Period

She looked up from her desk to see her mother at the door of her classroom. A quick consultation with her teacher, and they were both motioning her over to the door.

“Let's go to the bathroom,” her mother whispered, holding a brown paper bag.

Once safely in the girls bathroom, her mother explained that while doing the laundry that morning, she had seen the blood on her daughter's panties. So, here she was, supplies in hand, to help her deal with her first period.

Her heart was in the right place, and unquestionably, showing up at school to take care of things before the blood was obvious to all was the right thing to do. But the daughter was mortified, of course. She was only 10; nobody else she knew had gotten her period yet. Now everybody was going to ask her why her mother had come to school and whisked her off to the bathroom.

Into the stall they went. Her mother handed her the belt, and showed her how to attach the bulky pad to the belt and put it on. It felt thick and huge and uncomfortable between her legs. How could everybody not notice she had this big thing on? But her mother thought a girl of ten was far too young to use a tampon, and science hadn’t yet produced the ultra-absorbent yet thin pads with adhesive to stick to your panties.

So, on went the belt, looking like a weird sort of garter belt. The pad rubbed against her skin when she walked. Her mother gave her a couple of extra pads, with instructions on how to replace the pad and what to do with the used pads. Ewww.

Her mother had had “the talk” with her a year earlier, when her breasts had started to bud, so this wasn't a total shock, but she still didn't quite know what to make of it. She was torn between wanting to go home with her mother and go to bed and hide in a book, and wanting to ignore the whole event and pretend nothing had happened. But going home from school wasn't an option unless she was really sick; school was regarded as too important to miss.

Back in the classroom, there were whispered questions. “Why was your mom here?” “What happened?” “Where'd you go?” She deflected the questions from the boys; she certainly wasn’t comfortable telling a boy she had gotten her period, plus she didn’t know if they would even know what it was! She did tell a couple of the girls, who were jealous yet grossed out at the same time. She was right; nobody else in her class had gotten her period, yet. She was the first.

Once again, she was different.