I
remember it quite vividly. I sat in my bedroom, next door to my parents' room,
listening to my parents watching their favorite sitcoms through the wall, while
I watched a movie on my own little TV. It was one of those periods where we got
free HBO on every TV, not just the big one downstairs or the one in my parents'
bedroom, and I was watching Big Daddy, the movie where Adam Sandler adopts a
cute little blonde boy with a lisp; a film I still associate with this day.
Even now, in my twenties, when I'm flipping channels and see that it's on, I
remember exactly how my short life changed while the movie played, as I sat
around between dinner and bed.
My
friends and I had been buzzing about it non-stop for the past year. Who would
it would happen to first, and when, and
what we would do if it happened in the classroom, or on the bus, or somewhere
where our mothers weren't. We'd read all the books about it and listened on the
edge of our seats during the classes that taught us exactly what was happening.
Nija had gotten it first, as we'd suspected she would. She was almost a full
year older than the rest of us, several inches taller and already more
curvaceous. All the boys liked her, wanted to feel her up behind the basketball
courts while the rest of us waited for something to arrive on our chests bigger
than bee stings. Shayla came next. She got it during Language Arts class while
we studied Maniac McGee and counted down the days to our yearly planeterium
visit. Emily had been next. my closest friend calling me squealing to let me
know that she had just crossed that mighty threshold as well. Weeks passed, and
became months, and I began to wonder if I would ever catch up to my friends.
This
is probably why I remember that evening to vividly. Because I had wanted it so
badly, had wanted to feel grown-up, had wanted to belong, had wanted to become
as sophisticated and wordly as you could be in the sixth grade. I hated the
idea that my friends were experiencing something I wasn't, and all I could do
was sit on pins and needles and wait for the day that I could join their secret
society, that I could be a woman too and throw in my expert opinion when they
discussed all the gory little details that came with it. I wanted it so bad
that I wished for it every night before bed, squeezing my eyes tightly together
and praying that maybe, when I woke up, I would be a woman.
It
was two days before sixth grade graduation. Our elementary school went up to
sixth grade, so in a few days we would finish our stint at Browns Mill
Elementary and move on to middle school. It was a major milestone, I think,
because moving on to my next school was when I would encounter those all new
very bad things. I'd hear kids talking and learn what a blowjob was, and I'd meet girls who would
have babies very very soon. I'd see fist fights broken up and couples kissing
in the hallways, sometimes using their tongues. So it seemed appropriate that
just days before that transition, my dream would come true and I would become a
grown-up too. It was then, sitting in a
folding chair I'd gotten out of the garage so I could have an extra chair in my
bedroom, watching Big Daddy on TV before bedtime, that I felt a strange little
sensation I had never felt before. I can't fully describe what it felt like,
but it was new, accompanied by a dull ache in my abdomen that I'd assumed was a
result of eating too much dairy that day, for I was still a little lactose
intolerant. Still, I knew immediately what it was. I'd read enough books and
articles in Girls' Life magazine to realize. I went to the bathroom and checked
my underwear, a pair of teal Hanes Her Way for Kids, the big cotton ones that
come in a pack that your mom buys you. The unusual rust-colored stain in the center told me
all I needed to: I was a woman now. I started to my parents' bedroom, then
stopped. My mom lie next to my father, and I was too embarrassed to tell her in
front of him that I'd finallly joined the ranks of my mother, and older
cousins, and aunts, and that I now had that monthly excuse to be mean and nasty
or cry over long-distance phone commercials. I had no sisters to whom I could
confide, so I went to bed that night having told no one, excited that soon all
my friends would know that I was a woman too, but disappointed that the event
had come with no fanfare, no confetti, no streamers or balloons and no parade,
just a quiet little stain and a headache that wouldn't go away. Days later, I
would come to realize that being a woman was really no fun at all, and would
have given anything to go back to not having to worry about feminine hygiene
and bathroom breaks and Aleve. I thought to myself that maybe I should not have
wished quite so hard, or I wouldn't have to be so concerned with ruining the
white dress they made every girl don for our sixth grade graduation ceremony, and
suddenly being in that group of complaining young ladies was hardly worth it.
We could always talk about something else, of course. Which member of NSYNC
was the cutest or what we were doing that summer or what clubs we were going to
join once we got to middle school. But before, it had seemed like the be all
end all. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, I realized then, at eleven years
old, cramping, uncomfortable, and yearning to be a little girl again.
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