She was on her period, but she didn’t care. She was at the kitchen sink doing dishes like a char woman. The blood was leaking down her leg. She had already bled through her pad . She just wanted to finish up these last few chores, and then she would head up the stairs to a hot bath and some fresh pajamas.
She hated these heavy periods. She was finished child bearing, but the damn curse kept coming every month like clock work. Sometimes she felt like a menstrual cripple chained to the toilet and a chair covered with a towel just in case of leaks.
Sometimes she had to stay home it got so bad. Menstruation was not like controlling the urge to piss or shit. Most people can wait until they find a suitable facility in which to relieve themselves. A woman has no control over the flow of blood during her cycle. It comes like delivering a pound of liver whenever she coughs or even gets up out of a chair.
After a couple of days, it’s over until the next time. It was at this point in life when many women opt for a hysterectomy. Cressida is a natural woman. She intended to go through life’s processes naturally.
She puts a little dish of crumbs and cheese bits for the mice she feeds nightly on the side board. In this way she thinks she’s made a deal with the creatures to stay out of more important foodstuffs, like the fresh bread that sits uncovered on the counter.
The cats wait at her feet mewling for the dish of milk they know she will give them at the end of her duties. She wipes down the counters one last time, sees the baby’s bottle half full of unfinished milk, pours it into the cat dish, and puts the bottle to soak until the morning. “You always have to leave some for seed,” she says to herself and those that will listen.
With five kids and a house full of a half dozen student boarders, she stays pretty busy. Although you wouldn’t know it to look at her now, she is also a popular best selling author. She writes one book for each child she has conceived. Her baby is two, but she has not got the latest story to the publisher yet, but she is close to being finished with the final edit.
The whole house is quiet now, and settled. The kids are asleep, her husband has hooked up with one of the student boarders for the night. They have an open arrangement, but the last time she slept with anyone except a nursing baby, she can’t remember…. She turns off the lights as she moves through the house to go upstairs.
(First published 2/23/12)
