A Melancholy Old Woman Dying a Miserable Death Alone
– Nonfiction by Kelly Macias –
Featured in issue 16 of Dreamers Magazine & first place winner of the Dreamers 2023 Flash Contest
“We quit!” my ovaries pronounce with gusto on a random Thursday afternoon, and if I’d been paying attention I would have seen it coming since they’d left me plenty of clues we were headed for a dramatic breakup: the simultaneous puking and period poop every month, cramps like I’d been mauled repeatedly by a world class fighter in a Taekwondo match, deep inner belly aches necessitating the use of a hot water bottle passed down to me by my grandmother when I was 16, one with a little red knitted sweater and a white heart that she’d had since the 1970s, trips to the emergency room where doctors consistently gaslit me by insisting that everything was normal, I’d been detaching from my body for years, busying myself with life and work, secretly relieved that I wasn’t ever going to use my burdensome ladyparts to birth children of my own, not wanting any more responsibility since having been forced into raising so many of the adults around me from childhood because they were too damaged to take care of themselves, figuring that the centuries of Black women who’d come before had already paid my debt by being nannies, domestics and othermothers, I’d long since grown accustomed to invasive questions about my reproductive choices, feeling sassy with responses like I’m still raising my husband, though I confess I was left slightly mortified the one time an African Uber driver asked me if I had children and, when I said no, he tsked and predicted my fate would be a melancholy old woman dying a miserable death alone, I’d long imagined a sense of relief when my ovaries took a permanent vacation after all the trouble they’d caused but I’d just been given an entire department to run at work when they finally decided to go who knows where, panic and anxiety creeping in, I found myself suddenly thinking I was way too young for “the change,” as women in my family say, as if it were Beetlejuice or some other supernatural spirit we must not address by its name, recalling the first time my ovaries and I were properly introduced during the summer before seventh grade when I was home alone and a small but pronounced brownish stain appeared with flair in my purple cotton brief panties, seeping right through to my white denim shorts, I was 11, and had been waiting for this moment for three whole years, after Felicia Chapman got her period when we were 9 while her sister was babysitting us and she called me into the bathroom to show me the carmine clot in her underwear so I knew exactly what was happening to my preteen body, dialing my mother at work to announce the news dramatically, Your daughter is now a woman, she in turn called my grandmother after which the phone proceeded to ring all day with calls from aunties celebrating me and offering sage advice, my rite of initiation into a clan of women who wielded magic in our bodies complete, little did I know we wouldn’t talk about menstruation again for thirty years, so I’d have almost no information about what to expect at this stage in life, forced into late night Google searches about bodily functions (Cold flashes during perimenopause, am I dying?) looking for answers on social media I scroll through my phone and find buried in a random text from my mom written nearly two years ago, a reference to my current age (44) being the same as hers when she went through her change, but this data of course is hidden, sandwiched between notes about her beloved Cocker Spaniels and theories about the COVID vaccine so it isn’t all that useful but does make me feel slightly less unhinged, one important thing she leaves out, however, is the brain fog– which I just discovered after I had a Brazilian wax last week and on my way to the salon realized I couldn’t remember what time I was supposed to be there, my newly failing memory causing me to be late and miss my favorite esthetician, waxed instead by a woman I swear hated me by the way she delighted in pulling out each of my hairs strand by strand, taking my skin and dignity with each pube, leaving me raw, teary and ego bruised, attempting to soothe my shattered pride I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, buying myself an oversized bouquet and a few Snickers bars, completely forgetting it is a holiday, until the young clerk who rings me up can’t seem to mind his own business wishes me a Happy Mother’s Day, but this time instead of politely saying Thank You as in years past, the words Screw You triumphantly leap from my lips before I have a chance to think, and as I look at the clerk, who is clearly bewildered, I am overcome with glee, not feeling the tiniest bit contrite, realizing my fertility will not be going out quietly like a lamb but instead with a fucking roar.
About the Author – Kelly Macias
Kelly Macías (she/her) is a writer and storyteller based in Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in Prose Online, The Sunlight Press, Newsweek, The Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 Anaphora Arts fellow and has received recognition for her work from BlogHer Voices of the Year, NYC Midnight, and Stories Books and Café. She is an alumnus of the 2019 Yale Writers’ Workshop. When she isn’t engaged in her daily mindfulness meditation practice, or somewhere in the world dancing Argentine tango in a pair of Chuck Taylors, Kelly can be found on Instagram at @kelmacias and at www.kellymacias.com.
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