A Mother’s Intuition
Three weeks into my freshman year of college, I received a call from my frantically concerned mother at 8 o’clock in the morning. I ignored it. I was eighteen years old and hungover for the first time in my entire life. Sheltered and afraid of my parents, I only attempted teen drinking once at a prom afterparty. I’d never lost control. I’d never smoked weed or nicotine. I’d only ever kissed one boy.
I called my mother back several hours later after the hangover finally faded into a mild headache. My iPhone location had spent the night stagnant at a pizzeria. My mother—who raised me on Law & Order, Dateline, and CNN—was convinced that I had been dismembered and left to decompose under the checkered linoleum tiles of an abandoned pizza parlor. She was relieved to find me perfectly plenary, all limbs still about me. I swore that the next time I fell asleep at a friend’s house, who happened to live above a pizzeria, I would make sure to let her know. For years, my mom retold the same story to other empty nesters, reassuring them that their anxieties were normal but unfounded. Daughters are supposed to leave. Mothers are supposed to worry.
Fourteen hours prior to my mother’s call, I found myself getting picked up from my dorm by an old friend—a boy two years my senior from high school. Because we were at the tail end of closed dining areas and social distancing, we ate dinner at his apartment. I shared stories from my first few weeks of college while he poured red solo cups full of rum and coke. When he ran out of liquor, he drove us to Kroger to purchase two cases of Twisted Tea. Over my very first game of beer pong, we reminisced about high school. I never went to parties. He laughed—I know. I guess it’s my job to teach you how to party then. An hour later, he was sticking his fingers down my throat until the slush of alcohol left my stomach. Then, he was sticking his tongue down my throat while I laid limp in his bed. I woke up to the sun beating onto my naked chest. Pounding head tucked into his shoulder. Three missed calls from my mother.
My mother was the first person I told about my period. Nine years old in the Trader Joe’s bathroom, blood soaking the cotton in-seam of underwear from the children’s clearance aisle of Walmart. I stuffed it full of toilet paper. I remember shame—the only girl in my year to bleed, to blossom, to burn. By the time my grandmother bought me my first training bra, gleaming eyes had already turned towards my changing form. For years, I couldn’t figure out the right timing of when to change a pad, unsure of how to inhabit a body that no longer belonged to me. Fight, flight, or fawn. As he stripped me of my clothes and agency, I managed to slur the words that saved my virginity from a rape. I can’t, I’m on my period. I stained his sheets.
The next morning, my best friend of three weeks picked me up from across the pizzeria. I’d never ordered an Uber before. I’d only ever kissed two boys. As I waited for safety, I closed my eyes and prayed. Praise be to mother nature which allowed the moon to pool blood within me, and great thanks to a mother’s intuition which thought to call.
Comments