“Cassidy? Can you come in here please?” Momma sounded like she’d been calling for a while, I could hear the frustration in her voice and it made me fold my ears back tight against my head.
“Yes Momma!” I gave Jordan another push and stood over him with my hands on my hips. “Don’t think this is over yet! You wrecked my sand castle and I’m gonna get even for that!” I kicked making some of the sandbox sand get on his shorts which I knew upset him, then turned and headed toward the cottage. My hair was getting in my face again so I ran my fingers through the long white blonde curls to get it back off my forehead. When I got to the door I took a moment to stomp my feet and shake my shorts and shirt to get most of the sand from our scuffle off before I went inside, Momma didn’t like sand on the floor.
She wasn’t in the kitchen like I expected, or in the living room. “Momma?” I pushed the door closed since the flys were bad this summer and none of us liked them buzzing around our heads. The big fold out that Momma and Daddy slept on was still pulled out and made up since there wasn’t really much reason to fold it away when we spent most of our time outside anyway.
Momma appeared coming out of the door to the larger of the two small bedrooms, the one I shared with my little sister. “There you are, come sit with me for a bit will you honey? There’s something I want to talk to you about while your sister is napping and before your Dad and brother get home.” She had a shoebox in her hands as she came out of the room to settle on the side of the folded out bed.
I knew what it had to be. Every year she gave me a special ‘girls only’ birthday present. This had to be it! I was so excited I could feel my heart beating like it wanted to break out of my chest. I’d heard her talking to Daddy last night telling him I was old enough that I needed to learn some of what it meant to be a woman and him arguing that I was too young, that even at 8 years old I didn’t need to know about this yet. But Momma was firm she said that if it happened to her at 9 I needed to know so I would be prepared. Like always Daddy backed down because Momma knew girls better than he did.
Now here it was a simple shoe box that held the wonders of becoming a woman inside it. I could hardly wait to see what was in there! I crawled up onto the bed and knelt there looking from the box to Momma’s face. “What is it?” My mind was swirling with all the possibilities, was it some super power that would let me make Jordan stop teasing me once and for all? Or was it a gun like Daddy gave Bobby when he turned 8? It would be so cool to go hunting with them! No maybe it was my very own bra! I loved watching Momma put on hers and she knew I was fascinated with the way that it made her look more... well it was hard to explain but more like herself!
She took a deep breath and turned to face me. “Cassidy you’re getting to be a big girl now. Your Dad and I think you need to know some of the things that are going to happen to you as you get older.” I loved how she always made it sound like both she and Daddy had a hand in deciding what she told me. It made me feel more like Daddy was a part of my life than just a stranger who was here for dinner and breakfast, if we were lucky.
I nodded and settled cross legged facing her with the little box between us. My fingers itched to open it and find out what was inside but Momma always did things like this slowly, taking her time to explain why it was a special thing that the boys couldn’t know about and it was always a really interesting talk. My ears perk up when she smiled cause I know this was gonna to be a good talk.
“When I was a little older than you some things started to change in my body. First I didn’t really pay much attention to them because it wasn’t like they got in the way, my breasts started to grow and my pants didn’t fit quite right anymore. No one took the time to explain to me what was happening, Gran had so many other kits around that she didn’t notice what was happening to me, not with me being in the middle of the pack as it was.” She frowned a little and shook her head, “But you don’t need to know about that what you need to know is that there are changes that are going to happen to you, you will start to feel sore on your chest and your breasts will start to grow. You’re hips are going to grow too, making you look more like a grown up and less like a little girl. That’s just the outside though.” She paused and slowly took the lid off the box.
I couldn’t help it I leaned forward to see what was hidden inside! My excited eyes at first couldn’t understand what it was I was seeing, why would Momma have a bunch of papers in a box? And what was that strange blue and red picture supposed to be of? As she took it out I looked up at her with confusion all over my face. Almost afraid to talk but needing to ask the question I whispered, “Momma what is that?”
She chuckled, that deep throaty chuckle that she saved for special moments that were just for us and I couldn’t help smiling at her in return. “This is you Cassidy and me and your Gran and Nana, its all women, what we look like inside.” She unfolded the picture and I got my first look at a woman’s uterus, with all the bits labeled, though at the time I had no idea what any of it was. She kept going, “See this is what is inside us, what controls how we grow and eventually helps us make babies.”
That got my undivided attention; Momma was telling me how babies were made! My ears, nose and tail were all a quiver now; I never expected this talk, at least not yet!
She chuckled again at my eager expression and reached out to pat my hand. “We’re just talking about what happens inside you, not about how the rest of it works, that you’re still too young for.” She spread the picture out again, carefully weighing it down on the corners so it was held spread out on the bed. “Okay let’s have a look here. This big part is the most important for us today since it’s the part that will affect your life the most. It’s called the uterus and it isn’t nearly as big as the picture makes it look.” She picked up my hand and curled my fingers over my thumb till they were wrapped into a fist. “It’s about this big. It will always be about the same size as your fist, and it’s hidden inside you down here.” She pressed two of her fingers against my belly, way down low just above the bone.
I pushed my fingers against the same spot but I didn’t feel anything, at least nothing different then I always felt when the doctor pushed there. At my puzzled look she smiled and shook her head. “You won’t feel it, not yet, not unless you get cramping.” Without clarifying that comment she moveed her finger to the red part of the picture which seemed to be inside the bit she called a uterus. “This is a lining that your body produces; it’s like a garden for the baby to grow in. It’s thick and soft and has just the right things to make a baby feel welcome inside you. The only problem is that your body doesn’t know when it’s going to need it, so it makes the lining every month. If it doesn’t get used to hold a baby then your body doesn’t need it so once every month it changes the bedding. Like how we change the sheets because they get dirty. The unused lining has to go somewhere so your body will push it outside.” She paused there and looked at me to make sure I was following what she was telling me.
It was a little difficult to grasp but when she put it the way she did it made sense. “Like how some of the food we eat isn’t used and it gets pushed out when we go to the bathroom right?” My eyes found her face for a moment even though the picture was so interesting with all its big words and things.
She nodded smiling back at me. “Exactly like that and from pretty much the same place. But it’s not like going pee, you can’t use your muscles to hold it in and just let it all out at one time.” She stopped a moment then chuckled. “Aunty Kathy calls it the time of the red tide, which isn’t far from the truth. See the lining is red like blood and it will come out whether you want it to or not.” She reached back into the box and pulled out a pretty pink plastic wrapped package followed by a little pink plastic tube. “These are going to be your best friends.”
I watched fascinated as she unwrapped the pink package eager for a glimpse of my future. I couldn’t contain my disappointment when she finally had it all unwrapped and it was... a diaper! I thought she was pulling my leg, after all babies wore diapers not full grown women like Momma.
Maybe the tube thing would be more interesting. Momma pulled it apart, taking a smaller tube from the larger one and pulling on a tail of soft cotton thread until a tightly wrapped cotton ball looking thing came out the end of it a little way. This was even more confusing than the diaper.
“Momma, I don’t understand.”
She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me in close against her. “Ah my little one, these are the tools that will collect the lining and allow you to have a normal life while it’s being shed. Its going to happen once every month after it starts and you’ll have to use these things for up to five days before all the lining is shed.” She stroked my hair lightly and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I want you to be more prepared than I was.
“Gran didn’t only not notice what was happening to me she was rather callous. When she realized why I came back to the house and changed my panties three times when I was riding my bike,” there was a different sound to her voice a hardness that I hadn’t heard there before, “she actually threw a book at me.
“It was a book on anatomy true, but it hit me in the stomach and made me fall over. She and your aunts just laughed at me, all but Aunty Kathy. She took pity on me and hurried me to our room taking the book with us. She’s the one who explained all this to me, even though she is only a year older; she at least knew what to do to make sure I wasn’t bleeding all over everything.” The things she was saying, could Gran really have been so mean to her?
I wrapped my arms around her and looked up at her face. “Momma! Gran never did that! Not really! Did she?”
She smiled tightly and kissed my forehead again. “There are things about your Gran and Gramps that I don’t much like to talk about.” She gave herself a little shake and smiled down at me. “Okay, now you know about the messy stuff, do you have any questions?”
I had to think for a few minutes about that, what she’d told me was really gross. Not only was I going to get boobies which I was looking forward to, but I was gonna bleed from my peepee for up to five days every month. That’s pretty scary for a little girl to think about. Finally I had a question it was one that I really wanted to know the answer to with all my heart. “Momma, what happens to boys that’s gross? It doesn’t seem fair that we get all the gross things happening to us so what happens to them?”
* * * * *
About a half hour later Momma sent me back outside to play while she made dinner. Jordan was waiting on the porch for me throwing stones toward the lake to see if he could actually get one in. He smiled when I came out, but it turned into a frown at the look on my face. “What’s wrong Cassy?” I walked right up to him and punched him in the shoulder. “Owww what’s that for?” I turned and walked away from him getting my bike and starting down the driveway. It didn’t take too long before he was on his bike and following me as I pedaled faster and faster trying to run away from what Momma had told me.
