She remembered when she was a child, during catechism, when her mother explained to her about: "sins against chastity". She told her about Aída Curi, which chose to die instead of losing her virginity. It was not suicide, it was martyrdom. Suicide was never mentioned, like cancer.
Poor Aída... She didn't die, she was killed.
Her mother's version of "the birds and the bees" was full of sin, pain, fear, shame, secrecy, whispers, fate. That was the original sin, not that women would go through labor pains to deliver their children, but that they had to have sex in order to get pregnant.
One way or another, she learned about the birds and bees, she had lots of conversations with her mom, how her mom felt impotent to teach her, to control her, to make her have good manners.
At 13 she asked a cousin to teach her how to shave her legs. Her sisters wouldn't go into these feminine details with her, because she wasn't one of them. She was a tomboy. When on vacation with friends, traveling without her family, she had her first period. Her friend's mom helped her. If her mom got surprised, if she talked to her friend's mom, she never knew. At 15 a bohemian poet fell in love with her. He didn't have a job, he was a college drop-out, chain smoker, madly in love with her. Her mom didn't like him. She was afraid that he was dragging her to bad company. He liked her because she was small, looking like a 12 year old. he thought he was Lewis Carroll, perverted like him in his adoration of little girls. She left him, because as a matter of fact, too much infatuation wasn't thrilling anymore. Things changed quickly in her life at that time. Since he had lost her father, she never confided in anyone else in her family. She always had to fend for herself, because her siblings always accused her of being daddy's little girls. Now that he was gone, she had to take care of herself. She got pregnant at 17 and her mom just had an attitude of resignation, that this was her fate. Her mom thought that she was going to live like other teen moms that are finally subdue by their parents' wisdom and economic power. But her mom didn't seem to possess either and she wasn't the one to be subdued. She went on and got married, she had her son and he was very special. She cried at the hospital when the nurse gave him for her to hold.
Still, one way or another, her mom told her about several things, and she loved and respected her, like so many people. Her mom, with her beautiful, supplicant eyes. Her soft hands, her pitch perfect voice, her songs, her cooking, her stories. She still has a notebook with her mom's recipes for everyday cooking, her favorite dishes, holiday meals... Her neat handwrite. The recipes popping from the pages to her ears every time she referred to the cookbook for something, as if her mom was there, looking over her shoulders while she tried to cook like her mom.
Her mom was her first grade teacher. She learned how to read and write one year earlier, watching her mom tutoring kids from school. From all the things that her mom told her, one thing she never mentioned: menopause.
And menopause was what caught her by surprise while she was grieving the loss of her son. If it wasn't hard enough to lose a son, now not even the despicable "at least you can have another child" wouldn't be applicable to her.
One would think that losing a child is really the end of all aspirations and wishes for a mother. But a mother is also a woman, even when she is grieving, and menopause makes the woman question her femininity.
When she thinks about it, she realizes that her mom too had to go through menopause while she was grieving the loss of her husband. She sees the similarities of what they both went through. Her mom was even younger than her when she lost her husband. It should have been even harder for her mom. And she doubts that her grandmother would have told her anything about it. It was the fate of women. Grow, marry, procreate, die inside and wait to die outside.
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