Shh, Don’t Let the Gods Hear You
Jill Z Yong
 
She prodded gently at her thighs. Wow, she thought to herself, when did they grow so big? She knew her jeans were filling up a little faster now, but Mother had explained in reassuring tones that all young girls went through such a stage, and would soon develop child-bearing hips.

She was no young girl, she thought fiercely. Flipping her unkempt hair defiantly, she had told her mother loudly that she did not wish to bear children. 

“Shh..” Her mother had worriedly cupped her hands over her daughter’s mouth. “Don’t let the gods hear you. What if what you said came true?”

“All the better, then!” The young girl had yelled, nimbly removing herself from her mother’s authoritative and protective arms.

“Haiyah, that girl. I really don’t know what to do with her!” Her mother had later sighed to her friends; in a manner that all mothers did when talking about their children.

Her breasts hurt too. They had seemed to form white round mounds overnight. Mother, sharply spotting signs indicating womanhood, went to Ah Kim Soh who sold girl singlet and snapped up a dozen, which she had then commanded her daughter to put on, “especially if she was wearing a white shirt or dress.” The breasts had gotten in the way of play, and in confusion and sheer naughtiness, the girl attempted many ingenious methods of flattening the two cumbersome and offending lumps.

She had first slept facedown, and when that failed, she obtained a hard-covered encyclopedia from her brother’s bookshelf and proceeded to knock the lumps to back where they belonged. The Mother had laughed at her daughter’s antics, but later told her daughter that the chest was a magnificent gift from the gods, and should not be interfered with.

One day, to Mother’s amusement, the girl had applied Zam Zam Oil to her forehead, on this nasty red swell similar to one of the many of her legs. Later, she had gone crying to Mother when the swell started producing yellowish pus, and Mother had explained to her that the swell was not a mosquito bite, but a pimple.

Alas! The girl just gave up, and allowed her ever-expanding hips to completely obliterate the hairs which had since been sprouting round her “flower” (Mother had nicknamed it so, and had instructed her daughter in firm tones that she should never, under any circumstances, allow a man near it.), and her breasts to sit prettily under the girlish girl singlet. She prayed vehemently to the gods for the changes to stop.
 
The worse came when the girl had discovered that her panties were wet and stained a brownish-red. She immediately thought that she had accidentally soiled her panties, like a baby did its diapers. But, as she later realized, it could be the menstruation that her teacher had warned the girls about during one of the many Puberty Talks that the school had recently conducted.  She purposefully rolled a wad of toilet paper, and stuck it between her legs. She had felt immensely uncomfortable and burdened the whole day.

I smile indulgently as I flip through the pages of my diary; fond memories of the journey which transcended me from girl to woman, child to adult. At a ripe old age of eighteen, I am wise enough to be grateful to the gods for my hips (which Mother had since contented, was the right size for having three children), and wise enough to laugh at what right now seemed like silliness. The puberty years were beautiful, and I would urge young girls of the pubescent age to thoroughly enjoy them.

Written by Jill Z Yong