Free The Truest Pleasure by Robert Morgan

mean bleeding in your . . . you know what I mean,” she said.
    â€œWhy?” I said.
    â€œBecause it’s time. Because you are old enough,” Florrie said.
    â€œAnd what if I don’t?” I said.
    â€œThen you won’t have children. Only a woman that has monthlies can have children.”
    It was like she was accusing me yet again of being wrong. I run out of the room and out of the house. I run all the way to the springhouse and stood under the hemlocks there and cried.
    Florrie didn’t say anything more for a few days, and of course Pa didn’t say anything either. But after about a week Mama’s brother, Dr. Johns, come by and said he wanted to talk to me. Everybody disappeared and left me alone with him. He smelled like whiskey, as he always did when making his rounds. Whiskey was the medicine he mostly prescribed, and he always took a little hisself. But he was my favorite uncle. He liked to tease me. He said if I kept reading books I would be a doctor myself some day. He said my black hair made me look like an Indian or a gypsy. When I was little he brought horehound candy in his doctor’s bag. I imagined the candy smelledlike the whiskey on his breath. I even wondered if horehound candy might make you drunk.
    â€œGinny,” he said to me. He made me set on the sofa in the living room, and he set down beside me. He was no bigger than I was, and seemed like a little boy hisself except for his gray beard. He had a gold watch chain that flashed in the firelight. “Ginny,” he said, “do you ever feel sluggish, or heavy, or a little crazy from time to time?”
    â€œOnly when I have work to do,” I said.
    Dr. Johns laughed, and looked me right in the eyes. “Do you ever feel pains in your belly?” he said. “Deep in your belly?”
    â€œOnly when I eat too many apples,” I said.
    â€œYou’re too smart for me,” he said.
    â€œYou can give me one of your tonics,” I said.
    â€œI
am
going to give you a tonic,” the doctor said. “I want you to take a tablespoon three times a day, before each meal.”
    He handed me this bottle of black stuff. It was like a thin syrup, and you had to shake it before taking any. It was the color of Co-Cola but it didn’t fizz up when shook. I don’t know what all it was, except some herbs Dr. Johns had concocted for his female tonic and he sold it all over the county when he made his rounds. There was so much whiskey in the mixture it tasted like a cordial, except it had an aftertaste of anise or licorice. When I took it I tried to imagine it was some elixir that would make me beautiful with full breasts and voluptuous hips.
    The tonic warmed me and made me feel better. And sometimes I took two tablespoons before a meal just to make sure I got enough. It made me feel cozy and confident, and I was suremy problem would be solved. All the medicinal weeds and barks and berries Dr. Johns knowed about had been compounded in the tincture and I was certain it would help.
    But the only effect I noticed from the tonic, besides cheering me up, was it was a mild laxative. I took it every day, until the bottle was gone, and nothing happened. Pa didn’t say a thing, but he was watching. Whenever he asked how I felt I always said fine, fine. But I could tell how worried he was.
    For once it seemed the future might not come to me. I was somehow trapped and could not go ahead and become a woman. I would not have a marriage before me, or children. I hardly knowed what I had done to deserve it. But I felt guilty, especially when Florrie said it was because I read so many books that I had not growed normally. “A woman wasn’t meant to think so much, and to keep her mind on such rot,” Florrie liked to say.
    â€œI know what you keep your mind on,” I said.
    â€œJealousness won’t help you,” Florrie said.
    One day Pa told me to get ready to drive down to South