Rachael

      She awoke in her bed as she always had. A bright ray of sunlight cast across her face and settled just outside of her eyelids. She removed the sheets slowly, revealing her naked legs. She had stopped shaving when she was much younger, though her hair was not thick and currly like so many men she had seen and forgotten. She felt from her ankles, and up her thighs; the soft fuzz felt right brushed against her fingers.
     She sat up and walked over to her nightstand. A large mirror and toiletries before her, she shifted through the pile for a stick of deoderant. Like her, the deodorant was special; she was allergic to aluminum, and though the stick did little to mask the smell of her humanity, she lifted her arms and put some on.
Before she left to brush her theeth, her reflection caught her attention in the mirror. She stood there, just watching for awhile, half intrigued by the unfimalirarity of her own face, and half hoping her reflection would turn, and walk out of the door behind it, too bored to look at her any longer.
      She grasped her shirt around her waist and lifted it up over her head. She unhooked her bra and let it slide off her shoulders. She gazed a little while longer, confused by her form and the expression in her face. With both hands she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her underwear and lowered them to her ankles.
      Her nakedness was something new. She had seen her body in mirrors before; her back, the first time she and Kristina had sex, her chest when she was younger and still waiting to become a woman. She would see her  body in this same mirror everyday. Never before had she looked on her self as she was now. Her neck, her breasts, her stomach, the patch of hair between her legs; these were all foreign. In the mirror she saw a new woman; someone she had never met before.
      She walked from her bedroom, parting with her reflection. Each step was a careful movement, delicate and refined. Her parents would not be home for awhile, and her brother had already started school. Her nude form floated through the house like a ghost, a pale spector speedily brushing it's teeth and using the restroom. She stepped into the shower only briefly, the water cleansing her cold, tired body. The closest thing to baptism in judaism is the circumcision, but the water did not cut her, and she did not bleed.
      After drying her body she returned to her room. Her drawers were full of clean clothes and old momentos. Her mother still did her laundry every time she came home from college, each article was finely folded. She took out a pair of underwear and pulled them up to her waist. A white t-shirt clung to her still-wet body and she tied back her hair.
      This time she did not look at the mirror, instead she took an old picture from her drawer. It had been a year since Chica died, but she still remembered being younger, when Chica would sleep on her stomach and paw into her soft flesh. In the back yard outside of the house there was a small, round, polished stone where Chica was burried. She died of cancer at  home with her family.
      After returning the picture to its place, she reached under her dresser to take a length of rope. She tied the rope in loops to form a noose, as she had done so many times before. When she was ready she took one more look in the mirror. She saw nothing but a woman she did not know, someone whole, confident, and committed.
      Away from the mirror, past the dresser and the note she had left, past the shoes, still in the box, her mother had just bought her. She walked into her closet, tied the rope around the cross bar, and waited.