Jill D. • Colorado • 24
My story starts the usual way: waiting for a period that just wouldn’t start. A spot here, a spot there, but where is the actual flipping cheetah? I wished my period would just happen already.
But nature won’t be rushed; my period happened when it happened, several months later. Ruining my orange pair of “Friday” underwear, I might add. Whether or not it was actually Friday, this underwear anarchist cannot say.
That’s when things took a turn for the colorful.
I told my mom, and she sat me down. She pulled out a box of tissue paper and gave it to me.
She said, “You’re a woman now, Jilly. I’ve been waiting to give you this until it happened.”
Inside the box? A marble.
A handmade, clear and blue marble—the cratered blue center wrapped in a shell of transparent glass, lovingly rounded into a smooth sphere. It was like a little alien planet to represent the alien shift into womanhood. It was a beautiful marble. But it was a marble nonetheless. What the hell is a woman supposed to do with a marble?
…
I wish I knew where it was.
