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Prologue

“Why are you smiling? Are you an idiot?” my mother asked. She was as pale as a faded white rose. Startled, she looked more squeamish than angry, cringing in the doorway.

I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, staring down at my bloodstained knickers after I had called out loudly enough for her to come running.

My stomach was tight with cramps, but I wasn’t thinking about that.

“I’m not a little girl anymore,” I told her proudly.

She put her hand over her heart and took a deep breath, her eyes closed. I really thought she might faint. Then she looked at me, my words finally crashing through her ears.

“What? Of course you are still a little girl. Don’t leave the room,” she ordered, and fled to send for Grace Rose, a nearby nurse, to “deal with the matter.”

She had never once discussed this inevitable event with me. It was as if sex didn’t exist for her and she still wanted me to believe babies were really brought by the stork. Later, she would accuse me of willing what she called “Eve’s curse” to happen too soon and unintendedly revealed that it hadn’t happened for her until she was nearly fifteen. By the time Grace Rose arrived, I had fallen asleep on the floor. She knelt beside me and stroked my hair, waking me. My mother hadn’t followed her up to my bedroom.

Despite my mother’s insistence that I was still a little girl, Grace Rose complimented me on how grown-up I was about the start of my monthlies. I didn’t wail; there was no panic. I certainly hadn’t done what my mother accused me of doing: I hadn’t willed it, but, especially these past few months, I’d been anticipating it. I could feel the changes coming in my body, and from what I understood about the sexual fantasies other girls my age experienced, mine were more vivid and daring.