always be happy, not as charming as the ghost I once saw when I was so little. He was vulnerable, loving, and caring. Always giving. I saw him, but most of all, I saw my mother clinging to the memory of her father and harbouring it. I suppose when you get married a year after your father’s death, there is never much room to grieve. So instead of grieving the dead, she celebrated the living—his living. And she took his life and bottled it up, keeping him perfectly and extraordinarily frozen in good, forever.

By Chaily Bitton

I am eighteen years old and I still call my mother “Mommy,” and I don’t think that will ever change. It’s partly because, at this point in my life, calling her anything other than that would be odd. I had tried out saying “Mom” a few times but it felt so strange—like I was calling out to a stranger. I quickly started calling her “Mommy” again, because that’s who she is; that’s who she’s always been. 

 I think what was so hard about seeing my mother getting sick was the fact that she had always been so strong. That she had always been there for everyone and anyone. My father was and still is constantly working, so when I was younger she was always the one who was there.

I remember when she took us sledding on top of a hill at Beaver Lake. We had one sled for my brother and I. It was scarlet red and had one long opening at the bottom that looked like a scar.  The snow was thick and fresh, and it was everywhere. As you can imagine, sledding with a broken sled is futile—but still, this is my happiest memory. 

She did everything. She was the chef, the sheriff, the entertainer, and the handyman all rolled into this one heavenly creature. And I never saw her as a human before, because to me she had always been a sort of Wonder Woman. Never ill, never tamed, and certainly indestructible. 

She had been complaining of jaw pains for a while. She had just had gum surgery without any numbing drugs, out of fear of dependence. This wasn’t shocking to me. I had already been through this conversation. 

“Your grandfather was a drug addict,” my mother said in the oral surgeon’s lobby. I was just about to get my wisdom teeth removed and the surgeon had prescribed me some Oxi. I was holding her pinky tightly in my hand.  “Addiction runs in our family.” I nodded my head and suggested something less strong. 

I had always been a nervous person; my palms were always sweating. It was so bad, my mother wouldn’t hold my hand; every time I’d reach for her, she’d make this weird “tut, tut” sound that she often did, shake her head, and offer me her pinky to latch on to. 

So when I’d skipped first period to take her to the doctor’s, (because I’d taken her everywhere: to the dentist when we thought it was a cavity, to the pharmacy when she needed Tylenol, and to the MRI when reality hit) my head and my heart and my chest felt completely disconnected from one another, disunited because of this foreign feeling.

That night I spent hours begging anyone above to give me her pain. I held my hands to my ears to block the screams. I wanted to help but I couldn’t. I remember crying so much, I forgot how to breathe. 

I woke the next morning with this pain in my chest. Pain so thick, so hollow—I thought for a second that my prayers had come. That this was her pain I was feeling. That I would go to her room and she would be fine.  Wrapped under the protection of cotton sheets, her thumb in her mouth, and her dreams giving her peace.

But that’s not what I saw. And it was silly and naive and juvenile of me to believe this. It is so hard to see the one person you have the highest regard for being at their lowest. And there she was, her cries of “make it stop,” and her crushing of my pinky; as if our roles had been reversed, as if I was the one she needed. At that moment she wasn’t my mother, she wasn’t the chef, she wasn’t the sheriff, she wasn’t the entertainer, and she wasn’t the handyman; she was a human being. 

She was a regular person just like me, who at times gets sad and self-conscious. A person who had a childhood, and experienced love and heartbreak. That veil of motherhood was long gone and what was left beneath me was a tortured and suffering girl. This broke my heart.

I was absolutely destroyed. I was all-consumed with thoughts of “who am I without my mother?”. Who am I without her guidance, without her unusual bursts of energy that sprung from the most uncommon times? Without her witty responses and her knowledge on just about everything? I could not fathom the possibility of living in a world where my mother did not exist.

I don’t know why, but for some reason, the one thing I couldn’t get out of my head was my wedding day, which is strange, because I don’t even know if I want to get married. But I couldn’t stop. All I could think about was her not being able to see the dress she had been going on and on about since I was eleven because she was on the floor crying in agony. That her sickness was so torturous, she wouldn’t be able to be happy, and I wouldn’t be able to relish in her joy. 

And even now, when no episodes have come. There’s still dread. It’s like a cloud. Dark and looming and threatening. We didn’t talk out of fear of expressing it into existence.  

We went to a funeral not too long ago for a mother of four. I tried so hard not to get emotional; I barely knew the woman. I felt guilty. Here I was, my seemingly perfectly healthy mother beside me, physically with me while these four orphans were broken. Even in adulthood, they were distraught without their mother.

Every one of the daughters had said the same: “I couldn’t explain it, but the urge to start calling her ‘Mommy’ again had been so strong. I think on some level I knew.”

I grabbed my mother’s arm onto my lap, my fingers wrapped tightly around her long pinky, as though I was still a child; still her little girl, with clammy, sweaty palms. I rested  my head on her now-sturdier shoulders and whispered softly, “I will never stop calling you ‘Mommy’.”

Written by: Sheena Macmillan

Ivy Davis is the new President of the “free world”. She’s 47th in a line of all female Presidents. From my spot at the very back of the stadium, I look to the giant screens on the side of the stage to see her face. She stands in the middle, behind a podium, lined by all of her Ministers. All women. They wear bright gowns with long trains; they wear short skirts with their natural hair cascading down to their knees; they wear dark blue suits with flowers sprouting out of their cuffs. On the stage everyone is represented. Every skin tone, figure, hair texture. Except, when you pan out the image of proud women waving to the girls they wish to empower and inspire in the audience, you realise there is a lack of men. Where are they, you ask? They are with me, out of sight, at the very top of the stadium. We wear white shirts and white pants with white shoes, and sometimes we wear white jackets too. If we’re feeling spunky.

My name is Aaron Smith. I work as a nurse at the Grey House, so I get to take care of President Ivy if she gets a cold or something tragic like that. It used to be called the White House, but former President Violet changed it to Grey to symbolize how most problems aren’t just black and white, but there is a large grey area in between that should always be taken into account.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor, specifically a surgeon, but all my friends and family said that I was living in a fantasy if I thought I could make it as a doctor. They said nursing would be more fitting for me, you know, since I’m a guy. In school, all the other nursing students were male. Just across the hall there was a classroom filled with the newest doctors in training. They were a huge class of at least 100 students, 90% women. It always seemed to be like that though. In the engineering programs, in the law programs, in the science programs, the classes were always 90% women.

My dad always told me stories of when he was young and in school. How university was a place where men flourished. Where every other guy was on the path to get a degree in something expensive, like medicine. He always told me stories about how horrible his life became when the Empowerment Movement began. The Empowerment Movement started before I was born, and its purpose was to bring the women of the world to their full potential and out of the oppressive hands of the patriarchy. All of the roles were switched. Women were given more roles of leadership, women were taken seriously in serious situations, and they weren’t harassed in the street for wearing that cute dress they’d been saving for a nice warm day like today.

________

Ron stands behind a pot in the Grey House kitchen, cooking up something for the President’s supper. He’s my friend, Ron. The only guys in the Grey House are either chefs, nurses, or cleaners. The only reason why I’m closest with Ron is because he always hooks me up with some great leftovers from what he’s made that day.

“Ron! Ronnie Ron The King himself what it do Mr. Ronster!!!” I yell.

“My man! My man, my man, my man, you look nice! White is such a good colour on you.” Ron answers.

“Yo I can’t lie I was feeling this look. White on white on white is my new thing.” I look at Ron’s outfit, “Mate, how could you do this to me we’re wearing the same thing! We can’t both be in all white or we’ll look like fools.” Ron laughs, “You know what it doesn’t matter if we wear the same thing, cause I know I look better than you.” Ron stops laughing.

“C’mon man you know these are my nice white pants don’t hate on my swag.” Ron is on the defense now. One the the Secret Service agents pokes her head into the kitchen. She calls for me, says the President isn’t feeling her best.

I walk towards her. “Any specific symptoms?” I ask.

“She’s very nauseous, and she’s got some cramps in the uterine area.” She’s walking quickly in front of me. She escorts me to President Ivy’s bedroom. She opens the double doors and we find the President laying on her side in the middle of her bed. She’s clutching her stomach and her face shows she’s in pain.

“Are you on your period?” I ask Ivy.

“No, it’s been at least four months since my last period, maybe even five.”

“And you didn’t think that was weird? To have missed so many months?”

“Well no, I mean I am a very successful career woman. I am under constant stress because of my job, so naturally I miss my period sometimes.”

“Alright, what I’m gonna do is give you an ultrasound to see what’s happening in your stomach since you’re so nauseous. Is that okay?”

“That’s fine.”

I walk over to her bedside and turn her onto her back. The same Secret Service agent from before brings in all the things I need to perform the ultrasound. As I pull her shirt back to expose her belly, I can tell it’s more swollen than usual. I want to ask if Ron cooked up an extra large lunch today, but decide against it. I put the jelly on her stomach and fire up the ultrasound machine.

“I’m just looking for anything that shouldn’t be there, like a Lego or the Declaration of Independence, you know?” I pause. “Woah.”

“What’s wrong?” Ivy asks with obvious concern.

“I gotta ask, four to five months ago, were you sexually active?” My eyes move from the screen to meet Ivy’s. She’s lost all colour in her skin.

She exhales, “Yes.” I look back at the screen and examine the ultrasound more. I look at the small fetus growing inside of her and see something I know she won’t be happy with.

I exhale, “It’s a boy.”

She’s crying now. So filled with disappointment and regret. She’s having a son. She’s mumbling about how she’s always dreamed of having a daughter, of raising her to know that she can follow all of her dreams, of giving her all to her daughter and making sure that her daughter loves every ounce of herself because she is perfection. But, she’s having a son. What is she supposed to do with a son? Teach him how to do laundry? She doesn’t know how to do that. Teach him how to keep a happy home and cook balanced meals? Make healthy snacks for his ringette team? She doesn’t know how to have a son. She’s never thought about having a son. She sits upright and dries her tears.

“You know, when I was younger I wanted to be a doctor.” I check to see if she’s looking at me; she is.

“I wanted so badly to be a surgeon but everyone told me I would be setting myself up for failure. My biggest regret is listening to them and going into nursing instead of being that 10% in the classroom. In school I was always taught that the

Empowerment Movement happened so women could live to their highest potential. But what about my potential? I should be offered the same opportunities that women are offered. I should be able to tell my parents that I want to be a doctor and not get laughed at.

“Creating equality for women isn’t switching the roles of leadership and having a matriarchy instead of a patriarchy. Creating equality isn’t oppressing the oppressors. The boy growing inside you deserves the best. You are the President, you should be setting the example. I believe in his ability to be an engineer like I believe in your ability to change how men are treated in today’s society.

“Let your son wear what he wants, don’t restrict him to white. Let your son think what he wants, don’t restrict him to domestic affairs. Let your son be athletic, let him play the sports he wants. Let your son be. He is blossoming just the same as a daughter would. He is growing strong because he knows you are the right mother for him. Don’t set your son up for failure even before he knows what adversities he faces.”

President Ivy looks at me with understanding eyes, like she is surprised I can speak so eloquently. She turns to the Secret Service agent, “Get me my tablet, we’re having a second Empowerment Movement.”