The Death of My Youth

At the innocent and delicate age of ten, I became convinced of two things: I had cancer and I was going to die. I’m not sure if my fledgling medical knowledge came from something I saw on TV or from one of my mother’s women’s magazines, but I knew with absolute certainty that blood emerging from certain bodily orifices definitely meant cancer. Followed by inevitable death. I had other signs as well: fatigue, extreme pain, and stomach distension. This was so unfair! I was only ten and already it was all over for me!

I retreated to my room and fearfully contemplated my next move. I had to tell my parents, I knew, but such uncharted conversation came with many potentially frightening possibilities. Would they be terribly sad? Angry at me? Angry at a God I wasn’t even sure they believed in? Would I have to go to the hospital and receive horribly painful treatments? Would they be able to find someone who could cure me? No, I was certain I’d be dead in a few months, may even weeks.

I went into my mother’s sewing room, where she sat at her old Singer focused on the current seam. I presented her with the bloody evidence and informed her I was dying. Instead of tears or anger or shaking her fist at the heavens, she just sighed and led me into the kitchen, where my father stood at the stove. Now, my father is an incredibly hard worker, but not someone you’d typically find stirring a large pot on the stove. No, this ritual happened only once a year and only if luck was with him. 

What my dad was doing at the exact moment I announced my imminent death was boiling the flesh from a deer’s skull and antlers. If my dad shot a deer during hunting season that had mount-on-the-wall-worthy antlers, the boiling off of the meat was necessary for sanitary reasons. Rotting flesh would not be a welcoming smell while showing off your collection of deer antlers. Thankfully, I never had to experience rotting flesh, but the smell of boiling flesh? Well, let’s just say that if I never, ever smell it again, I’m good.

As the smell permeated the kitchen, the house, and my dying nostrils, my mother said, “Remember what we were talking about last week?” “Yes,” my father said, still stirring. “It happened,” my mom informed him. “Hmm,” I heard my dad say as he attempted to scrape a particularly stubborn piece of brain matter from the skull. “I guess I’ll have to talk to the gym teacher at school,” she said.

And with that, the conversation about my death seemed to be over. At this point, I was several miles beyond confused. Had they been expecting me to die? Did I have some horrible diagnosis they never told me about? And what the hell did the gym teacher have to do with it?

The next day my mother, who was our school’s library aide, came home with a little pink pamphlet for me to read. It turned out I had an affliction that would be with me for a very, very long time: I was menstruating.