Seven days. Seven days, my period lasted, and each day was a heavier than usual flow. I went through an entire 36-count box of tampons, bought extra panty liners when I realized my tampons weren’t holding—but I would not go a size higher—and I had to toss three pairs of panties that I didn’t feel like scrubbing. It was so unusual, in fact, that I even made an appointment to see my doctor first thing in the New Year.
But this morning I woke up (Hallelujah!) dry, and I wanted to pounce on my husband right then and there!
Yes, my husband. The butterflies still flutter in my stomach when I think of it—I am married. I sit up on my elbows and watch him sleep, study his steady breathing, the slow rise and fall of his chest, how his nostrils sometimes flare when he inhales.
Does he know how much I love him?
I lift my left hand to caress his cheek, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the gold band around my ring finger—I am married. I feel like I’m floating, swimming in the love that is desperate to flow out of me and into him. I don’t want to touch the ground.
But I do come down, tip toe across the cool hard wood of his (our)—I am married—bedroom floor to our bathroom to freshen up.
I find myself giggling hysterically as the steam rises from the shower. The last time I was this giddy was ironically when I had my first period. I was nine years old and so excited to finally be a woman, to be able to make a baby. I saw the blood between my thighs and squealed in delight. I washed my panties in the sink while my mom talked to me about the difference between tampons and pads and which one would be more comfortable for me to use. When I changed my first pad, I wedged my finger underneath the sticky lining an slowly peeled it back from the cotton, like peeling an orange, and the sound, like Velcro, was music to my ears. I rolled it in up in toilet paper, tossed it in the waste basket attached to the stall, the only one in Lincoln Elementary School bathroom.
It lasted three days, and those three days I walked about nose in the air, shoulders drawn back, flat chest perked up and out, as if I had grown boobs overnight. No one could tell me anything. I had surpassed all the other girls in my class. I could do something they couldn’t. I was like my teacher who dressed in prim pressed white blouses and pencils skirts, like my principal who wore her shiny, blue-black hair in a low bun and stomped down the halls in Stiletto heels. I was a woman.
And when my period didn’t return on its scheduled 28-day cycle, I knew I was pregnant. I made that announcement to my mom over breakfast that she would be a grandmother, and she cocked her head at me and asked, “Have you let a boy touch you?” which confused me, because while our class was the guinea pig for the new sex education program, the instructors only taught us about out parts, how they worked, not how to make them work.
But I know how to make them work now. And tonight, I will touch a boy, and he will touch me back, and as I put my hands in my hair, tilt my chin toward the shower head and let the hot water cascade down the curves of my body, I hear the door creak, a light tapping on the frame.
“Tash,” Mitchell says, “what’s so funny in there? You woke me up with all that laughing.”
I peek from behind the shower curtain, call him in with the curl of my index finger. He follows, like a cartoon character that is lured by a sweet-smelling aroma. When he is in front of me, I grab his hand, my eyes locked only on his lips swooped in a side smirk, and whisper, “Take off your clothes.”
—Nortina
This concludes Countdown to 31 Days of Holiday Hooligans! Thank you so much to those who stuck around (through this month, last month, and even last December when the first nine chapters were originally posted) to the very end! I have truly fallen in love with this story and this cast of characters, and while I plan to take a break from it for a little while, I do hope to return soon to edit and possibly self-publish it just in time for Christmas next year. Thank you so much for all the likes, comments, shares. It means the world to me. I wish you a wonderful, wonderful New Year, and a successful, productive, and prosperous 2018! ¡Besos!
