And why did she seem so terribly afraid?
What did she know about the future that didn't?
3 Head in the Sand
The next morning on the bus, Karen said nothing about the way she had treated me or why she was so upset. I didn't know what to make of it. She was quieter than usual, but she wasn't especially unfriendly. She gazed out the window and, as she usually did, made comments about places we passed. This house looked like a house made of gingerbread, that one looked as if it was leaning worse than the Langer Dairy building and could be blown over in a strong wind, or that side road looked as if it led to a secret lake where frogs waited to be turned into princes. We were soon in a contest to outdo each other with fantastic possibilities.
Whatever had been bothering her had passed, I thought, and decided to let it go.
"I'm going to see my grandmother on
Saturday," I told her, "but I'll be back by four. My mother is on duty, and it's my father's poker night. You want to come over? We can try to make a good pizza again."
She didn't answer immediately, so I held my breath. In fact, she acted as if she hadn't heard me. I was about to repeat it, when she turned and nodded. She said nothing more about it, and I didn't see much of her in school, because toward the end of the third period, she went up to our teacher and asked to go to the nurse's office. She didn't look at me when she walked out with her pass. She remained at the nurse's office through lunch. Usually, when a girl did that, it was because she was having bad cramps, but later, when the school day ended, Karen told me she had gone to the nurse because she had a terrible headache.
"She wanted to send me home, but I begged her not to,
" Karen told me.
"Why?"
She didn't reply. I could see from the way she frowned that she still had the headache.
"Maybe you should go to the doctor," I suggested. She shook her head.
"No doctor can cure this," she told me, which was very cryptic and mysterious.
"Why not?"
"Take my word for it, Zipporah," she replied, and pressed her lips together firmly, which was usually what she did when she wanted to stop talking about something.
She frightened me, because I thought she might be talking about something terminal, like a brain tumor. Maybe that was what had happened the night before. She had gotten terrible news. I told my mother about it later that day, and she tilted her head to the side as she often did when something puzzled or interested her. When I was little, I believed some thoughts weighed more than others and shifted in your head to make it tilt. I told my father, and he went into hysterical laughter, which brought tears to his eyes. From that time on, he would kid my mother about her having heavy thoughts.
"I doubt it's something like that," she told me. "There would be other symptoms, Zipporah."
I breathed with relief.
"I'm sure it's just something emotional. Part of growing up," she said.
Adults were often saying that to us: "It's part of growing up."
When are you grown up? I wondered. When do all these parts come together and form you?
"I don't understand how that could be part of growing up," I told my mother. I knew some young people had pain in the legs from growing so tall so quickly, but a headache?
She looked at me with more concern than usual and said, "Come with me a moment."
I followed her into the sitting room, that special feminine place in our house.
"Sit," she said, nodding at the small settee with the light pink flowery design.
"Why do we have to come in here to talk?"
"It's long past the time when you and I should have a mother-daughter talk," she said, and sat in her rocker. "I should have done it the first time you had a period, but these days, girls are having periods so young, it seems."
"How can that change from when you were young?"
"Wouldn't we all like to know," she said. "Anyway, Zipporah, these hormonal changes that are taking place in your body and Karen's have emotional effects, too. You have feelings that you don't understand, feelings that even disturb you and can cause all sorts of reactions, headaches included. Don't you find yourself confused by your feelings?"