La Regla

I was reminiscing with a friend about when we started our journey into womanhood - when we got our periods.  I remember that my grandma called ALL of the women in our family.  Never have I witnessed a speed dial that burnt a hole through the telephone wire like that one.  She called  ALL of the comadres chismosas, all the tias, las hermanas at church, and las vecinas.

"Mija ya es señorita.  Si comadre.  Le pego la regla.  Yo se.  Valemas que no salga pregnant esta niña.  Tiene los cachetitos rojos.  No comadre la birth control no se la va tomar.  No creo yo.  Puro pedo esa mugre."  The responsibility was all mine to protect my womb and there would be no help.  Cramps or no cramps.  That's just how the good Lord intended our bodies to react to the shedding of the old.

I still hadn't even developed, but it was my grandmother's green light to start bra shopping, makeup shopping (because I needed rouge on my brown pale cheeks), skirt shopping (because she would dress the tomboy right out of me), and she took me to get my first perm.  Cute girls had curly hair and now that I was a woman, curls would be a maravilla.

It seemed my grandmother was having more fun with my period than I was.  That same day I was ordered not to play with the boys outside anymore, "Se te sale el Kotec, mijita."  She was sure that my feminine pad would just fall right out if I was playing outside with my cousins where my womaness no longer belonged.

I think that's what was most awful about "becoming a woman."  Not being able to play with my cousins in the mud anymore.