When Women Were Dragons(23)

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “There’s no one. Just my mother. There’s no way I can talk to her about any of this.”

Joyce, a very pretty girl whose family had just moved to Wisconsin from California (and who had made a cottage industry of complaining endlessly and dramatically about the cold even though it was well into April and perfectly pleasant out) was sympathetic. “There’s no way around it, I’m afraid. Someone needs to shop for things, after all. You’ll need extra belts, and no end of pads. There’s things you can do in a pinch, but in the end, you’ll have the washing to consider, and you’ll need to have things on hand, both at home and with you at school, and your mother is the one to help you do that. Here.” She reached into her purse, which was so voluminous it could hold an entire library if she packed it right. She pulled out three white, rectangular boxes with blue type on the sides and handed them to me. “I swiped these from the nurse’s office. I thought I’d do more good with them than she had managed—she hoards them, you know. I can get more, but you really do need to bite that bullet and tell your mother.”

“I will,” I said. I felt dizzy and sick. My belly hurt and my back hurt and I wanted the experience to be over. “When I get home. I promise.”

I didn’t, but Mother managed to know anyway. When I got home that day, there was a stack of cream-colored boxes on my bed along with handwritten instructions. I didn’t ask her about it and she didn’t say. Which pretty much sums things up between her and me.

Beatrice examined one box—it had blue calligraphy on the side and a silhouette of a lady in an evening dress. She looked at me suspiciously.

“What’s this?” she said, holding out the box, her bright eyes narrowing. “Is it a toy?” Beatrice was nearly four, and wished that everything was toys.

“No,” I said. I was more snippy with her than usual.

Beatrice leaned on my bed and rested her chin on her folded hands. “Is it for me?” she said.

I shook my head. “No. It’s for big girls.”

“We are both big girls,” Beatrice said. She climbed onto my bed and then onto my shoulders, as nimble as a squirrel. “We’re the biggest girls,” she crowed. I hooked my arm around her tummy and we tumbled to the floor, giggling like mad, allowing me for a moment to ignore the deep cramp in my abdomen.

“Chase me!” she squealed, and darted out of the door.

“In a minute!” I called back.

I took the boxes, and the instructions, and put them on the upper shelf of my closet, in full view. No need to hide what my mother already knew. My head pounded. I lingered in my closet, my eyes drifting toward the removable panel at the back. I suddenly missed my aunt with an intensity that felt like a harpoon in my guts. After all this time, I still hadn’t touched the things she left for me. I still hadn’t looked at the pictures of my aunt, or read any of the letters, or her letter to me, or looked at the booklet with the face of the dragon on the cover. I wasn’t entirely sure why. Sometimes, I had dreams that the panel opened itself up, and all its contents spilled out—my aunt’s secrets, my secrets, and the secrets of my mother and father mixed in, broadcast for the whole world to see. Each time, I woke up gasping and sweaty and afraid.

But now . . .

I looked back at the closet. I knelt on the floor, moving closer by inches.

“Alex!” Beatrice hollered from the living room, startling me so bad I nearly choked. “Alex, I NEED YOU THIS SECOND.”

Downstairs, my mother shushed her. “Alexandra isn’t feeling well,” she said with a slightly raised voice. “And she probably would feel better after a bath and perhaps a rest.” Her volume ticked up a little higher at the end of her sentence, to make sure I understood. Beatrice started to squeal, and I knew my mother had caught her in her arms and was swinging her around while holding her tight. “Sweet Bea, sweet Bea, sweet Bea,” she crooned. “Let’s go to the park, shall we?” I heard Beatrice’s footsteps thunder across the room. And with that, my mother and Beatrice shut the door behind them, leaving me in peace.

My heartbeat slowed. I sat on the floor for several moments, staring at the closet.

Finally, I forced my eyes away, stood, started the bath, and then went back to my room, where I carefully slid the false panel out of the way and pulled out the bundle that my aunt had given me, three years earlier. My fingers shook a little as I undid the knot. The paper whispered in my hands. One by one I laid the envelopes on the floor, in neat rows. One by one, I slid the letters out, and laid them on top of their envelopes, flattening the paper gently with the backs of my fingers.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. I just wanted someone to talk to. Even if she wasn’t here anymore.

Marla had saved letters written in loopy, beautiful script from a woman named Clara, and letters written in firm, blocky text from a woman named Jeanne, and letters with exuberant, childlike handwriting from a woman named Edith. She had two letters from a man named Dr. Gantz—the same name Marla had written on the booklet, both chiding and naming him as the anonymous author. The Dr. Gantz letters were completely indecipherable—even his signature was barely legible. I set them aside. I returned to the booklet. It was many pages long and the type was impossibly small. That the illegible letter and the unreadable booklet were written by the same person made sense in a way that felt both obvious and annoying. I flipped through the booklet, focusing only on the subheadings and the pictures. Thanks to that doctor who visited my class in fifth grade, I had a vague idea of what the female reproductive system looked like, but I still didn’t understand why they had transformed the uterus and ovaries into a dragon’s face. The chapters had titles like “A Birthright of Blood and Fire: The Destiny of Biology” or “The Untapped Power of Female Rage.” There were charts and tables and an astonishing number of words in Latin. I was a good reader in sixth grade, but this was outside my scope of understanding.