Hey everyone! This idea came to me recently. Ladies, I'm sure we all remember this moment in our lives.
Chapter One
Downton, Yorkshire, 1932
Twelve-year-old Sybbie Branson sat in a stall, staring down at the brown stain on her knickers. The stain had ragged edges and it sat in the center of her white cotton knickers.
Sybbie wasn't quite sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. She twisted the ends of her brunette braid together nervously. Her belly ached and she had felt distracted all afternoon, even to the point that Miss Bunting, her favorite teacher, seemed distant, like she was lecturing to the class from the other side of a roaring river.
Sitting at her desk, Sybbie had felt something sticky and then pain in her belly and her sides. She didn't know what it was, but the stickiness convinced her that she needed the bathroom, so at the bell, she'd run for it. She hadn't quite expected…this.
Her monthly.
She sopped up the rest of the...blood...with as much toilet paper as she could, but still, she sat on the toilet, wondering what to do next.
Last year, when her breasts started growing, her Aunt Mary and Aunt Edith had perhaps sensed her needs before she did. Aunt Mary was Sybbie's godmother and the eldest sister of Sybbie's late mother. She looked stern on the outside, but to Sybbie, Aunt Mary had always been kindness personified. Mary often called Sybbie "her eldest and most sensible daughter," before pointedly looking at her three daughters.
Aunt Mary had taken Sybbie aside one afternoon up at the big house, Downton Abbey, and said without a trace of hesitation, "Darling, that dress is looking a little tight in the bodice."
Aunt Edith had been up from London that time and she had smiled in that gentle and wistful way she had and said, "Sybbie, I do believe you have, um, well, you're..."
Aunt Mary rolled her eyes and said, "What Aunt Edith means to say is that you are approaching womanhood. Is your chest growing, love?"
Sybbie nodded, for she had noticed her chest growing. She knew it was normal; a girl had to grow womanly breasts from somewhere.
"I suppose this means your monthly will arrive shortly," Aunt Mary had said. Then Aunt Edith had told her all about it.
"It's a bit disturbing at first, my dear," Aunt Edith said. "And sometimes, your belly or your back will cramp and ache and you'll feel quite cross. But it is what makes you a woman and what makes you able to have babies, someday. When you're married."
"So, because she bleeds every month," Sybbie had said slowly, trying to assimilate this new information. "Because she bleeds every month, Aunt Mary has babies?"
Aunt Edith gave a little smile. "There's more to it than that, but yes, in order to have babies, a woman must menstruate."
"What do you mean, 'there's more to it'?"
"All right, Chatterbox," Aunt Edith said.
Aunt Edith said this thing made her a woman. Sybbie did not want to be a woman just yet. So she stayed in the stall, frozen, and a bit frightened.
# # #
The school bell at Downton Village School rang at precisely three in the afternoon and the formerly peaceful roads of the small village were soon overrun with children hurrying home.
Miss Sarah Bunting, spinster and teacher of the year sixes and sevens, stood in her classroom, gathering papers and workbooks at her desk in front of the room. The girls she taught bolted at the bell. Sarah scooped all of the papers into a large bag and walked past the desks and the hooks along one wall where her students hung their coats and hats.
There was still one coat hanging on a hook. Sarah frowned. It was November and the outside was quite chilly. No one would so scatterbrained as to forget their coat on a day like this.
Sarah took the coat off the hook and examined it: black, thick woolen material, with little pearl buttons. Sybbie Branson's coat. Sarah hitched the coat over her arm and left her classroom, closing the door behind her.
Other teachers did the same, all hunched over with the weight of their bags of homework to grade.
"Hey," Sarah called to Miss Denning, who had the classroom next to hers. "Have you seen Sybbie Branson about? She left her coat."
Miss Denning shook her head. "No. She'll realize right quick that she doesn't have it though."
Sarah frowned. "It's not like her to be forgetful." She stood still for a moment, in deep thought. Hers was the last class Miss Branson had and it was also her main classroom, which is why her coat hung there. She was a conscientious young woman, serious, and inquisitive. But not forgetful.
Sarah was sure that she'd seen Sybbie bolt with her classmates. Had the girl really simply forgot her coat?
Sarah sighed. She did not want the grandchild of the local lord to catch cold because her coat was left behind.
Sarah walked toward the small teachers' lounge.
"Have you seen Sybbie Branson?" She asked another teacher.
"I saw her run to the lavatory seconds after the bell," Miss Broderick replied.
Sarah nodded and smiled, turning to the girls' lavatory. She opened the door and peered at the four stalls. Only one was closed and she saw polished black shoes.
"Sybbie Branson?" Sarah called. "You've forgotten your coat."
"Oh!" A little voice exclaimed. "I'm sorry, Miss Bunting. I—"
"Are you all right, Sybbie?" Sarah asked, hearing an odd note in the girl's voice. "Has something happened?"
A moment later, the shoes rose, the toilet flushed, and Sybil Branson emerged from the stall, biting her lip. She washed her hands, dried them, then took her coat from Sarah's arms.
But there something about her…something nervous, that worried Sarah.
"Thank you," Sybbie said, polite as ever. "Goodbye, Miss Bunting."
"Goodbye, dear," Sarah said. "Truly, nothing is wrong?"
Sybbie shook her head. "No, no. Everything is fine."