My first period hit like a nightmare. Gut-wrenching cramps, rushing to the bathroom, then finding blood in my panties.
I sat on the toilet staring at the stain, heart in my throat, whispering “Please God” like it could undo what was happening.
I found Mother in the basement. She was ironing, cigarette burning, pressing the iron into the worn-out clothes like she was trying to kill something in the fabric.
“Mother, I’m bleeding down there.”
She never looked up.
“Big purple box in the bathroom. Kotex. Figure it out.”
That was the entire sex talk.
I couldn’t work the pad—those weird tails, the way that thing crawled inside my panties—how to keep it from falling out? Blood running down my leg.
I yelled for her again.
Her sigh came up through the bathroom floor.
“Use a safety pin and your panties. Clean yourself up first.”
1968 motherhood, everybody.
The Old Man wrote in his little ledger book: “Today, Puddin’ became a woman. December 7, 1968.”
By March I was a sanitary-belt pro.
The reward?
Saturday laundry duty in the freezing basement with the ancient wringer washer.
One Saturday in March I’m half-asleep on a stool by the furnace, washer sloshing, when the whole house shakes.
Screaming upstairs. Crashes. Furniture scraping.
Then Mother bolts past the open basement door—hand over her face, blood pouring through her fingers, dripping on her blouse. She runs into the bathroom and slams the door.
I just flip the wringer switch and start feeding clothes through like nothing happened.
My first thought:
Wonder if Ladies’ Home Journal was right about Adolf’s Meat Tenderizer getting blood out of cotton…
***
This is an excerpt from the CNF piece "Wringer."
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