by Karin Cook
Before dinner, Samantha and I rummaged through the Shaptaw’s bookshelves, looking for sex in magazines and ’60s records. We found an old porn novel behind some medical reference books. It was about a young servant girl who gets licked by a dog named Gustav while the husband of the house watches, his wife asleep in the next room. We read parts out loud, laughing. Then we decided to write our own story. Erotica, Samantha called it. We weren’t sure exactly what it meant, but it had to involve animals, we thought because of Lance Engler. Jill Switt had told us that Lance had fingered his cat and we were both disgusted and intrigued. When a group of us confronted him in the lunchroom he said there wasn’t anything nasty about it.
“I am an erotic being,” he announced.
I think that was when Samantha decided to like him, but she didn’t tell me then.
Piled high, the artichokes looked like a pagan crown when Ivy brought them from the kitchen on a tray with seven finger cups full of melted butter, shining like coins. In the middle of the table was an empty bowl for the throwaways. I had no idea how these green sculptures were to be eaten, so I watched closely as the Shaptaws each peeled away the first level of leaves. Samantha dunked her first leaf in the butter and stripped it clean, leaving her teeth prints on the leftover leaf, and some leftover leaf in her teeth.
The Shaptaws always played strange games at the dinner table. That night was no exception. Stephen, the oldest Shaptaw son, started us off on some palindromes.
Come shall I stroke your whatever darling whatever your stroke I shall come.
Mr. Shaptaw coughed into his napkin. We moved inward on our artichokes, fingers damp and slippery with butter, as we took turns thinking up words and sentences that were the same frontward as backward.
“Artie Choke too small to choke Artie,” Samantha said. She had a buttery sheen on her chin.
“Does it count?” I asked, “with two different to’s?”
The leaves got thin and light, and Stephen and Seth pretended to be green lizards, the leaves adhering to their tongues. In his attempt to outdo his older brother, Seth got too close and touched his tongue to my ear.
“Seth licked Tilden,” Stephen said boldly. “Seth has a crush on Tilden.”
“Yeah right,” he said in a way that hurt my feelings.
“Here she is,” said Ivy, holding up a pale and slimy center and gazing into her husband’s gray-green eyes.
Stephen spooned around the coating of hair that was gathered at the top of the heart. “Don’t eat the pubes,” he said and flung a clump of hair onto Sam’s plate.
“Enough,” Mr. Shaptaw said, his cheeks flushed.
That night, Samantha and I put a chair against her bedroom door and hid in the closet. She explained how the saleswoman at Macy’s had taken her measurements and calculated her band and cup size with a special formula.
“Do mine,” I said and held my arms out from my body. Samantha wrapped the tape measure around my chest, making sure to keep it level, and held her thumb at the line. She did the math in her head, adding the number six to the number on the tape and subtracting one.
“We’re the same size,” she declared.
This seemed impossible to me from the looks of things, but I didn’t question her. Earlier that month, Samantha had won a contest for naming over thirty uses of math in our lives. I imagined going to the mall with her, the saleswoman mistaking us for sisters, ringing up our equipment together, and putting it in a bag with one staple through the receipt.
Outside, Samantha’s brothers were wedging a boomerang under her bedroom door, making it difficult for us to get out. She settled quietly into this fact, pulling me down to a sitting position in the bottom of her closet, her neatly hung pants and shirts brushing our backs. We became saliva sisters that night, touching our spongy tongues together for over a minute.
The school looked different on Saturday. It seemed bigger.
“They never had anything like this for us,” Ivy said as she flipped through the information in the handouts. I remembered what Samantha had told me about her mother faking her period throughout high school. As an adult, Ivy would announce hers, darting through the house in a towel searching frantically for a pad. With Mama it was different. She kept everything neatly tucked away, a secret. The only hint was a red-rimmed tube of cardboard in the trash, or the little string I could sometimes see through her nylons.
I wished that mothers hadn’t been required to go. They were so silly, so sentimental greeting each other at the back of the auditorium. The first words out of each mother’s mouth were “Can you believe it’s almost that time!” But the daughters didn’t leave their sides; they nodded at each other and looked away. I stood behind the Shaptaws until Ivy reached back and looped her arm through mine.
When it was time to begin, Ms. Penny called the group to order. Ivy sat down between us despite Samantha’s protests.
“The film you are about to see will explain the physical and emotional changes that a girl goes through during puberty.” Ms. Penny paused. “Are there any questions?”
No one spoke. She flipped the light switch. The projector whirled and clicked at the back of the room.
“There will be time for more discussion at the end,” she said, as the opening credits began to roll in squat black letters on the white screen.
The film was boring and relatively straightforward, but still I took down the important points. I had read all about menstruation in Our Bodies, Ourselves anyway, so this seemed really hokey to me at first. I knew Mama would have written down every word, drawing time lines and stick figures. I felt Ivy watching me. I wanted it to seem as if I knew more than I did. The film said that when it finally did happen, it would reoccur every twenty-eight days. And that everyone’s body was different, therefore menstruation could begin anywhere between the ages of ten and eighteen.
“Duh,” I wrote in my datebook and passed it to Samantha.
“Double Duh,” she wrote back.
I still didn’t know about the starting and stopping. What exactly brought it on? When did it end? After the film was over I passed Samantha a note asking her to find out how we could tell when it was coming. Ivy intercepted and volunteered to ask. She stood up for her delivery, a long rambling question that mentioned a few of her own experiences. She was speaking quickly and gesturing alternately toward her breasts and her uterus. Samantha slunk low in her chair.
Ms. Penny, cited the warning signs—“secondary sex characteristics,” she called them—the enlargement of breasts, rounding of hips, pimples, and the beginning of pubic hair and body odor. Ms. Penny suggested that we all order a Starter Kit from Personal Products in New Jersey to have nearby just in case. I wrote Starter Kit? in my notebook.
In the end, I suppose the mother rule was a good one because as we were filing out of the auditorium, Christy Diamo, who was known to have the largest breasts in our class, fainted. As she folded to the ground, I thought about the elk that I’d seen in National Geographic, the way they fall as they die, on their knees as if in prayer. Christy went chalk white and sweaty before her mother was able to shuffle her out to the girls’ room. What happened after that, none of us knew. Was this the initiation, what it meant to bleed once a month, to carry water weight and toiletries?
In the car, I read the pamphlet about the Starter Kit—maxis, minis, belts, and panty liners. Ivy offered to stop at the drugstore so that we could each get a box of sanitary napkins. I wanted to wait for the official kit.
Ivy ran her hand over my head and brought an open palm to my cheek. “Whatever you want, sweetie,” she said.
“I want to go home.”
“What about Friendly’s?” Samantha asked.
“You didn’t want to stay at Sam’s?” Mama asked, sliding me one of her pillows as I climbed in bed next to her.
Nick brought apple cider in wineglasses on a silver tray. “Room service,” he announced and closed the door firmly behind him.
“Well?” she asked. “How wa
s it?”
I presented her with my notes. She put on her reading glasses, the kind with magnifying lenses that made her eyes look large and shiny, like a horse’s. She read with her pencil, leaving a light trace of coal next to my words.
Watching her, I thought about her body and wondered if I would ever see it again. Just last month, she’d let me sit on the wicker hamper while she took her bath. The tub was long, with ceramic feet, like paws. She covered her pubic hair with a navy washcloth, which sometimes floated above and away. Her breasts, large with mahogany nipples, looked lighter under water. Suddenly, I felt like crying, but I squeezed my hands into a fist to stop myself.
“Did Mrs. Shaptaw answer your questions?” she asked.
“Sort of,” I said.
“What else would you like to know?”
About you … I wanted to ask. Did you wait until you were married? Did it hurt? And, Are you okay? Will you still get your period?
“Can I take baths when I … get it?” I decided to ask.
“Of course,” she said, suddenly distracted by her own need for one. She ran her hands across her slick scalp, stopping to massage her forehead. “Can you help me wash my hair?” she asked.
Mama balanced herself precariously on the edge of the tub and wrapped the shower curtain around her neck and shoulders. Her hands looked pale and fragile as she gripped the tub tightly on either side of her. After I got the water to the just-right temperature, Mama eased forward and let her hair fall into the wake of the spout. Her face was red when she sat up. She swayed a bit and steadied herself against me. She brought her fist to her face and pressed it against her forehead.
“That Herbal Essence is strong stuff,” she joked.
I lathered the shampoo between my hands first before putting it in her hair and working the bubbles into a foamy helmet. When it came time to rinse, Mama pointed to a plastic cup on the sink. I poured the water over her until it ran clear down her neck, the strands squeaking against my fingers. When I finished, I towel-dried her hair and wrapped it into a terry cloth crown at the top of her head.
CHORES
After two weeks, Mama stopped wearing her bathrobe around the house and put on a new three-piece sweatsuit that she’d gotten from our next door neighbor, Mrs. Teuffel, as a get-well-soon present. It had large, symmetrical pockets on the shirt and a matching, zip-up jacket with a hood. She looked beautiful that morning when she walked into the kitchen, a gust of peach, her shoelaces flapping with each step. Nick got down on one knee and tied the laces in double knot.
“We’re off to see the Mosquitoes,” she said. That’s what she called the blood doctors—the ones in charge of the chemotherapy. I pictured them thin and pale with long gangly arms and receding hairlines.
“How long are you going to be gone?” I asked.
She smiled. “Just long enough for the two of you to clean up this house.”
Mama drew a haphazard line down the center of a sheet of paper and wrote our names at the top. She knew how to balance our responsibilities to help keep the peace. We were both in charge of starting the laundry and washing the stairs. I had been asked to vacuum and Elizabeth was to load the dishwasher.
Elizabeth scowled at the list. “This will take forever.”
“Please don’t talk back,” Mama said. “Just do what I ask.”
Neither of us said another word. We stood around the kitchen, staggered apart from each other like chess pieces. Mama walked to the fridge, took out a bottle of milk, and poured three large glasses.
“I don’t like milk,” Elizabeth said under her breath.
Mama took long careful sips, picking her glass up and putting it down each time. She pushed at her sweatsuit bottoms with her toe, her pale shin peeking out between the squeeze of the elastic grip and her socks. Her hair was clipped up, the ends tucked under and pinned—the way she’d always done it to clean the house or when she was in a hurry.
Nick pulled the car around to the back door, got out and leaned against the hood. His mouth was drawn into a worried line. He made a Y with his thumb and pointer and rubbed his forehead. Mama drank down the rest of her milk and set the glass gently in the sink. While she dug in her pocketbook for her frosted lipstick, Elizabeth and I tilted our glasses in unison and slowly, silently poured the milk down the drain. By the time Mama got to the door, Nick had jogged up the stairs to meet her. He seemed formal in his navy blue blazer, as if on a job, guiding her by the elbow and opening doors.
Out the window, Mama looked smaller than I had ever seen her. She walked across the yard, watching each step, and sat carefully, her left hand holding onto the door and then the dash as she lowered herself into the car. There was some fumbling in the front seat before Nick started the engine. I could tell that they were arguing over the seat belt. He pulled the belt out wide and then wrapped it around her stiff and defiant body. As they drove away, Nick gave a quick, happy honk and Mama waved, small, with her fingers from a bent elbow. Halfway down the driveway, I saw her slip the shoulder strap under her arm.
“I call it,” Elizabeth said and raced for the beanbag chair in the TV room. She startled me and I ran after her, my heart racing. Usually we battled it out. One got the chair, the other got the controls. This was only fair, Mama assured us. A compromise. Though she never understood why we couldn’t just share.
Elizabeth turned on the television while I struggled to get the long and unwieldy vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet. For more drama, I let the carpet attachment bang hard against the wall as I dragged it out. Elizabeth ignored me and turned up the volume. With the tubing around my neck, and the extra pieces under my arm, I thumped the vacuum down next to her. I looked around for an outlet, walking back and forth in front of the television. Finally, Elizabeth pulled the beanbag chair right up to the TV and stared into the screen.
“You’re breaking the rule,” I said. “You’re going to go blind.”
Mama had a four-foot rule for the TV which she enforced with stories about migraines and blindness.
“Like I care,” she said.
I turned on the vacuum and made parallel passes across the carpet, under the couch and the coffee table, purposely sucking up thumb tacks and pennies. Elizabeth turned up the volume and pressed her ear to the TV. I thrust the attachment up against her chair. She didn’t respond. When I rolled the vacuum into the hall, she pulled the plug.
“Put it back,” I shouted.
“Can’t hear you,” she called over the TV.
“Plug in the vacuum cleaner,” I insisted, leaning against the wall and waiting.
She lowered the volume. “What did you say?”
“Elizabeth, please put the plug back in.”
“Okay,” she said. “At the next commercial.”
I gave up and stormed to Mama and Nick’s room at the back of the house. Mama’s room had never been off-limits to us before, and that didn’t change when we moved in with Nick. But after Mama’s procedure, I knew without ever being told that I was not to go in unless I needed to. There were things in there now—paper bags and pill bottles with labels from the Pharmacy, gooey salves and bandages—things I knew she wouldn’t want me to see. Also, she wouldn’t want me to walk in on her. I lived simultaneously with the fear and hope of seeing Mama’s scar. I thought that if I could just see it once, then maybe everything would go on normally. And at the same time I was terrified.
I went straight to the bathroom and stopped short. In Atlanta, I always knew what I would find in there. But Mama had become more of a mystery since she’d started sharing a bathroom with Nick. He had strange toiletries, brown soap and dark bottles with emblems on the labels. The whole room smelled like mouthwash. Nick’s socks were slung, dirty-toe out, over the side of the shower stall. Around the adjustable shower head was a pair of underpants that looked like a slingshot. My eyes darted around the room searching for familiarity.
I opened the storage cabinet behind the door. Mama had lined the shelves with scented paper. Lily
of the valley. A plastic bag full of cotton balls leapt out at me. Her hot pink hair dryer was propped up next to a bin of vitamin samples. I was surprised by how jumbled things looked; when we first moved in, Mama had arranged everything in little plastic organizers. She didn’t own much jewelry, but she kept her pendants and clip-on earrings in a Tupperware cup. I swirled my finger around in the cool metals and stones. It sounded as if I were stepping on broken glass.
Before I knew it, I was pulling out a bra and putting it around my waist, hooking the clasp where I could see it, twisting it around, over my clothes and putting my arms through the straps. I slipped a pair of socks into each side and studied my profile in the mirror. I looked like an overstuffed chair. I had waited too long to ask Mama for my first bra, had to stand by and watch as Samantha began wearing hers, a pink rose stitched at the center.
“You don’t have boobs.” Elizabeth was leaning against the doorway, watching me coldly.
“I know.”
She snapped the bra strap hard against my back. “What are you doing with Mama’s private stuff?”
I crawled quickly out of the bra, avoiding myself in the mirrors. One pair of socks rolled under the tub. While I bent to get it, my face pulsing against the cold tiles of the floor, Elizabeth returned the bra, folding it back under itself, and putting it in the correct spot. Then, she turned and left without a word. I realized with a start, that she had been there before me. How much more did she know?
When I resurfaced from Mama and Nick’s room, I heard Elizabeth downstairs in the basement starting the laundry. Washing the clothes was our favorite chore, one which gave us a chance to explore the storage areas and dark corners of the basement where Nick kept things he didn’t want us to see. I sat on the bottom step and watched as Elizabeth sorted the clothes, tossing whites and darks into separate piles on either side of her. The clothesline was covered with TransAlt work shirts, making the laundry room look like the garage on payday—a sea of orderly green tops.
