You were a sort of blood
mother to me: first you held me
close, for eighteen years, and then
you let me go.
Sharon Olds, Ode to my Hymen
Was I ever, am I ever, comfortably outside my mother? Languishing, always. A thin layer swathed around the truth of our non-resemblance, our non-penetration. Me, her daughter, a synopsis of her motherhood, tally of her attendance, packaging of her method—ripped open because the gift so deeply hidden inside. Because I was so well behaved, the story of my virginity, of its loss, within the confines of my mother’s house, beneath the margin of its Spanish roof tiles, above the line of its surveyed grounds, is a story of secret life.
Of course, I never meant to undermine. Under mine—under my own adolescent body an additional young adult body, is all.
Gustavo, Gerardo, Gilberto, what even was his name? I’ll wager Gerardo. No, I’m not sure of the title of this story’s secondary character but certain of his crescendo: he in college, I in high school. His hair bleached (this is important). His toothy kind kid grin. That night, like many, we knocked back blue mojitos at Señor Frogs with his gangly Mexican friend, Abelardo. His name, I am sure of.
Gerardo (yes, let’s call him Gerardo) drove me home after Señor Frogs closed its doors, crossed the front gate of my mother’s concrete block home, entered the wooden frame of my room. No reason to enter but to enter.
When you broke—you, hymen—when you tore, you gashed other things along the arc of your cut. For one: the image of me as virtuous daughter. More: the idea of me as tractable daughter. Gone: the notion of me as pageantry daughter. The minute you cracked, motion of open at my bedroom door.
Me on my mother’s bed, after she walked in mid-coitus, trying to explain. This was only the first time. Praying, God, please don’t let my blood stain her bed. Testimony sealed with a red dragging kiss—scarlet innard of plunge—down the inseam of my thigh. My mother’s response, it’s too bad it had to be like this, your first time. I should’ve lied. Confessed it to be the fifth, the eighth, the twentieth time.
After that, I tried to hang out with Gerardo, but we were over, done for, invalid. I ashamed, he ashamed, my mother ashamed. All of us, yoked by our communal bath of shame. Shame in my mother brews anger. My event, her personal offense. By then, I sensed her need to slaughter hurt by lashing out. Daughter a reflection, whose survival a matter of deflection.
Haven’t I taught you well, haven’t I taught you better?
Yes, mother, the problem, the ruin, is me.
Me, though—her summary.
To move on, I hunted for a deft second time. Quickly, I found it. No need for specifics: yeah, I’ve done it. Of course, all I’d done was crack you—you—blameless den. All I’d done was bleed your placid cover into my shower. All I’d done was further affix terror and submission, reserve and fascination to the being of mother—that particular soul whose body cooked me and housed me before hurling me out.
I have a daughter now. A daughter with a small daughter hymen, to have and to unhave, to rupture as her interactions deem fit.
At some point, I will speak to her of promise, of pleasure, and of how they can be divorced from puncture. But mostly I yearn for thoughts of me to never pierce her way.