Worlds

4. Blood Sisters

A menarche party is fun for everybody but the guest of honor. Old wine doesn’t mix well with new hormones. Smug sympathy while your girlhood is being torn bleeding from your body.

O’Hara knew she was drinking too much wine, trying to wash away the acid taste of vomit. That had been because of too many pain pills. The cramps were still there, gentle pressure, waiting for the medicine to wear off. If she sat still she imagined she could feel meat growing, shoving up beneath her boyish nipples. But she couldn’t sit still; no position was comfortable for long. And she couldn’t stand up without feeling nauseated. She had moved the party outside, upstairs into the park, which had helped for a minute. Now there was no place else to go. Except out the airlock. That sounded like an attractive proposition. She wasn’t even bleeding yet, raped by stiff cotton. She would not cry. If one more woman tried to put her arm around her, she’d knock the bitch’s teeth down her throat.

“My poor baby.” Can’t hit your own mother. “You’re so pale. You aren’t going to be sick again?”

“Thanks,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“You really shouldn’t drink so much wine, you know. It doesn’t help.”

“Mother. I always throw up at parties. Nerves. I’m all right now. Once always does the trick.”

She smiled uncertainly and cocked her head at her daughter. “I can never tell when you’re being serious.”

“Never serious. Morose, sometimes. Never serious.” She swallowed hard and blew her nose. “Boy. Wish we could do this every year.”

“Well, you brought it on yourself. You know what Dr. Johnson said.” The gynecologist had been after her for five years. The longer you put it off, the more it was going to hurt. Finally, approaching seventeen, she had to menarche or face real trouble with her pelvic girdle later on.

“Dr. Johnson knows as much about this as I know about peeing standing up.”

“Oh, Marianne.”

“It’s true; he’s never told me anything I didn’t know. He just likes to poke around inside little girls.”

“Don’t be crude.”

“Big girls, too.”

“He’s a nice man.”

“Sure. Keeps his instruments in the refrigerator so they’ll be nice and fresh.”

She shook her head. “Poor girl. I know what you’re going through.”

Marianne leaned back and closed her eyes. “In a goat’s gap, you do. You were twelve, weren’t you?”

“Eleven. I was twelve when I had you”

“So don’t call me ‘girl.’ In another five years I’ll be twice as old as you.”

“What?”

“Just help me up, would you?” She held out a weary arm. “I have to find the john.”

“Are you going to be sick?”

“No. If you must know, I want to check and see if it’s started yet.” She minced away and muttered: “My glorious fucking womanhood.”