Memoir Prologue
[646 words]
I turned off the tap at the bathroom sink and started stirring in my underwear with the handle of an old toothbrush. The blood slowly oozing into the water, tuning it red. My younger sister came by our shared hallway bathroom and saw me staring blankly at the mess of water and period blood in our sink. She laughed and hooted, “Debbie! What’s wrong, Debbie?” Without hesitation, as if my newly pubescent body knew how to turn pain into laughter, I joked back by speaking in a 1930s dustbowl accent and said, “mama’s sick and daddy ain’t comin home.” We laughed and laughed at how ridiculous the whole situation was - the period underwear juxtaposed to my joke riffing on the things people said during the Great Depression while lamenting being poor. The whole event, as macabre and bloody as it was, actually served as a humorous outlet for my sister and me. In our hearts, we were painfully aware of our situation: poor, unloved, forgotten girls who were left alone at home without a father to show them what true love and respect looks like. Girls with a mother who loved them, although she was just a third little girl in her own right.
I had had my period for just a few months at this point, and the ability to keep myself clean and well had never been directly taught to me. Mostly I was shown a pad, was directed to put it in my underwear, and that was it. As if that was the only thing to know or care about when starting a period. Women didn’t speak openly about body parts and we definitely didn’t draw attention to our “monthly visitor.” There was an air of shame about it all in that time and place. I was chastised for using too much toilet paper, for taking too long in the bathroom, for voicing any of the myriad aches and pains that accompany “Aunt Flo” and her monthly visit. No, mostly I was expected to hide my needs, hide the blood, hide the pains, and pretend everything was okay. That last part, specifically, was the glue that held my family together - no matter what happens, just act like everything is okay.
The day I woke up with pain gripping my pelvis, low back, calves, and ankles, I used the toilet and saw that I had leaked massively -again- on my underwear. Mom taught me how to wash the blood out, or rather, I learned by watching her do it herself time and again. As the eldest daughter, my role was to learn how to take care of myself with minimal hand-holding from my mother. That day, Abigail found me stirring my period panties in the sink as I mimicked what I had seen our own mother do: wash out the blood and keep it moving.
Seeing a sink bowl full of bloody water would have caused most people to ask “what’s wrong?” and shows the love my sister extended to me that our own mother did not. Maybe most people would react protectively and tell their baby sister not to worry, that the blood was simply my period and I was simply washing it out of my clothing to preserve them. Maybe most people had a different method of self-care all together? Perhaps that was what Abi found upsetting - that my self-care was so matter-of-fact with so little pomp or parade about the fact that so much blood had left my body, was still leaving my body. Perhaps.
What Abi asked me wasn’t “are you okay?” or “how can I help?” It wasn’t even a question about the events that transpired which led to the bloody water swirling in the sink. What Abi asked was “Debbie, what’s wrong?” And that’s the question I answered: mama’s sick and daddy ain’t comin home.