Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [81]
Finally school ended, and I could go home. I waited hours for my mother. I didn’t call her at work; I thought I might scare her if she knew I was bleeding. I stayed in my room. Closed the door. Finished my homework. I told Peter he could play next door.
She was finally home. I heard her car in the driveway. A battleship grey Rambler with no air conditioning. She was always so tired when she got home. I waited until she changed out of her dress and went to the kitchen to pour her glass of wine. Always red. Always in a bottle with a top that just unscrewed. She sat at the table with her wine and the newspaper. I told her I needed to talk to her.
“What's wrong? Did you get in trouble at school? What did you do?”
“Nothing, I promise. Something happened this morning. You weren’t here. I’m … I’m … I’m bleeding …” I pointed between my legs. “… there.” I still wore my navy blue pleated uniform skirt. Blood had stained the insides of my thighs. Half moons of red that I scrubbed off when I got home from school.
She looked so angry. “You’re what? What did you do? You didn’t touch yourself there, did you?”
“No. I swear.” Why would she think I’d do that, touch myself there? Why would I make myself bleed? I didn’t say anything because she now seemed angrier. I’d never seen her like this before.
“Did somebody else touch you there? Some boy at school? Is that it? You let a boy touch you there, didn’t you?” Her voice was strange. It came from deep in her throat.
“NO, Mom. NO. I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t let a boy or anyone do that. I promise.” Why would my mother think these things about me?
I remember backing away from her. So she couldn’t reach me. Just in case. I searched all over her face with my eyes. I wanted to find something familiar there.
“Okay, okay. That's good.” She calmed down, like something in her unwound. She picked up the glass, bent her head to make her neck straight. She finished her wine and poured another glass. “Good girl.” She sipped again and raised her eyes to look at me over the top of the glass.
I waited. I didn’t ask her if I might die. She wouldn’t have been so mad at me if she thought I was going to die from the bleeding.
She slid her wine glass away from the edge of the table. “This usually happens when girls are older. You’re starting young. Your menstrual cycle is going to come every month now. That's what it's called. This blood means you can have babies now. You have to be careful. Don’t you let boys touch you or put things there. That's nasty and dirty. You understand me, don’t you?”
I nodded. If boys didn’t touch or put things there, I wouldn’t have babies. Every month this would happen. I was not going to die from this.
“Now, I’m going to the store to buy you a box of Kotex. You’ll need to start wearing them. Clean yourself good. And, Leah, you don’t need to go around telling people about this. Peter doesn’t need to know about this. Not yet. And I’ll tell your father.”
She came home from the grocery, handed me the Kotex box, and said to keep it in the bathroom. “Well, Leah. You’re a woman now.”
We never talked about it again . “It” meaning what happened that day: periods, sex, pregnancy.
The night before Carl and I married, she told me, “It's going to hurt the first time. You might bleed a little. It doesn’t hurt after that. Maybe sometimes. You won’t always want to have sex, but men are different. They need sex. So you make sure he gets what he needs. That's part of being a good wife.”
I stopped. Blinked. Where had I gone? I ran my fingertips along the braided edge of the chair's arms. I didn’t know if five minutes or five hours had passed. I dropped my head forward, side, back, side. My neck muscles tightened, relaxed.