“Um . . . no, ma’am. I got to study.”
Miss Opal held out her arms, and when Lydia hugged her, Miss Opal whispered, don’t pay her son no mind. He was just trying to show off for his friend. Lydia knew how men could be when they got together. Come back another day, when Dante was by himself.
He tried to walk Lydia to her car. It was dark out there. It wasn’t safe, but Lydia told him, that was all right. She’d been taking care of herself for a long time. She didn’t need a Johnny-come-lately. That evening, when the hall phone on her floor rang and her name was called, Lydia opened her door and hollered out, tell that guy on the phone she wasn’t in. Then it was time for winter break, and Lydia drove her car up to the City. She kept dreaming about Dante but tried to put him out of her mind.
*
When Lydia was almost twelve years old, her grandfather lost interest in her. It was the day that her period began, which occurred during one of their bath times.
“What did you do?” A look of disgust on Gandee’s face. Her bleeding wouldn’t stop, and he climbed out of the bathtub and left Lydia there, as the water turned pink. She climbed from the tub and put on her clothes, and when Nana returned from shopping, Lydia told her, she thought something was wrong. She couldn’t stop bleeding, and her grandmother informed her, this was the burden of being female. She was surprised that the girl’s mother hadn’t told her what suffering meant.
The next morning, Lydia’s baby sister asked, why was there blood on her pajamas? Before Lydia could stop her, Ailey had run crying from the room. Calling for their mother. Something was wrong. Lydia had hurt herself. Her mother came into the room and saw the sheets. Wait just a minute. In a while, she came back with an aspirin and a glass of water. She brought a bulky pad with adhesive and pulled new underwear from Lydia’s drawer. She should go to the bathroom and wash up, but don’t ever try to flush a pad. That would be a sure enough mess.
Mama spoke to her daughter in a low, sad voice. When Lydia came out of the bathroom, her mother told her she was sorry she hadn’t talked about this before. It was her fault. Mama had thought she’d have more time. In an hour, Ailey was crying again, because her mother and eldest sister had dressed up to go to the department store, and she couldn’t come. This was a ladies’ trip.
“But I want to go!” Ailey held on to her sister’s leg, and Lydia stroked her head. Don’t cry, please. Don’t cry.
“You’ll go some other day,” Mama said. “Soon enough. Lord have mercy.”
She was dressed in church clothes and so was Lydia. They drove in the station wagon to Worthie’s to pick up some brand-new lingerie. Daddy was back home, watching her sisters, because he needed to do something other than sleep on his one day off from moonlighting in the emergency room. He needed to know there were no servants in his house.
In Worthie’s, Mama didn’t say much as she pulled through the lace panties, camisoles, and small-cup bras. It was only when she rode with her daughter on the elevator to the basement café that Mama brought up boys.
“This is your period, Lydia. It’s going to happen every month, like it does with every woman. I get these, too. And what this bleeding means is, you have to start watching yourself. Don’t let boys get too close to you. Because a boy can put a baby in you now. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mama.” Lydia wasn’t paying much mind to what her mother was saying. She was eating ice cream and thinking about what her new panties would look like when she tried them on, in a few days, when the bleeding stopped. Mama had warned her, don’t wear her good underwear when she was on her cycle.
For a time, Lydia hadn’t needed her mother’s advice. She was still in junior high school, and she wasn’t interested in the gangly boys who tried to talk to her. And up in the City, her mother didn’t let her date—not until she was sixteen, Mama said—so Lydia didn’t need to watch herself. Her mother did that for her. But there was a relaxing of the watch in Chicasetta, during the summers. There weren’t expanses of concrete and police lights constantly flickering, and her mother wasn’t as careful of Lydia. She didn’t hover in Chicasetta, and so, three years after her period started, when Tony Crawford had caught her that Sunday as Lydia was leaving the outhouse out back of Red Mound Church, she didn’t think about any warnings. Tony seemed so nice, and he told Lydia he liked her.
Lydia said, thank you, sir, and Tony said he was only thirty. He wasn’t nobody’s sir, not yet, and he talked to her. He wanted to hear about her life. For six Sundays he managed to catch her alone, when she came out of the outhouse. For three Sundays, it had been a surprise, but then, when he told her she had the body of a full-grown woman, she made his nature rise, Lydia caught on. Their meetings had been planned.