Early Spring 01 Broken Flower (2 page)

unnecessary expense.
"They're not wasteful," my mother said in OUT defense. "Especially not Ian."
Grandmother Emma would only grunt at that. She couldn't argue about Ian doing anything illogical or unnecessary. If anything, he was looking after wasteful practices on her side of the house. He would venture over at least as far as the switch on the wall and deliberately turn off a hall light. If she
complained about having to navigate in the dark, he would say, "I didn't think it was necessary with so much natural light through the windows,
Grandmother. Perhaps you should fine yourself. "
Behind the hand she held over her mouth, my mother might smile at that. My grandmother would shoot a reprimanding look at Ian, who would stare back at her without so much as a twitch in his lips. He had two licorice black eves with tiny white specks and when he looked at someone so intensely, he didn't even blink. Mama was always telling him not to stare at people.
"It makes you look like an insect and not a little boy." she told him. Other boys his age might have been upset about that, but Ian looked pleased. I knew that sometimes he did deliberately imitate creatures so he could better understand them.
"What would it be like to only be able to crawl?" he asked me when I saw him doing it in his room. He'd walk about the house with his forearms pressed against himself so he resembled a praying mantis. Or he would wonder what it would be like to be a Venus flytrap and have to wait patiently for your meal to succumb to deception. He would sit with his mouth open for as long as he could stand it. He was studying carnivorous plants as well as insects. He was truly interested in everything.
Grandmother Emma was often disturbed about something he would do, especially when he stood ye1y still and flicked out his tongue like a snake.
After trying to reprimand him for staring at people, my mother would only shake her head and walk away. Grandmother Emma would do the same. I envied the way Ian could make her shake her head and retreat.
When it came to Grandmother Emma's criticism of Daddy, however, she was relentless and unswerving. She never failed to tell him he was lazy and wasteful. She found ways to blame that on my mother, claiming she just didn't inspire him to be better or try harder.
"At times I think you are completely void of ambition and self- respect, Christopher."
She would say these horrible things to him right in front of Ian or me and even in front of my mother sometimes. Her sharp, surgical comments were never dressed in euphemisms or subtleties. She refused to rationalize or make excuses for Daddy and especially not for my mother and us. On occasion, my mother would try to stand up to her.
"Is it wise to be so critical of Christopher in front of his children?" she once asked her.
"The sooner they learn to base respect upon reality and not false promises the better off they'll be. As ye sow so shall ye reap," she added.
"So do you blame yourself for Christopher's failings?" my mother dared to follow up.
Grandmother Emma faced her firmly and replied, "No. I blame his father."
"That woman has an icicle for a spine," my mother muttered to me.
At the time I was young enough to believe that was literally true. I wondered how she kept it from melting.
There was so much tension and often so much static in our house, or I should say my grandmother's house that sometimes. I'd look down the hallway toward the circular stairs and think of the inside of the mansion as having its own weather. I'd imagine clouds or storms no matter what was happening outside. Shadows in the house could widen or stretch so that I would feel as if
I
was walking under a great overcast sky. Even in the summer months, it could be chilly and not because of too much air-conditioning either. Fair weather days were happening less and less, not that there were all that many after we were forced to move in with Grandmother Emma, anyway. It was no wonder then that my mother was adamant, even terrified, about Grandmother Emma finding out about me.
I suppose anyone would wonder how someone so small could command such obedience and fear. She was just five feet tall with small features, especially small hands, but I never thought of her as being tiny or diminutive. Even in front of Daddy, who was six feet one and nearly two hundred pounds, she looked powerful and full of authority. She had ruler-perfect posture and a commanding tone in her voice. When she spoke to her servants, she whipped her words at them. She rarely raised her voice. She didn't have to shout or yell. Her words seemed loud anyway because after she said them in her manner of speaking, they boomed in your head. No one could ignore her, no one except Ian, but he could ignore a tornado if he was thinking or reading about something that interested him at the time.
My grandmother was always well put together, too. She never appeared out of her room without her bluish gray hair being brushed and pinned. She liked to keep it in a tight crown bun, but on rare occasions, she would have it twisted and tied in something called a French knot. That was when she looked the prettiest and youngest. I thought, although she was very careful not to dress in anything she believed was inappropriate for a woman of her age. Everything she wore was always coordinated, as well. She had shoes for every outfit and jewelry that seemed to have been purchased precisely for this dress or that sweater. There were butterfly pins full of emeralds and rubies, diamond brooches, earrings and bracelets that were heirlooms, handed down by her mother and her mother's mother, as well as my grandfather's mother.
I couldn't help but secretly admire her. In my mind she really was as important as a queen. When she criticized me for the way
I
stooped or ate with the wrong knife and fork. I didn't resent her as much as Ian did when she said similar things to him. I swallowed back my pride and tried to be more like her. I watched how she sat at the table, how she ate, how she walked and turned her head. I think she saw all this because once in a while. I caught her looking at me with the tiniest smile on her lips and I wondered, could it be that she likes me after all?
I was afraid that if she did. Mama would hate me and miaht even think I had betrayed her somehow.
But I was also afraid that if she didn't like me. Daddy would be disappointed.
Did she or didn't she?
In my heart of hearts I 'mew that finding out would be something I would do on the journey toward discovering who I was. And so with trembling feet. I stepped into my future.

.
It was spring. We had just ten days left to school. Grandmother Emma wanted Ian and me to go to summer camp, but Ian hated the idea because of all

the boring things they made him do, and my mother refused to send me off at such a young age. Now, after she saw what was happening to me, she was going to be even more unyielding about refusing to send me to sleepaway camp.

"That's absolutely ridiculous," Grandmother Emma told her when my mother argued against it, using my age as an excuse. "I sent your husband away when he was just five and every summer thereafter."

"Maybe his failings aren't all because of his father's spoiling him then," my mother replied, and Grandmother Emma bristled like a porcupine. It was just as if my mother had reached out and slapped her cheek. Touch her anywhere and you would bleed.

"It was precisely my getting Christopher away from his father that gave him the few ounces of backbone he has,"

Grandmother Emma responded to my mother's sharp response. "At least at the camps he was made to bear some responsibility for his actions and himself. If he called here crying. I would hang up on him. Eventually, he matured. Somewhat," she added. She was always careful not to give Daddy a full
compliment or say something nice about him without a qualification.

She looked at me sitting quietly on the medieval cross frame chair I was somehow permitted to use in the living room. I was quietly cutting out some paper dolls, but listening keenly to their conversation. As long as you didn't look at them when they spoke, adults thought you weren't listening.

"I might not start up the swimming pool this summer," Grandmother Emma threatened as an added reason to send us off to camp. "It's a costly luxury just to please two children who are bored silly."

"Do what you want. I'm not sending Jordan to a sleepaway camp," my mother told her, digging her heels into the ground.

"Ridiculous," Grandmother Emma said, and walked away.
Mama looked at me, her face flushed with a crimson shade of rage and fear. She knew I
understood why she was so determined not to send me off.
Despite the way my mother had reacted to the changes in my body. I was happy she and I shared a secret, a secret no one else in our family knew. It made me feel very special, even a little more grownup. Everything else about Mama, Daddy, Ian, and me was pretty much out in the open, especially, as Mama had said, for Grandmother Emma to set or hear. There was little she didn't know about us, if she wanted to know it. She certainly knew all about our finances and whatever we bought. My mother couldn't do much in the house or even in the community without her finding out about it. She knew what we ate and if we ate. She knew all our clothes and shoes. She usually knew our daily schedules, too, even when we had our dental appointments. All the bills went through her hands at one time or another, it seemed. She especially knew if my father and my mother had an argument. How could they be mad at each other and not show it in front of her?
Lately, there were more and more arguments between them, too. Daddy always seemed to have a reason to go somewhere. He claimed there were endless food shows and conventions. Rarely, if ever, did he ask Mama to go with him. Grandmother Emma thought that was my mother's choice and was always critical of her not being more involved in his business.
"You could at least go down there and watch the cashiers and packers," Grandmother told her. "Didn't you used to work at a supermarket after high school?"
"I only worked there part-time to tarn money for college, Emma. It hardly qualifies me to be a supermarket manager."
"Nevertheless, you know what to look for. I'm sure we're being robbed daily," Grandmother Emma told her. "You could watch for that. You know all the tricks."
"What do you mean.
I
know all the tricks? I didn't rob from anyone," my mother said, her light gray eyes sparking like shiny new dimes. "I worked hard for everything I had. We all did in my family, especially my father, who like his fellow workers, was exploited."
Grandmother Emma looked at her, raised her eyes a little as if my mother was living in a fantasy, and walked away. No matter how good or quick my mother's answers were, she never felt she had defeated my grandmother.
"Her skin is so thick. She doesn't bleed," my mother mumbled.
Could that be true? I wondered. I never had seen Grandmother Emma bleed or groan. I never saw her sick, in fact. If she didn't feel well, she wouldn't come out of her bedroom. Everything was brought to her until she was better. It was from her behavior and attitude about illness that I often felt guilty for having a cold or a sore throat, and when I had a minor case of the measles. I thought I surely had embarrassed the whole family.
I suppose this was why I had such a panic attack when I had cramps in my stomach and felt a warmth between my legs that turned out to be blood. It happened only a week after my mother had made her discoveries about me in the bathroom. I touched myself and then brought my hand into the glow of the small night lamp I had to have turned on beside my bed when I went to sleep. The sight of blood on my fingers took my breath away. Now I was certain something terrible was happening to me, something my mother had feared.
I cried out for her, which I knew immediately was stupid. My room was so far away from her and Daddy's bedroom neither could hear me. Ever since we had moved into Grandmother Emma's house, I was on my own when it came to nightmares. By the time I would get up, if I had the courage to do so, and walk out and down the hallway to my parents' bedroom, the nightmare had lost most of its terror.
Daddy was always wrapped too tightly in his cocoon anyway. I remembered going to their bed when I was only four and shaking him to get him to wake up and comfort me. He merely groaned and turned over without opening his eyes, and when
I
cried, he just waved his hand over his ears like someone chasing off flies.
"Carol, see what she wants," he would moan, and turn over so his back was to me. Sometimes Mama heard him; sometimes she was in too deep a sleep herself and I had to wake her. I hated the idea of waking her more than waking my father. Even at that age. I had the sense that she cherished every minute of sleep because it was so difficult for her to get to sleep. She was always worrying so much about everything.
Groggy, but full of comfort, she would put me back to bed and stay with me for a while. In the morning, she always looked the worst for it, worse than I did or felt, and
I
was ashamed of my fear and my nightmares. Ian said it was ridiculous to be afraid of a dream.
"Just blink your eyes and pop it out of your head," he told me. "Besides, bad dreams can be interesting. Wake me up if you want. I don't mind hearing about them even if they seem terrible to you."
This was different. I couldn't run to him,
I
'mew instinctively that it was part of Mama's and my secret. Wake her or not, she had to be told. I started to get out of bed and then I worried that I would drip blood all over the rug and on the hallway floor. Nancy, the maid, would tell Grandmother Emma. Mama always said Nancy was an informer and a snoop, "an apple polisher who would sell out her own mother for one of your grandmother's compliments."
Ian agreed with Mama. He thought that the reason Nancy's ears were so close to her head was that she kept them against the walls so much.
For a while I just sat up in bed, wondering what I should do. I was tied up in indecision. Finally, I rose and, squeezing the blanket between my legs, hurried to my bathroom. I closed the door and put on the light. When I dropped the blanket, I nearly fainted. My pajama bottoms were soaked in blood.
I'm dying, I thought. It made me dizzy and nauseated, and the cramps were still strong. I quickly took off my pajama bottoms and reached for a towel. For a few moments, I just stood there with it between my legs. My heart was pounding, but I didn't know what to do. If I went into the hallway like this, someone could see me, and even if I got to my parents' bedroom unnoticed, the commotion could wake up Daddy. Mother had been adamant about my not telling even him. What if Grandmother Emma was awakened? What was I to do?
I decided to curl up on the bathroom floor. At least if I dripped blood, it could easily be washed off the tiles. I thought, and hoped and prayed I hadn't dripped any on the rug when I came in here.
It
was cold on the floor and hard, but I was so sick and felt so tired, my eyes closed.
The morning light spilling through the window in my bathroom didn't wake me, but the shaking in my body did. I opened my eyes and saw my mother squatting beside me. She was in her robe and slippers. Her mouth was contorted as if she were the one in pain' and not me.
"Jordan," she said. "Oh, Jordan. When did this happen?'
"Last night," I said, sitting up and grinding the sleep out of my eyes. I looked down at the towel, shocked myself at how dark and wide the stain was.
"I saw your bed," she told me. "We have a lot to do. We don't want anyone else to know about this. I can't believe this is happening. I'm running you a bath," she added, and started to do so. "Just sit there."
I heard her gathering up the blanket from my bed and then pulling off the sheet. She gasped so loudly. I had to rise and look out the door.
"What's wrong, Mama?" I asked.
"It went right through to the mattress. I'm going to have to turn it over so Nancy doesn't see it."
She struggled with it, but she didn't want me to help her. I was so involved in watching her work-- turn the mattress, put on a new sheet, bundle up the old, and check the rug--that
I
didn't notice the water in the tub. It started to run over the top.
"Mama, the tub!"
"Oh, damn," she cried, and rushed in. She turned off the faucet, but water continued to spill over. "We've got to get this all up. If it seeped through and leaked down to the ceiling, your grandmother would have us executed."
She started to soak up the water with towels and I squatted beside her and helped, shaking and terrified at all the trouble I had caused.
"I'm sorry, Mama," I said, the tears chasing each other down my cheeks. Everyone was going to hate me, especially Daddy because Grandmother Emma would somehow blame him, too.
"It's all right. Don't cry. Well be all right," she said. She repeated it under her breath like a prayer. "We'll be all right. Keep calm.'
It took nearly six towels, but we were able to get the floor dry. "Get into the tub," she told me.
I slipped into the water. My stomach grumbled so hard. I thought it would cause the tub to overflow. Mama looked at me with so much pity in her eyes. I was positive I was going to die. Would I be buried in the March section of the cemetery or far away from everyone, even Mama's parents, because I had been such an embarrassment?
"Just relax, honey," she said. "I'll be back soon."
I was afraid to move. Once, when
I
had cut my wrist on one of my toys. Ian told me
I
came close to cutting an artery and, "When you cut an artery," he said, "blood could shoot out so fast, you'd deflate like a balloon with a hole in it. Your body is about seventy-five percent liquid, which includes your blood."
Thanks to him I had one of my worst nightmares soon after that.
Mama returned with two large garbage bags. Through the bathroom doorway. I saw her force the blanket and the stained bed sheet into them along with my pajama bottoms and the towel I had used. She tied the bags and went out again. When she returned, she had something else. It looked like a white cigar. For a long moment, she stood there gazing at me in the tub. Then she raised her eyes to the ceiling and bit down on her lower lip.
"I can't believe this is happening," she said. "I can't." I started to cry again.
"No, no," she said, kneeling at the tub. She brushed my hair back with her hand. "It's all right. It's not your fault, Jordan. We'll be fine." She retreated, closed the toilet seat, and sat on it.
"I'm going to have to show you how to use this," she said, holding up the white cigar. "It will seem messy and unpleasant to you, but it's very important because it will prevent what just happened from happening again. We're going to have to keep track of the day this started and the days afterward, too. We'll mark your calendar by your desk in a secret code that only you and I will know, okay?"
I nodded.
"Am I going to the hospital?" I asked.
'No. no. What happened to you happens to all girls, only usually much later. It's just starting early, very early," she added.
"Why does it happen?"
"Remember when I used that word
'menstruation'?"
"Yes." I also remembered how angry she became and how it had brought tears to her eves.
"Well, that's what this bleeding is called when a woman has it. Woman," she repeated, and looked up at the ceiling while she took another deep breath. "She's only just becoming seven years old," she added, still looking up as if she were having a conversation with God. She took another deep breath and stared at me. I waited. What else would she tell me? I was holding my own breath in anticipation.
Then she shook her head. "You don't even know how babies are made and here I am starting this conversation." She sighed deeply and shook her head once again. "For now, Jordan, just get out and dry off. I'll show you how to use this. I'll help you every month."
"Every month?"
"Yes. That's why we have to mark the calendar, honey. We'll just make a small dot with a red pen so we both know what it means, okay?"
'But won't I die if all this blood comes out of me every single month ?"
"No," she said. "It's supposed to come out of you, only, as I said, not this early in your life. And we don't know. It might not happen again for a while. This," she said, holding up the white cigar, "will keep it from flowing out of you and I'll tell you what to look for in anticipation."
"What's that mean?"
"You'll know when it's going to happen. But as I said, it might not. This is so unusual. Let's hope," she said, and helped me out of the tub.
Then she showed me how to insert what she called a tampon. She told me I had to know because I had to change it for a fresh one every four to eight hours. The whole time she cried, especially when she made me do it myself. She hugged me to her and
I
cried without knowing exactly why I should. As lone as I did it correctly, she told me. I wouldn't even know it was there.. Having anything alien in my body, though, made me feel funny. How would you forget it was there?
Afterward, she gathered up the wet towels and then she took the garbage bags out of my bedroom and quietly snuck down the hallway to the stairway to put them in the garbage bins. She got me a new blanket from the hallway closet, too.
I dressed and brushed my hair. My stomach felt a little better, but I was still tired and a little dizzy. She returned and sat on the toilet seat again, taking my hands into hers.
"You can't let anyone know about this either, of course. It's part of our great secret. Because what's happening to you is so unusual. I will speak with Dr. Dell'Acqua about it immediately. We might have to go see her, but I still don't want anyone else to know about it just yet, Jordan. You have a few days left to the school year. Be sure you don't tell any of your friends. Promise?'
"I promise, Mama," I said, even though she didn't need me to promise. Since she had emphasized how important it was for me to keep it a secret. I was fearful of anyone knowing about it, too. But I couldn't help but wonder if any of my school girlfriends had already had the same thing happen to them and if they had promised their mothers they would keep it a secret, too. All of us were walking around with our hearts locked.
"You'll take some to school with you in your purse, but don't let anyone see them, and you'll ask to go to the bathroom and change it. Okay?"
I nodded and she took deep breaths as if she couldn't get her breath. For a moment. it frightened me, but she stopped and quickly smiled. She kissed me.
"Let's just go down, have our breakfast, and pretend none of this happened_ - she said.
Pretend it didn't happen? Could I do that? What if I got stomach cramps in the middle of breakfast and groaned too loud or the tampon fell out? All sorts of horrors occurred to me.
"You'll be all right," Mama said once more.