''I’m so angry,' my second sister said, visibly shaking. 'I’m not kidding, I’m mad.' Our parents had been cruelest to her.'
My Parents' Obsession With Purity Nearly Ruined Us. Years Later, I Found Their Secret In A Box Of Their Things.
“I’d feel better if you weren’t using birth control and got pregnant,” our mother yelled. “At least your intentions would be good.” The family’s eldest daughter, Laura, was a high school senior. Grateful that she’d agreed to share her room with me, I was also indebted to her for her understanding of moral ambiguity. “I’m on the pill,” she said. “You can think about whether sex is right or wrong, but use birth control while you decide.”
Multiple thoughts occurred to me: This could have been a miscarriage; I’d failed my mother’s strict chastity standard; Mitch and I were gambling with our futures. After completing the survey, I sat with a group of girls watching a film. One memorable scene had a woman talking about how she was never without her “condominium” — an embossed leather pendant pouch, worn like a necklace, which she squeezed open, and from which she pulled a wrapped condom. Tooled leather had been wildly popular a decade earlier, but this effort to make birth control hip felt flat. All the girls snickered, shook their heads — and put up with it.
I wanted to tell Mitch I might have miscarried a pregnancy. That it was in the toilet and I wasn’t sure what to do. But Mitch didn’t like talking about the female body, waving off what he felt had an “ick” factor. All I could manage to say was that I’d passed a lot of blood. He stared a moment, shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the TV. I returned to the bathroom and flushed the toilet.
“Mom and Dad’s wedding certificate,” I said. None of us had ever seen it. My sisters peered over my shoulders. “April 18, 1954.” Four months before my oldest sister was born.All of us were coming to the same realization at once. That was why they’d been married in the rectory rather than the church, our mother in a blue tailored suit.
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