The Year My Mother Came Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

try to remember my parenting strategy for this moment. I do in fact have a plan, which includes visual aids. I scan the bookshelves, looking for the book I planted there a year ago.
    â€œI bought this for you,” I say, reaching to the highest shelf for a children’s book about reproduction, illustrated with drawings and photographs of a ruddy-cheeked Swedish family, the father and pregnant mother uninhibitedly sharing the facts of life with their adorable little kids.
    We sit on the sofa, and I begin reading. “When a man and a woman—”
    â€œI know how to read, Mom.”
    â€œMay I read it to you?”
    â€œI’d rather read it myself.” I hand her the book and watch her eyes getting wider as she reads. I hope I’m doing this right.

    I was eleven years old. All the fifth-grade girls went to the auditorium to watch a movie, for girls only, about growing up. Top secret. A few of the girls giggled during the screening. I didn’t get the joke. I didn’t get anything. The movie made absolutely no sense to me. It was in a secret code that I couldn’t decipher. There were eggs inside us girls, and once a month, our eggs might turn into babies.
    Huh? Eggs? Humans? This was crazy! It couldn’t be true. When we walked back to class, I started singing “I Won’t Grow Up!” from
Peter Pan,
hoping the other girls would join me. I did it to get a laugh. But really and truly, I didn’t want to grow up. The girls just stared at me like I was mental, so I stopped singing. I guess they actually wanted to grow up.
    When we got to the classroom, the boys went to the auditorium to see the boy movie, and the girls were each given a booklet called
The Birds and the Bees: What Every Girl Should Know,
which had nothing to do with birds or bees, and which was as incomprehensible as the movie.
    â€œYour homework is to ask your mothers to read this with you and give you ‘The Talk,’ ” said my teacher, Mrs. Strange. More giggling ensued from my classmates who were in on the joke.
    Mom looked irritated when I showed her the book after school. She flipped through the pages with a scowl. “Ugh. This looks like the same book they gave us in school when I was your age.”
    â€œFor homework, you’re supposed to read it with me and give me ‘The Talk.’ ”
    She groaned. “Maybe tomorrow.” She went back to her typing.
    I pestered her, day after day, until all the other girls in my class had reported to Mrs. Strange that they’d had The Talk with their mothers. Now they all knew things I didn’t. I wasn’t part of the inner circle of fifth-grade female wisdom. When all the boys in the class had had The Talk (presumably a different talk) with their fathers, everybody in the class was in on the joke except me.
    After a week, Mom finally sat down with me for The Talk.
    â€œAlright, Alice.” She flipped through the book and put it down. “This is what you need to know. You’re growing up, and pretty soon you’ll start bleeding every month, and you’ll have to wear sanitary napkins.”
    â€œHuh?”
    I waited for further explanation. None was forthcoming. I started to cry.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Honey?”
    I cried harder and harder.
    â€œSweetie, what’s the matter?”
    I was convulsed in sobs. Mom hugged me.
    â€œAlice, Sweetiepie, it’s not so bad. It’s just nature taking its course. You’ll get used to it, I promise. Madeline gets her period. You can ask her about it. It’s completely normal. My goodness, Alice, why are you so upset?”
    â€œWhere—” sob “—will I—” sob “—be bleeding—” sob “—from?”
    â€œWhere? Why, from . . . you’ll bleed from your . . . private parts, of course.”
    â€œMy
whaaaat
?” (Sob!)
    â€œFrom . . . from your vagina.”
    â€œOh.” I wipe my nose on my