QUEENOLA BELL--CHAP. 2

CHAPTER 2

We have one week of school left then we are out for summer. I may go out on a date this summer. I’m old enough now. If I can find someone to ask me. I’ve never been the prettiest girl in the world and I’m a little tomboyish but I’m trying to grow out of that. I’ve learned some things from Lisa; she has two older sisters who thought her things like how to act feminine as she puts it. I would rather just be me but I have to accept the fact that things happen to girls whether we want them to or not. Like starting our period, beginning to wear bras, that kind of stuff. I got my first bra at the beginning of the school year that I turned fourteen. Mama went to K-Mart and bought my school clothes, she wouldn’t let me go because I always wanted stuff she didn’t have the money to buy. I always got three pair of pants, three shirts, three pairs of panties, and socks and she’d stop at the dollar store on the way home and buy me shoes. That year I got something special two training bras.
Mama brought my new clothes in my room and tells me to try them on. They all fit okay. She buys things a little big because she says I may grow during the school year and she can’t afford to buy new clothes. My shoes were a little long but I didn’t tell mama. I was afraid she’d do what she did when I was in primary school, she’d cram toilet paper up in the toes of my shoes and say here now they’ll fit. I had to wear them, I didn’t have anymore. I felt like I had on clown shoes. Well the first day of school I got up and started getting ready for school. I put on my new clothes even my new bra. I felt good in my new clothes; it’s all exciting to me because I don’t get them that often. (Often meaning once a year at the beginning of the school year unless some people at school gives me clothes or Lisa gives me hand me downs). I walk to school with Lisa every day. We both live in Gainesville mills, which is what the mill house community is called, so we meet in front of my house and walk to school together. We got to school and found our rooms. We were in the same homeroom. Our teacher was Miss. Hill, big lady, mean looking, and real tall.
Well, I did okay for awhile until my bra started cutting into my skin or at least I felt like it was. I pulled and picked at it all day. The girl that sat behind me kept telling me to be still but I couldn’t help it, my bra kept riding up over my boobs, (or the little knots on my chest that were going to be boobs.) At the beginning of class everyone had to stand up when their name was called. When Miss. Hill called my name <Queenola Bell> everyone started laughing, but I smiled and stood up just like everyone else. I really got picked on about my name. I had the worse year of my life that year, I started my period, and boy was I happy about that. I told mama about it and she went to town on Friday and bought me a box of mini pads. Mama buys groceries every Friday evening when she gets off work, thank goodness Lisa had some pads for me to use until then. Well I made it through that week of that month. The next month during my period, mama takes me and Lisa to the mall, on Saturday, mama had bought my pads on Friday as usual but I didn’t think to take any with me to the mall. I never carried a pocket book then. We were walking around when I get this gross feeling, that I had messed up my clothes. I whisper to Lisa that I had to go to the bathroom and asked her if she had any pads in her big pocket book, she carried all the time. We told mama we were going to the bathroom, then we tore off down the mall to find it. We find the bathroom and go in. I went in a stall and ask Lisa for the pads. While I’m sitting on the toilet Lisa pokes a box of tampons under the door and tells me that’s all she has with her. I thought I was really in a mess because I didn’t even know how to use these things. I take the tampons and read directions. I think I figured it out after using half the box. (Or should I say wasting half the box). I finally got one right. Lisa’s standing here the whole time fussing at me and telling me to hurry up. We walk out of the bathroom and mama is standing outside the door waiting on us she fusses at us and tells us not to run off again.
Well I’m feeling proud of myself now. I learned how to use tampons but they still feel funny and make me walk weird, but after about two months I figured them out, and told mama to buy them instead of pads. Tampons weren’t invented when mama went through this and she looked at me funny but she did it.