May We Be Forgiven

it,” I say. I hang up so excited, it’s like being given the key to a kingdom. I throw Milk Bones to Tessie and litter the floor with cat treats. I open the fridge, which remains empty and sour-smelling, and remind myself to go to the grocery store for food and something to clean the fridge.
    I owe Cheryl big-time and start thinking of what I can do to thank her. I can’t exactly send flowers; maybe a box of steaks? What can you send that remains a secret? I could have supplies sent to Nateville. “In your honor a hundred, make it two hundred, jars of fortified peanut butter for starving children have been sent to Nateville, South Africa.” Maybe I should buy her spa certificates—women love having their feet rubbed without the football game on in the background.

    M eanwhile, I go back to the hardware store, hoping that I might run into the woman who needed new batteries again, and buy a new answering machine for the house. “I love this hardware store, it has everything you need and even things you didn’t realize that you need,” I announce to the old guy at the cash register, who looks at me blankly.
    I put the old answering machine in Jane’s closet and set up the new one—I let it speak for itself with a mechanical voice, “Hel-lo we are un-able to take your call, please leave a message.”
    In the late afternoon, the phone rings; I let the machine pick up as a test. It’s Ashley, in tears. “Is this my house? Did I call the wrong number? I need Mom,” she sobs.
    “What happened?” I say, picking up. The machine automatically turns off.
    “I just need my mom,” she says.
    “Tell me.”
    She sniffles. “I need to talk to Mom.”
    “I know, but she’s not here,” I say as tactfully as possible. “What happened?”
    “I’m going through some, um, changes, and I need her advice.”
    “Changes?”
    “You know, like, growing up.”
    “Did you get your period?”
    She sniffles and doesn’t say anything.
    “Is there a school nurse or someone there you could talk to?”
    “I tried. She gave me a big biology lecture and some pads and Tampax and said if I was religious I should discuss with my priest before using them, and then said, ‘Actually, I take that back—use whatever you feel most comfortable with.’ I found it all very confusing.”
    “What do your friends do?”
    “They talk to their moms or their older sisters.” She sobs. “I don’t know anything about this stuff. The only thing Mom ever told me was some story about when she was in junior high and the school nurse gave her a giant sanitary pad. She said it was like a diaper, and she put it between her legs and waddled down the hall, sure that everyone knew she had her period. She was so embarrassed, she asked to be excused from gym, took a scissors into the bathroom, cut the pad into four pieces, and used masking tape to attach it to her underwear.”
    “Your mom was always right out there on the cutting edge,” I say, finding myself not exactly excited about the story but happy to be talking about Jane. “I tried to use the Tampax,” Ashley says, bursting into tears again. “I put it in the wrong hole.”
    I am trying to imagine what she’s talking about. I say nothing. “You know how there are two holes down there?”
    “I think so,” I say.
    “I put it in the wrong one.”
    “How do you know?”
    “It doesn’t feel right.”
    “You put it in your tush?” I don’t know what else to call it—I don’t want to say “behind” because everything we’re talking about is behind, and I don’t want to say “ass” or “butt” or “bung hole” because it’s all too crude when talking to an eleven-year-old.
    “Yes. It hurts a lot. It was really hard to feel what was going on down there, and the first hole seemed too small, and so I kept going.”
    “Does it have a string?” I only know about the string because once I was trying to have sex with a girl and she said, I have my period, and I said, I don’t mind, and she said, But I’m plugged—and I looked confused. Pull the string, she said, and I did, and out popped a clotted wad of cotton and blood, and, thinking I was going to drop it on the floor, I kind of let go and sent it flying harder than I thought—it slapped against the wall, slid down, and landed at the molding, leaving a bloody trail.
    “It had a string,” Ashley says.
    “Can you get a mirror and take a look?”
    I feel like someone trying to land a plane who’s only ever