“I’ll tell you how I feel,” Grace said. “Old. Feels like yesterday I was in labor with you.” Grace’s voice was soft, wistful. “Remember looking down at her for the first time, Mom? All that red hair and porcelain skin. We thought you’d be an actress or a model for sure.”
I swallowed my mouthful with a little difficulty. “You’re not happy I followed you into midwifery, Grace?”
“Happy? Why, I’m only the proudest mom in world! Of course, I still wish you’d come and work with me, doing home births. No doctors hovering about with their forceps, no sick people ready to cough all over the precious new babies—”
“There are no doctors or sick people at the birthing center, Grace.”
“Delivering in the comfort of one’s own home, it’s just…”
Magical.
“Magical,” she said, with a smile. “Oh! I nearly forgot.” She reached for her purse and plucked out a flat, hand-wrapped gift. “This is from your father and me.”
“Wow … You shouldn’t have.”
“Nonsense. It’s your birthday.”
Gran and I exchanged a look. Of course Grace had ignored the no-gifts directive—the one thing I’d wanted for my birthday. I hated gifts: the embarrassment of receiving them, the awkwardness of opening them in public, and, if it was from Grace, the pressure of ensuring my face was adequately arranged to demonstrate sheer delight, a wonder that I’d ever been able to get through life before this particular ornament or treasure.
“Go on.” She pressed her hands together and wriggled her fingers. “Open it.”
An image of my thirteenth birthday flashed into my mind—the first time since elementary school that I had agreed to a party. Maybe the fact that I was in the middle of my second-ever period and was cramping, bleeding, and wearing a surfboard-sized maxi pad in my underwear skewed my judgment. Grace wasn’t happy when I insisted we keep it small (just four girls from school) and she was positively brokenhearted when I refused party games of any sort, but she didn’t push her luck. With hindsight, that should have been my first clue. My friends and I had just gotten settled in the front room when Grace burst in.
“Can I have your attention, please?” she said. “As you know, today is Neva’s thirteenth birthday. We are celebrating her becoming a teenager.”
She looked like a children’s stage performer, smiling so brightly that I thought her face might crack into three clean pieces. I willed her to vanish in a cloud of smoke, taking with her the previous thirty seconds and the crimson crushed-velvet dress she had changed into. But any notion that this might happen faded along with my friends’ smiles.
“My baby is no longer a baby. Her body is changing and growing. She’s experiencing the awakening of a vital force that brings woman the ability to create life. You may not know this, but the traditional name for first menstruation is ‘menarche.’”
Panic broke out; a swarm of moths over my heart. I no longer wanted Grace to disappear and take the last thirty seconds—I wanted her to take my future. To take Monday, when I would have to go to school and face the fact that I was a social outcast, now and forever. To take the coming few weeks, when I would have to go about my life, pretending I didn’t hear the whispers and snickers.
“In some cultures,” she continued, oblivious, “menarche inspires song, dance, and celebration. In Morocco, girls receive clothes, money, and gifts. Japanese families celebrate a daughter’s menarche by eating red rice and beans. In some parts of India, girls are given a ceremony and are dressed in the finest clothes and jewelry the family can buy. I know for you young ones it can seem embarrassing or, heaven forbid, dirty. But it’s not. It is one of the most sacred things in the world, and not to be hidden away, but celebrated. So, in honor of Neva’s menarche, and probably some of yours too—” She smiled encouragingly at my friends. “—I thought it might be fun to do like the Apache Indians here in North America, and—” She paused for effect. “—dance. I’ve learned a chant and we can—”
I can’t believe I let it go on for as long as I did. “Mom.”
Grace’s smile remained in place as she met my eye. “What is it, darling?”
“Just … stop.”
I barely breathed the words, but I know she heard them, because her smile fell like a kite from the sky on a windless day. A steely barrier formed around my heart. Yes, she’d gone to a lot of trouble, but she’d also left me no choice. “Dad!”
Our house was small; I knew he would hear me. And when he appeared, his frantic expression confirmed he’d heard the urgency in my voice. He surveyed the room. The horrified faces of my friends. The abundance of red everywhere—Grace’s dress, the balloons, the new cushions, which amazingly, I had only just noticed. He clasped Grace’s shoulders and guided her out, despite her determined protest and genuine puzzlement.
But now, as Grace hovered over me, I didn’t have Dad to help me. I turned the gift over and began to open it tentatively, starting with the tape at one end.
“It’s not a puzzle, darling. You’re not meant to unpeel every little bit of tape, you’re meant to do this!”
Grace lunged at the gift with such vigor, she rammed the table with her hip. Ice cubes tinkled. The water pitcher did a precarious dance, teetering back and forth before deciding to go down. Glass cracked; water gushed. A burst of mint filled the air. I shot to my feet as the water drenched me from the chest down.
Usually after a commotion such as this, it is loud. People assigned blame, gave instructions, located brooms and towels. This time it was eerily quiet. Gran and Grace stared at the mound that was impossible to hide under my now-clinging shirt. And for maybe the first time in her life, my mother couldn’t seem to find any words.
“Yes,” I said. I cupped my belly, protecting it from what I knew was about to be let loose. “I’m pregnant.”