Mother, Can You Not? Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother. After a quick phone call in the kitchen, my mom marched back to the dinner table, bristling with rage.
    “Crystal Adams just called, and she is furious!”
    “Crystal Adams…” My dad narrowed his eyes trying to place her, and I kept my gaze fixed on my plate. I was in trouble. “Is she the one with the giant fish lips?”
    “Yes, but that’s not the point.” She whipped toward me. “How could you tell Ashley about sex? Kate, you’re grounded! After school? No TV. Weekends? You’re home studying for a month.”
    “I’m sorry. I just wanted to talk to someone about it, and Ashley’s my friend! Don’t be mad at me!” I looked down at the floor and tried to swallow the lump in my throat.
    “We’re not mad, we’re just disappointed.” And there they were! The worst words a child can hear—my mother played the disappointment card. In my family, this was reserved for only the most heinous crimes.
    The next day at school, Ashley avoided me all morning. I finally asked her at lunch why she was ignoring me. “My mom said you lied to me, and it’s true that the stork brings babies to mommies and daddies. She says you made up that story, and that you’re a bad girl, and we’re not allowed to be friends anymore.”
    I wanted to cry. Although even as an eight-year-old, part of me was like,
really
? As an adult, I’ve always wondered: What was her mom’s plan? When would the lying end? After high school biology class? College?Never? If so, Ashley was in for a very surprising wedding night.
    It wasn’t until college that I even realized my mom’s openness with me wasn’t standard practice for all mothers and daughters. I was once joking around with my friend Ellen in our dorm about an uncircumcised penis she’d been caught off guard by the night before, and I laughed, “Oh my God, I have to text my mom about this!” Ellen froze. “Are you serious?! You tell your
mom
stuff like that?”
Wait, what? Your mom doesn’t know comprehensive details about the genitalia of every guy you’ve ever dated? Right. Mine doesn’t either.
    But back in elementary school, I asked another friend for a pencil in history class, and she gave me the same response: “My mom says I’m not supposed to talk to you anymore.” I was stunned; did Ashley tell
everyone
? I choked back tears for the rest of the day, but the bottled-up sobbing broke free in a monsoon of snot and soul-rattling convulsions as soon as I got into the car with my mom.
    Ashley’s mother had taken it upon herself to start a weird PTA mom crusade against me—the kind ofcampaign only a woman with far too much time on her perfectly manicured hands could undertake. She was calling every mother in my elementary school class and telling them not to let their kids play with me, that I ruined Ashley’s life and was a creepy little girl, obsessed with “carnal pursuits.” The fact that the woman wasn’t even comfortable calling it “sex” in conversation with adults hints at a whole host of sexually repressed issues, but mostly just makes me feel sorry for her daughter.
    Her campaign to brand me with a scarlet N for child Nymphomaniac did not sit well with my mother. She switched into full combat mode. The next morning in the car, she blasted Public Enemy and N.W.A. all the way to school and marched into the headmaster’s office for battle instead of heading to work.
Fuck tha police!
    Mr. Thompson calmly listened to a rant that involved a lot of talk about puritanical moms and premarital penises, but he took it well and started chuckling.
    “I’m sorry to laugh, but these mothers! Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Ashley’s mom. How do they not understand that sex is all kids talk about at this age!?”
    “Exactly! If they lived on a farm, they would have already seen it all live!” Presumably a statement based on my mother’s vast childhood experience with farm animal copulation growing up in
Atlantic City, New Jersey.
    Mr. Thompson called