the little tampon that couldn't

I always imagined that I would get my first period like seemingly every other girl in the world—I would one morning wake up and shuffle to the toilet to pee, only to find a blood stain when I would then jump excitedly off the toilet and run to my mother to share the news. Or maybe I’d be in a girls’ bathroom with all of my friends, and when I’d shout, “I’m bleeding!” five tampons would cascade across the floor tiles into my open hand at the ready. Maybe I would just discover the rosy-red stain by myself and I’d privately smile because I was a woman now. But really, when it happened, I thought I had shit myself.

As an eleven year-old, the last thing I expected was to get a visit from what my Aunt Sharon had coined “The Period Fairy” after cackling into glasses of wine the color of the blood that had invaded my underwear. I tossed my stained garment into the garbage ashamedly, burying them under wads of toilet paper. And that was that. Until the next morning, when I questioned whether or not this could have happened not once, but twice. I stood in the doorway of my mother’s bedroom with a pained frown.

“There’s something wrong,” I told her as she sat cross-legged on her bed behind a newspaper.

She folded the newspaper and looked at me inquisitively through tendrils of cigarette smoke.

“Like what?” she asked, her cigarette bobbing up and down. 

 

“I think maybe I got my period,” I said, looking at the floor. 

  

“Nice,” she said, giving me the thumbs-up, “Do you want a pad?”

What a bummer. I looked her in her red eyes before I turned around and said, “You’re a pad!”

I wanted a mother-daughter moment. I wanted, at the mention of the word “period”, for red sparkling confetti to fall from the ceiling, for all of my lady-relatives to spring up from behind furniture pieces. I wanted there to be a trombone, a parade, and I wanted to be carried away into adulthood by the hands of my mother, my friends, and the world. But instead, in spite of my mother, I did not explore the bathroom for a “pad”—those dreadful diaperish vagina mattresses I had seen mocked on television by tampon commercials in the evenings. I would use a tampon, goddamnit. 

 

So I crept into the bathroom and barricaded the door with the clothes hamper. This was serious business and I was not to be interrupted. I sat on the floor and examined the box of tampons by the toilet.

“Insert and remove plastic applicator.”

Wait, what? Where was this supposed applicator? These were the only directions?

I frowned and unwrapped one of the tampons. I examined it and decided that it was ugly—a little plastic tube with a bulb of cotton protruding out of it, with a string at the end, like a tail. It reminded me of a sperm. I imagined thousands of little tampons crawling up my vagina and swimming around in my insides, hunting for blood to absorb. I didn’t like this.

Nevertheless, I dropped my pants and copped a squat over the toilet, shoved the freakish tube inside of me, plastic-cover-and-all, and stood paused for a few moments. I was a woman now. A woman with a tampon. I was not to be reckoned with. That is, until the tampon fell out once I moved my legs.

I didn’t understand. I followed the instructions. I removed the wrapper and inserted the tampon. What more was I supposed to do? I picked the tampon up off the toilet seat and tossed it into the garbage, frustrated. And then I tried again. Same process, but this time, instead of walking so boldly, I thought perhaps my vagina had to adjust to being a woman-vagina, and not a lame girl-vagina, and this meant walking with care, with the elegance of fancy ladies.

I spent most of that day sitting, daydreaming about the tampon and being very careful when rising to move or shift positions. It was difficult, being a woman. I reckoned most of my girl friends knew nothing of the trials of womanhood. A woman must be careful with every step, not rise too quickly, and when standing, always have one’s legs together. I was proper!

That evening I smelled Ramen Noodles when my mom called, “Dinner!” into the living room, where my younger sister and I were watching television. I stood up immediately, and the tampon fell out.

“Uh!” I exclaimed in surprise.

“What’s wrong?” It was my mother, walking into the living room.

“Well, you see, my tampon fell out. No big deal,” I said, nonchalantly, because I was a woman now, affected by womanly troubles, like tampons falling out.

“It fell out?” she asked, furrowing her brows.

“Yes.”

“Are you bleeding a lot?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Well, then, did you remove the plastic applicator?”

“Yes, you mean the paper wrapping stuff?”

“No, I mean the plastic applicator.”

It was then when I realized that I had clearly missed a step in becoming a woman. That damned plastic applicator! My face was immediately stained red, and I waddled to the bathroom to remove the tampon that had been absorbing nothing at all, behind me the hoarse cackling of my menstruating-savvy mother, who clearly knew more about womanhood than I did. I came to two conclusions as I stared at the sperm-like tampon now slowly expanding, unfolding, blooming like a flower in the clear water of the toilet bowl: first, that one must remove the plastic applicator before inserting a tampon, but secondly and most importantly, that perhaps the little tampon that couldn’t stay inside me was telling me not to be embarrassed, or frustrated, or ashamed, because even though there were no parades, no red-sparkling confetti, no trumpets or trombones, it would be okay. Maybe it was telling me that I could be a woman, even if I wasn’t really given instructions on how to be one. Although, I knew this for sure-- as I flushed the little flower down the toilet--that it would see me again next month.


COPYRIGHT 2008 CARRIE-LYNNE DAVIS