Sun Kissed Innsmouth 102
“You just about got this right too. Taters are crispy and soft, cakes are crumbly, mushies got overdone, toss ‘em in later on next time. Wish we had onions, but I always do.”
Felecia knew where to get onions, springs to grow right there in the cave, pearls and whites that might grow in the small plot of uncorrupted land near the well. Even reds and more whites that could and most certainly would take root in the wild meadow where every weed Rhode Island had seemed to grow in abundance.
A little bit of all of them, sprouted and planted and harvested still wouldn’t be enough to buy back the trust Felecia was on the cusp of breaking. Yet when Jacqueline got set to harvest mushrooms again before the week in spring was up Felecia found the most convenient of excuses.
The curse landed on her during that winter. The phenomenon was something Felecia knew of only vaguely before due to loose talk among the household staff during her formative years. Something to do with the slit between her legs that she peed from. Felecia only vaguely considered the whole thing until the summer before her exile from Rotary house, she made the mistake of asking her mother and was only given a very vague description of some mild horror that would be far, far away in her future.
“It hit me at fourteen. One day I was fine and the world was all goslings in the pond and puppies underfoot and the next I was chewing up acid strips and taking pills for a week every month just to get through the daily chores so mother wouldn’t whip me for laziness.” Felecia went to Josephine and got a far more worldly explanation. The whole thing sounded awful then so Felecia, all eleven years of her, went to the one source, no matter how feared or hated, she felt would have the real story to tell.
“Have you started?”
It wasn’t a question, not from Nana. The question came out in the form of hushed accusation from her as she pulled at her night gown and then reached out and dug her thick white nails into Felecia’s arm.
Started what?
Felecia didn’t know what to say or how to respond, she was curious in a dire way and felt the need to know about what impending horror awaited her as it seemed like yet another inescapable tragedy of life from the way everyone talked about it. Whatever the hell it was.
Nana dug her nails in and Felecia gasped. “Well, are you bleeding?”
That sounded like an actual question and Felecia considered the sudden pinch on her arm and shook her head.
Nana eased her grip on Felecia and let go of her nightgown. “The woman’s curse comes for all women even us Conway’s, our women get it late and we take it badly. I started at fifteen, my sister too. Your mother was nearly seventeen before it came for her. Truth be told I hope it takes even longer for you. Nothing good comes of it. The pain, the blood, the…urges. Nothing good comes of the curse.”
That was the full extent of what Felecia was told or what she ever learned of it. The next year she heard a bit more and understood that it was some sort of change that occurred where women peed but that was as far as it ever got for her until the night that she woke up in bed with Jacqueline nearby.
The cramps were awful, the spasms in her back and upper legs, the suddenly wet sensation down there. Felecia reached down in the middle of the night and came back with her fingers slick and sticky.
The scream wasn’t rehearsed, there was no plan in place as Felecia considered her options. Felecia woke up fully knowing that she was bleeding, quite readily and that there was no mystery from where.
Jacqueline was the only person there who understood and the only right one to speak up over the din of Felecia moaning in horror.
There was blood, it would come and keep coming for a few days, there would be stubborn dull and sudden stabbing pain. The mess was manageable, so was the pain, there could be nothing done with the stray absent feelings and urges, those were for later, for much later on, after everything that Jacqueline imagined and maybe not even then.
“It’s a sour sisterhood you can’t avoid, no one can. Should be something bad enough to make us all commiserate, to understand and forgive, right? Yeah, if only. Women should have figured it out long ago but they didn’t. We get little help and a lot of anger over the change now. If you go mucking with a boy, in the village or one of the farms out west or south, you don’t let him go all the way. Unless you’re barren like me and there’s no way to know that until he does. So just don’t, don’t let any of them finish, not in ya. As for this week, this week is going to come every month now, this week is going to be mess and pain and more work heaped up around the middle of you than you already had before.”
Jacqueline climbed out of bed and pulled a handful of yellowed old strips of cloth from under the bed. “Use these for the week, one layered in your under clothes should do per day. We’ll weave new ones for you come fall.