The Scars That Bind

We were sitting in her room--she on the bed and me on the chair next to it. The makeup she wore had begun to slide across her face as the oil from the drudgery of the day surfaced on her skin.

"I can show them to you," she said. "But you will have to close my bra."

I'd never seen the scars of a double-mastectomy in person before. Those I had seen in pictures were years healed. Micki's were fresh.

"Okay," I said.

***

Sitting on the floor in front of the television, my  nine-year-old self had had enough of these napkins commercials. The women in them smiled and ran carefree on the beach, played tennis or swam.

What the heck are those things, and why would any lady be happy to wear them? The question burned in my gut for some time until finally, I could take it no longer. I would bust if I didn't ask. Just bust!

"Ma, what are sanitary napkins?" At long last, it was out. My mother, working the tab of her third can of beer for the night, sat in her corner chair. Her eyes began to drift into space, as they always did when she was like this. And when she was like this was every night.

"Women use them," she slurred.

Micki, sixteen, said, "I'll show you, Kim."

With a slight sound of relief, my mother said, "Don't show her yours."


Taking me by the hand, my sister led me into the bathroom. She opened the linen closet and pulled a cardboard box from the top shelf.

K-O-T-E-X, it spelled.

Next, she dug an elastic band out of a bag. The band had two strips hanging from it, with metal closures at the end of each.

"You put it around your waist," she said, "but you attach the napkin through it first." Then she put her hand in the cardboard box and pulled out a pad. It was the same as the napkins I saw on television--rectangular, with cotton padding in the center and two strips of material at each end.

Perplexed, I said, "Why do women wear these?"

"Because they bleed every month for a week, dummy."

"Ewww," I said.

***

"Can you?" she asked. Micki laid down slowly as I unzipped the post-operative brassiere. And then I saw them: two sanitary napkins where her breasts used to be. She sat up and moved them. I could hardly speak. Each side consisted of two seams: one horizontal, the other a railroad line plowing up the middle in neat stitches.

"The surgeons did a good job," I muttered.

"Yeah, they did." Taking a moment, she looked at herself in the mirror above the dresser. "Ready?" she asked. She lay back again and I began to fasten the bra.

"Sure," I said.  She winced as I missed the first eye-hook. 

My fumbling hands betrayed the calm in my voice.

Missed it again. She winced again.

"Sorry."

Why won't this damned thing close?