would stop, but it seemed my body was no longer mine. It belonged to
itself now, and cared not at all how I felt about these strange
alterations, about whether I wanted to stop being a child, and become
something else.
That something else thrilled and frightened me. I’d always known
that I would grow differently than my brothers, but I’d never thought
about what that might mean. Now it was all I thought about. I began to
look for cues to understand this difference, and once I started looking,
I found them everywhere.
One Sunday afternoon, I helped Mother prepare a roast for dinner.
Dad was kicking off his shoes and loosening his tie. He’d been talking
since we left the church.
“That hemline was three inches above Lori’s knee,” Dad said.
“What’s a woman thinking when she puts on a dress like that?” Mother
nodded absently while chopping a carrot. She was used to this
particular lecture.
“And Jeanette Barney,” Dad said. “If a woman wears a blouse that
low-cut, she ought not bend over.” Mother agreed. I pictured the
turquoise blouse Jeanette had worn that day. The neckline was only an
inch below her collarbone, but it was loose-fitting, and I imagined that
if she bent it would give a full view. As I thought this I felt anxious,
because although a tighter blouse would have made Jeanette’s bending
more modest, the tightness itself would have been less modest.
Righteous women do not wear tight clothing. Other women do that.
I was trying to figure out exactly how much tightness would be the
right amount when Dad said, “Jeanette waited to bend for that hymnal
until I was looking. She wanted me to see.” Mother made a
disapproving tsk sound with her teeth, then quartered a potato.
This speech would stay with me in a way that a hundred of its
precursors had not. I would remember the words very often in the
years that followed, and the more I considered them, the more I
worried that I might be growing into the wrong sort of woman.
Sometimes I could scarcely move through a room, I was so
preoccupied with not walking or bending or crouching like them. But
no one had ever taught me the modest way to bend over, so I knew I
was probably doing it the bad way.
—