Last night I watched the film Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. I had never read the book; is it possible I’m the only woman in America – not in a conservative cult – to have missed it?! I’m not sure why we didn’t have a copy. It certainly wasn’t and isn’t even remotely scandalous compared to the suck and fuck novels lying all over the house, bodice rippers my mother was addicted to that I picked up and read at around the same age as the film’s main character Margaret, who is in 6th grade.
Set in 1970 in NYC and New Jersey – which, safe to say, stands in for most suburban towns in that era – it was laugh out loud funny, sweet, moving, and sad – and I’m not talking about the hair, clothes and interior decoration, although they made me laugh out loud and wanna weep, too. That BOAT of a station wagon. The plaid couches!!
It was sad, finally, because if my mother had shown one iota of the kindness toward me that two of the moms depicted in this film demonstrated toward their daughters when they got their first periods…well, she didn’t. She just couldn’t; it wasn’t in her nature to be kind to me, especially at big moments, and my getting my period (“I hope you know this doesn’t make you a woman!”) actually seemed to ratchet up the verbal and emotional abuse.
She had already been telling me for six years by that time that one day I would marry my father (when she was ‘gone’), that he loved me more than he loved her, and that I was manipulating him with humor, with charm, with my brains and pre-teen beauty.
It was a nightmare. How I hated her. How I depended on her, my mother, for so much. Later that day, my older sister suddenly appeared at my bedroom door (she avoided me like the plague, nick-naming me ‘Maggot’), shouting, “Here!”, throwing instruction pamphlets and period supplies at me (they landed on the floor), after which she equally abruptly turned and left.
The pamphlets included a short booklet telling me why Catholics should not marry outside the faith (I was twelve, FFS), especially not persons who were members of the Jewish religion, and a bunch of other rules for how to preserve that most previous gift from Christ: my virginity. How, exactly, Christ or his mythical sky daddy had given me my virginity was a mystery to me, as was a much larger personal challenge: knowing my precious virginity was already shot, a paternal first cousin having raped me four years prior, when I was eight. Oops!
Earlier that day, we were at one of a series of many family group parties at a farm belonging to a couple who were best friends with my mom and dad. All of the six or seven families who attended these parties had kids about the same age or pretty close, and there was a pool, bikes, a badminton set, and a buffet of mayonnaise-y salads, pickles and other sides to go with the hot dogs and burgers on the grill. It was late summer; school would soon be in session once more, and my life would get better again, as school got me out of the house, and away (mostly) from mother.
I wasn’t feeling good, a little faint, and – very unusually for me – I wasn’t interested in swimming. I was cold. At one point, sitting on a fieldstone step worn down by a century of use, I actually put my head between my knees, thinking, “Is this what fainting feels like? Am I dying?”, but I didn’t faint, or die. I got my period, which I discovered getting up to use the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face, which was pale and (I hoped!) interesting looking, with freckles long gone now splashed across my nose.
My mom’s best female friend could not have been nicer, or more kind. She gave me clean panties that were way too big and baggy, but would do, and a paper lunch bag she’d lined with plastic wrap to put my bloody ones in, kissing me on the forehand, hugging me close, assuring me that everything would be alright. Would it? Would it really? I owe this woman so much.
I was terrified to ask my mother how to best clean the stains out, waiting until we were home, and everyone had dispersed into their various corners in the old Victorian farmhouse. The TV was on, which meant my dad was safely ensconced in his recliner, a good thirty feet or more away. It had to be Sunday night football, as we only got one channel. I didn’t want him, or anyone to know, or overhear.
When I showed the bloody underwear to my mother, approaching her in the downstairs bathroom, she exploded. She’d physically attacked me once before for attempting to use her clothes washer, when yet again I’d made a mess of myself, probably playing outside in the rain, or in our unused barn. There was something about my existence that provoked her; I could have, probably should have just thrown the cheap cotton things away, but that made no sense either, as she hated buying me clothes; the recently purchased set of five pairs of underwear ‘for the new school year’ had to last.
As happened so many times, I froze inside myself, observing her, observing myself in that narrow space, listening to her as if I were floating above the actual scene she was making, screaming at me – but not so her husband could hear – for being human, bloody, and alive in a world she dominated and tried to control with her energy and intellect, and with her crazy. It was not unlike the day my cousin led me into the woods and fields below the house, a long way from where my dad and uncle – his father – were doing a last walk-through check of the house and barn. Another moment caught in amber, as I floated up, up and away, above the trees, into the blue sky of another late summer day.