With my last bite of pancake, I proudly announce, “My breasts are coming in.”

Swallowing some coffee, Dad calmly sets down his mug, looks up at me from his paper and coolly says, “Congratulations.” His eyes return to the paper.

Stacy smiles at me. “Well I could totally tell when you walked in here. I was just waiting for you to say something.”

“You could not tell,” I say.

“You have plans today?” she asks.

“Just homework.”

“You wanna go shopping?”

“Hey, she needs to do her homework,” says Dad.

“Homework can wait. She has all weekend,” Stacy argues.

She takes me to a fancy lingerie store. An older, fashionable woman wearing a lot of make-up and sporting a seamstress measuring tape approaches us. She leads Stacy and me to a large dressing room, where she measures my chest. She doesn’t dance around the issue. She returns with a bunch of “training bras” that she wants me to try on. She and Stacy leave the room to give me privacy. I remove my shirt and put on the first bra. I look at myself in the mirror and try to imagine myself with something larger than just breast buds. Actual breasts would be great someday.

Stacy calls out, “You have one on?”

Older Fashionable Woman says, “How does it fit?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” I begin. “I’m not sure how it’s supposed to fit.”

“Let me in, sweetie. I’ll take a look,” says Stacy.

I open the door and hide behind it. Stacy walks in and closes the door behind her. She adjusts the length of the straps on my shoulders until they are tighter. She says, “Yea, looks right. Holding you right up.”

“It’s not like there’s much to hold up,” I giggle.

She smiles. “Let’s get a few of these and a few of the next size up so you’ll be prepared when you outgrow this size.”

“When’s that gonna be?” I ask.

“Hard to say.”

My first lingerie purchase is exciting. I feel like I’ll be a woman soon, and I actually hope that a boy at school snaps the bra so I can kick him in the balls. I’m confrontational that way, and I know where I get that trait.

Stacy then takes me to the drugstore and buys several different kinds of teenager-size feminine hygiene products. “Couldn’t it be like a year before I need this stuff?” I ask.

“Yes,” she replies. “Better to be prepared.”

She takes me out to lunch at a fancy place, and she engages me in a girlie-girl talk. She asks if I have questions about anything. I feel self-confident in my knowledge on puberty, as Dad has left relevant books—such as The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls and Growing Up: It’s a Girl Thing—in my bookcase for as long as I remember. I’ve always explored these books and addressed the topics with Dad and Stacy in a matter-of-fact way, as that has always been their approach with me.

A few months later, Grandma and Grandpa fly in for a weekend visit. They always stay at a hotel because we don’t have extra bedrooms. As usual, Grandma takes me shopping one morning, leaving Dad and Stacy alone with Grandpa. Which is never a good idea.

After shopping for clothes, Grandma takes me out for ice cream. We sit at a table, and Grandma says in a very uncomfortable whisper, “Katie, do you know what a bra is?”

“Yes, of course,” I say proudly, wondering where this is going.

“Do you have any? We could go to Target and get you some,” she suggests. “You’re at a stage now where you should start wearing a bra every day. To get used to it.”

“I have a whole bunch, Grandma.”

“Why aren’t you wearing one?” she asks.

“I just forgot to put one on today. I’m still getting used to it,” I explain.

She says that I’ll start getting more attention from boys now. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, she emphasizes. I tell her that I will set straight anyone who gives me the bad kind of attention.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“You know, they say something rude, I tear ’em down with something even ruder. They pull my bra strap, then maybe I kick ’em in the nads... I mean... kick ’em.”

She looks appalled. “Katie, I don’t think your father wants you to go around kicking people—”

“Actually, if someone touches me inappropriately, I have Dad’s blanket permission to go medieval.”

Even after all these years, I think that she is stunned by my matter-of-fact manner of talking. It shouldn’t surprise her, because I learned this from my dad. But for some reason, it almost always surprises her. She takes a moment and says, “In a case like that, what you should really do is run and tell a trusted grown-up.”

“Yea, I will, after I defend myself. I’m not gonna stand there and take it, Grandma. I gotta make it not worthwhile for someone to harass me.”

I’ve rendered her speechless. Now I imagine her talking to my dad later about how I’m not ladylike enough or something. She is sweet, and she loves me, but she is very old-fashioned.

In the rental car on the way home, she starts talking about “the curse.” She goes on and on about how all women suffer Eve’s sins, and soon I will too. She mentions getting bad cramps and feeling irritable for a few days each month.

I’m confused, so I ask, “What are you talking about, Grandma?”

Her reply only serves to further confuse me. In a shameful whisper she says, “You know, bleeding from your... daisy.”

“My daisy?” I ask contemptuously.

She pauses. “Your cookie?”

“Grandma, what are you talking about?” I ask in frustration.

“Your hoo-hoo. Bleeding from your hoo-hoo,” she replies in exasperation. I say nothing, so she continues. “Your period. Do you know what that is?”

Now I know what she means. “Menstruation. Bleeding from my vagina.”

She white-knuckles the steering wheel, and she seems flustered now. She finally says, “Yes, that’s what I mean. I was afraid nobody had talked to you about it. In polite conversation, we call it the curse of womanhood. It makes you bleed, feel crampy, moody—”

I laugh. “Grandma, there’s no such thing as curses.”

She is annoyed at me now. “Katie, you’re in the beginning of puberty now; you need to know these things—”

“I do know these things! It’s part of the process of reproduction. Every month your ovaries release one egg. If the egg isn’t fertilized by sperm, then a couple weeks later you bleed for 3-7 days to shed the lining of your uterus. If the egg is fertilized, the uterus doesn’t shed. A baby grows inside your uterus, your breasts grow bigger to accommodate milk production. After the baby is born, you bleed for 4-6 weeks.”

She cuts me off. “Ok,” she says. “Stacy’s been talking to you after all.”

“And Daddy. He knows all this stuff, Grandma; he’s a doctor.” She seems appalled, so I continue. “They talk about this stuff at school too, ya know. It’s not a big deal.”

Dad’s and Stacy's talks (and the books I’ve read) have not really focused on moodiness and cramps. They mention these things, but in passing, like “some women experience this.” In the future I will look back and realize their intention is to exclude any negative connotations about it.

Later that night I’m sitting up in bed reading a book when Daddy comes in to say goodnight. It’s my first chance to be alone with him today, and I tell him about my conversation with Grandma. He smiles compassionately as I laugh and say, “Come on! Hoo-hoo? Why doesn’t she just say ‘vagina’?” Now I giggle uncontrollably, and he laughs too.

Finally he says, “You’ve heard kids your age use silly euphemisms instead of real words for private body parts, right?”

“Yea,” I say. “Not those euphemisms, but yea.”

He continues to explain, “Some grown-ups, especially older grown-ups, also are uncomfortable using real words for private body parts. So they use really goofy, old-fashioned euphemisms which complicate the issues and create drama and shame.”

“Why do they want to make it shameful?”

He shrugs. “Because their parents made it shameful for them.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because... because people are idiots.”

I smile. I’ve heard him utter that phrase many times. “She called it ‘the curse.’ I didn’t know what she meant at first—”

“She told you that menstruation is a curse?” he asks. His eyebrows are furrowed now. I nod, and he sighs. “You don’t believe that malarkey, do you?”

I smile, because he purposely uses the word “malarkey” because it is funny to me. “Of course not! I told her curses aren’t real. It’s like ghosts and zombies... just silly stuff that was made up to scare people.”

He smiles. “Good. Rule of thumb: If it’s about the human body and it comes from Grandma, you should ignore it and ask me for the real explanation. You know how she insists that you can catch a cold by being outside without a jacket?”

“You catch a cold only by exposure to a virus.”

“Excellent. Now get some sleep. They’ll be here early to go out for breakfast with us.”

“How early?” I ask. I really value weekends for sleeping in.

“Crazy early,” he says. “Old people get up at the crack of dawn.”

“Daddy—” I protest.

“You don’t have to get up at dawn,” he says with a smile. “Just wake up when you wake up, and don’t mess around in the morning. Just get ready to go, ok?”

“Ok. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” He kisses my forehead, puts my book on the nightstand, and turns off the light as I sink down into my bed and get comfortable.

******

I was annoyed with my mother.

I appreciated that she took Katie shopping for clothes or baked cookies with her. Approaching Katie about puberty was slightly out of bounds, and approaching Katie about puberty with her ridiculously sexist world view was completely inappropriate and cringe-worthy for me. I’d worked so hard—me, a man!—to make sure Katie could embrace being a woman and everything that goes along with it. And here comes my mother with “the curse” and the moodiness. Obviously I was planning to explain these concepts to Katie, because I knew she’d run into them eventually. I just didn’t need my mother unapologetically giving that view to her. Good thing Katie resisted my mother’s explanation... thanks to her own confidence about her body... thanks to years of me teaching her the truth about it!

So after saying goodnight to Katie, I went out to the living room and interrupted the surely riveting conversation between Stacy and my parents.

“Mom. The curse? Really?” I was trying to be calm.

“Someone had to talk to her about it!” she replied, indignant.

“Yes, I’ve taken care of it over the years,” I corrected. “She could probably school you on menstruation.”

My father jumped in with his grumbled, predictable, “Don’t talk to your mother that way.”

“I wasn’t sure anyone had bothered to talk to her!” said my mother. “She’s getting breasts.” She whispered the last word like she was embarrassed to say it to me.

I’ve always enjoyed shocking people. “Yes, that would explain the sudden appearance of all those tiny little bras in the laundry.”

Now my mother’s face expressed mild horror. “She wasn’t wearing a bra today; that’s why I figured nobody had talked to her about [whisper] puberty.”

Stacy—always diplomatic—jumped in. “She probably just forgot, Blythe. There’s a reason it’s called a ‘training bra.’ You can rest assured that she knows everything she needs to know.”

I jumped back in. “Mom, she needs accurate information. Not taboos and myths that serve to make women hate themselves and their bodies. Hate being a woman. She had no fears about it before; now you’ve messed with her ideas.”

“Well, I’m so sorry I ‘messed’ with her ideas. I was just trying to do you a favor.”

“We appreciate you were just trying to help,” said Stacy.

I couldn’t stop himself. “You can’t go around talking to kids about puberty. You should have checked with me first. My kid, my rules. Just like when she was two and you wanted to give her peanut butter, and I said no. Who won that battle, Mom?”

“Greg, that’s enough,” my father scolded. “Your mother was just trying to help!”

Yea, screw you. I’m a grown man; you don’t scare me anymore. I shot him a nasty glare and turned back to my mother. “Even if you think I’m too uncomfortable to talk to Katie about this stuff, you do realize she has a step-mother right here? A step-mother she loves and is close to.”

“Step-mother?” my father said derisively. “Step-mother, by definition, is married to the father. Stacy’s just your live-in—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” I warned, shooting him yet another nasty glare. “Stacy’s not ‘just’ anything.”

I glanced at Stacy out of the corners of my eyes. Her face fell, her eyes were watery, and she was trying desperately to hide it from my parents. “Excuse me,” she said, more politely than I wish she had. She left the room and headed to our bedroom.

“We should probably head back to the hotel,” my mother said, trying to break the tension. “It’s getting late.”

I told them we’d meet for breakfast tomorrow only so they could say goodbye to Katie, but that it would be brief. They left, and I went into the bedroom to find Stacy sitting on our bed, knees bent up at her chest, arms around her legs, face leaning down on one knee.

I sat behind her, wrapped my legs around her, rubbed her shoulders, and kissed the back of her neck.

“Don’t let my father upset you. He’s an idiot.”

She sniffled. “I know he’s an idiot. It still hurts.”

“It doesn’t matter what he says or thinks of you. All that matters is Katie loves you. She refers to you as her step-mom. She doesn’t care if we’re married. She cares that we love her.”

She turned her head toward me and smiled. “You always know the right thing to say.”

“One of my many talents,” I said with a smile. I tugged at her top. “We’re living in sin; may as well do sinful things.”

Truthfully, I hadn’t told Katie everything about menstruation. I insisted Stacy buy the feminine hygiene products and explain to Katie how to use them, and Stacy was happy to take care of it. No way was I touching that! I didn’t really have that kind of practical knowledge. And if I hadn’t had Stacy in my life, I would have asked some other woman to do it, like the doctor I took Katie to for her vaccinations and well-child exams or Bonnie or even Cuddy. Boundaries!

—G.H.