The Little She/Her Maid:

A short story based on 1836 Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid.”

The Little She/Her Maid:

A short story based on 1836 Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid.”

By Estella Suarez-Hamilton

Preface:

This story has much of my own experience woven into Sirena’s story. While the character is 15 years old and I didn’t start my medical transition until 18, a lot of what I experienced was included in Sirena’s story. I want to say that the age of the character is for story purposes. Especially because the age of the little mermaid is important in the original story and my story. With that being said, please consider this story as meant for adults to read. If you feel the need to share this story with others please consider whether this story is appropriate for their age. This is not intended to be used for the purpose of trying to steer anyone away from any specific decision. With that being said please do take the lessons I’m trying to communicate and share them in your own words as much as you please because this message is important for other women to hear. We don’t need any physical transformation to be full and accepted in the journey of life and womanhood.

Chapter 1

Sirena was a quirky, quiet, thoughtful, and intelligent girl; however, she had an incredibly hard time making friends and felt like an oddball among her peers. Sirena was also half-Mexican meaning she had visibly dark, thick hair on her legs, armpits, and face. The boys at school would not let her forget the mustache above her lip. Her Abuela said that they made fun of her mustache perhaps because they envied it, but this didn’t make her feel any better.  She was beautiful in many ways, but she never felt that she would ever be considered a pretty or popular girl.

At 14 years old, it was hard for her to relate to the other girls at school, they all seemed so satisfied with their puberty while she struggled under her own skin. It felt like an itchy church outfit that was not the right size for her. She looked into the mirror and only saw flaws. She no longer had that streamlined flat chest of girlhood. She now had to experience the heavy drooping and irritating rubbing under her sports jerseys and t-shirts. She wanted nothing more than to be like the boys in her gym class. All the boys her age seemed so energetic, happy with being smelly, and able to run and play faster than ever. She wanted nothing more than to shed her skin like a lizard and leap out of it fresh, new, and naked with no more heaviness of womanhood looming over her.

In her online circle, there were a few who seemed they had done just that. It seemed that they had leaped right out of their skin and emerged at the surface of a great abyss fully new, naked, and clean. She knew them as people who were identifying as Transgender. Specifically, she admired the “transmen” who were girls; like her, that had shed the burden of womanhood to acquire the identity of a man. They changed their names, started going by He/Him, and then went to specialists who would give them hormones, surgery, and advice on how to “pass” as a man in the world.

She longed for a solution like this, something so simple, magic even… Just stop being a woman and just be a man. She thought the hormones would completely get rid of her periods which were causing her great agony and embarrassment. She thought the hormones would give her the strength and muscles of the boys that she admired in the class, she now could be happy with being stinky and she now would have a chance to run with them and play with them. She thought the surgery would get rid of the weight on her chest, flatten it down, and give her the appearance of a man. This transformation soon became all Sirena could think about. 

Sirena was an artist and used her art to express the ways she wanted to transform. She could visualize her future as a transman. She would sit in Abuela’s beautiful garden and sculpt a statuette of a man she called Eric. She spent hours under the avocado tree’s looming branches and Abuela’s beautiful hibiscus flowers perfuming the air as she worked on her ideal self-image. She also sculpted her image online, in her circle of social media. She edited her profile name from Sirena to Eric and changed her pronouns from She/Her to He/him.  After a few weeks of online presentations as Eric, she cut her long black hair to the style that she thought made her look most like the other teenage boys. All of this felt invigorating which made her yearn for the physical transformation even more.

She found herself more and more looking into the luminescent screen of her laptop and editing photos of herself to look more like what she thought Eric should look like. As the weeks went, by her bedroom fell into disorder, the beautiful mermaid statuettes she had sculpted were gathering layers of dust, her clothes were left dirty on the floor, and she stopped showering. She only spent her spare time seeking videos of other transmen’s journeys and seeking treatment resources online that could offer her the transformation she desired.

Chapter 2

Sirena had already been going to a therapist for several years as she had a hard time adjusting to puberty and her parents were going through a divorce. She explained to her therapist how her skin felt like it was an itchy, too-small church outfit and that she desired to leap out of her skin to emerge as Eric. The therapist affirmed her perspective and suggested that her desires could be achieved through transitioning.

The therapist explained that she would write a letter of recommendation for surgery to remove her breasts, and a letter of recommendation to an endocrinologist, to start her on Testosterone in order to masculinize her appearance. The therapist explained that even with a letter of recommendation she should start “socially transitioning”, to live as a man for at least a year before most surgeons and endocrinologists would give her treatment.  While the therapist was speaking, Sirena’s mind was racing with joy and excitement. All the videos of the other transmen who were explaining the process of getting a letter and how to articulate the feeling of dysphoria, were all coming together, and she was now getting access to this solution to all her pain.

After the therapist appointment, Sirena concludes that she will now become Eric for the rest of the year. This would all be perfect timing because the Friday of her appointment was the day before her 15th birthday.  Sirena had 4 big sisters and they each got their own party called a Quinceañera which is a coming-of-age party for the Mexican culture. Sirena had been anticipating this party and looking forward to it more and more each year her sisters got one.

Her family invited all their friends and extended family, she invited a ragtag group of friends she had managed to make at school and in her sports teams. Sirena decided this would be the perfect event to unveil Eric and come out about being transgender. She resolved that the Monday after her birthday weekend, she would make an appointment at a well-known transgender clinic in hopes they would accept her recommendation letters at face value as long as she was “out” to her family. She had gotten this advice from other trans people online and assumed this would be the best option for her to transform as soon as possible.

Chapter 3

Sirena (now Eric) ran up to her (now his) bedroom. He ran with such speed and enthusiasm that he didn’t realize his Abuela was waiting at the top of the stairs holding something out for him to see. It was a pinstriped suit that Abuela had made with her own hands. The suit was a base brown with pearly pink and gold stripes. Eric stopped dead in his tracks shocked by the gift. He loved the suit. He hesitated at expressing it, because of the feminine qualities of the suit. There was a pearly pink, laced undershirt that Abuela had created to pair with the suit. This was the trigger to Eric; HE couldn’t be seen in a pink, laced, dress shirt! He brushed past Abuela taking the suit with him.

Abuela asked, “Mija don’t you like my present?”

all Eric could muster up was a, “thank you Abuela…”

before shutting his door softly.

He dived down under his bed covers in despair. How could he come out as Eric in a pinstriped suit with lace and PINK? He knew that if he was Sirena still, she would love the colors, but he also knew that his ideal Eric wouldn’t wear anything like this.

In his despair, he picked up his backpack full of weekend homework. He opened up his planner to discover he was behind on his AP literature project. He was assigned to read the 1836 Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Little Mermaid”. The deepest part of him was thrilled to read the story, but the part of him that was trying to be Eric, thought that a 15-year-old boy wouldn’t want to read a story like this about mermaids. He opened his laptop and uploaded the story onto his computer files. The file needed time to upload, which gave Eric a moment to surf the web about testosterone and surgery. He came upon a webpage explaining the risks and effects of transitioning. The file had completed downloading and opened up a window side by side with the transition webpage. Eric read the story but couldn’t help being distracted by the transition webpage. He flipped from the story to the webpage back and forth until he finished the story completely. As he closed his webpages, he felt his eyes grow heavy and his mind was racing.

He fell into a deep slumber.

Chapter 4

Sirena opens her eyes to see fluttering figures darting back and forth above her. At first, she thinks they could be flies in her bedroom or possibly even birds due to their size. She realizes she is no longer in her house. She takes a few breaths and takes in a thick cold substance that fills her nose and mouth. She panics at first with this overwhelming sense that she could be drowning. As she is about to scream Abuela bursts open the door telling her to get ready for the party immediately. She places six oyster shells on her bed and a heavy flower wreath over her shoulders. She begins to comb her hair and Sirena realizes her hair is long again. She looks down and thinks to herself that the blankets covering her legs seemed extremely tight. She attempted to bring her ankles out of the blanket to find that the blanket was not a blanket after all, it was a fishtail. She looks down at Abuela sitting by her bedside and finds Abuela has a fishtail as well.

 Like many nightmares or lucid dreams, Sirena had no ability to wake herself up nor was she entirely aware this was a dream. A sharp pinch shakes her from her thoughts and she noticed Abuela was affixing the oyster shells to Sirena’s tail. The sound of the party happening outside the room was growing as more guests began to attend. Abuela exited the bedroom and greeted the guests leaving Sirena to wonder what to do next. At the party, there were many different people from Sirena’s life, some friends and family who had all acquired the fishtails. She passed by her four sisters who each had their own beautiful tails and talked of their time away from home.  Sirena swam away from the party and found herself in Abuela’s garden. The garden was filled with beautiful ocean plants. Abuela’s beautiful hibiscus flowers were replaced by flowers of a similar likeness, but with no scent. The great avocado tree became expansive living coral. Her statuette of Eric had grown in scale and was now the size of a human boy.

She wept at the statue’s feet under the expansive coral and felt a cool shadow pass over her. She looked up to see a creature swimming at great speed toward a kelp forest. As she was watching the creature, a voice was carried to her from the distance. She could make out the sound of a name being called over and over.

“Eric, Eric come here Eric.”

She swam as fast as she could towards the creature and found that it wasn’t a creature at all, it was a great school of silverfish. The silverfish dispersed in a million directions, and she was left alone at the entrance of the kelp forest.

In the forest, she could see grabbing creatures with objects in their claws. Some objects were inanimate, but there were other objects that seemed to be corpses of animals, humans, and even other little mermaids. She could still faintly hear the party happening at her house. Abuela’s laugh carried through the water and tickled her stomach. She felt a deep dread about what was waiting for her in the forest but another voice interrupted that feeling. It was her own voice, but lower. She could hear it deeper in pitch like the many voice recordings she had done on her laptop where she had edited the pitch to sound masculine.

Without thinking, she swam as fast as she could towards the source of the sound darting around like the silverfish just out of reach of the claws. She arrived at the entrance to a bleach-white structure. She realized it was coral that had died and dried up.  Emerging from the bone-white coral was a serpent. The serpent slithered close to Sirena. As she was about to retreat out of the forest, she saw the face of her therapist peering from out of the coral, smiling. She was relieved to see a familiar face and swam closer to the coral. The serpent passed behind her and wrapped itself tightly around a staff that the therapist was carrying beside her. Sirena asked her therapist about her transition and how long it would take for the hormones and surgery to transform her fully. The therapist laughed heartily.

The therapist playfully said,

“Don’t you know? I am the Sea Witch, not your therapist. Don’t you know? You are just in time for your transformation to happen NOW. Heed my warning, this transformation won’t be painless or cheap.”

Sirena leaned in. With full determination, she said that she consents to the risks whatever they may be.

This time it was the serpent’s turn to laugh. His laughter was as loud as storm waves crashing against a cliff. 

The witch explained that she would provide a potion for Sirena that would cause her tail to shrivel up. She explained that her transformation would cause using her voice to feel as if a thousand knives were slicing her throat. Her final warning to Sirena was that if she couldn’t win acceptance as Man and if she failed to “pass” then her transformation would be for nothing, and her punishment would be the obliteration of Eric. Sirena asked what that would mean for her, and the witch responded that she would become nothing but seafoam in the air. The witch asked for payment of her feminine voice and sliced her tongue in two, like a reptile.

Sirena drank the potion and swam to the surface of the sea to find there was a storm happening. As the potion was kicking in, she realized she could no longer swim as fast. She was finding herself thrown by the waves. Her tail was shriveling up to reveal two legs. Just as her arms were failing and her lungs filling with water, she felt human hands grabbing her shoulders and legs lifting her out of the sea.

Chapter 5

She opened her eyes to find many women standing on a ship deck.

The women had covered her waist with a blanket yet Sirena could tell something was completely off aside from not having a tail anymore. Sirena looked down and found she had been transformed fully into a male body. The women kept calling her “sir” and talking about a “naked boy” who had been rescued from drowning. Sirena’s heart dropped to her stomach realizing she was the boy they were referring to. At first, an extreme sense of happiness and euphoria spread over her whole body. The women asked Sirena what her name was. When Sirena attempted to speak, it felt as if a thousand knives were exciting her throat in the place of air. A low unrecognizable gravelly voice escaped her throat and the name “Eric” was formed by her lips in a half whisper half croak. The women accepted the name but began calling “Eric” their “foundling” instead.

Chapter 6

At first, Eric loved the attention as he could feel they truly saw him as a boy. The transformation came at great costs though and Eric could find that he was more and more uncomfortable being doted on by the ship’s crew. The ship was an all women’s crew, not quite pirates but still outcasts of society married to the sea. They called themselves the Daughters of The Air as their sails filled with air and they depended on the wind for their journeys. Eric longed to be a part of their crew but they assured him no men were allowed. This rule was due to the crew being a sisterhood, bound together by their shared experience of girlhood and womanhood.

A pang in Eric’s heart twisted with their rejection as he knew inside, he shared that experience of sisterhood. Every time Eric tried to tell the story of the witch and his transformation from Serina to Eric, his throat would be sliced up by the magic knives that resided in his voice. With the mixture of magic and guilt, he was unable to tell the story of how he was actually a girl.

The crew planned to drop their foundling off at the nearest port town to continue their all-women’s journey at sea. Eric who knew he could not speak, nor would he want to live alone in a port town, felt desperation at his success at passing as male. As he was ruminating about his despair, he looked out to the horizon to see his four sisters watching him from the water, with mourning eyes. He gestured over to them waving and smiling, beckoning for them to come and hear how happy he was with his transformation. They only watched from afar wringing their hands in worry. Eric couldn’t shake the dread he felt. When the day came to leave the ship Eric found himself writing a letter of apology to the crew for deceiving them in such a way and begging them to see him for the girl he actually was. He knew this letter would mean the obliteration of Eric ending in sea foam in the air, but he thought it was necessary for Sirena to be free. As the crew read the letter, they looked at him with eyes filled with sorrow. Eric could feel the seafoam in his veins. As a wave crashed against the bow of the ship, the air-swept Eric right up into the sky in a flurry of glistening ocean mist.

Chapter 7

In that strange half-asleep state, Serina heard ethereal voices calling out to her. She asked them why they sent her such a dream. They explained to her that there was a life for her other than transformation. They explained that she will find others like her and form her own ship’s crew, her own “Daughters of The Air” and that they would be with her through this journey of womanhood for generations to come.

Sirena could hear her bedroom door close shut as she opened her eyes. She found a plate of oyster shells on her bedside table. The shells were all filled with her Abuela’s famous ceviche. Sirena took one of the shells in her hand and remembered how Abuela told her that she would make her favorite food for her birthday. Sirena stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was short again and her body was back to how she was before her slumber. She sighed with relief as she picked up the pinstriped suit and held it against herself.

Getting dressed felt, like she was wearing brand new skin, she could feel the love in every thread that Abuela sewed into the garment. She picked up a small mermaid pin with her name engraved in it that her mother had given her the year prior.

“I am Sirena, She/Her” she typed into her social media profile introduction.

She closed her laptop and joined the party.