"What do you mean. I know all the tricks? I didn't rob from anyone," my mother said, her light gray eyes sparking like shiny new dimes. "I worked hard for everything I had. We all did in my family, especially my father, who like his fellow workers, was exploited."
Grandmother Emma looked at her, raised her eyes a little as if my mother was living in a fantasy, and walked away. No matter how good or quick my mother's answers were, she never felt she had defeated my grandmother.
"Her skin is so thick. She doesn't bleed," my mother mumbled.
Could that be true? I wondered. I never had seen Grandmother Emma bleed or groan. I never saw her sick, in fact. If she didn't feel well, she wouldn't come out of her bedroom. Everything was brought to her until she was better. It was from her behavior and attitude about illness that I often felt guilty for having a cold or a sore throat, and when I had a minor case of the measles. I thought I surely had embarrassed the whole family.
I suppose this was why I had such a panic attack when I had cramps in my stomach and felt a warmth between my legs that turned out to be blood. It happened only a week after my mother had made her discoveries about me in the bathroom. I touched myself and then brought my hand into the glow of the small night lamp I had to have turned on beside my bed when I went to sleep. The sight of blood on my fingers took my breath away. Now I was certain something terrible was happening to me, something my mother had feared.
I cried out for her, which I knew immediately was stupid. My room was so far away from her and Daddy's bedroom neither could hear me. Ever since we had moved into Grandmother Emma's house, I was on my own when it came to nightmares. By the time I would get up, if I had the courage to do so, and walk out and down the hallway to my parents' bedroom, the nightmare had lost most of its terror.
Daddy was always wrapped too tightly in his cocoon anyway. I remembered going to their bed when I was only four and shaking him to get him to wake up and comfort me. He m
erely groaned and turned over without opening his eyes, and when I cried, he just waved his hand over his ears like someone chasing off flies.
"Carol, see what she wants," he would moan, and turn over so his back was to me. Sometimes Mama heard him; sometimes she was in too deep a sleep herself and I had to wake her. I hated the idea of waking her more than waking my father. Even at that age. I had the sense that she cherished every minute of sleep because it was so difficult for her to get to sleep. She was always worrying so much about everything.
Groggy, but full of comfort, she would put me back to bed and stay with me for a while. In the morning, she always looked the worst for it, worse than I did or felt, and I was ashamed of my fear and my nightmares. Ian said it was ridiculous to be afraid of a dream.
"Just blink your eyes and pop it out of your head," he told me. "Besides, bad dreams can be interesting. Wake me up if you want. I don't mind hearing about them even if they seem terrible to you."
This was different. I couldn't run to him, I 'mew instinctively that it was part of Mama's and my secret. Wake her or not, she had to be told. I started to get out of bed and then I worried that I would drip blood all over the rug and on the hallway floor. Nancy, the maid, would tell Grandmother Emma. Mama always said Nancy was an informer and a snoop, "an apple polisher who would sell out her own mother for one of your grandmother's compliments."
Ian agreed with Mama. He thought that the reason Nancy's ears were so close to her head was that she kept them against the walls so much.
For a while I just sat up in bed, wondering what I should do. I was tied up in indecision. Finally, I rose and, squeezing the blanket between my legs, hurried to my bathroom. I closed the door and put on the light. When I dropped the blanket, I nearly fainted. My pajama bottoms were soaked in blood.
I'm dying, I thought. It made me dizzy and nauseated, and the cramps were still strong. I quickly took off my pajama bottoms and reached for a towel. For a few moments, I just stood there with it between my legs. My heart was pounding, but I didn't know what to do. If I went into the hallway like this, someone could see me, and even if I got to my parents' bedroom unnoticed, the commotion could wake up Daddy. Mother had been adamant about my not telling even him. What if Grandmother Emma was awakened? What was I to do?
I decided to curl up on the bathroom floor. At least if I dripped blood, it could easily be washed off the tiles. I thought, and hoped and prayed I hadn't dripped any on the rug when I came in here. It was cold on the floor and hard, but I was so sick and felt so tired, my eyes closed.
The morning light spilling through the window in my bathroom didn't wake me, but the shaking in my body did. I opened my eyes and saw my mother squatting beside me. She was in her robe and slippers. Her mouth was contorted as if she were the one in pain' and not me.
"Jordan," she said. "Oh, Jordan. When did this happen?'
"Last night," I said, sitting up and grinding the sleep out of my eyes. I looked down at the towel, shocked myself at how dark and wide the stain was.
"I saw your bed," she told me. "We have a lot to do. We don't want anyone else to know about this. I can't believe this is happening. I'm running you a bath," she added, and started to do so. "Just sit there."
I heard her gathering up the blanket from my bed and then pulling off the sheet. She gasped so loudly. I had to rise and look out the door.
"What's wrong, Mama?" I asked.
"It went right through to the mattress. I'm going to have to turn it over so Nancy doesn't see it."
She struggled with it, but she didn't want me to help her. I was so involved in watching her work-- turn the mattress, put on a new sheet, bundle up the old, and check the rug--that I didn't notice the water in the tub. It started to run over the top.
"Mama, the tub!"
"Oh, damn," she cried, and rushed in. She turned off the faucet, but water continued to spill over. "We've got to get this all up. If it seeped through and leaked down to the ceiling, your grandmother would have us executed."
She started to soak up the water with towels and I squatted beside her and helped, shaking and terrified at all the trouble I had caused.
"I'm sorry, Mama," I said, the tears chasing each other down my cheeks. Everyone was going to hate me, especially Daddy because Grandmother Emma would somehow blame him, too.
"It's all right. Don't cry. Well be all right," she said. She repeated it under her breath like a prayer. "We'll be all right. Keep calm.'
It took nearly six towels, but we were able to get the floor dry. "Get into the tub," she told me.