Becoming Nicole

Jacob starts calling Nicole offensive names at school and one day follows her into the girls’ bathroom and urinates there. “I’m just a boy using the girls’ bathroom. If Nicole can go in then I can go in,” he says to the teacher who finds and scolds him (124). It turns out that his grandfather encouraged him to do this, telling him that if a boy who says he is a girl can use this restroom, so can Jacob. In fact, doing this will make an important point.

Bob Lucy, the school’s acting principal, asks to speak with Nicole and her two friends who witnessed the bathroom incident. Erhardt is at the meeting as well. She asks them to tell her exactly what happened. The other girls explain how Jacob was calling Nicole a slur behind her back. She can’t concentrate for the rest of the day and cries when she gets home. She feels ashamed and worries that others will think she’s a freak when they find out what happened. Principal Lucy tells Erhardt not to discuss the incident with the Maineses, so they are unable to reach her when they call the school. Lucy is a former sports star, an intimidating figure who tends to handle situations as a football coach would: within the team. Kelly calls the school administrator, Kelly Clenchy, and demands a meeting with school staff. Clenchy says she can’t make that happen, adding that Nicole should keep her enemies closer than she keeps her friends. Nicole isn’t allowed to use the girls’ bathroom anymore and is forced to monitor the child who is harassing her in the hallways. Kelly is outraged.

Nicole notices that Jacob is watching her. She feels like she’s being stalked. Jacob and Nicole never had problems with each other until Melanson started telling Jacob how to act. He follows her into the girls’ bathroom again in October and Nicole comes home crying. Kelly calls the school district’s special services director, who agrees that Jacob violated his agreement to stop following Nicole into the bathroom. Despite this, the school can’t guarantee her safety in that bathroom, so she’ll have to use the staff restroom. Kelly pens a letter to Clenchy requesting a meeting to develop a plan to ensure the safety of Nicole, Jonas, and other kids who need to use the fifth-grade restrooms. Kelly and Wayne also make a complaint to police department the next day. Two officers then visit Paul Melanson at home and tell him that Jacob has caused considerable trouble at school. They advise him not to use his grandson as a pawn, “but Melanson believed the school was pandering to the parents of a ‘disturbed’ student” (128). He acts out, and the officers start to bargain with him to get him to calm down. They ask if he’ll stop what he’s doing if they can get the school to promise that Nicole will no longer use the girls’ bathroom.

Jacob tries to intimidate Jonas at school. Jonas says nothing, but his parents find out and start emailing a litany of people: school staff, elected officials, and even an attorney at GLAD, a Boston-based legal defense organization for LGBTQ people. They know that specific plans for their children’s safety need to be established, but the school isn’t communicating with them. Then they are blindsided by a set of “next steps” the school district’s special services office plans. They find out that Nicole now has to use a unisex bathroom in a different wing of the school. Erhardt is charged with making sure school staff monitor Nicole and Jacob at recess during lunchtime and on the playground before school starts for the day. An administrator will meet with school staff to make sure Jacob’s bathroom use is appropriate and that Nicole and Jacob don’t have any unexpected run-ins. A police officer will visit the school regularly, and Lucy will discuss a procedure for bathroom sign-in and sign-out with the fifth-grade staff.

Kelly calls Lucy to ask how the school plans to prevent the unplanned encounters mentioned in the planned next steps, especially considering that Jacob and Nicole are in the same class. Lucy can’t answer this question. The school acknowledges that Jacob’s actions are wrong, but Lucy views the problem as an incident of poor decision-making, rather than a pattern of bullying. There is no plan to show Jacob or the other fifth graders why the types of actions he has taken are unacceptable. The school seems to be protecting itself from the lawsuit Melanson has threatened rather than protecting Nicole, even though she is clearly suffering and “questioning her self-worth” (129). Melanson’s threats soon end up on the front page of the local newspaper, which makes the Maines feel targeted by the Christian Civic League and other people outside the school.

The Christian Civic Leave claims to embrace “traditional family values,” a term they use when talking about goals such as “defeating the gay agenda” (131). The group’s members believe that God assigns each person’s gender at birth. Michael Heath, the organization’s executive director from 1994 to 2009, was a member of eighteen separate anti-gay organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed hate groups. When he hears of the bathroom situation at Nicole’s elementary school, he pens a fiery guest editorial for the Bangor Daily News. Two dozen of the town’s residents reply with an open letter decrying Heath and affirming that no child or family should be harassed in this way. Kelly and Wayne try to shield Nicole from the controversy, but it’s difficult. Meanwhile, in another part of Maine, an adult transgender woman is going through a similar situation involving a Denny’s restroom. She sues, claiming that using the men’s restroom is inappropriate and unsafe for her: “There are some men around here that think […] that people like [me] don’t deserve to live. I’m not willing to take that chance” (133). Nicole’s parents don’t want her to have to take such chances, either.

Wayne has told Jonas that he must protect Nicole at all times now. When Nicole was Wyatt, she never seemed to need protection; she was the more aggressive of the two children. Jonas also has to answer questions about Nicole’s gender identity for all sorts of people who are afraid to ask her themselves:

It was a heavy burden for a youngster—making sure his sister was always safe—and it had sometimes made Jonas a bit paranoid, unsure whom to trust. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to Nicole. And when something did—not physically, but psychologically—he hadn’t been there. Perhaps that’s why he now felt incensed whenever he saw Jacob (135).

Jonas hears many horrible things being said to and about Nicole at school. One day, Jacob makes his way into a foursquare game Jonas is playing with some other kids. Jonas gets angry. He accuses Jacob of breaking the rules by stepping outside the lines during this game. He tells Jacob he’s out of the game, adding, “You think you and your grandpa can push my sister and me around. Well, you can’t” (135). Jacob replies with a slur about gay people, and Jonas jumps on his back, which leads to a fight. When Kelly and Wayne find out, they tell him that they understand his frustration but can’t allow him to get in physical fights. He agrees with them but isn’t sure it won’t happen again.

Melanson takes the mic at a school-board meeting and starts telling his side of the bathroom-access story, claiming that Nicole is still using the girls’ bathroom. A school-board member says that she is using the appropriate facility. Melanson replies that his attorney will follow up. The incident makes the local news and appears in the papers. Melanson is no stranger to the courts or the media; he lobbied to repeal a 2003 Maine law creating domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. The Christian Civil League’s members throw their support behind his fight about bathroom access. The news outlets do not mention Nicole or her family members by name, but the Maineses’ story is being discussed all over the state. A letter from Melanson’s attorney arrives at Lucy’s office in February of 2008. It claims the school is discriminating against Jacob because of his sexual orientation, a violation of the Maine Human Rights Act. Nutt says that Melanson doesn’t care about the hardships LGBT people face and thinks they don’t deserve special privileges, as “[h]e’d seen, up close, the terror of people who had no privileges at all” and spent time fighting for his rights during his time in the military, Nutt explains (138). Now he feels that people in his own country are trying to take his rights away.

At first, Nicole isn’t bothered by being required to use the staff restroom; over time, however, it starts to feel like a punishment. She begins using the girls’ restroom again, convinced that it’s unfair that she should have to change her behavior because of Jacob’s out-of-line behavior. Jacob notices and follows her into the girls’ bathroom again. Nicole ends up in the principal’s office again, where she is told not to use the bathroom she wants to use. This makes her feel like the school is saying, “Here are all the normal kids, and here is you” (140).

When the Maineses try to talk to Lucy about bullying, he repeats the same line repeatedly: “We have a fair, safe, and responsive school” (140). But the school hardly feels fair, safe, and responsive when Jacob continues to follow Nicole into the bathroom and both kids receive punishments. Kelly tells Wayne that she wants to sue the school, but he feels that Nicole is too young to cope with that experience. If her story goes public, it could be devastating, he points out. Kelly wonders if he means devastating to Nicole or devastating to Wayne. She tells Wayne that she must take this action to protect Nicole. She starts by filing a complaint with the state’s human rights commission in April of 2008. She alleges that Kelly Clenchy, the school district’s senior official, has violated the state’s Human Rights Act, along with several other school district employees. They have done this by barring Nicole from the girls’ restroom because of her gender identity.

Though Nicole is facing extra teasing about her appearance and mounting anxiety about the onset of puberty, she asks Wayne to take her to a father-daughter dance at the town’s recreational hall. He feels he has made some progress when he realizes that he’s more nervous about dancing in general than he is about dancing with his transgender daughter in public. He also sees that he has needed to spend more time mourning the loss of a son than others needed to accept Nicole as a girl. When Wayne and Nicole dance, she feels beautiful and thanks him. He tells her that he loves her.

Wayne hears that Melanson is going to hold a press conference in front of the town hall with the Christian Civic League. He attends but keeps a low profile. A middle-school student addresses the audience, claiming that Nicole’s use of the girls’ bathroom is “an invasion of privacy” (145). Wayne suspects Melanson or the league has coached this child. Melanson then tells the crowd that if a person must be 18 years old to have a sex change, he or she should have to be 18 years old to use the bathroom of the opposite sex.

The Bangor Daily News runs a poll on Election Day. It asks readers if a 12-year-old boy who identifies as a girl should be allowed to use the girls’ bathroom at school. Nearly 83 percent of respondents say no. Both Melanson and the Maineses receive many supportive and sympathetic messages, but it’s the negative articles about Nicole’s plight that really drive Wayne to alter his perspective and make some changes in his life: “It had been a long, slow process, learning that Nicole would need him to fight for her rights. He’d spent too much time dwelling on the loss of a son and never really considered the special rewards of a daughter” (147). For instance, he thinks that a daughter is more likely to hug him, kiss him, and take pleasure in holding his hand.

Nicole’s school has an “eyes-on” policy that is supposed to protect her, but it has a different effect. A staff member follows her everywhere at school, which makes her feel suffocated. This measure is supposed to be short-term, but there is no end in sight. Kelly feels that if the school is going to keep an eye on someone at all times, that person should be Jacob.

For sixth grade, Nicole and Jonas head to the middle school next door to their elementary school. One evening, Nicole is at a workshop held by a music and performance group visiting her school. Some of the events take place at the adjacent high school, which has no unisex bathrooms. To find one of those, she would have to go into the dark, empty elementary school, which seems unwise and unsafe. As she approaches the girls’ restroom at the high school, an older student blocks her entry and tells her she’s not allowed to use the facility. Nicole says she is allowed to use this bathroom because it’s after school hours, but the students keep forcing her away from the entrance. Nicole gets angry and swears at them. Kelly complains to the school, saying that these students bullied Nicole. The school tells her that the incident was Nicole’s fault. Few places feel safe to Nicole anymore. She feels depressed and cuts herself off from her friends.

The place Kelly feels safest is at the University of Maine Police Department, where she works an administrative job part-time. Her work distracts her from family and personal concerns, and the schedule allows her to meet Nicole outside of her classroom at the end of the school day. Wayne sometimes stands up for Nicole and her rights when other people are being hateful, but most of the day-to-day battles fall to Kelly. For instance, when Nicole is told that she can’t share a tent with other students on the school’s overnight whitewater rafting trip, Kelly is forced to intervene. The school tells her that the only way Nicole can attend is if her parents attend as well and she sleeps in their tent. Kelly asks Principal Lucy if he thinks Nicole is a predator. She asks where the gay students will be sleeping as well. He won’t answer her. She feels there is nothing more she can do to make the school treat her kids the way they should be treated. Moving may be the only option.

Dr. Holmes has retired, so Nicole is now seeing a mental-health counselor named Christine Talbott. This therapist is trying to help Nicole find ways to soothe herself that don’t involve pulling her eyebrows or similar actions. She suggests the Emotional Freedom Technique, in which the patient identifies an issue to target, determines its intensity level, and chooses a self-affirming phrase to repeat while tapping points on the body that are believed to be energy centers. These physical repetitions seem to help Nicole. The relief comes at a good time. Jacob harasses her twice in May, and she sometimes imagines killing him, along with a girl who torments Nicole. Talbott suggests blankly staring at these bullies when they harass her. Nicole also feels targeted by Lucy. On one occasion, when she’s headed to the girls’ bathroom to touch up her makeup with some friends, he singles her out and orders her to use the staff bathroom. She is humiliated.

Nicole also wonders why gender dysphoria disorder isn’t truly treated like a medical disorder, even though its treatment involves a medical procedure. She is aware that health-insurance companies often refuse to pay for sex reassignment surgery. This angers her because she knows that having this surgery is the difference between many transgender people living and dying. She writes in her journal that 41% of transgender people attempt to kill themselves.