She waited for her period and for Jesus; neither showed up.
What seemed like ages ago now, her mother had taken her to the aisle at the Krogers, with all its glossy packages in sherbet colors. And they’d picked one out for her, to keep in her bathroom, for when the time came.
“One day, when you are a woman, you will use this,” her mother said, her tone serious as she gently placed the hot-pink package into their cart.
She could not wait for that day. She was ready, oh my god, she was so ready.
She’d been told she mustn’t ask so many questions. Girls mustn’t ask so many questions. It was so much more important that the boys should learn. So she quieted her churning mind and she held her tongue and she bided her time and she waited for womanhood to save her.
It was a mystery, precisely how this would free her and also how she was going to get it, though she knew it would and she must. It was a gift. Like the love of Jesus, you just accepted and it would be in your heart and set you free.
Her sexual education was a to-do, administered perhaps a tad prematurely. Still a bit young for the juxtaposition of animal and people examples, she emerged with the belief that babies were made when chickens crawled into the beds of married people and shoved boiled eggs up ladies’ urethras. Privately, she struggled to reconcile such a notion with the idea of a loving God and the story of Noah’s ark.
A few years later, due to a fear that their inability to navigate the matrix of straps on their cross-back bathing suits would result in their missing the bus home, she and a friend faked their periods for an entire month of summer camp. In the midst of this, there was a new development. Jesus, this friend swore up and down, blessed wives who pledged their submission to their husbands by allowing them to put their husbands’ privates into their mouths.
“And that’s where babies come from,” the friend concluded grandly, nodding sagely.
She blinked in confusion and worried about the chickens.
It was hard, being a girl. So many impossibilities were involved.
She felt so small sometimes, as she sat silent, waiting, wondering what it would be like when she was a woman and how Jesus could possibly fit into her heart. She was so small and her heart smaller still. How could a whole grown man fit in?
For ages, it seemed, her period did not come. Despite her total conviction, on multiple occasions, that it had. But she did not know what she was waiting for, did not know what it would be like, and each time she raised her hand in class, requested the hall pass, and rushed to the bathroom stall to inspect her underwear, she discovered nothing but the fact that she was still a little girl.
Confession: She had opened the gift. Gingerly pried open the plastic of the shiny, hot-pink package and pulled out the rose-colored plastic envelope that contained the thrice-folded sock of plastic-encased cotton that was the Kotex Super Maxi.
For months, she carried that pad on her person like a lucky rabbit’s foot. Because you never knew when it might happen and, when it came like a thief in the night, she wanted to be ready.
It came in the morning. And she wanted to send it right back.
A night of fireflies and illegal fireworks from across the border in Mississippi, it was a typical July 4th. Each explosion accompanied by a bouquet of dust and dynamite and citronella. Each explosion’s coda her father’s hands smacking together as he looked skyward and exclaimed, “Now, that’s the ticket!”
Barefoot, she sat on the veranda, aware of her body in a way she had never been before. Tugging at her shorts, shifting the bulk glued to her underpants, the plastic wedged between her legs.
In the night sky, dizzying crackles burst violently into red, white, and blue blobs. Softly, in the neighbor’s yard, the bug catcher sizzled its prey.
Jesus hadn’t come yet but her period had. Next to the previously unfelt area inside her belly that had so suddenly this morning turned into a tensed pit of fire, there was a sinking feeling as she realized. This would not set her free.
Oline Eaton teaches at the University of Memphis and is writing a book about Jackie Onassis.
SHORT AND SWEET (or not-so-sweet), the Very Short Story Contest welcomes entries of up to 750 words, maximum. Writers are encouraged to incorporate the city into their work. Winning stories will be published in Memphis and archived on memphismagazine.com. Whereas the fiction contest was in the past a once-a-year event, the Very Short Story Contest will recognize ten winning entries annually, every month except February and August. The Very Short Story Contest is presented by Novel, Memphis' newest independent bookstore, where each winning author will be honored with a $200 gift certificate. To submit your story, send it via email, accompanied by a brief bio, to fiction@memphismagazine.com.
