Regular A

I study myself in the mirror. The same glass in the square wooden frame that has stared back at me ever since I was tall enough to see over the top of the dresser. I concentrate on the small round bumps barely rising from my chest. I call them “my breasts.” “Boobs” sounds like the noise my brother Kenny makes when he imitates drums. “Bust” sounds violent. “Titties” sound silly. I’m not sure about “chest,” the word could belong to a man or a woman. I choose to think of them as “my breasts.”

Are my breasts identical? Different? Maybe, ever so slightly. I cup my hands, lift my breasts upwards and then press them together to imagine how I will look in a bra. I turn from one side to another and stare into the mirror. I decide I’m at least a Double A, the smallest size they make. Magazines publish articles about how to make your breasts bigger, but none of the arm flapping exercises I've tried has changed their size. They will have to grow on their own, just like the roses that grow in our garden.

One day in the Wagner Junior High School lunchroom, I am in line guiding my brown plastic tray along the grooves in the cafeteria line. Outside it is raining, and the lunchroom is extra noisy and smells of peas and wet wool. While choosing lunch from the steaming trays of hot food, I feel a finger run down my spine in a straight line from my neck to my waist. I spin around.

There is Warren. His face beams like the Cheshire Cat caught peering from a tree.

“You don't wear a bra,” he says.

In that instant, I am catapulted from wanting a bra to realizing it is an absolute necessity. But I don’t know how to answer Warren right away. “You shouldn't have done that,” I finally say.

He turns on his heels and walks away, taking his smile with him.

I carry the tray filled with lunch to join my friends at the long narrow lunch table. Do I tell them what happened? Keep it to myself? Is it my fault Warren did this to me?

I pick up half a sandwich. I have to say something to my friends. I tell them about Warren.

“He's a creep,” Alice says.

“He did that to me, too,” Joyce says. “Aren't you wearing a bra?”

“No,” I say. A warm red flush rises from my neck to my cheeks.

“The music teacher, Mrs. Johnson, approached me in the hall walking between classes last week,” Alice says. “She told me I shouldn't wear sweaters to school because my chest is too big. I was so mortified. That's why I've been wearing these big blouses.” She tugs at the loose cotton material ballooning around her chest.

Beverly is sitting with us, too. She has a boyfriend, wears a bra, and has had her period since sixth grade. I look at her. She nods. I need a bra.

I have been begging my mother to take me to the Teen Shoppe to buy a bra, but she keeps telling me I don’t need one. She is wrong. Warren has proven it to me.

That night. I cook carrots, bake Idaho potatoes, and broil hamburgers for dinner so everything is ready when my mother returns from work. I want her to be in the best mood possible for this conversation.

After dinner, I generate the courage to ask her. She is in the bedroom, getting ready for bed, when I decide to approach her. I tip-toe toward her room. She is unhooking her bra in view of her open door. I stop at the doorway.

“Mom, I have something to ask you,” I say. I watch her breasts fall out of her bra and flatten down against her body. I have seen her get undressed before, but tonight I am paying closer attention. I wonder if she was ever as small as I was, or if I will ever be as large as she is. Her nipples are large and brown and covered with bumps. She takes pride in her breasts, although she dresses modestly in loose silk blouses and fitted shirt dresses. I’ve never once seen her wear anything that showed off her decolletage. She unhooks her girdle one hook at a time, all the way down from her waist to the top of her leg. The rigid stays on her girdle leave angry dark pink marks on her loose flesh. They look like cherry juice stains.

“What is it?” she says and slips her arms into a silky red flowered robe, then gives an extra tug as she ties the silk sash.

“Mom, I want to go to get a bra.”

“What do you need a bra for?”

“I need one, I do.”

I tell her about Warren running his finger down my spine, and my friends wearing bras. I tell her that when I stare at myself in the mirror, I can see my chest is definitely growing, even if my breasts are not yet as big as Alice's or Joyce's or hers.

“You can do what the movie stars do, hold them up with band aids.”

“Oh, Mom, that's stupid!”

“There's nothing there.”

“There is.”

We are standing and facing each other. Suddenly, she reaches her arms out and cups my breasts so quickly with her hands I don’t know what has happened. I feel the pressure of her hands groping for my flesh.

“Don't touch me!” I shout and back away. My breasts are burning. I run out of the bedroom into the dark hallway.

“I'm just trying to see how big they are," my mother says, following me into my room.

I sit down on my bed and cross my arms over my breasts to protect them.

“Don't pull away from me,” she says. “I'm your mother. I'm allowed to touch you.”

Even though the bud-like bumps are still too small for me to think of as real breasts, I know they shouldn't be touched by anyone but me.

“You back away from me? You ungrateful child. Who do you think wiped your ass when you were a baby?” My mother moves towards me on my bed as I lean away from her.

“I'm going to go myself if you won't take me,” I say.

“How are you going to pay for it?”

“I have money in my drawer.”

She shakes her head. I don’t understand her objection to my wanting a bra. What had I done to make her act this way? So often she told me I was selfish. Ungrateful. Was I selfish by not giving my mother my body to touch? She has no right to claim it. But she is my mother. A good daughter does what her mother asks.

But I can’t.

“You want me to buy you a bra! Buy! Buy! Buy!” My mother waves her arms around. “That's all I'm good for in your eyes.” She marches out of my room.

I sit down in my big blue leather chair right on top of a pile of clothes. The history book is open to the chapter, "Political Events Before the Civil War," the assignment for the next day. I read the first line, then read it again. It doesn’t make sense. I read the entire paragraph. I read it again. Some words stick, others do not. Slavery sounds horrible. I wonder what slaves did for bras. I’m so glad we don’t live in those times.

I decide I can ride the number fifty-five trolley to The Teen Shoppe on Old York Road. I will go myself and use the money I keep in my drawer. Still, I want my mother to go with me. My father is dead and I need someone by my side.

The next morning, a strange thing happens. My mother says she will meet me at the Teen Shoppe after work on Thursday night. After school, I ride the number six trolley to The Teen Shop on Old York Road. While waiting for my mother, I flip through several racks of hanging teen skirts and blouses and the popular Villager clothes.

My mother arrives and is greeted by Ms. Skolnick, who owns the store. She has a commanding presence and is proud of her collection of teenage clothes. Her soft lilac silk dress emphasizes her high round breasts.

“My daughter thinks she needs a bra," my mother says.

“Of course she does,” Mrs. Skolnick says. “Let's see what we can do.”

Mrs. Skolnick's son-in-law also works in the store. My friends have warned me, “Don’t allow him to wait on you.” I don’t want a man to see me without clothes.

The small dressing room has a curtain that pulls closed for privacy. On the wall is a floor to ceiling mirror. Mrs. Skolnick opens the curtain and brings a few bras for me to try on. To my surprise, the Double A is too small.

"You belong in a Regular A," she says, “Turn around, let's see how it fits across the back.”

I turn.

“I'll get you a 32.” I blush. I am in shock.

Mrs. Skolnick returns with two different styles. One is padded and one is not.

“You don't need it padded,” Mrs. Skolnick says, then shows me how to lean over and let my breasts fill up the bra cups.

“This one fits just fine.” She closes the hooks, then leaves me alone in the room and goes to answer the doorbell.

I pull the curtain shut and turn around. That’s me in the mirror! This bra has transformed me into a young woman with a narrow waist, straight hips, and skinny thighs. My eyes travel from bra to face. I’m not sure about my face. My mother says my nose has a bump just like my father’s nose did. “The Aron Nose,” she calls it. Sometimes she presses her finger on the side of my nose to imagine how it will look after a nose job.

“You’ll be more attractive to boys when you have your nose done,” she says.

I don’t particularly want to go to the hospital and have a scalpel applied to my face, and I don’t want to surrender the part of me that comes from my father, so I ignore my mother when she says this.

Mrs. Skolnick returns. “Does this bra feel comfortable?”

“Yes, so soft,” I say. “Just what I want! Thank you so much!”

“That’s my job. You look lovely.”

I smile. “I love this bra.”

“I’ll take the bra to the cash register, and you can finish dressing.”

She walks out with a bra in her hand and leaves me alone in the fitting room. I hear my mother talking about how I am so small, I don’t need a bra.

“You know, girls these days have to have everything their friends have,” my mother says.

I emerge from the fitting room. I am not a Double A, I am a Regular A. I feel as triumphant, as I would if I had skipped a grade in school.

“How many bras should I get for her?” Mrs. Skolnick asks.

“One,” my mother answers.

I am so happy to have just one.

“She needs at least two,” Mrs. Skolnick says. “She wears one while the other is in the wash.”

I think my mother is a little afraid of Mrs. Skolnick because she nods her head and says yes quickly.

How did Mrs. Skolnick know I needed a bra and my mother didn’t? Mrs. Skolnick is a kind woman. She understands me.

I want to keep shopping and look again at some of the skirts and sweaters, but my mother says we have to leave. She doesn’t like to buy clothes in a retail store, and prefers to shop wholesale.

We ride home on the trolley, and I proudly carry the bag of bras that reads "Teen Shoppe" in large pink letters. I have proven I need a bra, and now I have two Regular As.

As the trolley clangs around the tracks, my mother looks at me. “Aunt Bessie said I should buy you a bra,” she says.

So it was her sister Bessie who had changed her mind? Why couldn’t my mother have listened to me?

At home, in the mirror, I admire the way the white cotton arches over my breasts. I touch the little pink bow in the middle and caress the delicate yellow flower that is sewn in the center of the bow and separates my breasts. The bra closes in the back with three sets of hooks: too loose, too tight, and just right. Like the women who wield influence in my life, I have learned that there are options.

-Adele Greenspun

Adele Greenspun is a writer and photographer. Picture books published. She is a Philadelphia-based writer and photographer and the author of four books: Daddies (Philomel), Bunny and Me (Scholastic), Ariel and Emily (Dutton Juvenile), and Grandparents are the Greatest Because (Dutton Juvenile). Her essays have been published in Grande Dame Literary Journal, Ladies Home Journal, McCalls, and Parents magazines. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 19TK, with a degree in Elementary Education. When she is not writing and taking photographs, she goes to Pilates, exercises, enjoys family, grandchildren and friends. For more about her work, please go to view her books at www.adelearongreenspun.com and to view her photographs go to: www.adelegreenspun.com