Sisters of the Moon
Philadelphia International seemed the perfect place to come unglued. Nobody knew me. Nobody cared. Nothing in the atmosphere existed to remind me of Emily. But still, I thought of her. Though, I thought of the old Emily, the one that had never made a transatlantic phone call on a dark December morning we’d remember for the rest of our lives. I thought of thirteen-year-old Emily and the way we were at Willowood when times were simple. And somehow, these memories were enough to hold me together.
Tinkerbell. That’s how I described Emily to my mother before they met. She reminded me of the little revolving Tinkerbell in my jewelry box from grade school. A tiny blue-eyed china doll. But one that carried whips and chains. I guess the contradiction was what I found most alluring. Here was a girl who couldn’t have weighed more than a morsel, but had enough attitude to propel both of us through the murky shit-mine our school board liked to call junior high. Before her, I was just a miserable suburban kid dreading my first period and praying each night for boobs to balance out my thighs. Instead of boobs, I got Emily. The period followed soon after and my thighs continued to spread like yesterday’s news.
We were only on our third gym class of staring at Mrs. Wilder’s cellulite together and secretly thinking she was hot, anyway, when I realized that particular rite of passage had arrived—right in the middle of jumping jacks. I was horrified and had to act extra spastic in order to get Mrs. Wilder’s attention, flailing my arms above the crowd and jumping sideways, until, finally, I caught her eye.
“Can I run to the bathroom?”
“Quickly.”
As I hurried off to check out the damage, I heard Emily asking if she could go as well.
“When Stella gets back, you can go.”
“But I have to go…now!”
As I opened the locker room door, I turned to see my new friend doubled over, grasping her crotch as if she might explode from holding it in. I heard Mrs. Wilder say it was okay just as the door closed behind me.
Inside the bathroom stall, I nearly fainted. Could a person really bleed that much? There was suddenly a tap at the door.
“Stella?” It was Emily.
“Yeah?”
“Do you want me to show you how to use a tampon?”
“How did you…?”
“I noticed some blood on the back of your shorts. Don’t worry,” she said before I could ask. “I highly doubt anyone else was paying that close attention. But I know you better than they do, and I knew something wasn’t right when you started jumping around all antsy out there. I figured it could be, you know, ‘feminine trouble,’” Emily continued, adopting a different tone of voice for the euphemism. “I just knew where to look.”
“It’s my first one,” I admitted.
“I figured that. Do you want me to show you how to use a tampon? It’s really easy.”
“I’m afraid to stick something inside of me,” I confessed to the stall door.
“You won’t feel it once it’s in there if you put it in right,” she explained. “And besides, pads feel like diapers, so the sooner you learn to wear a tampon, the better.”
“I don’t even have any money for the machine out there.”
“You don’t need money,” Emily said. “I have plenty of tampons on me.” She paused. “Stella, I have my period, too. So, now we are sisters of the moon.” There was a whimsical tone in her voice and I smiled in spite of my situation. “And sisters of the moon should not have to communicate through closed doors. Open up. The sight of blood does not freak me out.”
I stood there contemplating the idea. I had always prided myself on my discreet changing abilities in the locker room. It had been three years since my mother had seen me naked and four since my father had even seen me in a towel. Facing another person with my pants down was not exactly my cup of tea.
Emily peered through the crack in the stall. “I see you, my sexy moon goddess. Now, let me in and I’ll show you mine.”
“Emily!” I shrieked, covering myself with one hand as I unhooked the lock with the other. Though, I had to admit, the better part of me was grateful that I wasn’t going through this alone.
“Oh, I’m just kidding, you little perv,” she said, locking herself in the stall with me and handing over a tampon. I’d never held one before. “You’re lucky I’m here, you know. I got my period in fifth grade. I was, like, the only one. I stuffed a bunch of toilet paper down there and walked around feeling like I’d crapped my pants all day.” We both giggled.
“That’s probably what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come in.”
Suddenly, Emily’s eyes grew serious, and I could tell that her mood had changed. “Your mom will probably make a big deal out of this,” she said. I nodded. She probably would. “Let her,” she told me. “And then let me know what it’s like.”
The lesson worked on my third try, and Emily was right. Not only about the tampon—I didn’t feel it once it was in there— but also about my mother. She made a very big deal. Not that I didn’t appreciate her making my favorite dinner that night or buying me the seventy-dollar sweater at the mall the next day. I just didn’t see why my soiling my shorts during jumping jacks had earned me these things. Emily explained it to me the following week as we sat straddling a locker room bench before gym class, in typical conference position.
“Because, dear Stella, raven goddess of the moon,” she said, running her fingers through my long dark hair until they got caught in tangles on both sides by my shoulders, “it’s a big deal for a mother to watch her little girl grow up. And getting your period is step one in the long and beautiful journey to becoming a woman.”
One thing I’d noticed about Emily was that she enjoyed saying corny things like this, but always with the most serious of expressions on her face and in tones very much like the narrating voice in a public television documentary. It never failed to make me laugh, and when I would laugh, she would laugh. On this particular day, we bumped foreheads as we giggled. Her hands were still stuck in my hair.
“Are you two lesbians?” The voice penetrated our laughter, stabbing our fun on purpose. It was Nelly Whiteman, a tomboyish, good-at-sports, popular girl who wasn’t even pretty, but attracted lots of male attention due to her highly acceptable social status at Willowood. If you asked me, she was rather butch, and based upon my extremely provincial and retrospectively ignorant seventh-grade definition of the word lesbian, I didn’t think she was exactly the pot to be calling our kettles black. But I didn’t have the balls to say this to her. Emily, however, despite her Tinkerbell exterior, seemed to have been blessed with two very big brass ones.
“Are you?” she asked. But Nelly just stared at Emily blankly, as if the idea that either of us might have a comeback had never even occurred to her. After giving her a good ten seconds or so to respond, Emily turned back to me and, in the romantic tone of a black-and-white movie Don Juan, said, “Stella, you have the most elegant eyes I’ve ever seen. Can we make out now?” I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “That’s not what I meant,” she said, sounding scorned.
“You guys are freaks,” Nelly said, dismissing us with a flick of her hand and stomping away in a hurried huff, like we were no longer worth her time.
“At least we don’t have brooms up our asses!” Emily called after her.
“You really don’t give a shit about being popular, do you?” I asked as I untangled my hair from her fingers.
“Am I supposed to care what Nelly Whiteman thinks just because a bunch of mindless idiots decided that this year she and her friends were the ones to worship?” I shrugged. She had a really good point. I just didn’t know how she’d gotten the courage to arrive at it in seventh grade. “Besides,” Emily said as she got up off of the bench, “I am popular…with you.”
“That you are, my dear,” I said, extending my hand for her to help me to my feet, as if we were once again in our own black-and-white movie and she was my leading man. But the bell was ringing, and people were beginning to breeze between us, killing the moment. So I stood up on my own and, together, we headed out to another dreaded game of volleyball.
At first, I didn’t know where the music was coming from. The notes sprang up from my lap and almost seemed to meld with the memory, with the buzzing of that gym-class bell, until, finally, they pulled me out of it, stripping me from that seventh-grade locker room with my brass-balled Tinkerbell and dropping the crowded airport terminal upon me like a bomb.
“Landslide.” Fleetwood Mac. Emily had been driven by her longtime love for Stevie Nicks to customize my cell phone ring. Every time somebody called me, no matter who it was, I thought of my best friend and smiled. And normally, I loved it. But now the present was an intrusion. The adult Emily—the one who had called me that morning, the one who knew about making cell phones ring music—she was here, merging with the past, overshadowing her former self. And my comfort was gone. I looked at the caller ID and got ready to tell my first lie about Europe.
“Hello?”
“Hi, honey. I drove by your place on my way to the deli, but your car wasn’t there. Is everything okay?” To call my mother a nervous person would be an understatement. But everyone has reasons for being who they are. She wasn’t always this way.
“Oh, everything’s fine, Janey. I just left really early this morning. That’s all.”
A lot of people consider it disrespectful to call their parents by their first names. But Janey isn’t my mother’s first name, and in our case, it’s affectionate. Her real name is Mary-Jane, but the only person who ever calls her that is my grandmother, Dora. Everyone else just calls her Mary. I’m not really sure why, but for some reason, I chose to fixate on the part that comes after the hyphen. It happened when I was about twelve and evolved into its own special title. Emily and I both call her Janey. It seems pretty absurd when I try to explain it to people, but nevertheless, that’s what we call her. Occasionally, I will call her Mom, but only in times of nostalgia or need.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Do you have errands? We could meet for breakfast, maybe.”
“Oh, I can’t,” I apologized. “See, I’m at the airport. I got a call from Emily and—”
“Oh, my God. Is everything all right?”
“Oh, absolutely,” I lied. “She just thought it would be fun for me to come out and see her during my time off. It was so completely spur of the moment, I barely had time to pack.” There. Now I was telling the truth. About the packing part, at least.
“You must be so excited.”
“Oh, I definitely am,” I gushed, cringing at how fake I sounded. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to go to Europe with Emily. Now I’m finally getting my chance.”
“So, will you be gone your entire break, then?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I said. “I haven’t even booked my flight yet.” I lied because if I told her I’d already booked my flight, she’d want to know the details. Then she’d know about the wait. And she’d offer to come keep me company, meet me for breakfast, lunch. I’d have no choice but to hurt her feelings. The less she knew, the better. The longer I held out in giving her my travel information, the smaller the window for her offers, her questions, my guilt. I just wanted to be alone, anonymous, a stranger in a crowd.
“Oh, well, don’t let me keep you, honey. And try to stay the entire break if you can. You deserve a vacation with all those screaming meshuganahs clamoring for your attention all day long.”
I rolled my eyes. I work as a second-grade teacher at Forest Hills Elementary, the same school I attended when my family moved to the suburb of Scottsboro from northeast Philadelphia when I was ten, and I adore it. I’ve loved every student I’ve ever had, even the obnoxious ones, even the ones who have smelled funny, and even the ones whose parents I couldn’t stand. I’ve never complained about a single one of them to my mother, which leads me to the conclusion that my sister, Blanche, and I must have been screaming meshuganahs in second grade since that is the image my mother seems to hold of all children at that age.
“Listen, Janey…I’d better get going.”
“Oh, okay…Stella, I…”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“I wanted to remind you to light a candle for Blanche tomorrow at sundown if you can.” My heart seemed to rip all over again in the places the glue had dried so many times before.
“I will, Mom,” I said, becoming fifteen again, as the old familiar lump rose like fire in my throat.
In Judaism, we light yahrzeit candles to honor lost loved ones on the anniversaries of their death. But the anniversary is always commemorated in accordance with the Jewish calendar, which I don’t know anything about. I always just wait for my mother to tell me when it’s time. I think she gets some kind of card from the funeral home each year, either that or my great-grandfather, Zayde Max, lets her know. I’ve definitely gotten to the age where I should be aware of the approach of Blanche’s yahrzeit, but sometimes I think it’s better not to know until it’s upon me. After thirteen years, I know it should have gotten easier. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that nothing ever gets easier. When I was little, I remember seeing candles in my Grandma Dora’s kitchen from time to time, but they seemed like something one lit for old people who had died long ago, people who had faded into the shadows of dusty albums and cobweb memories and were too far gone to summon any tears. They didn’t seem to burn for seventeen-year-old sisters.
“Now, you go book that flight,” my mother said, so obvious in her attempt to sound unbroken that I wanted to slap my own face for making her feel she ever had to be anything but herself.
“Okay. I love you. I’ll call you when I get there and let you know what my plans are.”
“No, baby. Call me after you book your flight so I have a ballpark of when you’ll be landing.” She wanted to know when she should start worrying.
“Okay,” I said.
“And I won’t keep you long. I know how you like to read your magazines while you wait places.” Her kindness just made me sadder. If only my mother could be a bitch sometimes, like everybody else’s.
When we hung up, I found a bathroom, locked myself in a stall and spent a half hour crying over the all-too-sudden death of my older sister, Blanche.