In parts of the world, traditional customs and lack of proper hygiene products lead girls to drop out of school. In the Bronx, one Catholic man who preached about our lord Jesus Christ made me want to quit too.
At 14, I hadn’t yet learned the ropes of carrying pads and aspirin in my bag or mastered tracking my flow. I was new to being a woman. So when the first ache hit in the middle of religion class, I knew I was screwed. I had no pads, and the sanitary napkin vending machines in the restroom weren’t free.
Mr. Cooper was a drill sergeant: Catholic, bald, tall, always shouting. He was strict and had a knack for picking out nervous students for the morning prayer presentation. Sitting in the first row with a cold sweat breaking on my forehead from the cramps, I must have looked like I was going cold turkey.
I could have taken Advil, but I had none, and my mother didn’t believe in borrowing ibuprofen. “I didn’t raise you to take drugs from strangers,” she’d yell in Spanish. She emigrated from Puerto Rico to the Bronx at 18. Being alone taught her women couldn’t show emotion or weakness. In the borough where I was raised, street corner churches taught me that pain was for sinners who needed to repent. So when a layer of hell had an open spot in my lower abdomen, I decided to suffer in silence.
“Jesus comes when you need him most,” Mr. Cooper said, a hand in the air. Now it was time for student prayer reflections. He closed his Bible, his angry blue orbs meeting every student’s eyes in the classroom. If you looked away, you’d have to present.
He looked right at me. For the three seconds that I tried to convey the amount of agony I was in, I prayed that his Mr. Clean face would pick someone else. Then the cramp hit. I winced. My eyes lost him and I could hear God sigh in disappointment.
“Ashlie, you’re up!”
I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
“Ashlie, I said you’re up.” He was at the foot of my desk, the overhead light glinted off his bald head. I feared my jeans were stained.
“I’m not feeling well, Mr. Cooper. I’d like to sit this one out,” I said. I started to sweat again. There was no way Mr. Cooper would let me go up there if he understood. I hoped God would give him a sign.
“Ashlie…”
“But Mr. Cooper, I have…” I began, but his eyes were daring me to sit a second longer. I looked at my classmates, still the words “my period” wouldn’t tumble out. For a normal phenomenon that has over 5,000 slang terms, it was never talked about in public without hushed tones and uncomfortable faces. Going to an all-girls religious high school was worse. Talking about anything below your waist was blasphemy. If it wasn’t virtuous, it wasn’t taught.
Slowly, I picked up my green Bible and notes and made my way to the podium. The moment I got up the whole room came to a quiet halt.
“Holy hell,” someone gasped behind me.
If I had better aim I would have flung the Bible at Mr. Cooper’s head and made a run for the door. Instead, I cracked the good book open and turned the pages with clammy hands.
“Ashlie…” his face grew red.
“Psalms 56:11,” I read. Pages of Bibles turned. “In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
Mr. Cooper made me ashamed of menstruating. There was no easy way of becoming a woman, especially when the institution that promised to educate you failed to mention the word “vagina,” because it wasn’t respectable for the students. At an all-girls high school, it should have been easier to teach us about health, about our bodies. But it wasn’t.
“Why don’t you just go to the bathroom?” he said.
I looked at him for a second. I closed the Bible, took my notes and stuffed them into my bag. On my seat was a red stain the size of my palm. On my desk, a pad from a classmate. I took the sanitation napkin and walked out of class and into the nurse’s office without looking at Mr. Cooper.
She gave me one look, an understanding smile, and two ibuprofens. Then she helped me cover the stain on my jeans with a spare towel while I took a nap in the spare room.
Four years later, in 2014, Menstrual Hygiene Day was celebrated for the first time worldwide. The first holiday of its kind, MHDay is meant to spark conversation about our period stigmas, hygiene practices, and the importance of sanitary products for people around the world. Basic communication skills and items like pads and pain killers keep girls from returning to school in places like Uganda, Amra Padatik, and India. The inability to talk openly about my menses has made me ashamed of my body.
MHDay, celebrated on May 28, gave me the words and confidence to be okay with menstruating. One of the ways the holiday encourages people to celebrate is to have open conversations and to have pads and tampons available for people who might need it. So that’s what I did. I talked with my younger cousins and with my friend’s cousins that were going to the same school as I did. I told them about discharge and how to put in tampons. I learned that by talking about periods, I normalized it, and that’s how I gained confidence. The conversations stopped embarrassing me, and so did my period.
Days like MHDay can help younger people understand and normalize their periods. If I’d have known more about my menstrual cycle at 14, I would have been better prepared. Today, as a 22-year-old college student in Manhattan, I carry pads and Advil with me, every day of the month, just in case a classmate needs a friend.
Illustration by Ashlie Juarbe.