Mother Daughter Talk

Because my Ecuadorian mother was impregnated seven times, you’d figure 
she’d have something to say to her seven pajaritos when their time came 
to learn about the birds and the bees.  But my mother’s idea of sex 
education was telling me, “You no have no boyfriend y no sex antes de you 
married!” and telling my brothers, “Si you make some girl pregnant, I 
freakin’ kill you!”  Needless to say, I didn’t dare tell my mother, when 
fifth grade came around my prepubescent body started “blossoming,” my 
ovaries started doing their thing, my chest started growing sorry excuses 
for breasts (which my brothers referred to as “mosquito bites”), and my 
school required a three-hour sex education class—Project K.N.O.W. (which 
I now affectionately remember as Killing Naïve Notions Of What it means 
to be a Woman).  I almost wished I had told her (and endured her 
inevitable, “Why they sayin’ to you that in school?  They stupid o 
somethin’?  They no know they show you somethin’ of sex and you go do?”) 
because Project K.N.O.W., and its after effects, proved to be traumatic.  
	As my classmates and I were lead into two separate classrooms—one 
for boys, one for girls—the girls and I whispered about how the boys 
probably hoped they’d get to watch people having sex.  “Boys are so 
gross,” we agreed as we filed into rows of blue plastic chairs.  As the 
projector’s motor whirred, we giggled, wondering if we’d have to 
see “boobies” and “naked butts.”  Numbers—3-2-1—flashed over the screen 
and horrible seventies music filled the room.  A National Geographic 
documentary voice boomed, “Knowing Our Bodies: Just What’s Happening to 
Me and What Does it Mean?”  
	We knew what was happening.  Our “blossoming” selves were being 
forced to watch some outdated film about puberty.  
	We squirmed in our seats as were shown diagrams of our (slowly, 
oh so slowly) maturing breasts, our uteruses, our ovaries, our fallopian 
tubes, and our—“Gasp!”—vaginas.  Then, we were shown diagrams of the male 
anatomy—the prostate, the vas deferens, the—“Hehehe, he said it!”—
testicles, and the—“Oh my God.”—erect penis.  
	And then, the National Geographic voice told us where that erect 
penis goes and what it does and what that doing can make.  
	And then, we saw a baby explode from a screaming woman’s vagina.  
	I had never seen so much blood in my life.  I couldn’t believe 
something so big, so slimy, so weird, came out of such a little hole.  
And my God, everything was so hairy.  I felt terrified, ruined.  This is 
what was happening to me?  A little egg would travel down a little tube 
and all of a sudden boom bang orgasm and all of that would happen?  I 
didn’t want blood in my panties or lumps on my chest or boys and their 
erect penises or screaming babies blasting out of my little, as my mother 
so discreetly referred to it, cosita.  No, sir, I didn’t want any of it.  
The voice in the film reassured me, “Not to worry.  It’s natural.  You’re 
growing into a woman.”  
	He was right.  I couldn’t escape womanhood.  Just a few months 
later, I got my first period.
	I absolutely feared telling my mother.  What would she say to me 
now, now that my body had betrayed me and I was biologically capable of 
pregnancy?  Getting my period did not make me feel like a natural woman.  
It made me hear my mother’s voice in my head, on repeat: “You no have no 
boyfriend y no sex antes de you married!  Si you get pregnant from some 
freakin’ boy, I kill you!”  But I had to tell her.  My supply of feminine 
products acquired from Project K.N.O.W. had run out.  And I knew my 
mother was just crazy enough to keep count of her products, which meant 
if I started to use them, she’d notice, and then she’d start asking 
questions, probably in front of my brothers—“Silbi, you having your 
freakin’ period or somethin’?  You using mis cosas?”  
	I agonized for hours, as my uterine lining kept sloughing off, 
before sheepishly pulling my mother aside and whispering, “I have to tell 
you something.”  I’d never told my mother I needed to tell her anything 
in my life.  
	“Que?” she queried, touching my shoulder, searching my face, 
probably wondering what hideous thing I was going to tell her—that I 
stole a pair of shoes, that I broke her crystal, that I’d been 
impregnated.  
	“Um, well,” I delayed, “I got my period.”
	“Oh,” she dropped her tense shoulders, sighed, “venga conmigo,” 
and motioned for me to follow her into the bathroom.  Then, without much 
warning, she gave me my lesson in taking care of my new womanhood.  She 
said, “You take dis here, the pad, okay?  And you take dis off, and you 
pull down sus calcones, and—thbbbt—you stick it on.  ‘Es all.  I buy you 
more next time I go to da store.”
	I couldn’t believe that was it.  I was relieved.  I was 
horrified.  That was all my mother was going to say to me about becoming 
a woman?  “Okay, sounds good,” I rushed, wanting to end the awkwardness 
and avoid any talk about sex and babies, “uh thanks, mom, 
thanks.”