Something On My Skirt

Despite being peculiarly close to the ground (I stand at 5 feet and 3/4 of an inch tall), I rarely have any center of gravity. I know this because I stepped on a rock, tripped, and ripped my knee open. That is right. My DNA spread out all over the sidewalk. I have now made my mark.

We can skip past the story of my pathetic hobble home, cussing at tiny, little alcohol swabs, and agonizing over washing blood out of fabric for the second time that day, impatiently scrubbing the rustic swatch out of the distressed threads. These devilish holes were another culprit in this scheme. My Nana was right; I had holes in my pants. Decidedly giving the traitorous denim the silent treatment, and not wanting any more pressure on the wrapped wound, I opted to wear a long, breathable skirt the next morning. And it was working--until it wasn't.

It wasn't working in the five-minute break I had during my seminar when I went to the bathroom and noticed something halfway down my skirt. At first, I was appalled; could this have been toilet water? Did I, a member of the academy, have toilet bowl water on my cheaply-made but highly-complimented rust orange maxi skirt? This upset me, but surely, I thought, I could run it under the air-dryer and make it less noticeable. That's when I saw my knee. My nasty, busted knee. The gauze had had her fill, and whatever happens when your body tries to recover and regenerate was taking a leisurely trip down my shin. Once again, I had made my mark. This time, on my skirt. On my skirt. I was a presenting woman, in a skirt, with blood on her skirt. It did not matter where that blood was, or how far it was from any anatomically correct place that menstruation blood could show up (for instance, no one's vagina is below their thigh). It did not matter. There was blood on my skirt.

I did not have the tools to deal with this problem (like, for one, a magic button that could make me disappear, effective immediately), and I certainly did not have the time to stand in the women's bathroom thinking about my inability to solve the problem. I returned to the classroom. The sign on my forehead said: DON'T LOOK AT ME, DON'T LOOK AT ME, DON'T LOOK AT ME.

The problem is that I could no longer concentrate. I now visualized the sensation of things oozing and moving and ew-ing, and it disarmed me from properly contributing to the discussion taking place. Suddenly, I was far, far away, removed from the class altogether.

So what does it say that I was bleeding from my leg and the paralyzing concern I had was: what if they think it's my period?

I remember being 11 and having to tuck my pads into the top of my skirt and pray they wouldn't fall out on the walk to the bathroom. I was the first girl in our grade to get my period, and what my peers lacked in questions they made up for in empathetic terror: You did? Their eyes sparkled, but their jaws hit the floor. It meant something to get your period. (To me, it meant something karmatic, because in the previous year, I had written a story about a 15-year-old girl who suddenly got her period in the middle of gym class, and everyone who read it was aghast. Can you imagine? Provoking your own abdominal agony with the power of words?) I remember this performance of secrecy because I, an adult, continue to do the same thing a whole ten years later. The difference between then and now is that I have begun to feel more shame for feeling ashamed than for my body itself.

There are other things I remember that bleed over into my experiences as a woman now, too. "It's that time of the month," the whispers say. What time? That time. That thing. That. The euphemism perplexed me, but it was useful. Clearly, unless we were alone, safely away from the public ear, we were supposed to call menstruation by another name.

So what do we end up calling it (and it is another descriptive one) instead?

Allow me to think of some names I have heard and used to refer to menstruation:

"Aunt Flow"

"Mother Nature"

"The rag/ being on the rag"

"Ladytime"

"Special time"

"Moon cycle"

"The flu"

"Shark week"

"You know/ You know what"

One of my favorites is "being on the rag" -- not because it is something I genuinely have ever heard in person as an individual on the cusp of a Millenial and a Gen Z, but because of how literal it allows itself to be. The metaphorical rag is not so metaphorical, so much as it is the makeshift pad using scrap fabric to soak up the blood. Women made sort-of tampons, too, though that idea is much less charming to think about. I have a complicated-enough relationship with self-penetration as it is. Unfortunately, my environmental activism refuses to include the Diva Cup at this time. But enough about me: I think I am rather fond of this euphemism amongst the rest, because of how vivid and un-violent it is.

My choice of words might need some clarification. The names we use to hide menstruation are not violent because they make the period a dangerous force of nature. I mean, "shark week" is pretty violent; my vagina isn't biting off a surfer girl's arm in Californian waters. (Maybe more accurately, my vagina isn't being culled for medicinal soups.) These names are violent, I argue, because of the attempts to render the period invisible.

It is perhaps important that I point out how one of my above examples perhaps does not participate in this proposed violence. The word "menstruation" stems from the Latin word menstruus, meaning "monthly", which came from the word mensis, "month" or "moon", a word entangled in the passing of time. So, to call your menstrual cycle a moon cycle is not throwing a blood-stained blanket over anything, really. You are hereby allowed to gather your healing crystals and prepare for your moon cycle.

There are other historical contexts to consider here as well, as we discuss why the silenced period is made to stay silent. During antiquity and early Judaism, when Ezra-Nehemiah declared the temple, the only official place of worship must be located in Jerusalem, ignoring a larger, very important conversation about religion and accessibility, another important law in the Torah of Moses was concerned with determining what was pure or impure. One of the things considered impure? Blood out of the body. Naturally, if blood belongs in the body, for it to now be where it did not belong marked uncleanliness. This meant, that menstruating women* could not enter the temple to practice worship, and so these women alone were punished for their bodies doing what bodies do. Cleanliness was really a euphemism, if you will, for establishing order.

Reducing those bodies and genitals to a euphemism meant to clean up their very gendered mess is extraordinarily productive in making you, and you especially, feel dirty. Bloody-drawers-dirty.

There is one last thing I am inclined to remember. I do not imagine that ragging on about how the girls and boys were separated during that brief, introductory health education all grade-schoolers receive about puberty would surprise you. Not only did my elementary school separate the boys and girls when discussing the upcoming hormonal changes and adolescent health. The girls had a tea party.

My elementary school organized a tea party, on the weekend, with our moms all welcome to stand amused in the background afterward. All the girls wore their best sundresses. There was iced tea, and cucumber sandwiches, and a vegetable platter with ranch. (No double-dipping, of course. We were civilized grade-schoolers.) There were beautiful little handmade lilies made of pink fabric-like paper for each of us, our individual names printed inside the imitation bud hidden by plush petals. At some point, I remember, the girls were instructed to anonymously ask any questions they had on a piece of paper that could be delivered to the mom/host and then answered to everyone. Years later, after organizing the event multiple times, it simply became known as the tea. Now, I cannot tell you exactly how the mom charged with breaking the news to us explained menstruation; I no longer remember what she might have said, or what they might have showed us, what questions were asked. Whatever I asked, I remember my ears getting hot when I knew my question was being read aloud--as if everyone would know. But I already knew about periods. I had asked my mother all of the questions I thought I needed to ask, and I was given two copies of the same quintessential girl's* puberty book of my generation, so perhaps that is why I remember so little of the words exchanged that day. And yet the tea, as beautifully arranged and fun and giggly as it made us all feel at the time, is a rather uncomfortable memory for me now.

And I wonder, only sometimes, if my irrational fear that the sweat running down my thigh, or the rainwater on my ass, or busted knee juice at the hem of my skirt will like that time, will ever go away when I'm supposed to wait until the weekend, in another room, with a hushed voice, to have a body that is mine. A body that is visible.

*I have used an asterisk when referring to menstruation as female because those instances were specific to the gendered and feminized language and history of menstruation. Menstruation is not something only women and girls experience, nor is it something all women and girls experience. Remember to include your trans and non-binary siblings when discussing the trials and tribulations of our moon cycles.

**Edit 22/05/20: This post was formerly titled "It's That Time of The Month".