She gave me a sweet and tender smile.
"Sometimes it stops before you're fifty, and
sometimes it goes on for a few years more--there's no set rule. But somewhere around that age bracket you can expect to go into 'the change of life.' And that is called menopause."
"Is it going to hurt?" was the most important thing I needed to know at that moment.
"Your monthly periods? There may be a little crampy pain, but it's not so bad, and I can tell you this from my own experience, and that from other women I know, the more you dread it, the more it pains."
I knew it! Never did I see blood that I didn't feel pain-- unless it was the blood of someone else. And all this mess, this pain, these cramps, just so my uterus could ready itself to receive a "fertilized egg" that would grow into a baby. Then she gave me the box which contained everything I would need for "that time of month."
"Hold up, Momma!" I cried, having found a way to avoid all of this. "You've forgotten I plan to be a ballerina, and dancers are never supposed to have babies. Miss Danielle was always telling us it was better never to have a child. And I don't want any, not ever. So you can take all this stuff back to the store, and get back your money, for I'm calling off this monthly period mess!"
She chuckled, then hugged me closer and put on my cheek a kiss. "I guess I must have overlooked telling you something-- for there isn't anything you can do to prevent menstruation. You have to accept all of nature's ways of changing your body from that of a child, into that of a woman Certainly you don't want to remain a child all your life, do you?"
I floundered, wanting very much to be a grown woman, with all the curves she had, and yet I wasn't prepared for the shock of such messiness--and once each month!
"And, Cathy, please don't be ashamed, or embarrassed, or dread a little discomfort, and the trouble--having babies is very rewarding. Someday you'll fall in love and marry, and you'll want to give your husband children--if you love him enough."
"Momma, there's something you're not telling me. If girls go through this sort of thing to become a woman, what must Chris endure to become a man"
She giggled girlishly and pressed her cheek to mine. "They have changes, too, though none that make them bleed. Chris will soon have to be shaving-
-and every day too. And there are certain other things he will have to learn to accomplish, and control, that you don't have to worry about."
"What?" asked I, eager to have the male gender share some of the miseries of maturing. When she didn't answer, I asked, "Chris, he sent you to me with instructions to tell me, didn't he?" She nodded and said yes, though she had meant to tell me long ago, but downstairs there was a hassle every day to keep her from doing what she should.
"Chris--what does he have to endure that's painful?"
She laughed, seemingly amused. "Another day, Cathy. Now put your things away, and use them when you have the need. Don't panic if it starts in the night, or while you're dancing. I was twelve the day mine started, and out riding a bicycle, and you know I rode home at least six times and changed my panties before my mother finally noticed, and took the time to explain to me what it was all about. I was furious because she hadn't warned me in advance. She never told me anything Believe it or not, you'll soon get used to it, and it won't make one bit of difference in your lifestyle."
Despite the boxes of hateful things I wished I would never need--for I wasn't going to have a baby, that was a very good warm talk that my mother and I shared.
And yet, when she called Chris and the twins down from the attic, and she kissed Chris and ruffled his blond curls, and played with him in teasing ways, and almost ignored the twins, the closeness shared but a moment ago began to fade. Carrie and Cory seemed ill at ease in her presence now. They came running to me and climbed up on my lap, and with my arms hugging them close, they watched as Chris was fondled, kissed, and fawned over. It bothered me so much the way she treated the twins, as if she didn't like to look at them. As Chris and I moved on into puberty, and toward adulthood, the twins stagnated, went nowhere.
The long cold winter passed into spring. Gradually the attic grew warmer. We went, all four, up there to take down the paper snowflakes, and we made it bloom again with our brilliant spring flowers.
My birthday came in April, and Momma didn't fail to come with presents, and the treats of ice cream and bakery cake. She sat down to spend the Sunday afternoon, and taught me how to do crewel
embroidery, and a few needlepoint stitches. Thus, with the kits she gave me, I had another way to fill my time.
My birthday was followed by the twins' day-- their sixth birthday. Again, Momma bought the cake, the ice cream, and the many gifts, including musical instruments that made Cory's blue eyes light up. He took one long, charmed look at that toy accordion, gave it a squeeze or two while punching the keys, cocking his head to listen attentively to the sounds he made. And darned, if he wasn't soon playing a tune on that thing! None of us could believe it. Then again we were dumbfounded, for he turned to Carrie's toy piano and did the same thing. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Carrie, happy birthday to you and me."
"Cory has an ear for music," said Momma, looking sad and yearning as she at last turned her gaze upon her youngest son. "Both my brothers were musicians. The pity of it was my father had no patience for the arts, or the type of men who were artists--not only those who were musicians, but painters, poets, and so forth. He thought them weak and effeminate. He forced this older brother to work in a bank he owned, not caring if his son detested the job that didn't suit him at all. He was named after my father, but we called him Mal. He was a very goodlooking young man, and on weekends, Mal would escape the life he hated by riding up into the mountains on his motorcycle. In his own private retreat, a log cabin he had built himself, he composed music. One day he took a curve too fast in the rain. He careened off the road and crashed down hundreds of feet into a chasm. He was twenty-two years old and dead.
"My younger brother was named Joel, and he ran away the day of his brother's funeral. He and Mal had been very close, and I guess he just couldn't bear the thought that now he would have to take Mal's place, and be the heir to his father's business dynasty. We received one single postcard from Paris, in which Joel told us he had a job with an orchestra touring Europe. Next thing we heard, perhaps three weeks later, Joel had been killed in a skiing accident in Switzerland. He was nineteen when he died. He had fallen into some deep ravine filled with snow, and to this day, they never found his body."
Oh, golly! I was greatly disturbed, kind of numbfeeling inside. So many accidents. Two brothers dead, and Daddy, too, all from accidents. My bleak look met with Chris's. He wasn't smiling As soon as our mother was gone, we escaped to the attic and our books.
"We've read every damned thing!" said Chris in deep disgust, flashing me an annoyed look. Wasn't my fault he could read a book in a few hours!
"We could read through those Shakespeare books again," I suggested.
"I don't like to read plays!"
Gosh-golly, I loved reading Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill, and anything that was dramatic, fanciful, and fraught with tempestuous emotions.
"Let's teach the twins to read and write," I suggested, I was that frantic to do something different. And in this way we could give them another way to entertain themselves. "And Chris, we'll save their brains from turning into mush from looking at that tube so much, and keep them from going blind, too."