I glanced at the canal, afraid she’d seen the deposit of O-bones and T-bones that the catfish were leaving close to the dock. My mother enjoyed making me stand there and wait as she pretended not to take notice of me.

“You babushka, Kate, how you are wiping it?” she finally spoke.

Heat expanded to my ears. Flabbergasted, I sought the correct response when “fine” came, on its own, to my mouth.

My mother expected geometrical wonders from us. From each square of toilet paper, we were supposed to obtain a series of octagonal wipes.

“You so ce’tain?”

“Yes,” I answered though her stare was making me less and less so.

“You star’ you days?”

“What days?”

I was too young to know what on earth she could possibly mean.

“A’kay. Follow me.”

She allowed me to enter her bathroom after I’d removed my sandals and checked the bottom of both my feet.

“Now, you young, but some girls, dey start, you know, even a’ nine, ten, at el’ven. Me, I star’ when I was thi’teen. It’s a waste, such a shame, Mot’her Nature! A’ready you so skinny, jus’ skin an’ bones …”

“Is something wrong with me?” I squeaked.

“I show you sometin’. Now don’ get upset. It is norm’l. I … well … open you eyes.”

Her waste basket wore a thick coat of varnish and shells. My mother pushed aside the loose carpet of short blonde hairs and dirty cotton swabs, until she found what she was looking for. It was wrapped in layers of white toilet paper which she proceeded to unravel like a mummy. Until then, I was almost having fun. Underneath the layers of toilet paper was a tight wad of cotton padding; without a further word of warning, she expanded it.

I don’t know what I did first, gasp, shriek, or lift both hands to my forehead. The cotton padding was drenched with blood, vivid shiny red in the middle, like raw flesh; around the contours, it was exactly the brown of a well-done steak.

“Dis was Mótina’s.” She ignored my agitation.

“You cut yourself again shaving?”

I pressed my stomach, my face, my watery eyes. The women of my mother’s single blade razor generation always had, I noticed, regularly chipped white scars down their shin bones. I imagined my mother shaving the skin off her shin, tan on the outside, white on the inside, like a potato peeling.

“Now, dis happens to ev’ry woman, we lose a lil’ blood, ev’ry month. Dis is wha’ makes us a woman. Even if you a child still in you mind, you body is ’coming a woman.”

“A little?! Oh my God, no! From where? My babushka??”

She answered quietly, “No. You lil’ sis’er.”

I instinctively knew she was not referring to Cecilia. A wave of outrage swelled in me.

“I’ll urinate blood?!”

The toilet bowl filled with tomato soup; macaroni hands, feet, buttocks, breasts floated to the steamy top … Harry lapped Ursula’s mess like a dog.