period.”
She brought in her purple box of Kotex and handed me an elastic belt like the one Glenda kept in her drawer, then left me to work out the mechanics of attaching the pad to the two hooks, which I finally managed to do in a haphazard fashion. I hated it already, hated the attention and concern and the look on my mothers face that said I was now doomed to my life as a woman. I hated to think that I would be strapped and uncomfortable for a week each month, and that someone might notice the bulging pad or discover me in the bathroom at recess, struggling to bandage and bind myself and staunch the betraying flow of blood.
Then the cramping started, and for one day each month I lay doubled up in the school’s sickroom, pleading constipation or food poisoning but determined to never admit that the ache I felt somehow stemmed from the weakness of my gender. I had never felt anything that hurt so badly. It began in my thighs and rose in spasms to my pelvis, where it settled into a constant dizzying pain. My mother had explained that this would happen—it was part of what we must expect to endure as women.
One such day the principal, concerned by my pallor and the fact that I was lying on the cot with my knees drawn tight to my chest, called my mother to come and take me home. But my mother had gone to Orofino to buy groceries, so he called a neighbor, who swooped me into her car and led me into Kimball’s Drug to be inspected by the white-frocked pharmacist. Dr. Kimball was no physician but we respected his college education. The nearest medical attention was a hard hour’s drive in good weather, and anything that required less than surgery could be attended to by our one local nurseor the pharmacist. Most of the men’s wounds they treated themselves, and the women’s maladies, usually “female problems,” Dr. Kimball might remedy with laxatives and vitamins.
He asked me a few questions, pushed at my abdomen, then pressed my nails to check the color. I didn’t say a word, but he must have known. Undoubtedly, I wasn’t the first tight-lipped Pierce girl to be ushered into his presence, suffering from the same condition. (I would read one day in the paper that the pharmacist’s wife had reported him missing. The search that was launched covered three counties—everyone suspected foul play—and when they did discover him, not dead or even lost but simply hiding out, safe and supplied with enough food and clothing to last a while, the townspeople were stunned, the sheriff furious. How could the man on whom everyone depended suddenly disappear into the woods, leaving his family and community in torment? The county sent him a bill for thousands of dollars, and though he resumed his place behind the apothecary’s counter, he never again held the trust of the people. I wondered what affliction he suffered from—what had driven him into the wilderness—but knew without question what words would be spoken of him from the pulpit the next Sunday, his a lesson we all might learn from:
Physician, heal thyself)
.
Dr. Kimball suggested rest and that I be kept warm, and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the neighbor’s house beneath a pile of blankets, nearly happy to be there since she had a TV and I could watch a
real
doctor at work—the dreamy Dr. Kildare, not at all like our bespectacled, sterile-smelling practitioner with hands white and dry as cornstarch. I didn’t think I’d mind Richard Chamberlain prodding my insides, knowledgeable as to the intimacies of my sex.
That winter the snow fell for days on end and only byconstant shoveling could we guarantee our escape from the house. My brother and I charged ten dollars to scoop the heavy snow from the nearby roofs. Soon the berms and piles covered the windows, and we could step from the peak of our own house and sink neck-deep into star-shot whiteness.
Uncles, aunts and cousins came back to visit for Thanksgiving, piling into our small house with sleeping
She brought in her purple box of Kotex and handed me an elastic belt like the one Glenda kept in her drawer, then left me to work out the mechanics of attaching the pad to the two hooks, which I finally managed to do in a haphazard fashion. I hated it already, hated the attention and concern and the look on my mothers face that said I was now doomed to my life as a woman. I hated to think that I would be strapped and uncomfortable for a week each month, and that someone might notice the bulging pad or discover me in the bathroom at recess, struggling to bandage and bind myself and staunch the betraying flow of blood.
Then the cramping started, and for one day each month I lay doubled up in the school’s sickroom, pleading constipation or food poisoning but determined to never admit that the ache I felt somehow stemmed from the weakness of my gender. I had never felt anything that hurt so badly. It began in my thighs and rose in spasms to my pelvis, where it settled into a constant dizzying pain. My mother had explained that this would happen—it was part of what we must expect to endure as women.
One such day the principal, concerned by my pallor and the fact that I was lying on the cot with my knees drawn tight to my chest, called my mother to come and take me home. But my mother had gone to Orofino to buy groceries, so he called a neighbor, who swooped me into her car and led me into Kimball’s Drug to be inspected by the white-frocked pharmacist. Dr. Kimball was no physician but we respected his college education. The nearest medical attention was a hard hour’s drive in good weather, and anything that required less than surgery could be attended to by our one local nurseor the pharmacist. Most of the men’s wounds they treated themselves, and the women’s maladies, usually “female problems,” Dr. Kimball might remedy with laxatives and vitamins.
He asked me a few questions, pushed at my abdomen, then pressed my nails to check the color. I didn’t say a word, but he must have known. Undoubtedly, I wasn’t the first tight-lipped Pierce girl to be ushered into his presence, suffering from the same condition. (I would read one day in the paper that the pharmacist’s wife had reported him missing. The search that was launched covered three counties—everyone suspected foul play—and when they did discover him, not dead or even lost but simply hiding out, safe and supplied with enough food and clothing to last a while, the townspeople were stunned, the sheriff furious. How could the man on whom everyone depended suddenly disappear into the woods, leaving his family and community in torment? The county sent him a bill for thousands of dollars, and though he resumed his place behind the apothecary’s counter, he never again held the trust of the people. I wondered what affliction he suffered from—what had driven him into the wilderness—but knew without question what words would be spoken of him from the pulpit the next Sunday, his a lesson we all might learn from:
Physician, heal thyself)
.
Dr. Kimball suggested rest and that I be kept warm, and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the neighbor’s house beneath a pile of blankets, nearly happy to be there since she had a TV and I could watch a
real
doctor at work—the dreamy Dr. Kildare, not at all like our bespectacled, sterile-smelling practitioner with hands white and dry as cornstarch. I didn’t think I’d mind Richard Chamberlain prodding my insides, knowledgeable as to the intimacies of my sex.
That winter the snow fell for days on end and only byconstant shoveling could we guarantee our escape from the house. My brother and I charged ten dollars to scoop the heavy snow from the nearby roofs. Soon the berms and piles covered the windows, and we could step from the peak of our own house and sink neck-deep into star-shot whiteness.
Uncles, aunts and cousins came back to visit for Thanksgiving, piling into our small house with sleeping
Similar Books
