Lila Blue Read Free Page B

Lila's house so far. It smelled of salty sea air,
vanilla, and something fruity and sweet.
    With my eyes closed, I stayed
still, breathing. The roar of the ocean, a constant crash swoosh crash swoosh,
was punctuated by seagulls crying. I clung to the table, feeling adrift.
    "You poor thing," Lila
said, sitting down beside me. "Here, drink this. Peppermint tea and honey,
to calm the Nellies." She guided my hands around a heavy mug of fragrant
tea, and the smell of it did help. After a while I was able to sip the tea,
breathe normally, and open my eyes all the way. Then I felt incredibly tired.
    "Which first," she said,
"shower, sleep, or supper?" Then she laughed at herself and said,
"My, that was sibilant, yes?"
    "The sss sounds," I said,
nodding, "Yes."
    "Ooh, another word person in
the family. Excellent!" She clapped her hands and bounced up and down like
a child.
    "Shower," I said.
    "Perfect," she said, and
she brought me a big shopping bag full of wrapped birthday presents. Even
though I was tired, it was fun to open the gifts, which were wrapped in layers
of white tissue paper and bright red ribbons. The first gift was a soft,
beautiful white flannel nightgown with ruffles on it. Next was a fluffy long
blue robe that felt warm and luxurious. And the last package was a pair of
fuzzy blue slippers to match the robe. These gifts were so pretty I felt
ashamed of my big pity party on the bus earlier.
    Lila remembered my birthday. And
she went out of her way to make it special. I thanked her, and she carried the
presents to the bathroom to get out towels for me. I followed her, and she
showed me where everything was and told me to take my time.
    Before I stepped into the shower, I
tried on the slippers to see if they fit. They fit perfectly, which was truly
amazing because I had already passed through the Big Foot stage of puberty.
    First came the long arms and legs,
then sore little breasts, then zits and shiny skin and stinky armpits, then
little curly hairs popping out overnight in strange places, then big feet. All
my body parts seemed to have agendas of their own. I was completely at their
mercy.
    I even had my period, once, kind
of, enough to be yucky. When I had shown my mom my underpants, she'd said,
"Great! My daughter has the curse at eleven." She'd wadded up my
underwear and thrown them in the trash. "Don't I have enough trouble
taking care of you without worrying about this too?"
    She'd pushed me in the bathroom and
handed me a box of sanitary napkins and a box of tampons. "Read the
directions," she'd said. "You'll live." Then she'd closed the
door on me.
    The nurse at school had called menstruation
"our monthly visitor."
    I had memorized the textbook
diagram of the vulva and vagina and uterus and ovaries and fallopian tubes, but
all that knowledge did nothing to ease my loneliness as I sat on the toilet and
read all the directions on the blue and white boxes of sanitary products.
    When I emerged from that bathroom,
I knew what it meant to be unclean.
    Now, less than a month later, I was
six hundred miles away from home in the bathroom of a grandma I never knew I
had. The sturdy grab bar in Lila's tub helped me survive my first shower in
Oregon. Every time I was in danger of passing out from exhaustion and fragrant
steam, I clutched it, closed my eyes, and took three deep breaths.
    After I was clean through and
through, I dried with lavender scented towels, and I pulled the soft warm gown
over my head and the soft warm slippers onto my feet. When I came out of the
bathroom, Lila took my hand and led me to the little sewing room across from
her bedroom.
    "Sleep here tonight," she
said. "Tomorrow you can explore upstairs. I'll leave lights on in the
bathroom and kitchen. If you need something in the night, wake me up."
    I let her tuck me in bed like a
baby. "Sweet dreams, Cassandra," she said.
    "Sandy," I said, and she
smiled. My eyelids closed, and I plunged into deep, warm sleep.
    Sometime in the night, I awoke