31. Unexpected
UNEXPECTED
Dahlia
Lettie has been on a miserable rampage for the past two weeks.
Far be it from me to question the behavior of my slightly unhinged little sister but she’s been even more neurotic than usual. I’m starting to get concerned.
Lettie’s behavior moves in cycles. For a time she’s quiet, well-mannered, and isolated, focusing on her work and hobbies like the garden.
We usually know she’s entering her next cycle when she emerges from her cocoon and begins to seek out our company.
From there, it’s a lot of traveling, shopping, and evenings spent at her favorite restaurants or enjoying the city.
Last, it’s a period of mania where she’s an insufferable menace to everyone which is usually followed by a crash which then leads to the cycle repeating.
Withdrawn, social, mania, crash, rinse and repeat.
I have no idea what this cycle is. Mania looks different for her.
She hyper fixates on everything; the cleanliness of the house, the plants in her garden, counts the number of tiles in each of the bathrooms to make sure they’re an even number.
Nothing can hold her attention so she jumps from hobby to hobby, everything from re-sewing the buttons on all our clothes to polishing the guns I pretend aren’t locked away in a cellar room downstairs.
After this many years in the family, I’ve decided that whatever I don’t know or care to acknowledge won’t hurt me. And Allegra is forbidden from going down there anyway.
Lettie drags her arm across the grocery store shelf and clears out over two dozen boxes of cookies and cakes. I quietly eat my gelato as she stops in front of a display of cheap cava and puts three bottles into her cart.
“I am going to kill myself.”
I shove another spoonful of gelato into my mouth. “I can see that.”
She maneuvers the cart like a maniac down the store aisles and nearly runs over some elderly woman’s cat. Lettie snaps at her in Catalan and whatever she says must be sharp because the elderly woman’s jaw drops. I hide my face from the woman and scurry after Lettie.
“I feel sick. All the time. Dizzy, like my head is spinning.” She opens the freezer door and doesn’t bother to look at the ice cream tubs before grabbing them. Five get haphazardly tossed into the cart. “My stomach’s in knots.”
“Why? Did something happen?”
She slams the door shut and grips the cart handle. “Have you ever gotten butterflies in your stomach?”
I stop in my tracks. “You have what?”
She shakes her head frantically and takes off. “I think I’m going to vomit.”
“Are you getting your period or something?” I watch as she dumps two boxes of popcorn and three bags of chips into her cart. “Leticia!”
“I think I need to see a doctor,” she laments. “I’m going to have a heart attack.”
“More like diabetes.” I snatch a bag of gummy worms from her hands. “You don’t even eat candy! Or processed sugars!”
She grabs the bag from my hand, rips it open, and shoves a handful of gummies into her mouth with an agonized moan. “Siento que mi corazón se va a salir de mi pecho. No sé qué me pasa. Es como si fuera—”
“Holy shit.” I drop my gelato. “Do you have a crush on someone?”
“Dios mío…” She applies pressure to her temple. “Estoy muriendo.”
“Wait, wait, wait!” I rush to keep up with her. Now we’re roaming down the soda aisle. “Since when? I thought romance disgusted you?”
“Who said anything about romance?” She opens a bottle of Fanta and downs half of it. She looks like she’s about to cry. “I’m serious. I think I need to go to the hospital. I feel so sick.”
“How sick?”
“Like…like I’m going to die.”
I’m so giddy I could click my heels. “Oh my God, I’ve been waiting for this day!”
Lettie grabs a loaf of bread and two massive jars of Nutella. “My heart keeps pounding. It’s pounding all the time.”
“This is literally better than ecstasy. I feel higher than a kite right now—eek!” I spin around her, feeling as though my heart is going to burst out of my chest. “Tell me everything, tell me everything!”
“My life is over.”
“Who is he? Or she! Or they? It can be whatever. Oh my God…oh my God!” I clasp my hands together. “Do we know them? When did this start? Was it—wait, actually—”
“Are you done being ridiculous?”
“Oh my Lettie, my Lettie,” I wrap my arms around her shoulders and kiss her cheek. “I’ve been looking forward to this day ever since I gave you your first sex talk.”
Her cheeks heighten with color. “Don’t remind me.”
“Speaking of sex, are you? Having sex?”
“Dahlia!”
“Listen, I’m not a snitch and I won’t tell your brothers. Not like it’s any of their business. But if you are we should talk about birth control and STDs and—”
She opens up the nearest refrigerator door and shoves her head inside, hiding among the milk and juice cartons. “Someone put me out of my misery.”
“If you’re having sex with a man, it’s better to use a condom.
At least in the beginning. Once you guys are exclusive and have a serious talk about it, we can put you on birth control if you’d like.
You have plenty of options and if you don’t like them, you can always change them.
” I tell her. “In fact, I just did a few months ago. It’s really easy but just be prepared for the side effects.
The last one gave me a rash. I was scratching at my arms until they bled, it was awful. ”
Lettie abandons the fridge and starts walking down the aisles again, trying to avoid me. I don’t care. I follow her the whole way and carry on with our sex ed talk.
“There’s the pill, the IUD, the patch, the injection.”
Lettie lets out a deep, loud sigh.
“The implant in the arm, the diaphragm, the cervical cap,” I rattle them off on each finger. “And don’t forget that if you’re having sex with more than one person then you should get tested regularly.”
She spins around, stopping me in my tracks. “Why don’t you just take a gun, put the barrel in my mouth, and blow my brains out?”
I huff and plant my hands firmly on my hips. “Honestly Leticia, no es para tanto. This is important. Someone has to teach you.”
She scoffs and rolls her eyes before taking off with the cart again. We enter the feminine hygiene aisle which is quite fitting considering our current conversation.
She scours the rows of tampons and pads and something occurs to me.
“Hey, have you ever had a pap smear before? Because if not we should schedule you for one. My gynecologist is great and—”
Lettie grabs a box of pads off the top shelf and whacks me in the back of the head with it before dropping it into the cart.
“Ow!”
“Oops,” she responds with a delicate shrug of the shoulders. “Do you need any?”
“No, I still have some from before…”
I pause for a second and recall the trip I took to the drug store in May.
My cycle had come a whole week early and I was freaking out.
On the morning of the wedding, the bleeding finally stopped and I prayed every decade of the rosary in gratitude.
Menstruating in a massive white gown like mine would’ve been a nightmare.
I had a period in June and one in July but haven’t had one since.
Which is why I still have an unopened box of pads under the bathroom sink.
“If you must know, it’s a man.” Lettie nibbles on her bottom lip as she continues scanning the rows of feminine products.
“Oh God…what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to talk to him? I guess it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I could do worse, you know. I’m just awful to him but he’s nice and he’s patient and I appreciate that because I’m self-aware enough to know I can be a handful and—”
“Lettie, what’s today’s date?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m freaking out about this!” She throws her arms up in frustration. “I’m confident it’s all in my head, I mean, he has to be nice to me. He doesn’t exactly have a choice.”
I open my purse and shuffle around in search of my phone when I remember I must’ve left it charging in the car.
Lettie is rambling on about something—someone—but I start scouring the aisles.
There’s a whole display dedicated to tourist items. Porcelain cups, fans, magnets shaped like Casa Batlló, and lighters.
On a nearby twirling display are keychains, postcards, small journals, and themed calendars.
I snatch up the first one I see and flip back a few months.
If my last period was in July and we’re in September…
“Besides, I’m not sure my brothers would approve and—” Lettie barrels to a stop when her cart crashes into my hip. I barely feel the pain. “Hey! Are you even listening to me?”
“I’m late.”
She frowns and checks the time on her watch. “Diego isn’t meeting us for lunch until—”
“No, Leticia…” I scour the weeks and count backward.
Four, five, six…
I look up from the calendar. “I mean I’m late.”
She doesn’t understand at first but when she does, the gummy worm she was chewing falls out of her mouth.
“Oh.”
“I…I hadn’t realized…” She abandons the cart and comes up beside me as if the calendar holds some secret she simply must be privy to. “We were so busy traveling and then when we got back…it must’ve slipped my mind.”
“How late are you?” She asks. “Maybe it’s just your body readjusting.”
“Late. Too late.”
The calendar slips from my grasp as I back away from the display, palm pressed against my forehead. “I…I can’t be…it can’t…there’s no way.”
Lettie abandons me and her cart and starts darting through the store. After a minute or two, sensation finally returns to my legs and I comb through each aisle in search of her. I find her in the family planning section
“No…” I shake my head profusely. “We can’t.”
“We have to!” she insists and drops to her haunches. She starts piling every test on the shelf into her arms.
“I’m not ready.” I bury my face in my hands. “Lettie, stop. I don’t want to know.”