Middlesex

But in a timid, breaking voice Tessie asked, “Will she be able to have children?”

Luce paused only a second. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Stephanides. Callie will never menstruate.”

“But she’s been menstruating for a few months now,” Tessie objected.

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Possibly there was some bleeding from another source.”

Tessie’s eyes filled with tears. She looked away.

“I just got a postcard from a former patient,” Luce said consolingly. “She had a condition similar to your daughter’s. She’s married now. She and her husband adopted two kids and they’re as happy as can be. She plays in the Cleveland Orchestra. Bassoon.”

There was a silence, until Milton asked, “Is that it, Doctor? You do this one surgery and we can take her home?”

“We may have to do additional surgery at a later date. But the immediate answer to your question is yes. After the procedure, she can go home.”

“How long will she be in the hospital?”

“Only overnight.”

It was not a difficult decision, especially as Luce had framed it. A single surgery and some injections would end the nightmare and give my parents back their daughter, their Calliope, intact. The same enticement that had led my grandparents to do the unthinkable now offered itself to Milton and Tessie. No one would know. No one would ever know.

While my parents were being given a crash course in gonadogenesis, I—still officially Calliope—was doing some homework myself. In the Reading Room of the New York Public Library I was looking up something in the dictionary. Dr. Luce was correct in thinking that his conversations with colleagues and medical students were over my head. I didn’t know what “5-alpha-reductase” meant, or “gynecomastia,” or “inguinal canal.” But Luce had underestimated my abilities, too. He didn’t take into consideration the rigorous curriculum at my prep school. He didn’t allow for my excellent research and study skills. Most of all, he didn’t factor in the power of my Latin teachers, Miss Barrie and Miss Silber. So now, as my Wallabees made squishing sounds between the reading tables, as a few men looked up from their books to see what was coming and then looked down (the world was no longer full of eyes), I heard Miss Barrie’s voice in my ear. “Infants, define this word for me: hypospadias. Use your Greek or Latin roots.”

The little schoolgirl in my head wriggled in her desk, hand raised high. “Yes, Calliope?” Miss Barrie called on me.

“Hypo. Below or beneath. Like ‘hypodermic.’ ”

“Brilliant. And spadias?”

“Um um . . .”

“Can anyone come to our poor muse’s aid?”

But, in the classroom of my brain, no one could. So that was why I was here. Because I knew that I had something below or beneath but I didn’t know what that something was.

I had never seen such a big dictionary before. The Webster’s at the New York Public Library stood in the same relation to other dictionaries of my acquaintance as the Empire State Building did to other buildings. It was an ancient, medieval-looking thing, bound in brown leather that brought to mind a falconer’s gauntlet. The pages were gilded like the Bible’s.

Flipping pages through the alphabet, past cantabile to eryngo, past fandango to formicate (that’s with an m ), past hypertonia to hyposensitivity, and there it was:

hypospadias New Latin, from Greek, man with hypospadias fr. hypo + prob from spadon, eunuch, fr. span, to tear, pluck, pull, draw.—An abnormality of the penis in which the urethra opens on its under surface. See synonyms at eunuch.

I did as instructed and got

eunuch —1. A castrated man; especially, one of those who were employed as harem attendants or functionaries in certain Oriental courts. 2. A man whose testes have not developed. See synonyms at hermaphrodite.

Following where the trail led, I finally reached

hermaphrodite —1. One having the sex organs and many of the secondary sex characteristics of both male and female. 2. Anything comprised of a combination of diverse or contradictory elements. See synonyms at monster.