‘Dual Mourning’

“Come on,” my mom ushered me and my siblings through the front door of my grandparents’ house with a waving arm. Their townhouse sat on a hill, overlooking the Hudson River and the Metro North train line. Nana Geri loved to watch and listen for the birds as they flew along the coast of the river, riding the train tracks north or south, while Babu sat next to her with binoculars.

We knew Babu was close to dying. The hospital had just moved him into at-home hospice, where pancreatic cancer would eventually take his life in silence.

“It’s time to say goodbye,” my mom warned us as we pulled the minivan into the driveway. We followed her up the stairs like ducklings, me, then Livy, then Nate. I traced each of her steps with my small feet, paving the way for my younger siblings. I thought of Nana’s gold necklace, two flying geese dangling from her neck. Were they migrating North or South?

Scientists theorize that Geese have a sense that we don’t, called “magnetoreception,” that allows them to follow the dull magnetic field of the earth to guide their migrations. I imagine Nana with a magnetic sense, only Babu is the other pole that she feels herself migrate to, all the way from her Irish Catholic home in Athlone and into Babu’s Jewish New York City life.

Nana may have had magnetoreception as her sixth sense, but I felt like my sixth sense was an uncomfortable awareness that I was living in my own skin. My body was at that point of no return. I felt self-conscious no matter what I wore. My skin crawled as my insides raced with a surplus of hormones. I was only 10, yet small hills had begun to raise on my chest and hair grew in generously in places they never had before. I tried my best to ignore it, never looking in the mirror, turning away from my friends as we changed into pajamas at sleepovers.

I was thinking about my body, which seemed separate from my brain, when we reached the top of the staircase. I froze. Babu lay in a cot in the hallway, seemingly shriveled. I wondered why he wasn’t in the bedroom. Then I imagined Nana’s sleepless nights, lying in bed next to him, listening and counting each breath, wondering when they would halt. I took the scene in, his arms were discolored and bruised where an IV penetrated his thin skin.

“Hi!” he said breathily. I was afraid. This man didn’t look like Babu, the doctor who sang Puff the Magic Dragon in their bright living room and opened the door for Elijah on Passover dinner.

I didn’t know what to say. My words were clogged in the back of my throat, stopping the breath from easing out of my mouth. I felt infinitely younger than I was, standing far away from the bed in fear of this man I had known all my life. The same uncomfortable feeling I got when forced to face my changing body rose from the depths of my belly. I crossed my arms, flinching as I felt my chest. I still hadn’t spoken. Every part of me felt wrong. I felt both too young and too old. I was too tall and yet shrinking next to his bed. I was too quiet, but I heard each breath rattle in my chest. These things that made me grown-up also pushed down any logical response to the situation.

Tick, tick, tick. The clock on the wall had warped to move slower. I remained glued to the ground, staring at him wordlessly while the adults chatted under their breath.

Years before, Livy, Nate, and I were playing in the guest room when Nate knocked over a lamp. It came crashing down, screaming through the house. We stared at it on the ground. Babu came running in, wearing only an undershirt and a tighty whitey.

“What happened!?” he had yelled as he spun around the room.

What had happened? I was afraid of his loud anger then, but now I was afraid of this deathly silence.

“It’s time to go,” my mom finally said as she placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

I turned to Babu for what I assumed was the last time. I took in his furry mustache and round head, big square glasses perched on his large nose. None of the appropriate emotions seemed to hit me. I wasn’t crying. Instead, all I felt was awkward as I stood in front of him. For once, I wished I could cry. I begged my hormones to help me escape from the fight, flight, or freeze reaction I was thought I must have been having.

“I love you,” he told me in a shaky voice. I stared at him. The words still clogged my throat. Say something! I yelled to myself. I couldn’t say it back. My cheeks were hot with embarrassment. I nodded and touched his hand before walking away.

~

My grandfather passed a few days later and the funeral was to take place in a week. My mom looked at Livy and me, with our scraped knees and boyish clothes, and realized we needed to go shopping beforehand. We hated shopping, so the occasion for this outing made the experience comically miserable.

I dragged my feet behind my mom, who I swore was sprinting. “Slow down,” I complained as I mindlessly ran my fingers over the racks of clothing. I was looking, not seeing.

Her arms were piled high with black skirts, dresses, and tops. The industrial lighting in Macy’s glared down on us like a spotlight in the windowless maze of clothes and shoes. My mind wandered to Babu, who had told me he loved me while I stared at his deteriorating body in silence. It wasn’t something I often said to him. On his deathbed, did he wish we had said it more?

We walked past the bras and underwear to get to the dressing room. I blushed at the sight of these shapely items, meant to hold parts of a woman together that I couldn’t quite understand. I averted my eyes, shuffling my feet and hoping my mom wouldn’t notice I was peeking. Did they make her feel as awkward as I felt?

The three of us stepped into the dressing room and I weighed the options hanging on the metal rack. I turned away from the two of them and began to strip to my underwear, hunching my back to hide my morphing body.

It felt as if I spoke about what was happening to me, I would be admitting that I was no longer a kid, that some youth in me had shriveled up like a rotten apple. And wasn’t I still a child? If not physically then at least mentally.

In my fifth-grade class, I had searched for signs that this transformation was happening to anyone else. But no, my best friend Izzy’s chest was flat, her legs and arms scrawny and skin a perfect olive, bearing no hair. I noticed with the relief that the third of our classroom trio, Kathryn, had hair peeking out of the arm of her blue Abercrombie t-shirt.

For months leading up to the summer, all anyone talked about at school was the fifth-grade pool party. It was supposed to be a celebration of our graduation to middle school, but to me it felt like a funeral for the death of my child-body. I had desperately searched Justice for the perfect tankini for the occasion, something that hid my tummy I swore was bloating bigger and bigger by the day.

The night before the pool party, I stared into the eyes of a fresh razor I stole from my parents’ bathroom. What if I just kept my t-shirt on the whole day? I thought as I looked at its shining blades. That would be way too obvious. I lathered my hand with soap and ran my hand over my pits, lifting my arm up high above my head before quickly running the blade over myself. What was left was the baby smooth skin I had missed so deeply. I could have cried tears of joy.

This joy was abruptly changed to fear, as I decided that the only thing worse than having armpit hair was having armpit hair that people knew you shaved. I kept my arms as close to my body as possible the entire pool day.

This was before the goodbye with Babu, before he passed away, and before this painful shopping trip. Now, I was staring at myself in the dirty mirror of the Macy’s dressing room with my head tilted, and not much had changed about how I felt about my body. “That looks good Gab,” my mom said about the black skirt I was wearing.

“I hate skirts,” I responded, to which she sighed. I was used to my legs scabbed and bruised from basketball and lacrosse, not peeking out of flowing fabric.

“Me too,” Livy agreed. Her sun kissed caramel hair was pulled back into its usual ponytail, a thin headband holding her white flyaways in place.

“Well, you have to look nice,” my mom responded, losing all patience.

“Fine. Then this is fine,” I ripped it off my body and replaced it with my camisole, graphic tee, and sports shorts that fell just above my knee.

After the mall we drove home in silence. Too Cool from the Camp Rock movie played on Disney Radio. I had to pee badly, so instantly ran upstairs to go to the bathroom after the long drive. I pulled my shorts down and sat on the cool seat, staring out the window. Birds were chirping in the summer heat. I looked down at the crime scene in front of me. My heart sank and its pace quickened.

No, no, no, I thought. There, on my underwear, was a dark red blotch.

I flushed and immediately ran to my room, shoving the underwear in my drawer. I began to pace, unsure of what to do next. I knew I had to tell my mom, but the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I took deep breaths, shaking. Why did this have to happen to me first? None of my friends had their periods, it wasn’t fair. I remembered my mom telling me she got her period at 10 years old. Stupid genetics. I thought back to confiding in her, “I have hair down there,” as I stood on my twin sized bed.

I knew I had to confide in her again. I walked to the banister that overlooked the foyer to our main floor. “Mom!” I shouted across the house, my voice shaking. She hated when we did this, but what was I going to do, tell my entire family I got my period?

“What!?” she yelled back from the living room.

“Can you come here?”

“Why?”

“Can you just come here, please!”

“I’m doing something!”

“I need you to come upstairs!” I tried to put just enough urgency in my voice without alerting the entire family of my predicament.

I heard her huff and puff to the bottom of the staircase before saying “what?” with her hands on her hips.

“Come up here.” She began to walk up the stairs. I pulled her into my room and said, “I think I got my period.” An uncomfortable smile pulled at my lips.

“Let me see,” she said. I opened my drawer and picked up the underwear with two fingers. Pinching, I handed her the underwear.

“Yep,” she said cheerfully, and pulled me into her as my thin arms dangled loosely at my sides, “oh, Gab!” I heard her voice become thick as she became choked up. Perfect, I thought, even she knows my childhood is over. She pulled away and wiped her face. “Okay, I’ll get you some pads. Do you want me to show you how to put them on?”

“No, thank you,” I said. I couldn’t imagine anything more mortifying than discussing this further. I avoided eye contact.

She left to retrieve pads and I sat on my bed, staring at myself in the mirror. So, you’re a woman now? I asked my reflection. My body was betraying me. I was both a woman and a child at the same time, capable of creating life but incapable of addressing that life also comes to an end. It felt like some part of me had broken off, and that was what caused the bleeding. What kind of woman can’t even tell her dying grandfather she loves him?

The day of Babu’s funeral, I wore the dreaded black skirt that I picked out in Macy’s and a black short-sleeved blouse. I felt prettier and girlier than usual. My dirty blond hair was combed and falling softly on my shoulders instead of pulled back into my usual ponytail.

However, as I sat in the synagogue pew next to my cousins and immediate family, all I could think about was the thick pad between my legs. Something about the skirt made it feel more obvious. I wondered if anyone could see it. I hated my mom’s knowing glances and my sister’s questioning stares.

In the middle of my self-pitying, the Rabbi called my dad to give his part of the eulogy. He walked to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper, filled with his chicken-scratch handwriting. I watched him in awe as he poured everything into his words, unafraid of anyone witnessing the tears that were violently pouring out of his eyes and rolling down his red cheeks. I hoped he told Babu how he felt.

I felt a tug in my chest as tears finally began to rise to my eyes. I was relieved that I was capable of feeling again, of thinking about something and someone other than myself. I let the tears overtake me. I mourned Babu, his “I love you” and my silence, and the innocence of my body all at once. I would never return to the girl I was before.

Gabby Rosenzweig is an emerging writer based in NYC where she works as a full-time management consultant. She graduated from UPenn in 2020 with a degree in Communications. She has always been a writer, though she has just begun starting to share with others as she grows her work. She began this journey with the great support from the Gotham Writers Workshop and the community built there.