1963

Frenchtown, Tennessee

I learned about menstruation from a film at school.
On the morning of my thirteenth birthday, I discovered blood in my pajamas. As always, I was afraid to wake my mother up.
So, I went up and down the stairs several times, hoping that the creaking wood would rouse her.
She stumbled out of her bedroom, then screamed at me for waking her, then screamed again when she saw the blood on my sheets.
Next, she went into her bathroom closet and grabbed a sanitary belt and box of Kotex.
She threw them at me.
“I can smell your blood,” she shouted. “You really stink!”

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We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

—Joan Didion

“All art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

My mother’s wedding night was a threesome:  My mother, father, and Joe,  an Episcopal priest, who was my father’s favorite lover. They were in Fairhope, Alabama, an artsy town on the Gulf in 1949.

No family members attended.

My mother told me this when I was twelve years old. We were having dinner at Britling’s, the local cafeteria, in Memphis. I really liked their shredded carrots with raisins.

Some of the overdeveloped girls I knew started wearing bras in sixth

grade.

By ninth grade, everyone wore one except me. My mother would not

permit it.

I wore a sweater or jacket ALL THE TIME so that no one could see the undershirt under my blouse that Nancy made me wear.

Those were hot times in high school!

When we had to change for gym, I scurried to a bathroom stall; I was so

ashamed.

Nancy did not want me to grow up, even though she hated being a mother. She did not want competition—another pretty girl in the family. She had to be the center of attention at all times.

It was about power. She had complete power over me, but the clock was ticking on my confinement.

1965

Panstown, Pennsylvania

[music: Albinoni’s Adagio]

I desperately tried to be perfect to earn my parents’ love.

I became a very devout Episcopalian and prayed repeatedly, “Dear God, Please make me as perfect as is humanly possible.”

Then, I would make a mistake, according to the rules that I created for myself,

and would repeat the Dear God mantra over and over.

If I were perfect, then maybe my parents would love me.