“We’ll certainly try, if your mother will let you.”

We drifted into the sitting room and sat down. Mother’s voice called from the kitchen, “Children, you let him alone.”

“They’re all right, Ollie,” he called back.

We sat in a triangle in the living room. Tom’s face was so dark and his eyes so blue. He wore good clothes but he never seemed well dressed. In this he was very different from his father. His red mustache was never neat and his hair would not lie down and his hands were hard from work.

Mary said, “Uncle Tom, how do you get to be a boy?”

“How? Why, Mary, you’re just born a boy.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. How do I get to be a boy?”

Tom studied her gravely. “You?” he asked.

Her words poured out. “I don’t want to be a girl, Uncle Tom. I want to be a boy. A girl’s all kissing and dolls. I don’t want to be a girl. I don’t want to.” Tears of anger welled up in Mary’s eyes.

Tom looked down at his hands and picked at a loose piece of callus with a broken nail. He wanted to say something beautiful, I think. He wished for words like his father’s words, sweet winged words, cooing and lovely. “I wouldn’t like you to be a boy,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I like you as a girl.”

An idol was crashing in Mary’s temple. “You mean you like girls?”

“Yes, Mary, I like girls very much.”

A look of distaste crossed Mary’s face. If it were true, Tom was a fool. She put on her don’t-give-me-any-of-that-crap tone. “All right,” she said, “but how do I go about being a boy?”

Tom had a good ear. He knew he was reeling down in Mary’s estimation and he wanted her to love him and to admire him. At the same time there was a fine steel wire of truthfulness in him that cut off the heads of fast-traveling lies. He looked at Mary’s hair, so light that it was almost white, and braided tight to be out of the way, and dirty at the end of the braid, for Mary wiped her hands on her braid before she made a difficult marble shot. Tom studied her cold and hostile eyes.

“I don’t think you really want to change.”

“I do.”

Tom was wrong—she really did.

“Well,” he said, “you can’t. And someday you’ll be glad.”

“I won’t be glad,” said Mary, and she turned to me and said with frigid contempt, “He doesn’t know!”

Tom winced and I shivered at the immensity of her criminal charge. Mary was braver and more ruthless than most. That’s why she won every marble in Salinas.

Tom said uneasily, “If your mother says it’s all right, I’ll order the oyster loaf this morning and pick it up tonight.”

“I don’t like oyster loaves,” said Mary and stalked to our bedroom and slammed the door.

Tom looked ruefully after her. “She’s a girl all right,” he said.