My First Period Story

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"So next year you are going to high school?" asks Tshepo my school walk mate and sometimes mistaken cousin. I nod. I have been walking to school and back home with him since I started at Pioneer Primary. He had been ahead of me, but since he joined this group of boys around my street he has become so reckless - which obviously led to him failing a grade, now I get to leave him in Primary.  I laughed at first. I do pretty much recall the day I warned him. But you know how boys are like, they sometimes think it is all about them. I just hope I never get to think of them in another way.

My name is Ntombi, I am 12 years old right now and I never want to have a boyfriend. Every year since I started growing breasts has become a shock. Well now except for Tshepo repeating grade 6; I have discovered that boys might actually become a problem someday. But I cannot let them distract me. My older sisters Plantina and Noma always laugh, and I never seem to understand how they mean when they say "You going to be chasing after boys when you are older". As if I would ever do that.

Tshepo and I live two houses apart, but he always comes home with me because unfortunately he is also friends with my cousins Thokozani and Mvuleni.
I leave him with those two idiots, and I head to the room that I share with my cousin Cleo. I always wonder how it is like to have your own bed and your own bedroom and never have to share with anyone.

What is this? Blood!? Where did I hurt myself?

I spin around checking my hands, my thighs, and my head, everywhere not knowing where the blood is coming from. Then the door opens "Yini? (What is it?)" My cousin Cleo asks. I am so freaked out I have absolutely no idea whose blood this is. Then it happens, she laughs and points between my legs. I do not understand how anyone would laugh at the sight of blood. Then she says to me "This is going to happen to you often, every month actually. I will get water for you to clean up".
Stunned!

The only thought running through my mind right now is that I am going to bleed every month and it just happens? What is wrong with these people?
Two years ago when my chest started to grow I thought nothing else weird will happen. “It’s like a transformation, you will like it”, Plantina used to say. I really do not like it.

I bath and then I am given something that looks like a half cut nappy called a pad. What am I supposed to do with this thing? I ask with my eyes staring at my cousin Cleo and my oldest sister Noma, who keeps saying she wants to discuss ‘something’ with me.

They point at one of my panties and I place the pad there and then it begins, the one conversation I will always remember my whole entire life.
Noma instructs Cleo to leave. And then she makes this serious face that always makes us feel like we have done something wrong.

Oh God! What have I done? Why did I ever have to bleed?


“Now you are a woman” she says. I would like to stay a girl my whole life thank you very much.

“It is going to hurt sometimes” she continues blabbing. I really do not want to be having this conversation. I begin to wander, as I look at the walls filled with posters of Craig David, Rebecca Malope, Christina Aguilera and Lebo Mathosa. I do not get the combination really, what music does this lady that I spend every night with like? “Lalela” (Listen!), Noma says, literally knocking me out of my ‘I am ignoring’ you trance. “If you have sex with a boy, you will fall pregnant,” she says. Now why would I want to have sex with a boy? “If you fall pregnant” she says “I will kill you”.

And then, just like that she just walks out of the room, as though she did not just threaten a bleeding human being.

Seriously, there is something wrong with these people.
To be continued…

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