From the 5th Floor

One

A T O M

When I was four years old, I tried using the boys' bathroom at the daycare center I spent most of my mornings at. I had seen kids like Ricky Hannigan and Justin Clark standing at the toilets that I'd otherwise sit on when nature called. I remember thinking to myself, that makes more sense, and went to try it immediately.

Imagine my shock and embarrassment when I ended up peeing all over my tiny jeans and knobby knees. Lucky for me, Clarissa M. arrived right at the moment and screamed in disgust.

"[Redacted] peed on herself!" she cried. "It's all over the floor!"

I cried and cried while the teacher's aides came to grab me and clean me up.

My mother was called to pick me up since, up until that moment, I was believed to be fully potty trained and never brought in an extra pair of bottoms.

She came in a flash with extra underwear and clothes, a dress to be specific, so I could have easier access to the toilet when I needed it. What she didn't understand, and what I couldn't articulate in that instance, was that my problem was not my stubby, clumsy little fingers not being able to undo my fly quick enough before my bladder turned itself loose.

My problem was that I lacked a particular feature that would allow me to use said toilet in a way that, as early as four, felt correct to my mind even if it didn't align with my body.

This was my first experience with this confusion. This discomfort, dysphoria even, if it can be called that. 

There would be other times when my body, however grateful I may be for it, betrayed me and left me feeling like a mosaic put together incorrectly.

Ten years old, fifth grade, that same Clarissa M. came to class one day beaming with excitement over the news that within the next few years she would receive the most prestigious gift a young girl could ever hope to receive.

A period.

This made no sense to me, obviously. She would receive her own designated punctuation mark? That's fantastic for her, but how could she be sure that it wouldn't be misplaced or stolen? Would it be color coded so we would know not to mess with it? These things I assumed would make more sense once she actually came to class with her period and we could all see it.

But no sooner had she mentioned her soon to come period did she also start talking about how she could even feel her breasts beginning to change. She pressed a tiny, honey-colored hand to her shirt above her heart and said with just a tinge of longing in her voice, "My older sister's grew in around this age too, kind of a tradition for the girls in my family to start growing up in the fifth grade."

I'm glad not to be a part of that family, I thought to myself. Still, I reached a hand up to my own chest and was startled to find a soreness I had never noticed before.

The moment I reached my house I stormed over to the dinner table where my mom would no doubt be coloring, writing, or otherwise crafting something spectacular to teach me once my homework was finished.

With my hand still over my chest and the same tears from class in my eyes I cried, "I don't want to grow up yet!"

My mom, ever the sweet and delicate angel, could only hold back a grin as she asked what I meant. I explained the whole day away to her, Clarissa M. and her own very special punctuation and her breasts and her sister's breasts. The humor on my mom's face would have been insulting if I hadn't known my own mother inside and out. She wasn't making fun of me, she was taking in the sweetness of my childhood naivety.

"Oh, my sweet Bunnygirl," she would call me, "I didn't know you were ready to talk about these things yet . . . but I guess I should've. You are already ten, aren't you?" 

"Eleven in October," I had said back.

"Eleven in October, even more reason to talk this out. Come, sit."

I sat and for the next few hours, while I did my homework on the dining room table, my mom explained to me all about how our bodies go through wonderous changes that allow us to create entire families. We bleed, we grow, we swell, we create whole separate lives with just our own bodies. It's miraculous!

While she explains these things to me and answers all of my ignorant questions with such pride and excitement I can't help but anticipate when she'll get to the part about boys bleeding from their penises and giving birth too. Obviously, that part never comes so I have to pipe up about it.

"And the boys? Where do babies come out of them?"

Once again my mom gives me the why can't you stay this age forever smile and shakes her head, dark mahogany waves breaking loose from her bun.

"Boys don't give birth, baby, or have periods. They only help make babies," she explained kindly, checking all the answers from my math work.

"And babies are made by two adult people who love each other?" I asked in review.

"Ideally, yes. Just like how your dad and I made you."

Her smile beamed like starlight the way it did every time she talked about my father. Just in that moment the front door opened with a little chime from the wreath adorning it.

"Speak of the angel," she said through her grin.

The three of us made dinner that night together while I peppered some leftover questions about sex, love, and the human body into the conversation. I was an expert on the subject of menstruation and puberty by the end of the night but that didn't ease the rot I felt inside my gut.

I felt very, very strongly that I should not be allowed to have breasts. Not to mention a period? That felt almost criminal against my body. Still, at ten years old I wasn't sure that I could say these things out loud, especially after the way my mom so elatedly explained all the ways I would blossom within myself and the world.

To this day I still believe that's the night everything changed for me. Slowly at first and then, in a blink, violently.