Teach Me

9

Luckily, the rain only lasted that evening and into the next day. A few trees had fallen along the tree line, which were picked up the day after the rain and stored to dry out for future use. Luckily, no damages to any houses or property were made.

Locke asked me to not go to the shop the day after he had led me home. The rain was still falling heavily and the paths weren't safe for walking. So, he and I spent the day in the house.

I spent several hours reading the novels that Locke had gotten me, hand sewing a new dress for myself, and Locke taught me to play a board game. It was quite a peaceful day, something I'd never known in my old house with my father's domineering nature.

That was a week ago, and since then, Locke and I had fallen into a comfortable routine. One of us would make breakfast in the morning and then in the evenings, we made dinner together. After, we would wash the dirty dishes from the day. We usually took our lunches separately because neither of us had an exact schedule detailing when we'd be returning home to eat. When he was very busy, some days Locke never came back to eat lunch at all.

Usually, if Locke wasn't busy, after dinner we would sit in the living room together and do one of several things. Sometimes I would read and he would do something to entertain himself, we would watch a movie on this electrified box called a television and the movie was stored on this disk called a DVD, or we would play some type of board game or card game together.

My favorite time was the evenings, when both Locke and I were home, spending time together.

One evening, I was sitting on the couch reading, and he was sitting in the recliner opposite me.

"I'm going to use the bathroom," I said, getting up from the couch.

Once in the bathroom, I noticed a development. It was something I had only experienced a few times as a young girl and not something I'd ever experienced as an adult. I was menstruating.

At first, when I noticed the blood, I felt panicked. I'd thought that something was wrong or that I was injured in some way.

Then I remembered the first time this had happened to me as a girl. I was thirteen years old and I had rushed to tell my mother that something was wrong.

She told me to be quiet and never mention this to anyone. It wasn't to be discussed ever. Then she hurriedly gave me a cotton pad of sorts and told me to line it in my underwear. It was never addressed again and I'd only had five or six more cycles before it stopped.

I wasn't sure why it had come back.

Though, this time I didn't have a cotton pad. Instead, I cleaned myself up and gently rolled the toilet paper into a shape that would fit the inside of my underwear and placed the paper in.

When I returned to the living room, I saw Locke standing above the couch, pulling the cover off the cushion.

He noticed me walk into the room and looked up.

"Are you okay?" He asked.

I furrowed my eyebrows at him. "Yes, why?"

He stared at me for a moment, like he was unsure what to say. "You're bleeding."

I was confused. "How do you know?" Mother told me to never speak of such matters.

"There's blood on the cushion," he said.

"Blood?" I asked, feeling my face pale.

"It's okay, Willow. Are you... are you on your period?"

"I don't know what that is."