I grew up a tom boy. I loved all those creepy crawly things. Not bugs, but frogs, and snakes, and lizards! My Mama hated ‘em. All of ‘em. Especially lizards! She’d say, “Cause they’d crawl up on you when you weren’t looking.”

To discourage my interest in crawlotology, my mama told me that if a lizard bit me, I’d turn into a boy. And my grandmama backed her up. “Why, it’s a well known fact that if a lizard bites you, you’ll turn into the opposite sex,” they said. I believed ‘em. But I didn’t believe, being the skilled crawlotologist that I was, that I’d ever get bitten.

I guess I was about four or five when it happened. I was under the garage one steamy summer afternoon looking for Sinclair. I named him that after the dinosaur because he was truly the biggest anole I’d ever seen. Well, today was the day I had decided I was gonna catch him and rub his tummy until he played opossum like all the rest. So, there he was, up on the tool bench showing his beautiful pink blanket. You know, that flap of loose skin that they puff out under their chins. My granny used to sing to them on her porch, “Lizzy, lizzy, show your blanket.” 

Anyway, I tried to sneak up on him but he saw me and took off running along the edge of the carpentry shelf. I ran after him, reached out and grabbed his tail. Why he turned around with the biggest lizard mouth I’d ever seen and clamped down on my right index finger. I let out a scream. He held for a full second before I slung him off.

As Sinclair scurried under the board pile, I stood there in a daze. I remember thinking, “Oh God! I’m gonna’ turn into a boy. Mama’s gonna’ kill me!” I was in shock, really. This was my first bona fide traumatic experience. Actually, that’s not true. It’s the first traumatic experience involving a lizard. I tried to think of what I should do. My mama and little bother were out back in the garden and nobody was in the house. So I decided to go to my room and wait. Wait to turn into a boy. Wait for one of those little things to grow. I decided it shouldn’t take more than an hour.

So I went and got my daddy’s Big Ben alarm clock and sat it by the bed. I locked the door and laid myself out on the bed, frozen, like a corpse. And I waited, almost too scared to breathe. After the longest hour of my entire little life was up, I slowly pulled the elastic waistband of my shorts away from me and looked down there. I didn’t see nothing. Then I took all my clothes off and stood in front of the mirror and looked at every inch of my body, just in case it came out somewhere else. I didn’t see nothing! Everything looked the same. Then I tried out my voice, to see if it was a boy voice. It was the same. I was damned glad too! So much for penis envy. I didn’t want it!

And then it hit me. I realized that my mama, and even my big-time religious grandmama had told me a terrible lie. And, I was mad! I went running out the house in a whirlwind just like the Tasmanian Devil. I found my mama in the garden picking butter beans, and I was standing there half-naked in the bean row screaming, “I’m a girl, I’m a girl, you lied to me, I’m a girl!” I told her and I told her good!

And you know, my mama had a lot of trouble out of me after that, and an awful lot of trouble with me catching lizards and throwing them on her.