9 1/2 Narrow by Patricia Morrisroe Read Free Book Online

didn’t believe it, she called me a stupid dodo. I retaliated by telling her that I’d been born with twelve toes.
    â€œI’ve seen worse.” She shrugged.
    For the past six months, we’d all been hearing rumors of “the Talk.” Not having older sisters, I asked Bridget to fill me in while we lined up for a fire drill. “It’s about the Curse,” she said matter-of-factly. Seeing my blank face, she put it more bluntly: “It’s about blood. Lots and lots of it.” I stared at her tooth, my head spinning. Suddenly, her cavity had turned into the rabbit hole in
Alice in Wonderland,
and I stepped back to avoid tumbling down it.
    A few days later, when my mother sat down on the edge of my bed, I was prepared for the worst.
    â€œPatricia, you’re twelve now,” she began. “In eight months, you’ll be . . .”
    â€œWhat?—
Dead?
”
    â€œNo, not dead. Why do you have to be so dramatic about everything? You’ll be thirteen. A teenager. Almost a woman. So I think it’s time you learned a little something about
meninstration.”
My mother occasionally mangled words, particularly ones she didn’t want to pronounce.
    â€œ
Men! In Stration?
” I cried. “Who are these men? Members of the mob?” Was it too late to reconsider fencing?
    My mother handed me a pink booklet with a picture of a girl smelling a daisy on the cover. “If you want more information, you can read this, but don’t discuss it with anybody. It’s personal and private.”
    After she left, I immediately delved into
The Voyage: Journey of an Egg.
I was desperate to learn how to deal with the “men,” but it was all about eggs,
my
eggs, and their bold journey down my fallopian tubes. If one didn’t get “fertilized,” it was shed along with the lining of my uterus, “thereby producing menstrual discharge.”
    Blood!
    For some odd reason, the girl in the booklet didn’t seem to mind having her “friend” visit every month. I figured she must have been awfully hard up for companions. There was a list of “things to avoid,” such as “no swimming.” It hardly seemed fair that while your eggs were on a voyage, slipping and sliding down your fallopian tubes, you were marooned on land with a bulky napkin strapped between your legs.
    Several weeks later, Sister Superior descended from her office to deliver another “talk.” She rarely appeared unless it was for something extremely important, such as reminding us that one of Priscilla Lane’s movies was going to be on TV, or shaking us down for money to assist the Maryknoll missionaries. We all stood up and delivered the standard greeting: “How are you today, Sister Superior?” to which she’d answer, “Very well, class. Now take your seats.” Physically, she wasn’t an imposing woman. With her pale skin and clear-framed eyeglasses, she was practically see-through, but despite her short stature and watery face, she was a match for any boy in school. If brutal and aggressive cheek pinching qualified as a martial art, she’d have been a grand master.
    After sending the boys to the adjacent cloakroom, where they pretended to hang themselves on the coat hooks, she passed out prayer cards with a picture of Maria Goretti on the front. Maria Goretti was the patron saint of teenage girls, and since we were fast approaching adolescence, Sister Superior wanted to share her story with us. From my experience, these stories were usually pretty gruesome, which is one reason why popes favored red shoes. They evoked the blood of Christian martyrs.
    Sister Superior stared at us with her moist yellow eyes. “When Maria was twelve, she attracted the unwanted attention of a male neighbor on the Feast of the Most Precious Blood,” she explained. “Maria was in her house, sewing garments for her family. The neighbor