Juliet Takes a Breath Read online

  “Yeah, totally,” I said, flipping through the calendar. There was a giant red P marked on today’s date and yesterday’s date. The giant P was marked for every day of the week we were in.

  Harlowe tapped today’s date with her finger. “That’s me, right there, alpha period. Always right on time. Always connected to Lady Moon.”

  “You think it matters if we track their birthdays, like you really believe in that astrological stuff.”

  Harlowe took a sip of beer. “There’s a lot of wisdom in the world that’s been discarded because it comes from traditions created by women, indigenous peoples, and other non-white dude customs. So, hell yeah, I believe in this stuff.”

  “Word, I’m down. You’re right.”

  I grabbed the calendar, added my birthday and placed a giant P in the following week. She lit her cigarette. We sat shoulder to shoulder and discussed what I’d uncovered about Sophia and wondered about what kind of majestic, surreal period the feminine representation of the wisdom of God would have. Harlowe and I talked late into the night.

  Before bed, I checked my phone. No new messages from Lainie. I stopped myself from texting her, from calling her, from writing some overly dramatic email. I turned the phone off, took some deep breaths. Ten in, ten to hold, and ten to release. I needed sleep and time to think.

  12. Organa-pon

  Know your period as you know yourself. Touch the wobbling blobs of blood and tissue that escape and land intact on your favorite period panties. Note the shades of brown and purple and volcanic reds that gush, spill, and squirt out announcing themselves. Slide fingers deep inside your cunt and learn what your period feels like before it’s out of your body. Masturbate to ease cramps and meditate to soothe the spirit. Connect to your blood cycle. Build sacred rituals around your body during this time of renewal.

  Raging Flower

  * * *

  Oh fuck, I wet the bed. Springing up, blanket and all, I tripped over my feet and landed hard on my bottom. The blanket fell to the side and there it was: a bright, candy apple red, first day period stain. You’ve got to be kidding me. I was an entire week early. I heard movement downstairs and panicked. I felt nauseous, my underwear was blood-soaked and the stain on the bed made my stomach drop. You just didn’t bleed on someone else’s mattress. Gross. God, I didn’t think Harlowe would beat me with a chancla, but I couldn’t imagine her being excited about it. Or maybe she would be? All of me was mortified.

  The bathroom was downstairs. So were my soaps and access to water or bleach. Fuck. Blood dripped down my thigh. I had to clean or hide or something. I dug into my book bag and found a three-day old bottle of water and my deodorant. Panicked, I figured they’d help clean it up somehow. I poured what was left in the bottle onto my blood spot and scrubbed it with the deodorant. Cramps flowed down my lower back and along my ovaries. Fists clenched, scrubbing back and forth over the stain, I must have looked deranged. I refused to stop scrubbing even when I heard footsteps coming up to the attic. Maybe I could get it out …

  “What the hell? Are you okay?” asked Harlowe.

  “Just um, you know, cleaning the mattress.” I hid the deodorant behind my back, knees tightly pressed together. I was a sticky, aching mess, and I hoped Harlowe would just drift away and give me time to collect my dignity.

  Instead, Harlowe hunched forward on bent knees. “Did you bleed on it?”

  “Yes, and I’m totally sorry, and if you’ve got some bleach…” I looked at her and quickly looked away. I wanted the floor to devour me and save me from the volcanic levels of shame pulsing through my body.

  “That’s incredible.” Harlowe grabbed my shoulders and hugged me. “Don’t you see that it’s a blessing?”

  The mangled and bloodstained deodorant stick fell out of my hands.

  Harlowe looked at it and laughed. “Not sure if deodorant was the right way to go. What we need is some salt and water for this ceremony.”

  “Ceremony?” I asked. “Are you going to make me gargle with my period blood? ’Cuz I don’t think I can handle that right now.”

  “No, I’m not going to make you gargle with your period blood,” Harlowe assured me, laughing. She walked to the other side of the attic and found me a clean towel. “But what an idea that is. I’ll have to look into it. No, the salt and the water are to clean up the stain on the mattress. And as for ceremony, I mean periods should always be celebrated.”

  She handed me the towel. I wrapped it around my waist. Harlowe went to the kitchen and returned with a container of Kosher Sea Salt and a cold, wet rag. She sprinkled salt onto the bloodstain and handed me the rag. Pun most likely intended.

  “Scrub the stain,” she said. “Not because I have a problem with it, because I don’t but scrub so that you know how to get rid of menstrual stains when you need to.”

  I ran the towel over the salt, over the stain. After a few scrubs, the bloodstain on the mattress disappeared.

  “Whoa, that’s some magical shit right there. But listen, I’m a week early and once again, I’m so sorry.” I held the towel tight around my waist, and made my way to the stairs. Harlowe followed. I ran into the downstairs bathroom and shut the door behind me. Harlowe stood outside the door.

  “You’re early because our cycles have synced! Don’t be alarmed, Juliet. My cycle is probably going to mentor yours.”

  “So will your period get my period some narcotic-level, painkillers or are we just going to ride out the gnarly cramps with some hope and fairy dust? Stupid cramps, it’s like they don’t show up until you’ve seen the blood, you know?” I said, agitated.

  “Stupid cramps? Juliet, your body is going through an extreme transformation. It is purging itself of the beginning of life! My goddess, it’s that type of thinking that keeps us bound to bleached tampons and toxic placebos like Midol. I never use that shit, Juliet. Meditation and masturbation are the only ways to relieve cramps. I’m convinced painkillers make your cycle worse, anyway. Wait, is it weird that I’m standing outside the door? I’m just so honored that you got your period in my house. Goddess, the energy is going to be great.”

  I stood arms wrapped around my chest, knees and thighs pressed together in attempt to keep my non-alpha period from sliding out. Fuck, this isn’t my house. There’s nothing in this bathroom that even looks remotely like Tylenol and I’m not masturbating in her bathtub. I stood in the tub, still wrapped in that towel, still wearing bloodstained underwear. The thought of bleeding on her floor or getting blood anywhere else kept me frozen. Also, the idea of spending my morning running around after blood stains with salt and cold water didn’t hold any appeal.

  “Harlowe,” I said, voice weak, cringing, “I have tampons in my bag upstairs, I think And like, I have cramps and I kind of want to die right now. This is, like, first period ever level of embarrassment, just FYI.”

  “Don’t worry, Juliet. Let me help. I can bring you your tampons or my sacred period ritual kit,” she said from behind the door, “Which would you prefer?”

  What a fucking question.

  “I don’t ever want to be the person that turned down a sacred period ritual kit,” I said, climbing into Harlowe’s bathtub. I heard her move away from the door, and head up the stairs. I hunched over and held onto my knees, thinking about the first time I got my period.

  For an entire week, a whole month before I turned 12, I hid, stuffed, pushed my underwear into a side pocket of the suitcase I’d packed to visit Titi Penny and Cousin Ava. I hoped no one would find them. I didn’t want to ruin our mini-vacation—the one time Mom, Lil’ Melvin, and me went away without Dad. They couldn’t know that I was dying, not yet. The brown, sticky stains on my underwear were a sure sign that I had some sort of cancer or blood disease. Yeah, I knew about periods. Mom gave me a period talk and she talked about her period all the time. Ava already had her period and told me things about it, like how much it hurt. But periods were supposed to be red, like apples and fire trucks, not brown like peanut butter. The dark bro
wn smearable spots gathering between my legs were obviously signs that I was going to die, so I stuffed the underwear deep into that suitcase. Hoping and literally praying to God each night to keep me alive one more day.

  I’d made it to Thursday. I was brushing my teeth in Titi Penny’s bathroom when Mom burst in holding three pairs of rolled up, dirty underwear in her hands. I dropped my toothbrush on the floor. We stared at each other, the water still rushing into the sink. I ran to her, crying and apologized for hiding the fact that I was dying. I told her that I’d been praying all week but still the brown globs of death spilled forth. She held me close, laughing, running her fingers through my sweaty black curls. She promised I wasn’t dying. I didn’t believe her. I told her it was okay that I was a big girl and could handle the truth. She knelt in front of me on Titi Penny’s tiled bathroom floor and promised to God that I was not dying. Not only was I not dying, I’d in fact become a woman, an actual woman and those brown stains were my period. She told me that periods can be brown, purplish, dark red and sometimes they can be watery or thick. She made me promise not to hide things from her again. Especially if I thought I was dying. I promised Mom that I’d always tell her the truth. She bathed me, brought me fresh clothes, and taught me how to use a Maxi pad. I went from feeling mortified to feeling magical.

  Harlowe returned, arms filled with goods. A period Santa Claus. She lit white and red candles around the porcelain tub. In the corner of the bathroom, she burned a cinnamon incense stick, offering its smoky sacrifice to a Virgin Mary candle. She ran warm water into the bathtub while I was sitting in it. The water warmed my toes, calmed my senses. Harlowe spread rose petals and drops of lavender oil into the bath water. She poured a bit of violet-infused soap into the water, as well. It bubbled up around my ankles. Harlowe exited the bathroom so I’d have some privacy. I folded the towel, blood side in, and placed it on the floor. I sunk into the water, slipped off my underwear and soaked in the quiet and the bubbles. This sacred period ritual felt good and weird. My mom would have loved it.

  Harlowe brought me a cup of peppermint tea. She presented me with comic books and a packed bowl full of fresh, moist bud. She pulled out a grey, cloud-shaped box from the wooden cabinet and put it on top of the closed toilet lid. Harlowe sat down on the floor, back to the tub.

  She read the label on the box to me:

  “Organa-pons: Mother Nature’s way of absorbing your essence. Organa-pons are made from unbleached, uncompromised cotton helping women everywhere lessen their carbon imprint during menstruation.”

  “Not sure what you use, but organa-pons are an option. But let’s talk about your cramps. Right now all of your heat is centralized in your ovaries and that’s what makes you feel like someone is stomping on your lady bits. Drink tea to balance your core temperature.”

  This was advanced bleeding course level 300.

  “Soak in the flowers. They add the vitality of earth to your aching body. I’m going to leave you be now. If you need anything, give me a holler.” She added a few more rose petals to my bath. Harlowe touched my shoulder and left, shutting the door behind her.

  Sinking back under the water, I concentrated on the floating petals and thought about the power of their energy. Could I bring that into my body or was that just hippie talk? The petals seemed to drift in rhythm with the pulse of my heartbeat. I resurfaced, rose petals on my head. The peppermint tea cooled my chest, my abdomen. My trust in Harlowe transformed from words into a full body experience. Harlowe’s energy pulsed all around me. It was almost like the energy from the writer’s workshop but focused on me. The time to believe in auras and faeries and all that other crazy shit had arrived and I needed to either get with it or go home. I wasn’t going home. I sunk back under, moody and thoughtful, and let the bathwater swallow me whole.

  I heard a tap on the door. Harlowe entered; she placed a pair of my shorts, a T-shirt, and an oversized yellow towel on the toilet and stepped outside. I finished up in the tub, inserted one of her bizarro Organa-pons, threw on the comfy clothes she’d left, and met her outside of the bathroom door.

  Harlowe led me back up the stairs to the attic. It glowed from the labyrinth of candles she had lit. I lay down on the mattress. She fluffed out a blanket and draped it over my legs, as if we were in Pentecostal Church and I was being consumed by The Holy Ghost. Harlowe acted as a conduit between me and whatever period spirits she was summoning.

  “You control the energy in your body. Never forget that, Juliet. Put your hands where it hurts the most.”

  I placed my hands right above my hips on my lower abdomen. Harlowe put her hands over mine without touching them.

  “Envision your ovaries as a color and tell me what you see,” Harlowe said, in absolute concentration.

  I closed my eyes and forced myself to believe. Well at least she’s not asking me to clap her to life like Tinkerbell in that old Peter Pan movie. Eyes closed, I saw nothing and felt acutely aware of the absurdity of my situation. A surge of pain pierced through my stubbornness and I concentrated on the current within me. A vision of my inflamed ovaries popped into my head. I took in a nervous breath. Harlowe squeezed my hands encouraging me to flow with it.

  “I see them but they’re scratched. They’re scratched, glowing red. This is so weird, Harlowe,” I answered, surprised that I had the words to express what I saw.

  “Weird is the only way to live,” she said, her faith solid. “I can feel the redness from you with just my hands. You’re going to have to concentrate your energy flow into your ovaries and change that color. They need to be visualized as peace, which will manifest itself in a different color. When you see them that color, you will have experienced your first healing.”

  At some point, Harlowe left the room. She left her strength with me. I used it to concentrate. The jagged outlines on my ovaries were being smoothed out. Sweat beaded on my forehead as my body released its inhibitions and got to work. My ovaries went from police siren red to soft, velvety purple. The purple subsided into a swimming pool blue. Blue. Calm. Cool. Smooth. No pain. I lay in that meditative, pain-free, blue sky space and lost track of time. Ava was going to bug out when I told her about this healing shit.

  I heard Harlowe welcome Maxine home. Their voices floated up the stairs as I lay on the mattress. I took a few puffs from Saturn and blew out smoke into the air. Harlowe and Maxine were murmuring, giggling, all of it came up the stairs and mingled with the weed smoke. Harlowe’s bedroom door shut fast. The sounds of two people working up a love sweat wafted up from the below. A glistening Maxine flashed through my mind. The thought of pressing Kira, the sweet and totally hot librarian, against a stack of books and kissing her followed.

  Meditation and masturbation are the only ways to relieve cramps. I spent the next hour testing out the second half of Harlowe’s sacred period ritual. Lainie didn’t even cross my mind.

  13. I Didn’t Come to Kill Anyone. I Came Here to Die.

  “I shouldn’t even be on the phone with you right now,” I whispered.

  “Pero like, why not,” asked my cousin Ava, in the Puerto Rican accent she could slap on or off as the situation necessitated.

  “Because, I’m in the library, yo.”

  I hid between two aisles of books.

  “Ay, Juliet, no one in the library really cares,” Ava said. “And I’m telling you the book you need on Lolita Lebrón is called The Ladies’ Gallery. It was written by her granddaughter and I’m mad you don’t know who she is and some white lady had to tell you about your ancestors.”

  “Listen, we grew up together and I never heard you talking about no Lolita Lebrón. How was I supposed to know? It’s not like she’s related to us and Harlowe didn’t tell me anything. I found this name in her pile of names, so like be easy.”

  Ava half-sighed. “Juju, if you weren’t my cousin, if you were some clueless blanquita, I’d have so much disdain for you right now. But since you’re my blood, I’ll forgive you. Lolita Lebrón was only the illest Puerto R
ican freedom fighter nacionalista. She, like, tried to blow up Congress in the ‘50’s.”

  “Word? How do you know about her and I don’t?”

  “Nena, I’m on my ethnic studies grind. That’s why you should come visit me. I’m out of school until August. You know you want to sit on this balcony with me, smoke some trees, take the boat out, discuss the global impact of colonization and the merits of deviant sexuality.”

  “So many merits. All of that sounds good, Ava, but this internship goes until a week before school starts. I’m in Portland until then, but girl, if I could, I would.”

  “Aight, but I miss you, and if you hit any more roadblocks with the ladies on those magic scraps of paper, you call me, okay? Call me anyway. I love you.”

  “Love you too. Oh and, yo, I have so much period stuff to talk to you about.” I said, a little too loudly in the middle of the library.

  “Period stuff?” Ava asked. “You know I fucking love period stuff.”

  “Word, we’ll talk soon.”

  Ava made me smile big. She was cool, so damn cool, and her heart was open to me. Our relationship was solid in that cousins kind of way. If I ever needed her, I know she’d be there, but we were missing that regular closeness. When did she get so with it? How was she able to just drop colonization into conversation like that? I fucking loved her. Any other time and I’d be on the first plane to Miami. But I felt needed here; Harlowe needed me. My purpose was so clear. I mean, not like it hadn’t always been clear. Mom and Dad have asked only three things from me: get good grades, do as they say, and have faith in the Lord. I’ve always done those three things. Studying hard, receiving A’s, and being obedient to them and God have been my way of thanking them and respecting their work ethic. As their first-born daughter, I never had much say in the matter. Get good grades or else! Worship God or go to Hell. Do as we say or suffer the consequences. What the consequence would be, I was too scared to ever find out. But this internship gave me a different purpose. I chose this. I reached out to Harlowe. I asked. I wanted. I received.