Seeing Blood

I used to go to the now demolished 7/11 in a gas station nearby to drink blueberry flavored slushies that made my fingers sticky with the smallest amount of spillage and my tongue blue. When I turned fourteen my shopping habits were subject to change. I loved to watch people as they came and went, the automatic doors of the shop announcing every such incident. I’d watch what people bought- drinks, sandwhiches, cigarettes, gum. I never really paid attention to their prices, or from which aisle they came from, because my only interest was the material things and the drink I held in my hand while the flourescent lamps above my head emitted a constant buzz I now compare to the buzz I get from drinking vodka spiked with blueberry syrup. Old habits die hard.

When I turned fourteen, fort he first time ever, I went to the 7/11 to buy something else than my favorite beverage. I walked up and down the aisles, searching, all the while trying to avoid the unwanted gaze of strangers. I was greeted ever so warmly by the cashier I had come to know as I became something of a regular customer, a forty-something year old man with a receding hairline and a familiar smile. His attitude made me ease up, I remember, and I began to strut through the aisles with newly found confidence. This was my safe space after all. I had been here so many times. I had spilled sticky blue liquid all over the floors. Nothing bad could happen to me here.

When I found what I was looking for, I let out a relaxed sigh, drawing the attention of an elderly woman with a carton of milk in her shaky grip, who smiled at me knowingly. It made me blush, which warranted a concerned look from her. Don’t worry darling, she exclaimed, it happens to all of us. All of us, I thought, what did that mean? Surely, it excluded some. I mumbled to myself, does she not know?

She knew, as I came to realize later. That was the way of a woman, a human being, way above my living experiences, trying to comfort me as I delved into what would become a routine for me from that point on.

Having chosen what I would get, out of a multitude of options, and after a detour at the beverage station, blueberry slushie in my hand, I made my way to the register as I had done countless times before. The man smiled at me once more, that warm, familiar expression that gave a sense of comfort to me seconds ago. Everything, and with that I kind of mean every literal thing, changed, when I dropped the plastic wrapped unit of pads onto the counter for him to put into a bag. The smile remained- it was the reflection of that smile in his eyes that changed. It frightened me.

You have grown, haven’t you? he asked, but it was not really a question, now that I think about it. I didn’t expect an answer. It was an assumption that, so many years later, I understand to be a form of claiming his assertion on me as something other than the girl he had sold blueberry slushies to.

Are you alone? he asked next, and for a second, I took it for genuine concern for me, not as a question for his own sake. I nodded my head instead of saying yes, as my mouth was filled with the blue liquid and my head with the humming of the fluorescent lights. The automatic doors opened and closed. The man didn’t avert his gaze from me to glance at the customer, but smiled at me, as he bagged the pads and handed them to me.

Do you know how to use these?

I nodded again, this time saying no, an overly honest answer to an undeserving interrogator. This time, he did avert his gaze, searching for something between the aisles bustling with customers. I looked over my shoulder too, and came eye to eye with the elderly woman from before, for a few seconds, and when I look back to that moment, I sense, maybe because I want to, a desire to help- maybe she would have helped me. But I turned back to the man too quickly.

The man at the register called for someone from between the aisles, another employee, I supposed. Take my place for five, will ya? he said. Then he motioned with his hand for me, and I followed like a moth attracted towards a flame. I followed him all the way to the back of the shop, where the toilets were. I knew that from memory, as I almost had an accident in the shop after drinking way too many blueberry slushies, and asking the same man from the register with tears in my eyes where they were.

He went into a stall in the women’s restroom, while I stood in the doorway, suspicious. He came right back out with that familiar, warm smile. Don’t worry, he said. You have nothing to be afraid of.

I went into the stall with him, my shopping bag and my drink in my hands. I watched him lock the door, with his back turned to me, and I heard the opening of a belt buckle, frozen in my place, not knowing what to do. When he turned his face to me, the smile that comforted me was gone, replaced with something I know now to be the gaze of a man when he lays his eyes on his prey. I came to love that gaze from many man later on, but his was the one that still haunts me as something unwanted, like a bug bite. He took the drink in my hand and put it onto the floor, and told me to do the same for the shopping bag, as if the drink was something normal but the shopping bag containing the symbol of my growing into a womanhood was something not to be touched.

Get down on your knees, he said to me. I did. And he told me to put my tongue out, which was oh so blue, still cold and sweet stained with my blueberry slushie.

That was the day when I learned the price of bleeding. Bleeding monthly. I learned the price of womanhood, of the curse it would gift me. Today, I see myself cursed with a gift- putting my tongue out when I want to. I am the one with the blood. No one can decide on my behalf anymore.