Alyssa F. • Illinois • 24
Scene: it is two days before my thirteenth birthday, and I am wearing a strappy little black and white dress that— according to my grandma— makes me look like Audrey Hepburn. In the next room, my family and a bunch of old people I don’t really know are chewing on overcooked chicken swimming in some kind of lemon sauce. This party is for me, but it doesn’t really feel like it. Most of the guests are at least five times my age.
Tomorrow is my Bat Mitzvah. I’ve been preparing for a whole year, so I must be ready, but knowing that all these strangers showed up to watch me read in a foreign language from a sacred scroll is a little intimidating. My stomach is doing flips.
I excuse myself to the bathroom, imagining all the ways that tomorrow might be a colossal disaster. When I pull down my underwear, there is a reddish-brown smear along the crotch. I stare, first dumbfounded, then amazed, then fucking TRIUMPHANT, and i march back out into the dining room with a cat-ate-the-canary smile, and inform my mother that I need to borrow her purse, because I just became a motherfucking WOMAN.
