embarrassing incident

My mother swears that she does not remember this incident.

But I do.

It was significant, after all: It was the original S.W.B.

And we all know how reliable a six-year-old's memory is.

The incident occurred while we were visiting a friend of my mother's, who lived in a block of flats. They had been inside drinking coffee, as I played outside at the bottom of the long car park. There was an old cement block incinerator in the small garden there, and I had been poking around in it; searching for what, I don’t know.

What I found was a pair of bloodied underpants in a paper bag.

I ran inside, waving the underpants in my hand and screeching.

Mum, you have to call the police! Someone’s been murdered! I found these in the incinerator!

My mother and her friend were shocked, and rightly so. As my mother forced me to dispose of the evidence and sent me off to wash my hands, I heard her friend say to her:

I think you’re going to have to have a little talk with Megan.

Now this sparked my interest. A Little Talk. I nagged my mother all the way home: What did she mean by a little talk? Are we going to have a little talk? What was the little talk going to be about? Could she give me any hints?

My mother said: Not now, Megan.

A week or so later, when my father and brother were “elsewhere”, my mother sat me down next to her on the couch. She placed a book on the coffee table in front of us. It was a big square hard-cover, and very innocuous – all pastel colours and dainty line-drawings.

We went through the book together. She was very patient and calm, slowly pointing out the ovaries and the fallopian tubes and the uterus, and carefully, methodically explaining what each one did.

When we were done, I said to her:

So, the blood comes out because you have to make room for the egg?

My mother sighed.

Yes, Meg, that’s more or less it.

I believed this until I was about fifteen years old.

Sad, huh?