Keep Me Secret

When Shame feels like the Price of Admission

some pics we took of the landscape along the way (1986)

My parents, older brother Hans and I pulled into a dusty motel somewhere past Moab, Utah and stopped under the canopy just outside of the motel’s small office. While my parents went inside to inquire about rooms for the night, I looked out of the rear car window, and sighed with relief. There, running parallel to the single story building, was an outdoor pool.

For almost three weeks, we criss-crossed the western US. We went all the way north to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, stood atop Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming, and rafted down and camped on banks of the Colorado River in Utah. And even though we had also spent some time on horseback in the green woodland mountains (I don’t remember where), most of our three week trip was spent driving through the hot high desert alongside dry rock cliffs. Finally, today, on what happened to be my thirteenth birthday, I would be able to satisfy my deep need to float in water…for hours.

After they checked us in, my parents handed me a key to my room. Without a word, I got out of the car, flung my backpack over my shoulder, and grabbed my duffel bag out of the trunk. Then I walked ahead of everyone else towards the rooms and passed the gleaming outdoor pool. All around the perimeter, lounge chairs sat empty. The water shimmered. And, up above, the sun beamed down from the cloudless blue sky. It was the perfect invitation for me to bring my towel and make myself at home in this magical oasis.

Eager to get into the pool, I rushed to the room, unlocked the door, and threw my bags onto one of the two queen beds. Without delay, I unzipped the duffel bag, dug around and pulled out my bathing suit. As soon as I did, my brother, with whom I was sharing a room, walked in and set his bags down on the other bed. Since he had been my roommate at almost every place we stayed, we had established a routine—upon arrival, I made myself scarce and he made his daily call to his girlfriend. So, bathing suit in hand, I scooted off into the bathroom to change.

With the door locked behind me, I pulled down my shorts and underwear. Then I froze. “What the fuck is that? Is that blood? In my underwear? Oh, shit yes, it’s blood.” My mind whizzed through a catalog of things until it came to a stop. I have started menstruating. For the first time. Ever.

Just outside the door, I could hear my brother chatting with his girlfriend. Seriously? While sharing a room with him was annoying enough and while listening to him talk in his lovey-dovey voice was irritating on a good day, today, of all days, I really needed some space. And right now, I also needed my mom. But how do I make that happen? There was no way in hell I was going to telling him what’s going on. So, I did the only thing I could think of.

“Get mom! Get mom in here now!” My very high pitched, full-throated shriek reverberated around the bathroom

There was no response from him. Then the room went silent and I heard rustling. The door opened and closed. Footsteps back and forth. Until finally there was a knock on the bathroom door.

“Herzchen? It’s me. Mama.”

Relieved, I unlocked the door, pulled her into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. I turned around, and with a stricken face, I held my underwear up for her to inspect. That’s when a geyser of tears erupted out of my eyeballs and streamed down my face. She took one cursory glance at the blood and then looked at me.

“You have started your period.”

“Yes.” That seemed obvious to me.

“It is totally normal.”

“Yes.” I already knew that from the sex ed classes in school.

What I did not know was: what comes next? I had heard bits and pieces; anecdotes about some of my friends who had already been here, but I had very little else to go on. Because as much as my friends and I talked about all sorts of things, and for as long as we were on the phone with each other every day after school, we did not talk much about the changes in our bodies. Or at least, I did not.

“We have to go to the store,” my mom said. That was it? That was all she had to say?

And then it me. This seismic shift meant that I would not be able to go into the pool. I mean, not if I was bleeding…like this. My chest heaved with disappointment and more tears threatened to burst forth. Then I realized something else.

“Mama, where is Hans?”

“He’s in the other room. With Papa.”

Still staring at her, my chest tightened even more. The minute he put two and two together, he would find some way to relentlessly tease me about it. Just thinking about that made me want to throw up.

“Mama, you cannot say a word to him. He cannot know.”

“No, no. Don’t worry.”

“Promise me you will not tell him. Mama—SWEAR TO ME!”

“Nein, nein. I will not say anything to him.”

Confident I had sufficiently impressed upon her the need to keep this menstruation business secret, I asked her to bring me some clothes and a new pair of underwear. After she left and closed the bathroom door, I pulled myself together from within, went through the motions of changing and stuck an ungodly amount of toilet paper into my underwear. Then I sat down on the toilet seat, propped my elbows on my knees, dropped my face into the palms of my hands and wailed.

Ten minutes later, I finally emerged from the bathroom. When I stepped into the room, it was empty and dark. The drawn black-out curtains covered the big window next to the door and blocked out most of the light. All I wanted to do was lay down on the bed, curl up into a ball, and pull the comforter over my head. Instead, I bunched up my swimsuit and flung it on top of the bed as I made my way to the door. But before I opened the door, I pulled the plastic-coated curtain back a little and peeked outside. Just beyond the window, my mom stood by the car. Otherwise, the coast was clear.

I put the curtain back into place, grabbed the doorknob and took a deep breath. “Here’s goes nothing,” I thought to myself as I opened the door. Immediately, the bright sunlight smacked me in the face, and I paused. With my eyes adjusting to the light, I looked towards the pool. My one-time desert oasis now felt totally out of reach, and the empty lounge chairs at the edge of the sparkly water looked as forlorn as I felt.

“Herzchen, let’s go.”

My mom waved me over to the car, so I took a step forward and closed the room door. That’s when I saw Hans. He appeared out of nowhere, strode ahead of me to the car and opened the passenger side door. What? He’s coming with us? My eyes darted over to my mom, but she did not seem to get the hint to tell him to stay at the motel and it did not occur to me to ask him not to come. So, I hung my head, curled my shoulders down and crawled into the back seat where I sat, quiet as a mouse, for the short, dusty drive to the store.

As soon as we arrived and parked the car, Hans hopped out and went inside. My mom got out of the car after him. But I did not move.

“Herchzen, come,” my mom said as she opened the back door.

With my eyes glaring and blazing at the same time, I looked up at her and reminded her through gritted teeth:

“Not a word to him!”

When she nodded in agreement, I finally got out.

Once inside, I strolled through the aisles and perused the cans of soup and bags of chips. Everything had a light layer of desert dust on it. It seemed fitting that the first time I was buying—wait, what was I buying…pads? tampons? Whatever it was, my life-long journey of making sure I had what I needed to catch my shedding uterine lining would begin in an out-of-the-way general store in the middle of nowhere. After all, nothing about this—being on vacation with my parents, and sharing a room with my brother—had been anywhere on my radar when I agonized about what this day would be like when it came.

While I kept an eye on where my brother was, I picked out few bags of chips to appear casual and divert attention away from the real point of this outing. As long as the truth was left unspoken, better yet, unseen, I could ward off the shame I felt was inevitable. Especially once I got back to school. There, any time the boys in my class discovered a girl had started her period, they not only made fun of her, but they also stole her tampons from her backpack. Then they ran water over them so they would expand, and threw them up against the ceiling where they would stick until they dropped down to the ground. For the boys, it was hilarious. For the girls, it was utterly humiliating. For me, it turned a very natural biological and hormonal change into something to hide and, if possible, deny. Because if that kind of shame was the price of admission into womanhood, I wanted no part of it.

After a few more minutes of walking the aisles, my mom pulled me over to the section with the feminine hygiene products. Together we stood and reviewed the rather comprehensive collection: ultra-thin pads (aka pantyliners), maxi pads, super maxi pads aka overnight pads (those seemed a lot like diapers). And only two kinds of tampons—light and regular. My mom’s hand reached to the shelf, and she grabbed a few packets of maxi pads. I guess she wasn’t a tampon lady so now, neither was I.

But before my mom could make another move, I grabbed her arm and held her in place. Tall enough to peer over the top of the shelves, I scanned the whole space from where we stood. At the other end of the store, my brother was at the checkout counter. I squeezed my mom’s arm tighter to make sure she did not move. My eyes followed his every move as he paid and left the store. As soon as the door closed behind him, I surveyed the store one more time. With no one else in sight, I let go of my mom’s arm, took her hand, and yanked her along as I hurried us to the checkout.

After we placed an assortment of things on the counter, I looked at the clerk, pointed at the packet of pads and said:

“Hey, could you triple bag those?”

“Sure,” he said slightly bemused.

While he rang up our items, I stood to the side and kept a watch on the door. It was like a drug deal going down. Or like Gandalf asking Frodo: “Is it secret? Is it safe?”

Before my mom even paid, I grabbed the triple bagged pack of pads, stuck it under my armpit, and rushed through the door. As soon as I got outside, without noticing Hans standing off to the side, I beelined to the car, ripped the back door open, and crawled into the back seat. I slid the package under the driver seat, sat back, and folded my hands in my lap.

The passenger side door opened with a creek. I sat up and stared straight ahead. My brother got in without looking at me or saying anything. The only sound was the rustle of his bag as he placed it on the floor beside his feet. Just then, my mom emerged from the store. She got behind the wheel, reached back and handed me the bag of snacks. Without further ado, my mom started the car, put it into reverse and pulled out of our parking spot. Beneath the wheels, bits of loose gravel crunched against the asphalt.

For the next ten minutes, the only sound was the occasional crinkling of the bag filled with popcorn, pretzels and chips that I clutched onto for dear life. Because on our ride back to the motel, no one spoke. Not. A. Single. Word.

While I was more than happy not to talk about any of this, especially in front of my brother, the truth was, even if I had wanted to talk about it, I had no idea how. That’s because I learned early on that talking about anything with anyone was not something you did. Especially if it was about something like this. And as much as I yearned to be free of that kind of silence, the truth was, I felt much safer behind it.

And that meant not only would I keep what happened in or to my body a secret, but I would also keep who I was a secret—even from myself.

some pics of me from that trip (1986)