THE BRA

The summer between the seventh and eighth grades, all the girls in my class developed breasts. Except me. I noticed it and all the boys in the eighth grade noticed it… the absence of a bra through my thin white Catholic school uniform blouse. They could all see the outline of an undershirt against my brown skin and my flat-as-a-board chest which was a testament to a summer spent without a visit from the puberty fairy. I had grown two inches taller and now, even more resembled a stick figure.

Every day that first week of school, the boys teased me unmercifully, asking what happened to my tits. It took me by such surprise that I didn’t know how to respond. I had never really thought much about getting breasts except the dread of experiencing that obligatory trip to Hink’s department store and standing in a dressing room, naked above the waist, while being measured for a bra by a wrinkled old saleswoman with cold hands. I had gone with my mother when she took my sister. The whole idea was paralyzing. I wasn’t comfortable with my body. I came from a family that wasn’t comfortable with their bodies. No one ever got naked in front of anyone else. My sister and I shared a room since birth and we had never seen each other naked. How was I supposed to let a stranger look at and touch my just-beginning-to-bud breasts?

I went home and cried. I didn’t belong. I wasn’t like the other girls. I was a freak and everyone knew it. The thought of returning to school filled me with dread and there was no one to share this with. I couldn’t possibly tell my mother. She wasn’t the kind of mother you talked to. I had tried once. It was in the sixth grade when she proved to me that she wasn’t good at handling sexual-type things. They had just installed a Kotex machine in the girl’s bathroom. Laura Gardner and I were the only girls in our class who didn’t know what a Kotex was. We spent the whole day speculating about it before concluding that it must have something to do with breasts.

I went home that night, seeking out my mother for some answers. She quickly became nervous and evasive. As I pushed, she became more distressed until my father finally took me into their bedroom, reached up on the high shelf in the closet, pulled out a white cotton sanitary napkin and showed it to me. This was a Kotex. He didn’t tell me what it was for. I didn’t ask. I had seen a Kotex and that was all I cared about. The other girls had nothing on me.

So, it was up to me to solve my bra problem myself. I came up with a plan. My sister, who was three years older, had a few bras but wore them in a regular rotation so it would be impossible for me to take one without her noticing. But she was also already wearing stockings and owned several garter belts to hold them up. She only wore those when she dressed up or on Sundays for church. The next morning, I went into my sister's drawer and took one of her garter belts. It had a wide white band of cotton with four rubber and metal buckles that hung down to attach to the stockings. I hooked the two opposite buckles together fashioning a type of shoulder strap, turned the garter belt upside down and slipped my arms through the straps. Hooking it closed around me, I had created a “bra.” My very first bra. Although the place where the buckles were joined was a bulky knot at the top of my shoulders and a little uncomfortable, it looked like a bra to me and would hopefully to the eighth grade class too. I put on my white uniform shirt and looked at myself in the mirror. I could see the haltered outline of my “bra” through the sheer fabric. My heart raced. This would work. I covered up with my uniform sweater and went to school.

I was anxious the whole morning but waited for the perfect moment to reveal myself. Usually everyone kept their sweaters on in the morning. I sat nervously hoping no one would notice the extra bumpy something on the tip of my shoulders. As we settled down to work and the temperature of the room rose, one by one people started taking off their sweaters. This was it… Show time! I slowly slipped off my sweater, placed it on the back of my chair and leaned forward in my desk.

The first whispers came from Earl Adler who sat behind me. He had made torturing me his career at St. Columba’s dating back to the first grade when he gave me some contraband gum and once I was chewing it, forced me to swallow it by threatening to tell the nuns. Maybe not a big deal to some, but I had never swallowed gum before and had been warned against it repeatedly by my mother who swore it would stick inside me, clog up my stomach and kill me dead. Everything always killed you dead.

Hearing Earl’s all too familiar laugh, I turned around and saw that everyone was looking at me. I turned back and sat up proudly sticking out my tit-less chest.

At lunchtime, the guys teased me again. “Bernadette’s wearing a bra!” “Yes!” This is the same way they had teased the other girls. I felt giddy and weightless and the most supreme joy and pride. I was just like the other girls. I had a bra too.

I continued to sneak my sister’s garter belt for the next two weeks until the boys’ interest in female under-apparel waned. Then I went back again to wearing my sleeveless ‘Lollipop’ undershirts with the little cloth bow in the front. I was unafraid to take off my sweater because I now had complete “bra confidence.” I knew, and they all knew, I had a bra, whether I chose to wear it or not.