Becoming Nicole

We learn that Wyatt and Jonas Maines are identical twins who were adopted at birth. Their adoptive parents are Kelly and Wayne Maines, a couple who struggled with infertility and went through many miscarriages. When Kelly’s cousin, Sarah, contacted her to see if she’d be willing to adopt the babies, she and Wayne quickly said yes: “Kelly believed in fate. Maybe she was the right person at the right time to usher a child into the world who otherwise would have been set adrift in a family with a legacy of chaos” (11).

We learn that Kelly was also adopted by a relative, and that the cousin she grew up with—Sarah’s mother, Janis—also became pregnant as a teenager. The author says that “dashed expectations were a familiar family trope” for many branches of Kelly’s family (11). She and Wayne invite Sarah to live with them during the pregnancy in the hopes that they can provide support, stability, and a glimpse of some of the options available to her in life.

Kelly and Wayne both grew up in small towns, Kelly in a river town in Indiana and Wayne in rural New York. The girls in Kelly’s family weren’t encouraged to pursue college, even though they were bright and driven. Kelly’s adoptive mother, Donna, eventually earns a nursing degree and feels more comfortable working than parenting.

Kelly drifts until age 24, when she sees a friend try to steal drugs from a dealer. She makes a conscious choice to focus on her studies at a community college in California and then gets a good job with an environmental consulting firm when she explains that she can draw almost anything. She eventually relocates to the company’s Chicago office and meets Wayne at an educational event in Ohio. They bond over their shared affection for small-town life and values, including devotion to one’s family and respect for one’s country.

Wayne feels that the simple lessons he learned from his father have prepared him well for life. These include never bailing on your team, returning borrowed items in better condition than you found them, and avoiding liquor while playing cards. Wayne usually feels he has control over his immediate surroundings, and when something seems off, he is usually able to change it or move past it. His sense of being in control was shaken when he was working at a traveling carnival one summer as a teenager. Two girls were thrown from a ride. He tried to catch one of them, but it proved impossible and she died.

Wayne’s other challenge to his identity involved a moment in the Air Force, where he trained to be a dental assistant. The oral surgeon he assisted put him on the spot by asking him who the vice president was in front of some coworkers. Wayne didn’t know the answer, and the surgeon said “I told you so” to the doctor at his side (10). This motivated Wayne to attend college. He eventually earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell and went on to complete a master’s and doctorate in safety management, even though the rest of his family have blue-collar jobs that don’t require a college education. He is a person who likes to plan and analyze, so he’s uncomfortable at first when he gets the news that Sarah is having twins. Though this isn’t what he planned for, he soon realizes that two children can bring twice as much joy to the family.

Wyatt and Jonas are born in October of 1997. Wayne loves to repeat the words “my boys” (14). He tells Kelly that they are her boys now, when they’re very young, and that they’ll be his later, when they’re old enough for masculine rites of passage. They assist Sarah during the birth, during which Kelly feels that she is both intruding and doing exactly what she is meant to be doing. Kelly worries about Sarah, who lives with an unstable mother and has an uncertain future, even though she is smart and plans to attend college. She tells Sarah that she is free to live the life she wants and to be a part of the twins’ lives. Though Sarah has said nothing about wanting to keep the twins, Kelly worries that she might change her mind: “Once those babies were placed in her arms, they were hers and Wayne’s, and she would do everything humanly possible to make sure it stayed that way” (16).

The Maineses formally adopt the twins at seven months of age. Sarah’s mother, Janis, starts calling Kelly, asking questions about the babies. Kelly suspects she wants to take them away and gets passports in case the family needs to flee the country. Soon, Janis says that she wants to take one of the babies. Kelly tells her that she can have both of them or neither, knowing that Janis will never agree to raising two babies at once. Janis rests her case and Kelly feels relieved.

Meanwhile, Wayne struggles to be accepted at his workplace, a company that manufactures caustic chemicals. He is a safety director charged with making sure fewer employees are injured by these dangerous substances. One day, he climbs into a tank of dangerous chemicals to show the others that he understands what they are going through by facing hazards each day: “[H]e wanted others to know that even though he came from the outside, he also was one of them” (18).

Wayne commutes to his job from a tiny town in upstate New York. Both he and Kelly love that the town is conservative, close-knit, and family-oriented. They raise their sons in a 19th-century farmhouse that Wayne enjoys repairing. One day, when he is working on a home-repair project, Wyatt starts working alongside him with his toy hammer. This is unusual, since Wyatt typically chooses dress-up, Barbies, or make-believe involving his favorite character—Ariel from The Little Mermaid—over traditionally-masculine types of play. Wayne is thrilled until the 3-year-old announces that he hates his penis. Shocked, Wayne scoops up the boy and kisses him, insisting that everything is going to be okay. He tells the boy that he loves him. At the same time, he feels shaken by this news.

Kelly perceives Wyatt as different, rather than strange or sick. Wayne pretends not to see his son skipping about in a tutu, and Kelly knows that he doesn’t really understand what’s going on with his son. She feels that it’s cruel to keep dressing Wyatt in masculine clothing that he detests and rips off as soon as possible. She starts shopping for him in the girls’ department of the clothing store without consulting Wayne. Kelly also decides to stop caring what others think of how Wyatt presents himself: “[Kelly] decided it was their problem, not hers. And it certainly wasn’t Wyatt’s” (26).

Wayne doesn’t approve of Kelly’s approach but doesn’t try to stop her either. The author explains how Wayne and Kelly’s expectations for their family diverge. Wayne wants a “normal” family while Kelly recognizes that many families don’t fit this definition, including the one that raised her. Because the family that raised her was so imperfect, she has few expectations for the family she’s building with Wayne. There is “no picture in her mind or her heart that Wyatt wasn’t living up to” (26).

Wayne has more preconceived notions about how a family should look and act. When Wyatt wants to wear feminine clothes, he tends to make a big deal about it. Both Wayne and Wyatt are stubborn. Wayne escapes the house when he can’t deal with his feelings about Wyatt. He spends hours in the woods, the lake, and the gym. When others ask questions about Wyatt’s long hair or feminine interests, he feels that he and his wife are being judged. Meanwhile, Kelly is drawn to news stories about transgender people and worries when she hears of children being taken away from their parents because they were allowed to wear the other gender’s clothing to school.

When the twins are about 3 years old, Kelly begins searching the internet for information about what Wyatt might be experiencing. She begins her searching for details on why some boys prefer girls’ toys. She soon begins to learn about gender identity disorder, which was changed to gender dysphoria in 2013, with the release of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (the DSM-V). Gender dysphoria involves feeling uneasy when one’s sexual anatomy does not mesh with one’s personal sense of gender. In children, characteristics of the disorder include a strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy, a marked preference for cross-gender roles in play, a preference for cross-dressing in boys, and significant stress or impaired functioning.

Nutt argues that the American Psychological Association’s reclassification of the disorder was more than a language change. Instead, “it was a watershed moment akin to the elimination of homosexuality from the DSM-III in 1973” (28). She explains that the distress transgender people experience regarding their anatomy is quite different from the distress others feel because it is not tied to confusion but the notion that others perceive them as freaks. Wyatt is starting to feel this distress. He asks his mother when he gets to be a girl and when his penis will fall off. He also describes himself as a “boy-girl” (29). 

Wayne gets a job at the University of Maine at Orono, so the family moves to this rural college town, despite Kelly’s unhappiness about the idea. This part of Maine is filled with families who have lived there for generations and consider everyone else to be outsiders. The Maineses throw a party to meet some other families in the area before the twins start first grade. Wayne causes a scene when he scolds Wyatt for wearing a pink dress. The party guests witness the pair’s disagreement, and Kelly whisks weeping Wyatt upstairs to comfort him. It’s hard for Kelly to tell Wyatt that he has done nothing wrong when his father has just said just the opposite. She eventually advises Wyatt to wear something else to the party, even though she knows it’s unfair. After all, Jonas can wear whatever he wants, just as Wyatt has pointed out.

Despite the outburst at the party, Wayne tends to bottle up his fears, confusion, and anger about Wyatt. Nutt relates an incident from before Wayne and Kelly married. Wayne goes hunting and returns home with a deer’s heart in his hand. He sees it as a reward for a job well done, something that should make Kelly proud. Kelly sees it as a symbol of cruelty, the ending of a life. She is so upset that she gets in the car and drives for hours. When she finally returns home, she has gained some perspective. She explains to Wayne that she wasn’t prepared for what the heart meant, but that she could now see beyond her own experiences and learn to adjust. That said, she refuses to allow dead deer in the house anymore.

Kelly sometimes worries that Wayne will leave her for “allowing” Wyatt to behave in feminine ways (39). Likewise, Wayne wonders if Kelly will leave him. Neither of them actually want to leave each other, though. Kelly worries that she’s not being a good enough mother to Wyatt, and Wayne fears that he’ll never know how to be the kind of dad his son wants and needs. Wayne also hopes the boy will outgrow whatever he is going through. He also hopes that Wyatt isn’t gay, not because he dislikes gay people but because being gay seems like a difficult burden to carry.