Banned Like My Period

When I was somewhere in that too-big, too-small space between age 10 and 12, I found a faded copy of Julie of the Wolves on my grandmother’s bookshelf. I still can still feel the brittle cover flap in my hands. And the sound of the pages crinkling, blinking in light they hadn’t seen for decades probably. My grandmother said that it had been my aunt’s book. And then she said something about how I probably shouldn’t be reading it. So of course, I hurried to a hidden corner in my grandparents’ big, silent farmhouse as soon as possible. As I read about a Native Alaskan teenager facing a bitter-cold adolescence, my eyes darted under the bed in a long-unused guest room in Florida. I was afraid to mess up the comforter if I sat on the bed, and afraid of what might crawl out from under it if I sat beside it. But reason got the better of me. I knew that not a speck of dust fell to the ground without my grandmother knowing it. She’d have paid someone to scrub and spray for spiders faster than I could imagine them. So I settled into the fluffy beige carpet and read my mysterious, disapproved book. The first thing that really struck me – maybe because I was used to stories about survival and frigid wildlands – was that Miyax had her period. And the author just wrote it, right there on the page. My parents, and everyone that I knew really, avoided mentioning periods like my grandmother avoided the concept of dust. My dad would change the channel when Tampex commercials came on. And my mom would furtively ask if I needed to change anything “down there.” I had my first period when I was 10, before all my friends. I’d never read a book that included periods as a part of a character’s story that was worth-mentioning, or even mentionable. Now the book was even more interesting. When I got to the part about the sexual abuse, I had no idea that the book was banned because of that. I only knew it was another thing my family would never talk about. I was horrified for Miyax but I felt some kind of warmth knowing that at least here, on these pages, we could say these things aloud. Real things – things I had like periods, and things, thank God, I’d never experienced. But it all belonged. Seeing it all there so exposed like the tundra helped me think that it all deserved to be spoken. Little did I know then that in a few years I’d move to Alaska – Miyax’s land - with my family and my well-hidden stash of pads. I can still feel the squishy, concealed bulge in my bag. Long before we moved, my aunt took back her book from me. But I’d read it already, and I knew that even my periods belonged. I already had what I needed, courage like Miyax.