And on The Eighth Day, God Created Breasts

I know they just didn’t spring up over night, but it definitely seemed that way.

Even when I finally asked Mom and God about them they were still just little bumps on my chest not any bigger than a baby’s fist. The mounds were not firm or rubbery but soft like water balloons filled up all the way. The pair settled in place unobtrusively like a pack of Jehovah Witnesses moving into a new neighborhood. As is true to their nature, however, they soon started ringing the bell and knocking on the door as they stood up and demanded someone pay them attention. Unlike the Jehovah Witnesses, they were not selling salvation.

I first really gave noticed to my breasts when the pair started getting hung up when I pulled my shirts over my head. They protruded out like two groundhogs checking out the flat, dry plains of New Mexico. Some days they could be sensitive and on those days just having them rub up against my shirt made a tingle that both intrigued and tormented simultaneously.

I lived with this newly found curse in silence. I felt like Herbert, the whittling whippet, in that book by Mark Twain. Mom read the story to Little Mary, Jesus and me one night before laying us down for sleep. Mom tried to read us a story every night prior to bedtime. Jesus brought the book about Herbert home from the school library. In the story, Herbert was a racing dog that after a two year career, quite long in terms of racing dogs, was rewarded by being taken to “the farm” where all racing dogs go to live out their retirement in luxury. Only this was not a farm with pastures and trees and other animals with which to chase and play. The farm was actually a dirt pen where the dogs were kept until they died, starving of malnutrition and infested with disease.

One day Herbert found a bone, which he later learned was the leg of Maltreat, the greatest racing whippet ever. Herbert was so embarrassed by the fact that he was the only whippet with anything to gnaw on that he refused to eat it and instead chose to bury the bone. While on the “farm” Herbert discovered that he had a natural talent for whittling. So one day he dug up the bone and began to whittle a key to the front gate. Unfortunately he died of starvation along with the other abandoned dogs before he could get the key completed.

I think there was supposed to be a moral in that story but I could never figure it out. Mom said it was a sick and twisted individual who wrote Herbert the Whittling Whippet and definitely nothing that should ever be told to children. She finally said that she bet a lawyer must have written it and stormed out of the room after kissing Jesus, little Mary and me goodnight.

Like Herbert with his newly discovered bone, I did not speak of my breasts to anyone and endured their intrusion on my normal life without complaint. Unlike Herbert, I did not try to whittle them. I just tried to ignore them. Then I started to bleed from between my legs and that was more than I could handle.

It was midway between my twelfth and thirteenth birthday when I started to bleed. I had heard other girls talk about it at school, in fact Gina (September 8) and Allison (January 4) began keeping a record of when every girl started. I was beginning to think something was wrong with me because most of the other girls had already started to bleed and I didn’t want to be the last one picked, like Sally Struthers (who, by the way, began bleeding on February 2) in basketball.

All of my anticipation could not prepare me for what was going to happen. I had lay in bed on many nights feeling both excited and fearful for the day the dark blood might start to run and anoint me a woman. When the day came I felt neither fear nor excitement and I definitely did not feel anointed as a woman. I mainly just felt pain and the belief that my stomach was trying to jump out of my body through my mouth. I sat in the sixth grade, struggling to pay attention to Sister Murphy’s take on Napoleon, when my belly decided that it had heard enough. Like a French Serf, my uterus rebelled in the worst of ways. It picked up its spade and started hacking about at my vital internal organs. I raised my hand and asked to go to the nurse’s office. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed the blood in my panties.

I immediately went to God; after all he was supposed to know everything and he did create the tempest that had become my body. I found Dad in the garage. He was building a birdhouse based on the desert home of Frank Lloyd Wright. He held a miniature chair in his left hand, which he gently sanded with a small file.

“Hi there Jellybean,” God said without taking his eyes away from the chair. “Ya know, that guy Wright understood the harmony that humans are supposed to attain with their surroundings in order to truly be content. All of this control and domination leaves man empty. Wright knew that at our core we are all symbiotic creatures. Rather than designing buildings that protrude unnaturally up from the landscape like boils on a person’s face, he tried to construct dwellings that blended into the landscape. The building became one with nature and with the inhabitant. He even believed that the furniture of a home should appear as a natural growth from within the home’s interior, almost like a mushroom in the shade of a giant redwood. This would allow one to feel as if they were a part of nature, a piece of the cosmic milieu, rather than a detached stranger occupying a foreign land. A feeling you hopefully will not come to know when you get older.”

I looked at the birdhouse. It was long and boxy with a low-pitched roof. “Why is it so ugly?” I asked.

“Well unfortunately, Wright never lived anywhere pretty: Southern Illinois and Arizona.”

“Oh, one other thing Dad,” I said.

“Yes, anything Jellybean,” God said while continuing his sanding of the chair.

“Why do I bleed from between my legs?” I asked.

God dropped the delicate chair from his hands and it landed on the bench unharmed. He rubbed at his forehead and then picked the chair back up. It was a recliner with little arm rests. The seat had been scraped out to create a pool that could be used to hold birdseed. “Well Jellybean, there is no really easy answer to your question. See we can answer it on a physiological, spiritual or even philosophical level.”

“Well I’m physically bleeding right now, so what if we hit that one first,” I said.

“Okay, well I guess that is a good place to start,” God scratched his forehead with his file. He was obviously stalling. “See Jellybean, the human body is really quite a fascinating and complex system. Actually group of systems,” he corrected himself. “And, well, see... they all work together under the influence of a group of proteins in the blood called hormones.”

“Forget about it,” I huffed. “I’ll go ask mom.”

I found Mom sitting on the floor in the family room playing Candy land with Jesus and Little Mary. She had just drawn a Plumpy card and Jesus and Little Mary were cheering with delight. Mom grudgingly moved her piece back to the beginning.

“I hate the complete randomness of this game,” Mom said to the two giggling children. “It is almost as bad as Chutes and Ladders. There is just no way for someone to formulate a strategy.” Mom was competitive, even when playing Candy land with her two children. I went to mom’s ear and told her that I was bleeding.

“Do you need me to get you a Band-Aid?” she asked.

“I don’t know if a Band Aid would be big enough,” I replied. “Also, I think that might hurt.”

“Oh,” she looked away from the game and gazed into my eyes, “you’re bleeding.” Mom looked back at the Candy land board below her and then at Jesus and Little Mary. “Why don’t you go up to my room and I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

As I ascended the stairs I heard her hurry the game along. I sat in my parent’s room wondering what Mom was going to say. I felt small in their big room and a little scared. Was there something wrong with me? Was it supposed to hurt so much? Maybe I was bleeding for some different reason? I needed to know how long this bleeding was going to last and more importantly how often it would occur. It did not bring along the liberating feelings I had expected. I hoped it didn’t happen more than once every couple years.

Mom opened the door and walked into the room. She was carrying a laundered pair of shorts and underwear. She looked at me and then sat down on the bed next to me. Mother Mary patted my leg, “Jellybean, I guess the first thing we need to do is get you cleaned up.” Mom stood up, ushered me into the bathroom and showed me a thick, white pad in the shape of an hourglass. She peeled off a strip of paper revealing a giant sticker.

My eyes blasted off to Mars when I saw that sticker. It looked just like a giant Band-Aid. In disbelief I said, “You mean you want me to stick that to my, uh my.... Won’t it hurt when I take it off?”

Mom smiled as she struggled to control a laugh. “You stick this part to your panties, Jellybean.” She then pressed it to the crotch of my underwear and I changed clothes.

I walked out of the bathroom and sat back down on her bed. The bed was big with a thick, soft mattress. The bed was also unmade: its covers pulled half way down as they usually were throughout the day. The flowery pillows that Mom had bought for the head of the bed lay piled on the floor in the corner of the room.

Mom stood in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom staring at me. The light showered from behind, silhouetting her shoulder length hair, golden like the straw left in the pasture. She wore a long, comfortable t-shirt and blue jean shorts. Her eyes started to puddle. “When did you start to turn into a little woman, Mary?” I looked at her unable to answer, but I don’t really think she wanted one anyway because before long she shook her head and added, ”I just can’t believe it.”

“Mom, I hope you’re not going to start crying because right now I need someone with a level head on their shoulders. I’m bleeding, I’m cramping and right now I’m feeling a little emotional.” I lied. Inside, I did not just feel a little emotional, I was becoming frantic. Mom still had not explained what was going to happen next. I felt like my head might explode at any moment.

“Don’t worry honey I won’t cry. You do understand, Mary, that you’re not the first girl to start a period. It’s just that you’re growing up all over the place and I failed to see it. Now that I look at you, your face, your hands...I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought I might have you for another year or two.” She next told me that I needed to start wearing a training bra. Once again I was confused because I didn’t know what I was training them for.

Mom sat down on the bed next to me and we settled into a long talk. First she said something about bicycles and how every month I would bleed and need to wear a pad or something called a tampon: a spongy cork that you actually placed inside your body. I told her only a man could have invented such an awful contraption. She responded that actually tampons could be quite helpful. Next we talked about boys and girls and babies. Mom had a way of making me feel normal and most of the fear of the bleeding left me during our conversation.

When mom finished talking I asked her why girls gave birth to babies and had breast that leaked milk and became engorged and why not boys and that’s when she told me to go ask my father. As I got up to go find Dad again I told her that I would never touch a boy for as long as I lived and Mom said that she wished she could believe that.

“Honey,” mom tucked my hair behind my ears and clipped it up in the back. “I believe that your father thinks that he is God. I believe that a man crucified on a cross two thousand years ago is the Son of God and will bring me eternal salvation. Yet, I cannot bring myself to believe that you will not touch a boy during your entire life. I only hope that when you do that it is your free decision and that you do it responsibly.”

I left the room not quite understanding that last comment. I went to the garage but Dad was no longer working on his birdhouse. The birdhouse was near completion and I could see how in the right setting it might be beautiful.

I searched the house and found God lounging in the family room watching Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo. Yes, that is correct. God watches cartoons. In fact, he watches bad cartoons and enjoys them. Johnny was dancing the monkey and God was laughing.

God loved having the opportunity to elucidate on the inspiration of his many creations and especially describing how the seemingly inexplicable could have a very simple solution. “I’m glad your mom was able to clear up the technical stuff. She has always been good with mechanics. Still, she was wise to refer you to me for the more philosophical aspects of puberty. So let’s see, you’re interested in the breast and the monthly guest.”

My Father was insane. But he was the only one I had so I sat down besides him hoping he would tell me something helpful. “Sounds like the title of a Doctor Seuss book when you put it that way, God.” I repeated, “The Breast and the Monthly Guest.”

“I guess you’re right, Jellybean,” Dad turned down the volume on the television and began to recite:
“The monthly guest is such a pest.
He comes uninvited to bring unrest
I would not let him stay in my boat,
I would not let him wear my coat.

I would not let him borrow my car,
If he lived next door or traveled from far.
Each month he makes my wife nag and wail.
I sure am glad I was born a male.
Period.”

God laughed. He looked at me and realized that he was laughing alone. I was unable to see any humor in the situation.

“Okay Jellybean, what about bleeding?" God said. "Is that better?”

“It’s a little more accurate.” I rolled my eyes realizing that all had been lost. “But monthly. Come on God, what were you thinking?”

“Well okay,” he picked up an empty candy dish and started examining it. “Monthly does seem like a little much but the species had to survive. You know life was not always as easy as it is today. Famine, plague, wars: populations used to decrease. Humans needed numbers and monthly was a way to assure survival.”

“And you are probably wondering why women and not men,” he read my mind. “It was all part of the master design,” God placed the candy dish back down on the coffee table, stood up and began pacing. “You see, Mary, if you can recall from the O.T., I created man first. And when I created him I was not thinking about reproduction. I figured the animals could be his companions in the Garden of Eden. Since I created Jack to live forever, I did not give him the need for reproduction. Then I created Jill and Jack's reproductive organs were just sort of fashioned from clay and pressed on afterwards. Jack did not have the physical capacity to carry a baby, nurture or feed the child. I gave all that to Jill.”

“Sounds like you’re describing the trunk space of an automobile, physical capacity,” I said.

“It is more than just physical capacity, Jellybean. Man also does not have the emotional constitution.”

“Sounds like a cop out,” I challenged.

“Well a great cop once said, ‘a man has to know his limitations’ and Dirty Harry Callahan was correct. I created man with a need of independence, separation from those around him. What I did not anticipate was loneliness. I thought that Jack could be alone without being lonely. Boy was I wrong. Men need companionship more than they are ever going to admit. Well, when Jack asked for a wife I created Jill.”

“Now remember, I made man and I knew that woman was going to need something more. I constructed man without others in mind. So I did not give him social skills, cultural attractiveness or really any common sense. I had to shove all those things into the woman and hope that some would rub off on him.”

“Well that plan didn’t work,” I interrupted.

“You can say that again.” God shook his head lamenting his failure. “I also had to give Jill the ability to reproduce because I knew she would go crazy if she was stuck on Earth with just Jack all her life.”

“See,” Dad pointed to Mom resting on a sofa in the other room. She held Little Mary in her arms and had Jesus by her side. She was reading them a picture book. “The basic differences between man and woman go all the way back to creation. Together they make a wonderful pair, each drawing energy and strength from the other. People today try to deny the differences between men and women when really the distinctions should be celebrated.”

“But Dad, some things don’t make any sense. I don’t understand why you put nipples on Jack when they didn’t do anything. It seems like a waste of anatomy. And why do women have breasts that function? Why will I be the one who nurses the baby? While you were removing Jack’s rib you could have inserted some milk ducts.”

God skipped over the nipples-on-men question all together. “Jellybean, your breasts are a blessing from God. You have been created with the ultimate gift, not only can you create life but also you can nourish it. Your breasts fill with a milk that provides all the nutrients and protection that a defenseless baby needs. This is a part of you because you are the one who carries the baby and the whole process prepares your body for this awesome purpose. You should consider yourself lucky to be a woman and have such a wonderful present from your maker.”

“And what wonderful gift did God give man?” I asked him.

“Why I thought that would be obvious,” he answered, “woman.”

I told God what mom said about the pads and tampons and about how girls got pregnant and it really hurt when the babies came out.

“Mary, you may not understand this now, but one day you will consider yourself lucky,” God began but I interrupted again.

“Lucky. I should feel lucky to bleed every month and feel as if someone is yanking out my insides?” I cried.

“Mary, the ability to have a child is a gift. Your uterus develops a lining that is thick and nutritious and accepting to an embryo so small that a hundred of them could sit on the tip of a pencil. The baby is then able to grow and your body cares for it for the nine months while it is inside you. All during that time you create a special bond with your child which no man could ever share.”

“I noticed you picked to come to earth as a man,” I pointed out.

“Well,” he stuttered.

“If this period had to happen every month, why couldn’t all the blood come out at the same time and encased in some type of disposable bag.” God didn’t reply; he just shrugged his shoulders. “And with a handle,” I added. “Don’t tell me this was just an afterthought. We could pull out the whole thing, lining and all, and then just toss it away. I mean if a twelve-year-old girl could figure it out, why couldn’t you? Didn’t you have some of your assistants assigned to these details? No, I guess they were too busy putting nipples on men and designing slugs and sea cows.”

“First, as I have told your mother many times before, slugs are the most divinely spiritual creatures on Earth. They are both happy and content with their lives, which is a lot more than I can say for the majority of the human race. You will never see a slug racing to get somewhere. It enjoys its journey. Second, in regards to the nice little disposable bag idea, I kind of designed the system before the advent of biodegradable plastic and I thought the universe would be in better shape if the whole process was recyclable.”

“Recyclable!” I shouted. “Am I supposed to believe that you were thinking about recycling when you designed the female reproductive tract? Jesus Dad, that has got to be the lamest thing you’ve said to date,” I said.

I was flushed and I could feel heat racing up my back and across my head. I was way out of control but there was no way I could hold anything back. “And another thing, why’d you go and make my hormones go so crazy on me. You had to have done this on purpose just to torment woman.”

“Actually, I did that last part to torment man.”

I stormed out of the room, leaving Dad to his Johnny Bravo in silence.

Making my way up the stairs I looked down at Mom sitting in the living room reading the book to Jesus and Little Mary. I shouted out, “Mom, God is crazy.”

“Tell me about it,” she called back and turned to the next page of the book.