Do Tampons Take Your Virginity?: A Catholic Girl's Memoir (2 page)

The bride was our distant cousin (like everyone in the village). I remember how happy she was; she laughed the entire time. She was a plain girl in her early twenties with frizzy brown hair. She wore brown horn-rimmed glasses, and she was missing four teeth in the front. I could tell because her bridge was not well made and the false teeth were obvious, at least to me.

The groom was a tall, thin young man who smiled a lot and spoke very little. They looked really happy together.

The actual church ceremony was boring, as it would be for any child. I squirmed in the pew and my father kept pinching my legs so that I would stay quiet. He would grab the outside of my thigh and twist until it bruised. But I still wouldn’t stop moving.

After the ceremony, we threw rice at the bride and groom when they exited the church. Then everyone crowded into the back of panel trucks and on motorbikes and went to the reception, which was in a large hall at the top of the city. Everyone arrived together and the women swept inside, donned housecoats and aprons and began preparing the food.

All of the men stayed outside to ready the meat. They had slaughtered a cow for the reception, which was shot and dressed.

My parents would not let me watch the slaughter. I heard the gunshot, and then there was silence.

An hour later, I was finally allowed to go outside. I saw the cow’s head on the ground. It was skinned, but I noticed that the eyes were still twitching.

“Daddy, why is the cow’s eye still moving?” I asked.

“It’s the nerves. They just do that. Don’t touch it,” he said, slapping my hand away.

I stared at the cow’s head for at least thirty minutes, convinced that it was still alive, perhaps trying to communicate with me. I said a little prayer for the cow. I thought it might be in pain. After all, it was still moving.

The men all talked outside, smoking tobacco in pipes and drinking homemade wine in mismatched cups.

The women chattered away inside, cooking and gossiping. When everyone was finally seated for the reception, the bride and groom appeared in different clothes. They had changed out of their cherished bridal clothes, which were already tucked away in a cedar chest, never to be worn again. They sat down at the main table. There were some speeches made, the exact details of which I don’t remember.

Each table had multiple carafes of red wine, all homemade and of varying shades. Each place setting had a little bom-boniere of five Jordan almonds wrapped in pink tulle and tied with a little satin ribbon.

The women served us steak from the freshly slaughtered cow. It was the best meat I had ever tasted. During the meal, the bride took her front teeth out a few times because meat got stuck in her bridge. She and her young husband kissed during the meal. They seemed so happy with this simple life. It was the first time I had seen what looked like a truly happy couple.

I played with the other kids. We ran around outside and all over the place. Then I discovered the alcohol table, which had dozens of colorful bottles of flavored liquor. I remember sneaking under the table with the bottle of banana liquor, which was incredibly sweet and delicious. I took long swigs throughout the evening. I was drunk and smiling when I finally went home. My parents were busy gossiping, so they never noticed. I slept soundly that night.

That night, I dreamed about the wedding. Could this be what the rest of the world was like? Could it be that some married couples were really happy?

I remember having a fun time that day and I felt hopeful that I could be happily married one day, too. Not every marriage was a miserable goat fuck like my parents’ union.

1982,
AGE
9

When I was growing up, we had some wonderful Portuguese neighbors: the Bettencourt family. Mr. Bettencourt was handsome and his wife was attractive and friendly. Mr. Bettencourt was known to work “in the garbage,” which means he worked for the local waste disposal company. It was a great job, with union pay and benefits. They had two children, a boy and a girl, just like our own family.

Their son, Daniel, was my best friend. We were the same age, and played together every day. His little sister, Lucy, played with my little brother.

The Bettencourt were an upwardly mobile couple and soon left their rental apartment for a nice stucco home by the beach. Even after they moved, we still visited them a lot. Mr. Bettencourt raised pigeons in the backyard and his wife entertained guests frequently. I liked the way their house smelled.

They didn’t come to visit us very much. I think my parents were jealous of them. My father thought of Mr. Bettencourt as his “best buddy,” but I don’t think the feeling was mutual. Mr. Bettencourt was a likable man and he had many friends. Overall, they were a happy family.

Mr. Bettencourt thought my father was a little strange. Which of course, he was.

The Bettencourt seemed to have everything: their own house, a happy marriage, a pigeon coop, and a great job. They lived like kings.

At one point, Daniel and I became sexually curious about one another. We decided to play doctor, which was pretty harmless sexual play. My father caught us one time and freaked out. I think we were only about nine or ten years old. Father immediately took me home and beat the shit out of me. He called me a
puta
. My mother was actually more upset than my father—whoever would have thought that my mother could produce a child like me, who actually
wanted
to touch her own vagina?

I should have been recoiling from my pussy like it was a cobra.

Daniel wasn’t punished. Mr. Bettencourt just blew it off as childhood curiosity, which any normal parent would do. But Daniel and I weren’t allowed to play alone anymore.

We continued to visit even after my mother got sick. So we played in the common areas. At one point, we snuck away and Daniel showed me his stash of
Playboy
magazines. They were old
Playboys
—second-hand, garage-sale
Playboys
, but they were still nudie magazines! I was impressed.

Then one day, it all ended.

My grandmother Amalia, who was my maternal grandmother, invited Daniel’s grandmother to her house for a sleepover. I never really understood the reasoning for the overnight stay, but it happened. Both of these ladies were pretty old; over sixty by then.

Overnight, some money disappeared from my grandmother’s purse. My grandmother discovered the theft the next day and immediately suspected Grandmother Betten-court. My grandmother called the Bettencourt household, screaming accusations.

“Thief! You thief! You were a guest in my house! How could you?” Amalia screamed.

“You are a crazy woman! Why don’t you ask your
crazy homo
son, or your
druggie slut
teenage daughter where the money went!” hissed Grandmother Bettencourt.

My grandmother’s children, Moses and Diana, were teenagers with poor reputations. Moses and Diana were my mother’s youngest siblings; the babies of the family. It was all conjecture, of course, but it made good fodder for an argument.

My grandmother took a deep breath to respond. But before she could say anything, Grandmother Bettencourt hung up on my grandmother. That was it! It was WAR. All out, gossip-to-the-whole-town, crazy-old-lady WAR!

A rift opened up in the Portuguese community—those who believed one old lady and those who believed the other. My mother picked sides with my grandmother, and Mother subsequently refused to go over to the Bettencourt’s house. This greatly distressed my father. He hated the appearance of outward disharmony and this little scrap between old ladies seemed ridiculous. In vain, he tried to negotiate a truce between the two women.

Neither would budge. No one can hold a grudge like an old Catholic grandmother.

But the war raged on... for years. My father continued to visit the Bettencourt family alone. My mother never went back, even though she had enjoyed the visits. She felt it would have been a betrayal to her mother, who still talked incessantly about the stolen money. Of course, it’s ridiculous to believe that the old lady stole the money. My grandmother probably misplaced it, or my aunt or uncle really did take it.

The Bettencourt family never set foot in our house again.

When Grandmother Bettencourt died, my grandmother finally stopped talking about this “horrible incident.” At that point, she must have thought it bad form to speak ill of the dead. But she didn’t go to the funeral. That would have been too much. And she really wasn’t ready to forgive.

I went to a wedding a few years ago and saw Mr. and Mrs. Bettencourt in the pew next to me. They were older, but still a very handsome couple. They greeted me warmly, and told me that neither one of their kids had married. Daniel was still single.

I was sad for them... they deserved some grandkids.

1982,
AGE
9

There was only one black kid in our elementary school. His name was Randall Johnson. He had an older sister who was popular, but she was in high school. Randall was an outcast and he had few friends.

I wanted to be his friend because I felt like an outcast, too. I used to compose little novels, written on folded sheets of binder paper and stapled together. In fifth grade, I wrote a little book about Randall titled
Randall Johnson’s Adventures with the Birds
.

It was typical fifth grade gibberish—50 pages of block lettering and line drawings. I was quite proud of it. When it was finished, I took my masterpiece to school and showed Randall. Instead of being impressed, he got angry.

“I don’t want you to write about me!” he yelled.

“But it’s good, Randall—read it. I made you a hero.”

“I don’t want to be in your stupid book!”

I was so upset. Enraged, in fact. He had rejected me. Who did he think he was? And then I screamed, “I hate you, Randall! You’re a dumb nigger!” Randall froze. Then he started crying. Hysterical, unstoppable crying.

My parents never used racial slurs. I don’t even remember where I heard the word
nigger
. I just knew it was really bad and it would hurt Randall’s feelings. All the other kids in the class turned to stare at us. The teacher, Mr. Coleson, walked up and asked what happened.

Randall pointed an accusing finger at me. “She-she— called me a
nigger!
”

Mr. Coleson looked at me, his mouth open. He was horrified. My father had given Mr. Coleson permission to spank me in class during the last parent-teacher meeting and I thought he would punch me. So I lied.

“Randall called me a bitch!” I started crying, too, more from fear than anything else, but the tears were genuine.

“That’s a
lie!
” Randall yelled. He wouldn’t stop crying. Mr. Coleson took us both outside and talked to us privately. He left us in the hallway, sitting in chairs on opposite sides of the room. We sat in silence for about thirty minutes and then went back to class. Nobody ever said anything else about it.

I felt so guilty. I never forgot that day. It made an indelible impression upon me. As an adult, it bothered me so much that I tracked Randall down online. I sent him an e-mail and asked him to forgive me. But even then, I couldn’t get myself to repeat what I had said, even in the e-mail.

This was his exact response:

“Good to hear from you. My apologies for the tardiness of my reply. Now what’s this with all the worry about things twenty years ago? There’s nothing to apologize for. We were kids. It was a long time ago and that’s it. Come to think of it, I probably thought of you more as sassy than rude. So free yourself from worry over imagined slights. I felt none and take no offense.”

When I read his reply, I cried. He could have been a complete asshole, but instead, he forgave me, and in the most gracious way possible.

Thank you, Randall Johnson.

1984,
AGE
11

European Catholics love dark colors because they “show less dirt.” These color choices spill over into all aspects of their daily lives: dark brown cars, wine-colored tablecloths, and black socks and shoes, even in the summertime.

I hated wearing dark socks. In the eighties, all the other kids had pegged jeans, white Reebok sneakers, and scrunchy tube socks that came up at least six inches above their shoes. I was the only kid wearing bell bottoms, patent-leather fats, and black socks. When I walked to class, the other kids would call out, “Ding, dong, ding!” which was supposed to be the sound of my bell-bottom pants.

I begged Mother for white tube socks when I was in junior high school. Madonna was really in fashion then, and I desperately wanted legwarmers, long white socks, and pegged jeans.

Mother never bought white socks because she said they would “show dirt” and would be too difficult to clean. So I was the only kid in the sixth grade wearing little girl patent- leather black shoes with black socks.

My grandmother, Amalia, finally gave me a few pairs of white socks. I washed them in the bathroom sink so I could wear them over and over. In desperate times, when the socks were still wet, I dried them with a hair dryer and put them on while they were still damp.

In seventh grade, I was ecstatic when a friend gave me her old legwarmers. They were pink. I brought the legwarmers home and proudly showed them to my parents. My father flew into a rage and threw them in the trash.

“Do you want to be a
whore
?” he screamed. “These things are for
putas
.” He raised his fist, but I ran to my room. I let it go and didn’t get punched, which seemed like a fair trade at the time.

That was it. The conversation was over. I was shocked— why this sudden prejudice against legwarmers? I didn’t understand it. He’d never mentioned anything about them before. But I suspected that it was Madonna. My father
hated
Madonna. Her blockbuster “Like a Virgin” video was all over television and she was wearing legwarmers and cut-off gloves, which were also contraband.