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We all used to accompany her to the high school bathroom where they had a Kotex machine, and stand guard while she put in her nickel and got her pad. We felt grown-up, indeed. Finally one summer day, when my mother was outside in the garden, I found a spot of blood on my underwear. I was thrilled and frightened, and although she had never once mentioned anything about it to me, I needed her to know it had happened. I went out and said, “Mother, I think I’ve just started my period.” She stopped hoeing the weeds for a minute and said, “Well, go take care of it,” then continued chopping. I went back in and found her box of pads and some safety pins and took care of it.
    My friends and I never discussed sex like friends do today, their role models being the
Sex and the City
girls, ours being Nancy Drew and Sandra Dee. We talked about girls who were sleeping with boys as being tramps, and if any of us were doing it, or anything close to it, we never admitted it to one another. I think most of our crowd in the senior class were virgins. Most of the boys were, too, in spite of what they bragged about. The furthest I had gone with anyone was kissing and wrestling in the backseat, and a little light boob petting. I was, of course, determined to save the big moment for the honeymoon. But at seventeen, hormones seemed to kick into a higher gear, and when Larry and I had been going steady for a while, the life changing experience occurred. I was wearing a pink Bobbie Brooks skirt and sweater, and the main thing I remember was worrying that it would get blood on it. I really liked that skirt. While I was worrying, the event came and went. Or went and came, as the case may be. I remember thinking, “Is that IT?” I felt like I had gotten distracted for a moment and missed it. There was a small amount of blood—a spot the size of a silver dollar—on my underwear, but my skirt was fine. I remember going to bed that night thinking, “Well, now we’re married in the eyes of God.” That was a popular rationalization. It meant that as long as you intended to get married at some point down the road, sex wasn’t a sin. Or as much of one.
    The sex got better as we learned together. I think he had been with one other girl before me (one of the bad girls we all talked about, not Sharon), which had been a disagreeable experience, so we were prettymuch on the same level. From then on, along with playing cards with his brother and sister-in-law, sex was the big thing on our dates, and people began to treat us like an old married couple. Several of my friends got married right after graduation. A few had gotten married while they were still in school, with babies on the way. That, of course, was a constant worry, but for some reason I never got pregnant, even though we didn’t use birth control. Perversely, I began to wonder if I could have children.
    I did indeed go to Tech instead of State Teachers, rooming with Larry’s twin sister, Linda, and even managed to get an academic scholarship, which I lost my second semester after getting a C in chemistry. I normally would never have gone near chemistry, but I was required to take it for my major, and I wanted to get it over with. My lab partner was inept, too, and we once set the lab on fire, which didn’t endear me to my professor.
    I was the center of everything in high school, but college was a whole new experience. There were more people at Tech than in the entire town of Atkins, half of them were boys—half of those were cute, and I wanted to date them. Having my boyfriend’s twin sister as my roommate was a little tricky, though; even if I’d wanted to cheat, she knew where I was every minute. So I didn’t cheat, but I wanted to, and even that made me feel guilty.
    I started off as a home economics major, since I had loved my teacher in high school, Mary Gay, and couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do. Then, along with chemistry, one of the required courses for the