I don't wanna be tough: I just wanna be a girl

With lotsa lil ribbons and my hair all up in curls...

Cassie, it turned out, was a serious girl. She asked for and got, shyly and clearly scared, permission to call Jo and Roy, Mama and Daddy. She told them that she wanted parents, she badly wanted parents she could keep.

She tried to pretend she wasn't crying when she said that she didn't want to be a throw-away trash kid anymore, her head down and her eyes on her shoes. Ratty, torn up and ripped shoes, shoes she'd hated for a good while. Shoes Jo replaced with hand-me-down shoes that her own daughter had outgrown but were still in really good condition. Jo had went to fetch the shoes while Roy had scooped the clearly upset and ashamed child into his arms and headed for the rocking recliner.

"None of that was your fault, Cassie." He told her quietly. "We very much want to be your parents. It's fine with me, if you want to call me Daddy, okay? This could be your forever home if you want it to be. And remember, you promised you'd call Johnny, 'Uncle Johnny' or 'Uncle John' when he asked you to. The rest of my shift will be uncles too, but you'll see a lot more of your Uncle John than the others.

Those of them, like Marco, Mike and my captain who are married, bring you aunties and cousins. You, little Cassie, went from alone, to let's see...ten adults and twenty-two cousins, plus your new older siblings. And that's just my shift. I've got a brother, that's another Uncle. He's got four kids, that's another aunt and four more cousins. My wife, your new Mother, has two sisters who are married bringing two more aunts, two more uncles and eight more cousins between them."

"Really?"

"Your new family is huge, baby."

"Does...Uncle John...like kids?"

"Yeah, he does. Quite a bit. It's going to be a while, since you need to heal first, but once you have, he's got horses...which he wants to teach you to ride same as he does the twins."

She hesitated..."But, is that lady-like? Is it really okay? I don't want to act like a boy anymore. I forgot which parts were me sometimes and it was scary."

"Yes, it is." That was Jo Anne, "I'm a lady and I ride."

She almost deflated in relief. "Oh good, Mama. I didn't want to hurt his feelings if it wasn't a womanly thing to do."

Jo Anne blinked at the way the child had phrased that but it was a good thing Cassie was watching her since Roy's grin was blinding, she handed him the shoes she'd gone to get and watched him change the child's footwear, she was tempted to ask him burn the old ones. "I also like to go camping and fishing and a few other outdoorsy things. You can be active outdoors and still be solidly female." She assured the girl who was staring at her in awe.

"How did you know I hated my shoes?"

"You're female. All I needed to know. Besides, even boys wouldn't want those."

"Thank you, Mama. I guess there's lotsa stuff I need to learn." She looked down at the floor. "I could never stay clean in the tent. I hated being dirty all the time. I had to pretend I was a boy cuz boys don't mind being dirty. People always made fun of me because my clothes were dirty and so was my hair, all the time. No matter how much detergent I used or how much soap, the ocean water didn't clean anything very good. But it's what I had cuz what good water I had, I needed for drinking. Me and them, and I couldn't carry much home at a time."

"That wasn't your fault, either." Jo told her decisively. "Keeping children clean and in clean clothing is the duty of adults, not the children themselves."

"So, I can keep you? I can be a real girl again?"

"Yes, you can keep us, if you really want to." She replied.

"And you can be a girl, and still be both tough and smart." Roy told her with a smile.

Roy just cuddled her and let his wife convince the girl that 'fun', capable and yes, the dreaded 'tough' and 'female' weren't different things.

She was, both adults quickly noticed, quite serious about being feminine, actually. She would wear jeans, but not trousers...trousers were for boys, she'd told Roy once, nodding solemnly. Ribbons and curls were for girls.

"Your uncles John and Chet have curly hair, they are not girls, which is good...both would make an ugly girl. Neither is even remotely feminine, trust me on this. Tell you what, do you like pink?"

"Lots, and lavender, too."

"Why don't we trade curls for pink? They both have curls, but they don't like pink at all unless it's on flowers or a female is either wearing it or owns whatever it is that's pink. Most males are like that, where pink is concerned. Normal ones, anyway."

She thought about it for a while. "Can the pink be lacy?"

"Oh yes." Roy grinned down at her hopeful expression. "The only thing a male would like less than wearing pink, is wearing lace. Lace and pink together would be very bad for us. Especially firefighters, police or anything tough and manly, like that."

"Okay. You can tell Uncle Johnny I'll keep all the lace and pink stuff away from him. He can give me all of the pinky and lacy stuff."

"I'll do that."

"But I don't know which one is the other one, so I don't know if I can protect him from either pink or lace. I'm really sorry, he might get caught a few times before I find out who the Chet person is. I can't just take his cuz taking stuff from people you don't know is a bad idea. Some of them are really strange."

It took every bit of control Roy had not to react to that statement beyond agreeing with the last two sentences. He felt lucky Jo hadn't heard it, she didn't have nearly enough control to lock it down for something that funny...he couldn't wait to pass it along to Kelly.

She was a very neat and clean child, which was a little shocking after the tent on the beach. Jo Anne was well pleased, with this discovery. She had stopped making attempts at dressing up her blood daughter, Crystal...who, being a tomboy from 'go', wanted no part of it. Crystal far preferred running around with her twin, Christopher, climbing trees, skipping rocks and playing baseball. Besides, the twins were three years older than Cassie. At twelve, they considered her almost a 'baby', just because they understood the younger girl needed parents and their's had volunteered, it didn't follow that they wanted a tag-a-long.

Roy was a little surprised her feelings weren't hurt, but soon discovered that whenever Cassie wasn't following him around, she stayed close to Jo's skirts 'learning the ways of Womanhood', as the girl put it. And she while was learning quite a bit from his wife about housework, she usually had the minor chores around the house done, even when one was assigned to one of the older kids...mostly because she if saw something that needed doing, she just did it. She didn't see it as a chore, just common sense.

She could do small things in the kitchen, mostly from scratch stuff she'd had to figure out on her own. Her biscuits were decent, though she told Jo that her first attempts on the beach had been scary, especially since it took a while to figure out first, a way to bake them and then after that how hot and for how long.

Jo had called him at work over that one, since she'd clearly been experimenting with fire.

He'd told her to wait and explain to his captain, then handed the phone to Hank and afterward the engine took a little trip out to the old campsite and looked around. They had found a primitive set up for a crude dutch oven. Afterward, Hank had suggested that Roy have a little chat with his new daughter about what she'd figured out on her own...and find out how much she knew...or thought she did.

When Jo approached Cassie with a cornflower blue dress with white lace on Sunday for church, upon the discovery that the wide skirt was to fit petticoats under, Cassie had squealed in glee, nearly dancing at the sight of something Crystal had stared at and refused. "I love seeing petticoats under skirts on TV, and now I get to wear some? THANK YOU!"

As for her pets...about two weeks in, when asked about one of the two dogs which was a shepard mix that both twins adored and which took to the older kids, Cassie said they could have that one. The second dog was a pureblood and she had the papers on it; he was a bluetick hound from champion bloodlines that her first dad had won on a bet when he was drunk once.

He didn't like dogs, though so when he sobered up, he filled out the paperwork for her to own the durned dog. That was how she got Bitty, the mix and her rabbit...also a purebred Lop Ear. But the hound she wanted to give Roy for the station.

"The hound is for Daddy, he can give Holler somebody's shirt or something, and Holler will take you right to that person. He's a good hound, is Holler. He alerts for snakes, too...cuz I like snakes. For dinner, anyway. I didn't have to set up the oven for snakes. I just needed a campfire and a stick. And it's free meat."

When Jo Anne asked, more than a little pale, "What kind of snakes did you usually...eat...?"

"Rattlesnakes, Mama. Those are all over the beach, really big ones and they're easy meat to get and didn't cost me anything after I got a hoe from the free store, to cut their heads off with. Gotta cut off the heads and bury them in the sand, cuz they still tried to bite if you didn't. And then I used the buck knife I got when I got the hoe to open them and clean them and skin them so they could go on the roasting stick with a little salt and some of the basil and thyme I grew. I read a book at the library to find out how to make leather from the skins, wrote it down and that's where I got all the hatbands and belts I was selling to get money."

"Oh, so that's where you got those, I see. We don't eat snakes in this house, are you okay with that?"

"Yes. Snake eating is for boys and you said I could be a girl again. Right?"

"Yes, snakes do sound like a masculine food, don't they? Well good, if you're not going to miss snake meat, what meat would you rather have?"

"Porkchops, or fish maybe, as long as I don't have to catch it. The tide pulls too hard and it makes my rod hurt my wrists. I have a really good rod with really good line, but I think I liked porkchops best when I could afford to buy a pack and a bottle of worchestershire sauce or vinegar to soak herbs in and put the meat in to soak. I found a piece something called sheet metal and got a pack of SOS pads to clean it good, rinsed it really good and put it over the firepit. I dipped the seasoned chops in corn oil and fried them on it when it got hot. And sometimes, if a snake was a really big one...the ones that took two or three hits with the hoe to kill, I cut it up in to pieces and fried those, like that too."

She let that sink in, it sounded like a good idea if that's what Cassie had to work with, but she also understood why the child felt like she was turning into a boy. She was really glad the girl was away from the rattlesnakes...or any other snakes, though. She shuddered at the idea of all the things that could have gone wrong.

"Well, John takes us fishing quite often, when they're off during weekends or on the yearly vacation we'll go camping with him for a few weeks and we fish a lot then, but it's freshwater, not salt. And the rods don't usually pull very hard unless the fish is really huge. But that wouldn't be very often...and you could give Johnny the rod if it happens and he's got strong wrists so the rod wouldn't hurt him. And Johnny will take care of any snakes, too."

"Okay." Cassie sounded dubious. "But, I'm still taking my hoe, Daddy put it in the garage, but I'm taking it if Uncle takes us camping."

"Why?"

"Rather not need it, than need it really, really bad. Snakes are only safe once the heads are buried and the rest of them are ready for cooking. It's wrong to waste food, though, so...it's meat for the fire, anyway. I guess I could give him the snake leather, though, if he wants it."

"Ah." Jo Anne DeSoto wished that didn't make a lot of sense, but it did so she agreed Cassie could take her hoe whenever they went camping. She also made a mental note to ask John to have a talk with the girl about snakes...when Cassie gave him the snake skins. She had a feeling that was a conversation that Gage was better suited for than her husband was...and one that needed to take place. Badly.

She turned the girl's attention to the evening meal preparations, asking which herbs or seasonings the child wanted to use...she'd had quite a few potted plants, growing nicely that had been retrieved with the other belongings. Some were vegetables that could be eaten raw, others had to be cooked and many were herbs.

Cassie went and got her special basket, also retrieved, along with her cutters and went to where the pots had been located along one side of the backyard fence that got sun all day and where the garden hose was. John had showed her Daddy how to transplant many into a raised garden bed he'd put in for her vegetables. When she returned she had purple basil, sweet basil, oregano, thyme and had a fresh celery stalk. She also had several large black beauty eggplant fruits that were ready. "I need help and a bigger basket. There an area with a ton of cherry tomatoes and a lot of roma and a few big beefsteak tomatoes and bell peppers ready, some of the melons and stuff are ripe, too. And lots and lots of the squashes are big enough to need picking. Some of them are the kind I asked you not to get from the store, cuz I've got oodles growing and it was a waste of money."

"Okay. I was really surprised they managed to bring all your vining plants without breaking any."

"It's food. I told them that food is valuable and mustn't be wasted. Food that isn't going to be eaten can be sold for money or traded for things you need and either can't buy or don't have another way to get. Plants that produce food are more valuable because you don't have to leave your hiding place to get something to eat. I take really good care of food plants. But I don't understand why they didn't harvest the ripe stuff before they moved the pots."

Jo's heart ached a bit, but after a comment like that she knew the men had been very careful. Cassie definitely had a talent for gardening, though. And she wasn't kidding about the melons. There were a lot of honey dews, cantelopes, cucumbers and the biggest watermelons she'd ever seen were ripening on their vines. Cassie had told them they were two kinds, Georgia Rattlesnake (there was that word again) and Carolina Cross. The Cross was the huge one, though. Massive those, three looked like they'd weight a hundred pounds ripe, the Snake ones were closer to thirty or so pounds.

"They are men, dear. That's all I can think of, anyway."

Cassie just sighed. "I'm glad I'm not a boy. I'd have to be a man later and that...that's a scary thought. I wonder how long it takes boys to get smart like Daddy?"

"Well, Roy is 32 and we grew up together. He was probably 27 before his brain woke up and stayed that way, as I recall."

"Is Uncle Johnny safe?"

"He's almost there, he's 26. Just a little while longer. The one who we need to keep an eye on is your Uncle Chet, he's only 23."

"Oh...that poor thing!"

"And Roy says he's a prankster...but not very good at it."

"Oh dear...that's not good. Pranksters who don't have good thinkers get into trouble, like...all the time. That poor Uncle...he needs Smartness lessons, doesn't he?"

Jo Anne had no idea what she started when she replied, "Yes, dear...I do believe he probably does."