Claudia — perched on the edge of the toilet — leans over her knees and plays with the small white tag sticking out from her panties, which hang around her ankles, the little pink strawberries coated with blood. She pulls her ankles apart so they don't touch the sticky mess and wonders what the little black words on the tag say. She guesses it says made in Taiwan by number 251, but hopes it gives instructions for washing away womanhood.
With hands on each side of the panties she brings them slowly toward her, straining her legs to the sides. When they are almost to her knees she smooths out the tag between two fingers and cranes her head sideways to read. 100% cotton. Made in USA.
She turns the tag to the other side. Machine wash warm with like colors. Only non-chlorine bleach. Tumble dry low. She drops the panties back to her ankles, stands and steps out of them. She takes the clean panties from the sink, yellow with white hearts, and stuffs them with neatly folded toilet paper before pulling them all the way up. The water takes a moment to turn hot, so she holds her hand under the stream until it burns her palm, then hurries to gather the strawberry panties and hold them underneath, crotch up.
As she watches blood run from her panties to the sink, she hears her father enter the kitchen from the garage. The fridge squeaks open, bangs shut, ice hits a glass and the tap turns on and off. Another door shuts and she knows he's back to the garage, back under the hood of someone's broken down car. She thinks of her mother and an ache pulsates across her chest, sinks into her armpits where the pain has been hiding for the past six months.
Had her mother not dressed up in her fancy naval uniform, kissed them all good-bye, and shipped off for Iraq, she would know exactly what to do. Claudia wouldn't have to read labels or make toilet paper pads.
She turns off the faucet, dips the panties into the trapped pink water and swishes it around. As she pulls her hand out she wonders how much blood was absorbed. She wonders how her body will live if she keeps losing all this blood, and where it comes from anyhow. She squeezes the panties to drain excess water and drapes them over the empty towel rack while stepping into clean jeans.
She holds the panties at arms length and hurries down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the laundry room which is attached to the garage.
Tools clank and the radio pours out Martina McBride as she opens the washer and throws them in. She looks over her shoulder toward the garage door then leans over the washer, turns the water to warm and the load to small. She pulls up on the little black nozzle and the water shoots out, a noisy stream to wash it all away.
"Claud!" Her father shouts over Martina's ending high note. "Come give me a hand."
She slides the orange Tide bottle across the dryer, then tips it over the edge of the washer. She lets it pour to the count of ten then drags it back onto the dryer and shuts the washer lid.
"Well hurry it up. Working on a deadline here."
She wipes Tide from between her fingers onto her jeans and joins her father in the garage. The garage where she's bent under the hood next to him since she was barely a tike. She loves the garage, its smell: oil and exhaust, smoke and grease.
"Since when do you do laundry?" There's a laugh under his words.
"Since I spilled tea on my jacket."
"Maybe I should give you some lessons." He hands her a wrench and leans under the hood. "Just hand me those when I say. I might need your little fingers down here in a sec."
She leans into the car and stares down at her father. His layers of grease remind her of the blood. She smells it, like a rusted muffler, as it soaks into the toilet paper. Spreading her legs apart is more comfortable, but she knows it'll look odd and squeezes them close together.
"Quick lesson. That's what your mother would do."
If she leans into the car will it leak onto her pants? Will he stand behind her and see the toilet paper bulge? Will he smell this new development and ask questions? Will she actually have to tell him she's now a woman?
"Give it here." His hand swings out and she gives him the wrench.
She turns for the house and is halfway through the kitchen when he catches the escape.
"I might need you, Claud! Where you going?"
"I have all this homework!" It all leaps out, straight from the yellow heart panties to a scream. "I can't always be out there helping you! I have my own things to do!"
There's silence from the garage, besides Dwight Yokum strumming out. She wonders how long the washer takes and how she'll beat him in there to switch the panties to the dryer. She walks toward her bedroom, then turns and stomps back to the kitchen, standing just outside the garage door.
"And I'm not a boy! I'm a girl!" She sucks in deep, desperate for air. "Remember that!"
She stomps to the laundry room and sits in front of the washer, the soft rattle numbing it all away. She thinks of the pink water still in the bathroom sink and the fresh white water spitting into the washer. And she thinks of her mother floating through the blue waters of Iraq, her eyes turned to war and her finger on a trigger.